Author Archives: Joe

Bible Study: The Thief In The Night

Bible Study: Luke 12:32-48. Jesus is teaching the disciples in this passage, and starts by saying (verse 33 GNT):

Sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor. Provide for yourselves purses that don’t wear out, and save your riches in heaven, where they will never decrease, because no thief can get to them, and no moth can destroy them.

Jesus then uses two consecutive parables.  The first is about servants at a wedding feast:

35 “Be ready for whatever comes, dressed for action and with your lamps lit, 36 like servants who are waiting for their master to come back from a wedding feast. When he comes and knocks, they will open the door for him at once. 37 How happy are those servants whose master finds them awake and ready when he returns! I tell you, he will take off his coat, have them sit down, and will wait on them. 38 How happy they are if he finds them ready, even if he should come at midnight or even later!

The second parable is about a thief breaking into someone’s house:

39 And you can be sure that if the owner of a house knew the time when the thief would come, he would not let the thief break into his house. 40 And you, too, must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you are not expecting him.”

It’s intriguing that these parables seem quite unrelated on the outset, but Jesus is making a point by using them both together.

Questions

  1. Verse 32-34.  What do you think ‘Provide yourselves purses that don’t wear out’ means?
  2. Verse 35-40.  Why does Jesus allude to the master analogy and the thief analogy to make the same point?
  3. Verse 41-48.  What does the master do for the faithful and wise servant?
  4. What attitude makes the beginnings of a bad servant?
  5. Bonus question: Exodus 32. Discover another time when the people thought the master wasn’t returning.  What did they do, how were they dealt with by  God?

The Source of Samson’s Strength

Samson, a man with God-given strength, lost it when he gave his secret away to Delilah.  Samson said to Delilah ‘If my hair were cut, I would lose my strength and be as weak as anyone else.’ (Judges 16:17), and then the trap was set – Delilah called a man to cut Samson’s hair, then the Philistines pounced.  It was too late – Samson’s strength was gone, but God came through, and Samson ended up overcoming the Philistines in one last act of strength.

Even though Samson had amazing strength, he still needed to rely on God too.  Check out Judges 15:9-15 (GNT):

9 The Philistines came and camped in Judah, and attacked the town of Lehi.10 The men of Judah asked them, “Why are you attacking us?”

They answered, “We came to take Samson prisoner and to treat him as he treated us.” 11 So these three thousand men of Judah went to the cave in the cliff at Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are our rulers? What have you done to us?”

He answered, “I did to them just what they did to me.”

12 They told him, “We have come here to tie you up, so we can hand you over to them.”

Samson said, “Give me your word that you won’t kill me yourselves.”

13 “All right,” they said, “we are only going to tie you up and hand you over to them. We won’t kill you.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him back from the cliff. 14 When he [Samson] got to Lehi, the Philistines came running toward him, shouting at him. Suddenly the power of the Lord made him strong, and he broke the ropes around his arms and hands as if they were burnt thread. 15 Then he found a jawbone of a donkey that had recently died. He reached down and picked it up, and killed a thousand men with it.

‘Suddenly, the power of the Lord made him strong’.  On this occasion, Samson needed to depend on God for the required strength to be given right at the last moment.

In our lives, things are not so different!  Whatever God calls us to do, we can depend on Him all the way, and he’ll provide what we need when we need it.  It’ll take us well out of our comfort zone, but He will still provide.

Bible Study: Strength

Bible Study:  Samson (Judges Chapters 13-16). Last week we looked at humility, and in the biblical sense, it’s realising we are weak and God is strong!  This week let’s focus on  Strength.  What better an example than Samson.  Samson was one of God’s chosen early leaders (aka judges) of Israel, and he led for twenty years.  Samson had a special calling, to rescue Israel from the Philistines, and was dedicated to God as a Nazirite from birth.  As such, he wasn’t allowed to cut his hair.  It’s an incredible story of bravery, strength, weakness and redemption.

Questions

Read Judges 15:14-16.  Comment on God’s timing on when he imparted His strength into Samson (another example in 14:5-6.)

Read Judges 16:15-18.  Why did Samson finally cave in to Delilah?  What can we take out of this to help our relationship with God?

Read Judges 16:23-30.  Why did God choose this particular event to be Samson’s strongest moment?

Bonus Round: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10; When are we at our strongest?  What helpful things can we pray to get there?

Bible Study: Humility

Bible Study: Deutoronomy 8.  (Further reading in Philippians 2).  This is an interesting time for the Israelites on their journey to the promised land – having travelled through the desert for 40 years completely depending on God for everything, they were about to occupy the promised land.  Moses wanted to ensure that, even in the good times, the Israelites would remain humble and put God first.  He begins to address the people:

1 Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. 2 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna,which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.

 

Questions

Read Verse 1-5.  What do we typically think about God when we go through difficult times?  How does this compare to the teachings of this passage?

Read Verse 10-18.  Why is it easy to forget God in the good times?  Name some ideas on how to avoid this pitfall.

Read Philippians 2:3-11.  What is humility?

Bonus Round:  Name anyone else in the bible that did something humble (not Jesus, too easy!)  What did they do?