SERMON DISCUSSION This LifeGroup will focus it’s discussion on the Spring Semester sermon series God Is... During this series we will have a deeper understanding on the Character of God. There is nothing more important than a right understanding of God. Every day we have fears, concerns, and demands that distract our lives and compete for our attention. Before long, we begin to filter God’s character and nature through our experiences, creating a god in our image. God Is... is about undoing this —stripping away the false picture that we have painted and restoring a proper view of who God is based on what he has revealed to us in Scripture. WEEK 1 - The Mystery of God WEEK 2 - The Holiness of God WEEK 3 - The Faithfulness of God WEEK 4 - The Wrath of God WEEK 5 – The Sovereignty of God WEEK 6 - The Mercy of God WEEK 7 - The Jealous God WEEK 8 - The Beauty of God WEEK 9 - The Love of God WEEK 1 - GOD IS...MYSTERY: THE MYSTERY OF GOD WEEK 1 - GOD IS...MYSTERY: THE MYSTERY OF GOD God is never boring. Frustrating, confusing, enlightening, shocking, and even funny, but He is never boring. If we think that God is boring, then we are obviously worshipping a God of our own making and not the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of the universe and of our own lives. God is incomprehensible, but the mystery of God is revealed in Christ. There are some things we will always wonder about and question because God’s thoughts are higher that our thoughts, and His ways are higher than our ways. One of the most dangerous tendencies we have is deify man and humanize God. We give Him human characteristics and reduce Him to someone we can completely understand. In the beginning, man was made in the image of God, but we’ve been making God in our image ever since. We reduce the mysterious God down to the logical constraints of our left brain and, in that process, all mystery is lost. One of the first things we learn about God is that we just can’t figure Him out. There is an element to His transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient character that remains a mystery to us. With God, dirt can become medicine that heals and love can become the weapon we can wield. In mystery of God, we discover life in death and abundance in sacrifice. Let’s take God out from our microscopes and analytical boxes and let Him display all of His power, majesty, and glory to us. When we revel in His mystery, worship happens, and life becomes much more exciting. Please Read the following passages: Job 11:7 - “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?” Job 38: 31- 36 (As you are reading this, can you identify the mystery in this passage?) - “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? 32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? 33 Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth? 34 “Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? 35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? 36 Who gives the ibis wisdom or gives the rooster understanding? Psalm 46:10 – “He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;” 1 Corinthians 8:2 – “Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know.” Quote by William Jennings Bryan: “I have observed the power of the watermelon seed. It has the power of drawing from the ground and through itself 200,000 times its weight. When you can tell me how it takes this material and out of it colors an outside surface beyond the imitation of art and then forms inside of it a white rind and within that again, a red heart thickly inlaid with black seeds, each one of which, in turn, is capable of drawing through itself 200,000 times its weight. When you can explain to me the mystery of the watermelon, you can ask me to explain the mystery of God.” Think about these statements and discuss as a group. • A low view of God is the cause of a hundred lesser evils and a high view of God is the solutions to ten thousand problems. • There are more than 400 names for God in Scriptures and each one reveals a different dimension of His personality. • We want a Twitter God we can reduce to 140 characters; a God we can put in nice, neat categories; a God we can understand; a God we can measure; a God we can comprehend; even a God we can control. But God doesn’t fit 140 characters. • God is mysterious. The more we know, the more we know how much we don’t know. The more we know, the greater the mystery. And that should make us fall in love with Him even more! 1 Corinthians 2:1-10 (Have someone read out loud the following.) “And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. 6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” the things God has prepared for those who love him—10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” Put it in perspective: Paul was highly trained, educated, and skilled man. In other places in Scripture, we find him contending for the gospel against the brightest philosophical minds of Athens on the Aeropagus, sharing the story of Christ with political leaders of the Empire, and clearly stirring up theological debates between members of the Sandhedrin. However, Paul recognized that there was a point at which he must come to the end of his brilliance and knowledge. In the letter to the church at Corinth, he admits God cannot be contained by the hundred trillion synaptic connection tat crisscross our cerebral cortex. GROUPS DISCUSSION: 1. Paul constrasts human wisdom with the mystery of God. How should human wisdom be used? 2. Paul also speaks about the role of the Holy Spirit in helping us grasp the mysteries of God. Why do you think it is important to know that the Spirit “searches everything, even the depths of God?” What do you think this has to do with our relationship with God? Deuteronomy 29:29 – “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” (What if there was a file for circumstances for which there is no logical explanation? There are some things that remain a mystery to us as we live within the space-time dimensions of earthly history.) 3. What questions would you put in a Deuteronomy 29:29 file? 4. What life circumstances would you put in a Deuteronomy 29:29 file? 5. When God’s actions don’t seem to correspond with what you think you know of the character and promises of God, what do you do? Romans 16:25-27 – “Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from[a] faith— 27 to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.” (Romans is the closest we find to a systematic theology in the New testament. In this letter to the church in Rome, Paul outlines in bold detail in the content, implications and applications of his faith. He closes with this idea that ultimately, Jesus Christ is the mystery of God revealed.) 6. What are some things we learn about God’s character and ways through the Person of Jesus Christ? 7. In looking at the life of Christ, where do we see the mystery of God in full display? In other words, where do we see truth in the tension of opposites, the foolish confounding the wise, or unconventional approaches to faith and action? 8.