May 10: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

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Love

Teaching Text: Hebrews 3:1–6

Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house.Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmlyto our confidence and the hope in which we glory.

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• Hebrews

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• The book of Hebrews is written for exactly these reasons to show people who are suffering the story they are in, and how to rely on resources beyond themselves in the moments of their lives.

• It’s so important to remember this book is not just a theological treatise on how Jesus fulfills Torah. It is an endurance manual for people in the furnace of life.

• Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest.

  – Hebrew 3:1–2

• Hebrews is a book that helps define faith for us, it is a book that helps define home for us, and it keeps giving us this beautiful and powerful instruction …

• Fix your thoughts on Jesus. Let them return there over and over again. Not merely as some religious duty but as way to return each day, moment by moment to the love of God, to the person of our salvation.

  • To Christ who is here described as an Apostle and High Priest.

• To fix your thoughts on Jesus is to consider this One who has been sent to us.. To show us what God is like, what God cares about, how God loves …

  • But also this Apostle is our High Priest

  • One who represents God to us  - the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being and also One who represents us to God - the High Priest

  • To the One sent for us - to show us God

  • And to One who has been through what we have been through and now represents us to God - as a Priest...

• ...we learn that faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God. Believing, then, is directing the hearts attention to Jesus. It is lifting the mind to "behold the Lamb of God," and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives. At first this may be difficult, but it becomes easier as we look steadily at His wondrous person, quietly and without strain. Distractions may hinder, but once the heart is committed to Him, after each brief excursion away from Him, the attention will return again and rest upon Him like a wandering bird come back to its window.

  – AW Tozer

• Moses has to get to know this God - that’s a huge part of his vocation - burning bush and bygone 

• And then Moses has to let the people know this God - Apostle and Priest 

• We have been saying that Hebrews was written in particular to urban followers of Jesus who were experiencing tremendous resistance and challenges to their faith. 

• They needed resources for strength, for endurance in suffering. 

• And the author is saying fix your thoughts on this Jesus.

  • The One who is building the house God has been building all along. 

• Know you are connected to this story 

ALONE AND TOGETHER

• The instructions here are to fix your thoughts are something we can do on our own at any moment and in any situation with no equipment or privileged information or years of training.

• You can fix your thoughts on Jesus at any moment. Turn the 'gaze of your soul to Christ or back to Christ.

• We to know that we can do that on our own at any time and in any condition, but the next part we cannot do on our own. 

• We are the house of God together

• As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

  – 1 Peter 2:4–5

• This is our home. To know we are God’s home. And we are being built together. United as those who fix the gaze of our souls on Jesus.
  

• Lets turn the gaze of our souls to Him 

• Know you are not alone. We are being built together into the house of God.

• We together are a fuller picture of God and God’s love than any of us could be on our own.

• “In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter….

  The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

  – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

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May 3: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

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Love

Teaching Text: Hebrews 2:10–18

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says,

“I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters;
    in the assembly I will sing your praises.”

And again,

“I will put my trust in him.”

And again he says,

“Here am I, and the children God has given me.”

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants.For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• Hebrews

• Brothers and Sisters Set Free

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• The book of Hebrews is written for exactly these reasons to show people who are suffering the story they are in, and how to rely on resources beyond themselves in the moments of their lives.

• It’s so important to remember this book is not just a theological treatise on how Jesus fulfills Torah. It is an endurance manual for people in the furnace of life.

• This section of Hebrews that we read this morning has one of the most astounding asides in all of the Scripture.

• The author is busy telling us about why and how Christ has to suffer. He is writing to early urban followers who are facing immense challenges for their faith in Christ.

• And in telling them about the suffering of Jesus, he drops this little wonder...

  • God, for whom and through whom everything exists.

• He is the Source, the Sustainer, the Destination of life.

  • Poetically He is the Beginning and the End

• God is a creator and when the world He made was ruined by sin and death and violence and evil, it was revealed that He is also a Savior.

• In an unfallen world you don’t see the aspect of God. In allowing for choice, God also allowed for many to choose other than God.

  • And so it is now also revealed that God is One who will suffer for healing, for reclaiming, for redemption.

• There is a word in the passage that is translated "pioneer” in the NIV …

  • It is the Greek word archēgos - it has a wide lexical range and is hard to translate with one English world, but it means

    • Pioneer, Champion, Author

      • Pioneer, one who goes ahead where there is no known way and makes a way for others

      • Jesus is the Archēgos of our salvation

        • He has gone ahead to make a way where there was no known way

        • He has faced an enemy and force we could not face on our on and won a victory we have a share in

      • And He is telling a new story of how the world is healed and we have a share in a new type of life united to God.

• Christ has become an Archēgos, a Pioneer, Champion, Author who gives

  • Freedom from the fear of death

  • Atonement for sin

  • Help in temptation

FREEDOM FROM THE FEAR OF DEATH

• My question--that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide--was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live as I had found by experience. It was: "What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?"

  Differently expressed, the question is: "Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?" It can also be expressed thus: "Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”

  – Leo Tolstoy

• Jesus has gone ahead of us into death. And He has not made it so that we don’t have to die, but He has made it so we can share in the victory He won over death.

• 1 Corinthians 15 puts it like this...The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:56–57)

Atonement for sin

• He has made atonement for our sin, for the ways we are separated from God

• We are going to talk in Hebrews about many of the beautiful ways that we understand the Atonement

• But it is a ransom given to one who held us captive. It is a victory that we now have a share in, it is something Christ did on our behalf that we could not do on our own. It is the lamb of sacrifice and the scapegoat of Yom Kippur. Our death is faces and our shame is carried away.

• And now we are made family. Christ is not ashamed to call us brother and sister.

Help in temptation

• And Christ is a help in temptation

  • In all the ways we are drawn to doubt, and fear, and letting go of our confidence.

  • In all the ways we are tempted to do what we swore we wouldn’t do again,

  • In all the ways we feel trapped by patterns of thought and behavior. Addictions and little compromises of our integrity.

  • Our imaginations of vengeance or indulgence or laziness or workaholism.

• Christ is able to help us when we are tempted.

• When Christ was tempted (Matthew 4, Luke 4)

  • He clung to the hope that God would meet His needs better than the short cut or the substitute

  • He held on to His identity as a beloved Son

  • He spoke truth back to the lies from the Word of God

  • He received comfort from heavenly resources

• How are you at using these mechanisms to help you in times of temptation?

  • Jesus it the Archēgos of our salvation - Pioneer, Champion, Author

  • He confronts our fear of death

  • He has made atonement for what separates us from God

  • He gives us help in temptation

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April 26: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

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Love

Teaching Text: ‭Hebrews 2:1-9

We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord,was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But there is a place where someone has testified:

“What is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    a son of man that you care for him?
You made them a little lower than the angels;
    you crowned them with glory and honor
    and put everything under their feet.”

In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honorbecause he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• Hebrews

• Crowned

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What we believe at the deepest level matters.

• Hebrews 2 begins with a warning. It’s the first of several warnings in Hebrews and in my opinion they get more intense from here. 

• But this one starts very directly…

  • We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.

    – Hebrews 2: 1

• The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful Word.

• And what Jesus has done…

  • After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

• The author is suggesting that we need to pay the most careful attention to this revelation, to what we have heard.

• We live in a self-proclaimed attention economy. We live with more potential distractions than any era in history. We can make entire lives in our phones, in digital fantasies, in the ever increasing power of the artificial.

• Pay attention so you do not drift away.

  • So you don’t look up and realize you are miles off course. You are no where near where you thought you’d be or where you want to be.

• For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. 

  – Hebrews 2: 2-4

• In the law of Moses 

  • There was a personal cost to ignoring the words and way of God

  • There was communal cost to ignoring the words and way of God 

• The warnings in Hebrews were to be pretty intense. Some of them have been straight up scary to me in parts of my life. 

• And what I want to ask is are the warnings harsh or are they loving?

• How we hear a warning can really depend on the heart behind them. Is this an expression of violence, threat, pride, and control? Or is this an expression of loving care?

• The warning here is from the loving heart of God. Do not ignore too great a salvation. 

  • Don’t ignore the mercy, don’t ignore the friendship, don’t ignore guidance, don’t ignore the love.

• This salvation, if it is anything, is union with God in a real relationship.

• There is cost, now and forever, to living without God.

• So the warning comes - pay close attention.

  • Don’t let this get shoved off the priority list for all the shouting urgency of everything in our world. 

  • There is real resistance. The complexity of sin in the scriptures is profound. It is not simply obviously bad things we do from time to time out of selfishness or boredom.

  • Sin is a way of seeking to be your own God or to put something in the center of your life that functions like God.

    • That might look like all our sex, drugs and rock-n-roll rebellion or it might look like a much quieter life of anxious and distracted workaholism

• Pay attention to God.

• Pay attention to how you are living.

• Pay attention to to what has your attention 

• Pay attention to what God has given you.

• Pay attention to the relationship in prayer

• Paying attention is listening to word.

• Pay attention to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. 

• There is a cost when we do not pay attention.

  • I’ll just tell you somethings you can lose awareness of or connection to that are mentioned here.

    • You can lose your wonder.

    • You can lose a sense of your vocational inheritance.

      • The Psalm speaks of humankind in general as set in authority over the world, with ‘everything subjected to him’. But, says Hebrews, this clearly hasn’t happened yet. Humans are not ruling the world, bringing God’s order and justice to bear on the whole of creation. Everything is still in a state of semi-chaos. How then can this Psalm be taken seriously?

        The answer is that it has happened—in the case of Jesus. He is the representative of the human race. His exaltation as Lord, after his earthly ministry, suffering and death (in which he was indeed ‘lower than the angels’) has placed him in the role marked out from the beginning for the human race. He has gone ahead of the rest of us into God’s future, the future in which order and justice—saving order, healing justice—will come to the world. The exaltation of Jesus, and the fact that we who follow him can celebrate that and live in the light of it, is one of the major themes of the whole book.

        – NT Wright

    • You can lose a sense of the mercy of Jesus

Consider:

• Have you lost any of your wonder? 

• Do you have a strong sense of your inheritance in God?

• Are you aware of the gift of mercy available to you daily?

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