Teacher’s Overview: Lifeway “Explore the Bible” lesson: Mark 3:20-30, “Questioned”

Posted on 2023/09/09 by Shawn Thomas

A brief overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Mark 3:20-30, for Sunday, September 17, 2023, with the title, “Questioned.” (A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO  ??? One way to begin this lesson would be ask your group: “Can you think of a politician, or a ministry, that had some controversy or criticism?”???

(That’s an easy one, right? It would be harder to think of one that DIDN’T!

— Some might think of Donald Trump as someone who was controversial and has a lot of criticism. Others might point out that Joe Biden does as well.

— I’m reading a biography of Woodrow Wilson, and in 1916, he was strongly criticized for NOT responding to German U-boat attacks on our country’s ships by declaring war against the Germans.

— On the religious front, Franklin Graham received a lot of criticism a few years ago for his comments that the God of Islam was not the same as the Christian God, and that Islam was an “evil” religion. 

You could point out that virtually politician, pastor, minister, or leader of any kind will have some kind of controversy or criticism leveled against him. You might go so far as to say that if a person never receives any criticism, they are probably not doing something right! Because even JESUS was criticized, as we see in today’s passage. 

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Teacher’s Overview of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson: Mark 1:35-45, “Proclaimed”

Posted on 2023/09/02 by Shawn Thomas

A brief overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Mark 1:35-45, “Proclaimed,” for Sunday, September 10, 2023.

A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO: When British author Charles Dickens visited America in the 1800s he was mobbed by the crowds who wanted to see him:    “When he arrived at any railway station the crowds peered in the window at him “with as much coolness as if I were a Marble image”. There were other indignities. “If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude. If I stay at home, the house becomes, with callers, like a fair … Go to a party in the evening, and am so inclosed and hemmed about by people, stand where I will, that I am exhausted for want of air. I dine out, and have to talk about everything, to everybody . . . I can’t get can’t get out at a station, and can’t drink a glass of water, without having a hundred people looking down my throat when I open my mouth to swallow.”   (Peter Ackroyd, Dickens, p. 354)

??? “Have you ever been near a famous person, whom everyone was trying to see???” (Maybe a presidential candidate, or a famous singer or actor, etc.) 

After you/your group have shared, then you can say: that is very much like the context for our passage from Mark 1 today:

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“Christ’s Model of Obedience” (John 14:31 sermon)

Posted on 2023/08/28 by Shawn Thomas

One of the most glorious moments in the American Revolution was George Washington’s daring raid on Trenton, N.J., in December of 1776, when he led his men across the swollen Delaware River in freezing weather to launch a surprise attack against the German Hessians.

One of the Americans in the group (John Greenwood) wrote: “‘None but the first officers knew where we were going, or what we were about. This was not unusual, however, as I never heard soldiers say anything, nor ever saw them trouble themselves, as to where they were or where they were led. It was enough for them to know that wherever the officers commanded they must go …’.” (David McCullough, 1776, pp. 277-278)

Washington’s victory at Trenton was one of the most important in the whole war for Independence, NOT because that battle “won the war,” or anything like that, but because at that point, everybody had given up on the Americans and thought the British had won — but this battle showed our own troops, as well as the British, that they could win after all. It changed the whole course of the Revolution. But it’s significant that this key victory was based upon one important ingredient: the OBEDIENCE of the American soldiers, who did not even ask where they were going or what they were doing — they just obeyed. 

Obedience is such an important thing. And that’s true for us as God’s people today. At the very end of John 14, Jesus makes a statement that is easy to overlook, but which is packed with meaning for us. He tells us about the kind of obedience He gave to His Father, and is a model for our obedience to Him as well. Jesus said, “I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.” That’s a very simple statement — but look at how much it teaches us about how we should obey our Heavenly Father:

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Teacher’s Overview of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson: Mark 1:1-13, “Introduced”

Posted on 2023/08/26 by Shawn Thomas

A brief overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Mark 1:1-13, for Sunday, September 3, 2023.

A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO: Read some famous “opening lines” of books and see if members can identify them:

— One site said “Call me Ishmael” was the most famous opening line of a book. (Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.)

— I would say it might be: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

— “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” (Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice)

— “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling)

— “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.” (C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe)

Why is the opening line of a book considered to be so important?

(Because it gets your attention; and it may set forth the course of the rest of the book.)

That’s what :1 of the Book of Mark does here: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

??? What do you think of his introduction/first line???

(It’s brief, to the point. It does tell us what this book is going to be about: Jesus, the Son of God. That’s “typical Mark”!)

INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF MARK

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“Coming To Worship Jesus” (Luke 21:38 sermon)

Posted on 2023/08/21 by Shawn Thomas

Charles Spurgeon once told a story about how Caesar Augustus was invited to a feast in his honor; but the attendance was so poor, and the feast was so mediocre, that he arose in the midst of it and lamented: “Alas, you have fooled me; I supposed that I had been invited to be honored — but I find instead that I was invited to be shamed!” 

In light of Caesar’s statement, we might want to ask ourselves could we be doing the same thing to the Lord? When we come together on Sunday, we are supposedly doing these “worship services” in His honor.  But are they? Does the way we attend, the way we participate, the way we actually worship, really honor Him — or does it shame Him?

Luke 21:38 describes some things about the way the people came to be with Jesus that day, which should challenge us today regarding the way that we worship: 

“And all the people would get up early in the morning to come to Him in the temple to listen to Him.”

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Teacher’s Overview: Lifeway “Explore the Bible” Lamentations 3:19-33 “Good”

Posted on 2023/08/19 by Shawn Thomas

A brief overview of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Lamentations 3:19-33 for Sunday, August 27, 2023, with the title, “Good.”

(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

A few months into the American Revolution in 1776, George Washington’s army was struggling, while marching on repeated retreats from the British. One American citizen, Charles Willson Peale, walked along with the army as they retreated from New Jersey. He said “they looked as wretched as any men he had ever seen. One had almost no clothes. ‘He was in an old dirty blanket jacket, his beard long, and his face so full of sores that he could not clean it.’ So ‘disfigured’ was he that Peale failed at first to recognize that the man was his own brother, James Peale, who had been with a Maryland unit as part of the rear guard.”

(David McCullough, 1776, p. 263)

??? Have you ever seen something that USED to be beautiful/rich/new, that became devastated/run down??? 

(A house, a church, a city, maybe a person?

Last week so we saw how the Hanging Gardens of Babylon became a ruin; you could show pictures of that contrast again; or before/after of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, or other examples …) 

Then = that is how Jeremiah saw Jerusalem after Babylon had judged it. Chapter 1 of Lamentations gives us the context: 

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“Will Your Work Perish, or Last?” (John 6:27 sermon)

Posted on 2023/08/14 by Shawn Thomas

Every so often the U.S. economy will have a recession, or a depression — or even what they call a “Crash,” like what happened in 1929. One of the worst in our history was in 1873, when banks and businesses were closing left and right. Theodore Roosevelt’s father wrote to his wife, and told her that he felt especially sorry for a Mr. Clews, the owner of Clews and Company. He said, poor Mr. Clews made business his whole life. He had told Roosevelt not long before that he never even took a vacation. Now, Roosevelt told his wife, everything this man spent his whole life on, has been “swept away … in a day.” 

Is it possible that this could happen to you? Could everything that you have spent your whole life on, be swept away in a day? It matters what you’re working for, doesn’t it? Are you working for things that can be swept away? Or are you working for things that will last for eternity? 

In John 6:27 Jesus tells the crowd: “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.” Each of us should evaluate our lives today by Jesus’ words. What are you investing your time, your money, your life in — things that will perish and soon be gone? Or things that will last for eternity? Will YOUR work “perish,” or “endure”?

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Teachers’ Overview of Lifeway “Explore the Bible” lesson: Jeremiah 50:11-20, 33-34, “Just”

Posted on 2023/08/12 by Shawn Thomas

A brief overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible lesson of Jeremiah 50, for Sunday, August 20, 2023, with the title, “Just.”

(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO: A couple of times when I have shared an illustration in a sermon, I didn’t wrap up all the details in the story. Like once I told about a man who fell off an aircraft carrier, and can you imagine how helpless he was, drifting all alone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean — and that is like how we are lost, helpless, without God, etc. And I went on with the message. After church Cheryl said, “What happened to the guy?” I said, “What?” She said: “The guy who fell off the ship; what happened to him? Did he get rescued, did he die? What happened?” Two or three times over the years that happened, so I’ve learned, I need to be sure and “finish the story” so everyone knows what happened.  (EDIT: OK, so I did it again: I didn’t tell my YouTube listeners the end of THAT story either! The guy who fell off the aircraft carrier WAS indeed rescued and shared the story of how he felt so helpless while the carrier sped away! 🙂

Some of you may remember Paul Harvey, who a radio spot called: “The Rest of the Story”, where he would fill in little-known details of the stories of famous people. That is somewhat like our lesson for today in Jeremiah 50— which brings us to the context:

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“Honest to God” (Psalm 10:1 sermon)

Posted on 2023/08/07 by Shawn Thomas

Back when Harry Truman was President of the United States just after World War II, Dean Acheson was the Secretary of State. Someone later asked Acheson what kind of relationship he had with the President, and he said, among other things: “It is important that the relations between the President and his Secretary be quite frank, sometimes to the point of being blunt. And you just have to be deferential. He is the President of United States, and you don’t say rude things to him—you say blunt things to him. Sometimes he doesn’t like it. That’s natural, but he comes back and you argue the thing out. But that’s your duty. You don’t tell him only what he wants to hear. That would be bad for him and for everyone else.”  (David McCullough, Truman, p. 752)

And you can see how for the security of the country, it would be important for our Secretary of State, who deals with foreign countries, to be sometimes bluntly honest in his conversations with the President. He had to do it; for the security and health of our country. 

In the same way, if we want to have a healthy relationship with God. we need to be absolutely honest with Him. And I say that, because sometimes I think we feel like we have to talk to God a certain way. We used to call it “King James English;” many of us feel like we need to talk to Him with “Thee’s and Thou’s” and just be careful to say all the “right things.” As a result many of us may ot really tell God what is on our hearts — we may just say the things we think He WANTS to hear instead!

This morning as we look at Psalm 10, we see David talking to God in a way that many of us are not familiar with. He is very blunt, very honest with God. He says things to Him in way that I think many of us would find shocking, honestly! But one thing I want us to see today is that God is not shocked. And He wants honesty from us in our relationship with Him. There are issues in our lives that will never really be resolved, until we “level” with the Lord. You’ve heard that expression, “honest to God”? Well that is what Psalm 10 models for us today. It shows us we can — and SHOULD — be “honest to God.” 

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Teacher’s Overview of Lifeway “Explore the Bible” lesson: Jeremiah 42:7-22, “Trustworthy”

Posted on 2023/08/05 by Shawn Thomas

A brief overview for Sunday school teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Jeremiah 42:71-22 for Sunday, August 13, 2023, with the title, “Trustworthy.” A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO: Can you share a time in your life when you were seeking some direction from God? 

(Cheryl & I after seminary, waiting for God’s direction for our first church; also when I had been sick for a year in our church in Louisiana; what should I do: stay on/step down? It was a difficult time. Also after I had recuperated from my illness in 2014, as we were looking for God’s direction for a church to get back into ministry.

You/likely many others in your group can share a time when you were seeking God’s direction. (Maybe it’s NOW!)

??? Then you might also discuss: what did you DO to seek God during those times???
(Read the Bible to see if God had a word for you; PRAY; ask others to pray to God for you; cleanse your life of any sin; ask someone’s advice on what to do … etc.) 

Then say: Today in Jeremiah 42 we are going to look at a group of people in Jerusalem who were looking for some direction from God too. We’ll see what they did — and how they responded when they got God’s direction!

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