Bible Stories for Young Adults

by Alida Gookin


Instructive Bible Stories they didn’t tell you as a child!

So many teens and young adults are dropping out of church.  They are bored, they feel church is irrelevant to them, or they may have other reasons for leaving.  Many others have rarely or never attended any church.  This website was developed to show that many stories in the Bible that are never told to children or spoken of in the pulpit are very instructive for young adults.  I wish to retell these stories and point out the good lessons in them.  You may go as deeply as you wish in further study.  Click on several lessons in the navigation bar above or in the descriptions below and explore as you wish, but you may find it best to go in the order I have numbered them. 

Prologue - Why am I writing these stories?  Basically, it is because I have suffered with others. 

  1. 1.Satan’s Great Commission tells how a greedy false prophet named Baalam, presumed by a heathen king to be able to curse his enemies,  sought to turn God against Israel by sending prostitutes into Israel’s camp to get the Israelite men to defile themselves sexually.  Find out what happened and consider the warnings for our country, our churches, and our families today.

  1. 2. The Shame of Nakedness relates several Biblical stories that shows why nakedness (which doesn’t necessarily mean total nudity) is a shame.  Find out how God covers both our sin and our shame.

  1. 3.Circumcision, or The Bloody Sign, tells about the covenant sign God made with Abraham about 4,000 years ago and what replaced it in the Christian Church about 2,000 years ago.  It will surprise you what the early church leaders deemed to be even more critical for the church than circumcision.  (It wasn’t baptism!) 

  1. 4.Lot’s wife, or The Way of Sodom,  tells the story of God’s dealing with serious sexual perversions.  However, the warning to church members is that they may be like Lot’s wife who was destroyed along with the Sodomites.

  1. 5.Lot’s daughters, or Sin that Makes the Land Vomit, speaks of how the culture of Sodom so corrupted Lot’s daughters that they committed the horrible sin of incest, the sin that “makes the land vomit out its inhabitants.”  Perhaps this explains why tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and other disasters are vomiting out inhabitants in places all over our country.

  1. 6.Marriage, or Isaac’s Bride and Christ’s Bride, tells the story of how Isaac got Rebekah, a beautiful virgin, for a bride.  The institution of marriage is the only provision God has made for sexual activity, so special care must be taken to be sexually pure.  Courtship is replacing worldly dating in some Christian circles today.

  1. 7. Polygamy - Is it Biblical?, teaches the story of King Solomon.  It proves that polygamy was never God’s  plan for marriage and the problems with it.    

  1. 8. Dinah, or Hidden Idols and Private Matters, tells the story of how Jacob’s daughter was seduced by a heathen man.  Her brothers took bloody revenge, which made Jacob do some spiritual housecleaning on his whole family.  We are urged to do spiritual housecleaning in our own families.

  1. 9. Joseph, or Purity Paves the Way to Greatness, tells how a handsome and intelligent young man escaped the snares of a woman who wanted to seduce him, but ended up in prison for it.  Yet, God did not forget him but brought him to greatness. 

  1. 10. Sarah, or True Femininity, tells how the beautiful wife of Abraham was taken into a heathen king’s harem at a critical time in her life, but how God delivered her.  She is perhaps the greatest example in the Bible of what a woman of faith is like. 

  1. 11. Deborah, or Is Patriarchy Best for Society?, tells how a godly female leader, who was also a judge and a prophetess, understood the proper role of men in her society.  She understood that rule by men was the norm and  she proved that to the men who trusted her guidance.

  1. 12. Abigail, or The Unequal Yoke, tells the story of a wise woman who was married to a rich fool.  This study warns Christians to not marry someone who is an unbeliever, or  behaves as an unbeliever.

  1. 13. Hosea, or To Leave or Cleave?, speaks of God’s love for His wayward people through the example of the prophet Hosea who married an unfaithful woman who bore offspring from other men.   This study deals with the issue of divorce.  Does God allow divorce in some cases?  Should we seek to restore a marriage after adultery?

  1. 14. Pharoah, or Shedding Innocent Blood, deals with the issue of abortion.  Two Egyptian midwives are the heroines in this story.

  1. 15. Samson, or The Deception of Cohabitation, teaches the story of the strongest man who ever lived in a way  quite different from the way you heard it as a child.  They didn’t tell you about Samson’s weakness.

  1. 16. Children, or A Crisis of Overpopulation?, tells the Biblical view of having children and brings into question the idea that the earth is overpopulated. 

  1. 17. Teenagers, or Were Jesus’ Disciples Teenagers?, sets out to show the reasons why Jesus’ disciples must have been teenagers or very young adults.  Families often dread their children reaching the teen years, but Jesus saw their youth as a opportunity.

KEEP COMING BACK!   I keep making improvements to this website.  Please share this with others.  I have had many good comments about this website and the need for the lessons in it.

Alida Gookin has been married to Bobby for 40 years, has five daughters and twelve grandchildren, and teaches math at a community college.  She has been a Bible teacher for over fifty years in various churches and denominations as well as a Bible teacher in a private high school.  These lessons she wrote were taught in a pilot study at her own church.  You may contact her at alidajohnson@yahoo.com.  She lives in Tunica, Mississippi.