Sunday School Week 8
Epistolē
Pauline Epistles
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
Philemon
Prison Epistles
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
Philemon
General Epistles
Hebrews
James
1 Peter
2 Peter
1 John
2 John
3 John
Jude
The day we find the perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join it.
— Charles Spurgeon
GRACE
Romans — The Gospel
Romans 1
18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.
19 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them.
20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
21 Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused.
22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.
23 And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies.
25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.
26 That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other.
27 And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.
28 Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done.
29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.
30 They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents.
31 They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy.
32 They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
Sin
Salvation
Do I see why the Bible describes the damage and destruction of sin, allowing me to understand my desperate need for a Savior?
Romans 3:23 — For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.
Romans 6:23 — For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 10:9-10 — If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.
Corinthians — Cross / Completeness
1 Corinthians 1:18 — The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 — Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
2 Corinthians 5:17 — Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Galatians — Faith/Freedom
Galatians 2:20 — My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 5:1 — So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.
Ephesians — Identity / Family
Ephesians 2:8-10 — God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
Ephesians 2
19 So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family.
20 Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself.
Ephesians 3:20 — Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.
Philippians — Christ Centered
Philippians 1:21 — To me, the only important thing about living is Christ. And even death would be for my benefit.
Colossians — Supremacy / Sufficiency
Colossians 1:18 — Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything.
Colossians 3:17 — And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.
Colossians 3:23 — Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.
Thessalonians — Endurance/Eternity
Timothy — Leadership/Longevity
2 Timothy 1:13-14 — Hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching you learned from me—a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you.
2 Timothy 4:7 — I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful.
Titus — Godly Lives
Philemon — Forgiveness / Change
Hebrews — Faith in Jesus
Hebrews 12
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.
2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.
James — Faith / Works
James 1:22 — But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.
James 2:14 — What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone?
1 Peter / 2 Peter — Hope
1 John / 2 John / 3 John — Truth / Love
Jude — Faithfulness
Jude 1:3 — Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people.
Jude 1:24 — Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.
Revelation — Supremacy
Revelation 1:17-18 — When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if I were dead. But he laid his right hand on me and said, “Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.
Revelation 5:8 — And when he took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.
Revelation 8:3-4 — Then another angel with a gold incense burner came and stood at the altar. And a great amount of incense was given to him to mix with the prayers of God’s people as an offering on the gold altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, mixed with the prayers of God’s holy people, ascended up to God from the altar where the angel had poured them out.
Two Kingdoms
Revelation 5:5 — But one of the twenty-four elders said to me, Stop weeping! Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the heir to David’s throne, has won the victory. He is worthy to open the scroll and its seven seals.
Revelation 17:14 — Together they will go to war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will defeat them because he is Lord of all lords and King of all kings. And his called and chosen and faithful ones will be with him.
Revelation 20:10 — Then the devil, who had deceived them, was thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulfur, joining the beast and the false prophet. There they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Revelation 2:7 — Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God.
Revelation 2:11 — Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. Whoever is victorious will not be harmed by the second death.
Revelation 3:21 — Those who are victorious will sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat with my Father on his throne.
Revelation 21:7-8 — He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Revelation 12
10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, The victory and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah have now come. These things have come, because the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown out. He is the one who accused them day and night before our God.
11 They defeated him by the blood sacrifice of the Lamb and by the message of God that they told people. They did not love their lives too much. They were not afraid of death.
In such a fearful world, we need a fearless church.
— C.S. Lewis
Revelation reminds us to stay faithful in tough and troubling times.
Revelation reminds us that God is faithful.