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

The Narrow Gate

Discussion Questions

Two Types of Gates

Matthew 7:13-14

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Matthew, R.T. France

This [verse] is not a matter of more or less successful attempts to follow the lifestyle of the kingdom of heaven, but of being either in or out, saved or lost.

Barbara Brown Taylor

The abundance of our lives is not determined by how long we live, but how well we live. Christ makes abundant life possible if we choose to live it now.

Do you experience the Christian life as narrow?

How does this teaching about narrow and wide gates push against our Western cultural narrative?

How can passing through the narrow gate give us fuller, more abundant life?

Two Kinds of People

Matthew 7:15-20

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.  By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?  Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

What two kinds of people does Jesus compare when he speaks of sheep/wolves and thorn bushes/fruit trees?

What practices or characteristics would Jesus categorize as good fruit in your life?

How does religiosity keep people from bearing good fruit?

One Final Judge

Matthew 7:21-27

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

How do the decisions of righteous judges benefit humanity?

What does it mean to you to know Jesus and do the will of God?

How can we put the words of the Sermon on the Mount into practice in a new way?

Closing Thought

Stanley Hauerwas 

The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works but rather the way God is. Cheek-turning is not advocated as what works (it usually does not), but advocated because this is the way God is – God is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. This is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we feel so much better afterward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world through Christ.

This week was our final discussion of the Sermon on the Mount. Spend some time discussing what many people argue is the greatest sermon ever preached. How has your understanding of the Sermon on the Mount changed or grown? Has your day-to-day life been impacted by looking at this passage in detail? How have you grown to know God, his wants and his ways, better?