Year B. 1st Term. Lesson 4. JESUS SERIES. Tempted Jesus.

Scripture: for teacher background:  Luke 4:1-13

Making contact:

Catching game: in 2 rows facing the same way – the front children fall backwards for the back children to catch them. Swop around. This is difficult to do – to trust the other person.

 Or

Act out a role-play where someone is tempted to do something wrong. E.g. put some sweets on the table and maybe during the singing a teacher could come close to the table and make as if to steal the sweets, but then stop.

Or

Play a game of snakes and ladders or the version made for this lesson.

 Exploration:

After Jesus was baptized He went to live in the desert for 40 days. During this time he didn’t eat anything. He fasted. 

When he was very weak, Satan came to tempt him. He was trying to make Jesus disobey God and spoil his ministry.

The first thing he said was that Jesus should use his power to turn the stones into bread to eat. Jesus refused. The power was not to be used in this way – selfishly and to feed only people's bodies and greed.

"Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from God." 

Then Satan said that Jesus must bow down and worship him and he would give Him the wealth of the world. Jesus refused and said, “We must worship God alone.”

In this way Satan would be above Jesus in power and position.

Then Satan took Him to Jerusalem and tempted Him to jump off the highest point of the temple and the angels would catch Him. This would be a way to get people to believe in Him. Jesus said no- it was wrong to test God in this way.

Satan left him for the time being.

Application

 The reason Jesus went to the desert and spent time alone, praying was to find out His mission and priority. 

Satan tempted Him to win the world using one of three wrong methods – to be a magician – feed all the hungry with amazing tricks and everyone would follow Him; be a wonder worker and do spectacular things like jump off buildings – people would be sure to follow Him; to deny God and worship Satan, then Satan would hand over the world to Him.

None of these were the way Jesus knew He should go and He fought off all these temptations using verses from the Bible. He might have been weak from fasting, but His faith was strong.

Temptation itself is not a sin. Even Jesus was tempted, but if we give in to temptation, then we sin.

We are tempted in 3 ways. You could show a 3-pronged fork to the children or even give them a plastic fork each to remember this lesson by.

The 3 ways we are tempted are: 

1.by our own desires that entice us; 

2. by the world 

3. by Satan.

You could get the children to act out role-plays of tempting situations where they were strong and didn’t sin. Rather reinforce the positive than do role-plays of children falling into sin!

 Challenge to Mission

Let’s make a choice to be wise with our money. Let’s give the first 10% to God. This takes away the temptation to use the money on us. 

Let’s bring our tithe to the church so that the church can do mission. What mission are we involved in? Let’s resist the temptation to let others do all the work.

 Consolidation

There is a simple “snake” game, called “Temptations – that is the question…to do or not to do…..” 

You will need dice and markers.

There is a worksheet with a picture to colour in of Jesus in the wilderness.

 A 3-pronged fork shows the 3 temptations and there is a challenge to fork out our 10% and to get stuck in and help “dig” in building mission work.

 Memory verse 

"Be concerned above

everything else with the

Kingdom of God and He will provide you with all these other things."

Matthew 6:33