Luke 9:21-51 

Hope Group Sermon Discussion Questions 

1. To aid our memory, rehash some major points, illustrations and applications of the sermon. How did God speak to you? 

2.  Should we listen to Jesus? Why or why not? What evidence and reason do we have to follow him? 

3. How do you think Luke 9 can be a capstone and climax to our study through the gospel of Luke so far? What do we learn about Jesus, his identity, mission and power, that compels us to follow him from this chapter? 

4. In what ways do you think Jesus' statements in Luke 9:23-25 are so "counter-cultural" today? 

5. Discuss the paradoxes of Christianity and following Jesus by comparing Luke 9:23-27 and 9:57-62. What is Jesus teaching us? 

6. What do you think picking up a cross and following Jesus means for you today? 

Psalm 136

This week we are asking all the groups to spend more of a focused time in prayer. Please feel free to use the list and prompts to guide your prayer time. 

 

1. Pray with confession and supplication in mind for your group and for our church. (Read through and use Psalm 51 as a guide to help

2. Pray to simply praise and adore our God. (Read through and use Psalm 66 as a guide to help prompt your prayers)

3. Pray for the authorities in our land to reward the good and punish the evil. Pray for our government on all levels. (NH State government: Gov. Sununu, our senators and representatives if you know them by name for your town or just for the Jaffrey Reps: Richard Ames, Douglas Ley; State Senator Jeanne Dietsch)

4. Pray for our church: (pray for our elders, pray for our deacons, pray for volunteers, pray for spiritual growth, pray for community outreach, pray we see more salvations and baptisms, pray for maturity and unity among our body, pray for future direction and insight regarding space constraints on our current building, pray for wisdom in all these areas and God’s grace to fill his church and spill out into the community)

5. Pray for specific requests: (use this space to write down some of your own)

1. Talk through the parables given in this chapter of Luke. Which part of the parables most stuck out to you? (parable of soils/sower, soils explained, lamp and jar, story of Jesus' mother and brothers) 

2. Today we must be careful of allowing the culture of constant arena entertainment to infect our hearts at church. While also remembering the culture of a church is more a posture of your heart than is is a style, genre, or denomination. How can you create an atmosphere of being a true hearer and a true doer of the Word here at HFC, rather than just simply wanting to be entertained by an experience. 

3. What is a parable? Why would Jesus speak using parables and not just "say it as it is?" 

4. What are the details and elements of good soil? Luke 8:15 

5. Who does the work, God or man? Both? 1 Cor. 3:6-8.

1. What is grace? What does it look like? What does it not look like? 

2. What is Jesus talking about in Luke 7:33-35? Unpack these verses as a group. 

3. How are those verses (7:33-35) illustrated and woven into the story given to us by Luke in 7:36-50? 

4. Discuss the tension and the atmosphere of this situation described to us in Luke 7:36-50. Can you feel the emotion? Is this helpful for us to feel what is going on?

5. Read Ephesians 2:4-10 as a group. How does this passage relate to the story in Luke and to your life?