What the Lord requires of us

3 February 2016

Opening Prayer/Worship

Hymn: Now the day is over

Theme: Boundless Riches of Christ

Topic: What the Lord requires of us

Reading: Micah 6:1-8

Hear what the Lord says:
   Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
   and let the hills hear your voice. 
² Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
   and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
   and he will contend with Israel. 

³ ‘O my people, what have I done to you?
   In what have I wearied you? Answer me! 
⁴ For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
   and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 
⁵ O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
   what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
   that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.’ 

⁶ ‘With what shall I come before the Lord,
   and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
   with calves a year old? 
⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
   with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
   the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ 
⁸ He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
   and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
   and to walk humbly with your God? 

Introduction

God loves and treats us as precious children of His.  In Scripture, God declared that He would not withhold any good thing from us.  His love for us is so strong that nothing shall separate us from it.  Although we may never understand why the Lord loves us so much, He expects us to simply accept His love and mercy toward us.  Accepting the love of God comes with expectations from the One who blessed us immensely.  According to Scripture, while we were yet sinners Christ died to save us from our sins and reconcile us with the Lord our Maker.  Since Christ died for us, we should once in a while ask ourselves… what have we done for Him?  In this study, we will discuss what the Lord expects from us.

Questions/Discussion

1) Why should the Lord expect anything from us?  

Isaiah 1:11-20

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. ¹² When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; ¹³ bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.  ¹⁴ Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. ¹⁵ When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. ¹⁶ Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,  ¹⁷   learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.  ¹⁸ Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. ¹⁹ If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; ²⁰ but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Matthew 10:5-8

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, ⁶but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” ⁸Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

James 1:19-27

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; ²⁰for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. ²¹Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. ²² But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. ²⁶ If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

2) What are the lessons in Matthew 5:1-12 regarding what the Lord requires of us?

Matthew 5:1-12

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ²Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: ³ ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. ⁵ ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. ⁶ ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. ⁷ ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. ⁸ ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. ⁹ ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. ¹⁰ ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ¹¹ ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹²Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

3) Discuss some of the factors that hinder us from living mindful of the Lord’s expectations of our lives.  How do we overcome them?

1 Samuel 15:10-23

The word of the Lord came to Samuel: ¹¹‘I regret that I made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me, and has not carried out my commands.’ Samuel was angry; and he cried out to the Lord all night. ¹²Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, and Samuel was told, ‘Saul went to Carmel, where he set up a monument for himself, and on returning he passed on down to Gilgal.’ ¹³When Samuel came to Saul, Saul said to him, ‘May you be blessed by the Lord; I have carried out the command of the Lord.’ ¹⁴But Samuel said, ‘What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears, and the lowing of cattle that I hear?’¹⁵Saul said, ‘They have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep and the cattle, to sacrifice to theLord your God; but the rest we have utterly destroyed.’ ¹⁶Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Stop! I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night.’ He replied, ‘Speak.’

¹⁷ Samuel said, ‘Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel.¹⁸And the Lord sent you on a mission, and said, “Go, utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.” ¹⁹Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do what was evil in the sight of theLord?’ ²⁰Saul said to Samuel, ‘I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.²¹But from the spoil the people took sheep and cattle, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.’ ²²And Samuel said,
‘Has the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices,
   as in obedience to the voice of the Lord?
Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice,
   and to heed than the fat of rams.
²³ For rebellion is no less a sin than divination,
   and stubbornness is like iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
   he has also rejected you from being king.’

Psalm 15:1-5

¹ O Lord, who may abide in your tent?
   Who may dwell on your holy hill? 

² Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right,
   and speak the truth from their heart;
³ who do not slander with their tongue,
   and do no evil to their friends,
   nor take up a reproach against their neighbours;
⁴ in whose eyes the wicked are despised,
   but who honour those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even to their hurt;
⁵ who do not lend money at interest,
   and do not take a bribe against the innocent. 

Those who do these things shall never be moved.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

²⁶ Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no one might boast in the presence of God. ³⁰He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’

Intercession/Worship

Conclusion

Accepting the love of God comes with expectations from the One who blessed us immensely.

Closing Prayer (Collect for Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany)

Living God, in Christ you make all things new. Transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace, and in the renewal of our lives make known your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.