Bible podcasts, videos, blogs, printables, and more to help you know, trust, and apply the Bible.

Abraham, Hero of the faith, How God chooses and crafts his people

2023-01-20 by bible805

In Genesis, with the life of Abraham, we have a big shift, where God moves from working with all of humanity to a focus on ONE man, who will become the founder of the Jewish nation. Ultimately three major religions in our world today claim him as their founder: the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions. As such, he is held in great veneration by all and in Christianity referred to as one of the first “heroes of the faith.”

And though we do want to honor him, we also need to clarify that description of him and here is why—In reality, there is only ONE true hero of the faith throughout the Bible

And it isn’t any human.

The only true hero of the faith in the Bible is our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It is so important that we understand this so that our admiration and praise is in the right place—directed to our God and not inappropriately to any human.

How this worked out in Abraham’s life and its application to us is what our lesson today is about.

Below is a copy of the notes, questions, and a map of the key locations in Abraham’s life plus links to the podcast, video, and audiogram, the text and sound only goof for viewing on your phone:

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A Bible class member wondered why is the story of Abraham, a man who traded his wife for wealth and protection considered a great man in the Bible?—here’s the answer

2023-01-20 by bible805

Abraham sending Hagar away — Abraham was far from perfect in his relationships with the women in his life, especially when seen from contemporary eyes. But reading how God called, saved, and used him can give each of us with our many faults, hope.

Before I share these lessons with you online I teach them to an adult Bible class at my church. Some of the class members are relatively new to following Jesus and have never read through the Bible before. I encourage questions as I teach, and we have discussion following the presentation. I’ve found their questions and comments absolutely invaluable as they help me see things in a new light.

For those of us who have read the Bible many times and with the rose-colored glasses of church interpretations, we can forget how shocking some of the behavior is of the so-called “heroes of the faith.”

I had already planned on discussing this prior to her comments, but I wanted to emphasize in sharing the lesson with all of you that the key teaching I pray people get out of this lesson is that there are NO human heroes in the Bible.

There is only ONE true hero of the faith, and that isn’t a human. The true hero of our faith is our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In this lesson (Lesson #3 in Through the Bible) I use the life of Abraham to illustrate the balance of grace on God’s part in that we did not earn or deserve anything that calls us into the faith and yet our responsibility to take action based on that grace.

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What about people who have never heard of Jesus? Why do innocent people suffer?How can we help people who are suffering? Week Two of Thru the Bible, Genesis & Job

2023-01-14 by bible805

One of the great answers we discovered the first video of this series is the assurance that Life after death is a great promise to those who believe in Jesus. Yet that assurance brings up another question that we will answer in this lesson which is:

“What about those who have never heard of Jesus?”

We have two more questions in this series, “Why do innocent people suffer?”

And along with that one the final question, “How can we comfort those (including ourselves) who suffer?”

We will look in depth at answers to these questions in this lesson.

Below is a PDF of the Notes and Questions, plus the podcast and video and below the video with the podcast is the audiogram, a new version of the lesson.

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A new format to share the content of Bible805—Audiograms of the Bible805 Podcast—Lesson #1 and how I did it

2023-01-10 by bible805

Audiogram image of Genesis and Job, part one — This is a new format for the lessons from Bible805 – the audiogram, a text-only video of the content of lessons.

I am deeply convinced that going through the Bible in Chronological order in whatever media format you choose to do it (read, listen to, watch a video) will help disciples of Jesus grow in spiritual maturity and to help as many as possible do that, I finally figured out a way to put the weekly lessons as we go through the Bible into a new format—the audiogram—which is a video of the words of an audio file.

I did this because many current studies show people want to consume content in video format, but a huge percentage of the people who do that have the sound turned off, which is part of the reason for the increase in popularity of closed captions. I understand that as I do that frequently myself.

Also, somehow clicking on YouTube is so easy that I’ve found myself doing that with some podcasts I like and being able to see the words helps when I may not hear something correctly. Though I like doing that, I don’t think looking at someone reading into a microphone is especially helpful and so instead of that, for my audiograms you will get the content only against the Bible805 logo image.

Here is the first lesson I put into this format. Below the video is an explanation of how I did it in case you are interested.

The process of making an audiogram

The process to make an audiogram isn’t difficult, once you figure out the software you want to use, but it is time-consuming and takes a specialized program to do it. [Read more…]

Genesis & Job, answers to the Big Questions of Life, part ONE—week #1 of Thru the Bible in Chronological Order

2023-01-06 by bible805

With this lesson, we start the adventure of reading through the Bible in Chronological Order. It begins by reading Genesis and three days into it, we jump to the book of Job.

We will talk about why we read these two books together and you’ll see how Genesis and Job lay the foundation for much of what we will read in the rest of the Bible by starting out with answers to the Big Questions of life—

How did the world begin?
Why are there troubles in this world?
Is this all there is or is there life after death?

God hasn’t left us alone to answer these questions and many more that trouble us in our quiet moments and worst nightmares, as we will learn in this lesson. The material on life after death is especially encouraging as you’ll see in a close analysis of a key passage in Job.

Below is a downloadable PDF of the Notes, the chart talked about in the lesson, Questions, a link to the podcast, and a video of the lesson.

Click on the image of the Handouts to download the files.