May 18: 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.
Love
Teaching Text: Luke 10: 25–37
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
The Parables of Jesus
Good Samaritan
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
We ask some big question in life and we ask some big questions of God:
Among all that’s important, what is the most important?
What matters most to God?
What should matter most to us?
In this story:
This lawyer asks Jesus what must I do to inherit eternal life?
It was actually a pretty common theme of question put to Rabbis - How can I be sure that I will have a share in the age to come?
That’s actually an important question at any time even if we may prefer to keep in out of our minds…
Kenneth Bailey who is an absolute Maestro on the Parables of Jesus - has a book called Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes and it’s a classic
Not every parable has all 4 levels, but many do and this one does.
Compelling Story
Instructive Example
Revelation of the Secrets of the Kingdom of God
Hints at the Nature of Jesus
Entertainment
Ethics
Theology
Christology
Jesus shocks them by making the despised enemy, the hero of this story.
The man is not recognizable - the two ways you could tell who someone was and where they were from was their clothes and their speech.
This guy is unconscious (that’s what half dead means here) and stripped.
These first two men cannot touch him without risking breaking the law
3 Groups served in the temple in Jerusalem…
Priests
Levites
The Delegation is Israel - laymen
Jesus has had a priest and a levite come by, so He is going to make the hero of His story a Jewish laymen.
He shocks them
He makes a despised enemy the hero - a Samaritan
The despised Samaritan makes up for the failures of the priest and the Levite and shows compassion at great personal cost.
He risks his safety, he gives his time, he gives his money.
Ethics - Here’s the shock of the story to the man …
Your neighbor includes your enemy - that is the widest possible reach
A fundamentalist is most worries about their own heart not the heart of the other
God does not see insider and outsider the way we do
He loves the world
Jesus says I can tell you the whole law while you stand on one foot.
It’s love.
Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength
And love your neighbor as yourself
Many of us have seen American expressions of faith that you can have a ornate systems of personal devotion, prayers, Bible readings, conferences, and not love your neighbor
We often measure our spiritual well-being in personal devotional terms, but God keeps putting the emphasis on how we love.
You can do a ton of religious activity and never confront the real Jesus here or never let Him confront you.
“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.
– Matthew 7: 21
“For if the world could have been saved by providing good examples to which we could respond with appropriately good works, it would have been saved an hour and twenty minutes after Moses came down from Mt. Sinai.
Salvation is not some felicitous state to which we can lift ourselves by our own bootstraps after the contemplation of sufficiently good examples. It is an utterly new creation into which we are brought by our death in Jesus' death and our resurrection in his. It comes not out of our own efforts, however well-inspired or successfully pursued, but out of the shipwreck of all human effort whatsoever.”
– Robert Farrar Capon
You cannot reach eternal life (now or forever) without the rescuing love of Jesus, and that is all.
Once changed by that love we learn (with Jesus) to love our neighbor who includes our enemy.
The world is not renewed by people who only love the other people who like them and are like them.
The Kingdom of God looks like loving your enemy. At its heart is a man dying for his enemies
May 18: Good Samaritan
May 4: 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.
Love
Teaching Text: Luke 15
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
The Parables of Jesus
The Lost Coin, Sheep, and Son
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
In Luke 15, Jesus tells 3 stories of lostness and being found.
We will look at the the why of the stories and what those together tell us about reality
The Why is found in the first verse of Luke 15 …
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Then Jesus told them this parable
– Luke 15: 1-3
Question from the pharasees and teachers: “Why do you welcome sinners and eat with them?” (2 big offenses)
And Jesus as a true Middle Eastern rabbi doesn’t simply being a conceptual debate with them. He tells 3 stories:
STORY 1 | THE LOST SHEEP
Jesus is saying, you are shepherds who have lost the sheep
And now you are witnessing the cost of bringing them back and you resist.
There is a tremendous cost to go after this lost sheep and then to find it, place its 70 -100 lbs on your back and make the long arduous trek back.
But the now good shepherd rejoices, and celebrates with his community.
STORY 2 | THE LOST COIN
Luke does a particular work at highlighting a powerful and unique aspect of Jesus’ ministry for His time.
In that He does just tell stories that address the world of men and mens’ cultural expectations, but the world of women as well.
The woman here has been entrusted and is responsibly for the resources for her home.
A coin is lost and she will search diligently and not give up until it is found.
The sheep would not simply return on its own and the coin certainly is not simply going be found on its own.
The coin can show no initiative whatsoever in being found.
But again the search is all too worth it once what has been lost is found and the priority of Heaven is to rejoice over what is lost being found.
Any person turning to God.
Jesus is confronting these leaders with how they were a block to others finding and being found by God.
STORY 3 | THE LOST SONS
“Any Middle Eastern son who requests his inheritance from a healthy father is understood to want his father to die. Such a son is indeed dead to the family.”
– Kenneth Bailey
He humiliated his father and wished him dead and went off his part of the family’s money and came to ruin.
But the younger son comes to the end of himself in his own humiliation and he’s reduced to feeding pigs and longing to eat the pods the pigs ate.
Finally the Pharisees may have begun to think Jesus took sin as seriously as they did.
And in this way he invites them in for the shock of the rest of the story.
The son begins to return home with a prepared speech of how he would simply be a hired worker in his fathers home, no longer a son.
There was a formal ceremony where a pot would be broken in front of a son like this to say to the whole community, he is cut off.
This is the expectation he should have returned home to.
Instead we see this absurdity …
RAN - experienced disgrace himself and interrupted the speech
ROBE - heir to the kingdom, identifying him as a member of the family.
RING - authority to speak and act as an heir to the Kingdom.
SANDALS - freedom to move uninhibited about the father’s land and business.
PARTY - celebration of the best kind.
It is then we see the lostness of the older brother. There are more parallels than we can go into right now.
But he comes in from the field and humiliates his father by refusing to go into the banquet that his father has thrown.
And in the speech he does share we learn that he has been close in proximity but far in heart from his father.
He has been lost by keeping all the rules, perhaps even worse than his brother who broke them all.
Jesus boldly confronts these leaders who are convinced they are diligently seeking God but have lost touch with God’s heart.
God’s heart is to go after the lost and there are many ways to get lost.
We can wander off accidentally
We can be lost and not know it and not have an ounce of ability to return
We can with God was dead and go utterly do our own thing
We can follow all the rules and have a heart hard as stone
Heaven celebrates what is lost being found.
Be careful when you become certain in your exclusions
if God hates everyone you hate, its a pretty sure sign you’ve tried to make God in your own image.
There is a cost to be born in restoration
The burden and the long walk back
The difficult and diligent search
The bearing the cost to welcome in
The offer of grace at personal expense
Lets Celebrate today - celebrating the heart of God in restoration.
Lets remember the tremendous cost God has paid for our restoration
Lets be those who love grace - not those so comfortable in our own place (or insecure in our own place ) that we despise grace.
May 4: The Lost Coin, Sheep, and Son
April 27: 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.
Love
Teaching Text: Matthew 13: 1-13
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heavenhas been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
The Parables of Jesus
Wise & Foolish Builders
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
There is a place, a quick line you could miss if you weren’t looking for it in the book of Acts that says in the 40 days after the resurrection Jesus spoke with the disciples about the Kingdom of God.
Think about that. Hadn’t Jesus been talking with them about the Kingdom of God the whole time?
The disciples had seen partially. But now, His death and resurrection put His life in a new clarity, a new understanding.
This Eastertide we are also going to take these 40 days after Easter and listen to the teachings of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.
Parables lay two things beside one another so that in understanding one, you can better understand the other.
So they reveal the Kingdom of God, especially if you carry the story with you and let it work on you. But they also cloak the meaning to some degree and provide a way to say some very provocative things in public without being able to be immediately arrested.
No one parable shows us everything of the Kingdom of God but as we hear them and reflect on them, more and more of the reality of God in our midst becomes clear.
Jesus didn’t invent parables. It was a popular rabbinic teaching tool in a culture that valued a learner coming to a discovery from considering a teaching rather than simply having information laid out to them to repeat back.
But His disciples are worried that He may have cloaked too much. They ask why are you teaching like this?
I am teaching this way because this way is a heart revealer. It will show where people are at. Some will listen and listen but not hear. They will look and look and not see.
They many be present but they are not seeking God’s Kingdom. They have too much riding on their own Kingdom.
But for those who follow up, who ask questions, who keep the conversation going, who carry the story away and mediate on it, let it confront them, don’t hide from it, approach with humble and receptive heats it can bear the most precious fruit in all the world.
4 Categories of Responses to the seed that is sown:
(HOW IS YOUR HEART TODAY?)
Is it hardened?
Is it shallow?
Is it crowded?
Is it tender and open?
Jesus tells us ... The seed is the message of the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God is where God’s heart is being expressed and known and experienced.
“When we speak of the kingdom of God, we are speaking of a kingdom which works more like a family or a well-functioning neighborhood, where people really do love one another and care for each other. This kingdom is the range of God’s effective will—or simply God acting in this world—where what He wants done is done. Jesus’ teaching showed us that the kingdom of God is not a thing of times and places; it is a thing of the heart. It is a life that is lived in vital connection with God himself. Unlike the kingdom of God, human government functions on principles of force, deception, brutality, and the power of death. All human governments have the power of death, but what they lack is the power of life. This is what the kingdom of God has: the power of life. Human governments can kill. God’s government gives life. This life is based upon the new birth that is an entry into the kingdom of God.”
– Dallas Willard
HARD HEART:
Our hearts can become hardened when we become certain that our understanding of the evens of our life is all there is.
But also our hearts can be hardened simply by too much traffic there. We indiscriminately let too many things into the deep places of our life.
Our heart can also be hardened by the many messages of the world that enthrone the self, glorify selfishness, and keep us isolated in the pursuit of project self.
This parable is reminding us that we aren’t just hearing the message of the Kingdom of God in a neutral space.
How do you measure the hardness of your heart in light of these three descriptions of hardness?
SHALLOW HEARTS:
In this condition, it is received with joy, but there is no root, and the initial fast-growth withers when trouble hits.
I often see people mistake agreement for participation or mistaking on the spot resonance or actual obedience
We receive with joy but we are so used to only led by our feelings that the response lasts as long as the feeling.
“In the stony ground, the people hear the Word and say, “[T]his is wonderful!” But they don’t receive the Word at the deep level of their soul where it can penetrate the depths of their personality. The seeds don’t take root because there is nothing within the person’s character to take hold of. A person’s character is the internal, overall structure of the self that is revealed by long-running patterns of behavior and from which actions more or less automatically arise. It’s what runs our life. It shows itself in our thinking and choices and in our habitual ways of behavior that are built into our bodies and become obvious in our relationships. What we will seriously think about is one of the strongest indications of how our character has grown. The way our thoughts are directed affects our feelings before and apart from the point where they settle into the habits of our body and our social relationships. Receiving good news can make our bodies jump up and down with joy because our feelings are largely determined by our thoughts. That’s why people jump up and down when they win the lottery. But then very often their winnings ruin their life because their feelings were one thing and their character was something else.”
– Dallas Willard
How difficult do you find it to follow an emotional moment with obedience?
CROWDED HEARTS:
Received the word but the worries of this life and deceitfulness of wealth chokes out the world
There is an initial growth, but life is so full of other things.
Our old ways of meeting the deep needs of our life out of our own resources do not just vanish in a flash.
We keep making our way through life by worry as our functional guide instead of faith.
Fear leads our life more than love.
We begin to take the security of things like wealth as if that is the true abundant life.
“Western culture today is so powerful and alluring that it often swallows us whole. Its beauty, power, and promise generally take away both our breath and our perspective. The lure of present salvation—money, sex, creativity, the good life—has, for the most part, entertained, amused, distracted, and numbed us into a state where we no longer have a perspective beyond that of our culture and its short-range [salvation story].”
– Ronald Rolheiser
This is the first era in human history, you can reach in your pocket, check the stocks, check the news, see if someone liked your photo. You see your aunt dyed her hair a new color, right along the side of a tragic explosion, and then a filtered photo of your friends vacation.
What habits and patterns of life crowd your heart’s openness and receptivity to the kingdom of Jesus?
UNDERSTANDING HEARTS:
To understand here is beyond simply grasping the information. Understanding the implications of the Kingdom and surrendering to its reality in friendship with God.
I can change!
If you can be honest about where you are, you are ready to have your heart changed from there
“If you won’t hear the bad news about yourself, you can’t know yourself. You condemn yourself to the maintenance of an exhausting illusion, a false front to your self which keeps out doubt and with it hope, change, nourishment, breath, life. If you won’t hear the bad news, you can’t begin to hear the good news about yourself either.”
– Francis Spufford
Name where your heart is
Offer it to God - The Gardener
Obey what you do understand
Allow the miracle of growth - 30 - 60 - 100
PARENTS:
Read the parable of the sower to your kids
Talk, ask your kids what they think the difference is between hearing/understanding and doing something?
Ask them what it means for Jesus to be the Seed (the Word) of God
Pray with them for God to prepare their hearts to receive Him openly
