Category Archives: CG Discussion Guide

“How God Reveals His Will”  Acts: To the End of the Earth

Scripture: Acts 1:20-26

Sermon Summary

The book of Acts is not a book of prescriptions, it’s a book of descriptions.  This means Acts doesn’t tell us what the church today should be like but what the church back then was like.  And yet if we keep an eye out for how God worked then, we can get a sense of how he may be working in our own lives now.  From this passage we learn that God leads his people today by his Word, wise counsel and prayer in the Spirit

#1: God’s Will for the Early Church

God made his will clear for the early church in his Word.  Psalm 109:8 says that another apostle was to replace Judas’ place, thus restoring twelve apostles in Acts 1.  The twelve apostles symbolized the twelve tribes of Israel and this meant the church was to be God’s New Israel.  God was preparing them to receive the gift of his Spirit.  Peter discerned God’s will because he knew God’s Word.  But God did not reveal who or how to replace Judas.  This was decided by the early believers as they used their collective wisdom to come up with criteria and candidates.  It seems God was more concerned that a replacement be found than necessarily who or how that replacement was identified.

After two candidates are chosen, the believers pray and cast lots.  Casting lots was the way the believers entrusted the process to God’s leading.  Matthias is identified and God’s will is done.  But Matthias is never mentioned again not only in Acts but the rest of the New Testament.  Although Matthias was important, God doesn’t tell us anything more about him.  The focus of the passage describes the process of following God’s will more than it does the significance of Matthias.  Although Acts was not written as a manual for how we can know the will of God, we still see three principles at work that may be instructive for us. 

#2: God’s Will for Every Christian

Christians want to know the will of God concerning many different things in their lives such as relationships, family, career, and church.  But is it even possible to know his will for every decision we need to make?  Do we need to know it?  Here are three principles we see at work in Acts that may translate to our own lives.

First: Follow what the Bible makes clear.  Everything we must absolutely know for our lives, God has made clear in the Bible.  Too often we’re trying to figure out what the Bible doesn’t specifically address all the while losing focus on what the Bible has made clear.  Know what God has made clear and follow that. 

Second: Receive wisdom from others.  Many of the decisions we need to make in our lives are not ethical or moral decisions.  So what’s at stake is not a matter of obedience or disobedience but wisdom and foolishness.  God gives his people spiritual community by which they can depend and lean on the counsel and wisdom of godly believers.

Third: Take it to the Lord in prayer.  Believers never again cast lots in the Bible because God sends his Holy Spirit to guide and lead believers.  When we pray, we commune with the Spirit who exposes hidden motives, gives wisdom to cover folly, brings to mind Scripture, gives peace when we’re too anxious and disrupts us when we’re too complacent.  When we pray, God leads us by his Spirit. 

Word, counsel and prayer should be the habits of the daily Christian life.  But living this way does not ensure we won’t make foolish or even sinful decisions.  Our confidence is not in avoiding such things but in God who leads every one of our decisions toward his perfect purposes.  The God who purchased his people with the blood of his Son has our lives and decisions in his protecting hands.

Group Discussion Questions

1. Share something you found either interesting, memorable, convicting, confusing or challenging about the passage/sermon. 
2. What are some reasons you or others are so concerned with discerning the will of God?  What are the areas that you most want to know God’s will concerning? 
3. When it comes to Word, counsel and prayer, which do you tend to gravitate toward the most?  Which do you gravitate toward the least?  Why?
4. What are your fears of making a “wrong” decision in life?  How does the gospel give you confidence to make decisions even without a clear and strong sense of “this is from the Lord”?

“How We Hope in Uncertain Times”  Acts: To the End of the Earth

Scripture: Acts 1:15-20

Sermon Summary

Acts 1:15-26 is the only place in the entire Bible that records the events between the ascension and the day of Pentecost.  It’s worth slowing down and taking our time reflecting on these verses.  From our story today we learn that Christians should draw hope in uncertain times from God’s right purposes and his righteous anger.

#1: God’s Right Purposes

Peter addresses the gathering of believers and brings their attention to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and the subsequent arrest.  Judas not only betrayed a man he lived with and followed for three years but he betrayed the Son of God.  His actions led to the death of the Author of Life!  What could be more evil and treacherous than to sell the Savior of the world for a bag full of coins?  And yet Peter says about this “the Scripture had to be fulfilled.”  He then goes on says it fulfilled the psalms which are ascribed to King David.  This means Judas’ betrayal was predicted and planned almost a thousand years before Jesus.  But Peter goes further and says the ultimate author and originator of this was the Holy Spirit.  This is because it was God who sovereignly and mysteriously purposed this to happen.  Even Judas’ incredibly wicked act was all God-ordained. 

It is tough for people to accept that God not only allowed this tragic and terrible event to happen, but he purposed it.  Yet out of something so evil, God was able to work out something very good.  Out of his own suffering and loss he worked out our salvation and life.  It is not easy to believe that even the most confusing and chaotic things in our lives are part of God’s good and right purposes.  But we must remember that God worked something out of the worst and most evil act in history so he can and will work something out of whatever we’re experiencing in our most uncertain times.  Things do not happen in God’s world because he has let go of the reigns of history or because he has fallen asleep on his throne.  He has purposed all things and although not always clear and understandable to us, they are always right and for good. 

#2: God’s Righteous Anger

When Peter’s speech ends, Luke inserts his own authorial remarks.  He chooses to describe a part of Judas’ death that differs than Matthew’s gospel.  Luke does this in order to make a connection with the story of Ahab who murdered innocent Naboth and acquired a field.  Ahab received God’s judgment and died.  The point of this connection is to show us that just as God judged Ahab in righteous anger, so too God judged Judas in righteous anger.  This is a theme Luke develops in Acts.  It appears in the stories of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 and King Herod in Acts 12.  God does not let sin and evil go unpunished but he acts against it.  We need a God who is not only kind and tender but who also gets righteously angry at sin. 

To say that God has righteous anger against sin and evil is only good news to those who have their hope in Jesus Christ.  Through Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice on the cross, we know that God’s anger against our sin is satisfied and turned away.  Now when we behold the face of God we know he is smiling down upon us.  But God’s face is not always smiling!  When he sees the sin and its effects running rampant in his world, he is righteously angry.  God responds.  In John 11 Jesus is at the funeral of his good friend Lazarus.  Coming to the tomb, he is deeply enraged at death because death is an intruder and unwanted guest in his world.  Jesus is angry enough at sin that he goes to the cross in order to defeat it.  By doing so, he conquers sin and death through his resurrection and promises us that on the final day death, mourning, crying and pain will be no more.  This gives us incredible hope that God is at work to eradicate and exterminate all sickness, suffering and sin from his world.  There is incredible hope in knowing his righteous anger against sin. 

Group Discussion Questions

1. Share something you found either interesting, memorable, convicting, confusing or challenging about the passage/sermon. 
2. How are you processing and handling all the news and updates concerning the coronavirus pandemic?  What has been helpful and what has been unhelpful? 
3. What are you thinking about God in the midst of all of this?  Is your hope in him increasing or decreasing?  What idols (false hopes) are being exposed at this time?
4. Which do you think you need to meditate on more at this moment: God’s right purposes or God’s righteous anger?  How can you continue to hope and trust in God more at this time?

“The Fast that God Chooses”  Mission and Mercy March

Scripture: Isaiah 58:1-7

Sermon Summary

We often evaluate our spiritual health and the vitality of our spiritual lives through individualized acts of devotion to God like Bible reading and prayer.  But is this really the best way to assess your walk in faith with the living Lord?  Isaiah 58 offers a critique against such a way of evaluating your spirituality.  It shows us that God doesn’t desire religious performance or piety but righteous practices of mercy and justice. 

#1: What we think God wants

God calls Israel out for fasting and humbling themselves, pretending these are deeds of righteousness when they are nothing more than external, outward religious performances.  Ultimately the people did these things for themselves, not the Lord.  But God saw right through it.  He knew that their deeds were self-serving because the people hoped to receive a reward from God because of what they did.  That was exactly their problem.  They thought they knew what God wanted but they really had no idea.  The same may be true of us.  When we focus so much on our performances and our piety, our motions and our emotions, we lose sight of what God has made clear. 

#2: What God really wants

God says that the fast chooses is for Israel to pursue lives of mercy and justice.  Justice is not only about giving punishment to the guilty but also giving protection to the vulnerable.  The reason God is so concerned that everybody is shown mercy and justice is because he has made us all in his image.  Every single creature, whether covenanted to him in faith or not, are image bearers of God.  And this image is what assures each person value, worthy and dignity.  This is why we should work for and care for the justice of all people.  This is why it is our cause and our concern to speak against practices and attitudes that promote injustice, inequality and inhumanity. 

But who specifically are those in need?  From Isaiah 58:6-7, Isaiah 1:16-17 and Zechariah 7:9-10 we see that at the very least God identifies seven groups of people: the hungry, the homeless, the naked, the orphans, the widows, the immigrants and the poor.  The point is that God has a heart for those who are disadvantaged and disenfranchised, deprived and destitute.  To look after the interests of such people is at the heart of God.  This is the way we obey the fast that God has chosen.  Christians need to ask who the needy are and what their needs are.  Until we start asking these kinds of questions, we won’t begin looking to answer them. 

#3: How we do what he wants

We do what God wants when we begin identifying with those in need.  But how can we do that?  We must first understand the lengths God went to identify with us.  In Isaiah 58:7 God tells his people to do three things: to feed the hungry, to provide hospitality to the homeless, and to clothe the naked.  Later in Matthew 25 Jesus picks this up and says that those who feed the hungry, welcome the stranger and clothe the naked have done it to him.  He says, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”  Jesus identifies himself so closely with those in need that to serve them is to serve him.  The God of the Bible is a God who identifies with us! 

Now remember that in ancient religions such a thing was unspeakable.  The gods always identified with the rich and powerful, not the poor and lowly.  And yet the Son of God does the very opposite.  In fact he goes even further and does something even more outrageous and offensive.  The gospel is that the Son of God identified himself with mankind so intimately and so personally that our sins and our guilt actually became his.  Our trespasses and failures were cast on him as if they were his all along.  And in exchange for what we gave him, he gave us his righteousness so that we could be forgiven.  When we believe and understand that Jesus identified himself this closely with us, it begins to change us.  We start to identify with others and minister to them in mercy and justice.  In fact, we desire to identify with them because Jesus identified with us.  This is when it becomes clear to us that what pleases God is not religious performance and piety but righteous practices of mercy and justice.  Then it becomes the fast that we choose. 

Group Discussion Questions

1. Share something you found either interesting, memorable, convicting, confusing or challenging about the passage/sermon. 
2. Why do we tend to evaluate our spirituality based on things like religious performances and piety rather than practices of mercy and justice? 
3. Spend time reflecting aloud on these questions: What does mercy and justice look like in the relational spheres you’re connected to? What does mercy and justice look in your community?  In your country?  In the world? What does mercy and justice look in light of the coronavirus and those suffering in so many ways around the world? 
4. How can you begin to identify with those in need and be changed to live a life of mercy and justice?  What’s the difference between doing acts of mercy and justice and becoming an agent of mercy and justice? 

 

“Go and Do Likewise”  Mission and Mercy March

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

Sermon Summary

Mercy and justice are not optional components of the Christian life.  They are not varsity level Christian concerns that you mature your way up to.  They are foundational, core elements of being a Christian.  To follow Jesus and call him Lord and Savior means you must walk in the path of mercy and justice that he did.  From the parable of the Samaritan we learn that glorious mercy received in Christ spurs generous mercy toward others

#1: Mercy is a tangible way of loving your neighbor by meeting felt need through deeds

The religious lawyer asks Jesus a question about loving your neighbor and Jesus responds with a parable about a man who showed mercy.  Jesus then makes a connection between neighborly love and mercy.  This encounter makes it clear that mercy is a tangible expression of neighborly love.  The parable itself helps us understand more concretely what it means to show mercy.  Whereas the two religious servants (the priest and the Levite) see and pass by the Jewish man in need of help, it’s the Samaritan who sees and draws near.  This is because he didn’t see an enemy as others might have expected him to.  He didn’t see skin color, a language difference or any of the other barriers we often focus on.  He simply saw a person in need and a person made in the image of God.  The other two men saw a body but not a person.  They saw an inconvenience and a threat to their own safety so they were able to ignore the man and his needs. 

When the Samaritan sees the physical, felt needs of the man, he responds immediately with many merciful deeds.  According to the parable he responds in at least seven ways.  First is physical presence as he drew near.  Mercy begins just by showing up and being present with a person.  Second, he got involved.  The man’s problem became his problem and he began serving the man by washing him.  Third and fourth, he provided transportation and shelter.  He brought the man to an inn and made sure he had a roof over his head and food in his mouth.  Fifth, he gave financially.  He had no idea how much his mercy would cost him but he was willing to make the sacrifice, regardless of how the man would respond or repay him.  Sixth, he promised a visitation.  Rather than being one and done, the man decided to return to follow up and check in on the man.  Seventh and last, he gave of his time.  Time is often the most difficult currency to be generous with because time cannot be replenished.  Once spent, time is gone forever. 

#2: Mercy is the mark of a true Christian who has been shown mercy in Christ

Jesus responds that people should go and do likewise as the Samaritan did.  The Bible is clear that true saving faith leads to mercy and justice.  Consider passages like James 2:15-17 and 1 John 3:17-18.  A Christian who loves God and neighbor cannot have mercy very far from their heart.  Those born again by the Spirit and given a new heart have a powerful dynamic at work in them.  The gospel is power that makes you somebody who lives in generous mercy.  This is the dynamic that Jesus intends for the lawyer to see and experience.  But the lawyer is too proud to sense his own need of God’s mercy.  He doesn’t realize he cannot obey God’s law to love the Lord your God and love your neighbor.  Therefore Jesus tells him the parable to expose his need.  This is why Jesus identifies the man in need as the Jew, not the man who extends help.  Jesus was helping the lawyer see how much of God’s mercy he needed.  If the lawyer really understood that he was a recipient of mercy then and only then could he “go and do likewise” as Jesus commanded.

The gospel is the only dynamic at work in our hearts that’ll change us to do more than a few acts of mercy and justice.  It’ll shape all of our life to be lived in such a way.  We have access to this power only when we realize the parable is not meant to be a manual teaching us how to be a good Samaritan.  The parable points us to a true and better Samaritan.  In the same way, Jesus came for the very people who rejected and despised him and yet still showed us mercy through his death on a cross.  But Jesus is better.  The Samaritan put himself in harm’s way but Jesus subjected himself to certain death for us.  The Samaritan bound up the wounds of this man but Jesus healed us by being wounded in our place.  The Samaritan was generously willing to pay the cost no matter how much denarii it cost but Jesus generously paid all of our debt with the very cost of his life.  Jesus showed us ultimate mercy and when that grips our hearts, then and only then will we be transformed to show generous mercy to others.

Group Discussion Questions

1. Share something you found either interesting, memorable, convicting, confusing or challenging about the passage/sermon. 
2. Do you think mercy and justice are a natural, organic part of your life?  Do you normally consider these things to be “spiritual” or “unspiritual”?  Why?
3. What are the biggest obstacles or things that prevent you from showing neighborly love in tangible ways to others?  How does the gospel transform you to not just do some acts but live a life of mercy and justice?
4. Seven things we see the Samaritan offer are: physical presence, involvement, transportation, shelter, finances, visitation, and time.  Have you ever received any of these from somebody else?  What else would you add to this list?