28 Jan Discussion Guide: Set Apart Week 3
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 Completed
Discussion Questions
What is something challenging you dream of achieving (ie. learning another language, running a marathon, reading every book by a famous author, finding the best taco restaurant in Austin, etc.)?
A New City
Revelation 21:1-2
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
Augustine of Hippo, City of God
… the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.
Rick Warren
I’m looking for a second reformation. The first reformation of the church 500 years ago was about beliefs. This one is going to be about behavior. The first one was about creeds. This one is going to be about deeds. It is not going to be about what does the church believe, but about what is the church doing.
What do you enjoy about visiting or living in a big city?
What does a city that glorifies itself look like?
How can our choices and lives help make our city a little more like the New Jerusalem described in Revelation?
A New Future
Revelation 21:3
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed
You can’t see the future coming–not the terrors, for sure, but you also can’t see the wonders that are coming, the moments of light-soaked joy that await each of us.
AW Tozer
We must meet the uncertainties of this world with the certainty of the world to come.
How does your faith help you carry the uncertainties and challenges of this world?
When have you felt God’s nearness and presence dweling among you?
What practices can help us connect with and experience wonder and awe of God in our daily lives?
A New Judgment
Revelation 22:11-14
Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy. Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.
CS Lewis, Surprised by Joy
The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man, and his compulsion is our liberation.
Richard Sibbes
There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.
Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no expects us to be ‘as gods’. We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.
When you consider God’s judgment, what thoughts or feelings come to mind?
When you consider God’s mercy, what happnes to those thoughts and feelings related to judgment?
How do our friendships and commitment to Christian community help us learn about sin and weakness?
Closing Thought
Tim Keller
There are the good things of this world, the hard things of this world, and the best things of this world—God’s love, glory, holiness, beauty. The Bible’s teaching is that the road to the best things is not through the good things but usually through the hard things. . . . There is no message more contrary to the way the world understands life or more subversive to its values.
Take a moment to pray for the hard things you might be facing, trusting that God will use them to lead you to the good things in the end.