This six-week study walks through the full "Home, Family, Neighbor, Public Square" teaching one section at a time, pairing an Old Testament and New Testament passage each week. Each week can stand alone for a full hour of group discussion, and each is built to print cleanly on its own page. Read the Expanded or Teaching version alongside this study for the complete picture, or work through this series on its own for a slower, group-paced walk through the same material.
Week 1: It Starts Where You Live
Old Testament Passage
New Testament Passage
Walking Through It
There is a natural order to how faith spreads, and it begins in the home before it ever reaches anywhere else. God did not ask for a formal program, a curriculum, or a special hour set aside once a week. He asked for faith woven into the most ordinary moments of family life — sitting, walking, lying down, rising up — so it becomes part of the air a household breathes rather than a special occasion it observes. This runs against how many people naturally think about passing on faith, treating spiritual conversation as something reserved for church rather than the kitchen table.
Discussion Questions
- Why do you think God chose such ordinary moments (sitting, walking, lying down, rising) as the setting for passing on faith?
- What does Joshua's declaration near the end of his life tell us about what he believed mattered most?
- Where do the most natural spiritual conversations happen in your own household right now?
- What gets in the way of weaving faith into daily, ordinary moments rather than treating it as a separate event?
- What would it look like this week to have one unplanned, ordinary conversation about God with someone in your household?
- Is there a decision, like Joshua's, that your household needs to make plainly and settle once and for all?
Week 2: The Household as the First Witness
Old Testament Passage
New Testament Passage
Walking Through It
A family that lives out its faith honestly becomes the first sermon anyone in that household ever sees, long before a word about God is spoken aloud. Children raised watching their parents actually live what they claim to believe carry something entirely different than children who only hear it preached. The home is the hardest audience precisely because it is the most honest one — faith is either proven real there or exposed as performance.
Discussion Questions
- How is Deuteronomy 4:9's warning about forgetting connected to Deuteronomy 6:6-7's instruction to teach constantly?
- Why does Paul tie fitness for church leadership directly to how a person manages their own household?
- What is the difference between a household where Scripture is quoted and one where it is visibly lived?
- Why are children often the most perceptive judges of whether faith is real in a home?
- What is one area where your own household's daily life might be preaching something different than your words?
- How can a family create space to actually watch each other live out faith, not just talk about it?
Week 3: Then Brothers and Sisters, Then Neighbors
Old Testament Passage
New Testament Passage
Walking Through It
From the home, the circle widens naturally, first to brothers and sisters, the people closest day in and day out, then to neighbors watching from just outside the family. A neighbor does not need a sermon nearly as much as they need to see a life worth wanting — that pull is not manipulation, it is simply what light naturally does, drawing people who are looking for something better than what they currently have.
Discussion Questions
- How does Leviticus 19:18 set up the same widening circle Jesus describes in Matthew 5?
- What does it mean that light "cannot be hidden" — is that a comfort or a challenge to you?
- How is a light shining to draw people different from a light shining to draw attention to yourself?
- Who is a neighbor in your actual daily path right now, and what might they be watching in your life?
- What does it look like practically to let faith be visible without forcing or performing it?
- Why do you think Jesus places "good deeds" before glorifying the Father in this verse?
Week 4: Falling Short at Home First, Respected at the Gate
Old Testament Passage
New Testament Passage
Walking Through It
Love of neighbor that skips over love of family is not love that has actually been tested yet. This is not meant to shame anyone; it is meant to locate where the real work begins. The Proverbs 31 household shows the pattern completed — a husband's public honor at the gate rests entirely on the foundation of a household well-tended first, and her confidence about the future is the natural result of a household ordered around what actually matters.
Discussion Questions
- Why is it "far easier" to claim love for people we rarely see than for the people closest to us?
- What does 1 John 4:20's logic teach about love of God versus love of the people right in front of us?
- How does the Proverbs 31 woman's public honor depend on what happens privately at home first?
- What does it mean that she "does not eat the bread of idleness"?
- Where might you be tempted to invest more in how you appear publicly than in the household right in front of you?
- What is one honest, unshaming question this week's passage raises for you personally?
Week 5: Then, and Only Then, the Public Square
Old Testament Passage
New Testament Passage
Walking Through It
Once the pattern is established at home and has already rippled out to neighbors, it reaches its intended destination, the public square, exactly as God designed. This was never meant to be optional or an advanced stage reserved for the specially bold — it is where the whole pattern was always headed. Daniel's private, established habit of prayer became a public, costly stand only when it was tested, because the private practice came first, years before the law was ever passed against him.
Discussion Questions
- Daniel prayed the same way he "had done before" — how does a private, established habit prepare someone for a public test?
- Why do you think David danced before the whole nation without embarrassment (2 Samuel 6:14-16)?
- How does Hebrews 11:6 connect earnest, private faith to public proclamation?
- What did the apostles mean in Acts 4:20 when they said they "cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard"?
- Is there a public step of faith you have been hesitant to take because the private foundation does not feel solid yet?
- What private habit, if you kept it faithfully, might prepare you for a public moment you cannot yet see coming?
Week 6: Built on the Rock, and Carrying It Forward
Old Testament Passage
New Testament Passage
Walking Through It
None of this pattern works by human effort alone. A household ordered around God's design still faces real storms; both houses in Jesus's parable face the identical weather. What differs is whether it stands, an outcome decided long before the storm, in the quiet, ordinary work of building on rock rather than sand, trusting the actual building to the Lord rather than to sheer willpower alone.
Discussion Questions
- What does Psalm 127:1 free a parent or household leader from carrying alone?
- In Matthew 7:24-25, both houses face the same storm — why does the foundation matter more than avoiding hardship?
- How would you describe the difference between laboring in your own strength and laboring while trusting God to build?
- "Anyone who does not provide for their relatives... has denied the faith" (1 Timothy 5:8) — why is this language so strong?
- Looking back across all six weeks, where does your own household currently stand in the pattern: home, neighbor, or public square?
- What is one concrete, ordinary step you can take this week to strengthen the foundation at home first?
Closing Thought
Across these six weeks, one pattern ties every passage together — a commandment kept in the ordinary moments of a household becomes a life a child watches and absorbs; a life absorbed at home becomes a witness a neighbor notices without being told; and a witness noticed by a neighbor becomes, in God's own time, a reputation that carries naturally into the public square. Nothing about this pattern requires forcing faith into places it does not belong. It requires only faithfulness at the actual starting point, trusting God's design to carry it the rest of the way outward.
For deeper study on any week's theme, read the full Teaching or Expanded version of Home, Family, Neighbor, Public Square.
Want to read these passages in their full setting? Browse every book of the Bible on BibleRef (opens in a new tab), a free site with plain-language commentary.