Fall Bible Study Introduction:

God-willing, during the 15 weeks of this Fall’s Bible Class we will study character sketches of 11 different Old Testament believers. Our study will start in the time of the Judges and continue through King David. We plan to study the lives of the following Old Testament believers: Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Ruth, Hannah, Eli, Samuel, Saul, and David. [On Reformation Sunday we’ll depart from the Old Testament and consider a part of Martin Luther’s life.]

Although believers were not called "Christians" until the New Testament, the Old Testament believers were also very much "Christians." A study of the lives and works of Old Testament believers is beneficial to us for in their lives we will see the Hand of God working even as He does in our own lives; we will see faith in Christ active in them even as we pray it will be active in us; we will see their sins and their need for mercy even as we know and feel our own sinfulness in our hearts and the joy of the Gospel.

A walk through a part of the Old Testament with those who lived it will surely be an exciting and faith-strengthening journey. We have God’s own assurance that it will be so: "Now all these things happened to them (the Israelite forefathers in the Old Testament) as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come" (1 Corinthians 10:11).

Old Testament (Solomon-)