Preaching & Teaching Guide

On the text

• 1 Samuel 16:7: “the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” God says it while Samuel is admiring the wrong son.
• David was not even in the room. Jesse said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep” (1 Samuel 16:11). The one God chose was the one his own family forgot to call.
• Hebrews 12:11 is honest about how formation feels: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

On the text

• Exodus 3:1 opens on ordinary work: “Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro.” Stephen adds the length of it: “when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness” (Acts 7:30).
• Twice David had Saul within reach and twice he refused: “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed” (1 Samuel 24:6). Delay formed restraint in him.
• Psalm 27:14 says it twice: “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” Waiting is not passive. It takes courage.

On the text

• Psalm 105:19 summarizes Joseph's years: “until what he had said came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him.” The promise itself was the test.
• Joseph names evil as evil and God as greater: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). He does not pretend his brothers did nothing wrong.
• God told Elijah, “hide yourself by the brook Cherith” (1 Kings 17:3). Then “after a while the brook dried up” (17:7), and God sent him to a widow with almost nothing (17:9). Even the place God chose ran out, so Elijah learned to depend on God, not the place.

On the text

• After his conversion Paul “went away into Arabia,” and only “after three years” went up to Jerusalem (Galatians 1:17–18). The apostle to the nations began with years almost no one saw.
• Luke 1:80 says John “was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.” Then Luke 3:1–2 lists an emperor, a governor, rulers and high priests, and says the word of God came not to any of them but “to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”
• Of Jesus' years in Nazareth, Luke says only that He “was submissive to them” and “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:51–52). Thirty years, two verses.

On the text

• Both houses in Matthew 7 face the same storm: “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock” (7:25). The difference was laid where no one could see it.
• 1 Peter 5:6 says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.” The humbling is ours; the timing is His.
• The next verse gives the posture for waiting: “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).