Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practice the spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Hey everyone, this is Scott, the Cyclistr pastor at Irvine. And thanks for joining us for this new episode of our leader podcast.
We are continuing our series on Genesis and we're at week two, the beginning of ruin and good news looking at Genesis three. And believe it or not, I have this great conversation with our discipleship pastor, Ben Tim Lucai and everything got ruined. I raised the whole thing accidentally. So don't fret the good news is still here.
We're going to do a solo one just for this week. Well we begin usually our life group with that starter question and the starter question as we lean in this week is do you consider yourself more of a rule follower or a rule breaker and give examples and this will be fun in your group. You'll see who is a rule follower and who is a rule breaker for me. I'm both and I say that because I follow rules when it all makes sense and sometimes the break rules when it doesn't just like when I got caught Jay walking one time in high school.
Yeah, I did get a J.I. I did get a J.I. walking ticket by a police officer pretty embarrassing. Any case next we look down into the scriptures and you can actually break this down into two sections.
You can read through Genesis chapter three verse one through 13 and then answer that. Go around answering that first question. What's the lie told to Adam and he buying the servant and we can talk about how the servant distorts God's truth. The servant said no to God really say that.
You won't certainly die. Your eyes will be open. You'll be like God. And so we see the serpent working back then and the devil working even today's world trying to deceive and distort God's truth and promises.
And really what are the consequences of that? We can read through Genesis chapter three and that second part verse 14 through 24. And I love what Eric Agua was sharing in his messages past weekend. He was talking about that show severance which I have not seen yet but I really would like to see it but he was talking about how ever since that sin entered our world there have been great consequences where our relationship with one another has been severed where our peace with God was severed peace within ourselves and peace with our world has been broken and shattered and severed.
And we see in Genesis three how Adam and Eve try to fix it themselves. Sewing fig leaves to cover themselves because they were embarrassed but what God did was he sacrificed an animal to clothe them with the animal skins. So we see here that first sin entered the world but we also see the first sacrifice and ultimately when Christ came he sacrificed himself to clothe us in his forgiveness and righteousness. So these may be things that your group may look into or share.
I just want to encourage you to ask some follow up questions and just discuss and ask questions like what do you think the author is trying to say here? Well from looking down we want to look out as well too and I love that question. Instead of living under God's grace rule Adam and Eve rebelled the sight to rule over themselves. Where do you see this thinking still at work in our world today?
Now we're trying to look at the relevance of the scripture and how it applies in our world. And the reality is we see brokenness in our day to day lives but we also see that brokenness in our own lives as well too. And if we're being honest there are times when we insist that we are in charge of our own lives and we give in or listen to the liar, to the enemy, to Satan who says that we're in control of our own destiny and we fall even further away from God's ways when we do that. So we could talk about the brokenness in our world and our brokenness in our own souls and our own lives as well.
And then finally looking in and this is further relevance to our lives. And there's two questions there, let's just talk to one of them where when you're tempted to believe lies about yourself or any other part of life, what biblical truth helps you reject those lies. And this is a time when we can get personal and model the way to vulnerability. And if I'm being honest man there are times when I'm tempted to believe that I'm not good enough.
I don't have what it takes. I failed sometimes as a father or as a husband or as a pastor. And I have to reject those lies and replace them with God's truth. And God's truth is in his scripture and his word.
When we look at Apostle Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 5 17, therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come. So when those lies come at us and try to distort the truth we have to remind ourselves that we are his, that we belong to him, that we are his sons and his daughters, that we are in the family of God that we have been forgiven and that we have an eternal hope and future head that we've been redeemed by Christ. And so I hope these just conversations will be really honest and vulnerable and rich and that as you go through the book of Genesis together that it'll be a time for you to understand our relationship with God while there has been ruin and fallenness from the beginning, that there is good news and hope through Christ, through what our Savior has done on the cross to wipe our sin and shame once and for all. All right friends.
We hope you have a great meeting this week. We'll pray for you. Love you all.