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

Miracles

Discussion Questions

Matthew 4:23-25

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.

A Miraculous Kingdom

Norman Anderson, Jesus Christ: the Witness of History

The attempt…to remove the miraculous from the life of Jesus was doomed to failure for they found that the miracles we so intertwined with the teaching and the supernatural with the natural, that they could not discard the one and retain the other. 

Marcus Borg, The Mighty Deeds of Jesus

Jesus was known for doing “mighty deeds,” according to Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote about Jesus near the end of the first century. The gospels agree. They not only report many stories of spectacular deeds done by Jesus, but also that crowds flocked to him because of his reputation as a healer.

 

How does our understanding of the Christian faith rest on Jesus’s miracles?

What specifically do you imagine the crowds who gathered around Jesus wanted to see and experience?

Do you find any of Jesus’s miracles more difficult to believe or imagine happening than others?

A Miraculous Truth

John 2:11

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

St. Augustine
Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

 

Why do you think Jesus changed water into wine as his first miracle?

Which of Jesus’s miracles reminds you of a truth about who God is?

Has needing or witnessing a miracle ever changed what you believe?

A Miraculous Good News

Mark 16:17-19

“And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.

 

Acts 19:11-12

God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.

 

Have you ever seen or experienced a miracle first-hand?

Do you feel comfortable praying for miraculous healing or provision, or does it feel vulnerable or intimidating for you?

Is there a miracle you are believing for currently?

Closing Thought

C.H. Spurgeon

All our infirmities, whatever they are, are just opportunities for God to display his gracious work in us.

 

Take some time to pray for God to increase your faith to believe that he can accomplish the miraculous in your lives and in our city as a whole.