Sacrificial System Bible lesson

In my last year of teaching Sunday School for the 3/4 grade at my church, we were using Gospel Project. They go through the whole Bible in three years, which means they have more time to spend on a few lessons I couldn’t fit into my Bible lessons. I thoroughly enjoyed creating my own take on their Sacrificial system Bible lesson and breaking it down so my kids could understand it.

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Why learn about the sacrificial system?

I wouldn’t teach this lesson if I only had a limited amount of time to teach kids. That’s why I didn’t include a lesson like this, there are so many amazing stories to tell from the Bible and amazing lessons to teach kids, BUT since we had the time there is a lot to learn.

Learning about the sacrificial system and its purposes helps kids understand the gospels better. When they understand that Jesus was a sacrifice and what the purpose of the sacrifice was, their faith is deeper.

When Paul talks about being poured out as a drink offering, they will better understand just what that means.

It will deepen their faith.

Preparing for the sacrificial system Bible lesson

First off I did a bit of research, and after finding one post that had bits of useful information mixed in with a whole lot of heresy,  I found some really useful stuff:

• Offerings and Sacrificial system
• The Sacrificial system

Reading through those gave me some good questions to ask kids:

1. What was the point of a sacrifice? Sacrifices were to either bring you back into a relationship with God, OR to celebrate something.
2. What is sacrificed? It’s interesting to notice God giving provision for the poor so they are not given an undue burden.
3. What happens to the sacrifice? Sometimes it is completely burned, sometimes it is shared as a celebration, and some were kept for the priests to live on.

Where does this go in my Bible curriculum?

I just realized I should probably explain if you want to add this into my 2 year Bible plan, then I would add this lesson in after the 10 Commandments lesson. You could put it before or after the Tabernacle lesson. I’d probably put it after, but it could easily go in either position.

Sacrificial system lesson

After all this, how did I teach the lesson? I didn’t stand up there and read a storybook, that would make no sense.

I guess I could have, but it just really seemed like it would be the wrong decision.

Instead, I printed out examples of the different types of sacrifice, pictures of cows, sheep, oil, bread, and flour.

Then I passed them out and we opened up our Bibles. We looked at the passages to see what God had to tell us.

Then as we read about each type of sacrifice we looked at why people did it, and then we looked at what was sacrificed, and what happened to the sacrifice.

Did you know some sacrifices were essentially a giant barbecue?

After they gave a peace sacrifice, they would eat the rest of the sheep (or whatever level they could afford), think of it like a family barbecue.

That’s pretty cool.

Also, the sacrificial system helped support the priests, part of the offering was given to them for their food. Think of it rather like a tax to support parts of the government.

At some point I want to write a post on all the festivals, when I was studying the book of John, we learned about so many of the festivals because they are referenced in the book and it’s amazing how much of what the festivals are actually meant to do.

Let’s get some active games with this lesson

I fully admit all of these games are 100% so you can get the wiggles out of the kids. It’s playing the same types of games you always play, but re-skinning it to match the lesson.

Let’s be honest that is what half of the games and activities are.

You’ll need the images from the printable (it’s on the subscriber page, JOIN MY NEWSLETTER), or something to represent the different possible sacrifices: cow, sheep, dove, flour, bread, and oil.

You’ll need several copies of each image, and I would print them on colored paper so each team’s colors are clearly obvious.

Split the class up into teams. At the other end of the classroom set up the different sacrifice types (sin, peace, grain, sacrificial, and guilt). Then they have to take one item from the pile of sacrifices and then run it over and drop it in the proper type of sacrifice.

Once they have all of the sacrifices in the pile, their team has to sit down and then you check to see if their team is correct.