God, Morality, and Judgment

I am excited to prepare a Bible study for our high school kids this week during our AWANA meeting. We are coming off of Christmas break plus one week due to Covid and I am excited to be able to spend some time with the teens. They are such a good group of kids. I love their passion to learn. As we study, they always have tons of questions and during each study session, we discover answers to those questions. Some of our previous lessons were on such subjects as:

Moses’ last message

This Sunday during our Connect Groups, we are going to conclude the life and ministry of the great man of God, Moses. He has led the children of Israel faithfully for 40 years. It has been a difficult task for Moses and now he is giving his last charge to the people before turning over the leadership role to one of his disciples, Joshua. Our text this week with be Deuteronomy 31 and 32.

Last week we took a look at Balak and Balaam in a lesson entitled: A prophet seeking a profit. We have also seen

• God’s provision for salvation
• Heroes appear after the danger
• The day of atonement
• Idolatry: Are you not entertained?

Idolatry: Are you not entertained?

If you saw Russel Crowe in Gladiator back in the year 2000, you remember that line that the title of this article is from. The Romans loved to be entertained. That is our human nature. That is our sin nature. The children of Israel were no different. We are also no different today. We have a way of justifying our idols today, similarly to the way that the children of Israel justified their idols.

The Law of God

I am so excited to prepare for our Connect Group teacher training meeting on Sunday evening. In our Connect Groups this Sunday, we are going to learn how discipleship is the process of empowering others for ministry. The lesson that follows is about the Law of God given to the children of Israel. In this lesson, we are going to discover the purpose of the Law, but, before we dig into what the Law was for, we have to discuss what the Law is not for.

Discipleship: Empowering others for ministry

I am working on my Sunday School lesson this week and our passage is Exodus 18. Our previous lesson was on how our sin nature is contentious. God has promised victory to us, we simply have to walk in that victory daily.

Paul the pesky preacher

This coming Sunday, we are going to begin a new quarter in our Connect Groups at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. At the beginning of the year, we dove into the book of Acts. Then we moved into the epistles. Now we are going back to Acts and pick up where we left off. We left Acts after chapter 20 when Paul gave his final charge to the church leaders before heading to Jerusalem where he had already been forewarned of the persecution and imprisonment that awaited him. This is where we are going to pick back up this week, in Acts 23. In order to get caught up with what happened in chapters 21-22, I want to give a quick summary of those chapters.

Rebellious against God

Our Sunday School classes at Southern Calvert Baptist Church are walking through the Old Testament book of Exodus, focusing on God’s Great Calling. He is El Roi which means that He sees all things and is not indifferent to what happens to us. God intervenes on mankind’s behalf by calling us to come out of our slavery to sin and learn to worship Him. Some respond to the calling in obedience (Moses) while others respond by hardening their hearts to the message (Pharaoh). Once we respond to this calling, God wants to work in our lives via a spiritual mentor. He also wants to take us and train us to share His message of Good News with anyone who will listen. As we learn to walk with God, our sin nature seeks to dominate us like it once did, before we answered God’s Great Calling. It tries to get us to give in to our fears and not walk by faith. It tries to get us to grumble against our spiritual leaders instead of walking in humble obedience to the Lord by submitting to the leadership whom He has put over us. In our last lesson, we learned the purpose of the 10 Commandments. We learned that the 10 Commandments show us just how sinful we are. Moses had a sin nature just like the people of Israel had a sin nature. Moses was tempted just as the people of Israel were tempted. They both respond very differently to temptation.

Living faith revealed!

Well ladies and gentlemen, it is Wednesday once again and I am preparing to teach my staff James. We are in chapter 2, learning about the differences between living faith and dead faith. It is hard to believe that we are already on lesson 7 of 16. It is amazing how time seems to fly by as we busily serve the Lord. Here are links to the previous lessons.

1. Living faith vs. Dead faith
2. Living faith vs. Dead faith part II
3. Trials and Temptations; what’s the difference?
4. Genuine faith in action
5. Two spiritual births; death and life
6. Living faith in action

James has shown us real life situations that reveal of our faith is genuine or not. How are you doing with your daily exam? Are you learning to run to God and ask for wisdom, the One who gives liberally without reproach? How do we do it? Run to His Word, the fount of all wisdom!