SCRIPTURE: Genesis 1 & 2, Matthew 3, John 20

Before we can look at the story of “giftedness” in the New Testament, we first have to look at the story of the Spirit by whom these gifts are sent! What is the Holy Spirit, what role does this distinct person of God play in Scripture, and what are the implications for what we believe about the Holy Spirit for us, as twenty-first century followers of Jesus? The teachings in the Christian tradition about the Holy Spirit are complicated...but our hope is that a closer look at the story of Scripture will help us better understand not only the central part God’s Spirit plays, but also our roles, too, as people God is actively working in and through to reconcile this world to himself.

SERMON REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Take some time to ask yourself whether or not you have experienced God’s breath, or his Spirit, in your life. What would something like that feel like? What would God’s Spirit want from you? What could the Spirit do? 

2. And on the heels of that, ask yourself if you’ve ever said no to that Spirit. If you’ve ever felt something like the wind of God trying to effect a change in you, and you’ve resisted him. Why did you do that? What might the Spirit’s intentions have been? What might they still be?

3. Are you willing to be open to an experience with the Holy Spirit? Are you open to asking for that? This one applies to you, whether you are a Christian already or not: no matter who you are, are you willing to invite God’s Spirit into your life, knowing that this wind will challenge and reshape you...but also that the breath of this wind might fill you with real life.

4. How can you be a loving neighbor this week?

5. How can you bring joy to others this week, in this season of worry and anxiety?

SCRIPTURE: Mathew 8:18-22, 10:6-39

After the Sermon on the Mount ends, Jesus gets to work in the community: he heals the sick, casts out evil spirits, and befriends the outcast and despised. As he does this, he begins to attract potential “disciples,” or those who wish to follow in his footsteps. But again, Jesus defies expectations: instead of welcoming them aboard, he calls their commitment into question and lays out a high cost for real discipleship: those who follow Jesus have to put their relationship with God above all else. This week, we want to explore this cost in the context of Jesus’s earthly ministry and its implications for us today. Are we willing to put God first in all aspects of our lives? What does it really mean to be a part of Jesus’s inside-out Kingdom?

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Read Matthew 8:18-22 together. What are your reactions to this passage? What do you think Jesus is trying to communicate to these two men? To us?

2. Why do you think the story of Jesus calming the storm is placed immediately after this passage? What might be the connection between the two stories? What can we learn about Jesus, or about discipleship!, from this passage?

3. Read Matthew 10:9-32 together, when Jesus sends out the twelve. What similarities do you see between the mission Jesus gives his disciples and the mission of the church, as we have been discussing it?

4. What warnings does Jesus give to the disciples about what they can expect? How do you feel about these warnings, especially as they might relate to us, as modern-day Christ followers?

5. How do verses 34-39 relate to the series we have been in over the last 6 weeks? How do they relate to the passage we looked at in chapter 8? 

6. What parts of your own identity are you “holding back” from your relationship with God? Why do you keep them separate? How might surrendering them to God change things? 

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 7

The “Golden Rule” is the most ubiquitous moral teaching in the history of the world: we are in global agreement that we should all “treat others as we want to be treated.” But despite how easy to understand this idea is, and despite more than 5,000 years of sharing it generation after generation, we don’t seem to be any closer to actually living this way! So, why is following the Golden Rule so hard? This week, we want to explore the possibility that treating others with real empathy and love actually depends on experiencing God’s attention and grace for ourselves. As we continue to explore what it means to be “ambassadors of reconciliation” this year, we need to ask ourselves: “how well do I really know the love I have been asked to share?”

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. What are some of your earliest experiences with the “Golden Rule”? Have you ever taught the “Golden Rule” to others? Why do you think it is so central to our culture? 

2. In your experience, what makes the “Golden Rule” so hard to follow or keep?

3. On Sunday, Kenny said, “it’s not that we can’t treat others the way we want to be treated; it’s that we do treat others the way we expect to be treated.” Discuss this claim as a group: what strikes you as true about it? What is hard or confusing or complicated about it? 

4. Tough question alert! If you look at the ways you tend to treat other people (with trust; with skepticism; avoid altogether), what does your attitude reveal about the way you see others/the world/yourself? 

5. The first challenges for this week were to “allow yourself to be known” and to “give yourself permission to be loved.” What is your reaction to these challenges? Would they be worth trying in your life?

6. What can you do to “grow” in your understanding of God’s love for you? What sometimes makes this hard for you to accept? How can disciplines or community help you?

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 6

How do you know if you’re doing a good job? As Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount continues in Matthew 6, this question yields another “unexpected” answer: “your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” This teaching challenges the culture of pious performance among the religious Jews of Jesus’s time, and it can challenge us, too: when we see our religion as something we perform, either for our peers or even for God!, we run the risk of forgetting that our faith is intended to rewire us so we can see our world and its needs in the same way God does. When we care for others, pray, or even fast, we should do these things because they are important and part of living the way we are meant to live...not because we are hoping to seem more impressive to others. 

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Have you ever been in a situation where you really didn’t know if you were “doing a good job” or not? How did that affect your “performance”? Did you ever find yourself looking to others for validation or approval, even when it might not have been helpful?

2. In verses 1-18, Jesus talks about this in the areas of charity, prayer, and fasting. What is your reaction to these verses? What ties all 3 examples together? 

3. Have you ever caught yourself “doing good” in order to impress other people?

4. On Sunday, Kenny said that our “piety” shouldn’t be a performance for others...or for God. What do you think he meant by this? What might be unhealthy about “performing” for God? 

5. Jesus’s teachings in this chapter again emphasize that God sees our hearts, including our hidden desires and secret motivations. How does this make you feel?

6. Read verses 25-34 together. What do you think Jesus is trying to teach us here? How does this relate to our potential anxiety about a God who “sees in secret”?

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 5:13-48

After describing the unexpected blessings of a humble life in the Beatitudes, Jesus goes on to challenge his listeners’ trust in the legalism of the Temple system. He says that it is true God requires perfection from his people...but that the kind of perfection God has in mind is a matter of growth and maturity rather than a self-righteous commitment to purity alone. God’s plan for us is deeper than just rule-following!  In a series of six discussions of the Jewish Law, Jesus draws our attention to what the Law points to as an ideal not only for our behavior, but for the desires of our hearts and minds as well. In the end, Jesus reminds us that our growth is meant to serve a purpose in our world.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. When have you experienced a strictly or intensely “legalistic” system in your life? How did that experience help you to learn or mature and/or frustrate your growth?

2. Where in your life do you tend to be most “legalistic”? What do you think the rules you put in place for yourself/others are meant to point towards, in terms of your ideals? 

3. How do you feel when you read Matthew 5:48? Discuss this together as a group.

4. On Sunday, Kenny said there were 2 ways to “learn perfection.” The first was to look back at the examples described in the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1-12). Read these out loud: where do you see areas for growth in your own life as you seek to mature?

5. The second approach Kenny described has to do with building a real relationship with Jesus. He emphasized that we are really meant to know and talk to and put our trust in him. Is that something you are doing? If so, what is that experience like? Is it something you have considered doing? If you are comfortable, share your story with the group.

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 5:1-12 (read NIV and The Message)

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus begins to radically redefine both our expectations of God and God’s expectations of us. In the a list of teachings called “The Beatitudes,” Jesus teaches about blessing, or how the favor of God brings wholeness. He says that we are most blessed, or most whole, when we are least reliant on ourselves. It is in those moments of humility, trust, care, and even persecution that we are brought most close to God; where we are blessed and made most whole. 

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. In The Message, pastor Eugene Peterson translates Matthew 5:3 to read, “You are blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you, there is more of God and his rule.” What does it mean for there to be less of you? When have you seen this truth play out in your life?

2. The Beatitudes are: Blessed are the poor in spirit, Blessed are those who mourn, Blessed are the meek, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the pure in heart, Blessed are the peacemakers, Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. In your life, where have you felt blessed? What was your mindset? How did that blessing line up with the Beatitudes?

3. Where are you experiencing dissonance with God? Is there a mindset you need to adjust to experience His blessing in that area?

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 5:1-12 (read NIV and The Message)

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus begins to radically redefine both our expectations of God and God’s expectations of us. In the a list of teachings called “The Beatitudes,” Jesus teaches about blessing, or how the favor of God brings wholeness. He says that we are most blessed, or most whole, when we are least reliant on ourselves. It is in those moments of humility, trust, care, and even persecution that we are brought most close to God; where we are blessed and made most whole. 

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. In The Message, pastor Eugene Peterson translates Matthew 5:3 to read, “You are blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you, there is more of God and his rule.” What does it mean for there to be less of you? When have you seen this truth play out in your life?

2. The Beatitudes are: Blessed are the poor in spirit, Blessed are those who mourn, Blessed are the meek, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the pure in heart, Blessed are the peacemakers, Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. In your life, where have you felt blessed? What was your mindset? How did that blessing line up with the Beatitudes?

3. Where are you experiencing dissonance with God? Is there a mindset you need to adjust to experience His blessing in that area?

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 1-4 (3:1-17)

Jesus has a surprising relationship with expectations. On the one hand, Matthew’s gospel makes a strong case for how Jesus’s life fulfills the Old Testament prophecies surrounding the coming Messiah. But on the other hand, there is little about Jesus that people seem to be able to predict. He comes from an unusual background; he trusts some unusual people; and his teachings seem to catch both the moral and the immoral off guard. But underneath it all is a coherent picture of a God who cares most about who we are becoming instead of who we have been. We see this particularly in the story of John the Baptist, who criticizes the Pharisees for rejecting the baptism they need...before providing Jesus with a baptism he doesn’t! This week, we want to consider what expectations we might be placing on God...and as those expectations are challenged, ask: am I also being invited into a new way of seeing things?

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Describe a time where you had a significant change of heart about something or someone. How did that change the way you behaved towards it/them?

2. What pieces of your past are you holding onto or unable to forgive yourself for? What are the physical/psychological side effects?

3. Have you ever tried to “force” a behavior without really believing in the rationale for it? (Hint: often a workplace experience) What are the results? What are the consequences?

4. What is your next step for allowing Jesus and the Holy Spirit to influence or reshape your mindset?

SCRIPTURE: Genesis 2:15, Leviticus 25:23-24, Romans 8:18-22

THESIS: It can be a disappointing thing to remember that Adam and Eve had jobs to do in the Garden of Eden; that life the way God intends it to be still includes work! But quite frankly, this is what we are made for: all people are designed for a mission. So, what is our right occupation? According to Scripture, we are tasked with the stewardship of all the earth: we are meant to “care for” and “keep” the natural world (Gen. 2:15), respect God’s ownership of creation (Lev. 25:23), and join the world in hopeful anticipation of God’s redemptive plan not only for people, but for all creation (Rom. 8:18). 

SCRIPTURE: Genesis 22:18, Philippians 2:1-7, Matthew 25:31-40

In Genesis 22:18, God tells the patriarch of the Jewish people, Abraham, that “through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” From the beginning, the mission of God’s people was meant to reach outwards, to include all people on Earth. But what does it mean to be “blessed,” and how is this connected to Abraham’s obedience? The key is to remember that God’s relationship with Israel was always meant to accomplish two things: first, it was meant to serve as an example to all other nations of what it means to walk with God, and second, Israel was meant to serve as an ambassador of God’s love for the sake of the restoration of all people’s with their creator. When we serve our neighbors, we are not only obeying God’s command to be kind, we are living examples of God’s overflowing and available love. The real “blessing” of God is the invitation Jesus extends to all people to be reconciled with their Maker, and it is our work, as a church, to both testify to that invitation and make sure that everyone around us knows that God is working to bring all people to himself.