When I was given the opportunity to take a small group of men through Soul Purity, I jumped at the chance. I am putting that 8-week study guide here so that it can be used along with the Soul Purity workbook.  

Week #1   Introduction of our goal and journey together 

Week #2   Understanding the heart of temptation 

Week #3   Understanding the battle (part 1)

Week #4   Understanding the battle (part 2)  

Week #5  The path to victory (part 1)   

Week #6  The path to victory (part 2)   

Week #7  Our view of God is foundational to purity 

Week #8  We need to walk in the shadow of the cross 

Week #1   Introduction of our goal and journey together

1. Our goal for these weeks together: We want to experience and know Rom. 8:28-32. The God of the cross and substitution for our sin has given us what we need to be like Jesus. This is GOOD NEWS! God will not fail to work out this life purpose in us.

Discussion: What is Jesus like in regard to sin and temptation? How did he please the Father every day he lived on planet earth? What do you think it is like to live this way?

2. Our encouragement: We are surrounded by other sinners who have similar struggles to what we have known. 1 Cor. 10:1-14 describes the idolatry that Israel fell into and we are warned not to do something similar. There are two types of people that Paul describes in v. 12-13. He says some people fall because of their pride, thinking that they can handle life. While other people are overwhelmed with shame and defeat when they fall and miss the core of v.13 which says “but God.”  So there are two encouragements: (1) We have to see God in this struggle and (2) We need to see the struggle as something that is common to many thousands of men and women. 

Discussion: Why do we feel like our situation and struggle is unique? How do we struggle to see God in our times of temptation? Why do we tend to quit?

• Our hope: So where do we find our hope in this battle of the heart and mind? Rom. 6 is a key chapter that helps us to understand three things related to the battle with sin.
• #1: Jesus broke the power of EVERY sin and he has given us that resurrection power in order to turn our back on temptation to sin. (v. 8-11)
• #2: We need to know that we will serve a god of sin or we will serve our GOD. We cannot serve two masters. We either serve righteousness or sin. (v. 12-18)
• #3: We need to “believe it to be true” for our lives today and every day. (v. 11) Paul says “you must CONSIDER yourselves dead to sin.” He uses a term that was an accounting term. Like a bank statement that says you have $100,000 in your account. But you have to believe it to be true by accessing it and drawing some funds out to build the new addition on your house. Draw on the righteousness of Christ today and deny sin its place.

Discussion: Why do we live like sin still is our master and the more powerful foe? Why does it feel like sin will just keep getting the upper hand?

4. Our commitment: We are asking you to commit to this mutual discipleship for the next few weeks. Commit to the accountability and to the pursuit of a good and great God. Be honest, humble, and open about where you are so you can grow to be more like Jesus. If you need the patterns in the accountability workbook in order to practice good habits of godliness, then use it to get you going. You need to daily read Soul Purity to help you focus on and begin to enjoy all that God is and all that God does.

Commitment: “I will________________________________________________________________________________

 

 The result: Through this process we guarantee that if you commit yourself to this pursuit of Christ and to the daily discipleship of following God, here is what will happen. You will finally enjoy the delight and pleasure of walking with God rather than going to the cesspool for brief pleasure that ends in shame and loss. You can daily see the goodness and greatness of your God in full view in a way that you will not want to go back to the cesspool.

***Read and see these pictures from the Psalms

• Ps. 16:11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
• Ps. 36:7-9  How precious is your steadfast love, O God!  The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life: in your light do we see light.

6. Our resources: Everyone of us that is a child of God has 5 resources to help us follow Christ and grow and change. (1) We have the Word of God. That Truth of God is core and it is why we believe that biblical counseling is so effective and it is why we believe that true biblical discipleship is full of Bible. It is sufficient for what God has called us to and promises to do in us. (2) We have the Spirit of God. He moved people across centuries to write the Word and he will help you understand it and know it. (3) We have the grace of God. God’s grace is sufficient (2 Cor. 12:9-10) to help us to do the impossible work of living out the Word of God every day. (4) We have the people of God, the church. They are to point us back to the Word of God whenever we need that reminder. (5) We have access to the presence of God through prayer. Cry out to Him. He will never leave you alone. And to back that up we are asking you to daily use these resources (Soul Purity and the Accountability Workbook) because they push you towards these 5 resources of God that will help you change.

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Week #2   Understanding the heart of temptation:

1. Consider the world around us. We are surrounded by people, inundated by TV programs, and offered every kind of internet access as sources to every possible kind of sexual immorality. It is free. It is often even pushed into your face. How are we to avoid it? Let’s understand that the culture and images and freedom of access to immoral stories and images are not the problem. But a heart that is mesmerized by or driven by or has an unsatisfied longing for those things is the BIG problem. We tend to see God as a far off person and we are not drawn to his glory, beauty, and wonder. But we can’t seem to stop looking to the cesspool of sin for pleasure.

Discussion: How do you respond to this problem?

2. What is the heart and why is it the problem? (Matthew 15:1-20) Notice that Jesus confronts the Pharisees about their great concern for all the stuff on the exterior. They wanted everything around them to be “right” according to their traditions. But their hearts were like a tomb with nothing but dead men’s bones inside. Jesus says that the source of sin such as sexual immorality is the heart. The heart of the problem is the problem with our heart.  When God speaks of the heart he describing the deepest part of man’s being from which life flows out of. Notice in Proverbs 4:23 the writer of Proverbs pictures the heart like the source or head waters of the inner man.

Discussion: Response?

3. What does God say about our heart and temptation? (James 1) We are tempted. But the problem with temptation is that there is a Trojan Horse on the inside of me called my heart. I am tempted when I am lured like a trout to the Mepps spinner enticing him out of his deep hole or like a wolf enticed out into the middle of a field by the smell of blood on a carcass dumped there by the hunter. What is my heart’s problem? It is my desires James says. I want something so badly that I will go after it even though that “something” leads to sin and then sin leads to death.

Discussion: Response?

4. What is this idolatry in our heart that drives us to addiction, enslaved to sin? Foundationally our problem in our heart is that we have decided that there is something other than God that we want and that we think will satisfy. We are like the people in Jeremiah’s day (Jeremiah 2) who were going after idols. God compared that act to the sources of water in their day. The people had left or turned from God, the “source of living water,” and went looking for water in broken cisterns. How foolish! How much discontentment this act showed. What adultery they practiced as they turned to someone other than God for pleasure and satisfaction (Jeremiah 3:8-10). Their worship of idols was adultery against God.

Discussion: Which of these images that God uses to describe our temptation to turn from God and to worship something else is the most impacting to your heart? Idolatry? Adultery?  Seeking water from a leaky cistern? Why?

Conclusion: Do you believe that if you change what is going on in your heart that you can live in an immoral culture, surrounded by sexual immorality, and still live godly, holy, and pure like Jesus?  Paul did and he had to deal with Rome and Corinth, to name just a few places he visited and lived in as a representative of God’s kingdom values. It is to these people in Corinth that he said that he mourned over “many of those who …have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and sensuality that they have practiced” 2 Corinthians 12:21. And it was to the church at Rome that he pleaded with them not to participate in the “orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality” of their cities (Romans 13:13). They were surrounded by it but Paul believed they could serve righteousness and holiness and be followers of Christ.

• My conviction is that one of the main reasons the world and the church are awash in lust (by both men and women) is that our lives are intellectually and emotionally disconnected from the infinite, soul-staggering grandeur for which we were made. Inside and outside the church Western culture is drowning in a sea of triviality, pettiness, banality, and silliness. Television is trivial. Radio is trivial…Education is trivial. Christian books are trivial. Worship styles are trivial. It is inevitable that the human heart, which was made to be staggered with the supremacy of Christ, but instead Is drowning in a sea of banal entertainment, will reach for the best buzz that life can give: sex…The deepest cure is to be intellectually and emotionally staggered by the infinite, everlasting, unchanging supremacy of Christ in all things. (John Piper, “Sex and the Supremacy of Christ”) Consider the exercise in BIG God thoughts: p. 127  in Soul Purity.

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Week #3   Understanding the battle (part 1):

We need to understand that we are not playing games in life. We are in a battle for our soul. We have to fight back against Satan, the deceiver and destroyer. We are going to fight against our old self and its desires. And we must fight against the world system and it influences used by Satan as well to deceive us or lull us to sleep. Together, these three would turn us away from God and all the good that God has planned for us.

1. We need to see the struggle we are in to have a pure soul. It is right in the middle of the war against the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:1-4) and all his cosmic powers of darkness and evil. Ephesians 6:10-20 reminds us of this warfare and of the hidden powers that would attack us. If this reminder wakes us up and causes us to be more mindful of the arena of spiritual warfare, then that is good. But we must not see this warfare as something we should fear as if God is fearful that he may lose. Not only is “he that is in us is greater than he who is in the world,” (1 John 4:4) but God has given us everything we need for our armor and for our weapons, as mentioned in Ephesians 6, to defeat the evil one every time (“extinguish all the flaming darts” 17).

Discussion: What makes living with a sense of the hidden, spiritual realm so difficult? Do you think understand what the armor in Ephesians 6 is so that you can use it well?

2. This unseen battle, then, as acknowledged by Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, is not about the problems of our flesh and the immediate interaction with the visible world around us. Yes we feel them luring us into sin and its lusts to pursue sexual immorality. But the key is this: we are in a battle of the heart and mind and that is the realm in which Lucifer works. We need to be aware of the kinds of thoughts and desires that are against a holy God. The pride of our heart may allow for a stronghold, a place protected by our own sinful desires. It is a treasure that we protect in our innermost heart that must be torn down. This is how we obey Christ and pursue his likeness and not our own foolish lusts and temporal pleasure.

Discussion & prayer: Ask God to help you see what kind of inner desires and pleasures you are not yet willing to release or tear down and give back this worship arena to God. Take time to confess and be honest with someone about this struggle.

3. Again in Romans 13:12-14 Paul uses this imagery of warfare in a passage where he calls us to wake up. We are like soldiers that are sleeping in our time of duty. The “hour” of Christ’s return is fast approaching. We are not to live like those who do wicked things in the dark, but instead we are to “put on the armor of light” and walk as those of the kingdom of light by putting off sexual immorality and sensuality. Instead we are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ AND we are not to “make any provision for the flesh.” The idea of provision is one of planning ahead (pre-meditated) and leaving a door open that should be closed, or giving the enemy a beachhead for invasion. Don’t leave any place open for your heart to indulge in its cesspool pleasures. Don’t plan your day in such a way that leads not only to temptation but to sinful choices. Choose the path of righteousness in Christ. Put His kinds of planning for kingdom living into your daily calendar.

Discussion: How does someone tend to leave an open door for temptation and sin? How    do we allow our conscience to become lax towards things that allow the flesh its pleasures?

4. One of the problems of living in a country where we have our needs met and our problems are things such as which clinic to go to or which insurance to rely on or which car should we buy this time, we tend to forget how much we have and how blessed we are by God. Difficult times drive us back to God (And the loss or change in one of those very things mentioned above may be the catalyst for seeking him). In Psalms 106:13-48 the writer says this problem is exactly why the Israelites turned to idolatry. They “forgot” God and all his goodness to them. When we are not daily declaring our dependence on and thankfulness to God, we can too easily turn to our immoral idolatry. And then we become like the idols and the nations that don’t know God (Psalms 115:1-4). It is difficult to have a wartime mentality in a seemingly non-war situation.

Discussion: How can we be thankful people in a place of plenty? How can we make sure that we don’t take for granted God’s goodness? What are some practical helps for daily living?

Prayer: Now take time together to give God thanks for specific ways he has helped you and that the good things you have are sourced in Him.

 Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? ² All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” Is. 66:1-2

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Week #4   Understanding the battle (part 2):

The battle takes place in our soul, our heart, our inner man. This means that as Paul says, we are either walking in the Spirit or we are walking according to the flesh. They are at war with one another. We cannot please God and become more like Christ when we are walking in the flesh and its realms of pleasure.

1. Galatians 5:16-26 is the key passage that helps us to see the battle going on between these two realms. If we are in step with the Spirit and the Word of God, then we WILL NOT fulfill the “lusts” or desires of our old flesh and its wicked longings. This walk in the Spirit is not a magical or mystical act that some super Christians can do so they please God while the rest of us miss out. It is a submitting of our life to God the Spirit and depending on God the Spirit in everyday life. It is an awareness of God every hour as He is within us and we walk with Him.

• If we are truly a child of God, then we have the Spirit of God within us and we can either please him or grieve him. Notice that the word “desires” is a core source of either walking in step with the Spirit or in step with the flesh. Identify which kinds of desires, wants, and longings of your heart are righteous and which ones are immoral and ungodly.  We who “belong to Christ Jesus” have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (v.24). So allow your affections, loves, longings, and desires to be turned towards God through the Spirit.

Discussion: How does this work? What practical ways can you set in place daily so that you walk in step with the Spirit? How does Prayer, as one of our key resources for access to God, help us? What specific desires and affections do we need to “crucify” in order to not give in to the flesh and its passions?

2. Paul has several commands in Ephesians 5:15-21 and one of them is that we be filled with the Spirit. This simply means that we have given him control so that we do not give the flesh and its desires their way (there is the battle ground of our heart, its desires and its affections). We need to start every day with a conscious choice to allow God control. Pray that prayer daily. The flesh can’t have its way unless you ignore God’s Spirit as you begin the day.

• Here Paul uses a different contrast. He says, unfortunately we can give our physical body over to the control of wine and be drunken and debauched (the Ephesians saw that in town daily, especially at the temple of Diana). Instead, we are to be controlled by the Spirit of God, allowing Him to move within us for righteousness. The way this happens is that we are (v.15) careful about how we are walking, being wise about our choices, and we are using our time well, because evil is always ready to take a slice out of our day and our hearts.

Discussion: Since we are talking so much about the Spirit of God, is he a person we know? How would you say that God’s Spirit is essential to us, even if we don’t always acknowledge Him? How does he help us walk in wisdom and help us make good use of our time?

3. Consider the two words we identified earlier that God uses to describe the sin path away from Him and into our world of wicked choices.

• God says that it is idolatry (Ezekiel 8:1-14). This idolatry is like a soldier in wartime who goes over to the enemy for a period of time. We are a “deserter” from God’s kingdom for these brief moments of pleasure in immorality. This worship of other things besides God is so evil that it has to be hidden. Those feelings, desires, and bodily urges that you allow to drive you are your idols. They replace desires for God and His holiness and righteousness.

Discussion: How do we hide our idolatry? When I asked a man about his masturbation and he said he saw no reason that God disapproved, I asked him if he hid this activity from his wife or his closest Christian friends. Would he be free to explain his need for it? Why is night time the easiest time to go after pornography? Or why is it when you are all alone that you struggle with it?

• The other word God uses to describe the path of sin is adultery (Ezekiel 23). Adultery is equally an image of betrayal. We have betrayed our God and the enemy is glad. It is the only way Satan gets any advantage or opportunity against God is through us. God describes our relationship with him as a bride and groom. And we betray him for the cesspool.

            Confess: Pray and ask God’s help to be faithful to Him alone. Commit to God that by His    

grace you will no longer betray his love to you but that you will pursue the closest and most intimate walk with Him on a daily basis so that nothing else will come between you and Him.

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Week #5  The path to victory (part 1):

• We need to guard our heart so that we can protect it from the attacks of the evil one. When necessary, we need to take radical steps in order to give our heart an infusion of righteous delight and desire for God.  Why is this true and what does it look like?

1. Proverbs 4:23 says you are to “guard your hearts with all vigilance for out of it flow the springs of life.” The imagery that the writer uses is a military one where a soldier is protecting an important landmark. We have established that it is not what is around us that is the problem when it comes to sexual immorality. It is the heart within us that has such wicked desires. HOWEVER, since that is true, we need time to reorient our heart to pure, godly delights in the immortal, unchanging God. So we will, for a period of time, need to set ourselves apart from the influences and input that have been our immoral diet. We can’t just keep dumping the cesspool of images into our soul and expect to have new desires and thoughts and actions.

Discussion: What kind of temporary steps are necessary in order to do “radical amputation” of the lusts and desires of the old man?

2. Colossians 3:1-9 See where Paul says you are to “set your mind on things above; put to death earthly desires, which are idolatry.” He implores us to put on the new self which is made after the creator, put on God’s characteristics. And then, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly through which will flow God’s music and it will fill your heart with thankfulness to God. So there is a putting to death or denying those idolatrous desires and then a putting on of the godliness and Christlikeness we were made for.

Discussion: What kinds of study can we do and what kinds of input do we need in order to put new thoughts, eternal images, and holy affections into our heart in the place of the old?

3. Matthew 5 Jesus says that we are blessed if we mourn, and are meek. We are blessed if we hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are the pure in heart. This is it my friends. When we can come to the place where our soul mourns over the cesspool and is meekly following Christ, then we are on the right path. Then we will hunger and thirst after God and His righteous ways. Like the psalmist who “panted after God” like the deer who longed for water. He thirsted for the “Living God.” (Psalms 42) We will find God giving to us a pure heart. THIS is the blessed or happy man. He has found that God dwells within and God makes him new. Jesus is ENOUGH for me!

• Is there anything which Christians can find in heaven or earth, so worthy to be the objects of their admiration and love, their earnest and longing desires, their hope, and their rejoicing, and their fervent zeal, as those things that are held forth to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ? In which not only are things declared most worthy to affect us, but they are exhibited in the most affecting manner. The glory and beauty of the blessed Jehovah, which is most worthy in itself, to be the object of our admiration and love, is there exhibited in the most affecting manner that can be conceived of, as it appears, shining in all its luster, in the face of an incarnate, infinitely loving, meek, compassionate, dying Redeemer … So has God disposed things, in the affair of our redemption, and in his glorious dispensations, revealed to us in the gospel, as though everything were purposely contrived in such a manner, as to have the greatest possible tendency to reach our hearts in the most tender part, and move our affections most sensibly and strongly. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, part I.III.3

Prayer: Let’s take time right now to ask God for a glimpse of this kind of life and heart. Let’s not settle for anything less than what God made us for in worship of Him. Consider what it was like for Adam and Eve to enjoy unfettered worship with God.

4. Masturbation is a hindrance to many on the path to victory. We need to address this activity here in order to help you follow Jesus completely on the righteous path. One major help will be to use biblical terminology to describe this kind of activity. The word masturbation for most of the world systems and its counseling, along with many Christian counselors, is seen as useful and helpful. So why should we go after it? We are left with a habit that accompanies our struggle for a pure heart and soul. Let’s describe it as self-sex. That term more biblically defines and describes the activity. And the New Testament clearly says that sex is to be within marriage and not for our own pleasure, but for that of our spouse (1 Corinthians 7). Now I realize you may have many questions that follow this definition and we would be glad to work through them. See Appendix 5 in Soul Purity for a full discussion.

Questions:

• Is self-sex something all Christians should be encouraged to do?
• Can a believer do this for God’s glory and reflect God’s image while doing it?
• My body is not my own (1 Cor. 6:19-20) so how does self-sex please God?
• If married, how does self-sex fit Paul’s teaching on unselfish love and focus on your mate? How does self-sex fit into his teaching in 1 Cor. 13:4-7 and Phil. 2:3-4?
• If you were to describe this self-sex act to anyone, would it be something beautiful in comparison to what God has designed within marriage?
• What about the single or divorced individual? Is this a “gift from God” as some put it in order to help you? Think. It only causes more desire and drives us down the self-indulging path. So Jesus, a single man, taught self-denial, not self-indulgence (Luke 9:23). Continue to follow Jesus and be like Jesus. That is the goal.

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Week #6  The path to victory (part 2): 

Now we want to return for a few moments to a couple of passages that we introduced the first night in order to give us all hope in this battle for our soul and the worship of our God.  Now that we have traced the path of godliness and soul purity to solid ground, these passages will be more powerful and encouraging even than when we began.

1. I Corinthians 10:1-14 says that idolatry and sin in general is the common struggle of man. Paul points us back to the practice of sexual immorality in Israel that brought more sin and death. They wanted something more than the God that brought them out of Egypt. That something was their idol. They were willing to break God’s law in order to have that We each have our own particular path and bent away from God and it is on this path that we choose to sin against God. We have our idolatry that must be destroyed in our hearts.

• Paul speaks to the Corinthian church about the examples or illustrations of idolatry in Israel and then Paul says in v.12-13 that either we tend towards pride (ignoring our sin) or shame (feeling like we will never outlive our sinful choices). See God’s promise to you here. He is with you always. He will walk through this life and this day and this battle with you. You are facing something that thousands of others have faced and they have been victorious by trusting God and by pursuing righteousness rather than twisted desires.

Discussion: What has God shown you in the last few weeks that now is truly hammered home by God’s work and word? What is helping you destroy the idolatry in your heart?

2. Romans 6 reminds us of the claims of Christ on our life. We have the resurrection power of Christ in our souls! Think for a moment on that statement. What was that like for Jesus to raise up from the tomb and walk out? What was that like for the power of sin and death to be broken forever? We have to believe what we know about God, His Spirit, His grace, and His church. These are the promises God has given to us who follow Jesus and who say no to sin and say yes to God. We must believe this to be true every day that we put walk planet earth until Jesus returns to set up His kingdom. And we can’t just believe it is true for the person next to us. It must be true for me! I must know by faith that as I walk daily in the shadow of an empty cross and an empty tomb that Jesus has conquered this for me and I can walk in newness of life.

Discussion:  Let’s say out loud what kind of power this is when Christ rose from the dead.

3. Titus 2:11-14 We need to allow the work of grace in our souls. Paul says that the grace of God brought us salvation. Hallelujah!Grace instructs us to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures and it reminds us that we have been given this salvation by no merit or work of our own. It is a good, good God that did this. GRACE! And grace says we should live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God. This grace brought us Christ, who gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds.

Discussion: Share how grace should be such a huge encouragement to keep us from sexual sins.

4. How did you do this week in living out this resurrection power? How did you do in practicing rhythms of godliness from the accountability workbook? Encourage one another in what God is doing. Don’t focus on the negative or the seeming failure. Look at God and remind one another of the truth that you are living out by faith. Seek to identify specific ways that you are different from when we began together.

• For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15
• Define a “good” week: (1) A week where I was too busy to be tempted. (2) A week where I fell a couple of times, but then was ashamed and told myself I wouldn’t go back to that act again. (3) A week where I was tempted, but I was walking in the Spirit and finding my satisfaction in Christ alone. I saw my heart desires as wicked and as desires for adultery against Jesus. I wanted to be like Jesus this week.

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Week #7  Our view of God is foundational to purity

• Every person lives out their view of God every day. What I say (verbal theology) to others about God isn’t nearly as important as how I live (practical theology) before others.  This is my true belief lived out. When we consider the attributes of God they are astounding. But what does it do for us every day to say that God sees everything, knows everything, and is more powerful than any other being in the universe? It is a contradiction to say those things and then live in our moral life as if God doesn’t care, doesn’t know, doesn’t see, or just plain ignores us. You could say we are living like the atheist who says there is no God. So what we have to ask ourselves is this. What part of God’s character (what he is like) or person (who he is and what he has done) do I doubt or deny most in my heart and in my life choices?

Character and Being of God	Scripture	Doubt or Deny leads to sin
Knows all things	Psalm 139	Attempt to hide
Sees all things	Psalm 139	Pretend like we did nothing
Present everywhere	Psalm 139	God is in “big people’s” lives
All powerful	Ephesians 3:20
Holy	Isaiah 6; Revelation 4-5	Doesn’t care what I look at
Just judge	Psalm 19
Sovereign	Ephesians 1	I have part of my life to myself
Eternal/unchanging	Hebrews 13:8	God is okay with this today
Faithful	Philippians 1:6	God is helping others, not me
Loving	Romans 5:1-8; Hebrews 12:1-11	God won’t do anything
Gracious	Ephesians 2:1-10	Punish ourselves
Merciful	Ephesians 2:1-10	Fear His wrath
Sufficient	2 Corinthians 12:9-10; Ps. 42	Seek the cesspool
Patient	Romans 2:1-11	God quit on me

Savior
Father
King
Redeemer
Friend
Creator
Lord

Discussion: How are you functioning like this aspect of God is not true or you are functioning like you don’t really want to be like him?  When you commit the act of self-sex, what is going on? What are you thinking as you mouse over that image and click on that link to the next website? What are you denying our doubting about God as you surf through the channels on the TV? Remind yourself of Jeremiah 2 where God describes himself as “the fountain of living waters” compared to the “broken cisterns” we turn to.

• There may be many kinds of doubts that still lead us to sexual immorality. Our heart’s belief and confidence in God can change from the Creator to His creation or to the immediate situation.  The fleshly activities, including sexual immorality, usually come out of our responses to things that happen in life and that lead to these activities of immoral flavor. For example we worry (Matthew 6:24-25), we feel hurt (Psalm 34:18), we struggle to forgive others (Colossians 3:13), we get angry (Ephesians 4:31), or we gossip (2 Corinthians 12:20), we feel discontentment with life (Philippi

Discussion: Why do we turn from God? He asks that in Jeremiah 2:5. What is wrong with God that we went elsewhere for satisfaction?  We turn from God because we are ungrateful; we tend to complain, because we become unsatisfied with Him and forget all his goodness to us.  Think carefully as this reflects back to his character and being, his person and role in our lives that we looked at above.

• Practical thoughts about our access to the internet, phone, and all kinds of content on TV:  What do I need to be aware of as I access the internet and the TV?  One way to describe my use media is that I need to be aware of using it simply as a “toy” for my entertainment rather than as a tool. The focus in this statement is that our defenses tend to be down when we are in the self-pleasure mode. One person is no better for never watching TV or never going on the internet. They could be indulging the same fleshly desires and images in their mind through the fiction books they read. We tend to let our eyes and senses take us wherever they want to go. This activity is fulfilling 1 John 2:15-17 and the warning that John gives us about the lusts of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. Another problem with this kind of activity is that it tends to be temporal, living in the moment, rather than considering eternal pursuits. So my mindset is crucial to how I approach this mode of delivering information, stories, and other content. For instance, I can watch a movie with my wife or family and discuss the themes that reflect what we see in the Bible about God and man. This isn’t wasted time. My motive isn’t self-consuming. My feeling isn’t “I deserve some time to myself after all I did that was good this week.” We can live a kind of “catholic theology” in practice when we do life this way, as if God owes us some sin pleasure for a bit to balance out all the good we did for him this week. I am not superintended by the Spirit nor am I walking in step with him when I live this way. I am desiring some time for the flesh. So I am not setting out a list of approved books, internet sites, or movies that someone has given me. I am concerned for my heart attitude and desires as I participate. I can set myself up for failure to temptation just by being in this self-pleasure mode.

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Week #8  We need to walk in the shadow of the cross

• When we walk in the shadow of the cross, we can’t help but be humbled by what we see. God died for us. God died because of our sinful indulgence and because of our awful desire to go to the cesspool for satisfaction. This process of viewing the cross is not to shame us or make us crawl into a corner and quit. The cross is a visual reminder that should lead us to gratefulness. A thankful heart  is connected to God’s love, grace, and mercy, all of which are specific aspects of God’s goodness that call us to thank Him and praise Him. This kind of heart has no place for pride and self-confidence. It is a heart that revels in what God did at Golgotha and that it was for us. Should we mourn over our sin in light of the cross? Yes of course. But mourning at the cross leads to joy and wonder as we follow Jesus out of the tomb and as he ascends to heaven. Jesus accomplished the Father’s will and that plan and purpose of God included the cross.  So let the shadow of the cross keep us humble and thankful. Neither self-exalting arrogance nor self-focused shame are appropriate responses to the cross. 

Prayer: Let’s take time to pray to God in humble adoration and thanksgiving for the cross

• Peter mourns when he remembers Christ’s words to him. How proud Peter was to say to Jesus that he would never deny him. (Mark 14:72) We may feel like we would never deny Christ like that, but how have we, in practice, denied the existence of God/Christ?  Then Paul calls us to represent the cross well as ambassadors of God. In 2 Corinthians 5 Paul calls us to follow Jesus in the following ways.

 Verse 14: We are to be motivated by the love of Christ for us. So often we can choose some other motive or reason for leaving the cesspool behind, but nothing other than love for God and the love of God for us will permanently drive out this desire for more trash and lust for immorality.

Discussion: What are some lesser motivations that lose their effect?    

• Verse 15: We are to live no longer for ourselves but for Him who died for us. But why should we do this? What was this sin problem really like between us and God? We were on the side of the enemy. We were of those who wanted God dead. We were guilty of standing with the whip for his back and the nails for his hands and feet. We were against God! And now, we are reconciled. What a beautiful word this is that is possible only because of the cross. Did you and I do something to make this possible? No, we would not ever have done so. God did it on his own. He made this reconciliation possible. So stop living for self-gratification and pleasure and live for Him. He did the cross work for us so we could do the life work for Him.
• Verse 20: We have a responsibility to God as ambassadors of the cross. This life then isn’t about what people think of me, it is about what they will think of God. And I will blow it. I have blown it. But that shouldn’t be a life pattern They should think of a sacrificial God because they see in my a loving, sacrificial person who loves my neighbors at least as much as I love myself. If I was lost and in their place I would want someone to love me for Christ and love me to Christ.

Discussion: What kinds of reactions and thoughts are in your mind concerning these verses? What good and wonderful truth is laid into this passage that should help us leave the cesspool behind us forever?

Picture it in your mind:

• Think on the sufferings of Jesus.
• Take in the Garden scene as Jesus bows in prayer before the Father, feeling the weight of what is coming. Let the image of Jesus fill your heart as he is being beat up by evil, proud, religious bigots, like bullies taking their time beating up the person they don’t like.
• See the brutality of the soldier as he whips Christ, leaving his back laced by the whip and openly bleeding so that his garment sticks to him when they replace it.
• Watch him walk the road to Golgotha, weary and alone, knowing that soon he will bear the greater weight of the sins of the world.
• See him exposed on the cross for your sin, pierced for your breaking of God’s moral law, dying in agony to fulfill the wrath of the Father-God-Judge that must punish evil eternally, once-and-for-all.
• IT IS FINISHED! This is the payment that God extracts from His Son in order that you and I might once again experience the joy and gladness, wonder and thrill of walking with God.

Discussion: What are some practical ways we can keep the cross in view on a daily basis?