8. Lydia Learns About Jesus

For Lydia, try to find different shades of purple fabric and shells for the students to feel.

They had so much fun touching the different textures!

Last week we learned about Paul and Barnabas in Lystra. They had healed a man that couldn’t walk. The man stood up and started walking! The people thought that was so amazing! Paul told them that God is the One that heals. The same God that created earth and the heavens.

Paul had a vision one night. The man in the vision begged Paul to come help them in Macedonia, so they left the next day. Paul has Silas, Timothy & Luke traveling with him. They traveled to Philippi which is a city in Macedonia. They had been in Philippi for some days.

On the Sabbath day, they went out of the city gate to the riverside. In the Old Testament, God wanted the people to worship Him on the Sabbath which is Saturday. The people gathered together there to pray. The city of Philippi didn't have a synagogue, so the people went to the river to worship.

It was mostly women worshipping there. They would pray, study the Old Testament laws from scrolls and talk about what they had read. This would have been a great privilege to have a man there to teach them.

After Paul and his friends had sat down, they talked to a woman they had met there. One of the women that was there worshipping was named Lydia. She already believed in God.

She sold purple fabric. Purple fabric was very expensive at that time. Lydia had to collect a lot of seashells to make just a little bit of the purple dye. It was a lot of work and took a lot of time to make the fabric purple. Because of that, only people with a lot of money and important people wore purple clothing.

Lydia listened to Paul as he taught her about Jesus. Lydia believed in Jesus. Lydia and her household were baptized, immediately, and then she begged Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke to go to her house to stay.

Our scripture is found in Acts 16:12-15.

A couple things I do for this lesson is set up bolts of different shades of purple as seen on the left. Or, especially for this age group, just a pile of different purple fabrics are fun for them to touch. I hand out a small piece of purple fabric and shells, too.

I decided to use this flipbook as a review for this lesson. It is an easy one-page review printable. Print, cut and staple! This includes the color and black & white. Click here to print.