Wednesday Night Bible Study (Flatonia Baptist Church)

After Job, his three friends, and Elihu have all had their say, God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind, shifting Job's perspective completely and calling us to consider how we can fail to trust God with our struggles when we fully comprehend who He is.

We conclude our study of Job by discussing Job's confession of his sin and God's gracious restorative work for Job as well as his friends. We finish with a discussion of some key questions raised by the book of Job. Thank you for going on this journey with us!

We begin our study of the monarchy in ancient Israel with a brief overview of Israel's history and a study of the people's desire for a king to that they could be like the other nations around them. We consider what they were choosing to give up and what they desired to gain in having a king appointed for them. This session lays the ground work for the rest of our study, in which we will look at the ways in which Israel's kings - specifically Saul, David, and Solomon - are used in Scripture to reveal truth about the true King of kings.

We begin our study of Saul's reign by first looking to Deuteronomy to understand God's design for the kings who would lead His people. Then, we follow the events that led Samuel to find Saul and proclaim him as Israel's king. We examine what it means to be anointed by God and how Saul inaugurates an office that Christ ultimately fulfills: the "anointed one," or Messiah.

As we continue to study Israel's first king, Saul, we see the beginnings of a life-long pattern of Saul making decisions out of concern for what other people may think or do, rather than out of devotion to God. Saul's failures in 1 Samuel 13 and 15 result in God declaring that Saul would not endure as Israel's king and provide us with a contrast against which we can examine the humility, obedience, and devotion of Jesus, the King of kings.

In this session we study the unraveling of Saul after his rejection by God as king. We observe how Saul's pridefulness and jealousy led him to treat the kingdom as his possession, rather than as God's, and we see the beginnings of what develops into a stark contrast between Saul's mindset and that of his successor, David.

We wrap up the story of Saul by looking into the origins of his failure as king and tracing how those failures point to deeper needs that are ultimately fulfilled in Christ, the King of kings.

As we shift our focus to David we examine how he embodies the idea of the anointed one, the good shepherd, and the victor - all roles that will ultimately find their fulfillment in Christ.