Bible Lessons

This is a link to my Bible lessons blog called "The Bible: Logical Truth". These are the lessons I use when teaching the Bible. They start out covering Bible basics like the truth of the Bible, Bible misconceptions, etc. and go from there. 

The Bible: Logical Truth

Wednesday Invitation: God’s Orderly Creation

Genesis 1:1 "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." That's a brief summary of something unbelievably complicated. Think of all the physical laws and underlying principles that God had to get right to make the world work the way that it does. After all, if God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt and Christ walked on water then God can revise the laws of physics at will. He could’ve set up the universe any way he wanted, but he set it up so that things work in an orderly fashion. 

Consider friction, for example. When two objects are in contact with each other, there is a force that opposes any tendency for them to slide relative to each other. That’s friction. The amount of opposing force is directly proportional to the force pressing the two objects together. If you’re standing still, your weight would be the force pressing you against the floor. The friction force acts parallel to the floor and keeps your feet in place without slipping. The friction force varies from surface to surface and it also depends on the surface conditions. It’s higher for some surface conditions (dry floor), lower for other surface conditions (wet or oily floor).

Now imagine a world with no friction. You wouldn’t be able to stand up or walk because your feet would slip out from under you. You couldn’t go anywhere in a car; the tires would just spin in place with no forward motion. If somehow you did get the car moving, you would crash, because there would be no friction between the brake pads and the rotors to slow you down. Friction is a necessary basic principle that God created to make the universe work in an orderly fashion.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of any isolated system always increases. That's a fancy way of saying that when you bring something hot in contact with something cold, heat always flows from the hotter object to the colder object. You put your hand on a hot stove and the heat flows from the hotter stove to your colder hand and you get burned. The only way to keep something colder than its surroundings is by applying external work which is what your compressor does in your refrigerator. If your refrigerator is unplugged or the compressor goes out, then the stuff in your refrigerator will gradually warm up to the temperature of the room surrounding it. Heat transfers from the hotter room to the inside of the refrigerator which is colder.

But what if it was the opposite of that so that when you bring something hotter in contact with something colder, the hotter object gets hotter and the colder object gets colder? You put water in a glass full of ice and the water gets warmer? You couldn't boil water on the stove to cook, the water would just get colder. The North Pole would keep getting colder and the equator would keep getting hotter which would make it impossible for life to exist on earth. It would be a dysfunctional bizarro world universe. That's why God didn't make it that way. 

That's just a couple of examples. Think about all the underlying math and science in our universe. God created that. Think about all the chemical processes of the body, the nuclear reaction that goes on inside a star, the list is endless. When God created everything we see, he also created all of the underlying principles that make our universe work in an orderly fashion. And he did all that in six days. That is and always will be beyond human comprehension.

Another thing we'll never understand, at least not in this world: why did God create us, and why with all the billions of people on earth is he so deeply and personally concerned with each and every one of us? Who am I, this flawed and imperfect individual, that God is mindful of me and cares for me? Yet I know that he does because he sent his son to die for me and everyone else in this world so that we might have a hope of eternal salvation.

If you're here tonight and you're not a Christian you have a hope of eternal salvation, purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ. Come forward, repent of your sins, confess your faith, be baptized by immersion in water for the remission of your sins, and start living for Christ instead of for yourself. If you are a Christian and you're struggling with something or you need our prayers, come forward we can help with that as well. Whatever your need, come as we stand and sing.

Faith Is The Victory

(I wrote the words below in the last days of my mother's life (since then lightly edited for clarity). She taught me many things in those days, the most important of which is this: God's perspective is the only one that counts - our human perspective is often very flawed. As Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.") 

For years, I thought my mother's life was sad. Most people who knew her felt the same way. She was always depressed, always unhappy, and could not break free from the mental prison she created for herself. I thought I had the wisdom to understand her life, and that my perspective was the only valid perspective.

However, the scriptures tell us the following in 1 Corinthians 1:19-20: "For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."  Where is the wise man?  Where is the scholar?  Where is the philosopher of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?"

How wrong I was! I had forgotten the most important thing about her, the thing that made all the difference: her faith. God never forgets those who love him and keep his commandments, and it was the same with her. Even though she could never see it, because of her faith God gave her a wonderful life: a husband who loved her, four children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. God rewarded her faith with the strength to accomplish her daily work despite the negative thoughts that continually haunted her.

Even when she was in a nursing home, her faith continued to amaze me. One Friday after work, I drove to Pulaski to see her. The traffic was heavy, and work had been frustrating that day. I didn't have much patience left by the time I walked into her room. I talked to her for a few minutes, and then she began to sing a church hymn. Here she was, stuck in a nursing home, with Alzheimer's destroying her mental functions, and yet she had the presence of mind to sing a hymn of praise to God. In a situation that most people would consider intolerable, her mood was positive; she was praising God for all He had done for her. I realized then that I was perfectly healthy, in the prime of life, able to do anything I wanted or go anywhere I wanted, yet my mood had been negative all day long. I decided, on that particular day, her mental faculties were working better than mine.

A popular hymn tells us that "faith is the victory". I can't think of a better example of this than my mother. Her faith was the victory over a lifetime of depression. May God in his grace grant us all such faith!

The Consequences of Sin

Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) wrote a song called "Hurt". You may have heard the Johnny Cash version before. It's written from the perspective of someone whose addiction has ruined his life and destroyed his relationship with everyone he knows. These are some of the lyrics: "I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real. The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting. Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything. What have I become, my sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away in the end. And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down, I will make you hurt."

Sin is like that, isn't it? It hurts us, and it hurts the people around us. When God rejected Cain's offering, God warned him about the evil in his heart. "Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it." (Genesis 4:6-7 NIV) Cain chose to ignore God's warning, and it destroyed both his life and his brother's life.

Saul lost his kingdom because of his disobedience to God. (1 Samuel 15) The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah led to their destruction. (Genesis 19) The world was destroyed by water because of its wickedness. (Genesis 6-7) The consequences of sin are never good.

Worst of all, sin separates us from God. "Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save; nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear." (Isaiah 59:1-2 NASB) The sins of the 10 northern tribes of Israel were so bad and continued for so long (despite the warnings of the prophets) that God eventually removed them from his sight permanently. "The sons of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they did not depart from them until the Lord removed Israel from His sight, as He spoke through all His servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away into exile from their own land to Assyria until this day." (2 Kings 17:22-23 NASB)

Here's the good news: God protects the righteous; therefore, we must choose righteousness over sin. "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment." (2 Peter 2:4-9 NASB)

The Greater Good

I saw a documentary a while back about the loss of certain industries in the USA over the last 50 years. One of the people they interviewed was an old man. He was standing in front of an abandoned factory (a steel mill, I believe) that was slowly crumbling away. The windows were gone, some of the walls had collapsed, and weeds were growing everywhere. This man grew up near the factory and both he and his father worked there until retirement. When he was a little boy, the noise of the factory woke him up one night and he complained to his father about it. His father told him "be glad you hear the noise coming from the factory, because that means people are able to work and provide for their families. It will be a sad day when you don't hear that noise anymore." When he finished the story, he looked at the silent abandoned factory behind him and began to cry.

I thought of this story today at work. I had a splitting headache early in the afternoon, so I turned off the lights in my office to rest my eyes and see if the headache would go away. Meanwhile, rivet guns are going off in the factory about 50 feet from my office. If you've never been around a rivet gun, they are loud, and the constant BRAPPP BRAPPP BRAPPP from the guns was only making my headache worse. I thought "I'll be glad when I can retire so I'll never have to hear those rivet guns again". That thought reminded me of the old man complaining about the noisy factory as a boy. Suddenly the rivet guns didn't seem so annoying, because I knew that noise meant people were working and I had a job. For the last 33 years that noisy factory put a roof over my family's head and food on the table. My kids never went to bed hungry or homeless. No doubt the sound of those rivet guns will be a fond memory for me when I'm an old man.

 Sometimes we get caught up in the daily irritations of life and forget about the big picture or the greater good. Life is hard and we suffer at times, but then God never said it was supposed to be easy. Consider the example of the Lord who was made perfect through suffering for the greater good (i.e. our salvation): "But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering." (Hebrews 2:9-10 ESV) "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek." (Hebrews 5:7-10 ESV)

God Can Make It Grow

 "I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ." Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name." (1 Corinthians 1:10-15 ESV) "What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth." (1 Corinthians 3:5-7 ESV)

Have you ever planted a tree or a bush in your yard? If so, you know they require a lot of care in the early years to become established and grow properly. I planted a magnolia tree in my front yard almost 30 years ago. It was about four feet tall at that time. I watered and fertilized it regularly, mulched around the root ball for the first few years to conserve moisture, and pruned it as it grew. Today it's a beautiful tree at least 30 feet tall. Now I knew when I planted it that if I watered it and fertilized it, barring disease it would grow into the beautiful tree that it is today. The end result was guaranteed if I did my part.  So I planted this tree, I watered and fertilized it, but even though I did those things did I make it grow?  No, only God made it grow. God created it; I just nurtured and cared for it. So if in earthly things God can guarantee a certain outcome provided we do our part, how much more can he guarantee in spiritual things if we're doing our part? Sometimes it seems like no one wants to listen, but if we plant and nurture God's word among our fellow men, is there any doubt that God can make it grow in their hearts? 

Wednesday Invitation: A Brief Encounter

In Acts 8 we read about the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch: "Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and join this chariot." So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth.  In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth."  And the eunuch said to Philip, "About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, "See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?" And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing." (Acts 8:26-39 ESV)

I graduated from college in December of 1981. My degree was in civil engineering with an emphasis on structural engineering of bridges and buildings. At that time, the job prospects in civil engineering weren't very good. I had been looking for jobs in the first two months of 1981 with no success. Then I got a letter in the mail inviting me to a job conference in Atlanta that was only a couple of miles from my brother's house, plus it was during my spring break. So I stayed with my brother and went to the conference. When I got there, there weren't any structural engineering companies in attendance. So I decided to talk to the only aerospace company at the conference because I didn't know what else to do. Their human resources representative was a nice guy. He looked at my resume and was experienced enough to realize that his company used people with my background to design aircraft structures. I got a letter inviting me to come for an interview a few weeks later. A job offer followed a few weeks after my interview. It was the only job offer I got, and I took it. I've been steadily employed in the aircraft business ever since (34 years and counting). A couple of points to take from this story: (a) If you're thinking "the combination of all those coincidences seems like no coincidence at all", I agree with you completely. God was at work in my life even then, before I was a Christian. A better way to say it would be "God believed in me even when I didn't believe in him." Is there any adjective that is sufficient to describe the God we serve? (b) I didn't know it at the time, but my brief encounter with that human resources guy changed my life forever. Now if my brief encounter with that human resources guy in 1981 changed my life forever, how much more did the eunuch's brief encounter with Phillip change his life? I got a job (for which I'm very grateful), but the eunuch got something infinitely greater: the salvation of his soul. As Jesus said "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" (Matthew 16:26 ESV)

If you're here tonight and you're not a Christian, consider the example of the Ethiopian eunuch. He heard, he believed, he was baptized, and he went on his way rejoicing. Come forward, repent of your sins, confess your faith, be baptized for the remission of your sins, and leave here rejoicing as the angels in heaven rejoice with you. "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." (Luke 15:7 ESV) If you are a Christian and you're struggling with some burden in life, you don't have to carry it alone. Come forward, there are people here who can share the load. Come as we stand and sing.