The Gospel Comes with a House Key
God Never Gets the Address Wrong (4|4)
The Providence of Hospitality
• What Is the Covenant, and Why Does It Matter?
• What Is Covenant Love?
Pages 85-88
TOGETHER read the book and discuss the content below.
INDIVIDUALLY take notes in your journal on what stands out (try to keep it brief).
Psalm 147 (NIV) Praise the LORD. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him! The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. The LORD sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground. Sing to the LORD with grateful praise; make music to our God on the harp. He covers the sky with clouds; he supplies the earth with rain and makes grass grow on the hills. He provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they call. His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of the warrior; the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love. Extol the LORD, Jerusalem; praise your God, Zion. He strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your people within you. He grants peace to your borders and satisfies you with the finest of wheat. He sends his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly. He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes. He hurls down his hail like pebbles. Who can withstand his icy blast? He sends his word and melts them; he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow. He has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel. He has done this for no other nation;m they do not know his laws. Praise the LORD.
We need to start facing the deep shadow of the cross, because there at the cross we see what Jesus did and how God provided the way of escape at his expense and for our blessing. Make no mistake: the way is hard. It breaks you. It is best walked in the company of other broken people, accompanying one another in suffering, helping each other repent of sin, bear the cross, and make biblical sense of things.
TOGETHER pray for one another.
INDIVIDUALLY answer the questions in your journal - process your notes and pray.
Jesus dines with sinners so that he can get close enough to touch us so that he can participate in the intimacy of table fellowship as a healer and a helper. Jesus comes to change us, to transform us, so that after we have dined with Jesus, we want Jesus more than the sin that beckons our fidelity.
How can you use your space in order to follow Jesus’s example of “dining with sinners”?
The gospel is free. The gospel creates a community that welcomes others in. The gospel says to fellow image bearers: “You are welcome here. Come as you are. Take my hand. I’m not leading, I’m following. Jesus is leading.”
What is your response to this statement?
What would it cost you to see things the way God does? Are these things worth keeping if it means disobeying God’s commands to show hospitality?
Pause and pray - feel free to pray whatever is in your heart in response to this chapter or pray the brayer below:
Lord, give me so much love for my neighbors that I desire to show genuine hospitality freely and generously. Give me persistence to not only extend an invitation but also keep following up. Free me from the selfishness of keeping things for myself, rather than holding my things loosely. And surround me with a community of people who will show me how to understand things from your point of view.
EXTRA READING:
“The whole point of what Jesus was up to was that He was doing close up, in the present, what He was promising long-term in the future. And what He was promising for that future and doing in the present was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity but rescuing people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so they could enjoy, already in the present, that renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose - and so they could thus become colleagues and partners in that large project.”
- N.T. Wright, English theologian and author (born 1948)