By way of introduction: What are you reading at the moment in this stay-at-home season?

Read Acts 13:13-52

1. For a little bit of context, why are Paul and Barnabas in Antioch in Pisidia in the first place?

2. As Paul and Barnabas go to synagogue that day, they’re asked if they would like to give a “word of encouragement”. Read over Acts 13:16-37, and outline what that word of encouragement is, you can break it down using the following three sections:

   • verses 16-25

   • verses 26-37

   • verses 38-41

3. What is the application from Paul’s sermon, from verses 38-41? How ought the message move our hearts?

4. There are various responses to the gospel, but why is the response of many Jewish religious leaders so striking here (verse 27, 46)?

5. God’s Old Testament people, Israel, has been given God’s rescue plan in the Old Testament Scriptures. Here, Paul expounds from the Old Testament Scriptures how this all points precisely to Jesus. Yet the Jewish leaders and those they influenced had not been reading the Bible like their life depended on it.

   • What sort of things do we need to read like our life depends on it? (give some examples) How can we start reading the Bible like that, if this way of reading is new to us?

   • What things move Bible reading out of our day for us, and what is it about those things that does that?

6. Here are some helpful questions that we could use in our Bible reading, to read God’s word like our life depends on it:

   • What does this section of Scripture reveal about God?

   • What does this section of Scripture reveal about me? My sin? My need of God?

   • How do I read this section of Scripture through the gospel of Jesus Christ (read Luke 24:26-27 and 24:44-47 for that interpretive lens)

   • How does Jesus deal with my sin, or meet my need?

   • How does Jesus change everything for me? For our church? For Bendigo and beyond?

Pray for one another, that the Lord Jesus would change everything