In this historical record book of Israel, we see them struggling with wicked religious leaders and oppressive enemy neighbors. We see some hope when God in His grace answers not only the prayers of a godly woman wanting a child, but blesses the nation with a godly prophet and leader who will help them get back on the right path. Through the ministry of Samuel, God speaks to His people and even gives them the king they wanted. Unfortunately, this king who starts out so well ends up trusting himself instead of God and things go downhill fast, wrecking the …

In the middle of difficult times, we are tempted to think that God has forgotten us or is neglecting us for some reason. We begin to look for help and comfort in other ways, not realizing that we are only adding to our troubles. The book of Ruth is an amazing story of a family that did just that and suffered terrible consequences. That, however, is just the beginning of this great story of redemption and love. Today we will survey this little book and highlight some of the key details of the story. Most of all, we get to …

I find the book of Judges one of the saddest books of the Bible. We come from the book of Joshua seeing a great leader follow God in faith and lead His people into the promised land. We see the people affirm their faith in God and their obedience to the covenant, stepping out in faith to cross the stormy Jordan river and conquer Jericho. In contrast, in the book of Judges, the second chapter has these words, “When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD nor …

The book of Joshua is filled with wonderful stories of the miraculous working of God. We see His people, the nation of Israel, obey Him out of true trust. We see promises begin to be fulfilled. We see a very hard lesson learned by the whole nation through the disobedience of a single man. We see that trusting God is absolutely essential.I hope you will watch this message and be inspired to trust God more faithfully in your own life as we survey this important Old Testament book. Come find out what it takes to have true success.  

Do you have any stories of travel plans that went bad? A one-hour trip that took two days or a camping trip that has forever scarred you: something like that? I think most of us can think of trips that went awry, but let me ask you, what was the result? Was there a lesson learned from that trip? Are there precautions you take now because of it? The nation of Israel has a famous travel story where things went very bad and the consequences were measured in decades. In this study we learn about what lessons God wanted them …

I have very carefully chosen the first four words of my sermon titles in this Bible survey series for a reason. It is my desire that you will see and understand that God has progressively revealed His sovereign plan to us through the Scriptures. Fittingly, it all begins in Genesis, and we see many of the details foreshadowed there, including Christ’s death on the cross.A central part of God’s plan is the nation of Israel, and they find their beginning and their most critical promises in the book of Genesis. As we enter Exodus, their story is developed, and the …

Have you ever heard the story of the 12 spies who went to scout out Israel’s Promised Land?  How about the account of how God told Moses to strike the rock with his rod and water came out, forming a continuous stream that supplied the whole nation?  Or how about the next time that they needed water and God told Moses to speak to the rock, but he hit it instead? Do you know why Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years?  All these episodes in the early life of the nation of Israel are contained in this fourth …