24 Sep Discussion Guide: Friendship Can Save the World: The Power of Redemption
Before We Get Started
For our discussion today, we will be using the sermon series discussion guides. If you would like to follow along you can access this discussion guide on the website at mosaicchurchaustin.com and then select “community group resources” in the menu options.
Prayer
Because the primary goal of our time together is to establish relationships and learn how to walk with one another in all that God has called us to be and do, we’d like to begin by praying for one another. So, does anyone have anything you’d like us to pray for or anything to share regarding how you’ve seen God moving in your life that we can celebrate together?
This Week’s Topic
Today, we continue our series titled Friendship Can Save the World, in which we will explore how God uses diverse friendships to fulfill his miraculous will in the world. In an increasingly polarized world, our collective ability to navigate friendships with people whose backgrounds, experiences, and views differ from our own has diminished. Along the way, valuing diversity has come to be seen by many Christians as a secular pursuit. However, we love and serve a diverse God (being three unique persons himself) who taught us to love those we tend to have a hard time loving: outsiders, enemies, foreigners, the poor, and the weak. We hope this series inspires you to love and be loved more courageously as we forge a path together into a more redemptive future.
Today’s Topic
The Power of Redemption
An important note about the format for this series
We have provided two discussion group formats for our Friendship Can Save the World Series. For groups with access to a computer or television, our video discussion guide offers a vibrant exploration of the concepts each week. All you have to do is press play (and pause for about five minutes for each discussion question)! The same content has been rearranged and included in the discussion guide below for our groups that meet in noisy, public spaces or who don’t have access to a computer or television. All you have to do is read aloud, as usual!
Please choose either the video or the written format, given what works best for your group.
Ruth & Naomi
By the third chapter of Ruth, Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, have eked out an existence in Bethlehem. Thanks to the generosity of a wealthy man named Boaz, the women have access to food and Boaz’s promise to keep Ruth safe in the fields. However, wise Naomi has begun to wonder if Boaz’s friendship could offer an even better blessing than abundant barley.
When Naomi considered all Boaz had said and done to provide and protect Ruth, she advised Ruth to test the waters of her new friendship with Boaz and see where it might lead:
Ruth 3:1-4
My daughter, I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for. Now Boaz, with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours. Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.
Question 1
How could Ruth’s loyalty and commitment to Naomi in Ruth 1 have inspired Naomi to retain hope for a better future?
Offering Friends Manoach
When Naomi said she wanted to find a home for Ruth, she used the Hebrew word manoach, which also implies the comfort of security and tranquility. Ruth had sacrificed greatly to cling to Naomi, and now Naomi longed to secure a future full of rest and tranquility for Ruth.
However, Naomi’s plan involved great risk for both Naomi and Ruth. If Ruth’s actions offended Boaz, they might lose his life-giving friendship. If Boaz was not the man of integrity they believed him to be, Ruth would be making herself dangerously vulnerable to a powerful man. And yet, as modern people, we must remember how few paths forward Ruth and Naomi realistically had as poor widows in the ancient Middle East. Naomi and Ruth decided to shoot for the moon and reach for the rare opportunity before them: a compassionate, generous, wealthy man from Elimelech’s own family who could legally restore their land and continue Elimelech’s family line by marrying Ruth.
Friendship Can Save the World, Carrie & Morgan Stephens
“We should commend Naomi for not allowing bitterness to taint her hopes for Ruth. Naomi’s generous friendship proved she hadn’t relinquished all hope for redemption even after losing her comfort and security and renaming herself “bitter.” She didn’t become permanently jaded and suggest that all marriages would end in sorrow and despair as hers ended. Naomi hadn’t deconstructed her life to the extent that left her with nothing to offer when Ruth needed wisdom and guidance. Despite all she had gone through—first on the road back to Bethlehem, and now here with a man like Boaz in view—Naomi told Ruth, both times, there could still be manoach in her future. Naomi said, I want to be the friend who helps you experience rest and tranquility. And then she went for it. Naomi didn’t just talk about it—she made a plan to find it.”
Question 2
Did Ruth or Naomi risk more in the threshing floor plan if the plan failed, or were the stakes equal for both women?
Gospel Friendship
Luke 6:32-33, 35
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that…. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
Friendship Can Save the World, Chapter Seven
“From Jesus and Ruth, then, we learn that loving our friends beyond their worthiness and without regard for personal benefit allows us to participate in bringing God’s kingdom on Earth as it is in heaven…. Our burdensome, difficult friendships often become the places we encounter God’s kingdom in new, life-changing ways when they cost us more than we expected.”
Question 3
If Luke 6 (among other Bible passages) reveals the kind of sacrificial care we are expected to offer people who hate us, what does that imply about how we should treat our friends? And can we also expect a great reward for loving our friends as well as our enemies?
Share Your Perspective
Let’s take a minute and examine friendships with people unlike us through the lens of risk and sacrifice. What unique risks are involved in friendships involving people from different backgrounds or perspectives, ie. ethnic/racial, socio-economic, generational, or political differences?
Life Application
In the final minutes of your time together, revisit your plan from week 1 to take a risk and actively love a neighbor this week. Have you taken the plunge yet? If you have, how did it go? If you haven’t, when will you reach out? If you’re feeling nervous about it, is there anything this group can do to help you find some rest in the midst of the risk?