Lesson Objective:
The children will learn that the choices we make are very important and have an affect on us and others.
Arrival:
Sing with the children, and ask them to sing “Oh Be Careful Little Eyes What You Do.” Then, offer a volunteer a choice. Show him two boxes, one that has one candy, and one that has enough candy for the entire class. He does not know which one is which. Have him choose a box, and then offer the reward. If he chooses the box with one candy, he gets the candy. If he chooses the other box, he and everyone in the class gets the candy. Talk about how choices have an affect on everyone.
Prayer:
Pray that the children will understand how important choices are.
Lesson:
After Rebekah and Isaac got married, they were very excited to find out that they were going to have a baby! When the time came for the baby to be born, there wasn’t one, but two! Rebekah had twins! She named them Jacob and Esau.
How many of you have a brother or a sister? Do you always get along? Do you fight sometimes? Jacob and Esau seemed to fight all of the time from the day they were born. Their mom even said they fought when they were still inside her tummy.
Esau grew up to be a strong man. He was very hairy, and he was also a great hunter. Jacob grew up to be a good cook. He stayed around the house and helped his mom and dad with household needs. Even though they were twins, the two men were very different.
Esau was the oldest in the family by a few minutes. In this day, the oldest son received a great amount of money and goods as an inheritance from his father. Even though Jacob was also Isaac’s son, he was not the heir. He would get some things, but not as much as Esau. This privilege was known as a “birthright.”
Jacob was Rebekah’s favorite, but Isaac favored Esau. This made Jacob jealous. One day, when Esau came in from hunting, he was very hungry. Jacob had just made a tasty stew. I can imagine Esau could smell it cooking and was just dying to have a bite. “Quick,” he said, “Let me have some of that stew! I’m dying of hunger.”
Jacob offered him the stew, but he said, “First, give me your birthright.” This meant that Esau was giving Jacob the right to the huge inheritance he would get when Isaac died.
What would you have said? Would you have given all of those riches away for a bowl of soup? Sounds crazy, but that is just what Esau did. Instead of valuing the gift he had been given by God and his own dad, he sold it for one meal.
This was a choice, and it was a choice that Esau could not change. He chose not to value the gift he had been given, and God was not pleased.
But Jacob is also going to make a bad choice in this story.
When Isaac knew he was about to die, he called his sons and told Esau to go hunting. He told him to prepare a meal for his father, and that over the meal he would give Esau his blessing.
While Esau was out hunting, Rebekah told Jacob, her favorite, to trick his father into giving the birthright to him, not Esau. Jacob should have said, “no way, that is not the right thing to do,” but instead, he followed the plan. The two of them made the meal, and then Jacob disguised himself by putting animal hair on his arms. Isaac could not see, but he knew that his son Esau was hairy, so this is how they tricked him.
The trick worked, and Isaac gave the blessing to Jacob. When Esau came back from hunting, he was very, very angry to find out what had happened, even though he had sold that birthright to Jacob.
These choices, first Esau’s and then Jacob’s, tore the family apart. Esau was so mad that he wanted to kill his twin brother, and Jacob had to run away. He never saw his father again, and it was many years before he saw his brother too. These two men made bad choices, and their entire family suffered for it.
That’s kind of like the thing we did at the beginning of class. Your classmate picked a box, and you (got a candy/had to watch him get a candy). His choice affected everyone in this room! That’s true in life too. God cares about the choices we make, and often they affect everyone, not just you. The next time you have a choice to make, stop and think about how it affects those around you, and pray that you will make the right one.
Craft/Game:
Make a clay bowl so the children can reenact the part of the story when Jacob offers Esau the soup in return for the birthright.
Memory Verse:
Play Memory Verse Balloon Game to help the children learn Proverbs 4:26. Talk about making the choice to avoid evil, like the verse talks about.
Dismissal:
Remind the children to make careful choices in the coming week.
