How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent word.

Welcome to Through the Bible.

I'm Steve Schwartz, your host, and I'm so glad that you're here for another great study in the Old Testament Book of Hosea.

Now, as we start out in chapter 9, verse 3, our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, is going to show us that even though Israel was thriving in the new land, people were sinning more, but in fact enjoying it less.

Does that sound familiar? Well, stay with us,

because in just a moment, we're going to get a front row seat to what happened in Josea's day,

as Dr. McGee explains how he thought it parallels with what's going on today. So while you open

your Bible to Josea 9, through the Bible's president, Greg Harris is here, and we got some exciting things to share with you.

And Steve, it's great to be here with you and our whole listening family.

And you know what?

Today we want to talk about something that we love to touch upon, which is our core values.

Now, you just said we have exciting things to share, and some people might say,

well, that's not exciting. I'll tell you what's exciting. Would you like to know? Tell me.

Oh, please. What's exciting is the values that Dr. McGee articulated to us and in the teaching,

they actually play out in reality every day, and we're going to share letters showing this.

Yeah. And what we want to talk about today is the value of personal Bible study. That's something we care deeply about. Absolutely.

And that's what I love about through the Bible is it is personal Bible study, and it can also

be translated or transferred into a small group environment, and then that feeds into building up

the local church. Exactly. Exactly. We're not competing with the local church.

We are feeding and building the sheep, and then they go back into the church.

And even the pastors.

Earlier this month, you read a great letter from a person that basically said,

...