Youth group Olympics
10 minutes
Play the all-time youth group classic: running-around-a-broom-at-the-end-of-the-room-before-you-get-dizzy-and-have-to-run-back-relay-race. Award the winning team with points!
Opening discussion
5 minutes
Encourage them to discuss with a partner: where have you seen God at work in your life in the past week? Give them a few minutes to chat and then ask them what they remember from last week.
Read the passage
20 minutes
Read Matthew 5:17-48. Invite the young people to get into groups and answer the following questions:
- What religion was Jesus?
- What religion were Jesus’ disciples?
- Why do you think Jesus was talking about the law?
Say: In all of the next sections - murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, revenge and love for enemies - Jesus is directly addressing laws that the Jews would have followed, and explaining the true fulfilment of them.
The problem with laws is that we sometimes try and push up against the boundaries we have been set. We feel that so long as we are not breaking the law, we are ok. Sometimes we question the exact wording. We create weird laws for ourselves, and say that so long as I’m not doing that thing in that way, we are fine.
Challenge the young people to think in a mischievous and creative way (which will be very hard for them, obviously). Ask them to discuss how they could go against what this person wants them to do, while still ‘technically’ doing what they’ve asked:
- ‘Please don’t stroke the cat’ (eg you use a broom to stroke the cat meaning that you aren’t technically stroking the cat)
- ‘You can’t go and see your friends tonight’
- ‘Please can you clean your plate’
Say: Those are silly examples - and please don’t go away and play this game for real with your parents - but they hopefully highlight how it’s possible to still technically obey a law, even though your intention is to go against it. There’s a difference between the letter of the law (the actual words used) and the spirit of the law (the willingness to fulfil it). Here, Jesus makes a distinction between the two. It’s not about just fulfilling the law in an external way. It’s about our hearts. Hand out the following scenarios to groups and ask them to discuss what they think about them:
- Bob and Jill are 17 years old and have been going out for a while. They’re part of a Christian youth group, and heard a youth leader say that they should save sex for marriage. They take this to mean that everything apart from ‘full’ sex is fine, and so as long as they don’t ‘do the deed’ in the traditional way, everything else is ok.
- Joe is 16 years old and belongs to a Christian youth group. He remembers hearing in Sunday school that stealing is wrong, according to the Ten Commandments. He’s never stolen anything in his life. He really wants to watch a film on the internet, but annoyingly it’s not available on YouTube. He has found it on a website though, and seeing as it’s available to stream he decides to watch it.
- Sarah is 15 and doesn’t have much money. She needs to get on a train to Birmingham from London, but doesn’t have any time to buy a ticket. She decides to get on the train and will buy a ticket when the ticket inspector on the train comes. They never do. She gets off in Birmingham, and the turnstiles are open. She considers it her lucky day.
Say: It’s all about our hearts. Our desire should not be to just get around the laws without technically breaking them, but to actively desire a holy life, and to run away from sin where we see it in our lives: to go in the other direction, to gouge out our eyes if necessary! This is what Jesus is getting at throughout this section - there’s a whole new, higher standard of living he is after.
Spotlight: Other Faiths
5 minutes
Christianity is quite different to some other religions when it comes to following the law. Because of what Jesus did on the cross to take away our sin, we do not need to follow laws in order to make ourselves holy enough before God. With other religions this isn’t the case; Muslims and Jews, for example, devote themselves to certain practices, laws and ways of life in order to be holy. Think together: what can we learn from their devotion? How can we pray for our Muslim and Jewish friends, that they might know Jesus?
Worship
10 minutes
Say: Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking lots about Jesus and the meaning of these Bible passages, but all of this counts for nothing unless we know Jesus. It can be easy to lose motivation and heart with this stuff when we forget what it’s all for: to follow and know Jesus more closely. Spend some time in worship to close, inviting the young people to remember afresh why they set out on this discipleship journey in the first place.
