July 22, 2012 -- "Listening to Good Advice" - Moses and Jethro

This week we covered Lesson 7 from Bible Adventures, about Moses and his father-in-law Jethro, from Exodus, chapter 18.   Moses is leading the Israelites toward Mount Sinai, and while they are stopped at an encampment site, Jethro arrives at the location, bringing Moses’ wife and two sons with him so that they can be reunited.   The lesson covers an incident that follows Jethro’s arrival and welcome into the camp. Jethro sees the need for giving Moses some wise, fatherly advice.  

We began with lesson material from Sunday School that Clicks, a video clip from the movie “Big Daddy”.   After reviewing the clip before class, my reaction was “this is really stupid!”   When my wife Susan saw the clip, she added the word “gross” to our assessment of the scene from “Big Daddy” (which is a movie I had not previously heard of).   Big Daddy claimed he had “a whole new school of child-raising; you give the kid options, instead of orders.”   So, skipping school, having a plate of ketchup for lunch, wearing whatever clothes he wants to wear, learning to spit in a drooling manner and then sucking the drool back into his mouth, and ‘chilling-out all day’-- these were the options that Big Daddy’s son ‘Frankenstein’ had chosen in the video.  When asked about his choice for tomorrow, ‘Frankenstein’ said he wanted to go to school, but Big Daddy said he wanted to wait until the following Monday, and then he would enroll him in school.   That way they could chill-out for a long weekend, first.   

The class was able to see that the stupidity of this video was actually its teaching point.   Big Daddy was obviously not the man to go to -- for good advice.   The video was the complete opposite of our Lesson Focus, which is Our Families Can Help Us Solve Problems.  After making the point that their parents were not like Big Daddy, we turned our attention to Bible Adventures, where the lesson gave the details of Jethro’s advice to Moses, from Exodus 18.  Moses was still the great leader, the Man of God, who had “The Rod of God” which he had used several times, as the connecting point between the situation in the natural realm and the release of God’s power from the supernatural realm.   But Moses wasn’t perfect.  Another leader, Jethro, could see the difficulties that would come from Moses acting as the sole judge.   And in this situation, Moses the leader was willing and able to receive mentoring from his father-in-law.

If Moses could take advice from a family member, our students could see that they could do so, too.  I encouraged them to do so, and then transitioned to practice saying our memory verse from Proverbs 6: 20:

My son, keep your father’s commands and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.

Homework was not assigned this week; instead, we are going to go over the Scripture passages about God, using the faith steps handout,in class.. Then, we will be go over examples to show how to write a "reflection" -- a reader-response paragraph on one of those Scripture passages.  The students will then do their own reflection in class, for extra achievement points. 
The Memory Verse assigned this week is Proverbs 6: 20.   Each week for the rest of the Summer, we also are permitting students to say the previously assigned verse, Psalm 19: 1, using the NIV text:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.    -   Psalm 19:1