‘Hearing is the new seeing’. Gary Millar unpacks from Deuteronomy 4 how listening to God’s words is the way to life – the life God desires for us to live.
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For those meeting in Community Groups this week, here are the application questions for Study Two: In God We Trust?
Hearing God’s words has got to be a way of life for God’s people. That’s the key to making good choices: to allow every impulse, every idea, every decision to be shaped, corrected, and directed by God himself as he speaks to us.
1. Generally speaking, why do we find it so hard to listen? What makes it even harder when it comes to hearing God’s voice?
2. In 2 Timothy 2:8 Paul says to‘Remember Jesus Christ’. Why do you think he says that? What does it mean to ‘remember Jesus’?
Moses says that listening to God’s words leads to an attractive obedience – a way of life that will draw others in.
3. Thinking honestly about your life, how attractive do you think it is to outsiders? If someone would look in on your life from the outside, would what they see attract them?
The only way to ‘happily’ keep on sinning is if we first silence God. Repentance is essentially removing your fingers from your ears so that you can hear God again and start acting on what he says.
4. How can we make sure that we, as a community group, help on another stay saturated by God’s words – especially when we’re attempting to silence God?
It’s worth remembering that when we do pull our fingers out of our ears we’re not met with words of judgement from God, but rather words of mercy: “The Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you.” – Deut. 4:31
If you’re in a Community Group, you can grab studies here.
For those meeting in Community Groups this week, here are the application questions for Study One: Looking Back, Looking Forward.
Moses opens his speech by making Israel look back on their past in order to highlight the fact that they must learn to mistrust themselves.
1. Are you more likely to be blasé about your past (“let’s just forget that ever happened”) or be crippled by your past (unable to move on from your mistakes)? How can we learn to mistrust ourselves in ways that are healthy and lead to growth?
The other side of the coin for Moses is that mistrusting ourselves should lead us to trusting God – particularly trusting him to deliver on specific promises he gives to his people.
2. In what ways do we expect God to deliver on promises he never gave us? What has God promised us, and how can we have a realistic trust in God?
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 – “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
3. How do these words change how we view our successes and failures? What comfort (if any) do you find in these words?
Moses begins his epic speech to God’s people by telling us that we must have a healthy mistrust in ourselves. Only then will we be able to trust God for our future.
Jesus shows us that we find out how to be truly human – the human we were meant to be – when we share in his identity.
Big Idea:
Our biggest need is to know the love of God.
Key Verses:
3:17b-19 – And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
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Paul’s in prison, but he’s got a bigger picture of what God is doing in the world than his own circumstances. He knows what God is doing, he knows that God loves him, and he knows that because of what God has started in the Jesus & the church, the suffering he is now experiencing will one day not exist. (Apologies for the sound quality in the second half of the church. Stuff breaks. If it’s too bad, you can always listen to a Keller talk.)
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Big Idea:
The Church is God’s wisdom displayed to the world.
Key Verses:
3:10 – His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.
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In Ephesians 2 Paul tells us what our problem is, what God’s solution is, and what it means for lives in Christian community.
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