Sample from Participant Book Introduction to Session One of The Fragrance Life PRAYER: "Imagine" Prayer from http://www.lutheransforlife.org/article/imagine-prayer/ Date: August 18, 2010 Almighty Father, thank You for the gift of life. Thank you for the gift of new life in Jesus Christ. Help us better understand the value and purpose You give to every life. It is more than we can imagine. Give us faith to trust in Your power at work in our lives. It is more than we can imagine. Give us the will, the strength, and the opportunity to make known to others Your great power and the power of Your great love. Help us share the hope that Your powerful love brings into people s lives. For those who image the worst because of a crisis pregnancy, Give them hope as they trust in Your power and imagine what this baby might be. For those who are wounded from a past abortion, Give them hope as they trust in the power of Your forgiveness, which is more than they can imagine. For those with terminal or chronic illnesses, Give them hope as they trust in Your power to accomplish Your will in and through them. We pray for our nation. Restore a respect for the value and dignity of life at all stages and in all conditions. We pray for the Church. Restore in us an understanding and respect for the sacredness of all life, and use us as a beacon of life and hope in Jesus Christ. We pray for Lutherans For Life. Continue to bless their work and provide them with the resources they need to equip us to apply the hope and power of the Gospel to the life issues of our time. We now ask for Your presence among us as we study Your Word together. Bless this time, our fellowship, and our discussions in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. Amen. Bible Study # 1 Session One topic: By faithfully confessing the First Article of the Apostles Creed today, we are spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere! [2Cor.2:14b] I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. What does this mean? I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, 1
spouse and children, land, animals, and all that I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life. He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true. 1. What is the First Article of the Apostles Creed? [cf.above] 2. The explanation of the First Article in Luther s Small Catechism helps us understand God the Creator s continuing involvement with us humans. Not only did God create ALL creatures but He has paid special attention in forming and shaping each one of us human beings. We are distinctly human created for a special and continuing relationship with the living God! According to the Bible we have been made in His image! [Gen.1:27] As an English-speaking person What comes to mind for you upon hearing the word image in Genesis, chapter one? 3. If you re like most people, you encounter the reflected image of yourself when you first stand in front of the bathroom mirror as you rise up to face the dawning of a new day. How does the concept of a reflected mirror image help you to understand the Bible s assertion that humans are created in the image of God?... What in particular did a sinless Adam and Eve do in relationship to their Maker that the animals couldn t? [hint: they reflected back to God, what?] 4. When the Book of Genesis begins with the verse In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth [Gen.1:1]... Is this a creedal statement, yes or no? 5. A powerful belief system of the times in which we are now living was once stated in the decade of the 1990s by a scientist by the name of Carl Sagan. He was the host of an informative program named Cosmos which popularized, and in simple terms, explained scientific concepts to a television audience. During one episode of his program, he started his program with these words: Cosmos IS, Cosmos WAS, and Cosmos ALWAYS WILL BE. Is that formulation of words scientific or creedal? 6. The word Cosmos is the Greek word which designates this material, physical universe. What Carl Sagan was confessing is that he believed that matter and energy and chronological time are all eternal. Rather than confessing In the beginning GOD he instead believed and taught that matter is eternal. According to him, God is not eternal, no, the material universe is eternal. In other words, Carl Sagan was a materialist. An alternate way of labeling his belief system is he was an atheist evolutionist. 2
What are Christians? we who confess that In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth [Gen.1:1] are we materialists or theists? 7. Theism is the confession that GOD is the only one who is eternal. Before this material universe came into existence, GOD existed. Before the beginning of all things, GOD is! What then is man? 8. The psalmist David while talking to God has an awestruck question for us all in Psalm 8: When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You care for him? [vv.3 &4] The psalmist is marveling at God s care and love for humankind. The inspired poet realizes what a special relationship exists between the Creator of the universe and the human creature whom He made in His image. The creation account in Genesis chapter two expresses the same awe when painting this intimate portrait of the human being s special relationship with his Maker: then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. [Gen.2:7] The creation of any part of the universe, or of any other living creature of this earth, is not so described. But God took special and unique action in forming and shaping and enlivening the Human Being. We were made for relationship with God! He loves us! Do you marvel at this reality? Does not the Bible touch upon the most important questions of life?... questions like: Who am I? How did I come to be? Why am I here? Where am I going? The early church father, St. Augustine, is credited for stating this profundity: Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in Thee. The meaning of life comes to us human beings because of a faith relationship with God. The writer of the Book of Hebrews tells us: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. [Heb.1:1] Furthermore, it is written By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. [Heb.1:3] Finally, the Bible helps us to marvel at God our Creator s intimate involvement with each of our own individual creations. So, our remaining attention during the rest of the questions for this Session is going to be focused up reflecting on Psalm 139:1-18. Reader # 6: 1 O Lord, You have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. 7 Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in 3
Sheol, You are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night," 12 even the darkness is not dark to You; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with You. 13 For You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. 17 How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with You. 9. In verses 1 through 4, the psalmist gives expression to the thought that the Maker of the entire universe has intimate knowledge of him as a person: v.1 O Lord, You have searched me and known me! For some other religions of this world, and for atheistic evolution, there is no personal almighty, eternal Being named God. Rather, there is only that which is impersonal something like chance or fate or the material universe. And with such a worldview, there is no meaning of life or significance for being human! The great English playwright William Shakespeare expresses the nihilism of the worldview of the atheist and the evolutionist through Macbeth in Act 5, Scene 5, saying: Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. However, when we Christian believers confess I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth are we not affirming that earthly life has meaning and significance? Is not the important thing in the opening of Psalm 139 the words which express the personal relationship between the Creator and us human beings? Relationship with the Eternal One brings meaning to our earthly life. List some of the relational words and phrases of vv.1-4. 10. In verses 5 through 10, the attribute of God which is His omnipresence is reflected upon. God is said to be present in heaven, in Sheol [the realm of the dead] and in the uttermost parts of the sea. There is no place in this material universe where we human beings can go to escape the presence of God. He hems us in behind and before. As was said of God to the Athenians by the apostle Paul In Him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said. [Acts 17:28] Christian teachers and theologians write of the imminence of God and of the transcendence of God. What is being communicated with that language is that God the Creator is wholly above & beyond His creation. He is other than this material universe; this is His transcendence. 4
Yet, at the time, God is holding everything together He is everywhere an intimate part of this universe; this is His imminence and in Him we live and move and have our being. Question: Does not verse 10 [ even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me ] express what Jesus was getting at when He tells us His followers: 25 Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air:... 28b Consider the lilies of the field,... 30a [But if God feeds the birds,] if God so clothes the grass of the field,... will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31a Therefore do not be anxious... Is not indeed the Creator involved in every aspect of sustaining your life / my life in this world? Discuss [cf. page 8] Luther s treatment of the First Article (still preserves guards and protects defends etc.) 11. How did each one of us begin our journey of life? All human beings including Jesus who is the Son of God and the son of the virgin Mary all of us started in the same way as described in Ps.139:13 [God, You] formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother's womb. In medical terms of today, genetically a distinct human being began inside our mothers, and such a being has been labeled a zygote. Distinctively, at conception, a new human life began, and the psalmist describes all of this as follows: 13a You formed my inward parts;... 15 My frame was not hidden from You, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance. Have you taken the marvelous opportunity of viewing the photography of the miracle of human conception, and of the early development of an unborn child? (All of us should take the time for viewing such pictures; check the internet.) 12. We human beings have been created by God. Our individual creations occurred within the womb of our mother. The unborn human being which was knitted together therein is the handiwork of God. According to Genesis 1:27, we were all created in God s image. The Bible teaches also that there is no such thing as the pre-existence of the soul or of the immortality of the soul. Such a doctrine is of pagan origin. The Bible knows of only God creating and of God preserving a human being s life. The psalmist in v.16 of Psalm 139 puts it this way: Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. In light of these realities just stated, does not the statement life begins at conception ring true? 5