Click here for the sermon discussion questions or see them listed below. We highly encourage you to listen, think, and talk about the sermon. These are questions you can reflect on by yourself, with your family, or with your small group.

Discussion Questions 

1. How can a person be blessed even though they are poor, hungry, weeping and hated?  What do you think Jesus wants us to understand about the true source of blessing?
2. Describe the “pearl of great price” (Matthew 13:45-46).  Why is it so valuable? How does it help the Christian through poverty, want, sadness and persecution?
3. Is it possible to be both cool/popular and Christian at the same time?  Why or why not?
4. What differences would you see between a person who lives for the present, and a person who lives for the future?  How does a focus on the future reality of heaven help a Christian live through “momentary light affliction”?
5. Jesus could have been the richest, coolest, most popular, all-powerful person in the history of the world.  Yet we are told in Isaiah 53 that “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”  Why do you think Jesus chose to live and die in the manner in which He did, and how does this influence the way you look at your own life?