GraceCourse-worksheet-5.1

SESSION 5: HUMBLE

WELCOME
Who is the humbliest person you have ever met?


WORSHIP
We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19)

PRAYER & DECLARATION
Dear loving and gracious Father, I can do nothing whatsoever of any real value without You. I offer myself to You now as a living sacrifice. Please lead me into all truth. I ask this in the humble name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

In Christ I am no longer under the Law but under grace. I choose no longer to follow “the Law” as my lord or “rules” as my ruler. I declare that Jesus Christ is my Lord and I command His enemies to leave my presence.

WORD
*Focus verse*: Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-40 37Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Focus truth: When we understand our amazing position of security in God’s love, we are free to humble ourselves before Him and others so that we can work together to reach the world for Christ.

What, me? A Pharisee?
The Pharisees were originally a group of ordinary people who were radically committed to truth and to fighting against liberalism.
They ended up as shallow hypocrites. They had a gasp of truth but they didn’t have a clue about grace.
Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Corinthians 8:1).
Pride is another false motivator that keeps us from being compelled by love.

The woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11)
The Pharisees had a good intellectual grasp of the truth. Moses did indeed command that adulterers should be put to death (Leviticus 20:10). Jesus helped them realize that they had sinned too, just like the woman. None of them had lived up to the righteous standards of the Law. Jesus - the only one without sin - had every right to stone her to death. Yet He didn’t speak even a single word of condemnation.
Religious people are into rules. God is into relationships. Religious people put laws above love. God makes love the supreme goal. Religious people are most concerned about being right. God is most concerned that we be real. Only then can we be right. Religious people make their highest aim to know the Word of God. God wants us to make our highest aim to know the God of the Word.

Why did the God of grace give the Law?
The Law was not given until hundreds of years after God’s original covenant with Abraham when God made some promises: Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward (Genesis 15:1). Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be (Genesis 15:5). God made unconditional promises - grace promises. Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6).
Abraham did just one thing: he chose to believe what God promised. It has always been the case that we enter into God’s promises and blessing by faith, and faith alone - not by anything we do.
When the Law came, it did not supersede the grace promises God had made. It’s not as if the original plan was grace and it somehow went badly wrong and had to be changed to Law.
The Law was given “because of transgressions” (Galatians 3:19, Romans 3:19-20). The Law never was meant to provide a way to become acceptable to God through our own efforts. It was there to make us so aware of the awfulness of sin and its control over us, that we would understand our need of grace, our need of Christ. The Law itself was actually a means of grace!

How did Jesus fulfill the Law?
The Pharisees complained that Jesus seemed to be doing away with the Law. But He said 17Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished (Matthew 5:17-18).

He became the perfect sacrifice and met all of the Law’s righteous demands on our behalf
He made it possible for us not just to be counted as righteous, but actually to become righteous through and through - because of His perfect sacrifice which He paid once for all our sin, past, present and future.

He helped us understand the true purpose of the Law
Jesus takes the Law which already seemed an impossible standard and raises the bar even higher 21You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother will be subject to judgment (Matthew 5:21-22).
27You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:27-28).
Do you agree with Jesus’ words that we are incapable of meeting God’s standards in our own strength? How can we meet those standards?


He enabled the Law to be written on our hearts
Each time Jesus raised the bar, He moved it from a law that focussed on external behavior to what is inside. Although at one time, our hearts were deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9), they are no longer.
This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds (Hebrews 10:16).
Now that we have become new creations in Christ, we have new hearts and new minds. God’s Law is no longer wordt on a tablet of stone or on a page. It’s written inside us.

Now, watch the 24”29-minute DVD teaching lesson 5.1.

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT 1

Are there ways in which Christians today are tempted to think that they need to obey certain “rules”?


Jesus says to us Be perfect (Matthew 5:48). How is it possible to keep this command?

Now, save this worksheet in your e-mail inbox.