Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. So today, as we're kicking off this first episode, we're starting a brand new series, and we thought this would be a great time for us to introduce this podcast as a resource to you as a life group leader. Now, these are intended to happen every single week.
They're gonna be brief conversations that are ultimately helpful to equip you as a leader, walking into your group each and every week. So you might wanna listen to this with your morning coffee, perhaps even your commute into work or on your way to your life group, walk in the dog, whatever it is, these are gonna be short episodes designed to equip you to lead well. So we're gonna highlight the content and the key passages each from each week of the weekend teaching series, and we're also gonna walk through some of the questions and practical tips and tricks to leading effective life groups. Lastly, it's also just intended for us to encourage you to consider the ways that you're going to continue practicing those rhythms of group life, right?
The things that we learned way back when and rooted whenever you did that. These are spiritual disciplines that come out of Acts chapter two, they're things that the early church practiced, and we hope that as a life group community, you would continue to practice these things as well. We believe that living in biblical community is the most important thing that you and I can do today. Our society, the way our culture is going, we wanna be continually rooted and grounded in God's word, cause that's gonna inform us how to live as a part of his kingdom, not the kingdom of this world.
And so I'm excited to be joined this week and really every week moving forward with Jeremy Maxfield. And Jeremy, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself here, but I just want everyone to know that I'm so excited about who Jeremy is and what he brings to the table, and I know that you're gonna be encouraged by him as well. So Jeremy, introduce yourself for us. Hey, thanks, Jared.
I'm really excited about this opportunity. It's been a blast working with you and the pastoral team and the worship team as we prepare for different series. It's been a lot of fun to take those big picture ideas and try to break them down into content for group leaders to lead each week. And so I think this is gonna be a great resource, just a touch point to say, how can we, one more way that we wanna try to come alongside group leaders and help them lead their communities well?
So I'm excited about that and I'm excited about starting with this series. So I'm gonna jump right into this first series, if that's okay. Absolutely, that's through. So we're starting this new series called Unexpected Words of Jesus and What He's Saying to You.
And this got me really excited. And so this will be a fun way to kick off the podcast because we're gonna be looking at kind of the way Christ, as we prepare for Easter, we're gonna be looking at these conversations that Jesus had with different people, unexpected people, people that the religious establishment weren't expecting him to engage with, interact with, challenging those who thought they had it all together, encouraging those who felt like they could never get it right. We're gonna see him over the next six weeks, just interacting with everyone from the rich young ruler and the Samaritan woman at the well to his own disciples. And so as we prepare for Easter, this is just a great way to think anew, like what is Jesus saying to me in this season?
And maybe to step back and say, I might be very familiar with these stories, but just to kind of take a deep breath and pause and let Christ kind of speak something fresh to each of our hearts. And so this first week, going forward, I'll just say as a side note, I know Eric wants to jump in on the beginning of each series to kind of introduce new series going forward. So that's gonna be a lot of fun. And we're gonna have him here in a couple weeks on the podcast as well.
But to kick off this first series, we're looking at the story of the rich young ruler. And I think this is a, just gosh, I don't know if there could be a more relevant story for our own cultural context than the rich young ruler. And to kick off this series where unlike today's just constant stream of shocking scandals and controversies, Jesus surprised people in the best of ways and the people he spent time with took everyone by surprise and he has good news for each of us. And so with this rich young ruler, we see this man who approaches Jesus kind of feeling like he's got it all together.
And he comes to Jesus saying like, what more do I need to do? And so, and Jesus turns his expectations on their head. And so I'm excited to get into this particular story, but before I do, I wanna ask you, as the year was being mapped out, what was it that you and the other pastors and leaders at the church, what are you all really wanting for Mariners and for groups in particular to get out of this series? Well, it's such an important series when we can pause and acknowledge everything that's going on in our world today.
It's just a lot, right? There's a lot of things that have happened throughout 2020 as we're moving into 2021. I mean, not just moving in. I mean, it feels like this year's already half over, you know, we were six weeks in, but it feels like it.
And it's important for us to be reminded that Jesus has conversations with people that are outside of the church, outside of just his own cohort of people, but instead we find him having these conversations that are shocking and beautiful with all sorts of people. And so, you know, our hope is we're gonna take this series, this series will take us all the way up to Palm Sunday, which of course is the Sunday prior to Easter. And so if you kind of watch the way that this teaching series is going to develop, this is incredibly invitational and it's evangelistic. As we think about the people in our lives, our own family, our neighbors, coworkers, people that we just socialize with, if they are somebody that has this preconceived notion about who Jesus is and the things he has to say, this series is gonna flip that thing upside down.
It's an easy opportunity for us to invite people into any week of this series, because we're gonna be shocked and surprised at what Jesus has to say to various types of people. And it's often different than what most people believe about Jesus. So throughout every week of this series, it's an invitation opportunity. So as the life group leader, even encouraging your group to say, who are we gonna invite next week to church?
Who do you wanna see confronted with the reality of Jesus that's probably different than what they already think about him anyway? This will be beautiful, it will be refreshing. And I believe that as we get towards Palm Sunday and into Easter Sunday, we're going to see many people come to Jesus because he is shocking when we really do see the things that he says. So Jeremy, why don't you take us into week one, let's dig into the rich young ruler background just a little bit here and then we'll move into the specific discussion questions for this week.
Yeah, so with the rich young ruler, we're gonna start the series in the Gospel of Mark, which is a great place to start, because a lot of people believe that the Gospel of Mark was the first Gospel written and it presents Jesus as this unexpected Messiah. The Jewish people had been waiting for the promised Messiah, the one who had come and saved them, but they were looking for a certain type of ruler. And in the Gospel of Mark, we see this totally unexpected, at the time, this totally unexpected picture of Jesus as this suffering servant. And so he shows up, I would say the main point of this first lesson is that Jesus surprises his original audience, but that he also surprises our modern culture by revealing that no amount of good works, even religious rule keeping can achieve God's favor, can achieve eternal life.
And that's what we see with the rich young ruler. He comes to Jesus kind of expecting something out of Jesus as a teacher, but then Jesus challenges him with like, what are you seeking to build your life on? How are you seeking to find worth? And the question that he asks all of us is ultimately, is there anything worth more to me than my relationship with Jesus?
So in the Gospel of Mark, we see Jesus kind of in this role of the unexpected, doing the unexpected, engaging with the unexpected people, saying unexpected things. In this rich young ruler, he's been perfectly keeping all the rules, checking all the boxes based on people's expectations of this is what a good life looks like. We just came out of this series on the Proverbs and kind of what is wise living, what are these general principles for how to live a good life. This rich young ruler was doing all of those things, right?
And he approaches Jesus, he shows him respect, he thinks he has it all figured out, but Jesus gently redirects his attention and his affection and invites him into a relationship with him personally. And he invites this rich young ruler into freedom from himself, from trying to earn his worth and his value through achievements and possessions and success and points him towards serving others and finding freedom in life with Jesus. So ultimately the rich young ruler, he has this choice to make just like we all do today. Am I going to keep trying to live life according to what I've always thought it was about, even the good things that I thought would kind of add up to a good life, or am I gonna trust that Jesus has something better for me?
And I'm gonna make him not only my top priority, but really make him everything that my life is about. Am I willing to kind of let go of it all and follow him? I love that this is the first encounter that we're gonna have in this series, because as I think about the people in our life groups, the people in my own life group, we are the rich young ruler, right? I mean, whether we all define ourselves as rich, globally, anything in the global perspective, we are, we are absolutely in the 1% globally.
But more so, I'm thinking about the mindset of the rich young ruler, I'm thinking about, I have oriented my life around what's the status, what's the achievement, what's the accomplishment, I build out my day and my week with my checkboxes, and sometimes I'll do something that's not on my checklist and I'll write it sort of like post script on my checkbox just so I can check it, right? And I think that this is a lot of people that also look at if I categorize my life and my work life, my social life, my marriage, my parenting, I also put my spiritual life in there too. And I think how can I build myself a good workflow? What's the responsibilities, the achievements, the things I have to accomplish?
And this is exactly where Jesus centers into this conversation. Our spiritual life is not something to be accomplished. It is a lifelong relationship, right? That's a great way to put it.
That's a great way to put it. And I love that coming out of this past 12 months, over this past year, even like you said, even if we don't wouldn't think of ourselves as necessarily rich or influential or powerful, the mentality of our culture, regardless of where we are, the mentality of our culture is what do I need to do to make this year better than last year? Whether it was good or bad, we're always thinking about what do I need to do. And so I'm gonna jump into our worship guide or our group leader guide.
Right away, when we start with our icebreaker, you've got your group gathered together. We wanna start with a question about like, what is the hardest thing you've ever worked on? What motivated you to work so hard? Was it worth the effort?
And I wanna stress the point of this question is not like a bait and switch. Like, aha, see, you're driven by greed and whatever. Like these can be great things. Like I've put a lot of effort into a career or family or this nonprofit work or whatever.
Right. But just to get them thinking and to engage everyone with, what is it that really motivates me? What's important to me? Where do I see myself naturally willing to put in hard work and strive for things?
And where do I see those things as a bigger sacrifice? So just to kind of start self-reflecting on, what's important to me? I'm not willing to work towards things. And then from there, we're gonna transition into the story of the rich young ruler who has just by his title, the way we refer to him, it says basically he's a chief success on every level.
And he was a religious person as well. So, and just to hit this at the high level, what we'll see in the leader guide is kind of two sections of the conversation between Jesus and the rich young ruler. And the first of which, Jesus kind of pushes back on the greeting that he receives, where he's greeted as good, good teacher. And Jesus pushes back.
And this is something that I'm excited to share because I had never really paid much attention to this. Jesus pushes back and says, why do you call me good? Only God is good. And I think absolutely what he's doing here is, he's deflecting a little bit, showing that he's not gonna be kind of sweet talked or flattered, but also that he's not interested in status as far as relationally.
And that's obviously very important to this rich young ruler. And I had noticed that before, but I had never noticed just the grace and humility of Jesus in this question or in his response, because he basically says, you and I can both agree, right? That nobody's perfect, nobody's good, except for God. And what he's doing is, I believe he's providing this rich young ruler with opportunity right up front to say, you know what, you're right.
Like, I'm not perfect either. He's seen this kind of easy out opportunity to show some humility. And he says, nobody's perfect, but God, you know the commands, but instead the rich young ruler immediately comes back, he doesn't see it, he's blinded to his own weaknesses. And he says, yep, I've kept all the rules.
So in essence, Jesus gives him the opportunity to say, nobody's perfect. And he says, yep, I am, I've done it, I've done it all. And so from there, because he specifically goes after the portion of the commandments that are all about the doing, right? It's all about how am I checking off the boxes and doing the right things that I'm supposed to do, but completely misses over the idea of how do I love God and become more like him in the process, right?
He skips over almost the being portion of the 10 commandments. Yeah, absolutely. So what he's doing here is, and that's where we pivot into the second part of the conversation, is that Jesus, the commandments that Jesus references from the 10 commandments are the second half. They're the ones that are all relational.
How do you relate to your neighbors and your spouse and your family? And he's like, yep, I'm doing this better than anyone. But if we're familiar with the 10 commandments, they open with the first five or all about how we relate to God, about God's holiness and his uniqueness and that we don't worship anyone other than him. We set aside a day for rest and worship because we trust his goodness.
And so that would have been screaming to the original audience that this is missing. He's, he jumped straight to the second half of the commandments. And so obviously this man's problem is that he's living his life kind of looking horizontally. How do I measure up compared to other people, even when it comes to my religion, as opposed to, how is my life in relationship with God?
And here he is standing ironically, talking to the very Son of God. And he's totally blind to the fact that he's not at all focused on a relationship with God. He's focused on this religious checklist. So even as a life group, I'm so grateful that, first of all, the 10 commandments have a doing element to it.
It has a relationship with God, but also with others, meaning that God or Jesus in this scenario is not judging us for wanting to accomplish things. There's no condemnation for us wanting to do good, right? Riddle throughout scripture is this idea that we ought to do good. We ought to do good things.
But I think the point here is, as a life group leader, let's not create a critical environment within our group discussions where it feels like we should feel wrong for doing good things. We just want to put doing good things in the right force-ranked priority behind what really matters most, right? We want to engage God first and then allow our relationship with God to inform any of the good works that we do. Is that right, Jeremy?
Oh yeah, yeah, those first commandments, that relationship with God is going to overflow and spill out. As Jesus would say, you would know a tree by its fruit, right? So when we're rooted in our relationship with God, there's going to be the good fruit of good things. But those actions are going to come out of this love for God and for others.
And so that's where we transition into the look-in, apply God's word to our lives, where we want to create this environment that helps everyone kind of look at, what does it mean to me to know that Jesus loves me? The text says that Jesus loved him and invited him to follow him even after seeing his own ignorance and arrogance. And it says that Jesus looks at him with compassion. Jesus looks at him and loves him.
So really stressing like, look, Jesus loves you. God loves you. He knows your blind spots. By definition, we don't.
That's another great thing about community, right? Because when we're around one another, the people who love us can help us see the things that we don't actually see about ourselves. That's good. So even as a group discussion, to start to identify, what are those areas in my life where I am trying to achieve my own relationship with God, achieve my own sense of self-worth, right?
Thinking into categories and trying to identify those areas where something has gotten in front of God himself as opposed to giving me my own worth, right? Which, you know, that's an opportunity for us. We're going to try to do this as any time it makes sense. But it's just to point back to one of these spiritual rhythms or these spiritual disciplines that we find throughout God's word.
And repentance is one of those rhythms. This is a week where you may as a group, you may want to just acknowledge, you know, the sort of the church word for that is to confess. Like this is an area where something has gotten in the way. This is a sin or a struggle or perhaps some kind of action that I'm doing with the wrong motive or something that's preventing me from having a deeper relationship with God.
Let's acknowledge those things. And then as a group, pause and say, this is a moment to repent, to turn away from those things and not just turn towards something else, but to turn towards God himself. Because when we repent, we turn towards God and we are overwhelmed with grace and love for forgiveness because we have put him back in his right place in our own life, right? So pause and confess and pray for one another so that we can sort of move forward, right?
As a healthy individual and as a healthy group that's impacting the community around us in the name of Jesus. Jeremy, walk us through this look up section, the last portion. Yeah, so I'm really glad you mentioned that. Let me say one thing about the repentance is that when we were walking through this, we originally, I had kind of originally positioned this for next week with the woman at the well, which seemed to be kind of my mind immediately went there.
But just that reminder of it can be all kinds of things that prevent us from following Jesus. And so I'm excited to have this opportunity just to help one another identify those things. And then as we kind of look up and out at the world around us to say, who else around me? Like you alluded to at the beginning of this episode, like who is it in my life, in my circle of influence?
Maybe a coworker or family member or neighbor that is maybe living a great life, maybe a wonderful person, but they're living life by their own standards. They're living according to cultural measures and they don't know Jesus. And not in a judgmental way, like these people are missing the point and they don't know Jesus, but in a way that's like, hand, they're living a good life perhaps, but they're missing out on the fact that Jesus has something even greater for them. And so we kind of wrap up the lesson with, what does the world tell us adds up to a life that matters?
Like what does the world around us tell us is really important to achieve and to accomplish? And then ultimately, how can we help others find something even greater than any of those things in a relationship with Christ? Yeah, I think that this is going to be a really great opportunity in our life groups to challenge what has become part of our own understanding of Christianity today, where my performance is what matters, my giving, my doing, my serving, my leading. And don't get me wrong, every one of those things is good things, but we want to view those things as the fruit of a healthy spiritual life as opposed to the way in which I earn or achieve my way to God.
The symbol of the Christian faith, Pastor Eric says this occasionally and I love it. The symbol of the Christian faith, thank you Jesus is not a ladder. It's not how do I climb my way closer to God, but instead it is across, because Jesus is the one who has done it all for us. And we get to have relationship with him and all those other things, the serving, the leading, the giving, all the good that we do is just simply in response.
It's becomes our act of worship because of what Jesus has done for us. So like we're praying for you, we are with you. If there's anything you need, please don't hesitate to reach out to us or to your coach. And we're excited about continuing these conversations.
So week one of the series, it's off to a really great start. I want to just give you a quick reminder that encourage your groups to continue that spiritual rhythm of daily devotion. We are walking through a book on wisdom by Timothy Keller as he leads us through the Proverbs. We also have an annual read podcast, a brief messages from our pastors every single day, just to help provide some supplemental context to the Daily Read, we'd love for you to check that out.
And we're excited to be with you. We will see you shortly for week two of our series. Jeremy, would you mind closing us out in prayer? Sure.
Father God, we love you. And we thank you that you love us and all our imperfections, even in our blind spots. And you look at us with love and you invite us to follow you. God, and so I pray this week as leaders prepare to meet with those who are in their groups as they engage in their various circles of influence, that they would be those who show the infinite and unmatchable worth of following you in life with you.
God bless these leaders, encourage them, speak to them in fresh ways so that we might all joyfully prepare for the new life that we get to celebrate this Easter. So it's in Christ's name, we ask for all of these things. Amen. Amen, have a great week everyone.
Bye-bye.