Teacher's Manual and Explanation Guide: Bible Summary for Adults and Students

By Michael Kotch

The parent book, Bible for Adults and Students, is designed to give a comprehensive overview of the entire Bible to any adult or teen individual readers, along with being used as a textbook to teach the Bible to students grades seven through college level. This book, Teacher's Manual and Explanation Guide: Bible for Adults and Students, helps both teachers facilitate the teaching of Bible for Adults and Students to their students, and it helps the reader of any age get the most out of the parent book. The Teacher's Manual and Explanation Guide summarizes, simplifies, and gives explanations to the corresponding material in the parent book/textbook, Bible for Adults and Students. This is particularly useful when using the parent book/textbook to teach the Bible to younger students. It also helpful to any reader by adding explanations not found in the parent book/textbook because that book only has information directly from the Bible with no information outside of the Bible included. Using this Teacher's Manual and Explanation Guide in conjunction with Bible for Adults and Students will give all readers and students a commanding knowledge of the entire Bible upon their completion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098072445

Book preview

Chapter 1

Introduction and Overview of the Bible

At the beginning of every chapter in the Teacher’s Manual/Explanation Guide, there will be a Main Points section, as in the paragraphs below. The Main Points section will give an overall theme of what the chapter is about and/or an explanation of how the events in that chapter fit into God’s overall grand plan in the Bible.

Main Points of Chapter 1

In this first chapter, a general overview of what the Bible is all about is given. In a nutshell, the main point of the Old Testament of the Bible is man willfully sinned against God right from the start with Adam and Eve, and every person after them sinned in their lives. This caused a separation between God and mankind. God later gave people the law to teach them right from wrong, but they were not able to stop sinning because they were fallen and weak, and their sins could not be forgiven. All of the events of the Old Testament of the Bible showed this situation in different ways: God loved people and he took care of them, but they just could not stop sinning against God, and their sins could not be forgiven. Mankind, despite their best efforts, were not able at all to fix these problems due to their sins, and if God did not intervene and do something, they would be doomed. That is the Old Testament. God did intervene and do something. He did this in the New Testament.

In the New Testament, God the Son came down and became fully man while remaining fully God. As both God and man, God the Son (Jesus) took all of the sins that man would ever commit against God, and our sins were placed on him while he was on the cross. At that moment, God the Father unleashed his wrath on his Son while he had our sins placed on him on the cross. God the Son took the full punishment that everyone who ever lived deserved to get while he had our sins on him. He was then sacrificed to pay for our sins. By this act of complete love, God the Son paid for our sins which we could not pay for to make things right with God. Because of Jesus doing this for us, if we follow God the Father and Jesus, God the Son, as our God and Savior in our lives, then our sins can be completely forgiven if we repent of them. This will allow us to go to heaven when we die. This was impossible before Jesus paid for the sins that we committed. The Old Testament is the story of the fall of man due to sin and his inability to save himself from this sin. The New Testament is Jesus came and saved us from our sin.

In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, God also teaches us how he wants us to live our lives. He does this in two ways. The first is through commands or instructions from him to us. The second is we learn from the life events of all of the characters in the Bible.

In every chapter after the Main Points section will be a Summary section in the Teacher’s Manual/Explanation Guide. This is what you will next find in the paragraphs below. The Summary section will summarize, simplify, and explain each event that is written about in the main textbook. The Summary sections, along with the Main Points sections in the Teacher’s Manual/Explanation Guide, will be very useful to help the students learn about the events that are taking place in the main textbook. The younger the students, the more you may find yourself using this teacher’s manual to clearly explain the events and teachings in the Bible to them. The teacher’s manual may be needed less to teach the textbook to older students. However, I believe that no matter what age the reader, including adult readers, this Teacher’s Manual/Explanation Guide will be helpful in getting a full understanding of the Bible when used in conjunction with the textbook.

Summary of Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview of the Bible

God is our Father, and the Bible is information all about him given to us to learn about him.

God wanted a family, and he created the first humans, Adam and Eve, to start his family.

God created Adam and Eve as sinless. He gave them free will, which means they were free to choose to follow God or not.

Adam and Eve chose to follow what the devil told them, and they sinned against God.

Their sin nature was passed on to all of their offspring, who was everyone else who was ever born, including us.

Beings who committed sin are not allowed into heaven, so now there was a problem with sinful human beings. God wanted us to be his family, and now we were not allowed into heaven because of our sin. God decided to help us out.

God gave people his first plan to help them. He gave them the law. The law was a bunch of rules God wanted people to follow to teach them right from wrong, and to hopefully prevent them from committing sins.

God gave the law to the people of Israel. The people of Israel were a group of people that God decided to use as an example that the whole world would learn from. Although the people of Israel now knew right from wrong because God gave them the law, having the law did not stop the people from sinning.

Both God and man were in a bind because of sin. God wanted all of us to be with him as his family members in heaven one day. But all humans have sinned. If God just overlooked everyone’s sin, then heaven would be full of sinful people, which an all-holy God cannot tolerate. Yet if he punished everyone because everyone sinned, then no one would ever be in heaven with God. He had to find a way to punish the sinning that everyone committed yet somehow save the sinful people who love God and want to be part of his family even though they sinned in their lives. Up to this point, this was the overall main point of the Old Testament. Next, this is where Jesus came in.

God the Father sent his Son, who is God the Son, Jesus, to earth to become man while still being God at the same time. He led a completely sinless, perfect life for his thirty-three years down here on earth. God the Father then took all of the sins that everyone who would ever live had committed, or will commit in the future, off of everyone and placed them all on Jesus. Then the wrath of God the Father was unleashed on all of our sins that were on his Son, Jesus, when he was on the cross. Jesus was punished to death by God the Father with our sins on him. After this, if people loved and followed Jesus as their God, they can be forgiven and completely cleansed of their sins because Jesus took care of our sins for us. Now, those that love and follow Jesus can be forgiven of their sins and enter heaven when they die because of what Jesus did for us. The arrival of Jesus to save us and his paying for our sins, if we follow him, is the main point of the New Testament.

The Old Testament in the Bible shows how humans sinned and fell away from God. God gave them the law, but people kept sinning because they had a sin nature from Adam and Eve and they kept on sinning. They needed God to take care of their sin because they couldn’t do it themselves.

In the New Testament, Jesus (God the Son) came to earth, became a human, and took care of our sins for us.

In addition to God’s salvation plan for mankind, the Bible also teaches us how we are supposed to live our lives on earth. This is done in two ways. The first is the Bible directly tells us how we are supposed to live our lives, with rules and instructions from God. A second way we learn how God wants us to live is by learning from the successes and failures that happen in the lives of the people in the Bible. The Bible is full of stories of the lives of people that fit into God’s grand plan, and we learn how we should live by learning about what happened in the lives of these people in the Bible.

Chapter 2

The Beginning of the Old Testament: Creation

Main Points of Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is where the Bible summary actually starts. Chapter 1 was an attempt to give the reader a general overview of what the main purpose of Bible is. Chapter 2 begins with God creating the universe, and the last thing that he created was man and woman, who he named Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had free will. Therefore, they had free will to follow what God told them to do and free will to follow what the devil told them to do. They chose to follow what the devil told them to do, and they sinned against God. Because of this, the whole world fell under a curse, and Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve then had two sons named Cain and Abel. Cain got angry at God and killed his brother Abel. Right from the start, three out of the first four humans engaged in great sin against God. Over a great deal of time, mankind reproduced, and the whole world was full of people. Sin became so great among humans that all of their thoughts and deeds were continually sinful. God decided that things were so bad with sinful mankind that he had to start over. God found one righteous man named Noah. God had Noah build an ark, and he put Noah’s family in it. God then flooded the whole world and erased all of sinful mankind except for Noah and his family in the ark. God started the human race over again with Noah’s offspring. Sin was a huge problem between man and God as soon as God created mankind, and it got worse as time passed and humans reproduced. As you will later see, starting the human race over with Noah’s offspring did not stop mankind from sinning against God. How God and man deal with man’s sin will be a main theme throughout the Bible.

The Bible is divided into two main sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament is everything in the Bible before Jesus was born. The New Testament begins with the birth of Jesus and is mainly all about him. He saved the world from its sin when it couldn’t save itself.

Summary of Creation Through Noah and the Ark

Creation

The Bible is made up of many books, and each book has a name. The name of the first book in the Bible is the book of Genesis.

God made everything that exists in the universe in six God days. We do not know how long a God day is (Genesis 1).

The last thing that God made was a man who he named Adam on the sixth day. God made Adam in his own image (Genesis 2).

God made the first woman, who he named Eve, out of one of Adam’s ribs (Genesis 2).

God gave Adam and Eve dominion over every living animal on earth (Genesis 2).

God would walk and talk with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, which is where God placed them (Genesis 2).

The Sin of Adam and Eve

God told Adam and Eve, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it, you shall surely die (Genesis 2:16–17).

The devil approached Eve and told her that God lied to her. He said God did not want Adam and Eve to eat from the tree because if they did, they would not die, but they would become like God. Eve ate from the tree forbidden by God and she gave its fruit to Adam, who also ate the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3).

When Adam and Eve ate from the tree forbidden by God, they became afraid of God and hid from him. God found them and confronted them about what they did. Adam blamed Eve for his eating the forbidden fruit. Eve blamed the serpent for her eating the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3).

Because the serpent tempted Adam and Eve to sin and they did, God told the serpent (the devil) that a man will one day destroy the serpent (bruise his head). The man who will do this will be Jesus (Genesis 3).

God told Adam and Eve that their lives will be a difficult struggle from now on because of their sin against God (Genesis 3).

God cast Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden because of their sin. However, he still took care of them and helped them (Genesis 3).

Cain and Abel

Adam and Eve had a son and named him Cain. They had a second son and named him Abel.

Cain later became a farmer, and Abel became a shepherd of sheep (Genesis 4).

They brought offerings to God. God was not happy with Cain’s offering to him, which made Cain angry. God warned Cain to not sin because of his anger, and if he did well, God would accept him.

Cain killed his brother Abel, which was the first murder in history (Genesis 4).

Noah and the Ark

People reproduced, and over a very long period of time, the world was full of people. However, the people of the earth became completely evil (Genesis 6:1–5).

God was sorry he made people since they all became completely evil. There was one good man named Noah. God decided to wipe out mankind on earth with a flood, save Noah and his family in an ark, and start mankind over from Noah’s offspring, which God did (Genesis 6–9).

The Tower of Babel

Over time, the descendants of Noah became many people and they all spoke one language. They decided to build a city with a great tower to prevent themselves from spreading out across the earth. God confused everyone’s language so nobody could understand each other. This caused the people to spread out from each other and fill the earth with people (Genesis 10–11).

Chapter 3

God Starts the Jewish/Christian Faith with Abraham

Main Points of Chapter 3

The main point of God’s interactions with Abram (Abraham) was an attempt by God to make a covenant or an agreement with man. It was a two-part agreement that followed this rule: if Abraham would trust God and do what God says even if it was impossible for Abraham to understand how God would do what he told Abraham he would do, then God would bless Abraham exceedingly. Another way of putting it might be if Abraham would put his full faith in God when it was difficult, risky, and costly to do so, God would bless Abraham beyond measure.

God first put Abraham to small faith tests: he told Abraham to do particular things. Sometimes Abraham completely followed what God said to do. Sometimes Abraham did what he thought should be done, which went against what God told him to do. Abraham learned from these trial and errors. God then put Abraham to a very large faith test. Abraham failed it. In this faith test, God told Abram (Abraham) that he would have a son, who would be his heir, and he would have as many descendants as there were stars in the sky through this son. By the time Abraham (Abram) was eighty-five and his wife, Sarah (Sarai), was seventy-five, they still did not have any children. They became convinced that God would not give them children through Sarai who was seventy-five, so Abraham had a son with another woman. Abraham did not think God would come through with his promise of giving him a son because he and his wife were beyond childbearing age. Abraham failed in trusting that God would do what he said he would do because Abraham did not believe God could do the humanly impossible: make his wife pregnant when she was elderly. Fifteen years later, when Abraham was one hundred and his wife, Sarah, was ninety, God returned and told Abraham that Sarah would have Abraham’s son, who would be his heir that God promised him. Sarah did have this son, at age ninety. Abraham realized that God keeps his promises, and nothing is impossible with God since he allowed his wife to have a son at age ninety, whom they named Isaac.

God then put Abraham to the biggest faith test of all. He told Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, to God. God promised Abraham that through this son, Isaac, Abraham would have countless descendants. Yet if Abraham sacrificed Isaac, it would be impossible for Abraham to have descendants through Isaac, his only son. Just as impossible as it is for his ninety-year-old wife to have a son, which was another promise from God that Abraham thought would be impossible. Abraham learned through the miracle of ninety-year-old Sarah giving birth to Isaac that God keeps his promises even if they seem impossible through man’s eyes. Abraham agreed to sacrifice his son, Isaac, just as God told him to. Abraham was in the process of lifting his knife up to sacrifice Isaac, as God told him to, when God stopped him from doing It. God told Abraham that since Abraham was