18 Jun Discussion Guide Coming to a City Near You: He Himself is Our Peace
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 continue our series titled Coming Soon to a City Near You, in which we study the letter of Ephesians. Written to Christians in the ancient city of Ephesus, which is in modern-day Turkey, Ephesians announces to the world that there is a better story coming to a city near you, and the church is the screen on which the “Jesus movie” plays.
Today’s Topic
He Himself is Our Peace
Discussion Questions
Did you like to build things as a kid, maybe with blocks, legos, or clay? If so, what was the coolest thing you ever built?
Ephesians 2:14-22
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
People are the bricks in God’s building.
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking
The visible church is all the people who get together from time to time in God’s name. Anybody can find out who they are by going to church to look. The invisible church is all the people God uses for his hands and feet in this world. Nobody can find out who they are except God. Think of them as two circles. The optimist says they are concentric. The cynic says they don’t even touch. The realist says they occasionally overlap.
Barbara Brown Taylor
Most of us like thinking we are God’s only children…At least one of the purposes of church is to remind us that God has other children, easily as precious as we. Baptism and narcissism cancel each other out.
How can viewing your life as something God is using to build a “holy temple” in Austin help you grow closer to God?
How has God asked you to be his hands and feet in the world?
How can being part of a church help a Christian build a stronger life in Christ?
He himself is our peace.
Eph 2:15b-16
[Jesus’s] purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground
Through the resurrection, God responds to the violence of the cross – the violence of the world – in a nonviolent but forceful manner. It is important to understand that nonviolence is not the same as passivity or accommodation to violence. Rather it is a forceful response that protects the integrity of life. Violence seeks to do another harm, while nonviolence seeks to rescue others from harm. It seeks to break the very cycle of violence itself….That God could defeat the unmitigated violence of the cross reveals the consummate power of the nonviolent, life-giving force that is God.
What peace has the gospel brought to you?
How can Jesus’s death on the cross put to death hostility between people?
What hope does the resurrection offer Christians when they must work through their differences to find peace with one another?
The Kingdom of God is within you (all).
Ephesians 2:19b-20
…you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America
The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; and the text of Scripture which he now most commonly quotes is, “The Kingdom of heaven is within you.” That text has been the stay and support of more Pharisees and prigs and self-righteous spiritual bullies than all the dogmas in creation; it has served to identify self-satisfaction with the peace that passes all understanding. And the text to be quoted in answer to it is that which declares that no man can receive the kingdom except as a little child. What we are to have inside is a childlike spirit; but the childlike spirit is not entirely concerned about what is inside. It is the first mark of possessing it that one is interested in what is outside. The most childlike thing about a child is his curiosity and his appetite and his power of wonder at the world. We might almost say that the whole advantage of having the kingdom within is that we look for it somewhere else.
What is the difference between believing that the Kingdom of God is within yourself as a singular person versus the Kingdom of God is within us as a collective people?
How can coming to our faith with childlikeness help us avoid becoming Pharisees or spiritual bullies?
What practices can strengthen our lives so we can bear the weight of what God is building in our circles of influence, at Mosaic, and in Austin at large?
Closing Thought
CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
Take turns sharing one thing God has done to rebuild your life in the past and one thing you hope he will do as he continues to build new life within you.