Writing on the Wall Children's Sunday School Lesson

The Writing on the Wall

Use this children’s Sunday School lesson about Daniel to teach children about the need to respect God.

 

Needed: Bibles, a scale and random items, pieces of paper with invisible messages written on them

 

 

Intro Game: How Much Does it Weigh? – Bring in a kitchen or body weight scale and make a game show out of having kids guess how much various items weigh. Choose only one student at a time to come forward and answer your questions.

 

Round 1. Gather a variety of items and simply have kids guess how much they weigh.

 

Round 2. Weigh an item and have kids guess how much lighter or heavier the next object will be.

 

Round 3. Set a target weight limit and have kids bring you an item they think will be as close to that as possible. If it’s more than a pound lighter or heavier, reject it.

 

 

Lesson: Say, The two kingdoms of Israel and Judah had been conquered. God let the Assyrians and the Babylonians conquer Israel and Judah because the people of Israel and Judah had done so many bad things. They had believed in and worshipped fake gods instead of the real God, and they had done all the wrong things that God didn’t do want them to do. So, God let the Assyrians and the Babylonians conquer their kingdoms and carry the Israelite people back to Assyria and Babylon.

 

 

(Read Daniel 5:1-4 with your students.)

 

 

Who was King Belshazzar worshiping? (Fake gods – gods made out silver, gold, iron, bronze, wood, and stone.)

 

What’s wrong with worshiping those fake gods? (There is only one real God, and God’s number 1 rule is that we believe in and worship only Him.)

 

Why does God want us to believe in and worship only Him? (Because He’s the only real God. He’s the one who made us and can help us.)

 

 

(Read Daniel 5:5-6 with your students.)

 

 

What did King Belshazzar see writing on the wall? (A human hand.)

 

It was a hand only. There was no body, only a hand. That would be pretty scary, wouldn’t it?

 

 

(Read Daniel 5:7-24 with your students.)

 

 

What does Daniel mean when he says that God holds King Belshazzar’s life in His hand? (God can let King Belshazzar live or He can kill him. God is in control of King Belshazzar’s life.)

 

God is in control of all of our lives too. We’re only alive right now because God wants us to be alive. If God didn’t want us to live anymore, we would die.

 

 

(Read Daniel 5:25-28 with your students.)

 

 

What was God saying with the first word, “mene”? (That God wasn’t going let King Belshazzar be king anymore.)

 

What was God saying with the second word, “tekel”? (That King Belshazzar didn’t measure up.)

 

God wanted the king to be a certain way, but he wasn’t. God wanted the king to be good and believe in Him, but he was bad and believed in fake gods.

 

God measures us on His scales, too, to see if we measure up, to see if we’re how He wants us to be. We need to think about whether we’re being the people God wants us to be and doing the things that He wants us to do.

 

What was God saying with the third word, “parsin” or “peres”? (That God was going to give half of the kingdom of Babylon to Media and half of it to Persia.)

 

 

(Read Daniel 5:29-31 with your students.)

 

 

Why did God make it so that King Belshazzar would be killed? What was the wrong thing that King Belshazzar did? (He didn’t believe in the real God and was worshipping fake gods. He was even using the goblets from God’s Temple for himself to drink out of.)

 

So, God let someone else come to conquer his kingdom and kill him as a punishment.

 

Remember, we have to believe in only God and respect Him. Then, He will be happy with us and not punish us like He punished King Belshazzar.

 

 

Game: Reading the Invisible Writing – Prepare a few pieces of paper with invisible messages written on them. Prepare them differently if you can. Divide the students into groups of two or three and hand each group one of the pieces of paper. The first group to discover how to read it wins. Then, show each group the trick to reading their piece of paper and have them share what it says.

 

The messages could read:

 

1. Mene. Mene. Tikal. Parsin.

2. God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

3. You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

4. Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

 

Remind students that when God wrote these words, the writing wasn’t invisible, but the rest of His body was. The people could only see His hand.

 

 

Closing Prayer: Lord, we thank You for the warning to King Belshazzar. We pray that You’ll help us to be the people You want us to be. Help us to measure up to Your standards. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.