NASHVILLE (BP) – This weekly Bible study appears in Baptist Press in a partnership with Lifeway Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention. Through its Leadership and Adult Publishing team, Lifeway publishes Sunday School curricula and additional resources for all age groups.
This week’s Bible study is adapted from the MasterWork curriculum.
Bible Passage: Daniel 9:1-19
Discussion Questions:
- How often do you pray out of discipline or habit? When was the last time you prayed because you felt compelled? Is one of these better than the other?
- Do you have a watershed moment in your own faith when God’s Word leapt off the page and spoke directly to you in a moment?
- Have there been times in your life where you wished or even prayed that God would speak to you in a dream, vision or audible voice? According to the author, how is the written Word of God superior to such things?
Food for thought:
Abraham saw God face to face. Jacob was attacked. David was confronted by a prophet. With Daniel, God’s initiative is less obvious. “I, Daniel, understood from the books according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah that the number of years for the desolation of Jerusalem would be 70” (Daniel 9:2, CSB). As his mind was gripped by the written Word, the urge to pray was born.
Yet there is no essential difference between Abraham and Daniel at this point. The medium of communication is different. To Abraham it was the spoken Word, to Daniel the written. But the same God spoke with the same purpose in mind: to call His servants to pray.
Were we given a choice, we would doubtless opt for visions and voices. To our untutored imaginations they seem so much more satisfactory. Yet a moment’s reflection should change our minds. A vision never stays. It goes away. You are left wondering, “Did it really happen to me?”
The same is even more true of a voice – God’s or anyone else’s. With the passage of time, a man’s confidence in his subjective experiences (hearing voices, seeing visions) diminishes. The saner the man is, the more the rule applies. It is the unstable, the paranoid, the insane person who clings to subjective rather than objective reality. And did not Jesus remind us that if we are not willing to heed Moses and the Prophets, even a visitation from the dead would leave us unmoved (Luke 16:31)?
Like Daniel we are given the written Word and the quickening Spirit. While it is true that there are subjective aspects to reading the Scriptures, words themselves do not go away. Nor do their meanings change. They may at times (though by no means always) lack the specificity of spoken words. But far from being less tangible, they are more so.
Daniel needed no voice. He was gripped by the written promise of God. It wrapped itself round his thinking and refused to go away. It created inner tension for him. The facts he observed around him clashed with the words “in the books.” The current political scene gave rise to no hope of the return of his people to their homeland. Yet the words were specific.
Masterwork
MasterWork is an ongoing Bible study curriculum based on works from a variety of renowned authors and offers pertinent, practical messages that adults will find uplifting and enriching. The list of authors and their books to be studied in upcoming months can be found at Lifeway.com/masterwork.
Other ongoing Bible study options for all ages offered by Lifeway can be found at Lifeway.com/SundaySchool.
