July Sharing Time: The Temple is a House of God

I have been pondering about how to teach this lesson to the children and wanted to share some of my notes.

I have a great pop-up book called, "The House of the Lord," by Jason and Rebecca Rasmussen that I purchased at Seagull books on a clearance shelf a couple of years ago. It has beautiful pop-ups of different ancient and modern temples of the Lord that I will spend some time discussing.

The first temple shown is King Solomon's temple:

On LDS.org, there is a Friend article from June 2002 called, "Temples - A Sign of the True Church," that talks about King Solomon's temple. I will use some of the material in this article to talk about what a tabernacle is vs. a temple, and talk about King Solomon's temple:

"The Lord always commands His people to build temples. For many years, the Israelites could not build a temple because they were traveling through the wilderness. They carried with them a tent called the tabernacle, which served as a temple.""Solomon’s temple took eight years to complete. It was similar to the tabernacle, but it was twice as large. The walls were made of stone and were covered on the inside with carved wood and gold. Only the best materials were used to construct the temple. When it was finished, Solomon knelt at the altar in the court of the temple and offered a dedicatory prayer. (See 2 Chr. 3–6.)"

I also thought it was interesting that the Lord had King David wait for his son, Solomon to build the temple because David had too much bloodshed on his hands. I ended up reading this fascinating article about King David that I feel gives me a rich background and appreciation about Solomon and his temple. King David made some huge leaps of faith during his life (David and Goliath) but he also made some horrifying mistakes. He experienced a lot of grief and sorrow, and wrote many of the Psalms. I think this will be a bit too deep at least for Junior Primary, but it's good context for me personally to remember as I am teaching about the temple.

The article I referenced says:

"Matthew paid tribute to Christ by calling him “the son of David.” (Matt. 1:1.) Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Master, was called by the angels who attended his birth “the city of David.” (Luke 2:11.) And the angel Gabriel, in announcing the birth of the Messiah to Mary, stated that her Son “shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David.” (Luke 1:32.)"

The book has other temples and wording that I will spend a little bit of time discussing, like how the people gathered around the temple in the Americas after a great earthquake. They knew it was a safe place.

My Intro

The other part I wanted to share is that I live in a Utah neighborhood that is predominantly mormon. We do have some neighbors of other faiths though, or who choose not to attend a church of any kind at this time. Of those neighbors, one is a grandma, I believe in her 60s, who was baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Saturday morning. It is traditional that convert baptisms receiving the confirmation of the gift of the Holy Ghost the following day during Sacrament, and our ward is following that practice.

I would like to tie that opportunity into the lesson for the Primary children. It would go something like this (this is how I will start the lesson) - tying something current that the children were able to participate in during sacrament with what they having been learning in the month of June, to how that relates to going to the temple:

Today was a special day in Sacrament.

Can anyone tell me what happened to Sister [J]? (She was confirmed with the gift of the Holy Ghost.)

Sister [J] isn’t eight like [L] and [N] that were baptized just two Saturdays ago. She is a grandma with grand-children that are your ages! But the neat thing is that even for those that did not grow up with the gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives the way that you have, they can still learn about and follow Jesus Christ.

Today, she received the gift of the Holy Ghost. Remember last week Sister [P] talked about the gift of the Holy Ghost? Do you remember what [T] was wearing around him? A blanket, because the Holy Ghost is like a comforter that can make you feel safe help you remember things? It can be like a light to help lead the way? Well, she has all of those blessings now.

Yesterday, I got to attend her baptism, and the bishop talked about how she would receive the gift of the Holy Ghost today, which she did in sacrament, and that after she received this precious gift, she would be able to start preparing to be worthy to go to temple.

So, I brought a special book to help me share about the temple. I brought this book last year but I didn’t read from it or spend very much time with it so I want to look at it a little bit longer today and talk about temples.

Other Material

I found some other great material about temples that I want to focus on too - for one thing, I love the focus from the lesson plan about a few different kind of temples, and have printed out the pictures that go with those descriptions, as suggested. I plan to have the children in Senior Primary look up the scriptures that are referenced in the lesson plan.

I also love this Friend article from July 2013 talking about different modern day experiences that Primary children have had with temples.

Lastly, if you go to Lesson Helps for Teaching Children at LDS.org, there's a great section on Temples.