Kootenai Church Sunday School

What does the whole Bible teach about which acts, attitudes, and attributes receive God's approval? In Lesson 30, Dave Rich shifts the class into Normative Ethics — the search for answers — and announces the organizing framework for the rest of the series: the Ten Commandments.
Dave opens with a survey of biblical ethics summaries, from Ecclesiastes 12 and Micah 6:8 to the Golden Rule and Paul's charge to do all things to the glory of God. These summaries, he shows, are consistent with one another — and consistent with the Decalogue, which offers exactly the right level of detail to cover virtually everything the Bible addresses in ethics.
The lesson centers on the prologue and First Commandment of Exodus 20. God's self-identification — "I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt" — is not mere historical background. It is the ground of all obligation. Rescue precedes command. Grace motivates obedience. Israel's redemption from slavery is a type of the Christian's redemption from sin, death, and the devil — which means the rationale of the prologue applies fully to every believer today.
The First Commandment, Dave argues, is not merely one commandment among ten. It includes all the rest. Every sin is, at its core, an act of disloyalty to God — a manufactured idol placed before Him. The commandment still confronts us. The names of ancient gods may have faded, but the human heart, as Calvin observed, remains a perpetual forge of idols.

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Most Christians agree they should read the Bible—but how often? How much? And what do you do with the genealogies and census lists? In Lesson 29 of Christian Ethics and the Old Testament, Dave Rich turns the lens on the Bible itself, examining what Scripture says about its own intake and what that means for everyday practice.
Rich walks through Psalm 19, Psalm 119, Joshua 1:8, Deuteronomy 6, and the example of the Bereans in Acts 17 to build a cumulative case for what biblical engagement actually looks like. The pattern that emerges is clear: God's Word is meant to be present in a believer's life pervasively—not casually or occasionally—and the psalmist's deep love for Scripture sets the standard for how we ought to hold it.
Rich also gets practical. While the Bible doesn't issue a command to read a set number of chapters daily, it does establish an expectation. He puts the numbers on the table: reading through the entire Bible in a year requires just 12–15 minutes a day—roughly 1% of a waking day. He cites a 2025 survey showing that only 31% of Protestant churchgoers read their Bibles daily and challenges listeners to consider whether their current pace is enough to genuinely know what the whole Bible teaches.
This lesson is a needed wake-up call and a practical encouragement to anyone who wants to pursue biblical ethics from a foundation of Scripture they actually know.

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The Bible is trustworthy. But how do you know—and how do you use it rightly? In Lesson 28 of Christian Ethics and the Old Testament, Dave Rich brings the series' extended examination of scriptural authority to a close and turns the corner toward a foundational question: how do we interpret the Bible we've established as God's Word?
Rich opens by tackling the charge of circular reasoning head-on. Is it logically valid to prove the Bible's authority from the Bible itself? He argues yes—and shows why that's the only coherent approach when dealing with any ultimate source of truth. Archaeological evidence and fulfilled prophecy support Scripture's claims, but they don't serve as the foundation. The Bible is its own authority.
From there, Rich moves into hermeneutics—the art and science of biblical interpretation—grounding the class in the literal, grammatical, historical method endorsed by Calvin, Luther, and the church's own statement of faith. The goal is simple: discover the original, natural meaning of the text.
To make that concrete, Rich walks through several interpretive errors that produce ethical errors—beginning with proof texting and then addressing what he calls hyper-literalism. Using the holy kiss, foot washing, and the head covering passage in 1 Corinthians 11, he demonstrates the difference between a timeless biblical principle and its culturally bound expression. Wooden, context-free obedience to the form can actually undermine the principle the text is trying to teach.
Clear thinking about interpretation is inseparable from clear thinking about Christian ethics.

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The Bible we hold is a translation of ancient manuscripts. But does that gap between the original autographs and our English Bibles introduce error we should be worried about? In Lesson 27 of Christian Ethics and the Old Testament, Dave Rich works through the transmission and translation of Scripture—and makes the case that we have every reason for confidence.
Rich opens with the logic: reliable manuscripts plus faithful translation equals God's Word in English. Either piece can fail, and he walks through what happens when it does. From there he examines the manuscript evidence for the Old Testament—the Masoretic Text, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Septuagint—showing that agreement across those sources is remarkably stable. The one significant variant, Psalm 22:16, turns out to have strong textual support for "they pierced my hands and feet," consistent with its unmistakably messianic context.
New Testament transmission is even more extensively attested—over 5,800 Greek manuscripts, with 99.5% of the text determinable from existing evidence. Rich walks through the nature of the variants honestly, showing that the most significant ones are well known, clearly marked in modern translations, and doctrinally non-threatening.
The lesson closes with a survey of English translations across a spectrum from highly literal to outright corrupt: the YLT, NASB, LSB, ESV, NIV, New Living, and then the Message, the New World Translation, the Passion Translation, and several others that distort the text to serve a theological agenda.
God had a purpose in giving His Word, Rich argues, and that same providence extends to its transmission and translation into every language.

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How do we know the Bible we hold today actually contains God's words—all of them, and only them? In Lesson 26 of Christian Ethics and the Old Testament, Dave Rich works through the doctrine of canonicity and its direct bearing on Christian ethics. If the whole Bible teaches us which acts, attitudes, and attributes receive God's approval, then it matters enormously whether we have the right books.
Rich opens with three definitions of canon—exclusive, functional, and ontological—and argues that the most important one is often overlooked. Books don't become God's Word because the church recognized them. They are God's Word by virtue of what they are. Church recognition follows divine inspiration; it doesn't create it.
From there, Rich builds a case for confidence in the 66-book canon rooted in God's own stated purpose for His Word. If God speaks to accomplish something through His people, He will providentially ensure those people have access to what He has said. The near-unanimous agreement of the church across centuries on the canon—without any centralized authority enforcing it—is itself remarkable evidence of that providence.
Rich also walks through what doesn't belong: the Apocrypha and Deuterocanonical books added by the Council of Trent in 1546, the Pseudepigrapha, and the Gnostic gospels of Mary and Thomas. Each is examined and found wanting. The session closes with reasons to believe the canon is closed—structurally, historically, and textually. 

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