Reputation Issues

Objectives

• Teens will understand that high importance that God places on their word and obligations.
• Teens will understand what Godly financial decisions look like.

Introduction

• What are some examples of contracts that you know about?
  • Contracts to play for a specific team.
  • Marriage
  • Contracts to buy a house
  • Contracts to rent a house
  • Treaties made between nations.

Contracts

• What general principle is given in Ecclesiastes 5:5?
  • In all things a Christian should be a person who fulfills their obligations. The word for vow carries the idea of "make a binding promise to God, possibly with sanctions if the promise is not kept

A Case Study

• What relationships is developed in 2 Samuel 5:11, 1 Kings 5:1-12, and 1 Kings 9:11-14?
  • Tyre was part of contrasting David's palace
  • Tyre was part of the construction of the temple
  • Tyre and Israel had a close relationship.
    • It is important to note that Tyre was a Phoenician city.

• Why would ancient princes and kings marry?
  • In ancient times, kings and princes married with the goal of forming treaties.

• Who did Ahab, king of Israel, marry in 1 Kings 16:31?
  • Ahab married Jezebel who was the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians a Phoenician city. In effect this would have created a treaty between Israel and Phoenicia.

• The book of Amos was written between 790 and 739 B.C. Ahab reigned in Israel in approximately 870 BC and David reigned in about 1000 BC. In other words well over 100 years had passed from the reign of Ahab and over 200 years from the reign of David. Do you think God expected Phoenicia to keep a covenant they had made so much earlier?
  • in Amos 1:9-10 God proclaims judgement on Tyre. The punishment was severe,

    Alexander the Great overran the city of Tyre in 332 B.C. after besieging it for seven months. Six thousand people were slain outright, 2,000 were crucified, and 30,000 were sold as slaves. Tyre had sold Israelites to Edom as captives; later many Tyrians became captives.

Apparently God takes contractual obligations very seriously, even when hundreds of years have passed.

A Biblical Command

• According to 2 Corinthians 6:14-17, what should believers be very careful about?
  • We must be very careful not to put ourselves in a position where we are contractually bound to someone who is an unbeliever. In this particular case, we must take care to ensure that our spiritual well-being and testimony is not impacted by contractual obligations. In short we must be very careful about who we enter into contracts with.

• What are some examples of contracts that person might enter that one might reasonably expect to involve their spiritual well-being or testimony?
  • Marriage
  • Church
  • Possibly a job if there is potential to work on Sundays
  • Possibly a business relationship depending not he nature of the business.

• Why would it be important to think about these things before entering into the contract?
  • God takes the contract seriously and the Christian should not expect to easily get out of the contract.

Finance

• What parable does Christ present in Matthew 25:14-30?
  • The Parable of the Talents

James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997)."

Donald R. Sunukjian, “Amos,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 1429.