Application Guide: The Gospel of Matthew – Part 5

Live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way:

o bear fruit in every good work, grow in the knowledge of God,

o be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might so that you may have,

o great endurance and patience, and joyfully give thanks to the Father.

Paraphrase of Colossians 1:10-12 (NIV)

June 6, 2004: “The Gospel of Matthew - Part 5” by Pastor Kimber Kauffman, Senior Pastor College Park Church. Pastor Kimber continued his series on the Gospel of Matthew with today’s focus on repentance in Matthew 3:1-10. John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ, in a sense “paving the way” for Him to come. After 400 years of prophecy silence, everyone in Israel was expecting the Messiah. But first, a man with the spirit of Elijah had to come to deliver a very important message: that true repentance is necessary to be right with God…

Before you begin your discussion, ask God to give each person the grace to honestly see their condition before God.

Jewish people had ceremonial washings, but John’s baptism was different because this baptism was performed:

• By someone else, not by one’s own hands
• Once, not many times
• Only on the person who had embraced the message of repentance

1. How is John’s Baptism like the work Christ did on the Cross? How is it like our receiving Christ’s redemption by faith? (Hebrews 9:11-28 may be helpful.)

Recall Pastor Kim’s explanation of repentance: your going one way and at a definite point you turn away from where you were headed, leave everything behind, and go in a totally new and opposite direction.

2. This kind of repentance from sin towards Christ always results in obvious change. What “fruit in keeping with repentance” have you seen in your life? (Gal 5:22-23 lists some. For further study read Matthew 12:33-35, John 15:1-17, Ephesians 5 & 6, Colossians 1:1-14, and James 3)

3. If you were converted at an early age, then share a point later in life that gives you confidence you indeed have this kind of fruit.

4. Do you think you might not yet have repented, like the man who confessed to Kimber that he had “been a fake” his whole life; going to church, looking on the outside like a godly man—but in his heart he knew he had never yielded himself to God? (John 16:8-9)

*** If so; be glad because your feeling may be God’s way of wooing you! Only the Holy Spirit can make you aware of your sin and your need for Christ! Remember how the prodigal son’s father ran to him? You can trust Christ! Please, don’t allow this moment to pass without telling someone you think you may not be saved! ***

The Pharisees and Sadducees depended on things other than God’s grace. Their hope was in the fact that they were in Abraham’s bloodline and that they did all sorts of religious activity.

5. How can we, at College Park (with all of its great teaching, kind people, and good programs like Small Flock Groups) be like the Pharisees and Sadducees?

6. Do you ever think that being in this Small Flock Group, or your other church-related activity, makes you better than average?

7. What are some of the benefits of “testing ourselves” to see if we are in the faith?

8. When was the last time you privately considered questions like: “Have I repented and received Christ?” or “Do I really believe the story about Jesus?”

9. If God were to visit our meeting right now and say to you “I want you to repent from _____________” what be in the blank for you today?