Dec. 9, 2012 - “The Prophets’ Promised” - Micah and Isaiah Foretell the Birth of JESUS (Conclusion of Lesson)

Today's class  began with a special awards segment for Achievement during the Fall Quarter -- the  students that were recognized today for their achievement were the Third place and Fourth place (Extra Effort) award recipients .  Certificates were  distributed to those awardees. Remarks congratulating the award recipients and remarks to encourage the entire class, to follow the example of the Extra Effort awardees, were made by George Nielsen.  

Then there was a brief review of the last week’s class, which was the Introduction to the material in Lesson 1 for the Winter quarter, from Bible Adventures, titled “The Prophets’ Promise.”     The review started with playing one Christmas song, ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,’ performed by the group Sugarland.    Then the review covered the explanation of the calendars - the Gregorian Calendar where it is now the year 2012, and the Rabbinic Jewish Calendar where it is now the year 5773.   

Details covered briefly were that Abraham’s era was about 2100 BC, Adam and Eve were created about 4000 BC (or earlier), King David’s reign was in the era around 1000 BC, and the prophets studied in this lesson, Micah and Isaiah, are in the era after King David by several hundred years, but also several hundred years before the birth of Jesus.   The issue of the actual correct year of Jesus’ birth was mentioned, and the letters A.D. and the words Anno Domini (“the year of [Our] Lord”) were explained, in response to a student’s question.   The Bible Adventures cover wrap, which showed a timeline of events, including the era of Micah and Isaiah, was distributed to students.

The most-emphasized point was that 1 A.D., the designated year for the birth of Jesus Christ, is the central point of the calendar we use.  

This is to give honor to Jesus Christ, and to recognize that His coming inaugurated a new era in the history of mankind.   Jesus initiated the New Covenant, that had been prophesied, and He declared “The Kingdom of God is at hand” - that is, the Kingdom has come to earth and Kingdom rule on earth starts now; Kingdom citizenship is available now.

Last week, the New Testament portion of this lesson was taught.  That portion covered John 8: 56-58, and a very pivotal conflict between Jesus and Jewish leaders, involving the patriarch Abraham.   Jesus declared “Before Abraham was, I AM.”   This meant that Jesus was an eternal being.   This is a claim of Deity, which was in line with His earlier remarks referring to God as My Father.    Our lesson is for preteen students, not Bible college, so we did not elaborate, either last week or this week, on this pivotal “I AM” statement.   It just served as the introduction of the idea that was developed in our weekly Memory Verse, John 1: 1 -- “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”    John 1: 1 teaches that Jesus is God, the Son.

Today, December 9th,  we concluded Winter quarter Lesson 1, covering the Old Testament portion of the lesson - and the Bible prophecies found in Micah 5:2, Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6.    Using Bible Adventures for our study, we read the background information on Micah and Isaiah, and then read Micah 5:2.    The students were instructed to underline the last two phrases of that verse - “whose origins are from old, from ancient times.”    Along with mentioning the town of Bethlehem, the part of the verse that was underlined emphasized that this ruler of Israel will be an eternal being.   

Then we read Isaiah 7:14, which proclaims that something special is going to happen, a God-given sign, a miracle.    A young, unmarried woman will become pregnant, carry and then deliver her first child, a boy, all without ever being involved sexually with a man.   The name mentioned by the prophet, Immanuel, was explained -- it means “God with us.”    

In response to a student’s question, we discussed Joseph’s status -- Mary’s husband, and earthly father to Jesus, what we call a stepfather, today.    In that era of time, Joseph was not considered a stepfather, but was regarded as the actual father of Jesus.   Because of that, it was important that Joseph also be in the line of descent of King David, in addition to Mary.   People in that time would look to Joseph’s lineage, in the legal sense, to determine Jesus’ ancestry.    In the biological sense, however, Jesus’ ancestry comes through Mary.    

Another student’s question was if Jesus knew, as a child, that He was the Son of God.   The answer given was that Jesus grew and developed normally in His childhood.  We know that at age 12, He did understand that He was the Son of the Heavenly Father.    There was not any further elaborating on this during class, beyond stating that Jesus would have gone through all the stages of development expected during childhood.  (He would have achieved all the developmental milestones, and probably reached the cognitive and spiritual milestones on a fast track - what we would now call “gifted”.)

Then we read Isaiah 9:6, which proclaims that a son will be born - the Messiah - with the God-given authority to govern.   This Messiah will rule in such a way that He “will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”    Following instructions from Bible Adventure, we picked one of the names, Prince of Peace, and asked the students to write out their own personal reflection on that name.  Two sentence-starters were provided, with blank space for the students to complete each sentence and give their reflection.     

To complete this part of the lesson and also to connect with the New Testament part of the lesson, from last week, we picked two more names of the Messiah, taken from the Gospels.   The names were Son of God, and Savior.   Each of these names also had two sentence-starters provided, and blank space to give a personal reflection.    The students read their reflections, for each of the three names, and we commented on what was said, to complete today’s lesson.     Then the re-assigning of the Memory verses was announced and the closing prayer was said.

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Copies of the visuals used for the in-class assignment, with the names Prince of Peace, Son of God, and Savior, and with Scripture references and the sentence-starters can be seen by Clicking HERE.     (The students kept their completed copies of the visuals, as a Take-Home item.   The link will give blank copies of the visuals, for any student who missed this assignment to complete at home.)  

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The Memory Verse, assigned again this week is John 1: 1.      Isaiah 60: 1. is the Emphasis Memory Verse that is re-assigned and we have decided to continue with this verse for the entire month of December.     The “Bonus” verse planned to be introduced this week, John 1:14, will be put off for a week.