1 Small Group Questions based on the SECOND SERMON for session one of Purpose Driven Life What on earth am I here for? Preached in Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church, October 9, 2011 Living with Purpose: All for Him Luke 17:7-10 Read: Luke 17:7-10 Background: This sermon is part B of last week s sermon With this week s sermon I m still dealing with the question What on earth am I here for? I apologize if that throws some of you off but I need to spend one more week on this because it is important. I will address purpose # 1 on October 16. Be sure to read the Leaders note at the end of this study for a brief discussion of Jesus words in John 15:15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master s business. Instead, I have called you friends Review: We learned last week that our purpose in life is to glorify God. We glorify God when we allow his character to shine through us we demonstrate what God is like. So while we have missed the mark, fallen short of the glory of God, Christ in us our hope of glory (Colossians 1:27), Christ s spirit in us is our hope of hitting the mark, of reproducing the moral character of God and fulfilling our purpose in life.
2 Group Questions: As a group Read Luke 17:7-10 1. Pastor Tom asks the question how does it happen? We realize that Jesus lives in us and we can do nothing without him (See John 15:1-4) but how do we allow Jesus full control over our lives? Jesus answers the question in Luke 17:7-10. What do you think the disciples response would be to Jesus questions in verses 7 and 9? 2. Jesus says at verse 10 So you also. Jesus is saying that we are also slaves. Look up the following verses what do they say about our relationship to Christ? I Corinthians 6:19-20; Romans 14:7-8. 3. Jesus is not our slave. He is our master, we are here to serve him. This is the first step in having more of him in our lives. It has been said that there is no demonstration of the glory of God without a submission to the government of God. We cannot demonstrate a godly character if we are not submitting to His Lordship in our lives. Do you find it hard to recognize the Lord as your master? What things keep us from admitting that he is the master and we are his servants? 4. Pastor Tom used the illustration of the Queen of England she is the head of our Canadian government but in reality she is a figure head who is there for the ceremonies. The real power is in the hands of the Prime Minister. Many of us treat God like the monarchy over Canada he s nice to have around but really we are the Prime Minister of our lives. In what areas of your life do you act as Prime Minister? What areas of your life do you need to relinquish to God? 5. Rick Warren begins his book with the words, It s not about you and he begins chapter seven with the words, It s all for him. What do you think that means practically speaking? 6. The second condition we must fulfill is we must seek to please the master. In Luke 17: 8 Jesus says, "[wouldn t the master say to the servant], 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'?"
3 Our priority must be on pleasing the master. Pastor Tom said, If your conversion hasn t touched your priorities what kind of conversion do you have? Ask the group to write out their list of priorities what is it that is really important in their lives? Then have the group examine their priorities. Where does God fit in? Do they need to re-adjust their priorities? 7. Pastor Tom listed three benefits to all of this A. When we focus on pleasing the Master we escape from self-centered Christianity. Do you see evidence of self-centered Christianity? Describe it. If we focus on pleasing the Master how does this save us from this trap? B. When we seek to please the Master we have a proper perspective on being driven. Read 2 Corinthians 5:9 do you think there is such a thing as a Godly driveness? C. When we seek to please the Master it gives us a motivation to keep on. Pastor Tom said, Perhaps one of my biggest difficulties as a person is my dependence on human encouragement and appreciation. I need to be thanked for work that I do, I need to be appreciated for efforts that I make. To be sure a certain level of that is normal but it becomes dangerous, I know when I depend on that when I don t hear encouragement, when I don t hear appreciation I crash and burn What I have to work on and what I have to remind myself is that I don t work for SCBC. I don t do what I do for you. You aren t the ones I have to please. I, and all Christians, we work for the King, We take our orders from Him and our work is to please Him. And really when we have done everything that Jesus calls us to do, all we can say, is that we are unworthy servants we have only done our duty.
4 Can you identify with that? Do you do things to please other Christians or to please our King Jesus? 8. End your meeting with prayer, with each person asking God to help them live for him and him alone. Leader s note: There may be some in your group who object to the image of being a slave to Christ. Gently remind them that it s a biblical image. Paul calls himself a prisoner for the Lord (Eph. 4:1) and a servant of the gospel (3:1) and Philippians 2:5 tells us that our attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus who.. made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant (which in Greek reads, slave ) Some may counter with John 15:15 where Jesus says, I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master s business. Instead, I have called you friends. This would be true. But I would suggest that this does not void the master/slave relationship. Instead it only heightens the amount of responsibility we owe to Jesus. Let me illustrate it like this. Suppose you worked for IBM and your boss called you at 3 in the morning saying that you need to come into the office right now to fix a problem. You may say, Are you crazy? It s 3 in the morning I ll be there first thing at 7 a.m. The problem can wait till then. You could say that to him that s the nature of the boss, employee relationship and to an extent the nature of the slave/master relationship. But, let s say your best friend calls you at three in the morning and says (fill in your name), I feel awful, I m about to do some harm to myself. Could you come over and help? What do you do? Of course, you jump out of bed right away and rush over to your friend s house. There is no hesitation on your part because he is your friend.
5 So with our relationship with our Lord our calling him friend does not negate the slave/master responsibility it only heightens our responsibility/response to him. We have a greater responsibility to our friends than we do to our masters. Hopefully that helps. The dual status of slave and friend the two do not negate the other the one (friend) only serves to raise our responsibility not lessen it.