David sent messengers to a rich man named Nabal, asking him to give David and his men something, anything he could find. David thought Nabal owed him something in exchange for not harming Nabal’s employees. But Nabal chose not to give David anything, since he didn’t even know who David was. So David took 400 men with him and went to attack Nabal and murder all the men who worked for him.
Continue reading The Story of David and Abigail—A man named Elkanah had two wives, named Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah didn’t, because God wouldn’t let her. Peninnah kept tormenting Hannah about this for years, and she was miserable. Her husband told her she should stop crying, because she had him, which was better than having children. Hannah silently asked God to give her a son. When Eli, the priest and leader of Israel, saw her mouth moving but didn’t hear her saying anything, he told her she needed to stop getting drunk.
Then God let Hannah have a son, and she named him Samuel. She was so happy to finally have a son that she gave him away to Eli, whose sons were scoundrels. Eli tried to get his sons to change their ways, but God wouldn’t let them repent, because he wanted an excuse to kill them.
Continue reading The Story of the Calling of Samuel—Samson was another judge, who saved his people when God let the Philistines take over Israel. Samson was a life-long Nazirite, which required him to abstain from wine, corpses, and haircuts.
While Samson was on his way to a Philistine city to visit a Philistine woman, he was attacked by a lion. God gave him the strength to easily kill the lion with his bare hands. Later, when he was on his way to the Philistine city again to marry the Philistine woman, he found that some bees had made a nest in the lion’s body. He took some honey out of the dead lion and shared it with his parents. But he didn’t tell anyone where the honey came from.
Samson challenged 30 Philistine men to try to solve a riddle by the end of his week-long wedding feast. They agreed that the losing party would have to give the winning party 30 sets of clothes. So Samson told them a “riddle” that they couldn’t possibly make sense of without knowing about the lion incident that no one but Samson knew about.
The Philistine men realized that Samson was unfairly trying to take their property. So they threatened to burn down his new wife’s house unless she told them the answer to the riddle. Samson’s wife cried constantly for the rest of the week until Samson gave her the answer. Then she told the answer to the men, and the men gave the answer back to Samson.
Samson knew those 30 Philistine men must have cheated, since there was no other way they could have possibly solved his “riddle”. But he gave them the promised 30 sets of clothes… which he got by killing 30 other Philistine men.
Continue reading The Story of Samson’s Riddle—Abraham’s nephew Lot was a righteous man. He lived in the city of Sodom, where nearly everyone was so wicked that God decided to kill them all.1 So God sent two angels (who looked like men) to Sodom. Lot met them and convinced them to spend the night at his house.
Continue reading The Story of Sodom and Gomorrah—When Noah’s flood had reduced the world population to 8, and while the population was recovering for a while after that, everyone in the world spoke the same language. People who had moved to the East started to build a great, unifying city with a huge tower that would reach to the heavens.
Continue reading The Story of the Tower of Babel—In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul discusses the relative merits of prophecy versus speaking in tongues. He says as far as the church is concerned, it’s better to prophesy, because no one can understand you when you speak in tongues.1 But what about when unbelievers are around? What’s the best thing to do then?
Continue reading Is it more beneficial to unbelievers to prophesy or to speak in tongues?