Ok, here we are – up to the 4th Bible Bathday. The aim is to transform one bath-time a week into telling a Bible story that involves water. Super fun. See the intro post here.
Story 4 – Baby Moses
From: Exodus 2:1-10
What you’ll need:
Something that can work as a boat
Something that can work as a baby. A duplo person or a barbie could work
What we’ll do:
We will see that although Pharaoh – the King of Egypt – tried to hurt God’s people, God remembered his promise and had a plan to save. He saved Moses from the Nile River, so that one day he could use Moses to save his people.
Let’s do it (a possible script):
Get kids in a particularly warm (but safely warm) bath
Ok, today we are going to hear another story from the Bible where God saves his people. Because God loves to save his people. But this happened overseas, in the country of Egypt. And Egypt is very hot. That’s why the bath is so warm today.
Kids pretend to be really hot
And Egypt had this really big river. It was called the Nile River. That’s what you are sitting in right now! The Nile River. It was a big river, and it even had crocodiles. Kids pretend to be crocodiles.
And guess who was in Egypt? God’s people, the Israelites. They were the people that God made awesome promises to. He promised to save the world from sin through these people. But do you know what? They weren’t saving anyone right now. In fact they needed saving themselves! Because, you see, they were slaves. The Egyptians made them work really hard and didn’t pay them like you should pay someone who works really hard. Instead they would hit them and whip them if they didn’t work really hard. Do you think that would be very nice?
Kids pretend to be working really hard, getting really hot, and pretending to get beaten. (They don’t need to actually beat each other up – although boys may want to pretend to do this!)
But do you know what? God gave his people lots of babies! They just kept on popping out. And the King of Egypt started getting worried. What if all these babies grew up and started to fight back? He might lose his slaves. No – he wanted to be this really powerful king. He didn’t care about God’s people and he didn’t care about God. So he came up with a really horrible plan. He made a rule that all the Israelite baby boys that got born had to be thrown into the Nile River.
But it was a really big river! What do you think would happen to a baby that got thrown into the Nile River? That’s right – he might drown or get eaten by a crocodile!
Test out what might happen. Put one of the toy people in the bath to see what would happen.
Why do you think Pharoah made this rule? He didn’t want these baby boys to grow up into big strong men who would fight against the Egyptians!
Now, there was this one boy who got born. And his name was Moses. And do you know what his mum did? She put him in the Nile River. But… she put him in a tiny little boat, so that he might stay alive. Put a toy person in the boat and see if it floats.
And the craziest thing happened! Pharoah’s daughter, the princess, came along to have a bath (just like you are now!) and she found Moses. She didn’t want him to die, so she chose to adopt him when he had grown up a bit more.
God saved Moses. No way! How incredible is that?! And do you know why he saved Moses? He did it because he was going to use Moses to save his people from being slaves in Egypt. He was going to free them! That’s why he saved Moses as a baby.
Jesus link
And do you know what? The Bible says that long after Pharoah and Moses had died there was another evil king who tried to kill all the baby boys. He wasn’t the Egyptian king – he was actually the king of God’s people. His name was King Herod, and he wanted to kill all the baby boys because he heard that King Jesus had been born. He wanted to be this powerful king, and couldn’t have another king being born. So he made a rule that all the baby boys had to be killed. How horrible! But guess what? Just like God saved baby Moses, he saved baby Jesus too. And just like Moses grew up to save his people from slavery to the Egyptians, Jesus grew up to save his people from slavery to sin! God is so good and really loves to save!
Extra ideas for keen beans
Test out different boats to see what might work
Act out the whole story with the kids being people like Miriam and Pharoah’s daughter
I would love to hear from you about what did and didn’t work! Comment below! See more Bible Bathday posts.