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 main 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 a new series titled Family. We will be taking a lo0k at what Scripture has to say when it comes to singleness, marriage, and parenting. If God has called us, singles, marrieds, and families, to be one big family together, then we need to better understand how to love, serve, and walk together in these different stages of life.

Today’s Topic

A Theology of Marriage

Discussion Questions

What kind of marriage did your parents have when you were growing up? How do you think that shaped you in your youth?

Ephesians 5:31-32

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

According to Ephesians 5 (quoting Genesis 2), what is God’s design and desire for marriage?

How does that design and desire differ from our cultural view of marriage?

How has this cultural view of marriage impacted our society?

How might a marriage that lines up with God’s design impact our society?

In the same way a garden requires intentionality and cultivation to grow into something beautiful, so a marriage requires the same to grow into something beautiful.

What kind of cultivation and intentionality does it take to achieve this?

Ephesians 5:21-30

“Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”

Why do you think this word, “submission,” is so difficult for some (particularly wives) to swallow?

How does Jesus model this godly and Kingdom type of submission for us? 

How does that differ from the way some have poorly and even heretically tried to define this word submission?

Why might a wife be willing to submit to a husband who loves her with the love of Christ?

Why might a husband be willing to sacrificially serve and honor a wife who loves him with the love of Christ?

What must you first possess before you can love your spouse, or future spouse, with this kind of unconditional love?

How does the Gospel give you, and guarantee you, that you have received unconditional love from God?

Closing Thought

Philippians 2:3-8

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

If you are married, how could you do a better job of loving your spouse in a way that reflects the love of Christ? How could you do a better job of receiving that kind of love from your spouse?

If you are single, what attitudes are currently in your life that might make loving your future spouse with the love of Christ?