Rooting Path · How to Read the Bible · Lesson 7: From Then to Today
This lesson in one sentence: Three steps: what it said then → what does not change → how I live it today; be doers of the word, not only hearers.
Timing (about 60 minutes)
- Opening5 min
- Read Together10 min
- Practice Together15 min
- Discussion20 min
- This Week5 min
- Pray for One Another5 min
Opening
What is the verse you have heard most often but done least?
Read Together
1Now concerning things sacrificed to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 4Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other God but one. 7However, that knowledge isn’t in all men. But some, with consciousness of an idol until now, eat as of a thing sacrificed to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8But food will not commend us to God. For neither, if we don’t eat are we the worse, nor if we eat are we the better. 9But be careful that by no means does this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to the weak. 13Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will eat no meat forever more, that I don’t cause my brother to stumble.
1 Cor 8:1, 4, 7–9, 13 · WEB
22But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves. 23For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror; 24for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom and continues, not being a hearer who forgets but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.
Jas 1:22–25 · WEB
Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that each person who belongs to God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Tim 3:16–17 · WEB
Practice Together
Read Luke 10:25–37 together as a group and walk through the three steps: discuss steps one and two together; for step three, each person writes down one concrete thing to do this week.
Discussion
- “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1)—when have you ‘had knowledge’ but no love?
- ‘A question for myself, not a way of policing others’—why do we so often think of other people first when applying Scripture?
- Of the seven lessons in this course, which method do you most want to keep using?
This Week
This week choose a passage (you can keep reading Mark) and walk through the three steps each day; for step three, write only one thing you can do today.
Each person names the one concrete thing they will do this week.
Closing
Read 2 Tim 3:16–17 together, and the leader prays for the group’s Bible reading ahead.
Tips for the leader
- On questions like food offered to idols or to ancestors, churches understand things differently; don’t reach a conclusion in the group; as the lesson says, ask your own church.
- Someone’s ‘step three’ may be very personal; don’t press for details. Next time you can ask one another, ‘How did this week go?’—as encouragement, not inspection.
- This is the last session of the course. You might agree to read about one Bible figure together next, putting the methods you have learned to use.
General principles for leaders
- The leader is not a teacher but someone who walks alongside everyone.
- Give everyone a chance to speak; with someone who talks a lot, you can gently say, ‘Let’s also hear from friends who haven’t spoken yet.’
- Don’t rush to give answers. If someone is silent, wait a few more seconds.
- For a question you can’t answer, you can say, ‘I don’t know either; let’s look it up together,’ and note it down for next time.
- What is said in the group stays in the group.
- At the opening, the leader can give their own answer first, showing that it can be simple and honest.