Adult Mentor: Adult Bible Study: Faith, Vision, and Awe

By R.H. Boyd Publishing Corporation

The Adult Mentor is a topical Christian quarterly study guide is for the adult learner and is designed to increase Christian faith and biblical understanding using a variety of learning methods. It is a practical resource for every day Christian living.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.H. Boyd Publishing Corporation
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781681677378

Book preview

Words and Actions

LESSON SCRIPTURES:

Romans 2:17–29

DISCUSSION POINTS:

I. Knowledge must lead to action or it is useless.

II. More is required of God’s people than simple knowledge and ritually keeping laws.

III. There must be an inward change of a person’s heart toward doing the things of God.

KEY VERSE

For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.

(Romans 2:13, KJV)

LEARNING SESSION

How do actions reveal what one actually believes? There is great power in what a person says, but the real force is in the actions behind those words and the actions that result from saying them. Words can be used as weapons to destroy, as seen in Adolf Hitler’s charismatic and genocidal governance in Germany. Words also can be used to inspire a peaceful movement, as when Martin Luther King Jr. stood at Washington Monument and spoke to the crowds of hope for the future.

Anticipating his future visit to the city, Paul wrote this letter to the church in Rome. Though he had neither been to Rome at this point, nor had he planted the church there, Paul had a lot to say to the believers in Rome. They were a community made of both Jews, who had recently returned from exile, and Gentiles, who had stayed behind in the city. This letter is one of Paul’s most dense and comprehensive because of both his lack of prior evangelistic work in Rome and the possibility of fracturing due to the differences between Jews and Gentiles. He wanted them to fully understand what it means to live converted lives for Christ. He also needed them to know no one can escape God’s judgments if they willfully choose to disobey God’s Law. Some Jews boasted about the Law but seemed powerless to live within today’s lesson focus on the importance not just on knowledge and saying the right things, but also on doing the right things.

EXPOSITION

I. Knowledge and Practice

As Paul prefaced in Romans 2:13, it’s not the hearers who are just before God, but the doers of the Law. It was a misunderstanding of God’s intentions for His people Israel to assume that keeping His laws, especially the ritual and sacrificial laws, were the best way to please Him. This kind of thinking caused Jesus to rebuke the Pharisees when He said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! (Matt. 23:23–24, NRSV). These religious leaders led many astray in their love for the tiny details of the Law and disregard for the intent of the Law.

Paul also was educated in the Law, but he knew that reliance on keeping the Law perfectly was dangerous for his people. Furthermore, he knew how easy it was to teach the Law without keeping the Law. The Pharisees that Jesus rebuked knew the Law and the prophets always had called for the people to practice justice and righteousness, and they taught these things but did not do them (see Matt. 23:3). Paul challenged the Jewish believers in Rome, asking them, If you are sure that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You that forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You that abhor idols, do you rob temples? You that boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? (Rom, 2:19–23, NRSV). Though the believers might not actually have been stealing or committing adultery or stealing from temples, these examples challenged them to consider what they taught and what they actually did. They could easily fall into hypocrisy just as the Pharisees had done.

THEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS

•Knowledge must lead to action or it is useless.

•More is required of God’s people than simple knowledge and ritually keeping laws.

•There must be an inward change of a person’s heart toward doing the things of God.

II. Setting a Bad Example

The pride in their ancestors, their hypocrisy in teaching, and ignoring laws had a deplorable effect on Israel’s influence in foreign lands. Instead of being a light to the nations, as God always had intended Israel to be, the nation embarrassed God. Paul reminded them of both Ezekiel and Isaiah who said essentially, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you’ (Rom. 2:24, NRSV; see Isa. 52:5; Ezek. 36:23). Instead of calling the nations of the world to wonder at the majesty of the Lord, the actions of Israel brought shame to Him. He would not allow His holy name to be profaned forever. Israel’s exiles were evidence that God was serious about what their witness in the world said about Him. The Church would now be responsible for declaring His holiness.

III. Reversed Results

One of the key markers of Jewish identity was circumcision. Though this practice was not uncommon in the ancient world, for Israel it was a sign of the covenant God had made with Abraham. When God spoke to Abraham, He said, " ‘This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and