Today and Now
Isaiah 49:8-13 - New International
Version (NIV)
8 This is what the Lord says:
“In the time of my
favor I will answer you,
and in the day of salvation I will help you;
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people,
to restore the land
and to reassign its desolate inheritances,
9 to say to the captives, ‘Come
out,’
and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’
“They will feed beside the roads
and find pasture on every barren hill.
10 They will neither hunger nor thirst,
nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them.
He who has compassion on them will guide them
and lead them beside springs of water.
11 I will turn all my mountains into roads,
and my highways will be raised up.
12 See, they will come from afar—
some from the north, some from the west,
some from the region of Aswan.”
13 Shout for joy, you
heavens;
rejoice, you earth;
burst into song, you mountains!
For the Lord comforts his
people
and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.
When does the Lord say He “will help you” (verse 8)?
What does the Lord say to “those in darkness”
(verse 9)?
Who “will guide them” (verse 10)?
What will happen to the mountains (verse 11)?
Where will “they come from” (verse 12)?
Why should the heavens “shout for joy”,
and the earth “rejoice” and the mountains “burst into song” (verse
13)?
In
your opinion, what is the basic message of this passage?
In your opinion, what does this passage reveal to us about having
a worldly or Christian view of the world?
Luke 19:1-10 – New International Version (NIV)
1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing
through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he
was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to
see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the
crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a
sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to
him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house
today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be
the guest of a sinner.”
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord!
Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated
anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house,
because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son
of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
What
was Jesus doing in Jericho (verse 1)?
Who
was Zacchaeus (verse 2)?
Why
could Zacchaeus not see Jesus (verse 3)?
What
did Zacchaeus do (verse 4)?
Who told Zacchaeus, “come down
immediately. I must stay at your house
today” (verse 5)?
How did Zacchaeus respond to the command
(verse 6)?
What
did the people begin “to mutter” (verse 7)?
In
your opinion, why would Zacchaeus say “Here and now I give half of my
possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will
pay back four times the amount” (verse 8)?
What
did Jesus say “has come to this house” (verse 9)?
Who
did the Son of Man come “to seek and to save” (verse 10)?
In
your opinion, what is the basic message of this passage?
In
your opinion, what does this passage reveal to us about having a worldly or
Christian view of the world?
In
your opinion, how does the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10 help us understand
what God intended when He said in Isaiah 49:8-13 that a time would come when He
would “say to the
captives, ‘Come out,’”?
2
Corinthians 5:16-6:2 - New International Version (NIV)
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.
Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has
gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who
reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of
reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to
himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has
committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are
therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal
through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God
made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God.
6 1 As
God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. 2 For
he says,
“In the time of my favor I
heard you,
and in the day of salvation I helped you.”
I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now
is the day of salvation.
How does
Paul say he will no longer regard people (verse 16)?
What had changed in the way Paul regarded Christ
(verse 16)?
Who is “the new creation” (verse 17)?
How did God reconcile “us to himself” (verse 18)?
What is God not counting against reconciled people
(verse 19)?
What does Paul implore “on Christ’s behalf”
(verse 20)?
Why did God make “him who had no sin to be sin for
us” (verse 21)?
What do God’s co-workers urge (verse 1)?
When did God help (verse 2)?
When is “the day of salvation” (verse 2)?
In your opinion, what is the basic message of this
passage?
In your opinion, what does 2 Corinthians
5:16-6:2 help us understand about the timing of the “the day of salvation”
promised in Isaiah 49:8-13?
In
your opinion, how does not viewing Christ “from a worldly point of view”
like Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2 help us understand what Jesus saw in
Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10 and we can see in our neighbors today?
Hebrews 3:7-15 – New International Version (NIV)
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says:
“Today, if you hear his
voice,
8 do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors tested and tried me,
though for forty years they saw what I did.
10 That is why I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”
12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful,
unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But
encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none
of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have
come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly
to the very end. 15 As has just been said:
“Today, if you hear his
voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.”
Who
says “today, if you hear his voice” (verse 7)?
What
should we not do “if we hear his voice” (verses 7 and 8)?
What did the ancestors do “during the
time of testing in the wilderness” (verses 8 and 9)?
What were their hearts always doing
(verse 10)?
Where were they never going to enter (verse
11)?
Who is to “see to it” that they
don’t have “a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God”
(verse 12)?
Why should we “encourage one another
daily” (verse 13)?
What do we need to hold onto “firmly
to the very end” (verse 14)?
What does Paul warn us not to do “today,
if you hear his voice” (verse 15)?
In your opinion, what is the basic
message of this passage?
In your opinion, what does this passage reveal
to us about having a worldly or Christian view of the world?
In your opinion, how is the short,
sinful tax collector in Luke 19:1-10 an example of how Paul in Hebrews 3:7-15 would
have us respond to God’s word?
In your opinion, why does Paul stress “now
is the time” in 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2 and “today” in Hebrews 3:7-15?
In
your opinion, what do these passages from Isaiah, Luke, 2 Corinthians, and Hebrews
help us understand about the “day of salvation”?
In your opinion, why are “now” and “today”
important to us in salvation?
(sprucewhispers.blogspot.com)
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