Ben Phebus // Rockford Campus // March 9, 2025

SMALL GROUP
DISCUSSION GUIDE

THIS WEEK’S KEY PASSAGE: Luke 16:13-18

REMINDERS

PARENT CONNECT – TECHNOLOGY (Sunday, March 16 & Sunday, March 23 6:00pm-7:00pm – Rockford Campus) Your phone, your family, and your heart. Join us for a two week conversation on the significant role technology plays in shaping our lives and our call to be active disciples of it in our families.

This is a conversation for our whole community. If you know someone who doesn’t attend Magnify that would benefit from this conversation, reach out and invite them to join you! Programming for birth – High School is offered both nights.

TECH EXPO: On March 23 from 5-5:45pm, check out our tech expo and grab a walking taco in the Auditorium. It’s a time for the whole family to visit different stations and get answers, ideas, tips, and fun facts regarding technology use in the family and home.

TOGETHER IN LIFE

Take turns talking with your group about your first car. What kind of car did you drive? What do you remember most about it?

TOGETHER IN THE WORD

THIS WEEK’S KEY PASSAGE: Luke 16:13-18

Note: If you are meeting as a group, we encourage you to read the text together out loud.

KEY QUESTION:

• Do you ever find yourself tempted to self-justify the sins of your heart and downplay your need for forgiveness rather than humbly confessing to yourself, God, and others that you are a sinner in need of daily grace and then running to the Father for grace and transformation?

GOING DEEPER:

Luke 6:13-18 records Jesus speaking to a crowd that included His disciples as well as a group of Pharisees. Jesus knows that the hearts of many of the people are divided, so he speaks directly to them about several issues of the heart and their tendency to try to justify themselves before God and man.

Two Masters

Re-read verses 13-15. As Ben noted in the sermon, Jesus doesn’t say you can’t love God and have money. Instead, He’s talking about what you love and are devoted to. Take a minute to contemplate your loves and devotions.

QUESTIONS

• Have you ever had (or do you now have) two masters? Do you ever find they come in conflict with one another (for example, a job or a relationship you value that causes you to downplay your commitment to Christ)?

Self-Justification or Made Righteous

In verse 15, Jesus tells the Pharisees that they are people who justify themselves before men, but God knows their hearts. He warns that while other people may celebrate the Pharisees’ external righteousness, their pretense and sinful hearts are an abomination to God.

To justify ourselves before people is the exact opposite of the gospel. Self-justification believes the lie that we can be good enough or work hard enough to be made right with God on our own. Since there is no way for any of us to work ourselves back into relationship with God, Jesus did it for us on the cross. He took our sin onto Himself like filthy rags and died on our behalf. He clothes everyone who believes in Him as their only Savior in His righteousness and makes us into a new person. This path of humbly admitting our sin and need for a Savior and then being made righteous through Him is the only way back to the Father.

QUESTIONS

• The Pharisees were trying to justify themselves. But the best they could do was make themselves look good in front of other people. They couldn’t change their own hearts. Are you ever tempted to try to make yourself look good in front of others instead of humbly confessing your brokenness and need for a Savior?
• If so, what is it that tempts you to do this? Is there anything in your experience that causes you to fear admitting your sin to yourself, God, and others? Read 1 John 1:5-10.

Ben shared seven strategies that we often use to self-justify:

1. Legalism – We check the boxes and appear righteous while maintaining a heart of sin such as greed, lust, or self-indulgence.
2. Normalization – We don’t even see our sin as sin because everyone else is doing it.
3. Point to our Good Attributes – We hide our sins and highlight the good things we do instead
4. Hide and Ignore – We believe that if we never talk about a sin in our life or in our heart, we can pretend it’s not there.
5. Blame our Circumstances – We justify our sin as being the result of difficult circumstances. For example, saying we’re not selfish or impatient, we just had a hard day instead of admitting the sin within us.
6. Blame the Other Person – We pretend another person caused us to sin by their actions. i.e. “I wouldn’t look at porn if my wife wasn’t so withdrawn from me.”
7. Claim “Fairness” – We justify our ugly behavior because “they did it first” or “it’s only fair.”

QUESTIONS

• The battle between self-justification and the righteousness that comes only by grace through faith is a daily battle. Which of the strategies above do you see yourself using sometimes to self-justify? Why?

Is it Lawful?

In Luke 16:16-17 Jesus goes on to tell the crowd that it’s impossible for us to self-justify because it’s impossible for us to keep the Law perfectly on our own. Instead, we need an internal transformation that is only possible through the Spirit of God in us. It’s only through Christ in us that we can keep God’s Law of love, which is no longer written on stone tablets but now written on the hearts of His people (see Jeremiah 31:33 and Ezekiel 36:25-27).

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were fixated on the Law but neglected their hearts. One evidence of this was their stance on divorce. The religious leaders with their hard hearts searched for a loophole in the Law using a verse from Deuteronomy that they believed allowed them to divorce their wives and cast them out, all the while pretending to be righteous before God.

The Pharisees wanted to hold onto their claim of righteousness while living out their lustful and greedy desires. But Jesus debunked this, showing them that they couldn’t walk around pretending to be an example of what it means to follow God while using what they thought was a legal loophole to treat another person badly.

QUESTIONS

• Ben said that to bring the heart of a Pharisee into our life is to approach the Bible with the question, “What’s allowed? What can I get away with?” This is another example of self-justifying rather than being made right by God and living for Him. Have you ever used a verse in the Bible to justify something that you knew was morally “iffy” or wrong?
• Have you ever looked for a loophole in God’s commands or searched in the Bible to find the line between what’s allowed and what’s not allowed in a situation? Are there any situations in which this might be a good thing? When could this be a sign that you’re seeking to meet a desire rather than to honor God fully?

TOGETHER IN ACTION

Watch your life carefully for signs for self-justification. Ask those close to you if they see any self-justification in you. Choose repentance instead, and receive the healing grace that God wants to bring you.

Pray that your love would abound with knowledge and depth of insight that you may be able to discern what is best, even through the complexities and trials of life (Philippians 1:9-11).

TOGETHER IN PRAYER

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. – Philippians 1:9-11

• Pray Philippians 1:9-11 as a group and commit to praying it for yourself and your brothers and sisters in Christ.
• Pray for eyes to see where you may self-justify and for the healing experience of true confession to God, yourself, and others, and the joy that comes from justification through grace alone.
• Pray that you will always seek to truly live out a love of God and love of others rather than seek to use God’s Word to justify self-indulgence or a lack of love.