Matthew 3:1-12
Lead in: John the Baptist is the wild man who came out of the desert, unshaven, hair down to his shoulders looking like Rambo wearing a cloak made from the hide of a camel and cinched by a leather strap tied around his waist and eating an all-natural diet of locusts and honey. Was John the Baptist the hippie of the Bible? Maybe, but as we hear, he was much more than that.
Prompt: What about this fiery preacher do you find most fascinating? What about John the Baptist do you find most intimidating?
Lead in: When word got out about John the Baptist, hundreds of people came down from Jerusalem to be baptized by him. When John realized that a lot of the Pharisees and Sadducees were showing up because it was the popular thing to do, he exploded. As Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message translation, “You brood of snakes! Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to make any difference? It’s your life you must change, not your skin!”
Prompt: What is it these days about your life you must change in order to receive the coming of Christ into your heart?
Lead in: In talking about the one mightier than he who was yet to come, John said, “He will baptize you with the fire of the Holy Spirit. He will ignite the fire of the Holy Spirit within, changing you from inside out.”
Prompt: What is the difference between obeying the rules and allowing the Holy Spirit to change you from the inside out?
Lead in: John the Baptist said of the one to come, “He will clear his threshing floor … but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” In other words, the Holy Spirit will make a clean sweep of your life, putting everything false out with the trash to be burned.
Prompt: If you were to make a clean sweep of your house, what needs to be put out to be burned with the trash?
Lead in: Conflict resolution is a process that attempts to arrive at a mutually agreed upon resolution. But that does not always happen. In Romans 15, Paul offers this thoughts on how to arrive at
conflict resolution. He tells us to work “in harmony with one another” so that “with one accord” we may “welcome one another” as Christ welcomes us.
Prompt: Reflect on a situation where it was hard to work in harmony with someone, making it hard to come to any sort of resolution. How did you handle that situation and what did you learn from that?