Life Groups // Winter 2024 // Week 5
Posted February 9, 2024 — Lincoln Berean
To Be God’s People is to Be Godly People // Exodus 20:1-7
Introduction
After guiding the Israelites through the wilderness all the way to Mount Sinai, God communes with Moses and begins to give the commandments by which His people should live.
To think through the main ideas in the sermon and prepare for your discussion together, we invite you to look over all the questions on the following pages and write your thoughts down before you meet with your group. Due to preferences over a wide range of groups, we do not expect you will cover every question each week.
Warm Up (Suggested time: 30 min)
1) Would you rather have a fast-forward, pause, or rewind button on your life?
2) What is one rule that is difficult for you to follow?
Getting Started
1) Open group discussion with prayer. Here are a few potential prayer items:
a. For the Spirit of God to lead you in truth
b. For the fruit of the Spirit to be cultivated in your lives
c. For grace to hear and apply what the Spirit says to you
2) Choose someone to read the passage aloud for the group.
Study Questions (Suggested time: 40 min)
1) What did you find particularly interesting from this week’s sermon, or chapter 20 of Exodus?
2) Verse 2 depicts God announcing the unique identity that He holds in the eyes of the Israelites, based on His mighty works in delivering them from Egypt. If God were to speak to you today and identify Himself using an action that He has taken in your life, what might that action be? (See this week’s Scripture Focus exercise for more ideas to apply this to your life.)
Ryan spoke in last week’s sermon about God calling His people His “treasured possession.” Now, in verse 3, God commands His people, “Have no other gods before me.” This indicates to us that God redeemed Israel to be His people, and is therefore the only one deserving of their praise and the authority to establish laws over them. What does it mean to you to be God’s treasured possession?
How would this have defined the way Israel looked at these commands given by God?
3) In Exodus 20:4-6, God expresses His commandment to turn away from the worship of idols. This second commandment functions in the context of the first: God’s people are to worship Him alone as the One above all others, and therefore the worship of idols is a transgression against Him. How can we determine if something is becoming an idol in our lives?
Consider the things in your own life that tend to become idols for you. What are they? What are the consequences of putting too much of yourself into those things?
We’ve likely all experienced the feeling of jealousy in one way or another. According to Exodus chapter 20, what does it mean for God to be described as a jealous God? How did Pastor Jeff define it?
Most of the time we think of jealousy as a negative thing. How is it a good thing for God to be described as jealous?
4) Based on Exodus 20:7, as well as what you learned in this week’s sermon, what does it mean to take the name of the Lord in vain?
To bear God’s name is to represent Him to a world who does not know Him. What would it look like for you to faithfully bear God’s name in your daily life this week?
Personal Spiritual Exercises
Just like physical exercises help strengthen and stretch our bodies for healthy living, these spiritual exercises are meant to move us spiritually in ways that may be new so we might experience inner growth. Since God longs for us to experience Him with our whole selves—mind, body, spirit—we invite you along each week to strengthen your souls with suggestions and prompts. Next week in Life Group, take a few moments to share how the Lord may have used this exercise in your life.
Scripture Focus: Rewrite Exodus 20:2 using actions that God has taken in your life that He might reference in order to identify Himself to you (“I am the Lord your God, who ___________”) and consider how you can bring praise to Him for how He has worked in your life.
For example, He might say to you “I am the Lord your God, who taught you the meaning of forgiveness and set you free from the guilt and shame of your past.”
Prayer Focus: The first three of the Ten Commandments are all concerned with how God’s people are meant to interact with Him in light of His nature and identity. Here are a few ways that you can observe and praise His nature through prayer this week:
- Address Him as the one true God, who is supreme over all of creation.
- Thank Him for His laws and correction, which create order out of chaos.
- Acknowledge and repent of the things that tend to become idols in your life.
- Ask him for opportunities to bear His name well.
Prayer (Suggested time: 20 min)
A significant part of “coming together” is being open and honest with our lives. Sitting in a group of people for prayer may be new or it may be familiar to you. If you would rather not pray aloud when it is your turn, feel free to pray silently and then say “Amen” aloud signaling the next person in the group to pray. Whether or not you choose to verbalize your prayer, everyone is a participant in sharing this time before God together.
Take a few moments to prepare a prayer request. What did the message, working through the above questions or the discussion cause you to notice about your own relationship with Jesus? Would you be willing to share your prayer request with the group?