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PREPARATION
Create a pack of 30 cards. On the face of three cards write the number one, on three write two, on three write three, and so on, right up to number nine. Mark the remaining three cards with a star. When face down, all the cards should look identical. Put around the room posters bearing the words of Lamentations 2:11-13, Psalm 137:1-6, 2 Kings 25:4-7 and 2 Chronicles 36:15-17. You will need some complicated pictures for the ‘looking forward’ activity.
LOSING IT ALL
15 mins
Divide the group into three teams. Each gets ten cards from the pack, shuffled randomly, fanned out but face down. Each team chooses a card to turn up and the team turning up the highest number wins and collects the other teams’ two cards. This goes on until one team turns up a star card. They then win all the cards of the team who have fewest cards left, and that team drops out. The next time that either remaining team turns up a star card, they’ve won.
Ask the two losing teams how it feels to lose everything. Sometimes in this game you’re doing really well, you seem totally secure, then suddenly it’s all gone. That’s what happened to the people of Judah when they went into captivity, in the next part of the big story…
LEAVING HOME
10 mins
Recap the story so far, taking the opportunity to test how much they’ve remembered. We’ve reached the point where the nation had split in two. From here, there were kings in both the North and South, some good but most bad, for another two centuries. Then the northern nation fell to invaders, and its people were hauled off into captivity, never to return. The South (called ‘Judah’) kept going for another century, before the same thing happened.
Say: The disaster wasn’t unexpected or undeserved. In both the North and South, prophets were warning that the nation had deserted God’s guidance, and catastrophe was coming. In groups, read Amos 2:4-8 and 3:1-2 - one of the warning messages prophets delivered - and answer these questions:
• Why was disaster coming to both the North and South?
• What kinds of things had they done to deserve it?
• People were saying: ‘We’re God’s chosen people, so we’ll be especially safe.’ What was wrong about this conclusion?
KEY POINT
If you’re the people of God, you have special privileges, but also a special responsibility. He cares for us too much to let us carry on drifting further and further from him.
GOING BACK
10 mins
Now send the groups around the room to read the posters. Ask them to make a list of all the things that happened when disaster came. After a few minutes, compare lists and say: this seemed like the end for God’s promises to Abraham. How could they ever recover? Yet God had already made a promise through the prophet Jeremiah that it wouldn’t last forever.
Read Jeremiah 25:11-14 and say: Seventy years sounded incredibly brief. Yet that’s what happened: the great Babylonian empire fell to the Persians, and the new rulers allowed the Israelites to come home.
It didn’t happen all at once – there were three expeditions, under leaders called Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah – but the end result was that God’s people were back home again and his temple was rebuilt.
KEY POINT
God doesn’t renege on his promises. When we give up on him, he’s still committed to us and his purposes will be accomplished in the end.
LOOKING FORWARD
10 mins
Divide into groups and appoint one person in each group to be their team’s artist. Everyone except the artist is given one minute to study a complicated picture which the artist has to recreate without seeing it. Then after the minute, the rest of the group describes to their artist what to draw, giving him the best possible instructions based on what they’ve seen. After five minutes award a small prize for the most accurate picture.
Say: The artist wouldn’t stand a chance without close instructions from people who had seen something he hadn’t! In Israel, before, during and after the captivity, there were messengers from God (prophets) who had seen something that others hadn’t. Their job was to describe what God had shown them so that the nation got an accurate picture of where everything was going.
Give each small group one of these passages to look at: Isaiah 9:1-3,6-7; Micah 5:2-4; Ezekiel 36:25-27; Jeremiah 31:33-34. Ask them to prepare a quick report on their passage for the whole group: what did this prophet promise? What would the future hold for the people of God?
After five minutes, compare results. Sum up by saying: the prophets pointed forward to a new leader, coming from Bethlehem, who would bring good news to the north of Israel (the area where Jesus grew up). Thanks to this, God’s new people would have a changed heart and a deep personal knowledge of him. It would be another four centuries before the time was right for this leader, the Messiah, to appear but God was already working on his promise.
WRAP UP
10 mins
Get the group to sum up this instalment of the big story which you’ve covered tonight, and make sure the key details are firmly fixed in their minds. Mention key books they could look at to deepen their knowledge (2 Kings and 2 Chronicles on the lead-up to disaster, Daniel and Esther about captivity conditions, Ezra and Nehemiah about the return).
Remind them of tonight’s key points: God’s people have the responsibility of bearing his reputation, and they need to represent him properly but when they mess up and fail, even if the results are painful, God is still committed to them and can bring triumph out of disaster.
Pray together, asking God to help you live faithfully for him this week, and to trust in his mercy and forgiveness when we get it wrong.
