Digital Spotlight materials for the week of November 6, 2022 can be found below.
Click here for materials from October 30 (The Trinity)
Click here for materials from October 23 (Faith & Works)
Click here for materials from October 16 (Sin & Grace)
Week 4 — Knowing God
November 6, 2022
Start off by picking a dialogue leader and reciting this portion of a modernization of Luther’s Small Catechism.
(The dialogue leader reads the text in bold.)
Who is God? There is one true God, the Lord, who is also three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
What does it mean to be a creature? God made everything, including me and all my parts.
What does it mean to be taken care of? God preserves me every day with physical blessings of every kind, guarding me from danger and evil.
What moves God to take care of us? Only God’s praiseworthy mercy.
Who is Jesus? True God and true man.
What does it mean to be redeemed? Though we were condemned and separated from God, Jesus paid our price for sinful rebellion with his innocent suffering and death.
Why did Jesus redeem? So that we would be in his close family, in his gracious kingdom, in his blessed service, and in eternal life with him even now.
What does it mean to be unspiritual? We were born as God’s enemies, unable to truly trust in Jesus by our own thinking or choosing.
What does it mean to be spiritual? The Holy Spirit has called us by the good news of forgiveness in Jesus, working in and through us to keep all believers worldwide with Jesus in the one true faith.
Why is the Christian Church important? Among believers the Holy Spirit delivers full forgiveness over and over again all the way until the last day when the church will rise to eternal life.
Now listen to (and maybe sing along with) this groovy-’90s-style praise song “Glory and Praise”.
(Lyrics can be found below the video player.)
Jesus! Jesus Christ! (x4)
Create in me, O God,
A heart so true.
Show me the ways of peace,
As I faithfully follow you.
Glory and praise to you, Word of Life!
Jesus! Jesus Christ! (x2)
Our hearts, they cannot live
On bread alone,
But by your ev’ry word,
Bringing mercy and love to all.
Glory and praise to you, Word of Life!
Jesus! Jesus Christ! (x2)
Turn to the Holy One
With all your heart.
Come now and know your God,
Whose forgiveness is never far.
Glory and praise to you, Word of Life!
Jesus! Jesus Christ! (x4)
In Sunday’s service, we focused on four different ways to learn about God. Although our technological limitations kept us from focusing as fully on all four, here’s the plan of what those four different ways to learn about God were:
Through conscience
Through creation
Being known by God
Being known by others
Alright, this is a real brain crunch. You’re gonna do great…
Modernist philosophy (which came into being a few centuries ago) has made Bible scholars to be like scientists with white lab coats who poke and prod at God’s Word and quantify it with doctrines. This is unfortunate, because the approach we have toward the Bible should be faith in the claims God makes in the Bible about the good life, not a stance over God’s Word but looking in reliance on God’s Word. This modernist philosophy has made Christian teachers focus a lot more on us knowing God and knowing other people than focusing on God or other people knowing us. This misses out on a huge part of what Jesus intended for the Christian faith.
Discuss:
For what reasons do you think this modernist, white-lab-coat-scientist approach is tempting for believers to accept as full-and-complete teaching? (If you need to re-read the paragraph above, go ahead and do so.)
For now, let’s dive further into knowing God through creation and the help that the Bible gives to us.
Pick a reader to read out loud this re-write of the Creation account from Rob Lacey’s book The Word on the Street.
Day one: Then God’s voice booms out, “Lights!” and, from nowhere, light floods the skies and “night” is swept off the scene. God gives it the big thumbs up, calls it “day”.
Day two: God says, “I want a dome – call it ‘sky’ – right there between the waters above and below.” And it happens.
Day three: God says, “Too much water! We need something to walk on, a huge lump of it – call it ‘land’. Let the ‘sea’ lick its edges.” God smiles, says, “Now we’ve got us some definition. But it’s too plain! It needs colour! Vegetation! Loads of it. A million shades. Now!” And the earth goes wild with trees, bushes, plants, flowers and fungi. “Now give it a growth permit.” Seeds appear in every one. “Yesss!” says God.
Day four: We need a schedule: let’s have a ‘sun’ for the day, a ‘moon’ for the night; I want ‘seasons’, ‘years’; and give us ‘stars’, masses of stars – think of a number, add a trillion, then times it by the number of trees and we’re getting there: we’re talking huge!”
Day five: “OK, animals: amoeba, crustaceans, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals … I want the whole caboodle teeming with a million varieties of each – and let’s have some fun with the shapes, sizes, colours, textures!” God tells them all, “You’ve got a growth permit – use it!” He sits back and smiles, says, “Result!”
Day six: Then God says, “Let’s make people – like us, but human, with flesh and blood, skin and bone. Give them the job of caretakers of the vegation, game wardens of all the animals.” So God makes people, like him, but human. He makes male and female (for the “how”, see later). He smiles at them and gives them their job description: “Make babies! Be parents, grandparents, great-grandparents – fill the earth with your families and run the planet well. You’ve got all the plants to eat from, so have all the animals – plenty for all. Enjoy.” God looks at everything he’s made, and says, “Fantastic. I love it!”
Day seven: Job done – the cosmos and the earth complete. God takes a bit of well-earned R&R and just enjoys. He makes an announcement: “Let’s keep this day of the week special, a day off – a battery-recharge day: Rest Day.”
Discuss:
Garrett says that dwelling on the creation account is very helpful because creation is more foundational than even sin and forgiveness. What are the implications of that for how you think about God and live under God?
Watch this snippet of preaching that Garrett did back in September.
If you haven’t crunched through this type of stuff recently, now is the time.
Discuss:
Agree or disagree: What’s more troubling than what evolution says about where we came from is where evolution says we’re going.
As you think through the mental and emotional work of keeping faith in God, what are you moved to ask the others in your group to pray about?
Wrap up your time with the song “Child of Love” by We the Kingdom.
Upcoming Events @ GVT
Youth Group - Sundays 5pm-7pm
Some of the youth have taken to making meals, but we could use food supplies. Ask Garrett Alford or John Mullen for more info if you'd like to help. Or, perhaps you want to be a responsible adult presence at youth group gatherings.
Saturday, October 21, 2023, 4pm-6pm — next year’s Fall Family Fun Night
Lots of ways to help out with this outwardly focused event in which we see more newcomers to our campus than any other yearly event