I’m very thankful for elders who are doing the best they can, within the confines of the laws of our land, to resume in full…classes, fellowship, assemblies of all kinds. They are soul-focused men who know that being together and in the Word is crucial to spiritual growth and unity in the body.
Are you resuming your ladies class? Our ladies are meeting now, under a pavilion, in fairly distanced lawn chairs on alternating Monday nights for getting in the Word. (Our Bible classes on Sundays and Wednesdays have resumed but, because of the need for distancing, our ladies class cannot yet meet indoors.)
If you’re getting to resume anywhere or even if you can resume by ZOOM, I hope you will think about letting Digging Deep be your class study guide. It’s a year-long study and it (the Word through it) can give your ladies the coherence that’s been hard to find for the past few months. It will put them “on the same page” of God’s Word and it will promote the unity that some of our congregations are sorely needing right now. It’s a year-long study and it is not just full of the Bible—the study IS the Bible with relatively small amounts of commentary to give you help with application. The valuable online facet with monthly podcasts and weekly audio podcasts is helpful even if you haven’t been able to fully resume assembling with the body. (But ladies can do the study even if they are unable to fully connect to all the technology.)
I’m going to include here the introduction to the study and a link, once more, to the introductory video. Here’s the link to the video: https://thecolleyhouse.org/digging-deep-introduction-video
Let me also say that, if your ladies would like to do the study concurrently with the thousands who are doing it right now, it’s the time of year to start. The study actually began on September 1st, but it’s easy to “catch up” if you’re able to start anytime prior to November 1st. All podcasts and discussion is archived so you can catch everything even if you are not studying along with the big group. If you think you’d like to investigate, go join the facebook group called “Digging Deep in God’s Word.”
I want to thank every woman who has contacted me to let me know about life changes/growth due to DD. It’s very helpful in a time of relative isolation, to know that the Word is still connecting us and correcting us. When I read that DD has changed the course of a life, I know that all glory is His. (I mean that very literally in view of the last year’s study of Glory!)
Let me know if I can help your ladies start this study together! He is good to let us do this together!
If you’re deliberating about the study, here’s this year’s intro. (You don’t have to do this study to be a faithful woman of God. But you do have to study!) Remember, you can also do the study all by yourself from your home. Lots of women are!
Before the Mountain…
God was reminding His children of Who had brought this trembling people to the quaking smoke-covered mountain and so “all these words” in Exodus 20 begin with “I am.” He was. He is. He will be. The great I AM.
And His most recent display of glory, for them, was their over-and-over-again-miraculous delivery from the bondage of Egypt. He could have just picked them up and sat them down beside this mountain, but the bloody Nile, the frogs and flies and snakes and deaths, congealed Red Sea that came crashing in on the army of Pharaoh…all of that surely was to teach them and the nations around them that this was aholy work and that this nation was a sanctified people.
We know that the quaking mountain, the trumpet, and the smoke was really all about a baby in Bethlehem and a cross in nearby Jerusalem that would finally be the miraculous delivery from the worst kind of bondage. It would be a holy work for our sanctification. God was in those thunderings and, with the work of His finger on tables of stone, He was about to
change the world and cultures and legal systems for centuries to come. Have you ever thought about the fact that the body of Jesus the Lord, who was later to be accused of defiling the Sabbath, was resting on that very first Sabbath as He looked on the work of the first six days of that entity called time that’s really only for those of us who are in the brief flash of an earthly testing moment that we call life? Have you thought about the fact that He already had a plan for his physical body to temporarily rest on another Sabbath after His lowly entrance into our world through a human birth canal? That flesh would rest after His own testing and triumph over evil and his glorification as he was lifted for our sins?
He knew all about all of this, already. He knew about the darkness on the Golgotha hillside outside of Jerusalem way back there when He was thundering on the dark mountain at Sinai. He knew about the final holy Sabbath when he wrote the words “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” And He already knew about the tomb in which His own flesh would take that final Sabbath rest. He knew that He would walk away from that tomb and that mortals would hear the words. “He is not here, for He is risen.” And those words following that last Sabbath rest would make all the difference for you and me.
He already knew. He chose. Nothing about the mountain was accidental. On that day at Sinai, the people saw the thunderings and lightnings and the mountain smoking and they stood afar off and trembled. And on that other day, there was darkness from the sixth hour, and the earth quaked and the rocks were torn and bodies came forth from graves. The veil of the temple was torn. Even the soldiers and the one who pierced Him, observing the quaking and the darkness, said “Truly this was the Son of God.”
Nothing was accidental about this mountain, either. “It is finished.” He came not to destroy (thwart the purposes of ) the law, but to reach the law’s grand and driving cause of redemption. That’s why we call it a scheme of redemption. It was purposefully executed from before the foundation of the world. The Captain of our salvation was working already, at Sinai, and
He accomplished His most difficult work at Calvary. He finished the work and then He rested.
Before the Mountain…
When the Lord says “Hear O Israel”, may the Israel of the Lord listen.
But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? (2 Corinthians 3:7,8)
