Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practice the spiritual rhythms and changes the world together. Welcome Life Group leaders to On The Table, week one. Excited to jump in into this week's sermon overview with you.
Just a quick note that if you haven't already listened to the series overview, we did that with Eric Geiger earlier this week. You want to go ahead and listen to that. He gives an overview of all six weeks of this incredible series. Goes to really in depth on the different talking points and how they're going to help equip us as Life Group leaders to handle these conversations well.
So you want to go back and listen to that if you haven't done so. We're going to jump in to week one. This is the first sermon series of the brand new year. We got Dallas people with us.
It's happened to Dallas. Hello, everybody. Happy new year. Happy new year.
That's right. Happy new year. Great stuff going on. Your team's won a football game just yesterday.
Go blue. Time for this recording this podcast. Yeah. Congratulations.
I'm good. I'm feeling great. And I also I think it's good to take some time and recognize that I also want the staff fantasy football league. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You got the cloder. Not the great start. It's a great start. Congratulations.
It's good to you, man. So this year, all the table does not happen on Saturday or Sunday. After the third, man, what's happening? That's it.
We're so excited. Just looking at it for about 48 hours out. There's a night officially launching. Super excited.
There's been a lot of prayer. There's been a lot of people who have sacrificed hours or people who've gone through. Training orientations. And there's a lot of you who have prayed for us.
A lot of you who are going to be there on Thursday. I'm just so thankful for our church. So think of that we get to do this and get to serve our community and hopefully for more life group leaders, community groups, community, life change, I believe, that's what we're praying for on Thursday nights. That's it.
I'm not sure what's happening on Thursday night. It's not just about the service. As you mentioned, it's about giving people that demographic for the connected community, which is not change. You do.
It'll be all be all do. But we have life group leaders. You probably have adults in your life. You might be in that demographic and you want to encourage you to come.
You want to be a part of something for the very beginning. It's really cool to be there at the very beginning because you can look back, you know, 10 months, whatever down the road. I mean, I was there for the first one, the starting of this. So I want to invite you to join us.
It's going to be great. All right. We're going to jump in this week's topic is hypocrisy, right? What's actually worried?
Is it the sort of settlements that fool the hypocrites? Is it the church full of hypocrites? What great conversation? It's so good.
And Eric, in the message, it gives three beats to that is basically yes, no. Yeah, look to Jesus. Don't miss out on Jesus. Don't miss out on Jesus.
So it's going to be a really good conversation. It's going to be one that has got to be personal for many of us that have maybe been affected. Yeah. You know, relationally by somebody's hypocrisy or by somebody's abuse.
We've seen that in the lives of others that this is a real for many is probably going to hit all the people have to have a lot of experiences with this conversation. Yeah. I think as a leader knowing that on the front end of, hey, as I guide conversation here. You could be stirring up old wounds.
How can you shepherd the people of your group in that while also guarding? How do we not go down a rabbit hole? Totally. That's a really fine line there that you got to work through potentially in your group.
That's right. Yeah. In your group and just a word on that too. In your group, January is a great time of year, but we know sometimes life groups have a slower start coming into the new year coming out of the Christmas A's and so if you're listening to this and you haven't already like scheduled your first meeting of the new year, consider this.
Yeah. You're official prop. If it doesn't just happen. It's an other year of chatting.
That's right. You're right now. Lean in question here. What qualities do you value in the people with whom you spend time?
Dallas, you got so many friends, more friends than me. I mean, what would you look forward to? I really love what I'm spending time with people that we can go just a layer, a layer deeper. Talk when guys are asking about, hey, how's your family?
It's real conversation. It's not just, oh, look at the sports game. It's slowed down. Like when I'm hanging out with people, I'm like, I don't want to hang out with people who are in a rush, in a rush to leave or you can really notice when people don't actually care about the conversation.
That's like right out of the bat. That's what I'm hoping for when I spend time with people. I pick people who care about things that I care about, like my family, what I do, and then I'm rushed. Yeah.
That's it. And we had really good friends over last night. And for us, it's people like that where your guards are down. Like in the best sense of the word appropriate sense of the word, where you don't look like you've got to be someone else or pretense.
You can be yourself. Especially a mess in all. Especially a mess in all. And I'm just kind of a relaxed posture because then relaxed posture is fun.
There's vulnerability. There's all of that. You are fully known. It can be fully yourself and left and challenged at the same time.
And there is a sense of, in the message talk about hypocrisy and the root of that, of a mask and a pretense. That there is a sense of you got to be somebody else or fake it around people. But we can be yourself for the best sense of the world. That's what I look for in my relationship now.
That's good. Great. All right. We're going to jump in.
In your leader guide, this week, it's Matthew 23 versus one through 27. I think in the message, Eric is going to read about through verse seven or so, and then he's going to highlight throughout the rest of the text. So what we're going to do is we're going to read just one through seven, and then we'll interact with the questions from there. So let's do it.
You got it? Yeah. Yeah. It's go.
Matthew 23, one through seven. Okay. Then Jesus spoke to the crowds into his disciples. The scribes and the Pharisees are seated in the chair of Moses.
Therefore, do whatever they tell you and observe it. But don't do what they do because they don't practice what they teach. They tie up heavy loads that are hard to carry and put them on people's shoulders, but they themselves aren't willing to lift a finger to move them. They do everything to be seen by others.
They enlarge their, I don't even know how to say that word. I'm not going to try it. Philakchi, select cheese. Sure.
I need a dictionary. See, this is real. We're being real here and lengthen their tassels. They love the place of honor at banquets, the front seats in the synagogue, greetings in the marketplace and to be called Rabbi by people.
Yeah. So Jesus is really going in on here at the religious leaders who make these unattainable rules and legislations that they can't even keep, then their legislative morality and holiness by their own standards and pushing people away from that. And so is there hypocrisy of the church? Yeah.
It actually, there always has been, there always has been, there always has been. But he goes on and he has some of his really harshest words throughout the gospels, not just here, but throughout the gospels are reserved for those that feel like they're, you know, up here, they're high the pedestal. Yeah. They're holding their elite, the rollers of the authorities.
And Jesus says not so much. He becomes and gives them really harsh warnings where you often see him welcoming the marginalized. Those are on the far ends of society. Those that know their need for a savior, those that know that they're unclean, those are the ones that Jesus goes after pursues and welcomes, welcomes them.
But he's harsh at those that feel like they don't have a need for a savior, which is we talk about hypocrisy. Really the height of it. Are those that feel, well, I'm elite, I'm clean. I've done, I've done all this stuff.
Like I've already arrived, but their lives don't match up. Yeah. The outer world doesn't match up at the inner world. We ask harsh words to say here in your questions, you're going to be asked to interact with the seven woes.
What are the seven woes that are listed by Jesus to the religious leaders of the passage? So you're going to want to read the rest of the verse, the verses there. But we want to highlight what are those because Eric takes some time to go through all seven, seven other way, the message. So the first of which woe to you hypocrites because you shut the door to heaven in others.
So what is he talking about there? Well, he's talking about people that actually point people away from God. Yeah. Shutting the door to making it impossible to find find a way because of their own rules and legislative legislation.
So woe to the hypocrites because you shut the door to heaven. Secondly, woe to hypocrites because you make people choke them to hell. Their behavior was good and they taught people to trust in their goodness instead of trusting in God's grace. So it's all about your goodness and your own good behavior.
Totally. Third one woe to you blind guides because you focus on the wrong things. Instead of focusing on who they worship, they were obsessed with how they worship. They were not focused on Jesus and grace and relationship with him, but more on the mode and their level of holiness.
Fourthly, woe to you hypocrites because you neglect justice, mercy and faithfulness. There's no outworking of how you serve the poor and the modularized and outworking what biblical justice is. Woe to you hypocrites because you prioritize the externals over the heart and woe to you because you appear righteous while you are dead inside. Thinking back to when Jesus called the religious leaders, whitewashed tubes, clean on the outside but dead dead on the inside.
So really harsh words that he has for the religious leaders there. So interact with those to find those. You might want to have somebody like highlight it, write it down. What does that mean?
Look at the passage. What do you notice about Jesus' instruction to those that practice hypocrisy? What do you notice about his words to them? So work through the passage together there.
I even found myself as I was trying to interact with the passage. I'm trying to put myself like, I'm in life group right now. And just like the first one, am I pointing people to God? Yeah.
Okay, what does that look like? And you get to take inventory. Like, hey, how have I pointed people to God? Something that I often say to a young leader is, hey, I would love for you to try to be a freeway sign.
No one, when you're driving down the 405, you're not looking at this freeway sign. Wow, it's telling me to go north. I can't wait to go north. Look at that sign.
It just gets you where you need to go. It doesn't take any of the glory. But it's like sometimes I've even, the simplest form is am I pointing people to God or am I a neon sign attracting all the attention? So I found myself interacting with some of those, well, you hypocrite because you know, God, justice, mercy and faithfulness.
Sometimes it's easier to just give money. Sometimes it's easier. So even maybe for you, life group leader, how can you interact with one of those and go a little bit deeper? That might set the tone for your whole group and really open up some great discussion.
Right. So good. Great, man. That's in real life terms of where we seem to sit at work.
So a couple of questions here for you. Where have you or someone you love experienced hypocrisy in the church? How did that impact you or them? How might you respond to someone who tells you that they don't want a relationship with Jesus because of the hypocrisy they've experienced in the church?
So two different questions, you can interact with them in different ways. But the first one, where have you seen someone you love experienced hypocrisy in the church or maybe even for you? Where have you seen that? You don't want to shy away from that because it's real.
It's real. We've all seen that. We've all seen that. We've heard of people and what the effect that can be unfortunately when somebody's hurt by somebody within the church, the temptation, I understand the temptation is then to put that category of hurt upon every, on every, right?
So I was hurt by the church. Yes. In some sense, yes. Somebody who represented the church, but it was a person that was behind there.
And it doesn't mean that you have to walk away from all community. But man, certainly we've experienced that, you know, and too many times that I care to experience leaders that we've had led by where there was a life there that was exposed there. And it certainly rocks you. And it's a difficult thing.
But I love what Eric talks about during the message of your faith is it depended upon the faith of other people, your faith is depended upon your faith in Jesus. And we can always host up imperfect people that we're setting them and ourselves up to fail, right? Yeah. Yeah.
That's kind of like Eric's main point there is we look to Jesus instead of the imperfect people. Totally. It's always keeping our eyes on Jesus in everything. And clearly in this passage, Jesus did not shy away from the hypocrisy in the church.
So just to reiterate your point, like don't shy away from it. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, you're right.
Look to your perfect father and not to imperfect followers, right? Because people will, people will let us down. And really this is the whole thing is it's about having a right view of sin and having a right view of grace as well, right? Like, wrestling well with the sin and our own nature to wander far, but having a full of knowledge about the grace and the work of Jesus in our lives too.
Yeah. All right. Look at a couple of questions for us of the seven wells. Are there any that you feel particularly convicted by or one that speaks to an area of your own struggle?
So you want to look through that? Do you know that in the look down passage of seven wells interact with them and then turn the question towards one another? Okay. Which of these are ones that you're challenged by?
And then the second question is kind of tied into that. It could help you capture the first question a different way where the place is that Jesus is inviting you to have a humble or honest view of yourself. I think in this week, there could be a danger of telling stories of things that have happened. We want to have a space for that, but also bring it back to us.
What's the challenge? What's the challenge for us? How would you interact with that Dallas? Maybe on a personal level or how would you encourage people to leap through this last set of questions and look at them?
Yeah. I'm looking at the seven wells. I hit it a little bit earlier of, hey, how I interacted with them. I think it could be really cool to almost make it a moment of prayer too.
It's kind of like, it's kind of like, prepented strongholds. You're going through that. Okay. Which right of these, like, let's talk about it.
Let's bring it to the surface and let's spend a moment. Hey, we want to lay hands and we want to pray in our life group. We've done that a few times where we just interact with the passage and we're just going to stop right here and we want to pray over you. We prayed over a couple and everybody started praying and it was one of the most beautiful moments in our group is walking away saying, wow, we got to pray for someone, someone prayed for me and we were in it together.
How beautiful was it? And then to be able to hold each other accountable to it and check in with one another as well. It's good. Really good.
Yeah. So, yeah, have a real conversation about these things. The ones that you're challenged by. And we should all be, we should be challenged by them.
But if we're not challenged by them, then there's a danger of us being on the other side. Yeah, there's a conversation about something judgmental about us. Like, you know, like, that's why we have to have a humble right view of ourselves and a right view of both sin and a right view of grace. Yeah.
This is a map that we can come to like a full understanding of the work of the voice spirit in our lives. Never want to be on the side of, well, none of these was applied to me because I'm going to go and all these was applied to other people. I mean, tell all these stories of everybody who's got it wrong. It's like, actually, what is it for us?
What is it for us? And it's that an awareness piece that growth becomes possible. So this isn't just in a theory allowed their conversation, like have the conversation with your group together about where we were we in the town, so does it where we are. I think that's a good leadership tip of totally you're going to have to constantly bring that back so it doesn't turn into look at all the people that have hurt me and bring up like, you know what, I'm at it.
Like we don't want it to go down that path, but what's happening inside? Right. Right. So is there a box to the church?
Yes. And no, it looked at look to Jesus. It's going to be a good conversation this week as we start new series, new year, it's going to be amazing. It's going to be amazing.
Six hard-heating questions can't wait for you guys to be equipped to navigate these well in your groups, but also to navigate these well in conversations with people just in your life. These are real life questions that people have and they should be able to respond with truth and grace and have a confidence about how we navigate these questions together. All right, guys, well, get to it. It's going to be a great start for you.
I'm the year for life groups. Guys, I'm going to do great things in and through your groups and great things in and through Thursday night at Mary's. Let's go for it. All right, guys.
We'll see you on here next week.