Sin is a “knotty” problem. The word “not” appears three times in our lesson text (Genesis 3:1, 3, and 4). The devil used the word twice, and Eve, quoting God, used it once. The devil told Adam and Eve that they would not die if they ate the forbidden fruit. But that was a lie. […]
A friend of mine recently completed a 360-degree performance review at work. Are you familiar with the practice? It’s called “360” because it requires asking everyone who works around you (as in a 360-degree circle) to evaluate your effectiveness on the job. My friend’s coworkers gave him positive marks, but their honest feedback revealed areas […]
Use one or both of these questions to introduce the lesson: 1. Following the 2016 presidential campaign, unsuccessful candidate Hillary Clinton released a book entitled What Happened. Why can examining a personal failure be a helpful exercise? 2. Consider a personal crisis of your own (loss of a job, financial difficulty, etc.). What did you […]
Israel lived by the Word of God (Deuteronomy 8:3). Jesus lived by the Word of God (Matthew 4:4). The church should live by the Word of God (1 Thessalonians 2:13). In many ways the little epistle of 2 Peter is about living by the Word of God. It is in the written Word of God […]
Although he’s an atheist, Richard Dawkins admits that the Bible should be taught “because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.” But, he insists, it should be taught “not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality.” TV host Bill Maher cynically quips, “To most Christians, the Bible is like […]
