I have two young women that come to my home almost every Friday morning at 5:45 AM. Yes, AM! None of us are early morning people so it is a stretch for us all to meet that early. These gals are both public school teachers and lead busy lives so this is the only time that works for them. If one can't be here one week, then we do not meet, so we didn't meet last week because of the Easter weekend. This morning one of the gals brought about 6 different kinds of homemade biscotti and a couple of fancy teas for an early 'breakfast' and a treat. I provided the hot water for tea. We don't do this every week so that it is not a burden to anyone timewise. And it is not required that anyone bring anything unless they want to. But we love it when it happens!
We are doing a study on Covenant, and we use Kay Arthur's Precept Upon Precept studies which go deep into the Word, so we do learn so much. I think this is a very valuable study for all believers and should be required to take it, as I did not understand the depth of the covenants God has made with us. There are so many facets to a covenant that have great meaning.
Since I do the teaching I am required to spend a lot of study time preparing the lesson first, and then preparing to teach it. Here are a couple of pictures to show what my table looks like when I study and what our study books look like.
Actually this picture shows a rather mild version of the table as I usually have about 5 different Bible versions for comparison, especially if the Scripture we are looking at is a bit difficult to grasp the meaning. I do Greek and sometimes Hebrew word studies, so that is why the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance and Vine's Bible Dictionary are there. The gals are supposed to do this during their home study but they don't have the time, so I include it as an extra handout, or if it short I just tell them and they will make a note of it. I find the word studies very interesting as it helps to define the original meaning to that Scripture. You can do the word study online and don't have to spend the money to buy all the books, but my computer desk isn't big enough to spread out all my papers and such. Also, I already had these books before I had a computer. You see my yellow note pad and the pink squares are sticky notes so that I don't forget to bring up those things at the appropriate time. (I am forgetful you know!) We also use colored pens/pencils to mark key words. Can I say intense? But oh, so worthwhile. The gals say that I have 'ruined' them as they will never read the Bible in the same way again. ;-)
I had said earlier that none of us are early morning people so getting up so early on Fridays can be quite difficult. But we all have found that once we are up and moving just this one day a week, we do not mind it at all. Wouldn't you say that the Holy Spirit is at work there?
In today's lesson we discussed some things about the Old Covenant - the Covenant of Law made at Mt. Sinai through Moses and with the Israelites that had been led out of Egypt. The points being made were how the people heard the Law and all agreed to obey it. But that did't last long and they soon had broken the covenant. God has said that failure to keep the covenant requires the death of the one who breaks it. So the result is that all those that came out of Egypt died in the wilderness, and only the second generation - the ones that were born while in the wilderness, were allowed into the Promised land. That doesn't mean those who died weren't saved, but the physical death was required. Then we looked at more examples of each generation after that who were given the opportunity to renew the covenant and to decide if they will obey it or not, and that the results of either obedience or disobedience was always the same. Next week we will begin to look at the New Covenant in the same context.
Kay Arthur has some great studies. You have found out, like me, that when you are researching to teach you get so much more out of a lesson. I do a small Bible Study at our church and love it! Would love to join you, but not at 5:00 in the morning! Grandma D.
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