A Study of Esther Session - 02

Here is an outline and brief commentary of Esther

I. Esther Replaces Vashti (1:1–2:18)

A. Vashti’s Insubordination (1:1–22) - Vashti was Xerxes' wife. She refused to appear at a banquet given by Xerxes and he became enraged. He banished her from his presence.

B. Esther’s Coronation (2:1–18) - King Exerxes was smitten with the Jewish girl, Esther and, at the urging of his advisers, put her in Vashti's former place as his wife and queen. She never told Xerxes that she was a Jew.

II. Mordecai Overcomes Haman (2:19–7:10)

A. Mordecai’s Loyalty (2:19–23) - Mordecai, of the House of Benjamin, who had brought up Esther, was loyal to Queen Esther. 

B. Haman’s Promotion and Decree (3:1–15) - Haman was an Agagite and was second in command to Xerxes. He ordered that everyone should bow to him (Haman). Mordecai refused to bow to Haman. Haman gets angry and plots to kill Mordecai. (While he was at it, he wanted all of the Jews wiped from the face of the earth. (Does that sound familiar?)

C. Esther’s Intervention (4:1–5:14) - Queen Ester went uninvited to the King. Approaching the king without permission was strictly forbidden. She asks for a banquet.

D. Mordecai’s Recognition (6:1–13) - Xerxes, unable to sleep, reads the record of Mordecai revealing the plot for his assassination and seeks to reward him in a special manner. 

E. Haman’s Fall (6:14–7:10) - Haman is forced to adorn Mordecai with special honors, which really was awkward. Esther reveals that her people had been set up for destruction, The king asks who did it and Esther points to Haman. Haman kneels before Esther to beg mercy but the king thinks he is making advances toward his wife. He orders Haman hanged.

III. Israel Survives Haman’s Genocide Attempt (8:1–10:3)

A. Esther and Mordecai’s Advocacy (8:1–17) - Esther and Mordecai urge the king to spare the lives of the Jews by giving them the right to defend themselves in future conflicts.

B. The Jews’ Victory (9:1–19) - The Jews successfully defended themselves when their enemies attacked them. 

C. Purim’s Beginning (9:20–23) - Purim is from the Hebrew word for “lots” because Haman had cast lots to determine the day on which he would exterminate the Jews. to this day, a two-day holiday of feasting, rejoicing, food sharing, gift giving, memorial feasting as the Jews celebrate the fact that they were delivered from being exterminated.

D. Mordecai’s Fame (10:1–3) - Mordecai the Jew was second to King Xerxes and was great among the Jews and well received by the multitude of his brethren, seeking the good of his people and speaking peace to all his countrymen.”

So, although God is not mentioned in the book of Esther, we know He was the deliverer of His people the Jews. If he had not delivered them, we would not have had Jesus.

Preach the Bible or Preach the Gospel. What does the Bible say about it?

In Mark 16: 15-18 we read:  "He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the Bible to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

That is Mark's rendition of the Great Commission...only it's a misquote. What it actually says is, "He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the good news (the gospel) to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

Every time Jesus quoted the Old Testament, it was to show how it pointed to Him. Every time Paul quoted the Old Testament, it was to point us to Jesus. In fact, every time the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it is to point us to Jesus.

The Old Testament is not about Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Shadrack, Meshack or Abednego, it is about Jesus.

So, how many people has your church baptized so far this year? Why is that? You preach the Bible as hard as you can, yet nobody comes to Christ. What's wrong?

What's wrong is they're hearing the Bible preached instead of the gospel. Preaching the Bible is not what we've been commissioned to do. We've been commissioned to preach the gospel.

Many preachers "pride" themselves that they "preach the Bible," and they turn its verses into morality lessons, character studies, Christian behaviorism, social commentary and political opinion, never getting to its point, which is the gospel in both the Old Testament and New.

What is this "gospel" thing?

The word "gospel" means good news. The good news is that Christ (Messiah) has come to save people from their sins when they repent, follow Him in baptism and trust in, and only in, His finished work at the cross of Calvary. Virtually every preacher knows that, but somehow it does not compute in their minds that the gospel is the only message they have.

If you preach from the Old Testament, you must not preach it for the purpose of showing how God blesses obedience and curses disobedience. You must preach it for the purpose of pointing people to Christ.

If you preach from the New Testament, you must realize that it is not an extension of the Old Testament, it is the fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ.

"But just preaching the gospel gets old," you say. Then you're not saved. If the gospel ever gets old, then it was never good news to begin with. The gospel is not just good news, it is the best news that has ever been presented. It trumps ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and FOX news hands down. It is more current than tomorrow's news. It is the reason there are Christians in the world. It is Jesus.

When people come to your church, they should have three things: They should have a time of deep, spiritual worship (not fun and entertainment); They should have a time of exuberant praise of Christ; and they should hear the gospel.

Maybe there's a reason people are not "getting saved." Maybe they have no idea what's going on in your "worship" service. Maybe they're hearing the Bible preached instead of the gospel.

You think?

What Shall We then Preach?

Far too many pastors have no idea about the significance of the New Covenant. Preaching from the New Covenant perspective is absolutely foreign to them. It is so much easier to just read Bible verses that match their legalistic mind set. Even though they DENY that they are legalistic, they preach sermons that are legalistic in nature.

Interestingly, every time they lead in the Lord's Supper (Communion), when the cup is passed, they read from Matthew 14:24. "This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is poured out for many." Maybe they read from 1 Corinthians 11:25, "This cup is the New Covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me."

Once the Lord's Supper is over, they do not mention or preach from the perspective of the New Covenant again until the next Lord's Supper service.

That is sad and borders on heretical. Jesus IS the New Covenant. That's what He came to be.

The Jews were in covenant relationships with God. There were 7 covenants in the Old Testament: the Edenic Covenant; the Adamic Covenant; the Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant; the Mosaic Covenant; the Palestinian (Land) Covenant and the David Covenant. Every practicing Jew would be aware of these covenants. They revered them. They memorized them. They felt bound by them.

In the Old Testament, following the Davidic Covenant, Jeremiah said that God was going to establish a "new covenant" with Israel, one that would find its place in the heart, not in rules and regulations. This New Covenant was established in Jesus, Christ (Messiah). And He ABSOLUTELY DID AWAY with the Old Covenants. More accurately, He FULFILLED all of the requirements of all of the Old Covenants. We do not have to fulfill them, He has already done that for us. (Hebrews 8:13)

Every Pharisee, Sadducee and Levite would have understood EXACTLY what the implications of this New Covenant were. That understanding is what made them so furious about Jesus' ministry that they wanted Him dead. They did not want their covenant(s) made obsolete. That is because under the New Covenant, there would no longer be a need for the office of priesthood because EVERY believer would be a priest in his/her own right.

This is not about the so-called "New Covenant Theology," which is fraught with error. It is about coming to grips with and learning to live as New Covenant people.

We need to be steeped in the New Covenant (but not New Covenant Theology). We need to hear it from the pulpit, not on special occasions, but every Sunday. The New Covenant is Jesus. "Obedience to God" is not our message. Our message is following Christ. If we immerse ourselves in following Him, there is no need to ever be concerned about knowing how to be obedient. He will have written His New Covenant on our hearts. If he hasn't, we are not His.

So, should we preach about obedience here and obedience there? NO. We should preach that in our natural state we are totally and irrevocably depraved and cannot be good enough to even be in God's presence, let alone to please God. We should preach that the wages of sin is eternal death. We should preach that God offers a gift called "salvation." We should preach that the gift is freely given to those who accept it by trusting in, and only in, Christ, who shed His blood at the cross of Calvary.

So many Christians and pastors are so staunch in their legalistic upbringing and what they were taught in Bible study, Bible college or seminary that they COMPLETELY MISS the real message. They seem to believe that if every sermon is about, and only about, the salvation available through the Christ of the New Covenant that they will be seen as irrelevant and out of date.

There is NOTHING irrelevant or out of date about the message of salvation in Christ. That is the ONLY relevant message. It is a message NOT TO BE TACKED ON TO A SERMON TO CONVINCE PEOPLE TO BECOME CHRISTIANS, it is to be the MAIN FOCUS of the message from the first word to the last.

If the message of salvation in Christ is boring to you, you probably are not saved. If you are a preacher and you are struggling to come up with a "relevant" sermon message, QUIT STRUGGLING! God has provided you with the message. The only thing you should be "struggling" with is how to present THAT message more clearly and fervently. If you think God has led you to some message that is about social injustices, moral issues or how bad the world, country and/or church is, you are dead WRONG. HE HAS NOT LED YOU TO PREACH THAT MESSAGE. He only leads you to preach the message of Christ.

If you are preaching from one of the great Old Testament passages, learn to contrast it and compare it with the New Covenant message of the New Testament! If you are preaching from the New Testament, learn to present its New Covenant message with enthusiasm, accuracy and power.

Christians and pastors, learn to resolve to know NOTHING except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). That's all you need to know. What you need to learn is how to preach HIM.

Stop treating the Bible as though it is a list of things that displease God and things that please Him. Faith in Christ (not some generic faith in faith or even faith in some generic God concept) is the only thing that pleases Him.

Song of Songs-The Song of Solomon-The Bible Study

The Bible is God’s revelation of His character, His love for His creation and His plan for its redemption. Many people are quick to proclaim the Bible as God’s word, and it is. Some will tell you it’s about Jesus. But when it comes to the Song of Songs (also called the Song of Solomon), they fall all apart, not knowing how to deal with it.

The Song of Songs (SOS) is very intense, and seems at least a bit racy, if not almost pornographic in some ways. But that’s only if you do not look beneath the surface.

I have read many commentaries about SOS that treat it like a treatise on love and marriage here on earth. I’ll tell you this, if you need such a treatise, there is none better.

When I was a young man, my cousin and I used to work those 1,000 piece puzzles. We had a self-imposed rule that if you touched a piece of the puzzle without knowing where it fit, you were charged one point. When the puzzle was finished, the one with the most points lost. We both learned to solve puzzles.

If I were to present you with a math problem like this:

    3                          y

 + x         AND      +2           AND the total of both equals 14,
    7                          z                                                                                                         

would you be able to find the missing numbers? The answers would be 4; 5; and 7 respectively. That’s the only combination that would work. If you don’t like that solution or try to insert some other values, the equation just won’t add up.

The same is true with any part of the Bible, including the SOS. The answer is always Jesus. Any other answer and the “equation” won’t add up.

What happens to the Song of Solomon if you plug in Jesus and His relation to His Bride, the church? It becomes not a discourse on boy/girl relationships, and far more than an earthly love story, but a revelation of the way Christ loves His church.

I can hear the theologians from all over the globe gasping in disgust as they read this re-hash of an old idea. That’s OK. They’ve been wrong before, and they’re wrong about SOS.

Do it like this and see what happens. Let “Beloved” equal the church, let “Lover” equal Christ and let “Friends” equal the heavenly hosts. When you do that, the book becomes much more than an ancient love song. It becomes much more than a portrayal of God’s perspective on the romantic and sexual love between a man and woman. It springs to life like no other love story in all of history!

As Solomon saw his bride as beautiful, so Christ sees His Bride (the church) as beautiful. As Solomon sees his bride as irresistible, so Christ sees His Bride as irresistible. As Solomon saw his bride as worthy of his love, so Christ sees His Bride as worthy of His love because of his grace.

As Solomon compares his bride with the beauty of womanhood, the unbridled power of Pharaoh’s horses, the rarity of precious gems, the strength of cedars, the fragrance of perfumes and flowers, the grandeur of mountains and the sweetness of the vineyards, so is Christ’s Bride to Him.

The response of Solomon’s bride to him is analogous to Christ’s Bride’s reaction to Him.

In my mind, the whole book of the Song of Solomon speaks of God’s love for His creation and His preparation of the Bride of Christ for the unparalleled wedding feast that is to come.

Every time I read it, I am more breathlessly waiting for that day.

If you know Christ, you're His Bride and the feast will include you!

Now, let’s study the book. This week we’ll look at chapters 1-4. Next week we’ll look at chapters 5-8.

Song of Songs – The Bible Study

1. Some think The Song of Songs sets forth the glory of wedded love; It sets forth the heart of a satisfied husband and a devoted wife.

2. Others say it sets forth the love of Jehovah for Israel. The prophets spoke of Israel as the wife of Jehovah.

3. I believe it is a picture of Christ and the church. The church is the bride of Christ, a familiar figure of Scripture (2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:27; Revelation 21).

4. I also think it depicts the communion of Christ and the individual believer. The soul’s communion with Christ is here set forth.

No matter the interpretation, The Song of Solomon tests the spiritual capacity of the reader.

Chapters 1 – 4

Chapter 1

Verses 2-6 – The bride (church) reviews in her mind the meeting with the shepherd (Messiah). As a church we should constantly anticipate being with our Lord. Verse 5: She was sunburned, that is, the church must be found working outside of the confines of its brick and mortar. Verse.6: She was forced by her brothers to keep the vineyard. The world seeks to control the church.  Her “own vineyard” was her own beauty. The world is our vineyard and we need to be working in it.

Verse 7: The shepherd she met did not seem to have any sheep. From the beginning, Christ was anticipating His church They are His sheep. Verses 9-17: The church is to be in love with her shepherd, Jesus, the Christ (Messiah).

Chapter 2

Verses 1-7 – Here is a “vision” of the palace (heaven) that will be ours when we go to live with our shepherd. Verse 1: The church is like the flowers of the land. Verse 2: The bridegroom  (Christ) points out the difference between His church and the world. Verse 3-7: The bride speaks of her love for the bridegroom. Any relationship of the believer to Christ must rest upon His love for the believer and the believer’s love for Him.

Verses 8-17 – The return of the bridegroom after a trip abroad. That is the time of the rapture, when Christ returns for His bride. The bride’s happy anticipation of his return should be the attitude of the believer toward the return of Christ.

This is the highest spiritual expression of any relationship with Christ. It is the high note of the Rapture, the catching up of the believer to be with Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). This section puts into the lovely language of poetry the meaning of the Rapture.

Chapter 3

The bride dreams of the bridegroom while he is away. She seeks him at night and is found by the watchman. Is this not what we should be doing as the Bride of Christ? At last, she finds the bridegroom. Christ, in all of his glory, is pictured entering Jerusalem with his bride. WHAT A PICTURE!!

Chapter 4

Here we have the love song of the bridegroom. This is the expression of deep desire and strong passion. Compare verse 7 with Ephesians 5:25-27. It is impossible for the believer to know (verses 9, 10) how much Christ loves him (Revelation 2:4). Verse 16: The response of the bride (the church) should remind us of Isaiah 53:11.

Does this approximate your feelings for Christ? Is He your beloved? Are you intimate with Him as Solomon was with his beloved? When we call ourselves “the bride of Christ,” are we aware of all that entails? Does it motivate us to be totally immersed in His will for us?

Preaching the Gospel/Bible?

Some pastors seem to think that if the read a lot of Bible verses and make comments on them, they have “preached the Bible” or “preached the gospel.”

Often they preach on some topic or another and then tag the sermon with a non-descript “invitation,” that nobody knows why or how to respond to.

That’s not preaching the Bible. That’s not preaching the gospel. That’s not even preaching. That’s just filling time.

Paul wrote, following his failed excursion into philosophy at Athens, “I have resolved to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified…” (1 Corinthians 2:2). He didn’t say, “I have resolved to know not much more than Christ and Him crucified. He said, “I have resolved to know NOTHING but Christ and Him crucified. What does NOTHING mean? Does it mean “something,” “a little bit” or does it mean “NOTHING?”

Suppose a preacher takes a few Scriptures from the Old Testament, maybe one of the famous stories like Daniel in the lions’ den, David and Goliath, Joshua and the walls of Jericho or any of the other great stories, and reads them. Then suppose he reads about obedience and how “God blesses obedience and curses disobedience.” Then suppose he tacks on the gospel at the end. Has he preached the Bible? No, he has not.

The problem is that many preachers treat the Bible as though it is a bunch of unconnected, unrelated stories, rules, regulations and wise sayings. It is not.

The Bible is the most remarkably consistent, intertwined and amazing books ever written.

First of all, it is written by God. He used 40 different authors over thousands of years who wrote 66 books, each of which relates to every one of all of the others! That is astonishing!

What a total shame to not demonstrate in every sermon how the Bible is all about God’s character, His love of His creation and His plan for its redemption. What message could possibly be more powerful, more relevant and more important for any human being to hear?

Preachers wake up! Stop cherry-picking Scripture to put together a sermon that fits your agenda or your “theosophy.” Cults do that! Let’s not let the Word of God be treated like some legalistic bunch of do’s and don’ts.

Neither let us use Scripture to show how bad the church is or how bad some practices in the church are. The church is the BRIDE OF CHRIST!! Stop doing that! The church is not bad. The church is good! There might be some people who need Bible study, training or growing, but the church is GOOD. Get that through your backward thinking, legalistic heads!

Come on, preachers. Study before you speak. Find the gospel in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. Stop taking the lazy way out in sermon preparation. Start finding Jesus in every verse of the Bible. He’s there! You just have to find Him there! Do it!

Don’t tag your sermon with a quick invitation. Make your message lead up to a great, positive, compelling and inspiring invitation. Make Jesus the whole point of your message. Make every word of your message be designed to introduce people to Jesus and to inspire those who already know Him.

If you don’t think He is worthy of that, you need to revisit your own salvation experience!

Evangelical, Missional or What?

There is a whole “arm” of the Christian church that believes today’s church has to be “missional,” “trendy” and that “evangelicalism” is passé, or at least not the main issue.

As if you care what I think, let me tell you. I think the church must focus on, and only on, Christ and His finished work at the cross of Calvary. If He is not enough, nothing else will be.

I think the church should be evangelical, ministerial, missional and relevant. By “relevant,” I mean gospel oriented. There never has been, is not now and never will be anything irrelevant about the gospel. The gospel message is the only one the church has. It will “attract” those whom the Holy Spirit stirs.

I believe the church should spread the good news, minister to its members, serve the community in Christ’s name, and preach the eternal relevance of the gospel.

That’s it.

A Study On the Resurrection

This study is in the form of a quiz. The correct answers are below the quiz.

1. Why did God choose Israel?
    A. Because the people of Israel were steady in their faith and dependable
    B. Because He is God and He gets to choose
    C. Because the rest of the world was so much worse than Israel
    D. Because the Jews were people of great character

2. What did God choose Israel to do?
    A. Show the world how to follow God
    B. Write the laws that would make people acceptable in God’s eyes
    C. Establish the appropriate hierarchy for religious structure
    D. To establish the line through which Messiah would be born

3. Why did Jesus “perform” miracles?
    A. To demonstrate that He was God in the flesh
    B. To impress the people so they would straighten out
    C. To show the Jews that He was smarter than they were
    D. To show people that their faith would be honored

4. How did the Pharisees respond to Jesus’ miracles?
    A. They were amazed and wanted to follow Him
    B. They were happy for the people whose lives had been touched
    C. They knew the Scriptures and recognized that Jesus was claiming to be the fulfillment of the prophesies.
    D. They were confused and wanted to know more

5. Why did the Pharisees want Jesus executed?
    A. Because they were afraid of losing their power
    B. Because they were generally nasty people
    C. Because they knew he claimed to be God and considered that blasphemy
    D. Because they were led by the Holy Spirit to have Jesus executed

6. What made the Pharisees think Jesus was committing blasphemy?
    A. Jesus made it clear that He claimed to be God
    B. Jesus behaved in an immoral fashion
    C. Jesus broke the Law of Moses
    D. Jesus was just too religious for their tastes

7. What characterized the trials Jesus went through before Herod, Pilate, the Chief Priests and the Pharisees?
    A. They were fair and just
    B. They were open to the public
    C. They adhered to the letter of the Law
    D. They were illegal.

8. Who did Jesus look like after He was scourged by Pilate
    A. He looked tired and sad
    B. He looked bruised and cut
    C. He was unrecognizable
    D. He was strong and unaffected

9. Why was Jesus placed in a borrowed tomb?
    A. His family was too poor to afford a decent burial
    B. It all happened so fast that the family had not had time to buy a tomb for Him
    C. Joseph of Arimathia expected to live a long time and didn’t need it.
    D. He was only going to need it for three days

10. What did Mary find when she got to the tomb?
    A. The stone rolled away
    B. An empty tomb
    C. An angel
    D. The grave clothes folded
    E. Jesus

11. What does the resurrection of Jesus mean to you?
    A. It is a great story and I like to hear it
    B. It seems pretty fanciful
    C. It stirs my emotions and makes me cry
    D. It is the most exciting story I have ever heard or read and it thrills me to know that Jesus’ resurrection proves          that His death provided me with eternal life, just like God promised from the very beginning.

Trust in, and only in, the finished work of Christ at the cross of Calvary, His resurrection and His soon return. That’s the only way to life abundant, free and eternal!

Answers

1-B
2-D
3-A
4-C
5-C
6-A
7-D
8-C
9-D
10-All of them
11-I sincerely pray that your answer is D

Do You Pray for Your Pastor?

If you do (and you should), what do you pray for? Do you pray that he will be your personal chaplain or do you see him as your shepherd? A chaplain is duty bound to serve the rotating needs of a specific class of people.

Shepherding runs in the opposite direction from a chaplain. It takes all the unique needs of various people at various stages of life and leads them to one ultimate solution… Jesus Christ.

This post begins a series of posts about how to pray for your pastor.

The absolute most important prayer for your pastor is that his sermons are redundant.

What? Pray that his sermons are redundant? Why?

Still stinging from his fiasco at Athens, where he tried to match philosophical wits with the Athenian philosophers, Paul wrote that he “…resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (I Corinthians 2:2)

He had made the mistake of preaching something other than the gospel. But the gospel is absolutely the ONLY message we have. If you get tired of that message, you need to check your relationship to God through Christ.

So, pray that you pastor will be able to proclaim one overarching message from every text he preaches. Whatever principle or wisdom is put forward, pray that every message you hear from this pulpit is the wrapped around the same redundant theme: the glory of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Pray that his sermons hold high the sacred jewel of redemption so that you may marvel at it. With every turn and refraction of light there is a new glory revealed but it always the same jewel.

Pray he is a record scratched exactly at the sacrifice of Christ. Pray that he never gets over, gets past, gets to the bottom of or never gets tired of the glorious news of the accomplishment of God in Christ.

Pray that he hears you singing the refrain, “Tell me the story of Jesus. Write on my heart every word. Tell me the story most precious; sweetest that ever was heard.”

Pray your preacher aids you in the constant re-discovery of the absolute, unending spectrum of glorious truth that is within the Word of God and its singular message spanning from Genesis to Revelation.

This is not a story about what man does for God. This is not a message about how man gets to God. This is not a story about how man sought God. This is a story about how God got to man, how God satisfied His own requirements on man’s behalf and for his own glory.

Pray this message never ceases to amaze this man who is your pastor.

(Thanks and a hat tip to Church Pastor for the inspiration for and much of the content of this post).

Bible Study and Preaching

What passes for Bible study and “Bible based sermons” today is dismal. It is little more than pick-and-choose magnified to imitate Bible truth.

Bible study has been reduced to chopping the Bible up into little pieces to serve a particular topic of interest to the Bible study leader or the ones responsible for his “teaching manual.” This is the method used by every heretical cult that has ever been and is fraught with danger.

A case in point is the way the book of Proverbs is used to address certain topics, for instance, “Watching your words.”

Being careful about what you say is important. Words can hurt. Words can heal. Words can be neutral. But using some “proverbs” about words from one section of Proverbs and some from another completely misses the point of the book. Proverbs, in the Bible, is about growth. As we grow in Wisdom (Christ), we will understand how to use words better. That’s why the subject of how we use words is progressive in the book of Proverbs. Each time it is brought up, a little more of the subject is revealed and a proper response expanded.

Each section of Proverbs deals with the same group of topics, each time a little more in depth and a little more detailed. The topics are: Wisdom, the fear of the Lord, the company we keep, the value of money and things, and the results of choosing wrongly. Wisdom is a type of Christ in Proverbs and the point is that as we know Christ better we will exhibit more and more of His characteristics.

Sermons have been reduced to modified legalism. Most evangelical pastors would deny that they are legalistic, but then go right on preaching about lists of things that are right and things that are wrong. That IS legalism. And it is NOT what the Bible is about, no matter how many passages or verses are quoted.

The Bible is about the gospel of Christ. That’s its message from cover to cover. The gospel is the Good News that Christ has paid the penalty for sin and that if we repent and turn to Him in faith, trusting in, and only in, the finished work of Christ at the cross of Calvary, we will spend eternity with Him in Heaven.

Whether we are preaching from Exodus, Leviticus, Malachi the Gospels, or wherever, the message is the same: God is of the highest character; He loves His creation and has a wonderful plan for its redemption.

The Bible is not about how we behave (although if you need a behavioral guide, it is the best there is). It is not a history book (although if you need to know the history of Israel or of God’s movement in history, it is the best history there is). The Bible is not a psychology book (although it contains the best psychology that ever has been, is now or ever will be). Nor is the Bible a philosophy book (although it contains the only relevant philosophy in the universe).

The Bible is God’s revelation of His character, His love for His creation and His plan for its redemption.

Every Bible study leader should look for those three things. If he cannot find them in what he is preparing to teach, he should go back and study some more or he will be teaching the wrong thing.

Every preacher should look for those three things. If he cannot find them in what he is preparing to preach, he should go back and study some more or he will be preaching heresy.

Where Would He Lead?

Suppose you were a church that had been led to grow to 3 or 4 times your original size. Suppose you were then led to purchase a new building to accommodate that growth. Suppose then you were led into financial difficulties and had to split up. Who would you call to lead you back to where you once were and into the future?

Click here to see some of the pastoral qualifications a pastor should fulfill.

Here are some ministerial questions a prospective pastor should be asked.

1.  If you are called to be our pastor, what steps would you take to establish a meaningful Bible study ministry for all age groups?

2.  If you are called to be our pastor, what steps would you take to establish a meaningful ministry to train all age groups in sound doctrine and to train leaders to lead in such a way as to make their leadership a proper offering to Christ?

3.  If you are called to be our pastor, what steps would you take to establish a meaningful missions ministry that taught the importance of missions and activities for missions to all age groups?

4. If you are called to be our pastor, how would ;you prepare your messages in such a way that the central theme of each one is the gospel of Christ?

5. If you are called to be our pastor, in what way would you lead to make certain that all worship services are geared toward worship and praise as pure and acceptable offerings to a holy an sovereign God?

6. If you are called to be our pastor, in what way would you lead to assist the church to establish and maintain sound Biblical fiscal responsibility?

7.  If you are called to be our pastor, what would be your God given vision as to where we will be five years from now?

8.  If you are called to be our pastor, how would you go about insuring that all leadership is steeped in sound Biblical, New Covenant doctrine?

9.  If you are called to be our pastor, what steps would you take to ensure that all members are afforded a realistic opportunity to know everything there is to know about every aspect of the life of our church?

10.  If you are called to be our pastor, what objective, goals and actions would you lead us toward in the next year?

Those are nine questions that every prospective pastor should be ready to answer. They speak to his ability to lead into the future in a positive, Spirit-filled way. They speak to his administrative skills.

Come to think of it, they are questions every pastor, new or established, should be ready to answer.