Micah

[This is the second in our series on teaching the minor prophets, after Hosea]

Teaching Micah to 3-5s

Theme: Following other gods is rubbish, following the LORD God is brilliant!

Intro: Make a rubbish ‘god’ – create a statue out of rubbish and stick on a printed picture of a ‘god’.

Story:

[Have a lot of pictures of statues of gods] Are any of these our God?

The funny thing is that lots of people have said that this is god. And they’ve worshipped and bowed down and prayed to these gods. Do you think that’s a good idea?

A long time ago God’s people bowed down and worshipped these gods. [re-enact with doll family]. They forgot about the LORD God who had done so many wonderful things for them and they pretended that this was their god.

Things seemed fine for a while, but then they saw that they began to be like their gods. So if their god was nasty, they’d start saying nasty things. If their god didn’t care for people, nor would they. If their god did horrible things to people, so would they. God decided it was time to stop this. So he sent Micah [have picture or puppet of Micah] to warn them,

‘Stop worshipping these other gods, they’re rubbish! God is going to send an army to take away your land.’

But Micah told them something else, ‘Our God is so much better. He loves to forgive and care for you and he will make a perfect new world with no wars or sadness or pain. Isn’t that much better than these rubbish gods?’

But do you know what? God’s people never listened to him, except for a few. And they stopped being God’s people after a while.

[Get the children to destroy the ‘god’ they made]

Songs:

            No more tears

            My God is a very, very, very big God

Activities:

·        Make and destroy a ‘rubbish god’       

·        Stick a sad face and happy face on either side of a piece of paper. Then stick pictures of ‘gods’ on the sad side and the words ‘Father’, ‘Jesus’ and ‘Holy Spirit’ on the happy side.

·        Colouring sheet of Micah saying the theme sentence

Teaching Micah to 5-11s

Theme: Following other gods is rubbish, following the LORD God is brilliant!

Intro:

Make a ‘god’ out of rubbish, then destroy it later in the story

Talk points:

·        History – 1:1

·        What God’s people were doing – 1:2-5

·        This makes them no different to their gods or the nations around them (they become like their gods – eg become nasty, unjust, etc) – 2:1-2

·        So God will chuck them out of the land – 2:3-5 (or to v11)

·        They’d forgotten how good the LORD God is (promise of perfect world) – 4:1-8 (or less)

·        So God will send a King – 5:2-4. Who is this?

·        There is no God like our God – 7:18-20

·        Application – we become like what we worship, what is that? Have you seen how great our God is and how brilliant it is to follow Him?

Could illustrate by dressing one up, having other Israelites worship false gods, show them how they become like their god.

Table time:

·        Funsheet

Memory verse – learn Micah 7:19: Draw a huge group advert for how great God is using the words of Micah 7:19 while memory verse plays in the background.