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Take Off the Grave Clothes (Study Guide)

“Take Off the Grave Clothes” Sermon Study Guide for August 23, 2026 Downloadable Version Scripture: John 11:38-44 1. Lazarus Was Dead two sisters… “if you had been here…” “Jesus wept” - Romans 12:15; Hebrews 12:2 four days… 2. The Glory of God Psalm 19 John 1:14 - the word made flesh Isaiah 53:2 3. Beauty a. A ____________________________ 1 Corinthians 15:20, 56; John 10:10 b. Add to the _____________________ Questions to Discuss or Ponder: Why do you think “Jesus wept”? What would cause the heart of God to break? How are the reactions of Mary and Martha different and yet similar? How do you typically react to the loss of someone close to you? Why did Jesus wait so long to come to Lazarus’ home? What most communicates the glory of God to you in your own life? How have you experienced the “weight” of God’s glory? Why, do you think, Jesus prays in the way he does outside of Lazarus’ tomb? How does the raising of Lazarus help the people there see the glory of God? In...
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Free Indeed

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John 8:31-36 August 16, 2026 • Mount Pleasant UMC This past summer, we celebrated 250 years as a nation. 250 years of freedom. I remember the 200th and one of the differences I noticed—and I may be wrong, because I was pretty young at the 200th—but it seemed that this year all of the various political groups were trying to co-opt the celebration for their own purposes. I don’t remember that happening before. Before it seemed we united around the anniversary. Now, it’s just one more thing that divides us, which I think is horribly ironic: one of the things that divides us is our freedom (including our freedom to disagree, which we even seem to disagree about). We’ve been exploring what I call “signposts” in the Gospel of John, things that help us make sense of the world and, not unsurprisingly, point toward the way God intended the world to be. The problem is that these signposts are broken and have been broken for a long time. As a result, we lack direction. We don’t know which way...
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Free Indeed (Study Guide)

“Free Indeed” Sermon Study Guide for August 16, 2026 Downloadable Version Scripture: John 8:31-36 1. Signpost: Freedom chaos! 2. Jesus and the Pharisees Matthew 23:2-3 Abraham’s descendants slaves to sin family 3. How We Experience Freedom a. Freedom from _____________________ b. Freedom from _____________________ c. Freedom from _____________________ d. Freedom from _____________________ Psalm 51:4 e. Freedom for _______________________ Matthew 16:24; John 15:13 Questions to Discuss or Ponder: If you were to ask your neighbors what “freedom” means, what would they say? What image(s) to you line up with what freedom is? What happens when everyone in a culture has their own idea of what freedom is? Why did Jesus argue with the Pharisees so much? While the Pharisees were concerned with slavery to someone else, what was Jesus’ primary concern? How is being set free from sin similar to adoption? What does it mean to belong to a family? Which of the ways we exper...
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What the Light Shows

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John 3:16-21 August 12, 2026 • Mount Pleasant UMC The other day, Easton was at our house and we had played with I think just about every toy in the house. When Rachel came to pick him up, I told him we had to clean up, and I know I’m biased, but he’s pretty good about doing that. He began to pick up toys and put them back in their bins. And then he picked up one of the bigger toys and went to put it back but there was a problem. Something else had been put in the place where that toy went. Probably by Grandpa! So he stood there holding the toy while Rachel and I both tried to get him to just put it somewhere else. He didn’t want to do that because, in his mind, there was a right way to put the toys back (the way Grandma had organized them). And as I watched him try to figure out what to do, I couldn’t help but think how we are wired to want things to be made right. We want everything to be in order and the toys to go all back in the right place. When we get older, we have a name for ...
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