“Keep Promises” Lesson #8 in The Ten Commandments for Kids

This is lesson #8 in our curriculum called “God’s Good Rules” that helps children study the Ten Commandments. This lesson will explain how the commandment “Do not commit adultery” applies to all the promises we make as God’s people. Download the complete printable lesson plan below. See all the lessons and find bonus learning activities on the series page: God’s Good Rules – A Study for Children on the 10 Commandments.

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Main idea: We keep our promises because God is a promise keeper. 

Supplies: Bible; dry erase markers or chart paper and markers; Ten Commandments Coloring Page 7^th Commandment; hearts printable; glue sticks; scissors; coloring supplies; butcher paper or large paper, bowls. For bonus ideas, see all our resources for teaching the 10 Commandments to Kids

Memory Verses: Psalm 119:1-2 “Joyful are people of integrity, who follow the instructions of the Lord. Joyful are those who obey his laws and search for him with all their hearts.”

Scripture references:

• Exodus 20:14
• Genesis 2:18, 23-24
• Ephesians 5:31-32
• John 3:16
• 1 John 1:9

More 10 Commandment Learning & Activities

• See our printable 10 commandments for kids version
• Compare our single Ten Commandment Sunday School Lesson
• Compare our single Preschool Bible Lesson on the Ten Commandments
• Moses and the Law of 10 Commandments (preschool coloring page)
• PDF Worksheets on the 10 Commandments
• Commandments Preschool Booklet [pdf] and Mini Book [pdf]
• Moses Songs for Preschoolers
• Go Fish Guys sing the 10 Commandment Song
• See the 10 Commandments for Kids on Sunday School Works

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Teacher Preparation and Devotion   

Read Scripture references, Matthew 5:27-37, Jeremiah 3:8-10, Jeremiah 13:27, Judges 2:17

Take time to meditate on this week’s Scripture and think about your own life. Even if you are not married and never plan to be, you can still glean useful teachings from the seventh commandment. God is a keeper of promises, so must we be. As a single Christian, you can still support and pray for those in your lives who are married. If you are married, you must honor God and keep your vows. This includes, as Jesus explains in Matthew, keeping your heart pure from lustful thoughts. Take time this week to pray for your marriage and the marriages of those around you, and evaluate your life for any hints of adultery, lust, or promise breaking. Ask God for the strength to remove anything that leads to temptation to sin from your life.

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Game Introduction to the Lesson:  Promise Seekers

Before class, cut out at least two sets of the colorful hearts printable. If you don’t have color printing, print only the outlines and color three hearts each in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Hide the hearts around the classroom. Hang a large piece of butcher paper on the wall and draw the outline of a rainbow on it, putting the colors in order. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.) Alternatively, you could use a dry erase board or chalkboard. When students enter, divide them into at least two teams. (Up to five or six per team.) Tell them that they will work to find as many hearts as they can hidden around the room and place them in their team’s bowl. After all the hearts have been found, explain that the teams will work together to make a rainbow using the hearts. One member of each team will race across the room and glue one of their hearts onto the correct line of the butcher paper rainbow outline. The first team to run out of hearts, wins.

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Bible Lesson (Keep Promises) Do Not Commit Adultery

Open in prayer, then say, great job finding all the hearts and creating a rainbow! Who can explain to us what the Bible says about rainbows? (Allow students to answer.) In the story of Noah and the flood, God floods the whole world to destroy sin, and he saves Noah and his family and the animals on the ark. When the waters dried up, God set the rainbow in the sky to remind us of his promise to never flood the whole earth again. Every time we see a rainbow, we can remember that God keeps his promises, always. Today, we are learning about the seventh commandment, which is a very special promise God tells us to keep. Let’s look it up now. Turn with me to Exodus 20:14. (Read, or have a student read, Exodus 20:14.)

“You must not commit adultery.”

This is another straightforward commandment, and it’s not a commandment you all have to worry about breaking for a very long time. This commandment is for married people. But there is wisdom in this verse for kids and adults who aren’t married, too. So first we’re going to talk about what this commandment means for married couples, and then we’ll discuss what this commandment means for all of us, including you kids!

Have any of you ever been to a wedding? (Allow students to briefly share their stories. Take time to share about your own wedding, one you have attended, or wedding in general.) Weddings are big, special celebrations where two people who love each other promise each other and promise God that they will stay married and live together forever, loving each other best of all and always being there for one another. Being married is like getting to be with your best friend all the time, and getting to do things to help your best friend be happy and to help them love God more and more each day.

Marriage is a very special relationship. I want you all to understand how special it is, and why this commandment is so important. (Pass out the hearts from the “heart baubles craft” and glue sticks as you talk.) Everyone take two hearts. We’ll pass around glue sticks too. When you get the glue stick, I want you to completely cover the back of both hearts in glue, and then stick the hearts together. Press them together really well, making sure they are good and stuck. (Demonstrate with your own pair of hearts.) Once everyone has glued their two hearts together, we will continue to talk. (Make sure everyone glues their hearts together back to back, with plenty of glue. This demonstration works best if the hearts are very well stuck together.)

Now hold onto your hearts or put them in your lap to dry for a little bit while we talk. Marriage is a special gift from God. Let’s think way back to the beginning of the Bible, when God made everything, including marriage. He made all of creation, and it was good. But there was something that God saw that was not good. Does anyone remember? (Allow students to answer.) Genesis 2:18 says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.’”

Even though Adam was in a beautiful garden, surrounded by every single kind of animal, there was not anyone like him, who could be his best friend. So God made Eve to be his wife. Adam was really excited! Genesis 2:23 says,

“’At last!’ [Adam] exclaimed.

“This one is bone from my bone,
    and flesh from my flesh!
She will be called ‘woman,’
    because she was taken from ‘man.’”

“This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”

God made marriage special for two people. A man and a woman get married and have their own home and their own family. They are united into one, the Bible says, just like you took two hearts and brought them together to make one heart. It is a good thing to get to be married to someone you love, and to get to have a family and a whole wonderful life with them. A marriage promise is a special promise to God and to your spouse to be united into one with them forever. When you are married, your life is not just yours anymore. You think about and care about what your husband or wife thinks and cares about. You do things to show you love them. You spend time with them and work together as a team. When a husband and wife are united as one and working together as a team, the whole family wins!

I am sorry to tell you that sometimes, husbands and wives don’t always keep their marriage promise. Imagine you are on a basketball team. (Or other sports team. Choose a local team if desired.) Your goal as a member of the team is to score as many baskets as possible, and help your teammates score as many baskets as possible, and to keep the other team from winning. That’s one way to think about marriage. Adultery is breaking the marriage promises to love your husband or wife best of all, and to be there to help them do their best and be their best and to love God their best. It’s like being on that basketball team, getting the ball, and trying to score points for the OTHER team. It’s just wrong.

Adultery is taking God’s special gift of marriage, being brought together as one heart, and choosing to not give your best love and time and energy to your spouse, or to even decide you don’t want to be married anymore. It’s like trying to unglue your hearts. Let’s see what adultery does to married hearts. Take the hearts that we glued together and try to pull them apart. (Demonstrate with your own paper hearts. Peel them apart, not being all that careful, so you are left with two shredded and wrinkled hearts. Hold up the pieces for your students to see.) Adultery, breaking the marriage promise, hurts hearts. Marriage glues two hearts together, and there is no way to peel them apart without causing pain and heartbreak.

I want to stop here for a moment to make one thing very clear. Some of you may have parents who are divorced, or know kids whose parents are not together. You have to know, it is not your fault. Your parents both love you so, so, much and you are not to blame. When parents break their marriage promise to each other, it hurts not only their hearts, but their kids’ hearts too. I want you to remember to be kind and loving to kids whose parents broke their marriage promise, because hearts get hurt when this commandment is broken.

That is one big reason God gave us this commandment. Marriage is a wonderful gift, and it can be a lot of work. It takes a lot of prayer and a lot of sacrifice to keep the promise to always treat your husband or wife as the most important person in your life, aside from Jesus. Someday if you get married, remember, your heart will forever be united to that person, and breaking the seventh commandment will hurt.

There’s another reason God gave us this commandment. We’re going to have a sword drill to help us see why. Take all fingers and bookmarks out of your Bibles and hold them closed above your heads. When I say go, look up Ephesians 5:31-32. Go! (Read, or have a student read Ephesians 5:31-32.)

“As the Scriptures say, ‘A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ ³² This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.”

This passage even says that this is a great mystery, so I’m not going to spend much time trying to unravel it. Basically, this verse is saying that marriage is a picture of the church’s relationship with Jesus. Now a lot of very smart people have spent a lot of time studying the Bible and writing books all about how the Bible shows that the way we, as God’s people, the church, relate to God, is like a marriage relationship. When we love a spouse, we want what is best for them, we want to make them happy.

When we love God, we want to please God, so we obey him and love and help others. God loves us, so he gave us good rules to follow so we could stay safe and happy. Also, we know that God loves us so much that “He gavehis one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).

Our relationship with God is the absolutely most important one in our whole lives. God gives us a special promise about our relationship with him. “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” (1 John 1:9). When we trust God and tell him we are sorry for sinning, he promises to forgive us. That is wonderful news!

God always, always, always keeps his promises. (1 Corinthians 1:9). So we should too! When we keep our marriage promise, it shows the whole world that God is a promise keeper. So it’s going to be a long time before any of you even think about getting married. But right now, as a kid, you can still be a promise keeper, like God. Whatever you say you will do, DO IT! (Matthew 5:33-37). Clean your room when you’re told, go to a friend’s party when you say you will, play with your little brother when he asks. When you are faithful to do what you will say you will do, other people will see it, and they will learn that God is a promise keeper too.

End in prayer.

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Craft: 7th Commandment Coloring Page

7th Commandment Coloring Page by Many Groce. Have children write their name on the coloring page. As they color, discuss with them what they learned today. They may take the coloring pages home, or you may collect them to put together into a book to be sent home at the end of the unit.  You can find options with printed text (instead of cursive script) when on the 10 Commandments Coloring Book page on our website.

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Heart Bauble Craft

Print the outline hearts from the hearts printable. Have students color three hearts any way they wish. Fold the hearts in half. Glue half of heart A to half of heart B, then half of heart B to half of heart C. Then add a ribbon for hanging in the center before gluing the second half of heart A to heart C, bringing all three hearts together. Suggest to the students that they find a place to hang the heart bauble where they can see it and remember that God always keeps his promises, and we should too.