May 23rd, 2010
Today’s scripture focus: Matthew 7
Today we conclude our study of the Sermon on the Mount. It has been said this sermon comprises a good summary of Jesus’ three most important teachings. In chapter 5, the focus was on mercy. Chapter 6 emphasized faith. Now, in chapter 7, we discover Jesus’ teachings on justice. The chapter consists of seven short “stories” that could be divided into two main sections. Verses 1-12 give four short summaries of Jesus’ teachings, and verses 13-29 give three short final warnings to those who do not heed them. “Don’t judge” serves as a summary of chapter 5’s teachings on mercy, and “Ask…Seek…Knock” provide a summary of chapter 6’s call to faith. The command “don’t judge” is both the 5th Beatitude in reverse (blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy) and 5th Petition of the Lord’s prayer in reverse (forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.) This command has been interpreted in many ways. Jesus is not speaking here of failure to discern fruit, which He admonishes us to do in verse 15-20, but judging the intent of the heart, which is solely the privilege of God. Verse 6 serves as a balance to the previous verses – don’t judge, but do think. In verses 7-12, Jesus summarizes His teachings on prayer. While chapter six admonishes us not to use vain repetition, here we discover the importance of simple persistence in prayer. Asking is not unspiritual, but is both the privilege and responsibility of the disciple! In verse 12, we find some of the most famous words in all of scripture, commonly known as the Golden Rule. All major religions have a version of this rule, almost always stated in the negative form (don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you.) Jesus states it as a positive, showing that justice is about actively doing good, not just refraining from bad. The Sermon on the Mount ends with three warnings – the two gates, the two prophets, and the two houses. The two gates call us to conversion to Christ alone (the Narrow Gate) and to rugged discipleship behind Him (the Rough Way.) The two prophets call us to beware of seductive false teachings of super Christians with their seductive charms and charismatic gifts and to be instead simple Christians who do the unspectacular will of God. The two houses warn disciples that if they are merely admirers of Jesus’ sermon but not doers of it they are building their lives on shifting sands, and are on route to awful judgment. The two houses also encourage Jesus’ disciples with the promise that if they do build their lives on Jesus’ words they will be able to withstand the storms of this life and the awesome last Judgment at the end of life. The final verses of chapter seven show us that the greatest impact of the Sermon on the Mount was not Jesus’ words, but Jesus Himself.
CrossGroups
• Go around the table and share prayer requests. Have someone lead in prayer.
• Let everyone who would like share anything exciting from their week.
• Ask these three questions. Let as many answer each one as would like.
1) Is there anything in today’s scripture that especially speaks to you?
2) What questions would you like to ask about today’s scripture?
3) What’s the most challenging command in chapter 7 for you – “don’t judge” or “ask”?
Today’s Sermon
Faith focus – “I believe in the Holy Ghost”
Life need – What does it mean to follow Jesus?
Key truths -
- Astounding mercy.
- Astounding faith.
- Astounding justice.
- Astounding Jesus!
Assignment – Ask God.
May 9th, 2010
Today’s scripture focus – Matthew 5:1-16
We are picking up today in Matthew where we left off in January. In the first four chapters of Matthew, the focus was on the preparation for Jesus’ ministry. Chapter one details the preparation of history for Jesus’ coming. Chapter two gives us the preparation of Jesus’ culture for His arrival. Chapter three shows us the preparation of Jesus’ calling through baptism, and Chapter four demonstrates Jesus’ preparation for trial through fasting. The end of chapter four is a transition, showing how Jesus took over the ministry of John through calling disciples, preaching, and healing.
In chapters 5-7, we will focus on the preaching of Jesus’ ministry. The Sermon on the Mount is the first of five great blocks of Jesus’ sermons in Matthew.
The first section of Matthew five is known as the Beatitudes, or “blessings.” Jesus is just beginning to gather followers. The crowds have been attracted through His miracles and want to follow Him, but how are His followers to live? In Jesus’ day, being a disciple meant following your rabbi (teacher) everywhere they went, and living according to a code they taught. The Beatitudes lay out the lifestyle code for Jesus’ followers, and the rest of the Sermon expounds on this code.
Jesus went up on a mountain and sat down to teach, as was the custom for rabbis of that time. As the crowd gathered around Him, He began to lay out His radical discipleship lifestyle. We find in Jesus’ teaching that He has a special place in His heart for the poor and oppressed – which would have included most of Jesus’ audience. In contrast to the dominant message of the empire culture (blessed are the rich and powerful), Jesus teaches that it is actually those who know they are poor and suffering who will be able to receive blessings from God. For those in Jesus’ audience who don’t think they are spiritually poor, Jesus will use the rest of His sermon to illustrate their poverty (maybe you don’t murder, but do you hate? Perhaps you don’t touch, but do you look?) While the first four Beatitudes are passive (dealing with being), the next three are active (dealing with doing.) Mercy, purity, and peace are not just virtues to be obtained, but involve a lifestyle of actively seeking to live as Jesus’ lived, influencing others to do the same. The last two Beatitudes show how the world will react when a disciple lives out the first seven, but Jesus promises blessing even in persecution.
In the next section, Jesus moves to the “you are” section of the sermon. By living as Jesus’ followers, we become the salt and light of our world. We bring purity, flavor, preservation, and illumination to a dirty, bland, rotten, and dark culture. Jesus promises the world will hate us for exposing their darkness, just as they hated Him. However, we know that following Jesus offers blessing abundant and eternal, in this world and the life to come!
CrossGroups
• Go around the table and share prayer requests. Have someone lead in prayer.
• Let everyone who would like share anything exciting from their week.
• Ask these three questions. Let as many answer each one as would like.
1) Is there anything in today’s scripture that especially speaks to you?
2) What questions would you like to ask about today’s scripture?
3) Which of the Beatitudes is the hardest to live out today?
Today’s Sermon
Faith focus – “…He rose again from the dead”
Life need – What does it mean to follow Jesus?
Key truths –
• The disciples went up the mountain.
• We must go up the mountain.
• Jesus sat and blessed them.
• Jesus sits and blesses us!
Assignment – Make a list of seekers you know.
April 25th, 2010
Today’s scripture focus – Romans 8:12-30
This is our final week in Romans, and our final paraphrase from Eugene Peterson’s The Message:
So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!
That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.
CrossGroups
• Go around the table and share prayer requests. Have someone lead in prayer.
• Let everyone who would like share anything exciting from their week.
• Ask these three questions. Let as many answer each one as would like.
1) Is there anything in today’s scripture that especially speaks to you?
2) What questions would you like to ask about today’s scripture?
3) What’s causing creation to groan today? The Church? The Spirit?
Today’s Sermon
Faith focus – “…He rose again from the dead”
Life need – How can we live righteously?
Key truths –
- The groaning of Creation
- The groaning of Christians
- The groaning of the Spirit
- The goodness of God
Assignment – Identify the groanings of your “nation” (family, workplace, community)
April 18th, 2010
Today’s scripture focus – Romans 6:1-14
Today’s CrossTalk scripture background once again comes from The Message, Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible. You can fine The Message paraphrase of any scripture, as well as dozens of versions and translations, at www.biblegateway.com
1-3So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!
3-5That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.
6-11Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.
12-14That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.
CrossGroups
• Go around the table and share prayer requests. Have someone lead in prayer.
• Let everyone who would like share anything exciting from their week.
• Ask these three questions. Let as many answer each one as would like.
1) Is there anything in today’s scripture that especially speaks to you?
2) What questions would you like to ask about today’s scripture?
3) Do Christians continue to struggle with sin? Why or why not?
Today’s Sermon
Faith focus – “…He rose again from the dead”
Life need – How can we live righteously?
Key truths –
• Sin – the old system
• Sin – the wrong question
• Grace – the new system
• Grace – the right question
Assignment – Identify barriers between sin and grace in your “nation” (family, community, school, workplace.)
April 11th, 2010
Today’s scripture focus – Romans 4:13-25
The Message is a modern language paraphrase (not a translation) of the Bible. It says today’s passage beautifully -
That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God’s promise at that—you can’t break it.
This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father.
We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!”
Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.
CrossGroups
• Go around the table and share prayer requests. Have someone lead in prayer.
• Let everyone who would like share anything exciting from their week.
• Ask these three questions. Let as many answer each one as would like.
1) Is there anything in today’s scripture that especially speaks to you?
2) What questions would you like to ask about today’s scripture?
3) What was the last decision you had to make that required faith in God?
Today’s Sermon
Faith focus – “…He rose again from the dead”
Life need – How can we live righteously?
Key truths –
• Abraham lived by faith.
• We can live by faith.
• God made Abraham righteous.
• God made us righteous.
Assignment – By faith, decide in which “nation” (family, neighborhood, workplace) you will demonstrate spiritual leadership.
