Citizen

April 24 – Matthew 28:16-20

This week we’re turning to Matthew 28:16-20, which contains something called the Great Commission. Earlier in the chapter Jesus resurrected from the dead and in our passage Matthew draws his Gospel account to a close with a final command from Jesus (check out Acts 1-2...

April 17 – Matthew 28:1-10

This isn’t the case for everyone, but the resurrection might be old hat to you. Like many other things about our faith, overwhelming familiarity with the concepts and stories of the Bible can make us less astounded than we ought to be. It might take a little work in...

April 10 – Matthew 27:15-23

This week we pick up on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion. The night before he was betrayed by Judas, arrested, and interrogated at least twice. In the morning he was sent to Pilate having stayed up all night, having suffered abuse at the hands of his Roman guards, and...

April 3 – Matthew 25:31-46

As always, let’s start with the context. This week we’re in Matthew 25:31-46, just a couple days before Jesus’ crucifixion. Here we find Jesus at the end of what’s called the Olivet Discourse, which runs from Matthew 24:3 to 25:46 and is so named because Jesus sat...

March 27 – Matthew 18:21-35

Next week we’ll jump back into the events leading up to the crucifixion, but for now we’ll take another step back in the Gospel of Matthew to look at a story about the Kingdom of Heaven. There Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness, from which we can get some...

March 20 – Matthew 22:15-22

Last week I mentioned that Jesus got three tricky questions while he was teaching in the temple, the last being the question about the greatest commandment we just studied. This week we’ll flip back to the first question, when Jesus got quizzed on whether Jews should...

March 13 – Matthew 22:34-40

For some context, this week we find Jesus teaching in the temple, and it’s a few days before his crucifixion. There he was being quizzed by religious leaders as they tried to tangle him up in his words. A gaff or some non-orthodox teaching would’ve given them room to...

March 6 – Matthew 21:1-11

Almost every year, around Easter, we turn to the Triumphal Entry (we did this same exact passage in 2020). But this year, in our Citizens series, the passage is hyper relevant—for the past eight weeks we’ve been talking about the Kingdom of God, and this week we...

February 27 – Matthew 19:16-22

This week, in the story of the rich young ruler, we’ll see that Jesus actually asked the man to give up far more than his “great possessions.” Where the young man came to Jesus with thoughts of performance and reward, Jesus instead challenged him to give up his false...

February 20 – Matthew 18:1-6

You'll see some similarities between this passage and our one from last week, Matthew 11:25-30. Back in chapter 11 Jesus praised his Father for having revealed himself to little children, a countercultural way of expressing how God reveals himself to the least, the...

February 13 – Matthew 11:25-30

In Matthew 11:25-30 Jesus discloses a precious truth—this is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus tells us about his own heart, and what he reveals is a wondrous source of rest and assurance. Jesus is the king, and “all things have been handed over” to him. But...

February 6 – Matthew 10:32-39

Here at the start of the year is a great time to do a check in conversation with your group, just to see how things are going and assess any helpful changes you might make. If you haven't already made use of it, here's a discussion out of Acts 2 that can guide that...

January 30 – Matthew 4:12-17

Here at the start of the year is a great time to do a check in conversation with your group, just to see how things are going and assess any helpful changes you might make. If you haven't already made use of it, here's a discussion out of Acts 2 that can guide that...

CG Check In Discussion

With service cancelations we ended up a week off from the sermon series, so you can either do the discussion out of Matthew 4:1-11, if you haven't already, or you can do the CG check in discussion out of Acts 2 below.Below is a discussion out of Acts 2 that serves as...

January 16 – Matthew 4:1-11

With service cancelations we ended up a week off from the sermon series, so you can either do the discussion below out of Matthew 4:1-11, if you haven't already, or you can do the CG check in discussion out of Acts 2.This week we've got a front row seat on a cosmic...

January 9 – Matthew 3:13-17

This week we start our long journey through the book of Matthew—our last week will be the Sunday after Easter. In one sense, we already began through our Advent series, but here in Matthew 3 we’ll start at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, focusing on the entirely...

January 2 – Philippians 3:20-21

Our theme for 2022 is "Citizen," and we'll be spending the whole year exploring what the Bible says about being citizens in the Kingdom of God. Next week we'll kick off a series in the book of Matthew that will extend all the way through Easter, so that we can start...