Through the Bible

In 2019 we are going to go through the Bible Chronologically, which means we will be reading or listening to the content of the Bible in the order that the events took place, which is not the order they are in the Christian Bible. This way of taking in the content will help you understand the Bible in real history and the poetry, prophets, letters will make sense in a way they haven't before if you haven't gone through the Bible in this way.

Each Sunday, at 10:30 I'll be teaching a class at Orchard Community Church in Ventura, CA and after the class by sometime Sunday afternoon I'll have posted a podcast on the topic of the class (in most instances pre-recorded and containing more content than the class) and notes from the class on this website.

To download a schedule of the readings, CLICK HERE.

To go to the list of links where you can listen to the podcast, CLICK HERE.

To listen to the Truth and History Series, which is a great foundation for the podcasts and site, CLICK HERE.

Join us in this great adventure—you'll never be the same!

Joshua: How to fight and win in the battles of life

March 24, 2019 by bible805

After 40 years of wandering, Israel finally gets to enter the Promised Land. God was giving it to them, but they still had to fight for it. Join us to learn about how to fight the battles of life successfully and the warnings of incomplete obedience.

In this podcast, you’ll see how even though we may be doing exactly what God wants us to do, we can still have challenges, but with God’s help, not in our own strength, we can overcome them. We can learn encouraging, positive applications from that.

We also need to look carefully at the book of Joshua for what happens when we don’t completely obey God. Because some of the tribes did not totally destroy the people and idol worship God told them to, they suffered because of it for the rest of their history.

We’ll look at both the positive and negative ways Joshua teaches us to fight and win the spiritual battles of life.

Below the podcast is both a PDF of the notes and the text.
Continue Reading

Deuteronomy: God’s love and how we should live in response

March 17, 2019 by bible805

Moses knows he will shortly die and after 40 years in the desert, the now formed nation Israel will go into the Promised Land. The book of Deuteronomy contains Moses’ final words to his people.

The book is a series of sermons where he restates and summarizes much of the content of the previous books of the Law.

The tone of the book is more pastoral and less thundering than his previous messages. It is the first book that God declares His Love for His people. Earlier in the Bible

He commanded love for others, but this is the first book that explicitly states his love for us.

In the light of that love, Moses show obeying his commands is for the good and happiness of his people then and for us now.

There is so much in this book that Jesus quoted in his temptation and still speaks to us today! Listen now!

Below the podast that follows is a print out of the notes and a downloadable PDF of them.

Click the following link to download the PDF of the notes for this lesson: Deuteronomy, Class Notes

The print out of the notes follows….

Deuteronomy:
God’s love and how we should live in response

It’s not always about you— How to Correctly Read and Apply Bible Stories

March 10, 2019 by bible805

We love reading the stories in the Bible, but we can be disappointed if God doesn’t do for us what He did for the Bible characters. Though we didn’t have a live class this week, I recorded a podcast on the topic of How to Correctly Read and Apply Bible Stories.

This is a challenging topic for our Bible study because the stories are often our favorite parts of the Bible and what we remember. But valid application of what we read can be difficult.

For example, in the story of Gideon putting out a fleece for God’s guidance, does that mean that we should come up with seemingly impossible tests to determine God’s will? We will discuss the answer to that question and have additional guidelines on how to correctly read, interpret and apply Bible Stories/Biblical Narratives in this podcast. The podcast notes are below the audio you can download to keep in mind as you read your Bible.

Click on the following link to download the PDF of the notes: How to Correctly Read and Apply Bible Stories

I realized that not everyone wants to download a PDF, so I printed them out below:Continue Reading

God’s Expectations for His People, Then and Now illustrated in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers

March 3, 2019 by Yvon Prehn

How can we find out what God expects of us?

After someone decides to follow Jesus, do they need to live any differently than they did before?

Those are the questions we’ll answer in our lesson today.

After the Children of Israel were miraculously brought out of Egypt, God didn’t turn them loose in the desert to do whatever they wanted and it’s the same for us today. Once we become a believer in Jesus, we can’t simply live however we want to

Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers help us figure this out.

They aren’t simply outdated collections of ancient rituals and odd laws.

If we study them, we’ll understand more clearly God’s expectations of how he wants his people to live, not only then, how we ought to live today. Below you can listen to the podcast or on iTunes any one of your favorite podcast sources and below it is a PDF of the notes. All the verses and quotes are on the handout.

Click the following link to download the notes for this class: Notes on God’s Expectations for His People, Then and Now as illustrated in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers

What do the Old Testament Laws & Odd Regulations have to do with us today?

February 17, 2019 by Yvon Prehn

Genesis and the first part of Exodus were interesting to read, but now it’s getting a bit strange…..

What do all these laws about what to eat, sacrifices, and how to build the Tabernacle have to do with us today?

Why should we bother reading them?

The answer is SO much more interesting and helpful than you can imagine! Not in that we should follow the laws and regulations in the same way the Children of Israel did, but in what these things foreshadowed in what was coming.

The study of this foreshadowing of what was coming is called “Typology.” The podcast not only discusses this topic but gives you reasons and encouragements why you should read these books that most people skip. From the middle of Exodus through Leviticus and Numbers, it can be hard to read and even harder to understand, but God put this material in our Bibles for a reason and this podcast will help you understand how much it will help you grow in your faith even if it doesn’t seem like it when you start.

Below the podcast are the notes from the podcast and a link I promised I’d give that has an excellent article on typology.

From a person to a people– Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph AND is God or are people in charge of history?

February 10, 2019 by Yvon Prehn

How did the Jewish people become a nation?

Did Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph have any say in being the founding fathers or were they predestined to do all they did?

And what about us? What is God in control of and what are we responsible for?

Today we are going to answer these questions and more in our Podcast.

As we look at the lives of these founders of our faith, we can see God faithful to fulfill his plan and promises even though the people given the task to carry it out sometimes strayed from doing the right thing. Though we admire what they did, God is the hero of the story and our stories because He is the one who is faithful and who will carry us through the storms of life.

In addition to the overall themes above, this podcast has some extra material on the history of Midian, Edom, and why the Beatitudes are written in the way they are. If that didn’t make lots of sense–listen to the podcast and learn some fascinating facts we sometimes miss in Old Testament stories.

Click on the following link to download my messy, but hopefully helpful, notes that go with the podcast: NOTES People to a nation, is God or are people in control of history