Discussion Questions
What area(s) of Joseph’s life had you never associated with Jesus’ life?
How has studying Jesus in the Old Testament impacted your view of Jesus?
How can Jesus being seen in Old Testament people help us relate to Jesus now?
Who is in your sphere of influence that needs to hear the Gospel of Jesus?
Prayer Points
Pray for unity in the church
Pray for opportunity to share Jesus with others
Pray for personal spiritual growth
Discussion Questions
“Jesus is the one who made the covenants. Jesus is the one who keeps the covenants.” What about this statement helps us believe that all of scripture points to Jesus?
In what areas of your life are you prone to believing in the “shadow of the real thing” instead of Jesus himself?
Read together Hebrews 4:16. Do you find yourself struggling to approach the throne of grace in time of need, why or why not? How can we encourage one another to live out this truth?
Prayer Points
Pray that God would deepen our faith and reveal himself clearly as we read all of scripture.
Pray that the Holy Spirit would help us believe and worship Jesus instead of merely the shadow of the real thing.
Pray that God would give our church a deep assurance in the finished work of Jesus so we can be a church body that boldly approaches the throne of grace.
Peter and John face increasing opposition from the religious and political leaders, and find themselves in prison. When an angel shows up to free them, he gives them one instruction: go tell people about “this life.” This phrase is important to understanding what it means to follow Jesus. When God saves us, the very life of Jesus becomes our life, a life that comes with both blessings and challenges.
Discussion Questions
One of the primary ways that the Bible speaks about salvation is the idea of “death to life.”
How have you seen this idea play out in your own life and salvation? What does it mean to you personally that Jesus’ very life has become your life?
Of the blessings highlighted in this passage (forgiveness, Holy Spirit, restoration, perseverance, community), which one are you most grateful for? Which one do you need to spend more time thinking about?
What distractions, fears, etc. keep you from regularly experiencing the life of Jesus in your own life? What changes do you need to make in order to live the life that Jesus has for you?
As our culture pushes historic, orthodox Christianity to the margins, how can we cultivate an attitude of “rejoicing that we would be counted worthy to be treated shamefully on behalf of the Name”? How can we suffer like Jesus, without arguing and complaining?
Prayer Points
Pray that we would experience the life of Jesus in greater measure as individuals and as a
church community.
Pray that we would rejoice in the blessings of Jesus’ life, and that we would embrace the
challenges with an attitude of rejoicing.
As Jesus begins to close the Sermon on the Mount he levels a serious warning toward all who would claim to be his disciples. All believers are called to consider if their devotion to Jesus is genuine or not, regardless of how much has been done in the name of Christ. In this counterintuitive passage Jesus shows us that the most important thing about us is not in us, but in him.
Discussion Questions
How have you read the narrow and wide paths in the past? How were they interpreted in the sermon?
What assurance is there to gain from being known by Jesus VS only knowing about Jesus?
What would you say is the main warning from this passage?
How should the urgency of Jesus’ warning affect us in sharing the gospel?
Prayer Points
Pray for Jesus’ warning to bolster your resolve to be a true disciple that loves him with outward and inward affection.
Pray that God would give our church a deep assurance of knowing and being known by Jesus.
Discussion Questions:
What about Jesus’ character do you learn from this passage?
Jesus calls his disciples to be a praying people. What underlying beliefs do you have about prayer that leads you to or leads you away from praying?
Spend time examining your heart and mind. In what areas of your life is the Holy Spirit calling you to repent of your self sufficiency and seek God’s will and persevere in prayer?
Who in your life has encouraged your faith through their prayer life?
Prayer Points:
Spend time in prayer praising God for his love and faithfulness.
Pray that God would fill us with the joy of communing with him through prayer.
Pray that God would root out any form of self-sufficiency and cultivate a heart of dependency for him.
Discussion Questions
“To judge or not to judge, that is the question”. In what ways has this passage clarified your understanding of judgment?
In what ways do we accurately or inaccurately represent the gospel by the way we pass judgment?
Jesus is clearly teaching that once again, the heart is at the center of the issue and therefore, he does not forbid judgment, but rather calls us to discern and judge rightly. How do you see this practically lived out in your life?
Through Jesus we are recipients of God’s mercy. Spend time encouraging one another through scripture the reminder of this truth.
Prayer Points
Praise God for his mercy shown to us through his son Jesus Christ.
Pray that God would remind and steep us in the truth of his mercy in our hearts.
Pray that God would root out any pride that hinders us from practicing right judgment.
We each have many legitimate reasons to worry and be anxious. Added to that, there are plenty of unrealistic fears and worries that we can succumb to. In this portion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us to not give in to anxiety, but to live out faithful trust in the Father.
Discussion Questions
What are areas of worry and anxiety that repeatedly come up for you?
Why do you think you worry about those things?
What underlying expectations or desires explain your worry / anxiety?
How does having “faith like a child” challenge our worrying?
How has worrying interfered with your living a faithful Christ-following life?
What are ways that you see God’s heart of love and care for you and others?
How can you know that God knows your needs and desires to meet them?
How can you know that God has the power to meet any need or situation you encounter?
What does it look like to seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness first?
How do worries and fears show the priorities of our hearts and lives?
Who is an example of seeking first the kingdom of God that inspires you?
What are some steps you feel led to take to combat worry in your life?
Prayer Points
Ask God to show you how you indulge in worry.
Ask God to help you see his loving heart and all the ways that he cares for you.
Thank God for all the ways that he has provided for you and met your needs.
Pray for God to put your needs in perspective with his power and ability to meet those needs.
Pray for the faith to trust God and to seek his kingdom first.
Additional Resources
An example of great faith! George Mueller’s life story told by John Piper.
Blog: “What Does it Mean to Take Every Thought Captive?”
Trusting God in the worst of circumstances! The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
Gospel Hope for Anxious Hearts: Trading Fear and Worry for the Peace of God by Charles Spurgeon
In the second half of Matthew 6, Jesus pivots from addressing a genuine righteousness of one’s inward life to a genuine righteousness of one’s outward life. In doing so, Jesus instructs his followers to seek heavenly treasures above earthly ones because what we treasure reveals what we love. Or, more importantly, who we love.
Discussion Questions:
Are you as zealous for funding your retirement as you are for storing up heavenly treasures? How does the idea of heavenly treasures change the way you think about money?
What encouragement can we gain from knowing that God wants us to seek heavenly treasures?
Does this passage convict you about covetousness, the inordinate love of wealth and possessions? If so, what do you need to confess?
Who can you challenge with the truth that we all choose to serve either Jesus or the things of this world?
Prayer Points:
Pray for God to reveal ways you choose earthly treasures instead of seeking him and confess them.
Pray that God would make us a more generous church so that everyone would see how much we value Him above all earthly goods.
Fasting is a spiritual discipline that is practiced by all the major religions in the world. In fact, it is also currently a health craze, intermittent fasting is being touted as a cure for almost anything that ails you. It is true that fasting has health benefits but the fasting that Jesus is talking about in our text today is a Spiritual Discipline designed for us to seek out the presence and power of God.
Discussion Questions:
What has captured your attention or heart?
What do you need to set aside so that you can focus of God?
How can fasting help you to realign your priorities?
Is it ok to let other people know you are fasting?
What did Jesus mean when he said, “But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face”?
Prayer Points:
Pray that God will reveal the thing that has captured your attention
Pray that Sound City Bible Church will desire to feast on the Word and Will of God
Pray for those in the world that are suffering and struggling
Pray for an opportunity to minister the Gospel to someone this week
Jesus spent a great deal of time alone in prayer communicating with the Father. Knowing how important true prayer is in the life of those who follow him, Jesus teaches us how to pray. The Lord’s Prayer is a model prayer that shows us the attitudes we should have during prayer as well as the topics we should include when we pray. This passage and the sermon based on it are intended to encourage and equip you to have a robust, genuine, and powerful prayer life.
Discussion Questions:
Why do so many Christ-followers find prayer difficult?
What specific barriers get in the way of your own praying?
When was a time that prayer was a meaningful or powerful part of your life?
What parts of the Lord’s Prayer speak deeply to you?
Which aspects of the Lord’s Prayer are most difficult for you to embrace, believe or practice?
How does Relationship with God inform your praying? What does it mean that God is our Father?
Why is it difficult to depend on God for our “daily bread” when we live in relative luxury and apparent self-sufficiency?
How does it make you feel that God expects you to give grace to others as a result of the grace he gives to you? Is there someone to whom you are unwilling to grant forgiveness?
Do you believe and live as if there is a spiritual realm that is real and dangerous?
Would God lead us into temptation? How should we understand that part of the Lord’s Prayer?
Prayer Points:
Pray that the Lord will empower Sound City Bible Church to be a praying church.
Pray that God will help us each to embrace the simplicity of prayer and step out in faith to open our hearts to God by regularly and consistently praying.
Pray that God will move us with joy and conviction to be disciplined to set aside times to pray and to apply ourselves to learning and growing in our prayer lives.
Pray for those who are intimidated by prayer that God will free them from the barriers, fears and anxieties that hold them back from praying.
Pray for those who do not yet know our Father who is in heaven that they will hear and heed his drawing them to believe in his Son, Jesus.
Discussion Questions:
Do you ever find yourself acting in a way to prove that you’re a good person?
What does “Justification” mean?
How does the Gospel help you not strive for the approval and attention of others?
In your pursuit of good works, is God’s glory or self glory the motive? How can you tell the difference?
Can you be content with your good works if no one ever knew them or observed them?
Prayer Points:
Pray that we would be a church steeped in the gospel so that we can live for God’s glory in the pursuit of all that we do.
Pray that God would root out any desire for self glory in our lives.
Pray that God would remind us of our identity in him through the finished work of Jesus.
Discussion Questions:
Have you been wronged recently? If so, how should you apply Jesus’ teaching about loving your enemies?
What encouragement can we gain from knowing that God provides the sun and rain for the just and unjust?
How does this passage enable you to confess your sins and shortcomings?
If Jesus came to fulfill these laws, how does he fulfill loving his enemies and how can we demonstrate that love?
Prayer Points:
Pray for your enemies. Ask God to bless them in every way.
Pray for God to melt your heart with the gospel to love your enemies.
Discussion Questions
What does Jesus' teaching on oaths teach us about his character?
As Jesus confronts purposeful dishonesty and reckless promises, in what ways does our culture promote this form of sin?
What does our dishonesty and reckless promises reveal about our relationship with God?
Is God calling you to turn from dishonesty and reckless promises? What steps can you take to honor God with your words?
Prayer Points
Pray that God would be our highest priority and that the words we speak would glorify him.
Pray that the words we speak to our brothers and sisters in Christ would be edifying in every way.
Pray that Sound City would be a church that reflects Jesus to the world with the words we speak.
Discussion Questions
What does Jesus' teaching on marriage and divorce teach us about his character?
God created romantic love as a portrait of divine love. How have human sins distorted this picture and in what ways do you fall into these distortions?
Marriage isn’t ultimate, so whether you’re single or married, what steps can you take to guard the portrait of marriage as a reflection of God’s divine love?
Share and celebrate with your community group members and/or other Christians examples of the God honoring marriages you have seen lived out.
Prayer Points
Pray that God would be our highest priority and that marriages would be seen as a gift that reflects his love.
Pray for the marriages at Sound City to draw non-christians to Jesus' divine love.
Pray for the protection and flurisment of the marriages at Sound City.
Pray for the singles and married couples at Sound City to always find their identity and hope in Jesus.
Discussion Questions
1. What does Jesus' teaching on anger and lust teach us about his character?
2. In what ways have you tried to fight anger and lust through loveless obedience? In what way are you diminishing the work of the cross when you live in legalistic, loveless obedience?
3. Remembering Jesus’ fulfillment of the law, examine your heart and life specifically towards the sin of anger and lust. What steps of confession, reconciliation, and safeguards do you need to take in your life right now?
4. Share and celebrate with your community group members and/or other Christians the way you see loving obedience in their lives and how it has challenged and encouraged you.
Prayer Points
1. Pray that we—as disciples individually and a church collectively—would live with an ever-deepening understanding of Jesus’ gift of righteousness.
2. Pray that God would empower and guide us to live a life of loving obedience.
3. Pray that we can reflect the gift of righteousness in a way that draws people to Jesus.
At the beginning of the sermon on the mount, Jesus addresses an objection that was being leveled against him: he did not come to destroy or abolish the Torah. Instead, Jesus claims to offer the correct interpretation of the Torah, as he was the fulfillment of everything it points to.
Discussion Questions
Why is it so important to have solid hermeneutics (tools) when it comes to interpreting the bible? What are some tools that have helped you personally?
Where are you guilty of relaxing the commandments of God? Also, where might you be guilty of adding to the commandments of God?
If you truly believed that your righteousness is a gift of God through Jesus, how would that change your daily thoughts, feelings, actions, and words?
How does this understanding of the sermon on the mount help us tell people who have yet to believe about Jesus?
Prayer Points
Pray that we—as disciples individually and a church collectively—would live with an ever-deepening understanding of Jesus’ gift of righteousness.
Pray that God would help us to study the scriptures with wisdom, clarity, and diligence.
Pray that our evangelism would be full of truth and grace.
The sermon on the mount is very helpful in the life of a Disciple. Jesus teaches his followers what it looks like to live as citizens of the Kingdom of God and not of this world. For our passage this week, Jesus focuses on the idea that as his followers we are the salt and the light of the world. When others take notice of our lives they should see something different than the world around them. They should see Jesus in us.
Discussion Questions
. Take some time to discuss what it looks like to practically be the salt and light of the world.
Share with one another times where maybe you didn’t live out the call to be salt and light and how you could make changes in the future to do this differently going forward.
Share with one another, as an encouragement, examples of how you’ve seen eachother model being salt and light.
Prayer Points
Pray for opportunities to be the salt and light of the world to unbelievers in your life.
Pray that God would continue to remind you that you can only be salt and light because Jesus is our model and because of the Holy Spirit working in and through us.
Pray for God’s Spirit to show you areas in your own life where you need to make changes to be saltier and shine brighter for his glory.
Throughout all of human history, people have searched for blessings, for “the good life.” In this famous section of the sermon on the mount known as “the beatitudes,” Jesus lays out his vision for the good life and how a person can get in on this blessing.
Discussion Questions
Read James 3:17-18. What is the relationship between this passage and the beatitudes? How does the verbiage of James help us better understand Jesus’ teaching on “the blessed life?”
In your own life, where are you tempted to seek a cultural version of “the good life” instead of Jesus’ vision? What promises of “the good life” are likely to grab your attention?
Which beatitude needs to grow in your life? How can you participate with the work of the Spirit in your life?
How are these beatitudes needed in our broken world? How would these character traits help us in our evangelism?
Prayer Points
Pray that these character attributes would be what mark our lives individually and our church collectively.
Pray that these character attributes would make us better evangelists for the gospel of Jesus.
In his famous “sermon on the mount,” Jesus lays out his vision for a new kind of kingdom: a kingdom where God rules and reigns in love, justice, and peace. In order to understand this revolutionary sermon, it is important to understand the kingdom that Jesus embodies.
Discussion Questions
Discuss the idea of “gospel in the air” (kingdom) and “gospel on the ground” (personal). Why is it important to think about the gospel from both perspectives?
Why is it important to think of the Sermon on the Mount as the constitution or manifesto for the Kingdom of God? How does it frame our ethics and morality?
How are grace and mercy the foundation of the sermon on the mount? Why is it important to remember that we won’t keep it perfectly?
How might a well-articulated “gospel of the kingdom” help us to be more effective evangelists in our current cultural moment?
Prayer Points
Pray that God would use these next few months in the Sermon on the Mount to shape and grow us as a church
Pray that we would be agents of the gospel of the kingdom, bringing God’s love and wisdom and grace into a broken world.
For Further Study
The Sermon on the Mount and Jesus as the New Moses blog post by Patrick Schreiner
The Sermon on the Mount and Jesus as the New David blog post by Patrick Schreiner
Sin offers us freedom, but in the end it takes away the very freedom that it promises. But in the middle of our sins, our habits, and our addictions, we see that true and lasting freedom is found in Christ.
Discussion Questions
Why is it important to understand sin both as a choice of the will and as enslavement? What happens when we leave out or minimize either side of the equation?
Why is it important to remember that deep, lasting, true freedom is found in Jesus? How does the gospel empower our pursuit of freedom?
Is there someone in your life who struggles with addictions that you have treated with judgment, anger, or impatience? Who might you need to repent to for these attitudes?
What addictions or habits are you “stuck” in right now? Who does God want you to reach out to right away so that you can begin your journey toward freedom?
Prayer Points
Pray for people who are stuck in addictions or other sinful patterns and habits.
Pray that we would have gospel-shaped hearts of love, compassion, and grace for others as we seek to help them walk out their freedom.
Pray that God would give you the courage and the hope to confess your sins and addictions to others who can help you walk out your own freedom in Christ.
For Further Study
2006 Week 12, Packers @ Seahawks game
Addictions, a Banquet in the Grave book by Ed Welch
Sin as Slavery sermon by Tim Keller
