Before class
Real bricks or clay, a handful, and ten small cards numbered for the plagues: this lesson is full of things to handle, so get those ready first. The evening before, read pp. 51–56, staying longest with the pins on pp. 52–53 and the long line on p. 56. There are many verses to mark, so mark them in one sitting: Genesis 37:5–9 and 46:26, Exodus 3 and 12:40–41, Galatians 3:17, John 3:14. Print the Big-Print Stretch for Section 7, or keep the book open where the class can gather.
Opening · 5 minutes
Put a brick on the table and leave it there a moment. “For two hundred and fifteen years, by Adams’ count, this is what Israel’s life looked like. Not palaces, not pyramids. Bricks, made by slaves, every day.” Then hold up your Bible. “But this story does not begin with bricks. It begins with a teenage boy who had a dream his brothers hated, and it ends with a whole nation walking out of Egypt on one night. Tonight we are going to find both ends on the chart, and see how Adams fits two hundred years of silence in between.”
At the chart · 15 minutes
1The dream and the red rule. Send the class to the bottom of pp. 52–53 to find Joseph’s dream, with the sun, the moon and the stars (pin 4, p. 52). Now ask them to look straight up the page in the same columns. They will find Joseph’s red line, “11th Joseph, 110,” with Ephraim and Manasseh branching above it (pin 1). Follow it right to the heavy red rule of 1635, Joseph’s death and the end of Genesis (pin 2). Let someone read the two numbers on either side: “2369 y’rs. in Genesis” and “1238 years to Malachi.”
2How many went down?. Find the caravan, “Jacob and his family going into Egypt, 1706” (pin 5, p. 52). Read Genesis 46:26–27 aloud, then Acts 7:14, and let the class notice three numbers: sixty-six who went down, seventy for the whole house of Jacob, seventy-five in Stephen’s count. Give them a minute to puzzle, then turn to Adams’ note on p. 55: the nine wives of Jacob’s sons made “three score and fifteen souls.” Ask them why both Moses and Stephen took the trouble to count.
3From Levi to Moses. At the top of the spread, follow Levi’s line, “from Levi came the Levitical Priesthood,” through Kohath, 133, to Amram, “Father of Moses,” and Jochebed (pin 3, p. 52). Moses’ line begins in 1571, with Aaron three years older and Miriam, “the Prophetess,” curving below (pin 6). Then find the burning bush, 1491 (pin 8, p. 53), and put the subtraction on the board: 1571 minus 1491. The class will find eighty, the age Exodus 7:7 gives when Moses stood before Pharaoh.
4One year, many scenes. Lay the ten plague cards out as you read Adams’ list from the top of the spread (pin 7, p. 53), and stop before the tenth to show “Passover instituted” with no number. Then point to the scenes below the stream: the tablets over the golden calf and “The law given on Sinai, 1491” (pin 9). The serpent beside them has no date; Numbers places it near the end of the forty years (p. 54). Read the Watch Out box on p. 53: the scenes are a sequence, not a spread of years. Finish on p. 56, where the line loops forty years and ends at Nebo, 1451.
Talk it over · 15 minutes
From the caravan of 1706 to the burning bush, the chart shows no scene from Israel’s life. What does Exodus 2:23–25 say God was doing in those silent years?
Listen for: Listen for heard, remembered, looked and knew. If the class takes the silence on the chart as God’s absence, read verse 24 again: he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Adams counts the 430 years from the call of Abraham, 215 in Canaan and 215 in Egypt. Some Bible students put all 430 years in Egypt. What stays the same either way?
Listen for: Good answers notice that the order of events does not change. Point the class to Galatians 3:17, where Paul uses the 430 years to show that the promise to Abraham came before the law.
A bitten Israelite had to look at the serpent of brass to live. How does Jesus use that picture when he talks with Nicodemus?
Listen for: Listen for the idea that nobody was healed by effort; they looked, and they lived (Numbers 21:8). Then read John 3:14 and let the class say who is lifted up.
To close
“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”Exodus 20:2 · KJV
Lord, you rescued your people before you gave them your law; thank you that you have brought us out too.
With younger children (6–10)
Joseph’s dream is the place to begin: let the children find the sun, the moon and the stars in it. Then the clay. Each child presses a thumb into it to make a brick, and you talk together about what slavery felt like. Hand out the ten plague cards and have the children stand up in order as you read Adams’ list, with one child holding a card that says Passover. Moses comes last, with the tablets and the golden calf.