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Week 2 When the Israelites were exiled in Babylon, there was a prophecy that told of a day when the Messiah would come and restore King David’s rule. Only they thought he would establish an earthly kingdom, in the same way as King David had. This passage from Isaiah shows that this Messiah would not […]

Week 2 Esther would be considered one of the more fortunate Israelites while living in exile in Babylon. After the Persians conquered the Babylonians, Esther was made a Queen for the new King Xerxes. She would have had a prosperous life living in the palace. Yet, keeping her Israelite traditions would be difficult to do

Week 2 Israel turned from following God’s ways, and therefore stopped experiencing the blessing of living with God. They turned to the world’s ways of living, and so experienced the results of living that way. Another nation, Babylon, conquered them, and carried many of the citizens of Jerusalem back to Babylonia to try to force

Week 2 No doubt, David had faced formidable opponents before. I would not want to go up against a lion or a bear without a high-powered rifle. All he had was a stick (shepherd’s staff), a sling, and a few stones. But this was different. David was going up against a hardened warrior. Goliath had

Week 2 Moses was a long way from home. In fact, he was pretty sure he would never go back and probably did not want to go back. Moses was born into slavery and was scheduled for drowning in the Nile River along with all the other Hebrew baby boys. Through his mother’s bravery and

Week 2 Abraham’s child, Isaac, had two children, and the youngest of the two had 12 sons – which would then become the 12 Tribes of Israel. Abraham was on his way to becoming the father of a great nation. Yet there was another challenge that they had to overcome – sibling rivalry reared its

Week 1 Abraham lived a blessed life. That does not mean that he lived an easy life though. Just as he had moved into his retirement villa, God asked him to travel to a land he had never been to before. Traveling that far with all his family and possessions would be very dangerous. He

Week 1 After the death of Able, things went from bad to worse. Instead of choosing for God, people were becoming increasingly more broken in how they lived with God and one another. I’m not sure it was really living at all – at least not in the way that God had designed it. It

Week 1 Unless you are an only child, you have probably experienced sibling jealousy and rivalry. You are not alone. The very first children to inhabit the earth experienced it. And if you think your fights were bad, this one ended in one brother killing the other. Yes, God’s good creation was broken again. Cain

Week 1 God created for us a perfect world. In one bite, it became broken.Genesis 3:6 (NIV) [6] When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her