Receiving the Law on Mount Sinai

We started our story with a little question-and-answer time. We had seen how God had taken care of the Israelites—besides God, who takes care of YOU? (mom & dad) So, what should you do to show them how thankful you are? (be obedient) What are some things you should do to be an obedient child? Here each one had to come up with an example, or, for the non-verbal kids, had to nod agreement to a possible suggestion. Fun to get the kids of all types involved & thinking!

Next question: is it important to obey God, too? (yes) What should we do to be obedient? The good thing is, He tells us through His Word, and in today's story we will see how He first told His people about His law.

Okay, so the Israelites have been traveling for some time now (everybody gets up & follows the designated Moses once around the room) and are now in the Sinai wilderness. There is a tall mountain there (a tall, double-sided stepladder), called Mt. Sinai. God has told Moses He is going to come down to meet him on the mountain. Since God is coming so near, everyone had to be clean & nicely dressed & ready to greet him. So first, everyone had to line up & each received a washcloth to dip in a basin of water, to wash their faces. Then all the boys got neckties to wear, and all the girls got "corsages" (more like boutonnieres)—rather than fussing with pins for those, I used masking tape which worked fine & was much quicker & safer!

A white sheet was then held hovering over the ladder by a couple of tall helpers. "God" shook the ladder & blew a horn & climbed up the backside, then called for Moses to come up. He did & then we had to all count to 40, since he was up there that many days & nights. Then he came down holding a clay tablet bearing the "ten commandments" (actually just the Roman numerals I-X). Moses announced to the people that next week, we would start studying those commandments one at a time.

For game time, everyone had to sit down while we blu-tacked the numbers 1-10 in random order on the walls & floor. Numbers were then drawn one at a time. For the first number, everyone was in the race to find & grab the right card. Once any person had a card, however, he/she could not go for another until everyone had "won" one. It went well. A key was making everyone sit back down between each number.

Our craft was making clay tablets like the one Moses had brought down from the mountain. We had pre-cut "double tablet" shapes. Everyone got a lump of quick-drying clay to roll out to smoothly cover the shapes, using wooden or plastic dowels (I had some of each on hand; just enough!). Then they were to "carve" the numbers 1-10 into the clay.

When I was going over this with the day's leader, she said she really wasn't familiar with Roman numerals. We foreigners think "ten commandments" and automatically think Roman numerals but hey, you know what? I bet that even if they were numbered on those original tablets, it wasn't in Roman numerals! So we went "indigenous" and used the Chinese numerals: 一﹐二﹐三﹐四﹐五﹐六﹐七﹐八﹐九﹐十﹗Sorry no photos though; the numbers didn't photograph well in the white clay.

I went back & tried again to take a picture; here we go:

I heard the Bible study generated some good discussion. One interesting point being that God obviously wanted to communicate with His people, which their Chinese gods do not. (All religions are NOT just the same!)