Listen up, little ones
Listen for the words Elijah and Elisha.
Reading
Luke 4:14-30—In Elisha’s time…
Optional Reading
2 Kings 5:1-14
Keys for kids
- Jesus is greater than Elisha or Elijah.
- Elisha and Elijah both showed God’s grace to non-Jews.
- We should follow Jesus.
Questions
- What did Jesus say that Elijah and Elisha had done?
- Why were the Jews so enraged at Jesus for saying this?
- For whom did Jesus die?
Notes
Many sections of the gospel accounts of Jesus’s miracles read a little like the accounts of Elijah and Elisha’s time. But though Elisha and Elijah did great wonders, we are reminded that Jesus did even greater miracles. So, we are to follow Jesus, whose person and work is gloriously greater than Elisha.
In this account in Luke, at the beginning of Jesus’s earthly ministry, he references how Elisha’s healing of Naaman from leprosy was indicative of God’s plan to spread the gospel to the nations. This plan includes us, as most of us don’t come from ethnic Judaism.
This event also shows how the Jews of Jesus’s day were enraged at such a notion (showing that they had not been as good as they should have been as students of the Old Testament). Hughes points out that for these Jews to be told they were less spiritual and less wise than the Gentiles, both Naaman and the widow, was just too much! They wanted to kill Jesus!
Because his time had not yet come here at the start of his ministry, Jesus just walked away (or through) them. But the stage is now set for their rage to boil over in just three short years to send Jesus to the cross. There he died—for believing Jews and for believing Gentiles.
Swedish Method questions
Praise
Psalm 103a, 133a
Prayer
- Thank the Lord for Jesus dying for your sins.
- Pray for a specific application from yesterday's sermons.
- Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.