Due to the sudden passing of my stepfather in Oklahoma, the teacher’s overview for Lifeway’s Explore the Bible lesson of Acts 10, for Sunday August 18, will be delayed. I DO PLAN TO POST A LESSON OVERVIEW EITHER SUNDAY OR MONDAY (Aug. 11-12) — it will just be a bit later than usual. I hope this delay will not greatly inconvenience your preparation for next Sunday. Please say a prayer for my mother and our family! And thank you for your participation and feedback in the lesson overviews!
An overview for Sunday school teachers and Bible study leader of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson for August 8, 2024, Acts 9:32-43, with the title, “Healing.” A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: J. Edwin Orr was an Irish Baptist minister who traveled the world sharing the gospel, and authored books on revival. He wrote: “Occasionally the believer’s faith is strengthened by some such providence as healing, but the skeptic nullifies the evidence by saying that the healing was psychosomatic! But it is rather odd to claim that X rays offered by an expert showing that a bone had lengthened seven millimeters after prayer confirms the notion that the healing was accomplished only in the mind.” Orr explains in a footnote: “My wife’s doctor, Viola Fryman, a surgeon, showed X rays on TV of the growth—after prayer—of a femur by more than two inches.”
(J. Edwin Orr, The Faith That Persuades, pp. 89, footnote p. 142)
??? Have you or someone you know ever experienced a miraculous healing???
In today’s lesson from Acts 9, we see how the Lord used two particular miraculous healings to bring people to Himself.
In Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace, he writes about how during Napoleon’s War with Russia he commanded a group of his soldiers to go downstream and find a good place to ford the river, and go to the other side. When the officer in charge received the command, he asked if he and his men could have the privilege of NOT looking for an easy place to cross, but to swim across right where they were, in the presence of the Emperor. And so they did. Thirty of his men drowned in the attempt, but the officer and a few others made it to the other side — and stood there, proudly exhibiting their to serve their Emperor!
Sometimes I think that we as Christians could learn a thing or two from the world — among them that our King deserves our radical obedience. If a MAN, like a Napoleon, can receives such fanatical obedience from his followers, then what does the true King, the Lord Jesus, deserve from us?
In our passage for today we see a couple of “The King’s Laws” that He would have us obey, to His honor and glory.
An overview for teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s Explore the Bible lesson of Acts 9:3-16 for Sunday, August 4th, 2024, with text highlights, suggested outline, illustrations, discussion questions, and life applications for your group. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: In 1997, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was a liberal, lesbian college professor who was researching the Bible to write an article against the religious right. After she published the article, she got a lot of mail, pro and con, but one stuck out to her, from a local pastor, Ken Smith, who asked her some sincere questions about her presuppositions about the Bible. He invited her to have dinner with him and his wife, and they began a long process of loving her, ministering to her, answering questions — and to make a long story short, two years later she gave her life to Jesus as her Lord & Savior, and she is now the wife of a Presbyterian Pastor in North Carolina! She wrote an amazing book about the process of her conversion — I consider it one of the best books I’ve read, because it is so insightful regarding the thought processes of a person God’s working in, and how He spoke to her and changed her. The title of her book? The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert”! Rosaria Butterfield, liberal lesbian college professor, was definitely an “unlikely convert”!
??? Can you share the story of another “unlikely convert” that you know, or heard/read about, who came to the Lord?
(There are so many famous ones, including Chuck Colson, C.S. Lewis, Anthony Flew (atheist debater who famously became a believer in God and possibly a Christian and wrote the book, There Is A God — and others of your own experience.)
Then say something like: today we are going to look at the story of one of the most unlikely men who was ever saved: Saul of Tarsus, who had actually been persecuting Christians, but whom God dramatically saved and changed.
At one point during the U.S. Civil War, Northern General Ulysses S.Grant gave President Abraham Lincoln and the Secretary of War a list of 8 major generals and 33 brigadier generals whose service he said “the Government ‘could dispense with to advantage.’” President Lincoln looked at the list and told him: “Why, I find that lots of officers on this list are very close friends of yours. Do you want them all dropped?’ General Grant responded: “That’s very true Mr. President. But my personal friends are not always good generals, and I think it is but just to adhere to my recommendations.’” (Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, p. 629)
Ulysses S. Grant was a very unusual general, and a very extraordinary man. His desire was to show no partiality in something as important as the U.S. Civil War that was going on. The kind of impartiality he demonstrated is very rare. But it should be more common — especially among the people of God, James tells us here. Our passage for today shows us that “What Real Faith Looks Like” is that it demonstrates “No Partiality”!
An overview for Sunday school teachers and Bible study leaders of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Acts 8:26-39, for Sunday, July 28, with the title, “Baptizing.” A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: ??? What was the most exciting/interesting/special baptism you have seen???
— Beach baptisms are fun; we did several at a nearby river at one of our previous churches; some churches here by the Gulf of Mexico have baptized down at Surfside Beach.
— We just attended our two grand daughters’ baptisms in North Carolina in May. Our older grand daughter had actually led the younger one to the Lord after she was saved, so that was neat for us. I said I wasn’t missing that baptism for anything!
— I once heard a pastor tell of how a young boy was baptized, but he exited the baptistry to the opposite side – the women’s side. He didn’t know what to do, so he decided to just wait there, and swim underwater to the other side as the service progressed, so no one could see him while he got over to the men’s side. He didn’t realize, however, that the baptistry of their church had a glass front, so when he looked over, the whole church could see him swimming across!
— AND I actually had the privilege of baptizing my own WIFE, who was the pastor’s wife at our first church in Oklahoma City. As I shared once before, she had made a profession of faith when she was 6 and was baptized, but really came to know Christ when she was 16. This had always bothered her, so one Sunday she came down to the front — as a pastor’s wife — and said she needed to be baptized. And we did!
You/your group can share some baptism stories — yours/others — that were special to you. Then talk about how today’s lesson is from Acts 8, where Philip baptizes the Ethiopian treasurer.
Just before the dark days of the Second World War, English Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously said: “Never let a good crisis go to waste”!
His statement has been adopted and re-quoted by many politicians in recent years: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” If there’s a mass murder, they use it to further their gun control program. If there’s crime committed against a homosexual, they use it to further hate crime legislation, and so on. “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” they say. In other words, their philosophy is that you can always use a situation to advance your political position.
Now, while we may not agree with that politically, there is a legitimate application that we can make to that spiritually. We all WILL experience various crises in our lives — Jesus said “in this world you will have tribulation” — and when we do, we really should not “waste” those experiences. What do I mean “waste”? I mean that God always has some purpose for what we go through; there is something good He wants to accomplish; some lesson for us to learn through it. So whenever we go through something hard, we need to make sure that we don’t waste that: “Never waste a good crisis.” Make sure you learn, and do, what God wants you to through it.
And … WE have been through a crisis this week, haven’t we? Do you think any one of us will ever say again: “Oh it’s just a CAT 1” hurricane?! That “CAT 1” hit us pretty hard here: No power/water for many of us; no air conditioning in this South Texas heat!; many are like our neighbor across the street, with a tree crashed onto the roof of their house. We have a pastor friend in Freeport who is recuperating from foot surgery in his home; his wife is battling cancer — and they had a tree branch crash through their ceiling — it literally rained through into their house the other day! It’s been a crisis week for many of us: no electricity, no water, no refrigerator/freezer, no food, no work, no tv, no comfort, no rest.
Yet in all of that, God has a purpose. He has things for us to learn; He has things for us to do. “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” I do believe that is true spiritually. So what are some things we can learn through this “Hurricane Beryl Crisis”? I want us to focus on three things this morning:
An overview of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” Sunday School lesson, for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders. Includes a sample introduction to the lesson, text overview and highlights, illustrations, discussion questions for your class, and spiritual life applications. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO:
??? Can you share a time when someone served you/ministered to you in a specific way that was meaningful to you???
(Here in Angleton, Texas and the surrounding area, we got a direct hit from hurricane Beryl, and we had so many limbs down at our house, blocking our driveway. I only have an electric chainsaw, and our power was out, so I was trying to cut some pretty big branches with a little pole saw. I got most of big limb’s branches cut off, and went inside to rest for a minute — but when I went back out, someone had cut the big main part of it into pieces for me and set it on the curb! I was SO thankful!
You/your group can share your experiences about someone serving you in a meaningful way, then talk about how meeting needs is so important — especially in the church, where we are to demonstrate God’s love for each other and for the world — and that our passage for today shows how the early church was led to minister to some people in their church who had needs.
In March 2020 about a dozen or so of our church members went on a mission trip to Mazatlan, Mexico, to minister with what is now James Trail ministry, with Dan & Meredith Shuman. It was a good trip, but as we started to get ready to come back we were hearing about this “virus” that was going around, causing a lot of concern. And when we came back, the whole world had changed, and honestly there was a lot of fear and panic.
Even from another country I was hearing about all the fear that was going around, and on the flight home I felt led to change my message from what I was going to preach, to II Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
I said at the time that I couldn’t think of a scripture that many of us needed more than that one — and as many of us have been glued to the tv and internet weathercasts over the past couple of days, I felt convicted that we might need again to set aside the message from James that we had planned for today, and look anew at this passage from II Timothy. The specifics of our situation are a little different — but the principle, and our need to trust God in this time, is the same. So let’s look at what this verse has to teach us as we wait for the storm to come:
(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: ??? Did you/someone you know ever disobey a law/command/guideline, to do something you believed God wanted you to do? (— A friend of mine and I shared the gospel one time in a college report to the class when the professor had warned us not to. She was pretty ticked off at us, and spoke against us in class. — I went to India to share the gospel when there was a restriction in place against doing missionary work there …
You/your group can share any experiences you may have had, then transition to the fact that in our text for today, we see how Peter & the apostles in the early church obeyed God rather than men, especially in sharing the Gospel where they lived.
I'm a retired Southern Baptist pastor of almost 40 years. My wife Cheryl & I moved to Norman, OK in March of 2025. I share a weekly overview for Sunday School teachers of the weekly Lifeway "Explore the Bible" lesson, as well as texts of my sermons and other articles.
shawnethomas 