tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79076482012-02-16T16:09:12.559-07:00This blog is devoted to my relfections on the weekly Bible Study at Quail Lake Community Church.Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.comBlogger691100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907648.post-45365588770992233592007-07-31T09:28:00.000-06:002007-07-31T09:29:57.489-06:00

QLCC has changed its name to "Hope Community Church." I have moved our online Bible Study notes/Evotionals to a new domain to reflect the name. For all the new posts, please visit:Hope Community Bible Study

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Mark 1:4-13The wilderness breaks people. Over and over in the Old Testament, the wilderness is symbolic of those times when God’s people were at their lowest or where their relationship with God suffered its greatest blow. When Elijah reached the depths of his own depression and anxiety about his future, he put himself out to pasture – he goes to the wilderness to die. Over and over the prophets

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MarkThe verse that is almost universally acknowledged to be a kind of thematic capsule of Mark’s Gospel is 10:45:“For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”If you read through the first nine chapters and came across this verse, you would not be surprised. Mark is a Gospel of action—the action of the Son of God among God’s people.

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Jeremiah 48In this chapter Jeremiah moves to Judah’s familiar neighbor, the nation of Moab. What the prophet describes is the fall of that nation, the cities that become a waste, and some of the reasons why Moab was judged.One thing that becomes clear is that Moab was destroyed at the height of its prosperity. It was nestled, securely it was thought, in a rich valley. They were off the beaten

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Jeremiah 46-47These chapters mark a distinct change in the book of Jeremiah. We move from narration of the life of Jeremiah, to his litany of prophecies against the surrounding nations. Though the oxen yokes and baskets of figs are gone, we still have a lot to learn about Jeremiah and his God.As much as anything, these chapters are about the sovereignty of God. Though there is ultimately nothing

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Romans 8When we approach the Day of Pentecost, our minds are often drawn to the events of Acts 2, or to the instruction of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians. We tend to think of the relatively spectacular events of the early church or of the public gifts of tongues and prophecy. These are certainly realities in the life of the Spirit-filled church, but when we pay attention to the New Testament

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Jeremiah 45Between the narrative of Jeremiah’s life and the list of prophecies against the nations, we read a small chapter concerning his scribe and close friend, Baruch. Though our attention has been on Jeremiah and what he has endured to bring God’s Word to his people, we discover that Baruch has been with him almost every step of the way, and suffered his own setbacks and frustrations.To

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Jeremiah 44:15-23By now in the book of Jeremiah, God and Jeremiah have warned the people of Judah and Jerusalem that their rebellion would bring destruction, the destruction came, and they have been warned again that if they continue in their sinfulness they will suffer even more for their sins. Everything Jeremiah said would come to pass came to pass, and the people he talks with in this

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Jeremiah 44:1-14In many ways, this chapter is like letting the air out of a balloon. After all the build up in Jeremiah’s life and career, and after everything the Judean people experience, we find them finally in Egypt where they will literally fade into the sands of time. We might not be too surprised that a group of rebellious Judeans have disobeyed God again and headed to Egypt, but we are

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Jeremiah 43Johanan was a hero—at least he tried to be. In service to God’s will that the Judeans stay in the Promised Land in the face of all odds, Johanan tried to stop a plot against their leader’s life, and when that failed, he pursued the assassins and ran them off. When Judah’s social structure was thin at best, Johanan was a man who stood for the strength of his people and the will of God

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Jeremiah 42:8-22In this passage the people of Judah stand at a crossroads, and on the cusp of a major decision. Their nation has been decimated by Babylon and torn further by internal strife. There are very few of them left and their governor has been assassinated. To the south lies the nation of Egypt where they believe they can find a stable nation, economy and society to protect them from

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Jeremiah 41:11-42:7In these chapters we find ourselves in the middle of a story full of intrigue, conspiracy, devilry and heroism.  The conspirator, Ishmael, killed Gedaliah, the godly governor, and now Johanan, a military captain, has heard of the deed and pursues Ishmael.  Johanan catches up with the conspirator and runs him off while freeing all the people he had taken captive.  It seems that

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Jeremiah 40The following few chapters tell an intriguing story of destruction, prosperity, trust and betrayal.  After the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of the majority of the people, a remnant is left and Nebuchadnezzar puts Gedaliah in charge of what remains in Judah.  For the most part, those who are left are the poorest of the poor and a few bands of guerilla soldiers who escaped the hand of

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Jeremiah 39:11-18The events in Jeremiah 39 are bleak to say the least. Jerusalem, and hence the nation of Judah, finally falls to Babylon, Zedekiah meets his fate, and the people are taken into exile. But the story is not all about endings. The second half of the chapter tells the stories of two people God spared and the care he showed them in the midst of a nightmare.The first comes as no

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Jeremiah 39:1-10In this chapter we watch the end of Jerusalem and the nation of Judah unfold before our eyes. Jeremiah warned king Zedekiah several times that the Babylonians were going to seize control of Jerusalem unless he repented and turned back to God, but we note here that not only did Zedekiah not believe his repentance would accomplish anything, he did believe he could escape from the

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1 Kings 19:1-18In order to understand the power of 1 Kings 19, we need to remind ourselves briefly of chapter 18. In it, we get what might be the pinnacle of Elijah’s prophetic career. He openly challenges the prophets of Baal before the eyes of the nation of Israel to a “battle of the gods” and they are defeated in an astounding and shocking fashion—God rains fire down from heaven before them

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Luke 24:13-35Have you gone through a season in your faith when God just seemed to be absent? Despite all your need and maybe even your effort to communicate with him, God was just silent? One of the most difficult of all seasons in life occurs when God is hidden from our eyes. And, it turns out, it is one of the most common experiences among God’s faithful. When we scan Scripture for wisdom

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Daniel 1Christ was once asked what the greatest commandment in the Law was. His response, which he said encompassed all the Law and the Prophets, included the directive to love God with all our minds. We don’t always take time to look into what this means, but it is clear that we should. Scripture declares the importance of the life of our minds, and our lives should reflect that result. We

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Philippians 2:1-11What does it mean to form a heart that is open and receptive to God? Are there things I can do in order to put my emotions, attitudes, and passions in a position to be accessible to God? In Philippians 2, Paul speaks to the church using the example of Christ in order to encourage certain attitudes and behaviors that will open them up to the presence and activity of God and to

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Colossians 3:1-17This section of Colossians 3 is really rather straightforward. Paul tells believers that because they are now children of God and no longer children of this world, their lives need to reflect that change. The way The Message puts the first verse is enlightening:“So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it.”What follows is Paul’s

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In our discussion of the Spiritual Disciplines, it is helpful to have a list and brief explanation of some of them. This can act as a short reference as well as a springboard.This list and classification come from Dallas Willard. Though not comprehensive, it is a very helpful list.The two categories are important. The first, “Disciplines of Abstinence,” are designed to help us remove

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Matthew 5:1-12As Matthew chapter 5 opens, imagine the scene you would have encountered if you were with Jesus. First, you know very little about this teacher. His ministry has just begun and you are just a few days old as a follower, but you have already been witness to some amazing things. Just the day before, Jesus was teaching in the Synagogues and healed “every disease and affliction among

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Jeremiah 34King Zedekiah was more of a fool than a demon. Several of the kings before him were evil, even very evil, and one recent king was even righteous, but Zedekiah was too much of a politician. He ran his life and his kingdom according to the most recent need perceived by his advisors and made his decisions based on attempts at short-term pandering. And it got him in trouble.Jeremiah 34

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Jeremiah 33:14-16When we allow it to happen, the work that God does in the life of a believer and the life of the body of Christ is deep and lasting. Near the end of Jeremiah 33, God declares that the day will come when David’s son-the Messiah-will arrive and fulfill every promise he made to his people. The difference between this coming king and the kings Jeremiah has contended with is

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Philippians 4:4-9As Paul closes this letter to the church at Philippi, he provides believers with several very practical guides to living a life formed by the Spirit of God.  When we think of spiritual formation we often, and unfortunately, think of esoteric practices engaged in by people who are gifted spiritually and who have the time to separate themselves from the “real world.”  In stark

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Jeremiah 33:1-9There are moments in the book of Jeremiah where, if you are reading carefully, you might experience a little bit of literary whiplash. These moments, highlighted by God describing judgment and then suddenly speaking of grace and forgiveness, are telling when it comes to the character and activity of God. We read this kind of passage in Jeremiah 33 between verses 5 and 6.“They are

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Jeremiah 33:3How well do you think you would communicate with a stranger from a foreign land whose language you did not speak? If you needed to communicate with this person, what kind of effort would it take? No doubt it would require time and a great deal of work on your part to learn the language, the nuance of their vocabulary, and enough about their culture to understand better how they are

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Jeremiah 32:26-44One of the more fruitful aspects of studying Old Testament prophets is the conversational relationship many of them have with God. Often, when a prophet prays or asks questions, God answers. In my walk with God, I may not always hear an audible voice answering me when I pray, but I do have the record of God’s responses to His prophet’s prayers throughout Scripture. In this

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Jeremiah 32:16-25Jeremiah’s cousin, Hanamel, visited him in prison and sold him a piece of the family farm. Jeremiah, under the prompting of God, obliged and sealed the purchase as legally as he knew how and preserved the documents for future generations. The catch is that the land is useless not only to Jeremiah, but to an entire generation of Judeans who are about to be taken off into exile.

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Jeremiah 32:1-15If you know just a handful of stories or verses from Jeremiah, chances are you know a little of this narrative in which Jeremiah buys a field. As the chapter opens, we join Jeremiah “shut up in the court of the guard” (vs. 2)-he was in jail. The story of his inprisonment is detailed in chapters 37 and 38, but in short, he continued to speak God’s word thereby irritating king

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Jeremiah 31:21-40Covenants were made to be broken. At least you would think that was the case if you tracked the history of all the covenants God established in the Old Testament. Each covenant’s basic structure is, “I, God, will do X and you, human, will do Y.” From Adam to Moses, when a covenant is broken, it is always broken in the same way-people fail. So what good will it do to establish

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Jeremiah 31:15-20Many times we know segments of Old Testament Scripture because of their usage in the New. When we read Jeremiah 31:15, it rings familiar in our ears, but probably because of where it is in the book of Matthew. Well, Jeremiah is the first place we encounter this well-known passage and he has something particular to communicate to us. This part of his dream (vs. 26) begins:Thus

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Jeremiah 30:18-31:14After 29 chapters of warning and judgment, we now find ourselves in the middle of a section of Jeremiah where God promises blessing and wholeness for His people. Between chapters 30 and 31, the promised graces bestowed upon Judah and Israel are a redemption of the people’s behavior before the exile, and what was lost in the exile. Over and over, the curse is turned around as

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Jeremiah 30:1-17This chapter begins a very distinct section within Jeremiah sometimes called “The Book of Consolation.”  There have been glimmers of hope so far in his book, but here it hits the surface and become the focus of attention.  In the next four chapters, Jeremiah concentrates on the hope in store for God’s people, even though they find themselves in exile.It is worthwhile to note that

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Jeremiah 29Exile can’t be easy.  Different landscapes, different languages and accents, different customs and food, and foreign sights and sounds can add to a sense of displacement and anxiety.  Add to that the fact that the people of Judah were forcibly removed from their homeland and family and taken to the homeland of a brutal dictator, and you have a recipe for cultural and personal

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Jeremiah 28More than once Jeremiah comes into conflict with false prophets.  Most times they are anonymous, but here we meet one in particular who is unhappy with Jeremiah’s message in chapter 27.  There Jeremiah wore an oxen yoke before the king and the region’s ambassadors to invite them to join him in submission to Nebuchadnezzar.As chapter 28 opens, we should keep in mind that several weeks,

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Jeremiah 26Jeremiah faced death. It wasn’t disease resulting from the Babylonian sieges, or threat to his life from the warfare that seemed to rage throughout his adult life; it was from the priests and false prophets of his day who took him to court in a capital case. In chapter 26, God has Jeremiah speak some pretty serious and devastating words over the Temple in Jerusalem:Thus says the LORD

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Jeremiah 27This chapter gives us another “illustrated prophecy” of Jeremiah’s to the rulers of his day. In this case, it involves not only the king of Judah, but the ambassadors of several small surrounding nations as well. And Jeremiah’s prop of choice this time is a piece of farm equipment-he enters the king’s chambers wearing a yoke meant for two large oxen. God never said being a prophet

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“Cup of Wrath, Cup of Grace”Jeremiah 25:15-38In this passage we observe a kind of parade of nations as God prophecies through Jeremiah the judgment that will come upon not only Judah, but on all the surrounding nations and finally Babylon itself.Except for a couple of points of interest, this passage reads like a typical judgment chapter in the Old Testament prophets, so it is tempting to pass on

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Jeremiah 19This chapter closes out the image Jeremiah has been using since the beginning of chapter 18: the Potter and the clay. Whereas we watched the potter remake wet clay in the last scene, here Jeremiah is commanded to buy a finished pot, take it to the gate where trash was dumped, and smash it into a pile of useless pieces. The wet clay was able to be remade-this pile of pottery shards is

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Matthew 2:1-12This advent season, we are going to approach the Christmas story through the lenses of the other people and characters involved.  There is a lot to learn in how people encountered the birth of Jesus Christ.In the account of Jesus’ birth in Matthew chapter two, we have three distinct groups or individuals mentioned besides Mary and Joseph.  First, we encounter the Magi from the east.

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Jeremiah 17:26-27At the tail end of a passage in which God teaches on the topic of keeping and breaking the Sabbath, there is a final blessing added to the community that faithfully keeps it. Here God promises that if the people of God worship Him the way He ought to be worshiped, people will come from the surrounding nations to worship with them.26And people shall come from the cities of Judah

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Jeremiah 17:19-27This little section of Jeremiah contains some teaching and warning about a very specific violation: the breaking of the Sabbath. Of the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath law is maybe the most difficult for us to wrap our lives around, and the one we might be most inclined to think no longer applies to us. But we must be careful with such inclinations. In the Old Testament we

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Jeremiah 17:1-18It is difficult to keep our eyes on Christ in hard times. Peter serves as the clearest lesson of this truth when he tried to walk on water and began to sink after moving his gaze from Christ to the storm around him. Jeremiah has been through many difficult times simply for being a faithful servant of God, and in these few chapters we have heard him express that frustration

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As chapter 16 opens, God wastes no time in laying a fairly heavy burden upon the prophet in order to get a point across to the people of Judah. These first nine verses are sometimes difficult for us to read.First, God commands Jeremiah not to marry. The command is final: it is not the case that Jeremiah can marry later on in life. God wants the prophet to stand for the rest of his life as a

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Jeremiah 15Sometimes the call is difficult. Sometimes faithfully following the path God has laid out in our lives asks things of us that are a stretch, and sometimes they require everything we are and everything we have. Sometimes even just trying to be a Christian in our world is hard. I know we feel that strain from time to time in our lives today, but we can draw strength from the stories of

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Jeremiah 14If everything were stacked against you, and you perceived certain struggle in the future, how would you turn to God? What would you ask for? How would you pray? In chapter 14 of Jeremiah, we get another wonderful glimpse into a conversation between the prophet and his God. God continues to present a message of coming judgment through Jeremiah, and a brutally honest prophet

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Jeremiah 12:7-17This particular passage is one of those that can fly by very quickly in our evening devotions as we prepare to fall asleep. You know the kind of passage. The one you reach and think to yourself, “I can skim through this passage-it will be OK.” We are all guilty of that, and we can’t always be blamed for trying to get to sleep on time. But there are treasures for the diligent

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1 John 2:1-6What would your last piece of advice be? If you had a chance near the end of your life to write a letter to your loved ones, how would you encapsulate the lessons of your life? John had a chance to do that very thing in this letter, and his advice is a little surprising. We might think of “love God,” or “be thankful and kind.” There is nothing wrong with either of these pieces of

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Jeremiah 10:17-11:17As we reenter Jeremiah part way through chapter ten, the vocabulary changes back from reflections on wisdom to prophetic lament and warning. What is rich about this particular passage is not only the imagery and metaphor employed by Jeremiah, but the glimpse we get into the prophet’s heart and mind. I think this is one of the things I am enjoying the most about this study in

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1 John 1:5-10If I were to give you a chance to fill in this blank, what word would you use: “In order to fulfill joy in my life, I would say God is ______.” Maybe most of us would choose words like “love,” “faithful,” “gracious,” and so forth. These tend to be the concepts of God that fill our lives with comfort and peace, they are certainly true of God, and John will in fact make a big deal

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At the end of Jeremiah chapter 9, the language changes from prophecy and lament to reflection on wisdom. The passage we are looking at breaks down into two sections: what humans boast about in themselves, and how things are different for followers of God.The first list contains three items-wisdom, might and riches. Wisdom is the Hebrew word for “skill.” We tend to believe that through

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Jeremiah 8:18-9:26Have you ever thought to yourself or been told that if you are exactly in the middle of God’s will for your life, things will be easy or smooth? I think sometimes we carry that assumption around, even if we do so without thinking about it. Without doubt, there are times of blessing, plenty, grace and peace, but if we take a close look at the lives of faithful people in

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Jeremiah 8:4-17In our study of Jeremiah we find ourselves in chapter 8, and in another long litany of judgments and proclamations by God. It is easy in such a book to loose sight of the details and nuances of these kinds of passages and skim over them as if they were all the same. What a closer reading finds, however, is a wealth of knowledge about human nature and the character and nature of

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1 John 1:1-4If I were to ask you to describe an influential person you knew several years ago, or to describe a close friend you have not seen in years, where would you begin? Most of us might begin with a description of the time and setting of our friendship or encounter and some of the more salient descriptive details. We might describe where we were, what they did for a living, people’s

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We all know the story of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker-how Vader is redeemed through a final act of goodness that saves his son’s life and his own in the process. As the story describes it, Darth Vader was “turned” from the dark side of the force. A less familiar story (much less familiar) of “turning” is the moral drama that is Mr. Furious. After leaving his band of Mystery Men in a huff

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In the summer of 1906 there stood a reclaimed and whitewashed two-story factory building on the wrong side of the tracks in Los Angeles. If you were to walk inside at almost any time of the day or night you would behold some pretty amazing sights. A few fans hung from the ceiling, some wooden planks had been turned into pews, and there were a couple of old crates in the middle of the room turned

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As we make our way to Pentecost weekend, I think it will be appropriate to talk about what it means to be a Pentecostal church. I receive e-mails from time to time regarding Quail Lake and our style of worship and/or our denominational affiliation. We are affiliated with the Assembly of God, a Pentecostal denomination, and our theology and practice is in step with sound Pentecostal

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Jude 5-7Reading and understanding the Epistle of Jude is a little like arriving early to the symphony. As you find your seat and wait for the concert to begin, the musicians file in one by one, take their seats, and some of them begin to play their instrument. As each one runs over a section of their piece, the sound that reaches your ears is cacophonous, but if you broke down each individual

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Our Easter text comes from John 20:1-10. Although there is much in this passage to discuss, I want to spend my space here talking about the reactions of Mary and the two disciples as they encountered the empty tomb.As Mary comes early in the morning, she finds the stone has been rolled away and the tomb no longer holds the body of Jesus. Her first reaction is to run back to the disciples and tell

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1Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: 2May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.This past week we began a study on an oft-neglected book, the Epistle of Jude. This book is overlooked for many reasons, including its short length and the cryptic issues raised within the central portion of the

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Due to my personal time constraints and further decision making on my part about the purpose of this blog, I have decided to change the direction of what I write here. I have intended in the past to simply “hit the highlights” of my talks, but I end up basically repeating my entire sermon on the blog. Clearly, that is not an addition to people’s study or the development of my own ideas and

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In this passage we will encounter some marvelous encouragement on behalf of Paul, and catch a glimpse of the life of the Thessalonians since he and his company left them. First of all, I do not think it is insignificant that he labels them as “loved by God.” A little later on in the passage, he mentions the “sever suffering” they are enduring, and one can only imagine what a temptation it was

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As I began to work through this short passage I was struck by a handful of things, not the least of which was the trio of phrases, “work produced by faith…labor prompted by love…endurance inspired by hope.” First of all, however, I think we should take notice again of Paul’s thanksgiving. He notes that every time he is reminded of the Thessalonians he is thankful for them. It might be hard for

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I. Background It is profitable, and I think exciting, to take a big-picture look at Acts 15, 16, 17 and 18 as we begin this study. These chapters contain parts of Paul’s second missionary journey beginning with the conclusion of the Counsel at Jerusalem in Acts 15. From there Paul and his new partner Silas return to Asia Minor and begin to retrace Paul’s steps. Along the way they pick up a

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Ruth 4 Ruth chapter four opens with the dawn that closes chapter three. In the middle of the previous night, Ruth and Boaz had their encounter and proposal of marriage. Early that morning Ruth returns to Naomi, and Naomi declares that the sun will not set again until Boaz has settled the matter one way or the other. In the misty dawn of that very day while Ruth and Naomi celebrate their

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This chapter poses a couple of difficulties from the outset for a Bible Study. First, it seems fairly straightforward and possibly even mundane on one level. It is a story of a marriage proposition, and a short one at that. Secondly, it is loaded with sexual tension, and intentionally so. So what are we to make of this plan concocted by Naomi and enacted by Ruth? I want to address the second

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In these first few verses of chapter 2, we are going to pay attention to the characters of Ruth and Boaz. As in the last chapter, if we do not stop to pay attention to the simple, almost mundane, things of the book of Ruth, the story will pass us by. Instead of seeing this as just a simple and pastoral short story, God Himself will be revealed to us as the hero of the ordinary life which is

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As I spent time preparing for the book of Ruth, I must admit that I was caught a little off guard with how the book struck me. I guess more appropriately, I was not expecting Ruth to strike me so forcefully. All in all, it has been impressed upon me that Ruth is about the providence and grace of God, not in spite of the simple and pastoral setting of Ruth, but because of it. As I put my notes

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