Being a Christian (2)
Notes
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Introduction
Introduction
Being a Christian Bible Study (week 2): The Gospel and Your Past
Announcements + Prayer Requests
2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock where I seek refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
8 Taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy is the person who takes refuge in him!
9 You who are his holy ones, fear the Lord, for those who fear him lack nothing.
10 Young lions lack food and go hungry, but those who seek the Lord will not lack any good thing.
Pray
Introduction:
- This lesson is heavy for some of us because we know that our past isn’t exactly rainbows and roses. Even for those of you with a relatively uneventful life before accepting Christ as Lord, you struggled with sin. We all have a past and part of spiritual maturity involves us moving on from our past, owning it, and looking ahead to how God is going to use us and our story in His perfect plan.
Lesson Overview:
- How the Gospel allows us to move forward from our past
- We all have a past and we all have done things that we are not proud of. We all have made mistakes.
- Question: Why do you think some people can’t move on from their past?
- Scripture helps us see both our mistakes (sin) and the indescribable grace and love of God! In fact, Scripture does a great job of showcasing the sins and shortcomings in all of the heroes in the Old and New Testaments with the exception, obviously, of Jesus!
- Question: Who is a Biblical figure that you admire and what were some of their notable sins?
- Some people buy into the lie that they have sinned too much or that someone they know has done something too bad in order to be “saved” – how should we respond to someone like this?
o We share with them the truth of Scripture – we have all sinned and Christ died for sinners. Therefore, there is no one too far gone for the grace of Jesus Christ! We all have the responsibility to repent of our sins and trust in Jesus. Sadly, many people reject Jesus or believe that they are “good enough” on their own.
- One of the things found on pages 29/30 of our book is to own our testimony. We talked about how important our testimony is and how we should be ready to share it last week. Sometimes sharing our testimony can be scary or make us nervous because it reveals our weaknesses and sins. How can we, as Christians, help one another share our testimony and move forward from our past sins and mistakes?
Lesson Video:
- Everyone has a past! It can be easy to think that everyone else is perfect and we are the only one who has ever messed up and sinned – this is one of Satan’s most popular attacks! Have you ever felt this way before? I remember as a teenager having a Disciple Now weekend where the theme was on purity. We all know that purity is hard but especially for a teenage boy with a cellphone and internet access! As this weekend went on, I quickly learned that I was not the only person in the world who struggled with being pure. In fact, I learned that there were many other guys in my own youth group with the same struggles and temptations that I had as an 8th grader. I say that to say this, there are some topics that we simply don’t talk about in church or with others. Sometimes the enemy throws doubt in our minds and says that we are sooo bad because we are the only ones who struggle with this issue. Chances are, there are others who struggle with it too. It can be hard to open up, but whenever we do we are able to bear one another’s burdens in a healthy, Christlike, way!
- Some people have a past of self-righteousness/legalism (feeling they are better than someone else) while others have a past of breaking the law and being addicted to things like drugs and alcohol and living for themselves. Both are equally sinful in the eyes of God! Luke 15 shares with us that both Prodigals and Legalists must repent and receive grace from their Father. Possibly your past is one that was marked by self-righteousness and thinking that you’re better than other people, maybe your past is one marked by breaking every rule in the book! Consider for a moment the apostle Paul - as Dr. Allen mentioned in the lesson video.
- Paul example:
o Biography
3 Missionary trips throughout the Roman Empire
Wrote 13 epistles in the New Testament
Endured persecution, imprisonment and death
Could be called the “Greatest Christian who ever lived”
Famous Jew – very smart, a Hebrew of Hebrews, respected
· Legalism led him to persecute Christians (Acts 7-9)
· Damascus Road – converted to Christianity, changed forever!
Gospel and the past
Paul’s transformation is truly a 180 degree turn. What can we learn?
Repentance involves a turning around. You were walking one direction, now you are walking the opposite. This is what Paul does. This is what we must do as well. We repent and turn away from our sin and turn toward Christ. Whenever we do this, regardless of our past, we have confidence that we are forgiven fully and completely by our God.
Jesus forgives (2 Cor. 5:17 – we are a new creation)
We must view our past as God views it – He sees our past as He sees Christ’s. Christ’s righteousness covers our past! Regardless of the depth of our sin, even if we were a murderer, the grace of God is greater! Our sins are many, His mercy is more.
We must move forward!
7 But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ.
Because he does not reflect on his past sins/accomplishments, he presses on.
He focuses on what is ahead and his calling.
We too must not look exclusively in the rear view - we must press on and step into what God has in store for us now!
God’s Providence:
How God uses things in our lives to work for our good and His glory. His perfect plan. God’s Providence is extremely important for us to understand and to share with others.
Own your testimony
Don’t hide from it or bear it on your own! Show off the power of God by sharing your past, even the bad parts.
Your past can be used for God’s glory and to bless others as you show how God provided for you, was patient with you, and forgave you.
- Question: Please read 1 Timothy 1:12-17. What can we learn from Paul about sharing our past?
12 I give thanks to Christ Jesus our Lord who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful, appointing me to the ministry—
13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. But I received mercy because I acted out of ignorance in unbelief,
14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
15 This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them.
16 But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life.
17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
Think about your own past. The good and the bad. Now think about someone who is not a Christian, perhaps a family member or someone you used to know. Maybe it’s a politician or celebrity. It’s hard for us to imagine someone who is mean, wicked and believes it’s ok to do certain things could be saved – right? Think of the story of Jonah after he told Nineveh to repent and they actually repented… What was his response? He was like, really God? You’re not going to punish them and wipe them out? Sometimes we’re the same way whenever someone repents and is saved!
Please read Philippians 3:13-14. Where is Paul’s focus?
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead,
14 I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.
It’s not on his past or on earthly things, it’s on the eternal!
What can we learn from this? Where should our focus be, on our past mistakes or on what Christ is calling us to do today?
We acknowledge our past - Paul doesn’t shy away from it - but we don’t let our past define us. Christ has redeemed us. We are a new person. We are forgiven. Our focus must be ahead.
The bottom of page 26 notes Paul’s progression as he grew in spiritual maturity. As Paul grew to be more like Jesus, he realized that he was an even worse sinner than he previously thought. He thought less of himself and more of Christ – this is what John 3:30 tells us we should do as well!
Paul said initially in 1 Cor 15:9 – Least of the apostles
Next in Eph. 3:8 – Least of all the saints
Finally in 1 Tim. 1:17 – Worst of all sinners
This progression goes against our world and the idea of self-confidence and self-help. Our world says that we are perfect and we are enough. Paul disagrees. Many Christians say that this is depressing to think like Paul here, but isn’t this the truth? As I mature spiritually and learn more about God’s Word, I am reminded of my sin and how bad I am on my own. This is a healthy thing (not a bad thing) for all of us to remember because as we remember our sin, we also remember the Gospel message and the grace of God poured out on the cross. Many of us need to think more about our past not in a bad way, but to remind ourselves of the immeasurable grace we have received from Jesus Christ and how undeserving we are!
- Question: Is God’s timing perfect? If so, why do we fail to trust in it often times?
11 He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts, but no one can discover the work God has done from beginning to end.
6 I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
This doesn’t mean that we have no responsibility to act, we certainly do. There was a story about a man stranded on a remote island and he prayed that God would rescue him. The next day a boat came by and spotted the man on the beach and offered him a ride to the mainland. The man declined and said that he was waiting on God to rescue him. The day after that another ship came by and sent a group to come and pick him up. The man declined again and said that he was waiting on God to rescue him. The man was getting hungry and was disappointed at God by this point in time because it had been nearly 3 days of being stranded. Finally on the next day there was a severe storm and the structure he had built for himself caved in and the man died. He gets to heaven and asks God why he didn’t save him to which God replies, I sent you two different boats to get in but you rejected both times.
God is perfect and He has a plan – we are still responsible for our part and our actions. Often we fail to trust in God’s plan, though. We do things without consulting Him. We look at our focus so much on our past that sometimes we can forget to look ahead to what we are supposed to be doing today.
Remember that God can save anybody, anywhere, at anytime. Never stop praying for the salvation of someone God puts on your heart because if He could save Paul, and if He could save you, He can also save them!
As we kick off a short study in Daniel, we’ll be reminded that our God is in control as the King of Creation. He is in control and brings blessings and curses to the people of Israel during this particular book. Even though God is in control, that glorious Biblical truth doesn’t mean that we aren’t supposed to do anything - in Daniel we see what we should do as people who have saving faith in God. We must act. We must live a life of faith. We act in faith knowing that God will work all things for our good and for His glory!
- Context of Amazing Grace – similar to our lives, we were once lost but now we are found, were blind but now we see because of what Jesus has done for us. If we have experienced that grace, we must share it with others and move beyond our past and into Christian service as we focus, as Paul did, not on the here and now but rather on Christ and our heavenly calling.