Suggestions for leading a study:

• Familiarize yourself with the passage in context, including the book itself.  Who wrote it to whom, and why?
• Read through the study guide a couple times to get the “big idea” as well as the flow of the argument
• Have the group read through the passage in it’s entirety before beginning the study.  One of the goals is to try to get your members to learn how to study Scripture methodically, and this is an important step.
• Be prayed up
• Have fun!
  

Law Abiding Citizens

-Jesus’ reference to the “Law or the Prophets” in verse 17 refers to the entire Old Testament.  How did the coming of Christ fulfill that?

-How do you think that each of us can best allow the coming of Christ to be the fulfillment of God’s plan in our own lives? 

-Re-read verse 18.  

            -When can we stop worrying about letting Jesus fulfill the Law and the Prophets in our lives?

            -How much of what the Law and the Prophets intended to teach must we let Jesus fulfill in us, and what can we discard?

-According to verse 19 what are the two things that determine our status in the kingdom of heaven? What is the best way to equip yourself to “climb the ladder” in the Kingdom? 

-Re-read verse 20.  The Pharisees and teachers of the law were really good at obeying all the details of the requirements of the Old Testament.  Now that Jesus has come to fulfill the law, what do you think he means by surpassing their kind of righteousness?

-From this lesson, select your preference from the following options and how you intend to accomplish it:

            1. I’m going to fulfill the requirements of the law and the prophets by trying harder to obey them

            2. I’m going to fulfill the requirements of the law and the prophets by knowing Jesus better and allowing him to work in and through me

Each study on the Sermon on the Mount is based on the fact that God has translated us into the Kingdom of God, with all of the benefits and expectations being things that should currently characterize our “life in the Kingdom.”  Each lesson illustrates an important Kingdom principle that, when taken together, will help achieve a “Kingdom worldview,” in order to live healthy and significant lives while we await the complete fulfillment which will attend the second coming of Christ.  Review of Kingdom principles so far: 
5-12 (Beatitudes): The eternal perspective on our lives which comes from living in the Kingdom should be able to transform our attitude toward life because we have constant access to what is really important. 
13-16 (Salt and Light): Good works are not the means to God’s salvation, but are still critical in order to accomplish Kingdom ministry and mission in this world. The Kingdom principle in this passage is that we cannot keep the law of God by trying hard—we keep it by becoming the kind of people who naturally live in accordance with what God desires for us.

-Jesus’ reference to the “Law or the Prophets” in verse 17 refers to the entire Old Testament.  How did the coming of Christ fulfill that?

            Obviously, this is one of the most perplexing passages in Scripture and causes many people to scratch their heads.  One of the keys to understanding what Jesus is really saying is to understand that he is speaking of the entire Old Testament and what it was all about: not just the law.  Some people get tripped up thinking that Jesus is referring to the ritualistic requirements of Old Testament law regarding worship, food, etc.  It is better to understand Jesus as the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament in the sense that it was pointing to the coming messiah all along.  The law mostly revealed the fact that mankind is incapable of really keeping it, and the prophets mostly reminded them that they had failed to do so.  The Old Testament as a story of God’s people reveals the need for a different approach.  But God had a plan all along in order to fulfill what the law and the prophets reveal as his preferences for us: Jesus.

-How do you think that each of us can best allow the coming of Christ to be the fulfillment of God’s plan in our own lives? 

            Jesus is the messiah who fulfills God’s plan begun in the Old Testament.  But he does so through the radical transformation of individuals who allow his influence to pervade every aspect of their lives.  Make sure to go beyond just “letting Jesus save us”, or “having our sins forgiven.”  The expectations that God lays out in the Old Testament are extreme, and our commitment to Christ must match that if it is truly going to “fulfill” God’s intentions for us.  It begins by entrusting our lives to him as our savior, but then we must become his disciple, discovering all that he desires for us and accessing all of his power to accomplish it.  The end of this lesson will revisit this issue and ask how that happens for us in practical ways.

-Re-read verse 18.  

            -When can we stop worrying about letting Jesus fulfill the Law and the Prophets in our lives?

            Not until “heaven and earth disappear.”  In other words, there is never a point when we get to “retire” from meeting God’s expectations for us. 

            -How much of what the Law and the Prophets intended to teach must we let Jesus fulfill in us, and what can we discard?

            Every “jot and tittle”—the smallest letter or least stroke of a pen in Hebrew remains valid.  The rest of the New Testament makes it clear that the requirements of the law in regards to the “regulations” were completed with Christ’s death on the cross (Heb. 10, Gal. 5, Col. 2:14, etc.).  But the fact that Christ did that for us does not diminish even a little God’s intentions for us in regards to how he wants us to live.  The rest of the sermon on the mount gives us examples of how that can happen.  Taken together, verse 18 reminds us what God wants in regards to his expectations for how we live: it’s all of it, all the time.

-According to verse 19 what are the two things that determine our status in the kingdom of heaven? What is the best way to equip yourself to “climb the ladder” in the Kingdom? 

            Keeping (or not keeping) the commandments, as well as teaching others.  Here is an opportunity to remind your group that there really is such a thing as the “least” and the “greatest” in God’s kingdom.  A key Kingdom principle is that what we do will never earn us salvation, but it does earn rewards from God.  Scripture is never apologetic about that (see the parable of the talents in Matt. 25, 1 Cor. 3:10-15, 2 Cor. 5:10, etc.)  Getting equipped to not just obey Christ, but teach others to do so is the best way to ensure our own eternal status, whatever that means.  Being able to teach others is the goal of spiritual formation for all believers, and the whole point of this lesson is that equipping ourselves for that is much more than just having information about the Scripture: we must fully develop our relationship with Jesus who is the fulfillment of it. 

-Re-read verse 20.  The Pharisees and teachers of the law were really good at obeying all the details of the requirements of the Old Testament.  Now that Jesus has come to fulfill the law, what do you think he means by surpassing their kind of righteousness?

            According to this verse, surpassing the righteousness of the Pharisees and teachers of the law is the means by which we “enter” the kingdom.  So one thing this has to mean is that we have received the righteousness of Christ himself by accepting his gift of salvation and being renewed spiritually.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.(2 Cor. 5:21) The teaching of Jesus in the rest of the sermon on the mount also affirms that our lives will go beyond just legalistic adherence to rules and regulations, and truly fulfill what God really wanted to accomplish with them. 

-From this lesson, select your preference from the following options and how you intend to accomplish it:

            1. I’m going to fulfill the requirements of the law and the prophets by trying harder to obey             them

            2. I’m going to fulfill the requirements of the law and the prophets by knowing Jesus better              and allowing him to work in and through me

Clearly the preferential answer is number 2.  The tricky part is how people intend to accomplish knowing Jesus better in order to allow him to really fulfill what God wants to do in and through them.  We need to know the information, of course, but it has to go beyond that.  A walk with Christ that is fully developed by every possible means: prayer, worship, community, service, etc. is once again the ultimate answer to fulfill God’s plan for us.  When we let the image of Christ become fully formed within us, we become the kind of people who naturally do what God wants us to do.  That was really his intent all along.