Twelve Spies Sunday School Lesson - The People are Afraid

Use this Twelve Spies Sunday School lesson to teach kids about faith.

Needed: Nothing (optional –fruit)

Lesson: (Note: Always allow students enough time to think about and answer the questions before clarifying the teaching.)

Ask students, What is one thing that you’re afraid of?

(As the teacher, you should also talk about one thing you’re afraid of, or were afraid of when you were younger.)

(Summarize Numbers 13-14, using the following story and asking questions as you read.)

After God brought Moses and the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, they had to walk through the desert to get to their new home, they place where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were all from before Jacob and Joseph and all his brothers moved to Egypt.

When the people of Israel had almost reached their new home, God said to Moses, “Send twelve men, one man from each of the Israelites’ tribes, and explore the land I am giving you.” So Moses did what God said. He sent twelve men out ahead of the rest of people to explore the land where they were going to live.

When the twelve men started exploring the land, they found that it was a very good home. The land grew lots of vegetables and fruit and they even picked some of the fruit to bring back to the Israelites to show them how good their new home was going to be. (You could at this point, pass out some fruit for a snack.)

There was only one problem. The people who lived in that land were very tall. They were the descendants of giants.

When the twelve men came back to tell Moses and the Israelites what they had seen, they showed them the fruit they had picked and told them how good the land was, and they also told them about the giants. Then the people said, “We can’t go up into that land. The giants will kill us if we try to live there.”

One of the twelve men who had gone and explored the land – his name was Caleb – said, “We can go up there and we can take the land because God will be with us and He will help us defeat the giants.”

But the people were too afraid. They said, “God told us He would bring us to a new home, but we can’t go fight giants. We should all just go back and be slaves in Egypt.”

Then God said to Moses, “These people are making me angry. I told them I could give them this land, but they don’t believe Me. They don’t believe that I can help them defeat the giants. So I am going to kill all of the Israelites. I am going to make them all get sick and die.”

Why is God angry with the Israelites? (Because the Israelites don’t think God can help them beat the giants.)

But Moses prayed, “Lord, forgive Your people. Don’t kill them.”

Then God said, “I have heard your prayer, Moses. I will not kill them. But I will punish them. Since these people did not believe I could help them defeat the giants and bring them into their new home, I will not let any of them go into the land that I was going to give them. I will wait until they all die of old age and then I will take their children into the land and give the land to their children for their new home. I will do this because the people did not believe that I could help them.”

Why did God say He wouldn’t let any of the Israelites go into the land that He was going to give them? (Because they didn’t believed that God could help them defeat the giants and live there.)

Do you think the Israelites should have been afraid of the giants? (No, they should have known that God would be with them and would help them defeat the giants.)

Do you think God can help us with the things that we’re afraid of? (Yes. We just have to believe that God can help us and He will.)

Find more Sunday School lesson ideas on our Free Children Sunday School Lesson Helps page.