Sharing Your Faith - Lesson 5

By Stafford North

God's Eternal Plan (2)

Background Information for the Teacher

Objectives: (continued from Lesson 4)

  1. The student can draw 10 figures which summarize God’s plan for saving us and can put with each picture (1) a short sentence explaining it and (2) a scripture reference teaching it.
  2. The student will express gratitude to God and Christ for making this plan possible.
  3. The student will desire to teach this lesson to others.

Preparation:

  1. Have blank sheets of paper on which students the students can draw just the 10 pictures from what they learned in the last class period. They will add to what they draw in this evaluation later in the period.
  2. Pencils or pens for the students.
  3. Each student will need access to a Bible.
  4. Be ready to use a chalkboard or marker board.

Theme:

The Bible reveals God’s eternal plan by which He determined to save people if they sinned and, thus, were separated from Him. This plan may be expressed in ten steps, each of which can be shown by a simple drawing and a verse of scripture. By learning these, a student can have a general grasp of the story of scripture and have a simple way of sharing this with others.

Lesson Plan for Conducting the Class

Introduction: (about 10 minutes)

  1. Welcome the class and introduce any visitors.
  2. Make any necessary announcements.
  3. Have a song such as Jesus Is Lord or Victory in Jesus.
  4. Have one of the young men lead a prayer. Ask him to include thanks for God’s love in sending Jesus to save us.
  5. As evaluation from the previous lesson, give each student a sheet of paper and a pencil or pen and give them a couple of minutes to draw the ten figures that describe the plan of God. Tell them they should spread these out on the page to leave room to add more about each of these in today’s lesson. After a short time, ask how many think they got all ten correctly. Each is worth 10 points toward a total of 100. Pass around the sheet for students to use for recording their score and then get the average to put in your record

Learning Experiences: (about 30 minutes)

  1. Remind the students that the challenge for them is to draw the ten pictures and put beside each a scripture and a brief statement explaining it. In the lesson today, you will review the ten pictures (they can use the drawings they just made above as a start) and they are to put one or two scriptures and a short sentence beside each drawing.
  2. Ask the students to help you draw on the board the ten pictures. They should check their drawings by the ones you put up and be sure they are correct. Once these are on the board, you can take the next steps in the lesson.
  3. Now review the ten pictures and help the students learn more about each one. Start by asking a specific student to explain what each drawing means. Try to involve all students in answering the questions as you go through. To keep all the students interested, ask the question and then call the name of the person. Try to make them feel good about whatever answer they give. If they need a little help, give it to them. Write beside your drawing on the board the scriptures the students should be writing on their papers and a short form of the sentence you want them to read.
    1. Q: What does the first drawing mean? Have someone read Genesis 3:8. Q: What does this passage tell us about the relationship in the beginning between the first people and God? (They were in close fellowship). Now have the students write beside the “G and happy face” Genesis 3:8 and the words “God and man started in close fellowship.” Q: Is that how each of us started out too? (Yes)
    2. Q: What does the second drawing mean? Have someone read Genesis 2:16-17 and 3:2. Q: What was the first choice God gave human beings? (To eat or not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Their real choice was whether to obey or not to obey God.) Now have the students write beside the “face with the question marks” Genesis 2:16-17 and 3:2 and the words “God gave us the power to choose.”
    3. Q: What does the third drawing mean? Have someone read Genesis 3:6. Q: How did Adam and Eve exercise their freedom to choose? (chose to sin) Have someone read Romans 3:23. Q: How many others have made this same choice? Q: Does that include all of us? Now have the students write beside “the hand pointing to S” the two verses and the words “All have chosen to sin.”
    4. Q: What does the fourth drawing mean? Have someone read Isaiah 59:2. Q: What happens as result of sin? Have someone read Romans 6:23. Q: How does this verse describe what happens as result of sin? (Death—which means spiritual death or eternal separation from God.) Now have the students write beside the “G/sin/unhappy face” these two verses and the words “Our sins separate us from God.”
    5. Q: What does the fifth drawing mean? (Will God punish us or forgive us?) Q: Must God punish our sins? Have someone read Ezekiel 18:20. (Yes. God’s justice requires that sins be punished. He must punish our sins and that punishment is eternal separation from Him.) Q: How does God feel about that? Have someone read 2 Peter 3:9. (God does not want us to perish but wants to forgive us. He loves us and wants to be with us.) So God has a dilemma. He must punish us, but wants to forgive us. What will he do? The good news of the gospel is that He has found a way to do both—He can punish our sins and still forgive us. How can He do this? Have someone read Romans 3:23. (God is both just and justifier. He both punishes our sins because He is just and forgives our sins because He is the justifier.) Now write beside the “P or F” drawing the three verses and the words “God must punish but wants to forgive.”
    6. Q: What does the sixth drawing mean? Have someone read John 3:16. Q: Why does God want to help us out of this problem? (He loves us.) Have someone read Isaiah 53:5. Q: How did God find a way both to punish our sins and forgive them? (Through Jesus’ death on the cross. He did it by the principle of substitution. Jesus never sinned and so deserved no punishment for sin, but He was still punished as a sinner. Thus, God had “undeserved punishment” which He could apply to those who deserved it.) Q: Why does the drawing stand for this step in the plan of God? (In Jesus’ death on the cross he shed His blood and this death was the punishment He received for sins He didn’t do. Thus He became “a sinner” in our place.) So write by “the cross” the two verses and the words “God accepted Jesus as our punishment.”
    7. Q: What does the seventh drawing mean? Q: Will everyone receive the benefits of Jesus’ death? Have someone read Matthew 7:13-14. Q: Will more people eventually be saved or lost? (More will be lost.) So does God pick who will be saved and lost or does something we do make a difference? (Something we do makes a difference.) Have someone read John 3:16 again. Q: Who, according to this verse, will not perish but have eternal life? So we must make a choice to believe or not to believe, to choose or not to choose Jesus. Point back to drawing 3 and ask, “What did God give us?” (The power to choose.) So he does not force Jesus on us. It is still our choice. Beside the “hand pointing to the cross” write the two verses and “We must choose Jesus as our savior.”
    8. Q. What does the eighth drawing mean? (Faith plus obedience.) Have someone read James 2:24. What kind of faith does God reward? (A faith that works, a demonstrated faith, an active faith.) Have someone read Acts 2:38. Q: Had these people already believed what Peter said about Jesus being the Christ? (Yes or they would not have asked what to do.) So what Peter tells them to do next is the obedience they must make to demonstrate their faith before they will receive “forgiveness of sins.” Have someone read Acts 22:16. Has Paul already believed in Jesus? (Yes. He believed on the road to Damascus and asked what to do.) He fasts and prays three days, indicating repentance. Now Ananias says he lacks one thing to complete his obedience—baptism.) Have the students write the two verses beside the “F+O” and then write “We must demonstrate our faith by obedience.”
    9. Q: What does the ninth drawing mean? Have someone read Acts 2:38 again. Q: What benefits does this promise after believers have repented and been baptized? (Forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Not only does God forgive our sins but He sends the Holy Spirit to live in us as a sign of His presence in our lives. The main point here is that our sins are forgiven after obedience in baptism.) Have someone read Acts 22:16 again. Q: What does this passage say will follow the obedience of baptism. (Sins washed away.) Q: If our sins are removed, what happens to our relationship with God? Now write Acts 2:38 and Acts 22:16 beside the drawing and the words “God restores us to fellowship with Him.”
    10. Q: What does the last drawing mean? Have someone read Galatians 3:27. Q: Into what are we baptized? Q: Where are we, then, prior to baptism? (outside of Christ) Q: How many are in Christ? (all who have been baptized into Him) Have someone read Acts 2:47. Q: Who adds people to the body of the saved? (God adds to the body, the church, the kingdom, all who have had their sins taken away by the blood of Christ, through faith, repentance, and baptism.) Now write Galatians 3:27 and Acts 2:47 beside the “happy face in Christ” and write beside it “God puts all the saved into Christ.”

Applications: (about 5 minutes)

  1. These ten figures tell the whole story of the Bible from creation to eternity so having this overview will help your Bible study.
  2. These figures also provide a very easy way to explain the gospel to a friend or to a complete stranger. So practice making these drawings and telling the story that goes with them.
  3. We should be very grateful to God that He made such a wonderful plan and to Christ that He was willing to die to make it possible. Have someone read Romans 5:6-11. Emphasize how thankful we should be that Christ has reconciled us to God through His sacrifice and how we should seek to return His love.

Assignment: (about 1 minute)

  1. Sometime within the next day, on a fresh sheet of paper, using your notes as little as possible, do the ten drawings, the brief statement with each, and put with each one or two verses you plan to use with it.
  2. Using your notes only as you have to, take a fresh sheet of paper and share these ten steps with someone in your family or with a friend. Be prepared next class meeting to tell about this experience you had in sharing these drawings with someone.
  3. Tell the students that the next lesson will be on the subject of How to Explain that God Exists. For this lesson, you want them to do some reading in advance. Decide whether you want the students to read an article off the internet or whether you will download the article and hand it out to them at the end of this class session. The plan for the next class is based on letting the students who have read this article in advance help you, as the teacher, build the information for the class. You can also have copies of the article for students to use during the next class me eting. So, (1) they read the article on the internet at eBibleStudy.org/How to Explain God Exists or (2) you hand out copies of the article at the end of this session and ask them to read it before next week, and/or (3) you have copies of the article for them to use during class next week -even if they have read it in advance.

Evaluation: (next class meeting)

  1. At the beginning of the next class, be prepared to do the ten drawings with a scripture.
  2. We’ll have a few review questions then as well.

Back to Sharing Your Faith - Adult

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.