03 Sep Discussion Guide Stories: Back to School Sunday: Speak Hope
Before We Get Started
For our discussion today, we will be using the sermon series discussion guides. If you would like to follow along you can access this discussion guide on the website at mosaicchurchaustin.com and then select “community group resources” in the menu options.
Prayer
Because the primary goal of our time together is to establish relationships and learn how to walk with one another in all that God has called us to be and do, we’d like to begin by praying for one another. So, does anyone have anything you’d like us to pray for or anything to share regarding how you’ve seen God moving in your life that we can celebrate together?
This Week’s Topic
Today, we take a Back to School break from our current series to celebrate God’s great love for the next generation. How do the words of Jesus in Matthew 9 invite us to take the gospel into the world as God accomplishes his redemptive will?
Today’s Topic
Speak Hope
Discussion Questions
What is something you have seen or heard recently that felt hopeful to you?
Matthew 9:35-37
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Jesus on the Move
Matt 9:35
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.
Henrietta C. Mears
I know not the way He leads me, but well do I know my Guide.
Amy Carmichael
We profess to be strangers and pilgrims, seeking after a country of our own, yet we settle down in the most un-stranger-like fashion, exactly as if we were quite at home and meant to stay as long as we could. I don’t wonder apostolic miracles have died. Apostolic living certainly has.
Why do you think Jesus traveled to so many different towns during his ministry?
What is the connection between going to people to share the gospel and miraculous healings?
How can someone follow the way of Jesus and move through the world as he did, even if they live in only one place?
Jesus in the Crowd
Matthew 9:36
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”
How is Jesus seeing the crowd as “harassed and helpless” evidence that he is a practical realist?
How does the gospel create space for us to name our pain, both physical, mental, and emotional?
What do you think Jesus sees when he looks at the people in your life, especially those who might make your life more difficult?
Jesus on His Plan for Us
Matthew 9:37-38
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Anne Lamott
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.
Tim Keller
When we look at the whole scope of this story line, we see clearly that Christianity is not only about getting one’s individual sins forgiven so we can go to heaven. That is an important means of God’s salvation, but not the final end or purpose of it. The purpose of Jesus’s coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it.
How was hope woven into Jesus’s words to the disciples about the harvest needing workers?
Given what we know about the lives of the disciples, how did they eventually respond to his call to join him in the harvest?
What practical steps could we take in our daily lives to be part of God’s restorative will in the world?
Closing Thought
Saint Augustine
Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.
In the final moments of your time together, take a moment to share about a need you see in someone’s life or in the world in general. Then, commit to doing something to help restore and heal that situation this week.