An overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Exodus 25:1-9 and 31:1-6, with the title “Instructions,” for Sunday, January 26, 2025. A video version of this overview that you can watch is available at:
INTRODUCTION:
One way to begin the lesson this week would be to ask your members to share about their home. Did they buy it?/build it?/some combination of the two?
(For example, when Cheryl & I moved to Angleton, Texas, from North Carolina 6 years ago, we had picked out 4 homes online to look at when we got here. But by the time we arrived two days later, all 4 had already sold! (The market was really moving then!) So we ended up buying our present home, which was not on our original list. We got a really good deal on it — but it also needed to be almost totally remodeled. So we paid for the house, but we also put quite a bit of our own personal labor into it as well. (Cheryl more than me, I am not very gifted at these things!) One of the first things Cheryl did was the peel off all the old wallpaper in our entryway, and ladled on new texture and paint, and it looks fantastic to this day; it’s one of my favorite parts of our house.
Many of your class members probably bought their homes, some built them, and many are probably like us and did some kind of combination of the two.
You/your group can share your own experiences, and then transition by saying, today in our study in Exodus we’ll see how God called His people to use both their gifts and their service, as they constructed His Tabernacle — and we are to do the same as we serve Him today.
In 1622, the ship, “Our Lady of Atocha,” sailed from the Spanish colonies in the New World back towards Spain. The Atocha was laden down with so much gold from the mines in the Americas that it had taken two months to load all of it into the ship! But just off of what we now call the Florida Keys, a hurricane struck, and the Atocha sank. For centuries, that vast treasure had been hidden somewhere underwater, and a American named Mel Fisher was determined to find it. He outfitted a ship; he recruited divers; he used modern technology to search under the ocean. In 1969 Fisher crisscrossed the waters off the Florida Keys, but after a year of searching, he found nothing. He was determined to continue, but two years went by, and still they did not find it. Five years later, no success. Ten years; still nothing. Fifteen years and countless thousands of dollars later, no Atocha. But on the 16th year of crisscrossing, searching, diving, and after much disappointment, 16 years later, they finally found a large portion of the Atocha, in 1985, with its amazing treasure that was worth an estimated 400 million dollars. In fact, just one of the rings recovered from the Atocha was valued at $500,000!
Mel Fisher is a great example of what it means to really “seek” for something. But there is a treasure to be found that is greater than silver or gold. The Bible tells us in Isaiah 55:6-7 “Seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way an and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”
The Bible says the greatest treasure to be found is not silver or gold, but God Himself. Silver and gold, rings and other treasures, will never truly satisfy us, and they will all one day perish. But the treasure we can find in God will truly meet the deepest needs of our souls, and it is eternal, and cannot be taken away. So if we are wise, we should choose to seek God. Maybe you’re here this morning because you’ve said, “I am seeking the Lord”, and you are hoping that you could find Him, or find the way to Him, at church. And a church should be a good place to seek God. Others of us are a special points in our lives, where we really need to seek the Lord: last week Cheryl & I announced our retirement from full-time ministry, now we are seeking God’s direction for our next home. This church and its leadership needs to seek God’s direction for the interim time and then the call of the next pastor, a vital, vital decision! You might say that you have a personal issue in your own life, that you need to seek God about.
But what does it really mean to “seek the Lord”? This verse tells us something about that. The Hebrew word here for “seek” (“darash”) means to seek, or to read and study something repeatedly. A related word in the ancient world means to “beat a path” around something, because you are repeatedly going to it. That tells us something about what it means to “seek the Lord.” To really “seek” God means more than just going to church once or twice. It means you “beat a path” there, seeking Him. It also means that you “study” His word — not flipping open your Bible once or twice, but really “wearing a path” in it. In other words, if you aren’t “beating a path” to church, and if your Bible is not getting worn out, you are not really “seeking God”! When we really “seek” something or someone, we put a lot of time and effort into it — just like Mel Fisher did with seeking for the Atocha. And that is what we should do with the Lord. We should “beat a path” to church; “beat a path” to His word, as we seek Him, year after year if need be. If Fisher was willing to spend 16 years seeking for a treasure that he couldn’t take with him when he died in 1998 — he left it all behind! — how much more should we be willing to seek for the One True Treasure that we can keep for all eternity? We need to “seek” the Lord as fervently, or more so, than Fisher did his sunken ship. Isaiah 55:6-7 tells us some more about what it means to “seek the Lord”:
I. Seek God In Prayer Right after the Bible says “Seek the Lord while He may be found” in the first part of :6, it then adds, “call upon Him while He is near.” Those of you who are in our Prayer & Psalms study on Wednesday nights may recognize this as “parallelism”, which is the Hebrew form of poetry. Hebrew poetry doesn’t rhyme, instead their poetry consists of joining two sentences or phrases together; by saying something twice, just a little differently. It’s what Hebrew scholars call “synonymous parallelism” — repeating something in just a little different way. So what this verse tells us when it puts those phrases “seek the Lord” and “call upon Him” together is that they are similar things. It tells us that one way to “seek the Lord” is to “call upon Him.”
An overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Exodus 22:21-27, and Leviticus 19:9-10, with the title of “Protection” for Sunday, January 19, 2025. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
SAMPLE INTRODUCTION: Pearl Buck was the daughter of missionaries to China, and she spent much of her life there. She grew up to write a novel, The Good Earth, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. Pearl Buck wrote: “The test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”
You might consider posting this quote to open your lesson (or you could use it later on, but I think it would serve well as an introduction) and ask your group: ??? What do you think about this quote? Do you think it might be true, and why???
After your group’s discussion, then you can say something like: This morning in our passages from Exodus and Leviticus, we see how God commands His people to care for the needy and vulnerable among us.
An overview for Sunday school teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Exodus 20:1-17 for Sunday, January 12, 2025 with the title, “God’s Commands.”
A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
I have TWO different suggestions for an INTRODUCTION to the lesson this week:
INTRO OPTION 1: A survey by Kelton Research found that more people in America can name the ingredients of a Big Mac than can list all Ten Commandments. — 80 percent of 1,000 respondents could name the burger’s primary ingredient — two all-beef patties — but less than six in 10 knew the commandment “thou shalt not kill.” — Less than half of respondents — 45 percent — could recall the commandment “honour thy father and mother” but 62 percent knew the Big Mac has pickle.
Which leads to the question: “How many of the Ten Commandments can you name?” (Pass out paper and pens, secret ballot survey; keep for yourself) You could post something fun with the scores like: 0-2 You’re A Pagan! 3-4 Go Back to VBS! 5-6 You’re A Good Average Baptist! 7-8 Ready for Bible College! 9-10 BIBLE SCHOLAR! (Now try LIVING them!)
(As a humorous/interesting point of comparison you might then ask: “How many ingredients of a Big Mac can you name?” Song: “2 all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.
Then transition by saying something like: today we will look at the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20:1-17.
INTRO OPTION 2: (In July, 1955, the 4 world powers met for a summit meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.) “By a quirk of fate, the Reverend Billy Graham was holding a revival crusade in the city that coincided with the summit. Graham acknowledged that the timing was accidental, although he did not rule out the possibility that Providence may have played a role, Graham told The New Yorker’s Richard Rovere that he was much in favor of the summit. ‘Moses long ago held a parley at the Summit,’ said Graham, ‘and had there received a ten-point directive that the heads of government would do well to restudy.’”(Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace, p. 666)
On the occasion of the announcement of my retirement from full-time ministry, Sunday January 5, 2025.
I really wrestled and prayed about how to do this service today; and this is what I felt led to do: — First, I want to share some news with you, — And then I want us to look at a word from the Lord that I believe applies to Cheryl’s and my situation, and will hopefully speak to all of us in some way too.
THE NEWS: I don’t know how much of a shock it will be to many of you, that I need to announce my retirement from full-time ministry at First Baptist Angleton at the end of this month.
Most of you know that my wife Cheryl had a stroke the last day of August, and since that day, my primary concern has been taking care of her, and assisting in every way I could with her rehabilitation. That has pretty much been a full-time job, and I’ve temporarily set aside many of my church duties to do it. I am SO thankful that you all allowed me to do that. I felt absolutely NO pressure from anyone here at the church to come back and preach, or get back to full-time ministry — I have felt a lot of SELF-imposed pressure, I will tell you, but there has been none from anyone at church, and I greatly appreciate your love, patience, and understanding these past months. As I have mentioned before, your reward is with the Lord, and from my perspective, this church will fare well on that day for the way you treated me.
But although you have been SO patient and SO understanding, this church needs a full-time pastor — and the truth is, I am just not able to be a full-time pastor right now. I can’t do it. So it is obvious to me that I need to step aside, and let the church call a pastor who can lead it full-time.
(Preached at First Baptist Church, Angleton, TX, December 29, 2024.)
I hope that you are among those who had a Merry Christmas — but honestly I know that not everyone did. Our lives are often very difficult, and maybe you’ve noticed, that problems don’t usually take off for the holidays! Just a few years ago my mom & step dad were facing a lot of problems that December. He had just finished his treatments for bone cancer, and he was doing ok with it right then — but his son was engaged with a difficult struggle with cancer — and then just before the holiday they were given the news that his daughter had a serious brain tumor. One of my sisters told my mom that she was planning to come to their house for Christmas, but Mom told her that if she came up she was going to have to bring Christmas with her, because there wasn’t much Christmas at their house that year.
And that’s the world in which we live, right? There is pain, there are hardships, and sickness, and death — as YES that is true even for Christians too. We aren’t somehow exempt from suffering just because we follow the Lord — in fact, to be honest, sometimes God’s people have even MORE difficulties because we belong to the Lord! But it’s important for us as we face these things, to keep our eyes on the Lord, and to trust & obey Him. Our passage for today is very fitting for this time of year; it is a followup from scriptures that we often associate with the Christmas season: the visit of the magi to the young Christ after His birth, and the gifts they brought Him. Here in Matthew 2:13-23 we find in the aftermath of that sweet visit a tragedy the likes of which many of us may never see — but we also see that even in these tragic times, God is still working in His Providence. So we learn here that we need to trust and obey God as we walk through sometimes very difficult times in our fallen world.
I. Our Fallen World This scripture passage makes it very obvious that we do live in a very sinful, fallen world. We see a jealous king Herod who is enraged when the magi don’t respond to his insincere desire to supposedly “worship” Jesus, and he sends his men and kills all the male children around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, because he didn’t want any “competition” for his throne. This Christ he was seeking to kill was not much more than a baby — a 2 year old — about the age of our grand daughter Sophie. This was an unspeakably wicked and evil act. And it’s a reminder of the kind of fallen world we live in.
An overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Exodus 16:11-19, 17:1-6, “Provision Given,” for Sunday, January 5, 2025. A video version of this overview, that you can watch/listen to, is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: One way to begin your lesson this week would be by asking your members to share a time that God provided for them in a special way.
(For example: after Cheryl & I had graduated from seminary, and were still waiting to be called to our first full-time church, it was a very difficult time for us financially. We had just had our first baby; I was only working part-time, we had been out of school for several months, and hadn’t heard from a church yet, and things were really tight. In fact, we had some emergency bills come up, and we did not have the money to pay our rent the next week. One day that week, we received a check in the mail from a high school friend of Cheryl’s, that was exactly the amount of the rent we needed to pay. We had not told them, and they had no idea of our need. God provided in a very providential way!
You/your group can share stories of God’s provision like that, and they say something like: In today’s lesson from Exodus 16 & 17, we see how God provided for His people in the Exodus — and He STILL provides for us as His people today.
In David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Harry Truman, he writes about “This first Truman to reach Jackson County … Anderson Shipp Truman … was slight, gentle, soft-spoken, thirty years old, and without prospects. Nevertheless, Mary Jane Holmes, who was five years younger, had seen enough of him to defy her mother and marry him. … Then Mary Jane’s Mr. ‘Truman,’ as she would always refer to him, set off by horse for the ‘wild country of Missouri, intending to stay only long enough to secure the blessing of his new mother-in-law. … He was urged to stay and take up the frontier life. He could be happy anywhere, even in Missouri, he wrote to Mary Jane, if only she were with him. ‘As for myself I believed that I would be satisfied if you was out here … I believe I can live here if you are willing.’”(David McCullough, Truman, p. 20)
Mr. Truman’s attitude was basically, “I can live anywhere — if you are with me.” That’s a sweet sentiment for man and his wife — and it is even more true of the Christian’s relationship with our God.
To know that God is “with you” is the greatest blessing there is. That’s the comfort that David talked about in Psalm 23, when he said “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for YOU ARE WITH ME.” David knew he could face anything – even death – because God was with him.
And that is the blessing we celebrate at Christmas time: that God the Son came to earth, to be “with us,” just as our passage in Matthew 1 for today says: “Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which translated means, ‘God with us.’”
If you notice, in many of your translations of the Bible, these words in Matthew 1 are in all caps, or quotes; that is because most of these words are a quote from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, Chapter 7:14. God had promised in Isaiah 7 that there was coming a child, who would be “God with us.” And He tells us here that Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of that prophecy. “God is with us” through Jesus. This means several things for us:
An overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Exodus 14:19-31, with the title of “Power Revealed,” for Sunday December 29, 2024. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: In his classic book, 1776, David McCullough writes about the winter of 1776, when the young American army had lost battle after battle: “As near as could be determined, Washington now had an army of about 7,500, but that was a paper figure only. Possibly 6,000 were fit for duty. Hundreds were sick and suffering from the cold. Robert Morris and others in and around Philadelphia were doing everything possible to find winter clothes and blankets, while more and more of the local citizenry were signing the British proclamation (of peace for loyalty to the Crown). Congress had fled. Two former members of Congress, Joseph Galloway and Andrew Allen, had gone over to the enemy. By all reasonable signs, the war was over and the Americans had lost.” (David McCullough, 1776, p. 270)
Things looked hopeless for Washington and the young American army — but they were not. Washington and his army not only survived, but won that war for Independence, with what appears to so many to be God’s Divine intervention.
Then you can transition and say: In today’s lesson we’ll see how Israel appeared to be in a hopeless situation, but the Lord delivered them — and He delivered us from an even more hopeless situation through His Son Jesus Christ!
Emory University in Atlanta has a big collection of the writings of Martin Luther, who set off the Reformation in the early 1500s, and emphasized justification by grace alone, through faith alone. A couple of years ago, they found this old document, which was printed in 1520, 3 years after the Reformation had begun, on which someone had handwritten a note. It turns out after they studied it, that this note is from the hand of Martin Luther himself, who’d written a comment on this page, mocking the Pope, who had excommunicated him for his beliefs! It was a surprising discovery, and now of course that document is one of the treasures of Emory University, as they have the very words of Martin Luther Himself on that document!
That pamphlet is quite a treasure; but the fact is, every one of us has something far greater in our hands today: we have the very words of God himself, in the Bible! Isaiah 40, our passage for today, talks about the confidence we can have in God’s word, and the comfort we can find in it, as well as the attention that we should pay to it.
Isaiah 40 is a favorite Christmas time passage for many, George Fredrick Handel put several of Isaiah 40’s verses to music in his famous oratorio “Messiah,” which opens with its words “Comfort ye,” right out of Isaiah 40:1. So I thought it would be fitting for us, as we enter this Christmas season, to look at the text of this famous song, right out of scripture, and the message that it has for us today.
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 