Minor prophets lesson

On Sunday Jeff taught the Minor Prophets lesson to our Sunday School class.  I was out in “the nature” enjoying the women’s retreat from my Mom’s church and having a totally enjoyable and refreshing weekend. Needless to say, my Bible lesson was not about the Minor Prophets.

Meanwhile, Jeff and the other teacher had over 30 something kids together and no sub.  I definitely got the calmer end of the deal, but I missed out on the Minor prophets lesson, and I’d been looking forward to it.

Who are the Minor Prophets?

First off I have to preface it with, “we call them minor prophets, not because their message was less important, but because their books were shorter.”  Because of that, some people classify Daniel as minor and some people classify Daniel as major.  I classified Daniel as a major prophet, and we just finished covering him with our Daniel and the Lion’s Den lesson.

The minor prophets are a motley sort, there’s the professional prophet or priest (Jonah, Zechariah {I think, I might be misremembering}), there are the dirt poor prophets (Joel, Amos), and there are the ones we know almost nothing about (Obadiah, seriously, 1 chapter and not a word about himself).

And they’re not spread out over a wide period of time, if you look at the timeline they’re clumped in a couple of different times.  God chooses a few times to try very hard to get Israel’s attention: the fall of Northern Israel, the fall of Judah, and the rebuilding of the temple, to get their attention.  Unfortunately, Israel is not so good at listening.

What do the Minor Prophets say?

Now we get to the heart of the lesson and why I was so sad to miss the class (to be honest, I’d say this about EVERY lesson).  Each of the kids got a Minor Prophets lesson book.  It had a page per prophet and a few themes for them to look for.

They spent the first 20 or so minutes going through and finding what the prophets wrote about.  In theory that’s what the kids are doing in the picture up above.

I was going to show you the pages my kids filled out, but their minor prophet books are lost in the nether that is my house, so instead you get to see the pretty blank pages.

While each of the minor prophets taught at different times, and to different people, as you read through them you start to see different themes:

• Day of the Lord- a final day when God will judge the just and the unjust
• God’s sadness over the brokenness of the world and the sins of Israel
• God’s mercy- over and over again God warns them of the coming judgement, and they do not listen
• Future King- God will send a king who rules justly
• God’s judgement- There will be punishment for sins
• Repentance- encouragement for those who repent

Jeff had teased me about including Jonah in there because we’d already had an entire lesson on Jonah.  My exact response was, “But otherwise the cover would have looked weird because there would have been an empty square.”  I think really it was God pointing out to me I had a lesson still to learn.  The minor prophets are a reminder of God’s mercy and love for us.  I need to remember that.

Resources for the Minor Prophets

• Minor Prophets notebooking pages (what we used for the lesson)
• Minor prophets review worksheets
• Minor Prophets timeline coloring page
• Buck Denver Asks: What’s in the Bible? Volume Nine – God Speaks! (Isaiah, Jeremiah & the Prophets)(great explanation of timelines and why here)
• Bible Road Trip year 2 (for a great in-depth look at it)
• Prophets Major and Minor pinterest board

For all of the Bible Prophets head over to my Old Testament Prophets of the Bible page.

Next week is Isaiah