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Relevant Verses: Zephaniah 3, Luke 15, Psalm 146, Romans 5

Theme: To Be Pleasing to God

Leading Question: Which is our more serious challenge: Convincing arrogant sinners to abandon their arrogance, or convincing repentant sinners in their chagrined and depressed condition, that God really is eager to accept them?

This week’s memory text, Zephaniah 3:17, is a good place to start this week’s discussion:  

Zephaniah 3:17: The Lord your God in your midst,

The Mighty One, will save;

He will rejoice over you with gladness,

He will quiet you with His love,

He will rejoice over you with singing.”

As the official study guide comments: “Zephaniah 3:17 emphatically displays the delight of God over his redeemed people. Just about every word for joy and delight in the Hebrew language is packed into this single verse, descriptive of God’s delight over His redeemed people. It’s almost as if not one of the terms by itself is sufficient to describe the magnitude of God’s delight on that day.”

But that attitude of unrestrained delight has to be tempered in light of the realities of our human condition. And we can glimpse some of the complex realities of those realities in the first major passage in our lesson, the story of the so-called prodigal son. In Luke 15. And those realities can be seen through the experience of the major characters, especially those of the prodigal and the father in their before-and-after situations:

  1. The Prodigal:
    1. In his arrogant departure
 
    2. In his dejected return, depressed by a sense of his unworthiness

  2. The Father:
    1. 
Affronted by his son’s arrogant departure

    2. Delighted and amazed by his son’s return

  3. The angry elder brother

Questions: Is the stance of each of the three major characters understandable?  Defensible?

Comment and further questions: Is the figure of the father the most attractive of these figures?

Which of these figures is most helpful in addressing the situations faced by needy people in the real world?  We must remember the tension that exists in the overall theme for this quarter’s lessons: “God’s Love and Justice”: Some sinners are eager to hear of God’s love, but less eager to hear of his justice.  And in that connection we have to recognize the inherent tension between those who are to take advantage of God’s love, a love that they do not deserve, and those who can scarcely imagine that God’s justice would allow sinners like them to be part of his kingdom.

Question: Is there likely to be roughly the same number in each group?  Or do believers in community tend to drift to one extreme or the other? In other words, are believers, in general, more likely to take unmerited advantage of God’s love, or to see themselves, like the returning prodigal son, to be unworthy of God’s love?

A Psalm worth pondering: Psalm 146.  Considering the complex issues this week’s lesson addresses, Psalm 146 is worth pondering. Ps. 146:2-9 are cited here in the NIV:

Psalm 146: 2 I will praise the Lord all my life;
    I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
3 Do not put your trust in princes,
    in human beings, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
    on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the Lord their God.
6 He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
    the sea, and everything in them—
    he remains faithful forever.
7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed
    and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
8     the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
    the Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the foreigner
    and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
    but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

Until one gets to the very last line, a believer could rejoice in the words of this psalm. But the last line is a cold shower: “he frustrates the ways of the wicked.” 

Question: To what extent is there a danger that believers will rest secure in God’s saving care – when they really should be awakened to the knowledge that God frustrates the ways of the wicked?

A Startling New Testament Promise: Romans 5:6-10. For those who have difficulty in believing that God is able to save us, Roman 5:6-10 contains some remarkable statements:

Romans 5: 6-10: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

Note these 3 remarkable statements:

vs. 6: “when we were still powerless”

vs. 8: “while we were still sinners”
vs.10: “While we were God’s enemies”

In short, before we had done a thing, God accepted us.  We don’t need to earn God’s salvation.  He gives it to us while we were yet sinners.  In other words, we can be pleasing to God without doing a thing on our own behalf.

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