Sunday School September 1, 2024

Good morning and welcome to the Adult Sunday School Lesson for September 1, 2024, prepared by the Northlake Blvd. Church of the Nazarene in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. We are Bunny and Jim McLellan your fellow Bible students and guides.
Last week we completed the summer quarter, and this is the first lesson from Unit one of the fall quarter. This unit is titled “Challenges for Faithful Followers:” and contains seven lessons from the book of Daniel. Our readings are from the New international version of the Bible, and we utilize Faith Connections, Sunday School material from The Foundry Publishing dot Com. Student quarterlies can be purchased from them if desired.
Last Week: We learned the ways we are to live in expectation for Christ’s return.
This week’s lesson is from Daniel Chapter 1 verses 1 through 10 and verses 17 through 20. and it is titled “Encountering a Hostile Culture” with the long sub title of “God enables His people to live faithfully in a world that opposes His kingdom and seeks to lure them into its values.”

This week we want to learn that we can trust God to give us the strength and guidance we need to live boldly in a world that opposes God’s kingdom and opposes us living by His kingdom rules.

A little insight
Prior to the Babylonian exile, many of God’s people, the Israelites, believed their nation, Judah, was invincible. With that mindset, God’s people generally ignored the challenging calls to repentance by the prophets. Then God permitted the unthinkable: God allowed the Babylonian Empire to invade and conquer Judah and His people. How was this possible? Daniel, who was probably 15 years old, found himself swept into a hostile world over which he had little control. The powerful Babylonian armies had seized control of the ancient Middle East, including his hometown of Jerusalem. The Babylonians took the best and brightest young men, like Daniel and his friends, to Babylon to be trained to serve the empire.