1-2 Samuel Book 3 Intro

This study guide can be used for individual Bible study, small group curriculum, or family studies.

Small Group Leaders Note:
The purpose of this study guide is to draw you and your group into conversation about God’s Word and its application to our lives. The questions are posed in an intentional order and each of the questions has a specific purpose. As you are familiar with the purpose of each question, this will help guide the flow of the discussion.

A high-level view of the five basic questions and their functions:

1. Introduction (lean in). The goal of this first question is to get everyone in the group to “lean in” and get involved. It is normally easy to answer, fun, and creates a sense of energy—so much so that you’ll sometimes see group members physically lean in as they engage with the discussion.
2. Observation (look down). This is an observation question. It is designed to help group members “look down” at the text of scripture and see the relevant details and facts in the Bible passage being studied. This question establishes a solid foundation for the rest of the study. Regardless of how much time someone has spent studying God’s Word in their life, everyone in the group can get involved simply by taking an observant look at what the passage says.
3. Evaluation (look up). What do we learn about God from this passage? This is the ultimate goal of every Bible study—to get a clearer picture of the God we worship so that we can serve and love Him better.
4. Understanding (look out). This question helps group members “look out” and see the principles of the Bible passage through the lens of the world today. It builds a bridge between the facts of the passage and our understanding of the passage, and how it relates to our lives and culture.
5. Application (look in). Here is where group members begin to “look in” and see what God might be nudging them to change in their lives. During this part of the study, group members move from simply “knowing” God’s Word, to actually “doing” what God’s Word says. It’s the final step of all study of the Bible: life change—transformation into the likeness of Christ.

(Adapted from the Liquid Curriculum series)

Five Transformational Activities

An important part of discipleship is putting into practice what God reveals to you through your study. In our study guides, we are highlighting five transformational activities that can deepen and enrich your time with God—in whatever Bible study setting you find yourself. These activities serve as opportunities for you to take additional steps in growing deeper in your faith and drawing closer to your Creator. They are also great practices that we are asking each of our small groups to incorporate into the life of their groups.

At the end of each week, we are recommending one of these activities for you to integrate into your study and devotional time—be it with your family, small group, or any other place you might engage with these study guides. Here is a list of these transformational activities, as well as a brief description of each. We pray that these activities may deepen and enrich your time with God and help draw you closer to the God you love.

1. Bible Study — We seek to learn more about the triune God with the goal of knowing Him better and applying His will to our lives.
2. Prayer — We seek to learn how to have a deeper and richer prayer life that is consistent and meaningful. We will practice this both individually and corporately.
3. Community — We grow more when we are together than when we are in isolation. We want to have a place to love and support each other and encourage one another in the faith. “From Jesus, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Eph 4:16).
4. Worship — We always seek to incorporate an element of worship into our study of God. Knowing about God is different than knowing and worshipping God. This worship may or may not include music. Worship is a response to all that God is with all that we are. All of life is worship.
5. Outreach — We seek to be healthy in our spiritual growth by avoiding insulation and isolation—which comes from a loss of vision and passion for reaching out and ministering to those around us.

Introduction

A question I sometimes get asked is one that always surprises me. People ask me if America is mentioned, or alluded to, anywhere in Bible prophecy. This is a fairly common question. Yet, underlying this question are some presuppositions that touch on precisely why we are examining this topic in this study guide series. We have taken up the task of exploring the many facets of how God presents the nation of Israel in scripture, and how He has designed His plan of salvation around them. The purpose for attempting this monumental task in this particular study is that Israel is prominently on display in 1st & 2nd Samuel. In these books, we see the United Kingdom period of Israel’s history described—warts and all. But as we make this journey through these books we must recognize that if we misunderstand who Israel is and what role this nation and people play in how God is going about saving the world, then the message of these two books will elude us. This brings us back to the purpose of this discussion regarding Israel—namely, to motivate us to view God’s Word through the correct lenses, to acknowledge and appreciate the centrality of Israel in the plan of God, and ultimately, to help reorient our thinking about Israel, the church, and how they relate with one another—and thus, what our role as the church should be.

We began week seven in our first study guide in this series with this quote: “It’s not about you.” We went on to discuss how many in the church have mistakenly been led to believe that we are the pinnacle of God’s redemptive plan and that the purpose of God including Israel in the Bible was merely as a cautionary tale—an example that we, as His “new people”, should avoid. In our studies, we saw how this perspective is the height of myopic arrogance and is a complete misunderstanding of God’s revelation of Himself. Yet, when we ask the question regarding America in prophecy we reveal the fact that we are, indeed, reading scripture through self-centered lenses. Without perhaps realizing it, we, in fact, do think it “is all about us”.

We have perhaps heard somewhere that America is a Christian nation. And some teachers unbelievably go so far as to say that God has made a covenant with America; that all of history has been leading up to this moment when America the brave will lead the charge in “bringing in the Kingdom.” Sadly, this unbiblical idea of Christian nationalism has become quite popular these days as people react to the decadence and moral decline encompassing us from every side. They long for us to get back to “the good ol’ days” when baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet characterized our nation. They long for the time when the Christian values this nation was founded upon were not under assault via every major news and entertainment outlet.

Yes, God has blessed this nation like few others—partly because of the Christian values with which it was founded—but, as we have discussed, that blessing is more precisely because we, as a nation, have blessed Israel (Gen 12:3). And yes, there are a lot of good, Bible-believing Christians in America. And many of these Bible-believing Christians love our country. But we cannot confuse patriotism with a wrong-headed Christian nationalism that attempts to redefine the promises of God to be addressing America in any way, shape, or form. How many times have you heard 2 Chronicles 7:14 quoted by leaders pleading for Christians in America to lead the way in prayerful repentance so that God will heal our land? “And [if] My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” When read in context, it’s clear that this verse has absolutely nothing to do with America, and to even try to apply it to our nation is to rip it from its context.

Fortunately, there seems to be a change afoot. As the importance of context is being championed in more and more quarters of Christianity today, the seeds of an increasing theological precision are taking root and growing. Many people are starting to move past the sensationalism of Christian nationalism and are beginning to understand that while many of the founding fathers were God-worshippers, America is not, indeed, a Christian nation. God made no promises to America. There is no covenant with the United States in scripture. America is not God’s chosen people. There are no prophecies in the Bible that point to us as a nation. And the realization is growing that the self-centered lens through which we can tend to view the world doesn’t serve us well when reading scripture. This draw toward seeing the church as the most important player in salvation history, and the temptation to look for America in scripture, both flow from a basic misunderstanding of how God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. Thus, in our study, we have been focusing on the big picture in scripture. And this big picture revolves around the covenants God makes with Israel—and how these covenants reveal the centrality of Israel in the outworking of God’s plan.

If God hasn’t made a covenant with America, then with what nation has He made a covenant? It is abundantly clear throughout scripture that Israel is the only nation in all of history with whom God has made a contract. All of salvation history flows through the chosen nation of Israel. God first set His plan in motion to save the world by choosing one man, Abraham—through whom He promised to create a new people, Israel—through which He would send a Messiah. He then not only sent that Messiah through Israel, He also gave the world His scriptures through the nation of Israel. Then, in the future, when Israel is released from her period of discipline for specifically rejecting the Messiah, and when Israel acknowledges that fact of that rejection, then Messiah will return to the world and fulfill His promises to Israel to establish a Kingdom of righteousness for a thousand years—a Kingdom wherein He will rule and reign in justice and peace. Even a cursory reading of scripture recognizes that some 80% of the Bible is focused on Israel. If you hold up your open Bible in one hand, and grab with your other hand the pages between Genesis 12 and Acts 2, you will get a visually powerful picture of how much of the Bible centers on specifically and only Israel. Israel is so central to God’s blessings, that He even made our treatment of Israel the stated measuring rod for how He doles out blessings in Genesis 12:3.

We must begin to read the Bible differently. We must move away from a Gentile-centric lens. When we re-establish and re-elevate Israel back to the place of prominence God designed for them, the flow of the Bible and salvation history falls into place. We must use Israel as the touchstone around which we orient each era in salvation history. William E. Blackstone was not only the first dean of Biola University but was also arguably the father of Zionism. Despite what slanders you may have been exposed to in modern culture about the term “Zionism”, it is the divinely ordained movement of God to get His people back into the land He gave them. Blackstone, this non-Jewish follower of God, proclaimed in 1908, “Israel is God’s sundial. If anyone desires to know our place in God’s chronology, our position in the great march of events, look at Israel.” This is what I mean by the centrality of Israel in God’s plan.

So, we are in the midst of examining how this mechanism of covenants—and specifically the covenants God made with Israel—provides the framework for understanding not only the heart of God but also His intentions. So important are the covenants, that it has been said you cannot rightly understand the Bible without understanding the covenants. God could have simply made promises to Israel, and that would have been enough. But as He was forming this nation, God took the additional step of fashioning these promises into legally binding contracts—by which He obligates Himself and to which He ties the status and honor of His name. God wants us to know that He is serious about His plans for Israel, and the confidence we should have in His faithfulness—a faithfulness that He connects to, and which is dependent upon, how He fulfills His promises to Israel. Which is why the heart of the book of Romans is centered on this very topic (chapters 9 – 11).

As a side note—when you’re talking about contracts, it’s important to note that you cannot interpret contracts allegorically. If I enter into a contract to purchase a house, I cannot one day tell the bank that I choose to interpret numbers and dates differently than they do—that I believe they are allegorical and thus, I will pay my mortgage whenever I feel like it. No, God chose to enter into literal contracts with mankind so that we would know what to expect from Him, and so that we would know His expectations of us.

In our exploration of the covenants, we began with the first three covenants God makes with the world: the Edenic, Adamic, and Noahic Covenants. We then spent the rest of Book Two unpacking some of the riches of the Abrahamic Covenant. We saw how foundational the Abrahamic Covenant is to the unfolding plan of God, and is the anchor covenant to which all subsequent covenants are related. Our next task will be to describe how these remaining covenants are really sub-covenants that elaborate each of the provisions of the Abrahamic Covenant—namely, Land, Seed, and Blessing.