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Feb 19, 2024
Included | Romans 7:14-25
Following the rules
Paul is really getting to the heart of the matter! Many of us who read the Old Testament come away scratching our heads. Why didn’t these people, God’s Chosen People, do what they were told? Why are the early Scriptures so full of failure and frustration? They had everything going for them. God was on their side, yet they experienced failure after failure. Perhaps you identify! Paul looks into the reasons why this happened and the only solution for rescue.
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- What do you know about your ancestors (good and bad!). Share a story with your group.
- Have you ever considered that, as a Christian, the ancient nation of Israel is also part of your ancestry? Explain why that is good news.
- Do you relate to the sentence: “I do what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I want to do?” Explain.
- Can your group come up with an explanation for how, exactly, Jesus “rescues us from this body of death?”
- Do you find this passage fundamentally discouraging or encouraging? Explain
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Recent Sermons
Paul never recovered from God including the Gentiles in the salvation invitation.
Like some of us, perhaps, he felt like some people should be excluded by virtue of where they were born or how badly they have behaved.
More than included, Paul instructs that former ‘outsiders’ should be treated as precious insiders, treated even better than we would treat ourselves. What would it look like if love came to town?
Human beings need reminders about how to get along, and Christians are no exception. We especially need reminders about how to love each other while we disagree. Paul draws the believers' hearts and minds back to what Jesus has done, and that paves the way for loving each other well through conflict.
How do we live with Jesus in a society that opposes him? Paul tells us to wake up to our resurrection hope. When we do that, loving others and rejecting sin in our own lives makes sense.
Romans 12 is the description of what happens when God’s mercy overflows in a church’s life. Lifelong attitudes change, love becomes genuine, mocking enemies are not met with equal and opposite force but, quite the opposite, with peace and gentleness. Be praying even now for how God will speak uniquely to your small group.
All along, we’ve been saying that God’s heart is to see us INCLUDED. That’s why Jesus came, and that’s the subject of Paul’s letter to the Romans. At times, Christians forget God’s radical inclusion of them and go back to the old patterns of competing and comparing. Sadly, that was happening in the Roman Church. Paul has one powerful dose for that sickness.
The resurrection changed everything! The story includes an invitation, a blessing, and a commission for the first witnesses … and for us today.
