D - God's Character Pt. 3

Exodus 34:6 (NIV)

6 … “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loyal love and faithfulness”

Over the last two weeks we have been getting together and having a conversation over this memory verse right here. We have been talking about how God has chosen 5 attributes to describe himself and we call them God’s character.

God’s Character consist of 5 different attributes:

Do you remember what they are?

Compassionate

Gracious

Slow to anger

Loyal love

Faithfulness.

Last week we spent some solid time having a conversation about God being Compassionate. And we said that Jesus showed comapssion to His people by sharing the Gospel and healing the sick. And in the same God does that, we can be compassionate to others by sharing the Gospel and meeting people’s needs.

Today we are going to spend some time talking about God being Gracious. But before we do that, I have some prizes for 3 people that are willing to do what I asked them to do from last week.

Share the memory verse

Compassionate = Rakhum

Womb = Rehkem

Today we are going to see how God has been gracious to us. And even take a look at what it means to be gracious.

The Hebrew word for Gracious is Khen

Gracious = Khen

Khen also kind of favorable or delightful. So it’s kind of like the feeling you get when you see something cute like a puppy or something cool like a big stash of money. But you can also feel khen towards something or someone who doesn’t deserve it sometimes.

Like if someone owes you a debt and they ask you for khen, you can show them khen by forgiving them. You show them favor.

No one shows us more favor than God. God shows favor or grace than God does. The old testament calls God’s khen Kharis which means: Gracious Gift.

Kharis = Gracious Gift

That gracious gift was introduced to us in the New Testament through Jesus.

The book of Isaiah teaches us that God wants to be gracious to us, so He promises He will show us compassion.

John 1:11–14 NIV

11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The bible teaches us that Jesus came to save His people. In the old testament His people were the people of Israel. God chose Israel so that they could be light to the rest of the world. In the New Testament we talk about this specific group of people called:

The Elect

Who are the elect? Well, It’s the church. God has been Gracious to every one. HE has been Khen to everyone. But the way He shows that grace to other people is through the church. Through you and me. See, the book of John tells us that God came to His chosen people, the people of Israel. But when He showed Himself to them, they did not receive Him. But to those that did receive Him, you and me, He has given us the grace and the right to be called the children of God.

God wants the rest of the world to share that grave with other.

If you remember, we said that in the Old Testament Israel was God’s chosen people and God wanted to use Israel to show the world grace. But the people of Israel did not want to do that.

Now, God has chosen us to show grace and be gracious to the rest of the world. Can we do that? Let’s not be like Israel and show the world grace, favor and Khen.

Small Group Questions:

1. How does the following passage portray God’s grace?

John 1: 11-14

2. How are we called to respond to God’s gracious character?

3. How did the people of Israel respond to Jesus?

4. Share 3 examples of how we can be different than Israel.