Isaiah 6 Visual Throne & Relay Race
I was intrigued by the vision of heaven that Isaiah had. I used Power Point to show pictures of long trains on robes and explained that the longer the train the more important the person wearing it. The idea was it was someone was so important that they did not have to move, their authority was such, they could rule from where they were. A long train was heavy, and so you couldn't move much, indicating you were important.
How about teaching the truth of the incarnation to kids younger than tweens? It is never too soon to introduce the idea of the pre-incarnate Christ in children's minds. Isaiah 6 is a perfect chapter to launch from. Isaiah sees a vision of the Lord, high and lifted up, seated on a throne. In the New Testament, John clearly states in his gospel chapter 12 verse 41 that Isaiah was seeing Jesus. After quoting from Isaiah 6 in verse 40, John writes, "Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus' glory..." The kids were blown away.
"Wow, how could Isaiah see Jesus before he was born?"
At this point in my lesson, I uncovered the throne that you see pictured. It is so visual, the kids can imagine that there was someone seated on the throne. But how could it be Jesus? This gave us a great opportunity to explain how Jesus always existed because he is God. We looked at how God says "Who will go for US?" in Isaiah 6, showing that he is more than one person. We didn't delve into the trinity because the point was to help them understand the pre-existence of Jesus before he came to earth.
Visual Throne: I used a visual throne I made myself, set it up on a card table to represent that it was in heaven and put white fluff around the bottom to represent clouds.
The Incarnational Relay Race is a relay race I made up to help kids lay hold of the incarnation. Philippians 2:6-9 pictures the whole picture perfectly. These verses take Jesus from his pre-existence as God in heaven to being made human to death on the cross to going back up to heaven. I taught this at Christmas, but I re-introduced it when we examined Isaiah 6. It would also be great for Easter.
Relay Race
I focused on the fact that Isaiah was seeing Jesus and made up a race to help children learn the full cycle of Jesus: existed in heaven, born as a man, lived here, died on the cross, buried & risen and back to heaven.
This "race" has 4 "stations," beginning and ending at the throne in heaven.
- The throne in heaven - Jesus, being in the very nature God...Phil. 2:6
The manger - representing the incarnation (being made in human likeness 2:7) - The cross - He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (2:8)
- The empty tomb - representing that God raised him from the dead (not in Phil. 2)
- The throne in heaven - therefore God exalted him to the highest place (2:9)
Each station had an object:
- crown (on the throne)
- baby (in the manger)
- crown of thorns (at the cross)
- piece of linen cloth representing the burial cloth (in the tomb)
How the game works:
- Choose a song to play. The kids are racing as teams against the song.
- Break the kids up into teams of 4.
- There is a starting object at each of the four stations, as listed above (crown on the throne, baby in the manger, crown of thorns at the cross, piece of linen wrapping in the tomb).
- Child #1 grabs the crown runs to the manger, leaves crown in manger and takes baby from manger to cross, leaves the baby at the cross, takes the crown of thorns from cross to tomb, leaves thorn crown in tomb and takes the linen from tomb to the throne.
- Now everything is out of order. They keep running the circuit until it is all back in the right order.
- The object is to get it all back right before the song ends. It only takes 4 kids to do this.
This is the video explaining the relay game:
Moderator's note: This game lesson is from Rotation.org member Joan Eppehimer's KidFrugal blog. It is part of a large group of lessons and resources that she developed to make "ministry happen when there are no resources to make it happen." Thank you, Joan, for sharing your creativity with our community!
You can read more about Joan and her ministry here.
