Write Isaiah 64:4 from memory (compare 1 Corinthians 2:9):
“Since ancient times, no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides You who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.”
What is Benefit 5? “to enjoy God’s presence”
Many elements or conditions can keep us from truly enjoying God’s presence. For instance, not spending adequate time with Him greatly affects our pure enjoyment of His presence. Having an underdeveloped prayer life robs our joy, as does harboring bitterness or anger at another person.
To the best of your understanding, what does legalism mean when used in a negative, religious context?
“I think legalism is getting stuck on all the rules of the Bible, and not allowing grace to do its work. I think it has two manifestations: judging oneself, or judging others.”
Record what you learn about legalism from [each of these verses]
Matthew 12:9-14 “It can cause illogical and undercompassionate behaviors. It governed the Pharisees’ lives.”
Acts 15:1-2,6-11 “It started to creep into Christianity.”
Galatians 2:15-16 “It can’t get you to heaven; no one can obey them all perfectly, and be justified by it – we must be justified by Christ.”
With what you’ve learned about legalism from the references above, interpret Ecclesiastes 7:15-20 to the best of your understanding.
“Don’t be legalistic, but don’t sin excessively either. Fear God, follow Him as well as you can, and let His grace flow in your life.”
How could a student of God’s word squeeze the enjoyment out of her Christian walk by replacing relationship with regulations?
“At Sunday morning worship, she could be so preoccupied with whether she looks right and claps right, etc. or with judging whether everyone else does, that her heart misses the worship entirely. At quiet time, she might never actually let go of guilt of past, forgiven sins, and keep a barrier between Jesus and herself.”
Based on Matthew 7:1-5, what do you think I mean by the expression ‘microscopes replace mirrors’?
“A person can get too focused on other people’s sins or bad habits, and can act superior and judgmental without seeing that she has the exact same sin, perhaps even to a greater degree.”
Concentrating on the shortcomings of others, can cheetah Christian of truly enjoying the presence of God.
Read God’s description of legalism in Isaiah 29:13. Write what you believe to be an example of this kind of legalism.
“Recited prayers of memorized poems, singing songs, without really thinking about the words, politely listening to the sermon while mentally [reviewing one’s] grocery list, week’s schedule, etc.”
Dearest Rachel –
I apologize for not having gotten this out sooner today; I normally prepare your study, guide a day or two before, but with being at Anime Iowa, it completely slipped my mind to do so before I left town. Although, I suppose that to get hung up on whether or not I get this out every Sunday is a form of legalism in its own right (I’d prefer to consider it a form of self-discipline, but I suppose there are multiple interpretations to everything).
It might be presumptuous to claim that we are free from a specific sin; we as humans are never so blind as when judging ourselves, after all. However, I don’t think that we struggled with legalism very much, ourselves. Certainly, the fact that you underlined “not spending adequate time with him” and “having an underdeveloped prayer life” in a paragraph that eventually got into the subject of legalism suggested that you saw in yourself those flaws being more egregious, in terms of interfering with your joy in God’s presence, than that.
Still, it was an issue worth grappling with, if for no other reason than to try to prevent it from growing out of hand, and causing that lack of joy. granted, at this point, your joy in his presence is complete – but it was not so when you went through these pages. When you described the ‘student of God’s word,’ I wonder how much of what you wrote was something that you could’ve written in first rather than third person.
And you’ll notice that I’m not really going to touch on the last segment of your homework, where you take your heart’s spiritual temperature from four different perspectives. You did mark each line with tiny little numbers, indicating which temperature belongs to which description, but as the author says, only you know what each mark represents. This was not meant for us to interpret; this was a representation of where you thought you stood.
And as with recording one’s physical body temperature, this would not necessarily remain the same from one moment to another. Although, I suppose that, in the eternity that you are now a part of, they are all at their full measure.
Letters to Rachel 