Kootenai Church Sunday School

What's actually prohibited in "you shall not make for yourself an idol"? Dave Rich works through the Second Commandment verse by verse, and the answer is more precise than most people assume.
Lesson 31 in this verse-by-verse study examines Exodus 20:4-6, comparing it carefully against its restatement in Deuteronomy 5. Rich breaks down the Hebrew terms behind "idol" and "likeness," then makes a case from the tabernacle's own furnishings (the lampstand, the cherubim) that images of created things were never the problem. The real prohibition, he argues, is worship and service directed at an image, whether of a false god or of Yahweh himself.
From there, Rich traces the pattern through Aaron's golden calf, Jeroboam's calves at Bethel and Dan, and the worship of an ephod during the judges, before tackling the harder question of why Israel specifically couldn't picture God the Father. His answer rests on a simple historical fact: at Sinai, they saw no form. He also takes on what "visiting the iniquity of the fathers" really means, clearing up a phrase many readers misunderstand.
This lecture sets up next week's harder question: what about images of Jesus?

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Charles Spurgeon hated controversy. He spent nearly forty years fighting it anyway.
In this second installment on the life and legacy of the "Prince of Preachers," Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You, traces Spurgeon's place in what he calls the Truth War: the long, reluctant fight against error that defined Spurgeon's ministry far more than most modern admirers realize.
Johnson walks through Spurgeon's battles one by one, from the baptismal regeneration controversy to his outspoken stand against American slavery, through the Rivulet hymnal dispute, and into the Downgrade Controversy that consumed his final years and ultimately cost him his denomination. Along the way, he exposes a strange irony: many who praise Spurgeon today stand against nearly everything he actually preached.
Drawing on Spurgeon's own words, Ian Murray's The Forgotten Spurgeon, and even a German theologian's begrudging tribute, Johnson shows why Spurgeon's example as a defender of doctrine may matter more for the church now than his example as a preacher.
This episode challenges listeners to ask whether they truly stand where Spurgeon stood, or simply admire him from a safe historical distance.

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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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