Worship Programs

                                        Theme:

                   "Hope of Earth, Joy of Heaven"

                      Third Sunday in Advent –

                 Sunday School Opening Exercises

Scripture Memory: Isaiah 25:9

“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us.  This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”

Play a few rounds of a “Who Am I” game.  Choose people your kids would know, the kids themselves and Bible characters.  Give kids a few descriptive clues that begin with the phrase “I am…” (or similar) and see if they can guess of whom you’re speaking (i.e. I am a girl.  I have light brown hair.  I have three sisters).  After playing a few rounds, give the following scripture verses to some of the kids to read aloud (you could present a sword drill with these verses, or place the scripture references under some of the chairs on which the kids sit).  After reading the scripture, have the kids guess who the “He” is that the verses make reference to.

Isaiah 7:14:  Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. (virgin birth)

Micah 5:2:  You, Bethlehem, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel. (born in Bethlehem)

2 Samuel 7:12:  I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish His kingdom. (from David’s family line)

Isaiah 53:3:  He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  (rejected)

Psalm 41:9:  Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. (betrayed by a friend)

Isaiah 53:12:  He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many… (died with thieves)

• All of the verses we looked at are talking about Jesus!  These verses were actually written hundreds of years before Jesus was born.  The people who wrote them were told by God that Jesus was coming.  They probably didn’t know everything about Jesus, but they were given small clues pointing to Him so that when He came, the Jewish people would be able to recognize Him as the promised Messiah.
• We are in the third week of Advent.  Advent is when we prepare ourselves for Christmas; when we think about Jesus, how He came to earth and why He came.  We see that Jesus came as part of a larger plan – not just out of the blue, but as part of a thousand year old plan. 
• Even though the Jewish people had all of these prophetic verses pointing toward Jesus, when He came, they didn’t realize it was Him.  They had their own ideas about what a Messiah would look like and be like…and a little baby in a manger who grew up to be a humble teacher was not one of them.
• As we get closer to Christmas, let’s prepare our hearts to worship Jesus, the One promised…the One sent to save us.

Prayer Time

Prepared by Ms. Lorena Simmonds

Territorial Sunday School &

Christian Education Bureau Director