Sermon Notes | April 24, 2016

Responding to the King | Living Without Fear

Speaker: Kenny Clewett, KennyC@ChristCommunityKC.org

“People are more likely to have a background sense that life is nastier and more precarious – red in tooth and claw. They put in the tribal walls and distrust the outsider. This anxiety makes everybody a little less humane.”

Pues si vemos lo presente

cómo en un punto s'es ido e acabado,

si juzgamos sabiamente,

daremos lo non venido por passado.

Therefore, if we see the present

It is like a dot, swiftly gone

And finished. If we judge wisely,

We will consider what is coming

To already have passed.

“Immanent Frame: a constructed social space that frames our lives entirely within a natural (rather than supernatural) order. It is the circumscribed space of the modern social imaginary that precludes transcendence."

"Fear is what you feel when your greatest treasure is threatened... So when your greatest treasure is Christ and your union with Christ, which nothing can threaten... You've got nothing to fear. But if your greatest treasure is your life, you've got much to fear."

Christ Jesus,who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Conversation Starters – Leawood Campus

Date: April 24, 2016

Series: Responding to the King

Text: Matthew 10:26-42

1. Takeaway. This Sunday, what was personally convicting, encouraging, enlightening, or helpful to you? Spend time discussing this.

2. Question. What was something that was confusing, unclear, or even offensive about the sermon this Sunday?

3. Read TEXT. What are the reasons Jesus gives to not have fear for the conflict, persecution and even death that we can experience on his mission in this life?

4. What fears get in the way of you following in the mission of God? What treasures do you think underlie those fears?

5. Read the excerpt below. Elsewhere in the Bible, we read that the fear of God is a good thing. How is that different from the kind of fear Jesus tells us not to have in the passage we read?

Excerpt from Tim and Kathy Keller in The Meaning of Marriage: "Obviously, to be in the fear of the Lord is not to be scared of the Lord, even though the Hebrew word has overtones of respect and awe. ‘Fear’ in the Bible means to be overwhelmed, to be controlled by something. To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love. It means that, because of his bright holiness and magnificent love, you find him ‘fearfully beautiful.’ That is why the more we experience God’s grace and forgiveness, the more we experience a trembling awe and wonder before the greatness of all that he is and has done for us."

6. Spend some time in prayer together. How can we pray for each other to let go of the fears of this life and learn to instead fear – stand in awe and astonishment – God?