THINK TOGETHER
What’s something that you’re really good at? (Music, singing, sports, school, art)
READ TOGETHER
Do you know what pride is? What about bragging or boasting? Do you know what those are? Do you ever brag?
After Noah and the flood, it didn’t take long for people to get very wicked again. People soon forgot about God, and wanted to be their own bosses. Genesis 11 tells the story of some very proud people. People who wanted to brag and boast about what they had done. Listen to what these proud people said:
Genesis 11:4.Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
What did they want to do? (build a city and a tower)
Why did they want to do it? (pride/ for themselves/ they wanted to be gods in heaven)
Did you hear this phrase “let us make a name for ourselves?” What do you think that means?
The city these people would build would be called Babel. And the tower they tried to build high in the sky was called “The Tower of Babel.”
Now there’s nothing wrong with building things and using what God has given us to create new things, cool things, beautiful things, and useful things. All of that is good.
But God doesn’t want us to show off what we’re good at so we can go up, up, up. He wants us to use what we’re good at to go down, down, down to help others. And that’s what God did in this story. God came down from heaven to earth to stop the people from building their tower. Listen to what God says:
Genesis 11:7-8. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
Because God loves us he came down from heaven to earth. God didn’t want the people to be filled with pride and bragging. And so he confused their languages and made them spread out over the whole earth. God knows that often when people become too powerful they become more and more mean. And so he would spread the people out so that they couldn’t get too wicked and cruel.
Thousands of years later God will come down to us again as Jesus. Not to spread us out but to bring us together as those who love and serve Jesus. Jesus came down to earth to show us that true greatness means helping others instead of showing off or bragging to others. Jesus came down from heaven to earth to remind us that even when we’re great, we’re still sinful, and even when we’re bad, he still loves us very much. Jesus came down to earth to die for our sins so that we can go to heaven, not by being great, but because we believe that he is great!
Because of Jesus we never have to be a show off again.
With Jesus we can do kind things and give God all the credit.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Break out the blocks or Legos and build towers together. How high can you go? Talk about how we should build and make things not to show off, but to help others. Talk about how we can never build our way to God – he had to come down to us.
PRAY TOGETHER
Jesus,
You came down to me because I could never be good enough to get to you. Help me use the things I’m good at to help others to know about you too.
Amen.
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