lesson loop 9.24.13

Before we have our lessons tonight, I wanted to let you all know what we talked about last week. :-)

Middle School - "The Triune God"
We started a brand new series entitled "Limitless God". Over the next couple months we will be focusing our attention on who God is and what His character is like. We will see that He is limitless. He is perfect in all His attributes.
We began last Tuesday by considering the Trinity - 3 persons, 1 God. While this is a mind-boggling concept for us as humans, we must believe it because the Scriptures are clear that this is truth. We considered the following passages that show that God is One, and each member of the trinity is God:

• Deuteronomy 6:4 & Matthew 26:63-64
• Romans 3:30 & John 8:58; 17:5,24
• 1 Corinthians 8:5-6 & John 16:7-8
• Ephesians 4:5-6 & Acts 5:3-4
• 1 Timothy 2:5 & Philippians 2:5-6

Our main points were simple:

1. THERE IS ONE GOD! (we focused on Ephesians 4:1-6)
   vs. 4) One: body (church), Spirit (H.S.), hope (salvation)
   vs. 5) One: Lord (Jesus), faith (key), baptism (spiritual)
   vs. 6) One: God & Father [over all, through all, in all] vs. 2-3) One body - be humble, gentle, patient, bearing in love, unified, peaceful
2. THIS ONE GOD IS THREE PERSONS! (we focused on 1 Peter 1:1-2)
   Trinity Teamwork:
   Father - chooses us (foreknowledge)
   Spirit - sanctifies us (calls, saves, seals, purifies)
   Son - sacrificed for us (cross)

We used an illustration to explain how our perspective of the Trinity is limited - we looked at zoomed in photos, and tried to guess what they were. From that limited perspective, it was very difficult. The same is true with the Trinity - from our perspective it is very difficult to understand, but that does not mean that it is not true. 

These truths are foundational, and we must hold to them as Christians. We ended with reciting this creed of the church - 

“I believe in God the Father, who created me; I believe in God the Son, who redeemed me; I believe in the Holy Spirit, who makes me holy.”

High School - "The Devastation of Sin"

We started with a video of a tornado - because that is a physical illustration of where the nation of Israel is spiritually as a nation. Things have spiraled down to a point of maximum destruction, and their sin leaves destruction in its wake. The main point was:

When you give yourself over to sin, destruction is sure to follow.

We read Judges 19, and we shuddered at the depravity that God's people committed.

We traced this all back to Israel's idolatry which is sketched out in the entire book, and we mentioned that all sin is idolatry. It is nothing less than worshipping ourselves rather than God. We considered 3 things about sin and self-worship:

1. SELF-WORSHIP HAS DEVASTATING RESULTS There is an unavoidable correlation between Gibeah and Sodom and Gomorrah Sexual sin is especially heinous! “Sin will always take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay.”
2. SIN HAS A SNOWBALL EFFECT Things go from horrible to worse. More and more people are killed, and more and more women are taken advantage of. Unchecked sin will spiral out of control.
3. WE ARE OUR OWN WORST ENEMY Christians tend to be so concerned about how vile and wicked the world is (and it is!), but often we forget that we tend to destroy ourselves most times because we allow our sin and lust to go unchecked. We will destroy ourselves if we do not regularly repent from our sin and self-worship.

This seemed a depressing end to our study in the book of Judges, so I ended by saying this - "While the deliverers in the book of Judges failed to bring about reform, there did come a Deliverer who was true, and holy and beautiful. His name of course is Jesus, and He is a great Savior. He offers hope to all who would turn to Him and repent from their sins. He is in the business of radically changing people. He takes us who are sinners (our own worst enemy), and he makes us more and more into the image of Himself."