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

The Gospel of the Kingdom

Jesus’s Kingdom, as He himself taught, is not of this world. While His Kingdom influences and transforms people and structures, fundamentally, it does not belong to an individual or ideology. His is the kingdom and the power and the glory, as he taught us to remember in prayer.

Today’s Topic

God is Turning Things Around

Discussion Questions

1. Stones into Seats

Matthew 28: 1-3

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow.

 

What do you think the women expected to find when they came to the tomb?

How can the angel sitting on the stone that rolled away encourage us when our lives begin to shake?

What kind of stone blocking your way would you like God to turn into a seat?

2. Fear into Joy

Matthew 28:4-7

The guards were so afraid of [the angel] that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.” So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy…

Why do you think the guards reacted differently than the women to the sight of the angel of the Lord?

What do you imagine the women were thinking as they ran away, afraid and yet filled with joy?

How could God turn things in your life so you can experience greater joy?

3. Forsakers into Family

Matthew 28:9-10

Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

How do you imagine the women felt when they saw Jesus?
How does Jesus calling the disciples “brothers” reveal his great mercy?
Have you ever needed a second chance from God?
How can Jesus’s words here offer us an opportunity to return to God after we have failed or sinned in some way?

4. Despair into Hope

Matthew 28:16-17

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 

How do you imagine the eleven have spent the days leading up to their encounter with Jesus?
How can the disciples’ doubt mentioned here help us when we are struggling to have faith?

5. Defeat into Victory

Matthew 28:16-1

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

What do you imagine the disciples would have assumed they had lost after Jesus died?
How is Jesus’s statement about his authority in stark contrast with what the disciples have witnessed in his arrest, crucifixion, and death?
How was making more disciples a victory for the eleven disciples?

Closing Thought

JRR Tolkien

The joy of the happy ending…is not essentially “escapist” nor “fugitive.”…It does not deny the existence of dycatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies…universal final defeat, and in so far is [good news], giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief…When the sudden “turn” comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.

 

Take time to pray for God to turn things around in our lives, city, nation, and world.