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Honor and Respect the Lord!
King Nebuchadnezzar had a severe case of pride and arrogance. Even after more than one miraculous encounter with Almighty God, he still saw himself as the sole source of his own power and accomplishments. God seems to have had fun with His judgment and so will your students: God turned Nebby into a COW! Well, not quite, but almost. Your students will learn that only the Lord is King of kings and Lord of lords -- and Lord over of all of us. He fully deserves our honor and respect.
The story is found in Daniel chapter 4.
POWER-USER TIPS:
There is a name for the disease that Nebuchadnezzar may have suffered from: Boanthropy. It's rare but it does occur. Sufferers believe they are a cow or an ox. They eat grass and feed, and often stop speaking, uttering only "moo." The word boanthropy comes from bovine, the Latin word for cow. Your listeners might enjoy learning these trivia facts.
Get in the habit of making a master copy of the Activity Pages included with all our Object Lesson downloads, to keep for a rainy day. Just the coloring pages alone will add up to more than eighty before we finish going through the Bible!
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The Lesson Plan
This time around, the Object Lesson presentation is super quick and easy. The first page of the Lesson Plan begins with instructions for preparing and performing the Object Lesson, followed by a Bible story that works well with the lesson's topic. In this case, the story is King Nebuchadnezzar's time spent believing himself to be a cow eating grass, and the object is a clear plastic bag of lawn clippings as a tongue-in-cheek visual.
God made an example of Nebuchadnezzar to teach all of us the wisdom of respecting God and honoring Him above all else.
Thought for Today: "Those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me will be disdained.” From 1 Samuel 2:30, NIV.
The Student Activity Pages
After presenting the Object Lesson, you have your choice of a Bible story review game, a puzzler that defines worship as celebrating God, plus a coloring page based on King Nebuchadnezzar's humbling malady...
Nebby Goes Crazy. For individuals to play. The player's job is to fit all the words listed in columns into the squares. The words must properly share letters like a crossword. The words are from the Bible story in Daniel 4, where Nebuchadnezzar has a bad dream about his fall from power.
Use this game to review the Bible story. Nebby goes Crazy can take a long time to complete - it's best for a Sunday morning setting, and best for older Elementary-age kids.
Why We Worship. This type of puzzler is called a rebus. The word is based on the Latin word for things. This rebus, therefore, is a puzzle that uses things plus letters to spell out an important message:
"We are celebrating our Lord."
Related Topic: What is Worship?
The Coloring Page. It's not only little kids that like to color. We've often seen older kids sitting with friends as they color away.
The Object Lesson Presentation • Lawn Clippings
This time around, the object used is simply an attention-grabbing visual aid. The real lesson comes from the Bible story, discussion, and the Activity Pages. Here's what the Lesson Plan says...
Purpose: To teach that God demands our respect - don’t ignore Him.
Prep: Lawn clippings in a clear container (a food baggie is fine) for the object lesson. Nothing special for the activity pages.
Bible Story/Object Lesson: Unlike many of our object lessons that can be taught with any of several Bible stories, this one is is made specifically for the story of King Nebuchadnezzar’s arrogant self-congratulations and pride. To begin, hold up the lawn clippings for all to see. Ask questions such as, “Anyone here want to eat this for dinner?” Tell the Bible story, drawing out some of the humor of God’s response to Nebuchadnezzar’s arrogance. Be sure your audience grasps Nebuchadnezzar’s radical change in attitude once he looked up to heaven: “I praised the Most High. I honored and glorified Him, the One who lives forever….I praise, exalt and glorify the King of heaven! Everything He does is right, all His ways are just. Those who walk in pride He is able to humble.”
Activity Pages: The game that looks like a crossword puzzle isn’t—see the page has complete instructions. Use the game to review the Bible story. The Why We Worship puzzle’s solution is We are celebrating our Lord.
The first page of the Lesson Plan shows the solution to the Nebby goes Crazy game. The purpose of this activity is simply to give you a chance to review the Bible story you just told, helping to cement the story into your listeners' memory.
The Time Element
Those of us that teach Sunday School always try to keep an eye on the clock. We don't want to spend too much time on one activity and not enough on another.
Well, that's the nice thing about object lessons with activity pages: the time they take to present can range from quick to lengthy, all under your control.
In today's lesson, you can just hold up the bag of lawn clippings while you quickly summarize the story of King Nebuchadnezzar's problem of pride, dispensing with the activities altogether. You're done in five minutes, ready to start something different. But adding as many as all three Activity Pages will easily fill another half hour, even more.
So calculate how much time you want to invest, then choose the combination that best fills that time.
No matter what you end up with, the kids will enjoy it and learn a good lesson about honoring and respecting the Father, Son and Holy Spirit above all else.
Something to Think About: “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven....Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." From Matthew 10:32-37, NIV.
These powerful verses contrast the situation for those who have no respect for the Lord, and those that do.
