I’m doing the Bible time portion of our church’s VBS (my Pastor Husband has been shoved into opening/closing prayer and babysitting for the week!), and our theme is Prospecting for God’s Truth. We didn’t buy a curriculum, which means it’s me, my Bible, and the internet to put together talks for each evening. Since I’m kind of time crunched, I thought I would type my thoughts out for you to share and save some time. 🙂
One of the first things I wanted to show the kids is the difference between fool’s gold and the real deal. My daughter has a hunk of Pyrite for me to show the kids Fool’s Gold. Unfortunately, I can’t get my hands on a nice set of real Gold nuggets like the one on the left, but it doesn’t take too much exposure to the real thing to recognize a fake, does it?
I especially like the analogy of how pyrite goes dull as soon as a shadow comes, but real Gold keeps on glistening in the shade. That works for Jesus, and for our Christian testimony!
Looking for verses to put in at this point, I found that the word “gold” is used 361 times in the Bible! I had no idea it was that popular.
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. Genesis 2:10-12
God tells us only a tiny amount about the world as it was before sin entered in, but He took the trouble to make sure we knew about a couple of really odd things. He told us He planted the garden of Eden and then talks about the 4 rivers that flowed from there. I could (and probably will) do a whole post about the names of these places sometime, but for today we’re going to look at the minerals that God takes the time to record for us.
Apparently God has a thing for (perfume,) jewels, and gold! I’d always figured “bdellium” was a fancy gemstone I’d never heard of (like a lot of other names in the Bible), and it might be. The online dictionaries all say it is a tree resin like myrrh, but I kept looking (because of the ads you don’t need to see). The Jewish Encyclopedia is very “open-minded” about what bdellium means. It could be an unknown gem or it could be a tree resin. Who can say for sure? I guess we’ll just have to ask God what He was talking about when we see Him!
OK, back to gold. From this passage, we know that gold has always been around where people could find it. That’s not too surprising since gold is one of the basic elements. Gold, silver, lead, and tin are about the only names I could ever remember when I had to study the periodic table.
Today it is often found in streams and rivers just like in Adam and Eve’s day. An interesting thing on the Gold element page is that the Bible says we’ve known about Gold longer than the scientists admit. That’s the opposite of what I’m usually telling you! Of course, all the evidence for early Gold mining and working was washed away by the Flood, so their dates are pretty accurate for the things we find lying around.
Oh dear, I’m going to have to wrap up today’s post already! Here are the verses I shared at VBS last evening:
But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me.
It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.
God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof. Job 28:12-17,23
And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. II Timothy 3:15
Finding Jesus and His power to rescue us from sin and hell is far better than owning all the gold in the world!
4 Comments
Erick Reinstedt · at
It sounds like a wonderful time! May God pour out His Spirit over you and your husband and those you are teaching. Thanks for what you are doing! With Satan as a deceiver and liar it is so important we are taught to discern real from fake, and truth from lies. I think the examples you have chosen will really help that. Thanks, again, for your heart and stand. I am blessed to get that email that says you have a new post! God bless. —Erick
forhisgloryandpraise · at
You might want to share the things that prospectors used in their hunt for gold, and relate it to the putting on the full armor of God. You could also wrap up the weak talking about storing your treasures in Heaven and not on the Earth where they will rust and erode, and you could share how a vein of gold from a mine would soon be empty and many prospectors would be left penniless, or how they would move on and sometimes only find fools gold. You could also share with the kids how hard the work was to mine gold, that they worked long hours and many only mined the surface, or panned and came up with little nuggets or gold flakes, while others dug deeper in underground mines and would find the larger chunks of gold. You could relate that to reading the Bible, showing that when we only skim the surface of reading it is like those little flakes of gold or little nuggets of truth, and when we spend real time in God’s Word, reading daily that is when we find the large nuggets of truth. Just some ideas. Here’s a modern day story for you. I used to live in the Kern River Valley in Central California, up right next to Lake Isabella and the Kern River in the mountains. I would take my daughters down to the river on hot days, and build a check dam to make a shallow pool for us to sit in and cool off. As we would sit there in that river, we would see little flakes of glistening gold in the water, and tiny little stone nuggets. My daughters and I often talked about bringing a pan to pan for some of those flakes and gold pebbles, but we never did. Now years later, because we never did follow through in doing that panning, we still don’t know if we were looking at real gold or Fool’s Gold, and we don’t know if in doing so we would have actually become rich or at least been better off financially. You see, we were not willing to do the actual work to get to the truth. TRUE STORY.
Cheri-CreationScience4Kids · at
Wow, I bet the stuff you saw was real gold. I don’t think pyrite would flake so fine. Ah, well.
I’m like you, I have so many ideas that I could draw out from this subject, but I’ve only got about 10 minutes a day to share and the kids are mostly very young, so I have to stick to basics.
By the end of the week the kids should know what “wisdom” means, who has it and how they can be clean enough to live with God in His perfect, gem & gold filled heaven. Any more than that is icing on the cake!
forhisgloryandpraise · at
Yes, it is! Yes, it was real gold flakes too. The Kern River Valley is known for it, and you can still see remains of mining towns up there when the water is low. I pray all will be blessed at your Bible School this week, and I know the Lord will use you to his glory and praise.
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