DECALOGUE IV

Discuss as a group how to put better rhythm in life. Allow those who have good rhythm to share how they got there and how they handle it mentally.

Discuss the reality that sabbath says your work is done even if it isn't.

Discuss how the Spirit of sabbath is trying to get the slaves out of us.

Discuss how an inability to turn off, rhythmically, is a form of dying.

Key texts for discussion:

Deut 4

Deut 5

Exodus 31

Mark 2

Mark 3

Colossians 2:16

Based on the content of the teaching/message:

What were the key points for you?

What was the "one thing" you took away?

What surprised you?

What bothered you? Why?

Have you ever heard or come across a similar teaching or idea? Have you ever been taught something that was contradictory?

What is/was already part of your thinking on this subject?

What did you learn that was new to you?

*About God?

*About yourself?

*About others?

What changes of thought are necessary in light of what you learned?

What changes of action are needed?

How would life be different if you/we applied this teaching fully?

What are the hindrances, and what do we do about those?

What role can this group play to help you take steps this week and beyond?

DECALOGUE III

Though not a justification, often times racism in a person stems from a negative encounter with a particular member of a so-called race early in life. Sometimes people don't go to the doctor because of a horror story they heard at an impressionable age. And some kids won't eat any vegetables because of a vague memory of the texture of pureed carrots being force fed to them in a high chair.

One bad experience can unfairly, but powerfully, cast a shadow on a whole category.

And sometimes that experience is a person of faith, and the category is God.

Use this discussion to both wipe away the human fingerprints from God's love, and to help snap into realignment those of us that have gotten used to speaking comfortably and simplistically for God about the difficulties of real life.

Thaw

• Football season: "Hurray", "Boo" or "What's football?" Explain.
• What has been on your mind in the last week, and why do you think it has been in your thoughts?

• What has stuck with you from Sunday morning?
• Considering the message was simultaneously for followers of Jesus, people who want to follow but keep their distance in many ways, and non-followers, what is your specific position on the point of the message?
• Who did you think of during the message, and why do you think that is?

Read

• Micah 6:1-8
• Thoughts?

Leader note: The prophet Micah is largely constructed like court proceedings. Israel has a complaint, and so does YHWH. At this point in chapter 6, God is asking "how have I burdened you?". The implication is that his people are claiming they have a burden, and they may be telling the truth. It just wasn't given to them from God. God reminds them that he is the one that "un-burdened" them from slavery. (Jesus makes a similar point when he tells his followers about is yoke and burden being easy and light in that it all boils down to putting others first Matthew 11:30). A list of supposed wants and needs for a religion-protecting God follows in Micah: what does the Lord require of a person....gallons of this? tons of that? your children? various of your interests that make God out to be the taker, and not the giver? In verse 8, Micah is credited by the Talmud as actually summarizing the whole of Torah; be just, be loving, be humble in your ongoing journey with God.

Gently help people resist the urge to say "this applied to the Jews, but it's not enough because Jesus and becoming a Christian hasn't shown up yet". Jesus' message was identical, and in his Spirit this Micah 6:8 life is the life we live. Make sure people don't think God gave inaccurate information about what he wanted to Micah!

• What does doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God mean?
• What do you feel like is missing from this list based on what you have come to believe about what God wants?

Read

• Exodus 20:8
• Literally: "You will not carry the name of YHWH God emptily, for YHWH clears not the name of him who carries the name emptily."
• Thoughts?
• Why is it important to not use God's name, title, etc as a common expression, profanity or in ways outside of actually referencing him?

Leader note: It might be helpful to help the group understand the Jewish principle of "gezeirah". This is essentially a "fence" put around the heart of the command or issue at stake. A gezeirah protects the person from being able to eventually commit the greater offense. Like a parent who makes a rule that the kids can't play in the front yard, only the back. This seemingly strict, even odd rule may not make sense to the kids. But, the parent knows they live on a dangerously busy street. "Don't play in the front" is a protective gezeirah for the real matter- don't play in the street on penalty of death or severe injury. This idea is common in Torah, and is best understood as parental for a nation of former slaves (and us today, whose hearts still believe they are slaves) that needed strictness to "keep them out of the street". In light of this, understanding the traditional dimension of taking the very literal name of God seriously, undoubtedly connects in our minds and behaviors to continuing to revere God and his interests, rather than making them common or dismissed by way of familiarity.

• If this command is so that people far from him, or even people not in leadership positions, would remain clear about the difference between God's heart and human religion, what does this tell you about the power of the lives and behaviors of religious people?

Discuss

• What is something you feel you're supposed to believe about God, but have trouble with?

Leader note: Don't attempt to handle metaphysical, origin-of-everything kinds of questions in one LifeGroup. Let the weight of the question be realized if they ask, make sure responses are humble, and try and keep the discussion on the kinds of lives we're to live with or without all our scientific questions answered. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, remember that Jesus is our measuring stick for what we believe God is like (John 14:8-10). So, in trying to discern what God is like, what we're called to, and how we can know anything about the Divine, it's always safest and most accurate to reference Jesus.

• What is something you have said to others in a moment of attempting to be helpful, but realized you don't even believe for yourself?
• Where do we get the impulse to have answers and speak for God?
• Why do we often condemn the actions of others, referencing God's holiness, and yet think of ourselves in terms of our intentions, referencing God's grace?
• What does Micah 6:8 say to this?
• What does Galatians 5:21-22 say to this?

Leader note: Reminder, "fruit" means "evidence". Note the kinds of words not in this list by Paul in determining if God's Spirit is in play. Condemnation, hypocrisy, stubborn stances, excommunications, trite explanations for serious matters...none of these are evidence that God's Spirit is at work.

Apply

• How does this group apply all this?
• How will this group know it has successfully applied all this?
• What step are you taking now?

DECALOGUE II

When you think of your mother, your boss, your self or God, do you see them as they are, or do you see them as you have gotten used to projecting them to be.

The difference is the gap between reality and fiction. And the heart of the issue may be idolatry.

This week, discuss as a group how we often bring templates, or expectations to every one else in the universe. And the more comfortable we get with doing it with God, the easier it becomes to do it to people. And vice versa. Once we are aware that we do this, we can cease from anxious control and begin living in the flow of God's Spirit and with others for who they really are.

You may find that various members of the group want to get into the particulars of what a modern day equivalent of idolatry is. Some will focus on statues in some churches. Others want to be certain that iconic paintings such as found at Sistine Chapel aren't against the second command. Help the group understand that it's easy to point away from ourselves to see who's guilty, but that the goal of the group is locate your own misalignment and work there.

Thaw

• What most stuck with you from Sunday?
• Was there a recurring thought, name or face that was brought to mind during the message?

Read

• Deut 4:1-20
• Thoughts?
• Difficult as it might be, how would you explain the importance of the second commandment ("You shall not make idols...", Exodus 20:4) as elaborated on here by Moses?

Leader note: Help the group understand this from far more angles than God being threatened by a seeming lack of fidelity. This was about interpersonal welfare, sociological and psychological health. Additionally, Israel's job was to put YHWH on display and be a people of light for the world, so the perception of other nations was always a concern. The children who didn't experience the flight from Egypt staying true to their redeemer was in view as well. Idolatry would rot all these areas and more. Help the group discover these and as many other angles as possible.

You may also want to note that Ezekiel 18:20 makes clear that God doesn't punish kids for their relative's sins, and that the second command seems to be about the observation of the associated social consequences of choosing to make God's Spirit out to be a wooden remote control. "Visiting the guilt" as it says in Exodus 20 doesn't mean capital punishment, but literally "tending to it".

Read (Leader note: you may want to make this a quiet meditation)

• Psalm 115
• Thoughts?
• What does verse 8 mean?

Read

• John 3:3, 8
• John 4:23-24
• Thoughts?
• Why is this difficult?

Discuss

• What kind of relationship to God do we have when we refuse ourselves the clear cut definitions of an easy religion and a predictable god?
• When someone is disappointed with God, how might this sometimes be a form of idolatry brought to light?
• When someone becomes fixated on their interpretation or ideas about God, rather than God, how would someone else be able to tell the difference?

• How does creating and attaching ourself to a template of reality affect how we relate to others?
• How does it affect our ability to actually love someone?

Apply

• Perhaps you have ongoing relational tensions. Disappointments. Frustrations. How might some of these relationships improve by the realization that you have a template or mold for who this person(s) should be?
• Apply this same question to God.
• Perhaps you are failing someone else's template. They have an inner projection on all you should be, do and become. And you're none of it. How can you love this person(s) even while they have created an idol of what they think you ought to be?

Leader note: Point out to anyone struggling in this area that a demand for their parents/sibling/spouse/etc to drop their template before the group member will love or respect them is a template in and of itself. Living and worshiping in Spirit and in Truth allows others to carry their templates until they are aware enough to drop them. Loving them is not contingent on them dropping their idols.

• What is God asking this group to do with a spirit of idolatry regarding the church, the Bible, doctrine, prayer, etc?
• What is God asking this group to do with regard to how we see people as they really are, and the lack of control we actually have on others?
• What step can the group take together?

Prayer

• Spend time quietly praying and experiencing the mysterious, unpredictable flow of God's Spirit and God's direction on how to destroy our inner idols of him and what others should be.

DECALOGUE I

For the next 10 weeks we will be going through one of the more familiar parts of scripture, and perhaps one of the least understood. Mention the 10 commandments and people will understand them to mean "what you must do to go to heaven", "the basis for a nation's morality", "an outdated law code for Jews but not Christians" or "the reason Moses had a bad back".

But what if they express the heart of God and the way toward life?

What if they point to Jesus, rather than provide an outdated alternative?

For the next couple months, use this these discussion guides to see if, as a church and as a group, we can know God and the abundant life better by understanding what he told his first followers millennia before Christ.

Thaw

• What's one big thing on your mind as Fall draws nearer?
• What do you feel like God is teaching you about Him, you, life, etc. so far this year?

• What most stuck with you from service Sunday morning?

Discuss

Leader note: You may want to discuss the song "Free" by Switchfoot, performed Sunday morning.

Here is the song. Here are the lyrics.

Read

Leader note: This is Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Romans 7. It's a pretty amazing take and will undoubtedly be helpful for people understanding how followers of Jesus may see Torah. Don't feel underproductive if this is the only things you get to tonight...there's plenty here.

^1-3 You shouldn't have any trouble understanding this, friends, for you know all the ins and outs of the law—how it works and how its power touches only the living. For instance, a wife is legally tied to her husband while he lives, but if he dies, she's free. If she lives with another man while her husband is living, she's obviously an adulteress. But if he dies, she is quite free to marry another man in good conscience, with no one's disapproval.

^4-6So, my friends, this is something like what has taken place with you. When Christ died he took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with him and left it in the tomb, leaving you free to "marry" a resurrection life and bear "offspring" of faith for God. For as long as we lived that old way of life, doing whatever we felt we could get away with, sin was calling most of the shots as the old law code hemmed us in. And this made us all the more rebellious. In the end, all we had to show for it was miscarriages and stillbirths. But now that we're no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we're free to live a new life in the freedom of God.

⁷But I can hear you say, "If the law code was as bad as all that, it's no better than sin itself." That's certainly not true. The law code had a perfectly legitimate function. Without its clear guidelines for right and wrong, moral behavior would be mostly guesswork. Apart from the succinct, surgical command, "You shall not covet," I could have dressed covetousness up to look like a virtue and ruined my life with it.

^8-12Don't you remember how it was? I do, perfectly well. The law code started out as an excellent piece of work. What happened, though, was that sin found a way to pervert the command into a temptation, making a piece of "forbidden fruit" out of it. The law code, instead of being used to guide me, was used to seduce me. Without all the paraphernalia of the law code, sin looked pretty dull and lifeless, and I went along without paying much attention to it. But once sin got its hands on the law code and decked itself out in all that finery, I was fooled, and fell for it. The very command that was supposed to guide me into life was cleverly used to trip me up, throwing me headlong. So sin was plenty alive, and I was stone dead. But the law code itself is God's good and common sense, each command sane and holy counsel.

¹³I can already hear your next question: "Does that mean I can't even trust what is good [that is, the law]? Is good just as dangerous as evil?" No again! Sin simply did what sin is so famous for doing: using the good as a cover to tempt me to do what would finally destroy me. By hiding within God's good commandment, sin did far more mischief than it could ever have accomplished on its own.

^14-16I can anticipate the response that is coming: "I know that all God's commands are spiritual, but I'm not. Isn't this also your experience?" Yes. I'm full of myself—after all, I've spent a long time in sin's prison. What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can't be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God's command is necessary.

^17-20But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

^21-23It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

²⁴I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

²⁵The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

• Thoughts?
• What are the major themes that Paul is getting at and how have you seen them play out in your own life?

Read

• Exodus 20:1-3
• Thoughts?
• Who is this for?

Leader note: The point here is to make sure people don't think of God as making these commands for himself, or to protect himself from our sin. Reference Jesus in John 10:10 for a clarification on who his ways are for.

• What psychological, theological and emotional benefits come from God beginning with himself and his own behaviors?

Discuss

• How does coming back to this first command throughout life help?

Leader note: When we find ourselves in anything from a seeming crisis, to daily annoyance, going back to reference God's initial freeing work helps us believe that we are no longer slaves to our circumstances or anything else. See if you can help the group get to this...that God has freed us, and in all things we are invited to be humble, peace-filled, calm n0n-slaves.

• Are there any members of this group that do not feel free? Explain?
• How are Paul's words in Romans 7 applicable (Romans 7:25)?
• How can this group help you understand the freedom that God is offering for your life, mind and overall faith?