Hello again! Today we continue in Joshua. Today’s story is from Joshua 10. Last year’s lesson and craft can be found HERE.
As the Israelites (God’s people) were moving into the promised land God was giving them, it was a pretty big place and there were a lot of cities already there. So Joshua and God’s people had to fight a lot of people to get that land. (You may ask why God would have them defeat people for THAT land instead of giving them some place where no one lived? Why all the fighting? Well…God DID give them that land a looooooong time ago. Remember way back when, when God first promised that land to Abraham? Then Isaac and Jacob? That had always been the plan–for God’s people to live there. But now that other people had taken that land, Israel had to take it back.)
Whenever they obeyed God, they would win. If they didn’t obey God, they wouldn’t win. Well, they had taken a lot of cities and made peace with several kings. (They were going to work together). One of those places with Gibeon. Gibeon and Israel were on a team now. But the king of a different city was scared! He said…”Those other people are working WITH the Israelites!” So he called 4 of the other nearby kings and said, “Maybe if we all work together…we can defeat those guys AND the Israelites!”
So the king of Gibeon asked Joshua and Israel to come help! The 5 kings all joined together to defeat Joshua, but God said, “Don’t be afraid. I will make sure you win.” So Joshua and the Israelites went ahead and they surprised the kings and other armies. It took a long time to defeat all those guys, so Joshua said, “Sun! Stand still!” (Because you can’t fight very well in the dark).
And do you know what happened?! The sun STOOD. STILL. It took FAITH (Joshua TRUSTED in God’s power) to ask God to make the sun stand still. And we know God CAN make the sun stand still because God can do…ANYTHING!
The sun stayed in the sky almost a whole extra day, until Israel had defeated all those other guys.
Joshua and his men defeated a LOT of people as they took over the promised land–because GOD fought with them. When God is for us who can stand against us? (Romans 8:31)
God doesn’t always do the things we ask…if you go outside and ask the sun to stop…it probably won’t. But that doesn’t mean God isn’t fighting for you. God has big plans for you, and just like He parted the waters for Moses, or made the sun stand still for Joshua, or even sent His own son to die for my sins and your sins, God will do GREAT things in your life if you trust Him and obey Him.
For our craft today, we made suns. We used paper plates and cut some triangles out of yellow and orange paper and attached the triangles with tape to be the sun’s rays. Then we decorated them. We used stamps and stickers today but you could use anything you want. Then we acted out the story using our suns.
THIS is a cartoon of today’s story posted by SharefaithSolutions.
THIS is another video posted by Kids Bible.
Thanks for joining us, love to you all!