Greetings! Below you will find questions which reference the sermon preached on Sunday, September 15th, 2013 at The Park. This week we studied chapter 4:1-6. Each week new questions are posted to track along with the sermons. Work hard to facilitate discussion. Listen to the hearts around the room and close with prayer.
Intro to 1 John:
Jesus, despite what you may have heard, was fully man and fully God. I saw Him, I touched Him, I did life with Him. The fellowship I had as an Apostle, the eye witness of Jesus’s life and miracles, is now readily available for all of you who will confront the most venomous reality, one from which we all come. To have fellowship with this God-Man you have to confront your love disorder, you must face up to the fact you love something more than your Heavenly Father. That love, that trust in something else is forcing you into the darkness. These idols, the beginning of sin, are the anti-fellowship, the anti-community, and let’s face it… they are robbing you of the Joy of life with Jesus. Stop pretending you don’t have idols, be honest. That’s what confession is all about, it’s you stepping into the light of Jesus, the light of a faith community. He can smash these idols but only when we finally confess they exist.
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- What are some observations you had from this chapter?
- Were there any new insights you learned about the passage from the sermon?
- What theology was present in this chapter?
- What did you learn about God from reading this chapter?
- To whom/what is John referring to when he uses the word “spirit” in verse 1? John sites two manifestations of this: the Holy Spirit (3:24) and false prophets (4:1). What do you make of these two different examples?
- What does John mean when he tells the people to “test” the spirits? How have you tested the spirits, or is this something we can even apply today?
- John distinguishes Jesus as the test for determining the origin of spirits in verse 3 (of God or of the antichrist). How does this impact our interaction with with the other religions of the world?
- What are some of the specific ways that you speak to the world from God’s point of view? How does this play out in your daily life? John says that the world doesn’t listen. He doesn’t say Christians don’t tell. What should our reaction be to a world that doesn’t listen?