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Wax Museum Scripts for Christmas 2016

                                                                        ADAM

Hello, my name is Adam.  The account of my life is found in Genesis chapters 1-4. 

I was the first person God made.  I was made in His image.  His voice spoke into creation everything else, but He chose to use the dust of the earth to create me.  He used His own breath to breathe life into me.  I had a close relationship with God.  We existed in perfect harmony.  I had the responsibility of taking care of the garden that He put me in and naming all the animals.  Because everything was still perfect, these responsibilities were not difficult…rather it was pure joy. 

God gave me a helpmate that was made just for me.  When I first saw her I was so excited and I said, “This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.  She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”   We enjoyed our time together in the garden. 

Then one day we made a terrible decision.  God had given us every tree imaginable to eat and to use except one.  It was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Satan came to us in the form of a serpent and told us that we would not die if we ate it.  We believed him and ate the one fruit that God had told us not too.  Immediately, we lost the harmony and perfect relationship with God.  There was also an immediate break in our relationship with each other and we experienced shame for the 1st time in our lives.  Never before had we experienced such emptiness and ugliness.  The Great Deceiver and Liar had succeeded in tricking us with his lies.

When God came that evening, we hid from Him.  When He confronted us, I tried to blame Eve for doing it.  I even tried to blame God for making Eve.  Another reason to feel shame.  God cursed us that day.  I am the only man alive that knew what it was like to have perfect harmony with a perfect God and then by my own bad decision, have it stripped away.  

Now my work became a burden.  Something called thorns and thistles started to grow up and suck the moisture and life from my plants.  For the 1st time, I began to sweat.  And I got tired.  Very tired…and true to His Word…I eventually died.  But God was gracious to us.  When Satan sinned, he was immediately cast out of heaven with all the angels that had chosen to follow him.

Instead of casting us into hell, like we deserved…MY sin became the reason God sent the second Adam… His very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

 

 

 

 

                                               

                                                                                    EVE

Hello, my name is Eve.  The account of my life is found in Genesis chapters 2-4. 

 I was created out of the rib of my husband by God the Creator.  I was his helpmate in the Garden of Eden.  I was taken from his rib under his arm to be protected by him and close to his heart to be loved by him.  We lived in perfect harmony in the garden in the presence of God. 

Everything was enjoyable until the day the serpent visited us. He fascinated me.  I don’t know why, because I had everything I could ask for. Yet, he tantalized me.  I tried to tell him that there was only 1 tree that God didn’t want us to eat from.  I even added my own emphasis that we shouldn’t even TOUCH it, unless we wanted to die.  But the serpent was smooth and he told me that we wouldn’t die.  He made it sound so harmless and the fruit seemed to grown in its beauty and my desire for it increased greatly. 

Finally, I just had to have it!!!   I reached up into the tree and took one of the fruit and I gave one to Adam.  Together we ate and IMMEDIATELY I experienced a separation from God and I was so ashamed!  I was even ashamed to be seen by my husband, even though he had eaten the fruit, too.  Never had I experienced such a shift in emotions.   The joy was gone!   The fellowship was gone!  The perfection was gone! I would give anything to get that moment back- to continue to say no as firmly as I started out…but I couldn’t so I hid. 

I covered myself with leaves and when God came to us that evening, I tried to hide from God.  But, of course, you can’t hid from God.  He knows everything.  When I tried to explain to Him that I was “beguiled” by the serpent.   Beguiled---almost hypnotized-by that liar.  I tried to show how sorry I was, but the curse came anyway.

Now my curse would be two fold.  First, I would cry out in pain when I had my babies.  Giving birth would have been the greatest joy in the garden, but now I would suffer.  The second curse would be that I would always have a constant desire to please my husband and never feel like I had succeeded.  

And the death that Satan said I would never experience….I experienced the worst possible pain.  My oldest son got angry at the younger one and murdered him.  The pain of a mother losing a child to death is a pain that I took to my own grave.

But there is one hope.  I was created from Adam so I could be redeemed by the 2nd Adam… God’s very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

 

 

                                                                        ABRAHAM

Hello, my name is Abraham.  The account of my life is found in Genesis chapters 12-25. 

My name used to be Abram.  I lived with my wife, Sar’ai, and my father, Terah, and my other siblings in a land called Ur of the Chal’deans.   It was a very wealthy and upcoming city. My father, Terah, decided to move to the town of Haran.  Sar’ai and I went along with him.  So did my nephew, Lot.  His dad (my brother) had died several years earlier and since Sar’ai and I had no children, I took care of Lot.  While we lived in Haran, my dad died.

When I was 75 years old, the Lord spoke to me and He said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing….”  I totally believed in the living God so I did what He asked.  I had no idea where He was taking me but I went.  And the part about making me a great nation…well Sar’ai and I still had no children so I couldn’t understand that part…but that didn’t mean I didn’t believe Him. 

When we came to Shechem in the land of Canaan, God told me that this was to be the land that He was going to give me.  But He didn’t just hand it over to me with one magical swish of His hand.  No, there was a lot of pain in growing to trust Him and His promises.  We suffered a famine; men were very attracted to my beautiful wife and I didn’t trust God to protect us as a couple and consequently got us into a whole lot of trouble.  Kings tried to war against me when I began to get to be too rich with all my sheep and cattle.  My nephew, Lot, got kidnapped once.  I did get him back, but then he chose to live in a very corrupt city.   God told me that He planned to destroy it with fire from heaven.  I was so concerned about Lot that I argued with God.  God promised me that if He found 10 godly people in that town, that He would NOT destroy it with fire.  Unfortunately, Lot and his family (4 in all) is all that could be found. God was gracious and let them escape right before the destruction.

All of this time (over 20 years) passed and still my wife and I had no children.  God gave us each a new name.  He took the H from his name Yahweh and added it to each of our names…Abraham and Sarah.  What a blessing and then when I was almost 100 years old and Sarah was 90+, we got the baby boy that God had promised us.

Oh how I loved that little boy!!! My very own son!!!  My miracle child!   But when he was still young lad, God asked me to do the hardest thing that He could ask of any dad.  He asked me to sacrifice Isaac on the altar to Him.  I had waited almost 100 years for my son. Yet, I knew that God had given him to me, and He could take him away.  So I traveled to Mt. Moriah just as God had asked.  At the last minute, God did a wonderful thing.  He interceded for my son and provided a ram so I did not have to sacrifice my only son.

Many centuries later God would not provide a ram to replace His sacrifice.  The sacrifice of His very own Son on the cross…JESUS CHRIST.

                                                                        SARAH

Hello, my name is Sarah.  The account of my life is found in Genesis 12-23.

My name was not always Sarah.  That came much later in my life.  When I was born, my parents name me Sar’ai.  When I grew up, I married Abram, who was related to me.  Men thought that I was very pretty and sometimes Abram put me in very uncomfortable situations because he always seemed so afraid that other men might kill him just because I was so pretty.  My husband moved A LOT of times.  He also became a very rich man. 

But no amount of prettiness or money, could take away my greatest sorrow.  I wanted a baby.  How my heart longed for a baby that I could hold.  Abram believed in a God that was different from the idols that our parents and family believed in.  His God wasn’t stone.  His God talked to him.  When we were still young, this God promised to make a great nation through us.  So I hoped and hoped for that baby.  Nothing happened.  Then I got old…and older…and then I gave up. I decided to take matters into my own hands.  In our day, we had slaves that waited on me and by custom if I gave one of those slaves to my husband and she had a baby it would become mine.  So I decided to give Abram my servant girl, Hagar. Sure enough, she had a baby boy that she named Ishmael.  I tried to think of Ishmael as mine, but I couldn’t.  Then Hagar started looking at me with contempt because she could get pregnant and I could not.  I couldn’t stand her.  I was very mean to her for many years trying to control that contempt.

Then God came to visit my husband in the form of 3 men.  One of them told Abram that I would have a maybe within a year.  I was inside the tent and out of hearing and I laughed to myself.  What nonsense.  I was over 90 years old.  Me…have a baby at my age…what an impossible idea!  No one heard me, and yet when I went out to serve them, the man asked me why I had laughed inside the tent.  That scared me.  How did he know I had laughed? Of course, I denied it, but he said he knew that I had laughed and that nothing was impossible with God.

True to his word, I did get pregnant within a year.  I had a son and we named him Isaac because he was our joy and laughter in our old age.  How I adored him.  Ishmael was 14 years old when Isaac was finally born and one day I saw the two of them playing together and my hatred for Hagar and Ishmael went off the charts.  I sent them both away into the desert to die.  I never wanted to see either of them ever again.  I didn’t want to admit that it was my own impatience with God that created the mess in the 1st place.  My mistake of trying to play God in my own life went on to create over 5000 years of hatred between the descendants of my son, Isaac and her Ishmael.  Oh, how I wish that I had not meddled.  I am thankful that it was through my son, Isaac that the promised Messiah would come.

He came to save me and all of Israel from our sins.  None other than God’s very own Son….JESUS CHRIST

                                                            Isaac

Hello, my name is Isaac.  The account of my life is found in Genesis chapters 21-27.

My parents were way too old by worldly standards to have a baby.  Yet I fulfilled God’s promise to them by being born a perfectly normal little boy. Needless to say, my parents adored me!!!  I was their miracle child.  But because they were so old, my mom died when I was still a young man.  My father wanted to make sure that I did not marry a foreign woman so before he died, he sent his servant back to my grandfather’s land where family still lived. The woman that the servant brought back for me was beautiful and I loved her the minute that I saw her.  She comforted me as I grieved the loss of my mother.

One time when there was a famine in the land.  I became fearful (just like my dad) that Abim’elech, the king that I needed to ask for help and food would kill me because my wife was so beautiful.  So just like my dad, I told a ½ truth…which is God’s eyes is a full blown lie.  The king got angrier at me for trying to deceive him.  So I never tried anything like that again.

I eventually opened up the wells of my father and became even wealthier than he was.  God talked directly to me just like He had to my father.  My wife and I had a set of twins.  My first born was a man’s man.  He was my favorite.  My wife favored our 2nd son.  When I got old, I called my first born who was named Esau and told him to go hunt game for me so that I could give him the blessing of the first-born.  My wife overheard the conversation and because I was almost blind, she and our younger son, Jacob, deceived me and I gave the blessing to Jacob because he insisted that he was Esau.  That caused a hatred between those 2 brothers that still exists with their descendants today.

As I think back over my life, and all the mistakes that I made…I like to think of the one time I did it right.  I remember one time when my father and I went on a long trip…the last part of it was just the two of us.  I was so excited to have my dad all to myself.  Then I found out that God had requested me to be the sacrifice on the altar to Him.  That my dad was going to obey God’s command and kill me.  I was old enough and strong enough, that I could have resisted and got away very easily from my dad, but I didn’t.  I chose to obey his request to me. God was testing our obedience and in the end He provided a ram for the sacrifice instead of me.

Little did I know that I was to become a foreshadow of the willingness of God’s very own Son when it came time for Him to be sacrificed…JESUS CHRIST

 

 

 

 

                                                            REBEKAH

Hello, my name is Rebekah.  The account of my life is found in Genesis chapters 24-27.

I was raised in the land of Ur of the Chaldeans.  We had a very modern and highly civilized city with running water and everything.  My family was a very close knit family.  One day I went out to draw some water for our family.  There was a stranger and his camels close to the well.   They looked like they had traveled a long ways.  The stranger asked me if he could get me to draw him some drinking water.  Without thinking, I said, that I would draw some water for him and then I would draw some for his camels, too.  He got so excited when I said that to him and he asked about my family.  It turned out that he was a servant of Uncle Abram who had left Ur before I was even born.  He had been sent by my Uncle to look for a wife for Uncle Abram’s son. My offering to water his camels was a sign from God that I was to be that wife.  The land of Canaan was a long ways away.  I am sure they don’t have all the conveniences of living that we have in our city.  I am sure that I will probably never see my family again.    Yet I had fulfilled a sign from his God without even knowing it, how could I not go with him?

It was a good decision.  Isaac loved me the moment that he saw me and he was extremely good to me.  When I couldn’t get pregnant, he prayed to God on my behalf and I ended up having twins.  Oh my!  Those 2 boys!  Even inside of me, they fought like cats and dogs.  When they were born, the youngest was hanging onto the heel of the first born…almost like birth had interrupted yet another fight.   They were as different as night and day.  Esau, our first born was red and hairy from his birth.  He was a hunter, and he was rough and rebellious. He was his father’s favorite but when he married foreign women and gave up his birthright for a simple pot of lintels…Esau and his wives became pure agitation to me.

I loved Jacob, our younger son.  He liked to stay in our tents with me and he learned to cook as well as I could.  I wanted him to get the blessing and inherit the larger portion of our wealth so I helped him deceive Isaac.  Because of the success of that deceit, though, my two sons hated each other.  Hated so much that I heard Esau planning to kill Jacob as soon as Isaac died.  Oh my heart broke.  I loved Isaac and it would be hard enough to lose him to death…but to have my son die too because I something that I had help planned.  I couldn’t bear it so I sent Jacob back to my homeland, far, far away where Esau couldn’t hurt him.

So much hatred in my own little family.  But nothing like the hatred that faced God’s very own Son….JESUS CHRIST.

 

 

 

 

                                                            JOSHUA

Hello, my name is Joshua.  The account of my life is found in Exodus 17 and Deuteronomy 31 and throughout the book of Joshua.

When I was born, I was a slave in Egypt along with every other Israelite. I was a young man when Moses came to deliver us. I immediately believed in him and in God’s plan for us.  Because of my loyalty, I earned a spot very close to Moses.  I was the leader of his military at a very young age.  God was always on our side when we obeyed him.  One time, Aaron and Hur help up Moses’s arms so that I would win the battle.  Later, when it was time to go into the Promised Land, Moses chose 12 spies.  I was one of them.  We went into the land and saw the land filled with milk and honey.  The produce was MAMMOTH!  So were the people, but Caleb and I weren’t concerned about their size….we had God on our side.  The other 10 spies didn’t see it that way.  They were scared of the giants and the people listened to the 10 rather than us.  It made God so angry that every single person over 20 years of age wandered in the desert until they died so that not one of[O1]  them entered[O2]  the Promised Land except for Caleb and me.

When Moses died, God chose me as the new leader of the Israelites to lead them into the Promised Land.  God provided one miracle after another for me.  Like Moses, when it came time to cross the Jordan River in its flood stage, God stopped the water so we could walk on dry ground while the priests held the ark.  We won battles in amazing ways, always so that ALL people knew that the God of the Israelites was the only GOD.  One time the sun even stood still so we could win a battle!

Our first battle was against the fortified city of Jericho.  The walls that surrounded it were huge. God commanded us to simply walk silently behind the priests and the Ark of the Covenant one time each day for 6 days.  Then on the 7th day we walked around 7 times and when the trumpets blew we all gave a mighty shout and the walls of the city simply collapsed.  We were able to rush in and kill the inhabitants without losing one of our men.

Before I quit being the leader, I challenged the Israelites with these words, “Choose this day who you will serve…as for me and my household we will serve the LORD.”   My God has been faithful to every promise that He ever made to me.  He kept each promise perfectly even when I failed and disappointed Him.

The fulfillment of the most important promise came years later from me when He sacrificed His very own Son for my sins….Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

                                                                                    RAHAB

Hello, my name is Rahab.  The account of my life is found in Joshua chapters 2 and 6.

I lived in the town of Jericho during the time of Moses & Joshua.  The town of Jericho was not a good place to live.  People were very sinful and those that did worship gods, worshipped stone idols and developed a religion that condoned their evil and sinful ways.  I was just like them.  I was sinful and made bad choices and I was concerned with only myself.    But then some stories started coming into our town.  Stories about a God that was alive and watching out for His people.  Stories of incredible miracles. The people had been slaves in Egypt for over 400 years.  They were nobody.  Then this man became their leader and he and this God caused so much trouble to Pharaoh and the Egyptians that they actually asked the slaves to leave.  But after a few days, they missed the slaves and sent the army to round them up and bring them back.  The story goes that the army had them trapped between 2 mountains and the Red Sea.  There was nowhere for them to go and this living God of theirs stopped the flow of water and they crossed the Red Sea on DRY LAND.  Do you know how big the Red Sea is?  That is incredible!  Then when they were all crossed over, the Egyptians started in after them and the walls of water collapsed and the army all drowned.  None of our town liked that story, but I wanted to know more about a God like that.

Then very recently, their God did it again in the River Jordan.  Just blocked the water and they came into our land on dry ground.  They aren’t very far from here. Some Israelite spies came into Jericho and were checking it out and I found them and talked to them.  I told them our men were terrified of them and their God, but I believed in Him.  The king of our city sent men to grab the spies but I hid them well and lied to the king and said that they had left through the gates of the city already.  The soldiers went after them and I let them down my window in the wall with a scarlet rope and told them where to hide until it was safe to go back to their camp.  In exchange for saving them, they promised to save my family and myself if we were to hide in my room with the scarlet rope hanging out of the window. They kept their promise.  When the walls of Jericho fell down, the spies rescued my family. I ended up living with the Israelites the rest of my life.  I believed in their God.  I married an Israelite man named Salman and I had a little boy name Boaz.  I later became the great-great grandmother of King David.

And more importantly than that, I was grafted into the family tree of the most important person on this earth…God’s very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

 

 

 

                                                                        BOAZ

Hello, my name is Boaz.  The account of my life is found in the book of Ruth.

My name is Boaz and I lived in the land of Canaan near the town of Bethlehem. I had many fields and many servants.  I was quite a wealthy man.  I took good care of my land and my people.  I kept in constant communication with the people to make sure that everything ran smoothly and I watched over my land to make sure that no one stole from me the harvest that was rightfully mine.

My mother had survived the collapse of Jericho and so she was a Gentile and not a Jew.  Yet she loved the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as much as my father did.  And he was a direct descendant of them.  For this reason, I probably had a more open mind to the Gentile population that surrounded Israel.

One day when I was checking on the gleaners, I saw a very beautiful woman that I did not recognize coming after the gleaners to pick up the spillage.  This was a very common practice for the poor in our town to do, but this woman I did not recognize.  It turns out that she was a daughter-in-law to Naomi and she was from the country of Moab.  So like my mother, she was a Gentile living in a Jewish world.  I knew that Naomi and her husband and 2 sons had gone to Moab when we had a drought several years ago and that both sons had taken wives from the country of Moab.  I had also heard since Naomi was back, how her husband and both sons had died in the foreign land, leaving 3 widows to fend for themselves.    This daughter-in-law had come back with Naomi to protect and help her.  That impressed me.  So I went and talked to her and told her to ONLY glean in my fields.  That way she would not have to worry about people treating her poorly.  I also told her to eat and drink with my hired people and I gave them strict orders to deliberately leave extra for her and to be kind to her and watch out for her.  She listened to me and stayed close to my maidens until the barley and wheat fields were completely harvested.

One night she came and asked me to be her “redeemer kinsman”.  I really wanted too, but I knew that there was one other that came before me as far as that responsibility.  I wanted to follow God’s law to a T so I told her to wait until I had done everything properly.  Because of my willingness to follow the plan of God, He honored me and allowed me to be Ruth’s Redeemer Kinsman.  I married her and brought both Naomi and her into my household.  Shortly after our marriage, we had a son and his name was Boaz.  He had a son named Jesse and Jesse had a son named David, who became the greatest king in the history of Israel.

I was Ruth’s Redeemer Kinsman, but God sent a Redeemer for all mankind in the form of His very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

 

                                                                        RUTH

Hello, my name is Ruth.  The account of my life is found in the book of Ruth.

I was a young woman in the land of Moab.  We are neighbors to the country of Israel but we live a very different life.  We do not have the God that they do.  Our gods are all stones and idols. I knew very little about the country of Israel until an Israelite family moved into our neighborhood.  They had suffered a severe famine in Israel and came to my country for relief.  They had a very handsome son that I fell in love with.  We got married and had only been married for a short time when he died. I was heartbroken! 

But if I ached for myself, I really ached for his mother.  She lost 2 sons and her husband and was left alone in a strange country.  Oh what heartache she suffered.  My sister-in-law by marriage and I tried to comfort her.  Finally, she decided that she wanted to go back to Israel to die.  She was an older lady and my sister-in-law, Orpah, and I decided that we would go back with her.  It was not an easy trip for 3 ladies to make.  As we neared the border of our 2 countries, she told the two of us to turn around and go back to our families, and our gods and to get married to someone else.  Her sadness and our own grief made all of us cry very hard.

Finally, Orpah said that she would go back, but I clung to Naomi and I said, “Entreat me not leave you or to return from following you; for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge.  Your people shall be my people and your God my God.  Where you die, I shall dies, and there I will be buried.  May the Lord do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you.”

When I said that, Naomi realized that she was not going to change my mind so we continued on together to her hometown of Bethlehem.  All the neighbors and family were kind and welcoming to her; but now that she was back in familiar surroundings, her full grief came out.  She told them to stop calling her Naomi and to called her Mara which means BITTER.

I was concerned about our food situation.  My mother-in-law told me how I could follow behind the gleaners of the barley and wheat fields and collect what the gleaners dropped or missed.  It was very hard work but at least it gave us bread to eat.

I was working in the fields of a man named Boaz.  When he saw me, he asked about me.  He told me to only work in his fields.  The gleaners left behind more than they had too and they also shared the lunch food with me each day.  I always put some extra in my pockets for Naomi.

Later, Boaz married me and we had a son named Obed.  My precious mother-in-law, Naomi, was happy again.  And I had an extra blessing from the God of Israel.  I became the great grandmother of King David and was included in the family tree of of His very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

SAMUEL

Hello, my name is Samuel.  The account of my life is found in the book of 1st Samuel.

I was an answer to prayer for my mother.  She had not been able to have children and she had begged God to give her a child.  She promised that if she could have just 1 child that she would dedicate him back to God.  And that is exactly what she did.  After I was weaned, she brought me to the temple to a priest named Eli.  I was so very young but I learned the ways of the church.  I was a great help to him.  His own sons were supposed to be the helpers, but they were not responsible at all and Eli never made any bones to correct them so they just got worse and worse in their behavior. 

One night when I was laying in my bed, I heard a voice calling to me.  I immediately thought that it was Eli calling me so I got out of bed and ran to him.  He did not know what I was talking about.  So I went back to bed and it wasn’t very long and I distinctly heard a voice calling out my name.  Again I hurried to Eli and again he denied calling out to me.  The third time it happened, Eli finally said that it was the Lord calling out to me and I should just say, “Speak Lord, for thy servant hears”  So the next time I heard the voice, that is what I said.  The message that the Lord gave to me was very hard.  It was to tell Eli that his house was going to be punished severely because his sons continued blaspheming God and Eli did not try and stop them.  I didn’t sleep much after that.  I was scared to tell Eli what I had heard from the Lord.  But the next morning, he commanded that I not leave anything out and so I told him the truth.  He seemed to accept the news with resignation.

After that the power of God was with me and I soon became known through the land as a prophet from the Lord.   God continued to have conversations with me directly and I knew His voice well.    It was not easy being a prophet.   One of the first things that happened is Israel lost a battle with the Philistines and the Ark of the Covenant was stolen.  This battle killed both of Eli’s sons and when Eli heard the news, he fell off his chair and broke his neck and died.  Such a sad day for me.

I became a very fair judge in the land and I always honored God.  I never turned to the right or to the left all the days of my life.  I wish the same could be said about Israel.  They decided that they needed a king just like other countries.  I tried to tell them they had the King of Kings on their side….but no…that was not good enough for them.  Finally God had me anoint a tall, handsome young man named Saul to be their king.  At first he was a godly man, but then the power went to his head and he was going to be his own boss.  It caused so much grief…that I ended up anointing a 2nd king named David before I died.

I loved my God and his infinite patience with such a stiff necked people.  His real patience showed up when He chose to make the ultimate sacrifice…His very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

 

                                                            HANNAH

Hello, my name is Hannah.  The account of my life is found in 1st Samuel chapters 1-2.

I was the wife of a very kind man whose name was Elka’nah.  He loved the God of Israel and very faithfully made the journey each year to the city of Shiloh to sacrifice to the Lord.  He had another wife who had given him many children and she use to poke fun of me CONSTANTLY.  She loved to remind me that I couldn’t have any children.  Every year when we went up to worship and sacrifice, I would beg the Lord to give me a child.  Every year God remained silent.  I became so troubled and depressed that my husband even asked me, “Am I not more to you than 10 sons?”  I knew that he truly loved me but it was still so hard living with Penin’nah.

One year it was particularly hard.  All of the years of begging…all of the years of being mocked and ridiculed and looked down upon by Penin’nah.  All of the year of never having my own little baby to hold and to love simply crashed around me.  As I wept and cried to God, I told him that if He would just hear my prayer, as soon as my child was weaned, I would GIVE HIM BACK TO GOD.  My heart was totally crushed.  A priest named Eli was watching me and he accused me of being drunk.  DRUNK at this hour of the morning????  Talk about adding to insult to injury!  I shared my pain with him and he surprised me by announcing that God had heard my plea and was granting my prayer request.  I could hardly believe what I heard.

But true to His Word, my baby, Samuel, was born less than one year later.  Oh, how I loved that little boy.  The year after he was born, I stayed at my home in Ramah when Elka’nah and the rest went up to Shiloh to worship.  But when the next year rolled around and Samuel was weaned, I remembered my anguished promise to God.  So I stayed faithful and that year I brought Samuel with us to Shiloh.  I showed him to Eli and told him of my promise to God to “lend” him back to God.  So Eli took the child and kept him at the temple.  I sang a song of praise for being able to have a baby at all and then I went home.

Every year I made a new little robe for my Samuel.  Every year Eli praised us for loaning Samuel back to God and him.  For my faithfulness in that promise, God gave us 3 more boys and 2 little girls.  And my little Samuel?  He became a very important prophet and judge in Israel. And he stayed faithful to God to his dying day.

My faithfulness in keeping my promise to God was small in comparison to His faithfulness in the promise that He made when He sent His very own Son to be sacrificed for OUR sin…JESUS CHRIST.

 

 

                                                                        DAVID

Hello my name is David.  The account of my life is recorded in the books of 1st & 2nd Samuel.

My dad and mom had lots of children.  There were 8 boys and I was the youngest of them.  My brothers were all tall, strong, and very good looking.  I was “ruddy”.  Yep, that’s what they called me!  I was shorter than most and I liked to play instruments and write songs and poems.  My dad put me out in the fields to watch him sheep.  Kind of keeping me away from everyone else.  My brothers were all in the king’s army where they could ‘strut their stuff’.  I didn’t mind.  It gave me more time to write music and play my harp.  I dearly loved the God of Israel and a lot of my music were worship songs to Him.   And to be honest, all those years of living alone in the hills with my sheep, I became very strong for my size.  No wild animal was going to have my sheep for dinner.

One day my father sent me to my brothers in the army with some fresh food.  Little did I know that this simple assignment would change my life.  When I got to the camp, the enemy we were fighting had a giant person that had challenged any soldier to fight him.  Everyone in our camp was scared to death.  Why his sword alone was bigger than a lot of our soldiers.  I was shocked when I heard that giant insulting our God.  The God that I loved!  No one was standing up for our God and that made me angry.  I tried to rally the soldiers but they turned like a bunch of babies.  So I said that I would fight the giant myself in the name of the Lord! My brothers were embarrassed by me beyond measure and I was ridiculed by everyone on both sides.  But King Saul offered to let me put on a soldier’s suit and it was so big, I couldn’t move so I went out in my shepherd’s outfit and picked 5 smooth stones for my slingshot.  I didn’t need their armor…I had GOD as my armor.  Oh how that Goliath laughed at me.  I didn’t care that he laughed at me.  People had laughed at me all my life…BUT he was NOT going to laugh at and make fun of my GOD!  When he continued his mockery, I put 1 stone in the slingshot and let God Himself guide that stone to a tender spot in his skull with such a blow that Goliath fell to the ground.  And I took that big old sword of his and cut off his head!!!  I wasn’t interested in being a hero…I just wanted to make a very clear statement.  NO ONE MOCKS THE GOD OF ISRAEL.

Soon I became the main leader in King Saul’s army.  I fought and won many battles.  Some claim that I had killed over 10,000 men with God’s help.  Eventually I even became the king of Israel.  I screwed up big time, more than once.  But each time I confessed my sin and begged God for forgiveness.  I never took my heart and eyes off of God.  For that reason, God blessed Israel richly while I was on the throne.  Some called me the greatest king of all time. 

That is not true.  The GREATEST king of all time came 14 generations after me in the form of God’s very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

 

                                                            ABIGAIL

Hello, my name is Abigail.  The account of my life is found in 1st Samuel 25.

My story begins as a wife of a man name Nabal.  We lived in a town that was called Ma’on.  It was close to Carmel in northern Israel.  My husband was a very rich man.  He had 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats.  But he was also very churlish and ill-behaved.  He offended people often.  I felt like I was always ‘putting out fires’ for him and his reputation.

One day he was more insulting than usual.  We had all heard of the brave young man, David, who loved our God and had saved our country from the destruction of the giant Philistines.  One day, David showed up in northern Israel and he asked my husband to give him and his men some food for the feast day.  We had more than enough food.  My husband chose to be a complete jerk and treated David as if he was some runaway servant. 

Our servants came and told me the sad story.  I knew that I had to act quickly or David would revenge his insult by killing my husband and every man that worked for us…maybe even me and the women too.  After the way my husband treated him, we probably deserved it but I wanted to at least try and make amends.  So I quickly made up 200 loaves of bread and 200 cakes of figs.  Then I dressed 5 sheep for eating.  Next I collected 100 clusters of raisins, 5 measures of parched grain, and 2 skins of the best wine.  I loaded all of my food on some donkeys and went out to meet David.  As soon as I saw him, I got off my donkey and threw myself on the ground with my face down.  This was my way of showing him honor and respect.  It was also a gesture of begging for forgiveness for my ill-mannered husband.  I kept calling David, “my Lord” and calling myself “his servant” and “his handmaid”.  I even told him that my husband’s name meant FOOL and that he lived up to it on a regular basis.  I begged him not to murder as a revenge mechanism but to let His God do the punishments.  I asked him to accept all the food that I had made for their feast day.  I was so happy and relieved when he accepted my pleas for forgiveness.  He promised that he would not kill my husband or the men and that he would gladly eat the food.

When I got home my husband was so drunk that I chose not to even mention my intervention.  The next morning, when I did tell him, he turned stone quiet.  Never even said thank you to me for saving his life.  10 days later he died.  When David learned of Nabal’s death, he came back and wooed me and I became his 1st wife. 

14 generations after us…all of us received an intervention that saved all of our lives.  A much bigger intervention that mine for my husband.  This was for ALL mankind.  God’s very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

                                                                        ZECHARIAH

Hello, my name is Zechariah.  The account of my life is found in Luke 1.

I live near Jerusalem in these are the days of Herod the King.  I am a priest in the temple and I have a wife that was one of the daughters of Aaron.  We both love the God of Israel and have tried to walk as righteous and upright people to honor Him.  My job as a temple priest has given me such joy over the years.  I am no longer a young man.  Actually, I have to admit it…my dear wife and I are old. Very old.

One day, when my division of priests were on duty, we drew lots to enter the temple of the Lord to burn incense.  The lot fell on me.  I felt so honored.  During that hour of incense, many people were praying outside the temple.  I entered and started my ritual of duties when suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared to me standing on the right side of the altar of incense.  I became afraid immediately.  No one had seen an angel for centuries.  But he told me that his name was Gabriel and I was not to be afraid.  He came to tell me that our prayers had been answered and that my wife was going to have a baby boy.  He gave me instructions to name the baby, John.  He instructed me that from his birth that he would take the vow of the Nazarene and drink no strong drink or cut his hair. He told me that the baby would be great before the Lord and be spirit filled even in the womb.  Then he told me that my son would be the great preparer of the way for the Promised Messiah.

I was so shocked.  Elizabeth and I are old!!!! How could this be?  Gabriel let me know that he stood before the God of Israel and took messages only from Him.  Because I had questioned the angel and ultimately, God, I was struck dumb until after the child was born.  I could barely comprehend everything that I had just heard.   I had stayed in the temple much longer than I should have and the people that were praying outside were becoming very concerned about me. When I finally came out of the temple, I couldn’t say a single word and they immediately sensed that I had seen a vision!  I could say nothing. 

When my time of duty of serving came to an end, I hurried home to my Elizabeth.  Sure enough, she got pregnant and our son was born.  Our relatives were going to name him Zechariah after me.  Elizabeth said that his name was to be John but they wouldn’t listen to her.  Since I couldn’t speak, I grabbed a writing tablet and wrote on it.  “HIS NAME IS JOHN!” Immediately my tongue was loosed and I could speak.  I praised God for my son who would become known as John the Baptist!!

My son was the great preparer to the most important person on earth…the long awaited Messiah…God’s very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

 

 

                                                            ELIZABETH

Hello, my name is Elizabeth.  The account of my life is found in Luke 1.

I am already an old lady when I am introduced in the gospels.  My lineage of people is a highly honored one that traces all the way back to Aaron, Moses’s brother.  My husband is a priest in the temple and we live outside of Jerusalem in the hillside.  We both love the God of Israel and we live fairly comfortable here in our home. Because of my husband’s position we are more wealthy than most.  Our greatest sorrow is that throughout our long life together, we have never been blessed with a child.  Being childless in our culture bring a certain amount of shame.  It broke my heart!  Not only because I wanted to be a mother, but also because I did not want to dishonor my husband.

For years we have prayed.  For years there was silence.  There was absolutely nothing.  Then we got old and the prayers seemed pointless.

One day my husband returned from his time as being a priest and I knew that something was different.  I soon discovered that he couldn’t speak.  When he communicated with me what had happened inside the temple, and the reason why he couldn’t speak…I was speechless.  Was I to be like Sarah of old?  Was I to have a baby directed by God’s plan instead of physical understanding?

True to the angel’s word, I did become pregnant.  I was so nervous how others might view my late pregnancy or whether I would be able to carry the baby full term that I hid myself for 5 months.  All those doubts in me and yet such incredible excitement.  I exclaimed to myself, “Thus the Lord has done to me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.”

In my 6th month, I had a surprise visit from my young relative, Mary.  As soon as she walked into our house and spoke, the babe inside my womb leaped!!!  I was filled with the Holy Spirit and I cried out, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!  And why is it granted me, that the mother of my Lord, should come to me?...”  We needed each other so badly and she stayed with me for 3 months.

John was born shortly after she left and my neighbors and relatives were very gracious and merciful to me.  Everyone seemed so happy.  Best of all when we name him John, instead of following tradition and naming him after his father or another forefather, Zechariah received his voice back and we praised the Lord for our precious son and praised God that in a few short months that He would send His very own Son, JESUS CHRIST.

 

 

                                                                        SIMEON

Hello, my name is Simeon.  The account of my life is found in Luke 2.

I have been a devout and righteous man my whole life.  I have been looking for the consolation of Israel.  Years and years I have prayed and now I am an old man.  One day the Holy Spirit came upon me and promised me that before I died that I would get to see the Lord Jesus Christ…our Messiah…our Redeemer that we have waited for all our life.

Today I was told by the Holy Spirit to get to the temple right away.  As these young parents brought their baby up to do the custom of the law, I stepped in front of them.  The Spirit told me that this was the long awaited Messiah.  This small child in front of me.  I was so excited.  I asked them if I might hold him and they let me.  I think the Spirit had told them that it was OK to let a shaky old man hold their fragile little life.

I lifted up my voice in praise to God and I cried out,  “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word;   for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples.  A light for revelation to the Gentiles and a glory to thy people Israel.”

The parents just stared at me in awe and I just had to bless them because I sensed what they were about to encounter in the journey of being the parents of the Messiah.  I declared to them,

            “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is spoken against.  (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also) that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.”

How hard it is to speak words of death and pain to brand new parents of a beautiful baby boy.  But how blessed I felt that God had allowed me to see his salvation…His very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

 

                                                                        ANNA

Hello, my name is Anna.  The account of my life is found in Luke 2.

I am the daughter of Phan’-u-el.  We are of the tribe of Asher. Asher is one of the 12 tribes of Jacob that most people don’t know very much about.

 And I am a prophetess.  I have lived in the temple for many years.  I am quite old now. I am 84 years old.  Once I was young and once I was in love, too.  I was married to my husband for 7 years.  Then he died and I chose never to marry again.  I have been a widow most of my life.  But I have been devoted to my God and I worship him every single day.  I fast and pray day and night here.

God gave me a vision today that I would see his Messiah here in the temple.  I was so grateful to be given that insight and to be able to enjoy for just a few minutes this Promised Messiah.  Such a little baby and such young parents. 
 

But once I saw him, I couldn’t stop telling about him.  He was the one that we are looking for.  He is the one that will give Jerusalem redemption.  I did not care what people thought or said about me, I just had to share.

The Messiah has come and He is God’s very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

                                                                     JOSEPH

Hello my name is Joseph.  The account of my life is recorded in Matthew 1 & 2 and in Luke 2.

I am a simple carpenter and I live in Nazareth.  This is where my father Jacob lived and we are a simple family.  I was betrothed to a virgin in our little town.  Her name is Mary and I was looking forward to spending our life together.  But one day, our “happily ever after” turned completely upside down.

She came to me before the two of us had ever come together and told me that she was pregnant.  I was numbed by the news.  She had never struck me as that kind of a girl.  She told me that she had been visited by an angel and that she had been chosen to be the mother of our Promised Messiah.  That was more of a fairytale than I could ever believe.  I decided that I would put her away quietly.  I did not want anything bad to happen to her.  I still loved her even though I could not accept her story at all. 

Then one night while I was considering my options of divorcing her quietly, I was visited by an angel.  I mean we haven’t heard the voice of God for over 400 years.  The angel told me that what Mary had said was the truth and that together we would be the parents of the Promised Messiah and his name would be called Jesus, because he would save the people from their sins.  All of this was to fulfill the prophecy declared in the prophet, Isaiah.   When I woke from my sleep, I did what God had commanded me to do and I became Mary’s protector and not her husband until after Jesus was born. 

Mary left Nazareth for 3 months as soon as she found out about her pregnancy so it was not easy when she came back.  I did everything I could to protect her from all the cackling and gossip.  Then in her ninth month there came a degree from Caesar Augustus that we had to be enrolled, each in our own city.  That meant I had to go to Bethlehem.  I was not excited about making Mary go on that long trip in her condition.  But I had no choice.  Then when we finally got there, what family I had in Bethlehem wanted nothing to do with me for “our great sin” and there was absolutely no room in any of the inns.  We ended up getting a place in a cave where the innkeeper kept his animals.  How humbling!  The Promised Messiah having to be laid in a manger that feeds animals!

But God in His graciousness saw to it that even though we didn’t have family, we had people that believed in our Savior.  God had angels share the message with shepherds and they came to celebrate with us. We had 2 people in the temple confirm what we already knew. They just came up and started sharing with us.  Finally, we had wise men come from the far East.  They gave us precious gifts and it was shortly after that visit that Herod went on his rampage and tried to kill the Holy Son of God.

God warned me in a dream to flee to Egypt and I left in the middle of the night.  I stayed in Egypt until Herod died and then to protect my family, I traveled way around to get back to Nazareth.

We stayed there until Jesus was 12 years old. When we went to the temple in Jerusalem for the feast, his mother and I were traveling in a large group from Nazareth and we “lost” him.  Thought he was with his friends and then ended up back tracking to find him in the temple teaching the priests!  And he asked us if we didn’t know that he needed to be about His Father’s business.

After that the Bible never mentions me.  Tradition says that I died when Jesus was still young and he took over my carpentry business and caring for his mother and the other children that we had until he was 30 years old.

I must be about my Father’s business…it wasn’t this father’s business…but His heavenly Father.  And the business was about sacrifice.  It was about fulfilling all of the prophecies in the Old Testament to the very last one.  It was about loving every single person, Jew and Gentile.  Those that believed and those that did not. It was about dying on the cross so that you and I might live, even today 2000 years later.  Yes, HE was God’s very own Son…JESUS CHRIST.

 

 

 

                                                                        MARY

Hello, my name is Mary. The account of my life is found in all of the gospels.

I was a very young girl when I found favor with God.  Finding favor with God did not mean that I found favor with mankind.  I became an instant shame to my family and the town when they found out that I was pregnant before Joseph and I were officially married.  Of course they thought that Joseph was the father and that we had committed a “great sin”.  I was so thankful that God provided Joseph as my husband.  I know that it was very hard for him, but he was a just and godly man and God talked to him, too.  That made it easier for both of us.

I did not understand everything that happened to us.  I mean, we were carrying the King of Kings…and he ended up being born in a cave where the animals are kept.  I had to wrap him in swaddling clothes and put him in the animal’s manger. Family wasn’t around to celebrate with us, but angels sent shepherds from out of the fields in the middle of the night to celebrate with us.  It was surreal. 

The terror of leaving for Egypt in the middle of the night because Herod was trying to kill our baby, the sneaking back to Nazareth as quietly as we could, losing Him in Jerusalem.  All of these events put holes in my heart as a mother.  And yet I knew this calling would not be easy at all.  When we were at the wedding of Cana and the bride and groom were about to be humiliated because they ran out of wine, I asked Jesus to help out.  I knew he had the power of God.  Even though he rebuked my interference, he quietly provided the wine.

When his time of ministry came, I didn’t always see Him.  He was constantly on the move trying to reach as many people as He could. My other children were very much against Him and mostly our town of Nazareth rejected Him and His miracles.  That was another hole in my heart.

But when the scribes and Pharisees started to hate him, I tried desperately to understand God’s plan in all of this pain.  I knew that it was all in God’s plan.  The hole encompassed my whole heart.  How come our scribes and Pharisees were so blind?  How come they…the ones who spent their whole life studying the Torah and the prophets…didn’t recognize him as the Promised Messiah?  Yes, He was God's very own Son...Jesus Christ.

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