Blog

The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend.  We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.

SPOTTER, LESSON 3: God is Faithful to Forgive

Propitiation (Greek – hilasmos, meaning an offering to appease an offended party.)

How can a God who hates sin so much just let it go unpunished?  When He looks at His creation and sees how scarred and polluted sin has made it, He is greatly offended.  How can He not pour out his anger on the guilty?  How can God let wrongdoers go free?  It doesn’t seem fair. Unless, of course, I am the wrongdoer and then my math changes dramatically, and forgiveness seems a rather wonderful thing.   But the questions are still valid.  How is it just to leave sin unpunished?

The short answer is, it wouldn’t be just, if that is what God actually did.  But sin has been punished.  The sins of God’s people going all the way back to Adam accumulated and accumulated.  All the while God in his great mercy withheld punishment, looking forward to a day when One would pay for it all and wipe out the debt once and for all for those who believed in his coming.  “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.”   (Romans 3:25)

The best news is that, not only did Jesus receive the just wages of the sins of all who went before Him,  He also made available that credit of righteousness to all who would believe and receive Him in faith in the future.  He became our Passover Lamb.  The Lamb was slain, that work is done.  It is a historical fact that happened completely outside of us and was purely an act of God.  The only question that matters now is have you, by faith, applied the blood of the Lamb to the doorposts of your life?  Have your students?

“Jesus paid it all

All to Him I owe

Sin had left a crimson stain

He washed it white as snow”

(Elvina Hall, Jesus Paid It All)

“What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”  -Robery Lowry, Nothing But the Blood

MEDITATING ON THE WORD:

Romans 3

Psalm 86:5

Ephesians 1:7

Hebrews 10:12, 17

The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend.  We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.

SPOTTER, LESSON 2: God is Faithful to Forgive

Ben Franklin is quoted as saying, “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”  I think the same thing could be said about sin.  If we attempt to hide sin, to cover it up, to “regard” it in our hearts, it is only a matter of time before it will begin to stink up the place.  Numbers 32:23 tells us that we can be sure that our “sin will be discovered. It will be brought out into the open.”  In Hebrews 4:13 we are reminded that “Nothing God created is hidden from Him. His eyes see everything. He will hold us accountable for everything we do.”

So how does sin begin to stink?  King David, the subject of our case study, gives us detailed insight into the very real physical effects of un-confessed sin in the life of a believer.  When I kept silent,
 my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
 For day and night your hand was heavy on me;
 my strength was sapped
 as in the heat of summer. (Psalm 32:3-4)

Only when David, after being confronted by Nathan, recognizes his sin for what it is and despises it as God does, does he find forgiveness.  Then I admitted my sin to you.
   I didn’t cover up the wrong I had done.
I said, “I will admit my lawless acts to the Lord.”
   And you forgave the guilt of my sin.   (Psalm 32:5)

Belonging to Christ involves a change of mind, the adoption of a new worldview in which sin is seen through the eyes of God for what it is.  Confession begins with seeing and hating our sin.  Don’t let sin be a guest in your house.

“Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”  -Ben Franklin

MEDITATING ON THE WORD:
Psalm 32:3-5, 38:18, 139:23-24
Numbers 32:23
Proverbs 28:13

The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend.  We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.

SPOTTER, LESSON 1: God is Faithful to Forgive

Confess (v): “to say the same thing about” (Greek – homologéō) “to make known, declare, tell.” (Hebrew – Yada)

To confess a sin is to uncover it and call it exactly what God calls it.  Effective confession must be accompanied by the willingness and desire to turn away from it.  Having a “change of mind” about the sin (repentance).

The pattern we see with King David in his sin against God with Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah, the attempt at hiding those sins, the physical results of that attempt, and his subsequent confession in Psalm 51, serves as a case study for God’s promise of forgiveness.

Over the next several weeks, we will walk with our students through the hard truth that even David, a “man after God’s own heart,” failed the test and sinned against heaven.  Were it not for God’s promise of forgiveness, this reality could cause us to lose all hope of ever being useful in the hands of our Lord.  But the truth is that our God is faithful to forgive for the sake of his own Name and because He is, we can say to God, just as David did, “Let me hear you say, “Your sins are forgiven.” (Psalm 51:8)

“He will do it through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  -Romans 7:25a

MEDITATING ON THE WORD:
1 John 1:5-10
Romans 7:7-25
Psalm 51

The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend.  We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.

FREE CLIMBING, LESSON 4: Victory Over Sin

“It’s an open-book test.”  Those words can indeed be beautiful to hear in the face of a difficult exam.  I remember clearly the first time I heard them in a high school chemistry class.  At once, my heart jumped because I had not studied well for the test.  In fact, I hadn’t studied well for the whole year in that class.  I thought, “This is a gift!”  Sadly, my joy turned to nervous sweat as I frantically thumbed pages and scoured the index of a book I had barely cracked all semester.  I quickly learned that, without a good working knowledge of the book, an open-book test isn’t much easier at all.  I needed the answers now and there just wasn’t time to find them because I didn’t know where to look.

The temptations or tests that we face in our spiritual lives are “open-book” tests too.  “Your Word is like a lamp that shows me the way. It is like a light that guides me.”  “How can a young person keep his life pure? By living in keeping with your Word.”    The psalmist says that the one who meditates on the Word day and night is “blessed.”  When Jesus was tempted in the desert after forty days without food, his weapon of choice against the Devil was the Word.  “It is written…” Jesus answered three times and Satan retreated.  When Satan distorted the words of God, Jesus knew how to answer him.  What if Jesus had, like Adam and Eve, simply listened to Satan’s lies and had no response?  Rather than being hyper-vigilant and sheltering our children, we must exhort them to be prepared for what WILL come.  And when they are tempted they will be able to say, “I have hidden your Word in my heart so that I won’t sin against you.”  It’s an open book test.  Know the book.

“How can a young person keep his life pure? By living in keeping with your word.”
“I have hidden your word in my heart so that I won’t sin against you.” (Psalm 119:9,11)

“So obey God. Stand up to the devil. He will run away from you.”  -James 4:7

MEDITATING ON THE WORD:
Psalm 119:9,11
1 John 5:4-5
Matthew 6:9,13
James 4:7