13 Dec Discussion Guide: Rise and Fall Week 8
Prayer
Take the first 10 minutes of your time together to listen to what God is doing in one another’s lives and pray for any specific needs people in your group may have.
This week we continue our series called Rise and Fall. We are taking a look at the life of King David and seeing that, through his successes and his failures, David does indeed point us to the Greatest King of all, Jesus.
Discussion Questions
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
Have you ever asked someone, or been asked by someone, to do something you did not understand the reason behind? If so, how did you respond?
Why do you think it is difficult to obey when you don’t know the reason behind the request?
Has God ever asked you to do something that didn’t seem to make sense to you? If so, how did you respond? What was the outcome of that decision?
Ecclesiastes 12:14
”For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”
Has there ever been a time when you made a decision you knew was not what God wanted you to do? Would you care to share that moment?
What was the consequence of your disobedience?
How do you feel about the fact that the Bible tells us God judges sin and disobedience?
Hebrews 12:5-6
”And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.””
According to Scripture, why does God judge disobedience and sin?
Scripture teaches that God judges from multiple motivations. One motivation is His justice. A God that doesn’t judge disobedience to His Laws would be unjust and inconsistent with His own Word. Another reason is His righteousness. God has designed the Universe to work in such a way that results in His ultimate glory and our ultimate joy. For God to allow disobedience to go unpunished would be like a father allowing his child to put her hand on a hot stove or drink poison knowing it will harm or even kill her. Because God has a design and a standard, He must uphold that standard and that design, again, not just for His own glory but because He wants us to experience ultimate joy. Another reason is because of His love for us. Any loving parent disciplines his/her children. To be apathetic towards destructive behavior is the most hateful attitude you can have towards a person. And, because God loves us more than we love ourselves, He may allow us to disobey, but He will always discipline us in our disobedience for the purpose of bringing us into His perfect will.
What do you think the world would be like if God did not judge evil?
Titus 2:11-14
”For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
How does God’s judgement of our disobedience differ from the way we tend to judge the disobedience of others?
We tend to judge with an eye for an eye attitude. The punishment has to fit the crime. If someone wrongs us then they deserve to be wronged. If someone robs us then they must pay us back what they took. If someone breaks a law then they spend time in prison to pay back that debt. But, God’s judgement is the same and yet completely opposite. God does say that sin deserves judgement, disobedience deserves a penalty. The difference is that in Jesus, God took that judgement and penalty upon Himself. He put the handcuffs around His own wrist. He traded places with us so that He became our sin and we became His righteousness. God judges, but He judges through His grace and mercy.
How does Jesus’ sacrifice enable and empower us to obey God just because He said so?
The main reason we tend to struggle with obeying God, especially when it doesn’t seem to make sense to us, is because we don’t really trust God’s goodness. We presuppose that if God is asking us to do something that doesn’t make sense it must be for our own detriment rather than our ultimate joy. When we look at the cross and what Jesus went through on our behalf, it gives us indisputable evidence that not only is God good and loving, but He is absolutely trustworthy. If Jesus died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8) then we can put to rest any doubt that, having now saved us, He would wish anything other than loving joy on our lives. Therefore, we don’t need a reason to obey, we simply obey because we trust His goodness.
Closing Thought
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
”One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.”
What are some ways we, as a group, can demonstrate that kind of unconditional trust to obey God to the world around us?