Before class
Pack a small bag tonight if you can, as if for a trip, with nothing in it to show where it is going; the lesson opens with it. In pp. 44–48, give most of your time to the pins on pp. 46–47 and to Abraham’s red road on p. 48. Mark Genesis 12:1–5, 15:6 and Hebrews 11:8–10. Print the Big-Print Stretch for Section 6, or set the book open where everyone can see it. A ball of yarn and a few strips of paper for counting complete the list.
Opening · 5 minutes
Set the packed bag on the table. “Suppose someone knocked on your door tonight and said, Pack. You are leaving your town and your family, and I will tell you where you are going once you are on the road. Would you go?” Let a few of them answer honestly. “That is very nearly what God said to a man named Abram, and Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out. Adams put the moment at the top of this page with its year, 1921 B.C. Tonight we will find who was still alive when he left, who went with him, and how one family became the line the whole Bible follows.”
At the chart · 15 minutes
1The dashed line of 1921. The heading at the top of pp. 46–47 reads “the Call of Abraham,” 1921 B.C.; let a student find it and read the 427 years from the Flood (pin 1, p. 46). Then put a finger on the thin dashed line under it and slide down. Ask them to count, on a paper strip, every colored line their finger crosses: each one is a person still alive that year. Somewhere among them they will find Shem, who “talks with Abraham 150 years” (pin 3, p. 46). Name the key: Key 6 · Same column, same moment.
2Terah and his two numbers. Find Terah, 205, and his three sons (pin 2, p. 46). Haran’s line is short; ask why, and let someone read Adams’ words, “died in Ur of the Chaldees.” Then turn to Reading Adams’ Dates on p. 47. Genesis 11:26 says Terah was seventy when he began to have sons, yet under the stream Adams writes “Terah, 130.” Walk through his reason: Terah died at 205, and Abram left Haran at 75, after his father’s death. Tell the class both numbers plainly. Some Bible students keep the seventy, and the order of events stays the same either way.
3One son each time. Follow Abraham’s line to its branches: Ishmael with his twelve “princes” (pin 5), Keturah’s six children, and Isaac (pin 6). Then Isaac’s two, Esau and Jacob, in 1836. Each time, ask the class which line goes on. Now drop below the stream to the single thin line of pin 8 (p. 47) and read the names aloud together: Nahor, Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah. Read Galatians 3:16 and let the class say where that one line is heading.
4Abraham’s road in red. On p. 48 Adams draws Abraham’s journey a second time, as a dark red line. Start at A, his birth in 1996, then let a student trace it up past Haran, where “Terah dies there,” and right into Canaan in 1921. Point out the dip at D, where the famine of 1919 drives him down to Egypt’s stream and back by 1917, and the battle of the kings at E, 1913. Close the step by reading Hebrews 11:9–10 under the picture: the red line never turns back.
Talk it over · 15 minutes
God called Abram out without telling him where he would end up. What did Abram leave behind, and what did he take with him?
Listen for: Listen for country, kindred and father’s house on one side, and Sarai, Lot and the promise on the other (Genesis 12:1–5). If the class gets stuck on possessions, read Hebrews 11:8: “not knowing whither he went.”
At each step on the line under the stream, only one son carries the promise forward. Does that mean the others did not matter to God?
Listen for: Good answers notice that the chart gives the other sons lines of their own: Ishmael’s twelve princes, Esau, father of the Edomites. Bring the class back to Genesis 12:3: the one line was chosen so that every family could be blessed.
Adams thinks Melchizedek was “probably Shem.” Whoever he was, what does Hebrews care about most?
Listen for: Listen for a man who is both king and priest, and for Hebrews 7:3, “without descent.” Remind the class that Genesis 14 does not say who he was, and that Adams marks his answer with “probably” (p. 45).
To close
“And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”Genesis 15:6 · KJV
Lord, when you ask us to take the next step before we can see the road, give us Abraham’s trust.
With younger children (6–10)
Abraham’s road fits on a classroom floor. Lay the yarn across it as the red line on p. 48: Ur at one end, then Haran, then a long stretch for Canaan, with a loop down to Egypt and back. Let the children walk it while you tell the story in a few sentences. Then gather them round the book and send them hunting for three pictures under the stream: Lot’s wife standing alone, the well where Rebekah meets the servant, and the angels on Jacob’s ladder.