Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practice his spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Welcome leaders to week three, looking at our study of the book of Genesis. We're excited to unpack this passage with you to help you get the most out of your discussion with your life groups this week.
This is John here by the way. Have you been on here for a little bit? And excited to be joined with our discipleship pastor from Mariners Huntington Beach. This is Sherry Life, also.
I love how he is. So glad you're a part of this week's podcast. Thanks. I'm excited to be here.
Love to hear just a little bit of as you've been down in your role now for how long has it been? About five months now. It's gone quick. Yeah.
And you came to us with lots of experience and serving at different churches and similar areas. But love to hear just what you see God doing down there at Mariners at HB. Great. I just have love helping people get connected.
And right now just Mariners HB is on the move. God is just working. We had so many new people coming at Easter. That translated just a lot of people standing up and saying, I believe this last weekend rooted is happening.
We have image of God and we've had a lot of new life groups launch. So it's an exciting season. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah.
And we have a lot of insight wisdom to our team and all the things that you're leading out there. It matters. It matters. We love that you're part of the team and I love that you're going to join us in this week's discussion.
And man, I picked not an easy one. We're looking at this week's message. It really does cover the span of Genesis 5 all the way halfway through about or so to Genesis 9. We've got the flood in there.
We've got the Nephilene in there. Some of the more hard to understand passages in Scripture are in here. And so Sherry is going to give us all of her deep theological insights of how to understand it in Scripture. Just a deep dive right here.
You've been getting to it here a little bit. We're grateful that we've got the FIFI Head More Time Podcast. And obviously Eric and his message is going to you're going to teach the passages. You're going to talk about the things that are in the passage faithfully in an Orthodox way, too.
But then if I had more time podcasts, even for you as a life-repleeder, that's a great resource. It is such a great resource. I'm hopefully they are all taking advantage of it because it just gives you a whole other layer of discussion, of knowledge just to be prepared for the questions that come up. Yeah, totally.
Because there could be a dissertation to talk about. Hey, we're talking about what do people think about that? Was it local, global, is it literal? What is that?
And all you need to know is there was a flood. Yes. And it's a cosmic sort of reboot. All the language about a de-creation that comes through that.
But yeah, listen to the podcast and get some more handles of insights on that, too. So we're actually not going to read the flood narrative as a part of our group discussion. We're going to pick up and jizz is nine after that. So we'll get into those texts here in a minute.
But why don't we start with our lean in question? Because that's a good place to start. All right. And a trick with the lean in usually is if you can get people talking at the beginning, more likely you're going to get them talking all the way through.
Absolutely. So here's a question. All right. When you're beginning a new relationship with someone, what's a creative question you like to ask to get to know them better?
So I love food and I love to gather people around the table. So I like asking questions around like, what's your favorite restaurant or what's if it's near holiday? What's a favorite tradition that you've carried forward? Or I mean, even on Mother's Day, like what is something that you're bringing forward that you do that you did when you were a kid?
Thanks for reminding us that it's Mother's Day this weekend. Thank you for the PSA. That's really important. Yeah.
That's really important. And the husband's to remember that it's Mother's Day. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great.
Yeah. So when you ask a question like to add creates inside it, it's a way to help start some commonality, start that relationship. So why are we asking that question you think this week? Well, yeah, we're talking about new beginnings.
Again, post, post flood is a new reset. You know, Noah in so many ways is like a new Adam who also, by the way, goes and fails miserably his own self leading all the way to Jesus, which he loves, who does not fail, but feels it perfectly for us. But there is like a new beginning as a new starter after the flood. So I think that's where the question is getting at.
All right. Why don't we jump into the look down section here then it says Genesis, we're going to read Genesis nine, one, three, seven and the question here before we read it. And again, always helpful to like give the question before you read the passage. So people know where you're going.
Yes, they can kind of be processed. So God gives his people a new beginning. What sounds familiar about God's words here? Where have you seen these commandments like this before?
So I'll go ahead and read it. So again, the question, what do you learn about new beginnings? How is the language similar? We've seen this before Genesis nine, one through seven.
This is after the flood. God bless Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill here. And the fear and tear of you will be in every living creature on earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls in the ground, all the fish of the sea, they are placed under your authority. Every creature that lives and moves will be food free as I gave the green plants I have given you everything.
However, you must not eat meat with its life blood in it and I will require a penalty for your life. I will require it from any animal or from any human. If anyone, if someone murders a fellow human, I will require that person's life. Whoever sheds blood by human hands will be shed for God made humans in his image.
So be fruitful and multiply spread out over the earth and multiply. Okay, great. So lots of ways that we can go in there and don't practice meaning about the law about the shedding of blood of the life blood of obviously foreshadowing Jesus and his ultimate sacrifice. So the most, I say the obvious big one is the be fruitful and multiply is the same as Genesis I.
But I think it would be even interesting for the, at this point to have them read Genesis I, 26 through 29 and really compare what is the same and what is different. That's an opportunity to just get in the word, open your eyeballs or bring them up on your phone and let them engage in that and try to look at what is the difference and where do you see similarities? That's great. Yeah.
So if they're struggling, I'm not sure. Great. Awesome. Okay.
Now what do you see? Yeah, there's some very intentional parallels here. God bless him. Bless him.
Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. It's really after it's been sort of like a deep deep. Right. It's like starting over, but there's, there are some differences, but there is very much similarity of start recreating and great.
You see this forming and this feeling and now you see this re this reforming and even the subduing the dominion over animals, the provision and that's where there was, I was noticing last night there was a difference between we were just giving, we were given human plant. Yeah. In Genesis one, but now we've added meat. Yeah.
You know, so things did take, they're similar, but a little different. Yeah, this is where my vegetarian friends say, Hey, you always supposed to be a vegetarian. That's pre fall. Right.
So this fall, that's a clever point, but I don't know because meek breed Angus. So I thought, I'm not sure. But yeah, that's great. So you can't be on that.
Interact with the passage a little bit. And then as we go and next card the look down, it says flip over to Romans eight, 22 to 23 and say, what hope do these verses provide us as we all wait for new beginnings? I'll go ahead and read that out. It was eight 22 to 23, right?
Yeah. For, you know, that the whole creation has been growing together with labor pains until now, not only that, but we ourselves who have the spirit as first fruits, we also grow within ourselves eagerly awaiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. So when we see there, we want to add like there, you know, I think that there's that longing we all have that is just within us. And so we have hope that we aren't alone and that he not just now, but it will be in completion when he returns, but we have that hope.
Yeah. Yeah. And so we have that, you know, we have that hope. Yeah.
Yeah. And so we're just now, but it will be in completion when he returns, but we have that hope to look forward to. Right. Yeah.
I love it. That's your turn. Knowledge is the present reality with the also the present hope that's going to be fully fulfilled. So there's acknowledgement that even creation is unsettled.
Even creation is groaning. It's waiting. It's waiting for the redemption for the renewal, just like in our own bodies, like our own earthly bodies are slowly deteriorating. And we see that every day.
The older we get, we suddenly see it. We feel it. We feel it every day. And there's an acknowledgement of that.
But the deterioration is one that doesn't lead to just a finite down. Yeah. And actually there's a renewal. There's a hoke as a restoration that's coming and the Holy Spirit has been given to us as a down payment that's coming, the future.
It's positive security with what's coming. And we have that too. Hold on to even when times are tough and when we feel the pain that we have that hope. Yeah.
So I love that the hope is, well, how does that fill us with hope? It fills us with hope for what we know is coming will be experienced in part now. But I also like that the hope is not naive. Like it doesn't just glance over the difficulty of life, the wandering with sin and the problem of people and all of that.
It acknowledges it. Yeah. Very good. That's the take, take us there.
All right. Let's move into the lookout says God forgives his people. You know, within yourself as a good news. All right.
So now we're coming into the conversation about new beginnings and forgiveness. We wandered. We caused them. And there's a consequence to that.
But the consequences, we feel the weight of that. But also God has a redemptive plan that he works, that he works, that he works through. So God's forgiving. God forgives his people, even when they mess up, is our culture good at forgiveness or do we generally hold grudges against people and why?
So giving us an understanding like, okay, redemptive forgiveness of God, how do we see that in culture? What does that look like? I worked out. This is definitely an opportunity for some great conversation around just we are living in a very unique time of cancel culture and just where it feels like there's a lack of unforgiveness.
And so just being able to talk about that and point people to not having a fear against that and how we can move forward. And because we know as believers that how God wants us to forgive and how because the value of that we were created in the image of God, that affects how we have an opportunity to be a light to all the people in our lives because we're looking at it differently and that they even if someone has heard us that we release it and that we deserve at least the dignity of life. I mean, being treated with respect doesn't mean engaging with people that have heard us deeply. I mean, we still have boundaries but we don't have to carry that.
Yeah, right. That's right. Absolutely. And it's only really made possible once you understand how we've received from what we've been released from, what we've been forgiven, what we've been forgiven.
It just becomes rule keeping. It becomes score keeping, it be potential. The people just erase you now, right? Like delete, you know, erase you from their social world.
Yeah. And the follow up question is what makes it so hard for people to forgive others when they are hurt. Well, I mean, so many things. And I was tiny ab is that we're hurt from others.
We feel we've been owed to enact pain on the other person. I never basically do that for them. I'm keeping, I'm keeping scores and forgiveness, you know, unforgiveness is a false sign of control. I can still control it.
I can dictate how much they're going to hurt me now. I hold on to it, right? And I think that people just feel like if they forgive their condoning, like they, you know, and so they, they don't want to or that maybe they're giving up the right to be right. Right.
And when that's really not what it is, it's just because God showed us just grace when we certainly didn't deserve it. It's just trusting. It's really giving it to him and trusting him with it. I like that word condoning too.
Because God doesn't condone sin either. No, there's a punishment. There's consequences. It's for that we experience, but then praise the God ultimately bears, but it's very, very very good itself.
I like that's an interesting word to use. That's a great word for that. Yeah. Forgiveness is saying it was okay.
You know, it's not excusing a poor behavior. And as we often say, forgiveness is not always wise to lead to reconciliation. Right. And so it's two parties, you know, forgiveness is something that you can do.
And you do it. I mean, you do it because God really told us to, but also you do it for yourself because I think that as leaders, we can help people in these could be potentially hard conversations where people have been holding on to unforgiveness, but it's an opportunity to walk alongside them and help them see that ultimately that we're the ones when we hold onto it. We're just, we're just the ones getting hurt. There was that old saying like unforgiveness is like taking, you know, poison, you know, because you feel like you're holding it against that person, but really it's you that you're hurting.
That's right. Yeah. And we, we keeping up from being free. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, we have a hurt done to us either self-harm or harm of others. Well, just the harm of the world, right? We have typically three different ways to be falling around and you could, you can internalize it.
You could hold onto it. You can even build an identity around it. You can throw it at other people and project it on other folks and try to give it to them or then of course, right? The third, release it to him.
The other place that's like he can bear to read about that, right? So easier said than that. Yeah. So it's just going to say it's like almost a daily a time like, you know, we've all, I think we've all been there.
We've all been hurt deeply, but and sometimes it literally is okay today. I'm giving it back to you, you know, and it's not like you just say I'm forgiving and that it magically goes away, but it changes our hearts. I think when we take those steps. Right.
So I think that's the first time that we're looking at the flood and the recreation and the story of Noah and that's really what it is. There is, there is a consequence for sin, but God has a redentive plan even through it. There's grace through it. I mean, in the passages, Eric highlights in the teaching, this is the first time that we really see that we're grace up here, you know, the favor that rests upon Noah, like God's grace that resting upon Noah.
And so the forgiveness isn't defeatism, but it's accepting something that we could do ourselves. So yeah, it's great. One more section of the look in here and you know, you're going to spend a lot of time here, obviously as well. The questions here are basically getting you to talk about, man, how have you seen experience God's forgiveness in your life?
How have you seen this grace in your life? And then not only have you seen it, how has God gone to express it? Where has God gone to show that for others? So anything you might say to leaders, there is a neveget that he calls in it.
I think that this is just a beautiful opportunity because I just know that this is a huge issue for a lot of people and that maybe they don't really ever talk about, but it affects really the other relationships can just one little thing can make such a big difference. And I think it's an opportunity to model it by sharing your own experience of where did, you know, you experience God's grace. And it can be a little thing. It doesn't have to be this long story, but just where have you seen God's grace and how did that play out and just provide a space that's safe for them to share and be vulnerable.
That's awesome. Sure. Thank you so much. Really good inside.
Appreciate your wisdom and perspective and all that we're doing to leave the leader so well done at HB. So we're grateful for you. Awesome. Thanks for joining us.
First and not the last time. If it sounds like we're on an airplane, I promise we're not. My air conditioning is taking off on the offices up here. Yeah, really, really great discussion guys and look forward to seeing you this weekend.
Mother's Day, celebrate moms, mother figures in your lives. Yes. These great conversations this weekend. As we mentioned, make use of the if I have our time podcast and learn more about the flood in Epheline.
It definitely yes. Do a deep dive. All right. Thanks.
Thanks. We'll be back.