If not the most, one of the most difficult passages in this curriiculum.

Click HERE for a blog from Faith Church on this lesson.

Thank you to those who have been working through this lesson.

I want to let you know this week's passage has one of the most difficult verses to teach to children.  Ezra 10:3

Therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the Law.

What do you do with this passage?  
How do you keep a high view of marriage in a culture where quick divorces are the norm
How do you tell a child who has been hurt by divorce that part of God's plan for God's people was divorce?

Here is my attempt to explain this passage in a way that some children might understand.  (How is that for a STRONG statement:  some children might understand).  Comments specifically geared towards kids are italicized and bold

In the Old Testament, God wanted His people to be very different than the nations around them, which explains many of the Laws God gave the people.  One set of these laws was that the people should not marry foreign women with foreign gods.

God gives His people specific laws to follow.  God did not want the Israelites men to be led into sin by foreign wives who served very different Gods.

The Israelites did not follow this command.  They sinned against God.

The book of Ezra tells how the people repented of this sin.  

Part of this repentance was taking action steps to do what was right in the future for the husband and the foreign.  
And these action steps had to be done God's way.
The last part of Ezra 10:3 says that everything the people did had to be done according to the Law.  

Our repentance, just like the Israelites' repentance is to and for God.  

Here is part of an article I found on this passage, I am trying to track down the source.

The basic truth introduced in Nehemiah, Ezra and other Old Testament passages is reestablished in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 6:14: “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” This is seen, of course, in number of New Testament Scriptures. However, after reiterating the truth confirmed in the New Testament that God’s people are not to marry outside the faith; the Old Testament passage in Ezra teaches that those who had married unbelievers were to divorce them. Meanwhile, in the New Testament, while it is wrong to marry an unbeliever (literally, “do not BECOME unequally yoked with unbelievers” according to A. T. Robertson, Alford’s Greek Testament, Expositor’s Greek New Testament, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown and others) – again, while it’s wrong to marry an unbeliever, once a Christian is married to an unbeliever, he is NOT to divorce his unbelieving spouse, but to work on converting her.

BOTTOMLINE:  Sin is a serious problem and has a VERY serious solution (Jesus dying on the cross) and should cause a very serious change in our lives.