CONVERSATION STARTERS:
Conversation Starters help us dig deeper, connecting Sunday’s sermons with our Monday lives. These prompts have been designed to help Community Groups grow in their relationship with God, with one another, and with their neighbors. Please know that these questions are meant to be a resource to you. You do not have to follow them verbatim or get through them all. We trust you to know your group and to ask the questions based on your group needs.

1. Read Psalm 2 out loud. What stands out to you from this psalm? If you are participating in the Formed.life, what are some of the things that stood out to you in your study of the psalm this past week?

2. How does this psalm contrast God’s kingship with human rulers and authorities?

3. Read Luke 1:46-55 and 2:1-7. How do these passages pick up on the themes of Psalm 2?

4. How do these passages give you hope this Advent season?

PRAYER PROMPT:
Praise Jesus for giving himself up for the church - for us. Pray for the humility and love to give ourselves back to Christ in joyful service.

Title: The King’s Victory
Scripture: Psalm 22
Speaker: Paul Brandes, PaulB@cckc.church

“[Advent is often] superficially understood as a time to get ready for Christmas, but in truth it’s the season for contemplating the judgment of God. Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in this world. Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light—but the season should not move too quickly or too glibly, lest we fail to acknowledge the depth of the darkness. Advent bids us take a fearless inventory of the darkness: the darkness without and the darkness within.”
- Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

> King Jesus knows pain.

> King Jesus knows pain farther.

“By combining multiple animal images, the psalmist paints a montage that pictures impressionistically his horrific suffering. As a result, the reader is given the impression of the terror of cosmic anarchy brought to bear on one figure, a vision of what happens when evil breaks through the normal restraints of humanity because the restraining, correcting salvation and providence of God are absent.” - Daniel Estes

> King Jesus knows pain finished.

> King Jesus knows pain for us.

> King Jesus knows our pain with us.

> King Jesus knows pain.