Some of you can really relate to this thought: if you have a child who is in some ways both the greatest comfort and love in your life — but also in other very real ways, a great challenge to you? Anybody got a kid like that? (Maybe everybody who has children can relate to that!) They can probably all be simultaneously our greatest comfort, but also one of our greatest challenges.
I’m going to suggest this morning that the Book of Revelation is something like “that child” among the books of the New Testament. In one sense, it is the source of some of the greatest comfort we have as Christians — and yet, in a number of ways, it is also very challenging to us, in both understanding it and applying it to our lives.
We’re continuing our study of the first chapters of Revelation this morning, moving on to verses 3, 4, and 5, where we are both comforted and challenged by what we read here:
A brief overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of John 11:32-46, for Sunday, February 26, 2023, wit the title, “I Am The Resurrection.”
(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: ??? I think the Lifeway Leader guide has a pretty good introduction suggestion: Have you & your members share about the most interesting funeral you ever attended.??? Then use that to transition into John 11 and the death/burial of Lazarus.
OR begin with a discussion time like this:
??? Can you share a time when you/someone you know, questioned God??? (Or you might put it another way: If you could ask God one question about a time in your life, what would it be?)
(For example: In 2012 I got sick with an illness that took me out of the ministry for a couple of years. After a year of being incapacitated, I was stepping down from the church I had pastored for 12 years, and we were selling our home and 2/3 of our possessions. It was a difficult time. My wife Cheryl likes to tell the story of how at one point I was laid up in bed, and she was walking through the room packing things, and I said to her, “You know, I am really at peace with this.” She didn’t say anything then, but she told me later that when I said that, she said “I wanted to take that pillow you were laying on and suffocate the snot out of you!” She was not at peace with it. WHY was God doing this?)
You/your group can undoubtedly share many examples of this same kind of thing: WHY did God not do what you thought He would? Why didn’t He heal; why didn’t He seem to answer, etc?
And then I’d say: This morning we’re going to look at John 11, at a time like that in the lives of some of Jesus’ closest friends, who wondered why Jesus didn’t do for them, what they thought He should.
In 1957, Jack Warner’s movie “The Spirit of St. Louis,” about Charles Lindbergh’s first-ever flight across the Atlantic Ocean, came out at the theaters. Interestingly, the real Charles Lindbergh took his wife Anne and their three youngest children to see the film. Despite a few deviations from the truth for dramatic or comic effect, Lindbergh was pleased: he found the movie true to the spirit of his journey. The audience surrounding him that day was enthralled. “About halfway through the film, during one particularly tense moment in the flight, (Lindbergh’s eleven-year-old daughter) Reeve clutched her mother’s arm and whispered, ‘He is going to get there, isn’t he?’” (A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh, p. 503)
Well, of course they DID know he was going to get there — the man in the flight was their father, who was sitting right there with them that day! They KNEW the end of the story. They could be confident in how it was going to end.
And that is what this Book of Revelation has done for God’s people throughout history: it has assured us that “we are going to get there” — because we know how it ends; we know how it is going to turn out.
Now, that doesn’t mean that we understand everything about this book.
A brief overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of John 10:7-14, 25-30 for Sunday, February 19, 2023 with the title: “I Know My Own.”
(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: One way to introduce this lesson would be to ask: ??? Has anyone in your class ever had any experience with sheep???
(If anyone has, you can talk about it … AND/OR, THEN, if are you led to, you could show one or more of these videos of sheep being rescued, and jumping right back into the ditch again!)
SHEEP VIDEOS: (I’ll post these on my blog and in the comments)
???You might talk about: What kind of qualities do you think it would take, to make a good shepherd?
(Obviously, PATIENCE! Love for the sheep would help: why would you do it otherwise! Diligence; you have keep be on the alert for the crazy things they might do — or against predators!
ETC.)
THEN = Today we are are going to look at THE Good Shepherd, Jesus, and how He cares for US!
A brief overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of John 9:24-38, for Sunday, February 12, 2023, with the title: “You Have Seen Him.”
(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO:
??? The Leader’s Guide has a good opening question: “What’s your favorite photo, and why?” (Maybe have your group show their favorite photo on their phone!) After talking about that for a while, then you could introduce today’s story, about the man born blind.
OR: ??? You could begin class by asking you group: what’s one of the best salvation testimonies you have heard?
??? OR open class by sharing your own salvation testimony
??? OR line up one of your class members, or someone else from church, to share their testimony to open the lesson time.
Then say: today we are going to look at the testimony of another man whose life was changed by Jesus: the man born blind in John Chapter 9…
My car’s Owner’s Manual is not my favorite book ever to read — in fact I can’t say I have ever read it all the way through. But I am also really glad that I have it when I need it — like when I had a flat tire and needed to know where the stuff was to change it — especially that special socket for the lock nut that you can’t get your tire off without — I was really glad I had the owner’s manual to help me with that when I needed it. Well, today’s session may be somewhat like my Owner’s Manual. This 4th session of Discovering FBCA has some technical details that may not be the most exciting, but they are important and necessary to the “nuts and bolts” of our operation as a church.
This is the final session of our “Discovering FBC” class; if you have been in attendance for all 4 sessions, then you will be eligible to apply for church membership after today’s lesson. If you have NOT been at all of the previous class sessions, then you just need to make up the sessions you have missed — you don’t need to take them in order. (Get with me and we’ll set up a way to get that done.)
Tonight’s session will cover some of the “nuts and bolts” of the ministry at First Baptist, things like our Constitution & By-Laws, budget and finances, and our missions giving. And if the Lord leads you to, at the end you can fill out an application for church membership.
A brief overview for Sunday school teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of John 8:3-18, for Sunday February 5, 2023. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: There’s a pretty good intro in the Student book about the darkness at Mammoth Cave – and then you might ask your group to share times of darkness they’d experienced/when they needed light – and you might share one too.
OR I might personally focus more on the first part of this lesson with the adulterous woman; if so I would begin with a story like this (If you did not use it in our lesson on Hosea 1)
Major General Dan Sickles served in the Union Army in the Civil War. “Sickles had been a state senator and then member of Congress … he had his sights fixed on the presidency … And then he killed Philip Barton Key. Son of the man who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Key … handled certain legal business for Sickles, and Sickles in turn helped to persuade President Buchanan to reappoint Key as United States attorney when his term expired. Key became friendly with Mrs. Sickles, had assignations with her in a shabby flat on Vermont Avenue in Washington, and one day was shot dead by Sickles on the sidewalk bordering Lafayette Square, across from the White House. Having killed him, Sickles walked down he street and surrendered his revolver and his person to Attorney General Black.
A generation ago, a group of people in the town Cheryl & I grew up in decided to start a new church. Their first service was held in the home of one of the members. The adult worship service met in the living room, and the class for children was in one of the bedrooms. One of the families had a little girl, who just could not get it in her mind that they were really “at church.” In her little preschool voice, she protested: “This is not a chu’ch; this is Twoy’s house! A chu’ch doesn’t have a bed. A chu’ch doesn’t have a couch and a fireplace. This is NOT a chu’ch!” People laughed at that little girl’s misunderstanding about what a church is — but the truth is, a lot of adults have similar misconceptions: many people think that the church is a building, when in fact the church is really not a “building” at all, but the PEOPLE God has saved and gathered, and the ministries they perform together.
So today we begin Session 3 of “Discovering First Baptist Angleton”, and we want to familiarize everyone with our church ministries. And you will have an opportunity to fill out a survey sheet indicating how God has gifted and inclined you for service in the church. One of our most important goals today is for YOU to discover YOUR place of ministry here at FBCA!
A brief overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of John 7:14-29 for Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023, “He Sent Me.”
(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: One way to begin the lesson this week would be to ask your class: “Can you think of a time, in the Bible or in your experience, when God did things differently than people might have expected?”
(There are many examples from scripture: God sending Israel through the Red Sea, and the wilderness, instead of the direct route to the Holy Land. God calling a fearful Gideon to lead His people in Judges instead of some brave warrior; God calling little David instead of the impressive Eliab to be king of Israel, etc.)
(One experience from my own life: I had a minister of music friend ask me about 5 years ago if it was ok if he put my resume in at his church. I told him, I’d love to work with you again, but I’ 60 years old, and I’ve just come off of being out of the ministry for 2 years sick; that’s not usually the kind of guy churches are looking for at the top of their list! But as everything unfolded, me to FBCA: not high on the list: 60 & sick! But it was God’s will, and He has blessed these last 4 years.)
You and your group can share more like this.
How many times is it just like that: God’s plan, God’s ways, are way different that anything we expected. (That’s one of the reasons why we need to be careful how we pray: let’s don’t get I the habit of telling God how we think He should do things!) He OFTEN/usually does things differently than WE would have: including when it came to sending Jesus!
God’s ways are different than man’s. Isaiah 55:8-9 says: “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.’” God’s ways are different than Man’s — and we see that spelled out in several ways in John 7 this week.
— Not long ago, the news reported about a child who had an illness that could have been easily treated with medication, but he died because his parents did not believe in calling doctors or using medication.
— During World War II, Japanese kamikaze pilots flew to their death on suicide missions, because they believed that if they died while fighting the enemy, they would go right to paradise.
— Muslim terrorists today do the same thing, thinking if they die while on “jihad” they’ll earn maidens and servants and pleasures forever in Paradise.
You know what all these have in common? They’re all based on what these people believe. Some people claim that what you believe in your religion really doesn’t matter, as long as you’re sincere — but these kinds of examples, and many others, show us that it DOES matter very much what you believe. Beliefs have consequences.
So this second session of Discovering First Baptist is one of the most important, as it covers what we believe as a Baptist church. And as dramatic as some of those examples I gave just a moment ago are, the consequences of our beliefs in the spiritual realm are even more important. What you believe will make the difference between going to heaven and going to hell. It very much matters what you believe. So we DO take doctrine seriously. Having said that, all doctrine does not carry the same weight of importance:
THE “THEOLOGICAL TRIAGE”
Al Mohler, the president of our Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, has a concept he calls “Theological Triage”. Many of you know what a “triage” is. Whenever there is a tragedy, they separate the patients into groups: those that are most critical and need immediate help, vs. those that are superficial and not as urgent. Dr. Mohler suggests that doctrines are like that. Everything we believe is important. But some teachings are more essential to our faith than others.
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 