38635 Overview: Ruth

God uses a faithful non-Israelite to bring restoration to his people.

The book of Ruth is a beautifully crafted look at how God’s good purpose interplays with the human decisions. It’s a tale of love, loss, faithfulness, and redemption.

The Faithful Gentile

Picking up “in the days when the judges ruled,” the book of Ruth tells the story of Naomi, the Moabite widow Ruth, and the farmer Boaz. The four chapters of the book are each designed with intentional symmetry. The first and last chapters reflect how loyalty turned this story of tragedy and death into a story of joy and birth. The inner chapters show how Naomi and Ruth make a plan, followed by an encounter between Ruth and Boaz, followed by Naomi and Ruth rejoicing.

Curiously, God is hardly mentioned in the book of Ruth. At a time when we look for God to be active through a judge or king, God instead works out his will through the everyday faithfulness of his people. This faithfulness not only benefits Naomi and her family but goes on to bless the world through the family of David, the line from which the Messiah would eventually come.

38636 Overview: Lamentations

A collection of five funeral poems offered on behalf of Jerusalem after its destruction by Babylon.

The Book of Lamentations may not be the most popular book in the Bible, but it is an essential ingredient for helping humans to understand an important aspect of their relationship with God – the expression of grief and distress. This special book is a collection of five lament poems recounting the tragic fall of Jerusalem to Babylon.

Jerusalem has fallen

This catastrophic event was the direct result of Israel’s constant rebellion against God’s Covenant despite His persistent warnings through prophets to Jerusalem’s royal lineage.

Now surrounded by war, grief and suffering, the people of Israel acknowledge their sin and cry out to God for restoration and repentance in the lament poems, which are a way to process emotion and confusion at the disorder and chaos and to express themselves to God. Reading Lamentations helps us today to understand that communicating our distress to God about what’s wrong in our lives is an appropriate response to the evil in the world, rather than keeping it bottled up inside.

38637 Overview: Ecclesiastes

This book forces us to face death and random chance, and the challenges they pose to a naive belief in God’s goodness.

The Book of Ecclesiastes is the critic’s response to Proverbs, which states we live a good life when we fear God and follow wisdom.

Can you trust God’s wisdom?

This book’s author and the teacher believe that life is hevel, that is, temporary and fleeting like smoke or vapor. We all try to build meaning and purpose in life apart from God, investing in pursuits and things that have no lasting meaning, but time marches on, we all die and bad things happen to good people.

In the end, the key to contentment comes from wisdom, accepting hevel, fearing God, keeping His commandments, and putting our trust in Him. We remain puzzled by life’s mysteries, but He will bring true justice that fuels our ability to live lives of honesty and integrity.

38638 Overview: Esther

God providentially uses two exiled Israelites to rescue His people from certain doom, without any explicit mention of God or His activity!

A classic story of good versus evil, the Book of Esther is a unique account in the Bible. It gives us a glimpse of the Jews who remained outside their homeland after the Exile, particularly the Jews living in the Persian Empire.

God is never absent

Here we see that the author chose a fascinating literary choice – never once is God mentioned in the entire Book. This behind-the-scenes take of God at work is brilliantly displayed throughout Esther’s chapters through “coincidences” and “happen chances” that help to save the Jews from Haman’s wicked plot to destroy them.

Even today Jewish people celebrate Purim each year by reading Esther, enjoying fun traditions, and giving gifts as described in Esther Chapter 9:20-32. Christians, too, can benefit from reading Esther as it reminds us that even though it appears God is absent, He is still at work in our lives and will not abandon His promises while we are living in a murky and ambiguous world.

38639 Overview: Daniel

The story of Daniel motivates faithfulness despite exile in Babylon. His visions offer hope that God will bring all nations under his rule.

Can there ever be faith again in the midst of darkness, rebellion, and gloom? According to the Book of Daniel, yes, there can. This remarkable piece of Scripture has encouraged the faithful for centuries, giving us a glimpse of future events that already came to pass and are yet to come.

A model exile

Christians and Jews alike will appreciate the timely events that Daniel sees in his visions while giving us hope to look forward to where evil hearts and rulers will one day finally come to an end.

We also have a chance to get to know Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and see them as the model example for believers living in the midst of a dark world, which applies both to Daniel’s day and to ours in the end times. Keep an eye out for key manifestations of Jesus Christ as well, as He is often referred to descriptions of being like a “Son of Man.”

38640 Overview: Ezra-Nehemiah

Many Israelites return to Jerusalem after the exile and face some success alongside many spiritual and moral failures.

Originally written together as a single book in the Jewish Scriptures, Ezra and Nehemiah document the fulfillment of God’s promise that Israel will return home after 70 years of exile in Babylon and restore their ruined dwellings again.

From the rubble

Zerubbabel and Nehemiah both play a part in restoring God’s Temple, while Zerubbabel takes charge over governing affairs, and Nehemiah rebuilds the Walls of Jerusalem. Ezra, a descendant of Aaron, arrives in Jerusalem later and instills God’s laws to the post-Exile Jewish generation.

Note how the people received revelation and responded after they listened to the Word of God that was being taught to them. This response is remarkably similar to Jesus’ teachings about God’s Kingdom centuries later, and His often-repeated phrase, “He who has an ear, let him hear…” The takeaway? Whether it’s ancient Israel or our worship today, we all must receive a new heart from God and listen to Him.

38641 Overview: Chronicles

Chronicles retells the entire Old Testament story, highlighting the future hope of the messianic king and a restored temple.

Like the Books of Samuel and Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles was also written as the single Book of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible. Many readers today, however, skip reading it when they find that it repeats much of the material from its previous books. But is Chronicles necessary to read? Yes, it is!

The story so far

Chronicles is the last Book in the Hebrew Bible as it summarizes the continued relationship between God and Israel through the Blessing of Abraham. The arrangement of the content in Chronicles invites the reader to explore the stories of each section and reveal interesting details about David, Solomon, God’s temple, the kings of Judah, and how they work together. Chronicles is also an excellent historical reference for those studying specific facts in the Scriptures.

Time to pull up your sleeves and embark on a treasure hunt to dig up the “gems” in God’s Word!

31051 God and You

God exists. He is the supreme personal being with intelligence and wisdom who created all things. He exists beyond our time and space. This God is absolutely good, holy, just, beautiful, and powerful. He is love. He is light. He is life!

It Was Good

God is the designer of all things.

His creation was good! God is love. Out of love and out of goodness, God created all things visible and invisible.

Look around you. Everything from the bright sunrise in the morning to the starry night, from mountains, lakes, meadows, forests, deserts, and oceans to all kinds of creatures both great and small, from galaxies with billions of stars to molecules, atoms, and quarks—the majesty, grandeur, power, elegance, and fierceness and gentleness of nature all point to its magnificent Creator.

Science is from God because he ordered our universe. King Solomon of ancient Israel claims: “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” God created this world so that we may discover the wonders of His nature in His creation.

Arts are from God because he is the master artist. Creativity, beauty, and many other qualities that we appreciate reflect the nature of God.

Living in Two Worlds

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

So, the Hebrew Bible begins.

Dr. Tim Mackie, the co-founder of bibleproject.com and a professor at Western Seminary in Oregon, explains:

“So, in the Bible, the ideas of Heaven and Earth are ways of talking about God’s space and our space.”

In the Biblical understanding of creation, heaven and earth represent the spiritual realm and physical world.

“They’re different in their nature. But here’s what’s really interesting, is that in the Bible, these are not always separate spaces. So think of Heaven and Earth as different dimensions that can overlap in the same exact space.”

That means heaven is not a place you go to after you die. The spiritual realm coexists with our physical world. Dr. Mackie continues:

“Which is kind of crazy because the union of Heaven and Earth is what the story of the Bible is all about—how they were once fully united, and then driven apart, and about how God is bringing them back together once again.”

Furthermore, according to Dr. Mackie, the Garden of Eden is “a place where God and humanity dwelt together perfectly, no separation. And humans then partner with God in building a flourishing, beautiful world.”

So, we are a spiritual, physical, and relational creation. We are designed to be in two domains—spiritual and physical, heaven and earth—with God and with one another, in perfect harmony.

Meaning and Purpose

Because God exists and because we are His creation, our existence has a meaning and purpose. We are not the product of accidents or random chances. We are brought into existence by a supreme being of great intelligence and wisdom. We are created because He loves us. We exist to receive His goodness.

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)

We are here for a good purpose to flourish.

The world is full of His glory. It is a place of abundance and wealth. Under God’s rule and authority, we are meant to manage His creation and enjoy His blessings.

Union

Creation in Genesis is just the beginning of God’s ultimate plan for humanity. As it becomes clear as you walk through the story in the Bible, God’s design is our union with Him.

Just as God has always existed in three Persons in perfect union—Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit—as One, He desires us to be one with Him. In an intimate conversation with the Father, Jesus, in His last hours before His arrest and crucifixion, shares His prayer “that they may be one just as we are one—I in them and you in me—that they may be completely one.” (John 17:22b–23a)

This perfect union between God and man was first realized in the person of Jesus. Jesus is God Incarnate, the Word that became flesh, 100% divine and 100% human.

Even though Jesus is perfectly one with the Father, He remains the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Similarly, we do not lose our individuality or identity in this union with God. Rather, we become all that we are designed to be. In a sense, we become truly human again.

In union with God, we are never lonely. We are fully known and embraced. We are one with God; so, we are fully alive because He is life. We are in the constant flow of love because He is love. We bask in the light of peace and joy because He is light.