Group Bible Study

Jesus went to have dinner at the invitation of a Pharisee named Simon. During the meal, a woman known as a prostitute in the area came and washed Jesus’ feet with her hair and anointed Him with her expensive perfume.  40 Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you." "Tell me, teacher," he said.  41 "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred  denarii , and the other fifty.  42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?" (Luke 7:40-42). Simon’s thoughts betrayed him to the Lord. He judged Jesus for allowing this known sinful woman to draw near to Him and touch Him. Jesus spoke a parable about two debtors. Although Jesus was speaking the parable to Simon, it applies to all of us. Every one of us has a debt of sin that we have brought upon ourselves. At the time of Christ, a  denarius  was the take-home pay of a man for a day's wag...

The people of Israel were in slavery to Pharaoh and Egypt, and for Pharaoh to release them, God warned that the last of ten plagues, the death of all firstborn children, would happen throughout the land. On Passover night, God told Moses He would protect the Israelites if they would slay a lamb as a substitute and put the blood of the lamb upon the lintel and sides of the doorframes of their houses.  12 "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood,  I will pass over you . No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt (Exodus 12:12-13). God required faith in the blood of the Passover lamb. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6). The Israelites were to take a bunch of hyssop plant and dip the hyssop in a bowl of some of the bloo...

There is a spirit at work in the world that seeks to destroy the plans of God—as if that were possible! This spirit seeks to influence men by suggesting they wipe out the nation of Israel. This is not the first time that Satan has tried to do this. In the Bible, the Book of Esther tells the story of a man named Haman, who plotted to wipe out the Jewish people (Esther 3:6) but was hanged on the very gallows he had built for his Jewish enemy, Mordecai (Esther 7:9). Then there was the attempt by Pharaoh to kill all the male babies of Israel (Exodus 1:16). This also failed. Through the last 2000 years, the Jewish people have been persecuted, culminating with Hitler’s attempt to systematically murder six million. Since the birth of the Jewish nation in 1948, the enemies of God have influenced men such as the president of Egypt, Abdul Nasser, who said,  "We are going to drive the Jews into the sea and wipe them out as a nation."  War broke out in 1956 and Nasser lost. Nasser aga...

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12). When I glanced down at the water rushing past our fishing trawler in the wrong direction, I knew something was wrong. The net my father and I were towing along the bottom of the seabed was caught on something heavy. We put our winch in gear and inch by inch, we heaved the net up, our powerful winch straining at the weight. Our fishing boat, the Why Worry, leaned over as the derrick and mast took the strain of whatever it was we were lifting off the bottom. When the Cod End of the net came to the surface, there was the largest of the Second World War German magnetic mines. It was 12-foot-long and still in pristine condition, with 1,500 pounds of high explosives. Designed to blow ships completely in half, it was now swinging inches above our deck as the w...

In the Bible, the writer of the Book of Hebrews states that God knows ahead of time who will take up God's free offer of the gift of salvation and that He assigns an angel to them, even before they commit their lives to Christ. The creator God, the Lord of all the Earth, lives outside of time and acts inside of time from what He knows you will do with the gift of God—the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus. If you are a believer, an angel of God has been assigned to you. You might have noticed that the passage following says that angels are sent to those who will inherit salvation—future tense.  Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? (Hebrews 1:14). For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways (Psalm 91:11). This angel sent to you is a ministering (serving) spirit sent to serve you. The Bible has many instances of angels serving God and His people down through the ages. We don’t talk to ...

We are in the midst of an unseen battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. This war is fought on a hidden spiritual plane for control of the human race. The majority of the population of planet earth has the cloak of deception placed over them. They cannot see the good news as to what Christ has done in redeeming (buying back) men from the grip of the god of this age. Paul the apostle wrote about our unseen enemy: The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4). Satan is the god of this age, an evil angel who chose to rebel against God, drawing away with him an army of angels and demons after himself. His chief tactic against you and me is a strategy of deception to keep you from seeing that the Bible is the Word of God. The Bible is a compilation of 66 books that tell the story of the Creator God, who loves us so much that He paid t...

10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.  12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,  13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.  14 If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward.  15 If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). In verse 10, Paul says that each one of us is building something with our lives. He reminds us to build with care. All labor in the Kingdom of God is built on the foundation of an intimate relationship with Christ. All other good works a...

We are in the midst of a battle that rages all around us. This battle is fought on two planes of existence, the visible, and the invisible realm. On earth many kingdoms are at war with one another, each of them trying to gain some upper hand against the other, think China vs. Taiwan, India vs. Pakistan, Arab against Jew, but in reality these struggles on earth are part of a more significant cosmic battle for dominion over the souls of men and women. In the unseen realm, there are only two kingdoms at war with one another, and you are in one of those kingdoms—either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of Satan. The kingdom of Satan is using a great deal of deception and ignorance to blind men to the truth. He has been doing this for several thousand years and has become an expert at it. This division and struggle among nations and people groups is Satan’s plan to deceive you away from the real spiritual battle as to who will rule you—whose side are you on? Jesus put it this way:...

The Book of Revelation is a book devoted to future things that God gave the apostle John. The Spirit of God took John outside of regular time to a time that is yet future to us. He saw things that "must soon take place" on earth (Revelation 1:1). He sees the Lord Jesus Christ as a Lamb, "looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne" (Revelation 5:6). He is the only one worthy to open a scroll sealed with seven seals. Scripture doesn’t tell us what the scroll represents but theologians and scholars believe that the scroll is the title deed to planet earth. When the Lord Jesus comes forward and takes the scroll from God the Father, seated on the throne of heaven, a song of praise to the Lord Jesus is sung by those that are there: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, 
  because you were slain, and  with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. 
 10 You have made th...

I spent a lot of time at sea as a commercial fisherman in my younger years. When you are out there in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, the Dover Straits of England, you get to see all kinds of boats and ships designed for all sorts of jobs. But for us fishermen, our purpose was to catch fish. It would have been easy to waste time doing all kinds of things out at sea rather than the reason for the boat design. Now that God has called me to work on His net, I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I invested myself doing things that wasted a lot of time, energy and money. What I am called to do must be the main thing! What is the main thing the church of Jesus Christ is to be doing? Paul says that it is the gospel:  For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile (Romans 1:16).  The gospel of Jesus Christ, when it is presente...

11 "This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God.  12 Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.  13 Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away.  14 The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.  15 But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop (Luke 8:4-15). What I love about God's Word is that there is often more than one way to interpret it. Often, Jesus spoke on two levels, for example, on the cellular level and the organism level. While we should receive it at the cellular level, we can also l...

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.  39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said.   40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”  41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things,  42 but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42). Mary comes across as a person passionate about the things that count. She knows that she is expected to be helping Martha with the food and drinks, but how often does one have the God of the universe over for tea and crumpets (or whatever they had for tea in that day)!  She saw the eagerness on the face of Jesus as He began to answer questions...

What does self-substitution mean? In his book,  Miracle on the River Kwai, Ernest Gordon tells the true story of a group of prisoners of war working on the Burma Railway during World War Two. At the end of each day, the guards collected the tools from the work party. On one occasion a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it. He began to rant and rave, working himself up into a paranoid fury and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. "All die! All die!" he shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment one man stepped forward, and the guard clubbed him to death with his gun while he stood silently to attention. When they returned to the camp, the tools were counted again, and no shovel was missing. That one man had gone forward as a substitute to save the others. In the same way, Jesus went forward and satisfied justice by dying in place of us.  Jesus was our substitute. He...