21 Jan Discussion Guide: Set Apart Week 2
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 with our series, Set Apart: A Biblical View of Holiness. Join us as we take a look, one week at a time, at how God’s call to holiness requires more of us than changing our actions or achieving something. Holiness is a call to set our hope on the grace of God through Jesus to be fully transformed and to live set apart.
Today’s Topic
Holiness Restored
Discussion Questions
What is one piece of good news you’ve heard this past week?
Hebrews 7: 23-28
The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.
Remember the Promise of a Priest
Hebrews 2:16-18
For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Charles Spurgeon
You never hear Jesus say in Pilate’s judgment hall one word that would let you imagine that He was sorry that He had undertaken so costly a sacrifice for us. When His hands are pierced, when He is parched with fever, His tongue dried up like a shard of pottery, when His whole body is dissolved into the dust of death, you never hear a groan or a shriek that looks like Jesus is going back on His commitment.
Tim Keller, Counterfiet Gods
No person, not even the best one can give your soul all it needs…this cosmic disappointment and disillusionment is there in all of life, but we especially feel it in the things in which we set our hopes. When you finally realize this, there are four things you can do: You can blame the things that are disappointing you and try to move on to better ones (that’s the way of continued idolatry and spiritual addiction), you can blame yourself and beat yourself (that’s the way of self loathing and shame), you can blame the world (that’s how you get hard, cynical, and empty), or you can reorient the entire focus of your life on God.
Why is the promise of a merciful high priest so vital for humanity?
Why do people so easily look to other people (celebrities, politicians, or themselves) for salvation?
What practices help reorient us toward Jesus as our high priest?
Recall the Problems of a Priest
Hebrews 7:23
The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office…
Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer
The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there. Our lives are filled with examples which tell us that leadership asks for understanding and that understanding requires sharing.
Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines
The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes- a time for men and women to be heroic in their faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message too low.
Who is one of the most faithful leaders and mentors you have known in your life?
Why must we acknowledge that no human can flawlessly love and serve us as our high priest forever?
What is one lesson your life could offer someone else?
Reclaim the Promise of a New Priest
Hebrews 7:26, 28
For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens…For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.
Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth
Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.
Jackie Hill Perry, Holier than Thou
Holiness is what makes real love possible. Without it, love is purely sentimental.
1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Why is the holiness of Jesus an essential part of the promise that he will be our forever high priest?
How does the gospel make us holy?
How can we fulfill the call to walk as members of God’s royal priesthood?
Closing Thought
Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved
Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life…all of our life.
Take a moment to explore ways your group can practice generosity in a specific way, offering light and hope to a world experiencing so much need.