Adult Bible Study March 23, 2008

Lesson Text: 2 Chronicles 6:12-17; Luke 24:44-49
By Ken Hawkley
E-mail: louise050@comcast.net

In the United States this question has an obvious political context. All the presidential hopefuls are making promises. So whose promises can you trust? Warring peoples and countries each invoke the name of God or their version of God, saying that God will bring them victory.

Jack Van Impe uses the Bible to tell us when Armageddon is coming. Joel Osteen uses the same Bible to tell us that if we follow Jesus, everything will be all right. Some others tell us that if we are faithful, we will be rich and healthy beyond our dreams. When the Bible is used as a bludgeon against the opposing side on many issues facing us, whose promises can we trust?

Whose promises can you trust? Someone in your class is likely to say that we can always trust the promises of God. That allows us to ask, Whose interpretation of God’s promises can we trust? We all filter God’s Word and promises through our own senses. Each of us experiences God and God’s promises a bit differently than the next person. If this is true, then the question of the lesson could change to, How do we as a community discern and interpret the trustworthy promises of God?

Today’s lesson is about how people thought God had promised one type of messiah, but the reality was another type of messiah. Many people rejected the Messiah, Jesus, because he was different from what they “knew” to be true from the old scriptures. From where we sit today, we can see how way off base they were. God’s promise was fulfilled according to Scripture, but people had just interpreted it incorrectly. Can we be open enough to rethink, relearn and reopen our interpretations of God’s promises? Are we willing to abandon ourselves to new understandings of God’s purposes?