Teacher's Manual and Explanation Guide: Bible Summary for Catholics

By Michael Kotch

Teacher's Manual and Explanation Guide: Bible for Catholics is exactly what its title says it is. It is a teacher's manual that explains how to best use the main textbook to teach a comprehensive summary of the Catholic Bible to students, or a resource for anyone who wants explanations of the material in the textbook. This book summarizes, clarifies, and gives explanations to the textbook material. The main textbook was written in a manner in which the only material in it is shortened information from the Bible or actually quoted word-for-word information from the Bible. As such, it is a pure summary of the Bible with no explanations or interpretations from the author. This teacher's manual provides explanations of the biblical material in the textbook, intended to help the student/reader get a better understanding of what is being presented. Suggestions are additionally given in this teacher's manual to teachers concerning methods they may use to teach particular topics to their students.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098081775

Book preview

Chapter 1

Introduction and Overview of 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. 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 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. Humans, 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 did 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. God the Son took the full punishment that everyone who ever lived deserved to get while he had their sins on him. He was sacrificed to pay for our sins. By this act of complete love, God the Son paid for our sins that 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 confess them to him and 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 coming and saving 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 the characters in the Bible.

Thought Question: Take a few minutes and ask the students what they know about the Old Testament. Can they name anyone from the Old Testament? Can they tell you a story from the Old Testament? They may be surprised by what they do know.

Summary of Chapter 1

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. It was a bunch of rules God wants people to follow to teach them right from wrong and to hopefully prevent them from committing sins.

Thought Question: Can you name any of these Laws that God gave the people?

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 he just overlooked everyone’s sin, then heaven would be full of sinful people, which an all-holy God cannot tolerate. Yet if then 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. The New Testament is where Jesus comes in to save us.

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 ever lived had committed or will commit in the future, off 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 cleaned 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 had a sin nature from their ancestors 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.

Thought Question: Are there other people outside of the Bible that we can learn from to help us with God’s grand plan?

One Answer: The saints

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, 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 followed what the devil told them to do, and they sinned against God. Because of this, the whole world fell under a curse, and they were cast out of the Garden of Eden. They had two sons named Cain and Abel. Cain got angry at God and killed his brother Abel. Right from the start, man engaged in grave 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.

Thought Question: Ask the students some thoughtful questions about sin. Why do we sin? How do we sin? What happens when we sin? There are no right or wrong answers, just things to think about.

Summary of Creation through Noah and the Ark

Creation

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.

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

God then made the first woman, 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. 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).

Cain and Abel 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).

Thought Question: Talk to your class about God’s promise to never again flood the earth with water. What is the symbol/gift that God gave us to remind us of this promise from him to us about this?

Answer: Rainbow

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. 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. He did not think God would come through with his promise of giving him a son because he and his wife were beyond childbearing age. He failed in his faith in what God could do. Fifteen years later, when Abraham was one hundred and his wife Sarah was ninety, God returned and told him 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.

Thought Question: Why might God have tested Abraham’s faith?

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. 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 since he was willing to not withhold his son, his only son from God, God will bless him by making his descendants through Isaac as numerous as the sand on the seashore.

One major possibility that I want you to consider is this: Is it possible that because God found a man who was willing to sacrifice his only son to God because he loved God; did that prompt God to later actually sacrifice his only Son for man because he loved man?

As a reward for being faithful to God and being willing to sacrifice his only son to God as God told him, God did make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the beaches. Additionally, one of Abraham’s descendants would be Jesus Christ, God who became man, who saved the world from their sins.

Summary of Chapter 3: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

God came to a man named Abram and told him to take his family, leave his country, and go to a land that God would show him. If he did, God promised to bless him and make a great nation from his descendants and his name would be great. Abram went as God told him to. He was seventy-five years old at the time.

God sent Abram to the land of Canaan. God told Abram this was the land he would give to Abram’s offspring (Genesis 11 and 12:1–9).

Abram and his nephew Lot had so many possessions and livestock that they couldn’t fit in the land, so they split up. Lot decided to move to a city called Sodom. Abram stayed in the land of Canaan (Genesis 13 and 14).

God appeared to Abram and told him that he would give him a son and his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. He also told him that in the future, his descendants will become slaves in a foreign land for four hundred years, and after that, God would rescue them (Genesis 15:12–16). This would later come to pass when the Egyptians would make the Hebrew people living in Egypt slaves. God would then use a man named Moses to free the Hebrews from being slaves in Egypt for 430 years (next book of Exodus).

During this time, there were two exceedingly evil cities called Sodom and Gomorrah. God told Abram he would destroy these cities because they were so evil. God allowed Abram to save his nephew Lot and Lot’s family from Sodom before God destroyed it. God then destroyed both cities with fire and brimstone because they were so evil (Genesis 18:1–33 and 19:1–29).

Abram’s Two Sons

Abraham was now eighty-five, and his wife, Sari, was seventy-five. They did not yet have a son as God promised Abram. Abram’s wife Sari