Salem Presbyterian Church

By the grace of God, we are a new humanity, freed from the need to prove our worth, compete with one another, or climb above each other. In Christ, we are uniquely gifted members of one body, equally needed and given our place by grace. So stop comparing and start serving: discover your gifts by putting them to work, helping Salem grow a garden of grace for the good of our city.

Questions

1. What are some of the voices in our culture that tell us our worth depends on being better, smarter, more successful, or more important than other people? Where do you feel that pressure most strongly?

2. What does this passage tell us about our gracious heavenly Father? What false belief about God is corrected by the truth that our gifts, our place, and our identity are given to us by grace?

3. What would change at Salem Presbyterian if we truly believed that every member is a needed part of the body, and that we rise and fall together? What impact could we have on our city if we all used our gifts to serve others?

Discipleship in community means that we grow by gathering together and encouraging each other. We gather together as individuals who draw near to God. We draw near to God because we have a great High Priest who died for us. Our great High Priest has made a way for us to stand in the throne room of God with confidence. Because he is coming again, we should encourage each other to stay hopeful and not give up and isolate ourselves.

Prayer apps, liturgy books, and accountability groups are good gifts, but do they really change us? They are not magic, and Austin Pfeiffer shares how his own post-seminary exhaustion and the Golden Calf at Sinai illustrate our propensity to put practices between us and God. Paul’s answer in 2 Corinthians 3:7-18 is freedom: a debt paid at the cross and a Spirit who tunes our hearts together, “not tuned to each other, but Christ.” And this creates a community that gathers, beholds, and is re-formed.

SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS

1. Paul says we’re “being transformed… from one degree of glory to another.” Where might the Spirit be tuning our hearts toward gospel freedom, and how can we pray for that in one another at small group?

2. Paul says a veil lies over hearts that read the Law and miss Christ. Where might we use practices (apps, hacks, quiet times, liturgies) as leverage to earn or feel God’s presence instead of beholding him?

3. Where do we see Jesus as different from Moses in the story Paul references? How might that change how we approach him in a tough week?

Left to our own will, we run the Bible through the filter of our opinions and preferences. Paul says that way leads to a messy, tragic life of selfishness, and he offers one antidote. In 2 Timothy 3:10-17, God's Word instructs the wise, gives objective truth, and shows salvation. Austin Pfeiffer describes a life of stacking the logs of God's Word on our hearts to burn a steady, everlasting fire of faith.

SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS

Where might there be opportunities for us to take the "amazing opportunity" to look at God's Word before we appeal to our intuition and preferences?

Paul describes people who are "lovers of self" yet appear godly while denying God's power. Where do you put your own opinions above Scripture?

Paul says Scripture makes us "wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (v. 15). Where do you see Jesus in the hard or strange parts of the Bible?

The gospel is the story of the rightful King, Jesus, who has come, won the victory, and invites us into his kingdom rather than leaving us to make our own stories the center of everything. Apart from God, we are trapped in the “domain of darkness,” shaped by the world’s desires and our self-centeredness, but God, rich in mercy and love, makes us alive with Christ. By grace, we are God’s workmanship—little poems within his great story—raised and seated with Christ so that our lives can participate in his kingdom and display the immeasurable riches of his grace.

What happens after Christ ascends? Paul's answer in Ephesians 4: we live — together, joined like bones by joints, energized like a flashlight with fresh batteries. Ephesians 4 reframes church for us: teaching as coaching, attending as participation, and equipping as skill-building — a body of people growing together rather than sitting apart. Austin Pfeiffer unpacks the passage's call to speak truth in love, to grow strong through resistance rather than rigidity, and to stop mistaking the warmth of community for the fire of Christ himself.

Small Group Questions:

1. Where do you see yourself outsourcing your faith, perhaps treating a pastor, counselor, or program as the one who should do your wrestling with God for you, instead of Christ?

2. Ephesians 4 opens with Christ descending to the lowest parts of the earth and ascending again to minister to us. Where do we see Jesus in this passage after his ascension?

3. Verse 16 describes the body "working properly" as each part is joined and held together. What might this passage reveal about the Spirit's work of growing you through connection to others, rather than in isolation?

Why does a church need a mission statement? We don't, but it can help us stay on the trail of Jesus' final words in Matthew's Gospel—the Great Commission. They're a call to "go to the people," wherever you already are. Austin Pfeiffer walks through two of Jesus' commands for the church now: (1) moving out toward people who don't yet know Christ, and (2) discipling them by doing the Christian life together.

Small Group Questions:

1. Where does this passage challenge a false belief you or our culture holds about what following Jesus requires — going far away vs. going to the people already around you?

2. What did you learn about God's character from Jesus' claim to total authority, total reach, and total presence (Matt 28:18-20)?

3. What might this passage reveal about the Spirit's sanctifying work in you — specifically your hesitancy to invite people past "watching" into actual discipleship?

Malachi closes with Israel's small view of God and inflated view of themselves exposed. That is until God flips it in their remembering his faithfulness. He promises the joyful coming of the Messiah and his steady faithfulness through all time. This sermon walks through what it means to set down the ledger of what we think we're owed and instead receive the healing future of the Messiah, like calves leaping from the stall.

Small Group Questions:

Where do you find yourself keeping a private ledger (tracking what God or others owe you) instead of focusing on his faithfulness?

What does this passage reveal about God's character in his patience with Israel's accusations, and his declaration that they are his "treasured possession"?

How does this passage point forward to Christ, from the law and prophets at the transfiguration to the healing described in Malachi 4:2?

We are prone to thinking we provide for ourselves, and prone to focusing on what we don't have. In Malachi 3, God calls out his people for robbing him through their withheld tithes, but the deeper issue is a heart that's forgotten his mercy in the past and lost trust in his provision for the future. Austin Pfeiffer walks through why the tithe was never about a quid pro quo with God, but an exercise in remembering what's already been given.

Small Group Questions:

1. Where do you see yourself keeping a grip on what God has given you rather than trusting it was never yours to begin with?

2. What did this passage teach you about God's character in his patient, waiting posture toward his people ("I am waiting" / "the Lord does not change")?

3. How can this passage, God's call to test him with the tithe, prompt prayer requests around trust and generosity in your group?

Humans often inflate our own capacity to fix ourselves while also shrinking God down to a coach we call in when self-help stalls out. Malachi calls that out. And challenges us to identify ourselves on a list of sinners in 3:5 we'd rather not claim. In this sermon Austin Pfeiffer traces how a holy God who could rightly consume us instead sends his Son as both the refining fire and the sacrificial lamb, so that in Christ we're not just spared the heat — we're brought inside it.

SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS:

1. Malachi's list of sinners in 3:5 can catch us off guard. Do you find yourself insisting "I think I will endure" instead of admitting you're on the list?

2. Jesus answers both Israel's cry for justice and God's charge against them. How do you see him doing both at once in this passage?

3. Are we able to admit our impurity and if so, how are we to make sense of Christ's covering us with his righteousness?