Toward the goal

This is the lesson from 2014-12-28. Amazingly, it went pretty much according to the outline.

Intro

In most murder mysteries, the murder occurs at the beginning and the bulk of the story is the pursuit of the solution — discovering who the murderer is. In Toward Zero, however, Agatha Christie began with the buildup, telling the story of how the murder was to be committed, and then, when it happens, the detective, who has been observing the people, knows the solution immediately.

Today’s lesson in Ezra is like that: People are gathered, work is begun and then halted and then resumed, and it’s all heading toward something.

Background

A few years ago, we were studying 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles, which run in parallel to each other. At the very end, the kingdom of Judah is conquered, and many of the people are carried off into Babylon. Then the Babylonians are conquered by the Persians. But then, just before the end of 2 Chronicles, the Persian emperor decrees that peoples conquered by the Babylonians back to their ancestral homes.

And the book of Ezra begins by repeating those words of Cyrus, the Persian emperor, from the end of 2 Chronicles.

Migration

• READ 1:1
• READ 1:2–3
• READ 1:4
• READ 1:5
• SAY Don’t read too much into Cyrus’s words here: This doesn’t translate into his belief in the “God of heaven.” He used similar, culturally appropriate language for every group he was repatriating to its homeland.
• SAY On the other hand, don’t read too little into it either. God made it so that this change in emperors (this was the “first year of Cyrus”) and change in policy would be in place. God had a plan. Remember what Proverbs 21:1 says: The king’s heart goes wherever God directs it.

The altar and the beginning of the temple

• SAY So the people migrate, and they get settled in. And then …
• READ 3:1–3
• So the daily burnt offerings are in place.
• We don’t live under their sacrificial system. ASK But do we have anything that should happen on a regular schedule like the daily burnt offerings?
  • Don’t neglect assembling togther (Hebrews)
  • The blessed man meditates on God’s law day and night (Psalm 1)
• READ 3:4–6
• ASK What’s missing? (the temple)
• READ 3:10–11
• SAY The work on the temple is begun — the foundation is laid and there is great rejoicing! However …
• READ 3:12–13
• ASK Why was there weeping? (the new was not a good as the old)

Opposition

• Let’s rewind a few decades: When the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom, and the Babylonians later conquered Jerusalem and carried people off, they also imported captives from other lands they conquered into Judea.
• The superstition commonly held by almost everyone (except the Jews) was that gods were attached to places. When you went somewhere, you worshipped the local gods. So when the Assyrians imported people, they brought in a priest to teach the new poeple about the local gods. What did these people do when the temple was started?
• READ 4:2
• ASK Without reading ahead: Would we have accepted their help if we were there?
• ASK How much help should we expect from the culture around us? How much of the culture’s help should we ask for?
  • What about, for instance, our tax deductions for our giving to the church?
• The answer: READ 4:3
• The result: READ 4:4–5
• And a letter was sent to the new emperor, who replied that they had to stop building the temple.

The resumption

• READ 5:1–2
• This is many years later.
• Notice that the rebuilding didn’t wait for the government’s permission.
• There’s a new set of civil servants in place.
  • It has been several years. There haven’t been any major rebellions, so the Jews are known to be good citizens.
  • The civil servants aren’t opposed to the building of the temple. They just want to check the permits.
  • They send a letter to the new emperor, Darius. He has the records checked and finds that the Jews are just doing what was commanded 2 or 3 emperors back, and he makes provision for everything to be done.
• Finally, the temple is finished.

The passover

• READ 6:16
• There was still something missing that they had waited to have the temple for.
• READ 6:19
• SAY This is what they’ve been driving toward. They couldn’t keep the passover without the temple. Why did they need the Passover? From their point of view, it was to commemorate the miracles God performed to get their ancestors out of Egypt a thousand years earlier. But from our point of view, it’s because it tells us of Jesus.
  • God’s firstborn — only-born — being sacrificed for our sins, in our place.
  • God passes over our sins because the penalty for them has been exacted.
  • Century after century, the Passover as a type (remember: a person, object, or event that prefigures Jesus) was performed and was now resumed. It was preparing the way so that Jesus would be recognized.

Good News: Great Joy!

This is the outline of the lesson from 2014-12-21.

Traditions

• ASK What is your favorite Christmas movie?
• ASK What is your favorite Christmas song (hymn, secular, whatever)?
• ASK What is your favorite family Christmas tradition?
• SAY When I was growing up, whoever in our family was in town would gather on Christmas Eve, and we would read the Christmas story from Luke 2, around in a circle, one verse at a time. So that’s what we’re going to do now.
• HAND OUT the handout, and read it in a circle.

Shepherds

• We already read about the shepherds.
  • ASK What are some of the things we’ve heard about them? (Low-lifes, tended the sheep for the official sacrifices, etc)
  • ASK How much do we know from the text? (Not much)
  • SAY From external sources, we know
    • they were not allowed to testify in court;
    • Pig farmers were worse than shepherds.
• When Michael & Andrew were little, they would say, “It’s dark at night,” and we thought it was cute. But darkness was something the shepherds understood. So when the glory of the Lord shone around them and there was an angel there, they were terrified. So the angel said “Don’t be afraid.”
• ASK Why not be afraid? (Good news: great joy)
  • Good news = Gospel
  • I looked at a lot of translations, and there were 2 basic ways to phrase this:
    • Good news that brings or causes great joy
    • Good news of great joy
  • ASK (Thinking question) Can you see a difference between them?
    • The good news results in great joy, vs.
    • The good news is great joy.
  • ASK What is the source of the joy?
    • For unto you is born (Isaiah 9:6) Savior/Christ/Lord
      • “Savior” = “Joshua” = “Jesus”
      • “Christ” = “Messiah”
      • “Lord” = “God” (Psalm 110:1)
• What does “multitude of the heavenly host” mean? (The army of heaven)
  • Why an army? (READ Joshua 5:13–14a) The angels were there because their commander was taking a new form — a baby.
  • What was the army doing? (Saying “Glory to God …”)
  • READ TOGETHER 2:14.
  • “Peace” — An army is there declaring peace. We aren’t talking about the old Yugoslavia, where they had peace at the pointy end of a gun. And we aren’t talking about warm fuzzies. Or the peace of God, i.e., the peace that God has within himself. (We can have that, too, but that’s not what it means here.) We’re talking about peace with God the way Romans 5 talks about it: No longer at war with God.

At the barn

• They go and find Jesus, wrapped up and in the feed trough just the way the angel said. And they told people.
• “All who heard it wondered,” as in finding it wondrous, wonderful.
• God had Luke learn about this and write it down for us, so that we can wonder, too.
  • Wonder at the Savior — the one who came to pay for your sins.
  • Wonder at the Messiah — the one who came to free his people from their slavery to sin.
  • Wonder at the Lord — the one who “rules the world in truth and grace.”
• And this is the message we have: A Savior (Jesus), Christ the Lord.

Wisdom’s invitation

This is the lesson for March 9, 2014. I'm setting this to be on the blog some time during the week after, so I have no idea yet how it went or how much of it I got through.

“Wisdom is deep insight into how things work.” — Greg Koukl

Intro

Solomon, when he wrote the proverbs, was soaked in the scriptures he had available at the time. Remember the command in Deuteronomy 17: The king had to make a copy of (at least) Deuteronomy — perhaps the entire pentateuch — in his own hand.

First call of wisdom: 1:20–28

• READ 1:20–22
• Wisdom
  • is available
  • wants to be heard
• Different kinds of people who don’t have wisdom
  • Simple: Directionless, easily swayed
  • Fool: Rejects wisdom
  • Scoffer: Makes fun of wisdom
• READ 1:23
• ASK What is the benefit of listening to wise warnings?
• READ 1:24–28
• ASK What is the cost of ignoring wise warnings? (It will be too late.)

Second call of wisdom: 2:1–8

• READ 2:1–4
• READ 2:5–8
• ASK What is our part in obtaining wisdom?
  • Pay attention (v.1)
  • Remember (v.1)
  • Incline your heart (OT: heart is the equivalent of modern brain) (v.2)
  • Ask God for it (v.3)
  • Consider it a treasure (v.4)
• ASK What is the immediate result of seeking wisdom?
  • “Fear of the Lord”
  • the knowledge of God
  • ASK Are these 2 different things?
  • SAY Dan Phillips says that the “fear of the Lord” in the OT is equivalent to “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ” in the NT
• ASK What is God’s part in our obtaining wisdom?
  • He gives it.
  • His word is wisdom.
  • ASK Do we get it by deserving it? (No)
  • It’s like your salvation: It’s yours because God gave it to you.

Trust in the Lord

• READ 3:1–4
• Sounds just like Joshua 1:8. (Maybe by Solomon had to copy Joshua and Judges as well.)
• Where else do we hear the phrase “in the sight of God and man”? (Luke 2:52, where Jesus, as a boy, had been demonstrating his wisdom to the teachers in the temple)

A command and a promise and a way to interpret (some) hardship

• SAY Generally, Proverbs is a book of insight and principle, not promises. But here we have a command, and obeying this command brings something that looks like a promise.
• READ 3:5–6
• Our hearts warm with verses like 5 & 6. But remember about “heart”: it means “brain” or “mind”.
• How easy would it be to just say “I’m trusting God for everything” and then turn around and be passive about knowing him, about acquiring wisdom? But that would be the exact opposite of what the whole book of Proverbs is about.
• How much do we hear verse 7?
• READ 3:7–10
• These sound like promises of health and wealth. Are they?
• READ 3:11–12
• This is quoted in Hebrews 12. God’s promise there and in, e.g., Romans 8:28, is that our hardship is for our good.

Fish & forgiveness

This is the lesson from February 23. Amazingly, I think I remember getting through all of it.

Fish

• SAY Peter decided to go fishing, and 6 other disciples went with him.
• READ 21:4–5
• READ 21:6–7
• ASK Why didn’t they catch any fish all night, and then caught almost more than they could handle?
• ASK How did John recognize Jesus? (He remembered the experience in Luke 5:1–11, when Peter fell at Jesus’s knees and said, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man!”)
• SAY They pulled the fish up on the shore, and Jesus had breakfast ready for them.
• READ 21:12b–13
• What did this remind them of? (Feeding of the 5,000)

Forgiveness

• READ 21:15
• ASK What did Jesus mean by “more than these”?
  • More than the other disciples?
  • More than the living he could make fishing?
• READ 21:16
• READ 21:17
• READ 21:18
• Some people think there’s something in the way the differentiation of the Greek words for “love,” others think there’s no essential difference in the way John uses these words when he writes.
  • We use love to mean different things as well:
    • “We say we love Coca-Cola, and we love mother’s hot apple pie. We say we love Captain Kangaroo — we say we do, but we lie!”
• It’s also not much use to try to differentiate between Jesus saying “sheep” & “lambs” or “tend” and “feed”.
  • SAY The point is to match up forgiveness for Peter with Peter’s denial of Jesus: 3 times around a charcoal fire.
  • Also, Peter took this as Jesus giving him advice for pastoring. And he passed this along to the pastors who came after him. READ 1 Peter 5:1–4
• SAY We sin. If you have sinned, and you think or feel you’re up against the limit of what God is willing to forgive, remember Peter. Jesus took forgiveness to Peter in a way he couldn’t mistake, and he has the same forgiveness for you and me when we sin.

Oh! to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be.
Let thy goodness like a fetter
bind my wand’ring heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it —
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart. Oh, take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

The resurrected Jesus

This is the lesson from 2014-02-16. I am scheduling it in advance, so I can’t talk about what we did or did not get to, or even whether we got to the lesson. Sometimes prayer needs outweigh the need for me to talk. This is not “big church,” so the priorities are different, and that’s okay.

Peter & John at the tomb

• READ 20:1–2
• READ 20:3–5

• READ 20:6–9

• SAY Jesus had been teaching his disciples that he would be killed and resurrected. (e.g., Matt 16:21, Mark 8:31). Peter even rebuked the creator of the universe for talking like that. Even though Jesus had been telling them, they didn’t yet understand that it had been prophesied over and over in the Old Testament.

Mary Magdalene at the tomb

• READ 20:10–11
  • ASK What was Mary Magdalene feeling? (open discussion)
  • ASK Have you ever felt that?
• READ 20:12–15
• READ 20:15–18
  • ASK What is Mary feeling now? (open discussion)

Jesus appears to most of the disciples

• READ 20:19–23
  • SAY When Jesus breathed on them, he was using an object lesson about the Holy Spirit:
    • Breath and spirit are the same word in Greek.
    • Jesus had already told them the Holy Spirit was coming.

Jesus and Thomas

• READ 20:24–25
• READ 20:26–29
• READ 20:30–31

SAY There has been a lot of malarky that followed from reading verse 29 by itself. It is used to support name-it, claim-it teaching; it has been used to support blind faith in various sorts of preachers. But look at what follows in verses 30–31: “[T]hese things are written so that you may believe …”

Back in 17:20, when Jesus was praying, he said, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word …” John’s gospel is the word of an eyewitness, and it is on this basis we believe.

John emphasizes this point in 1 John: READ 1 John 1:1–3. John is telling us that this is from those who have seen Jesus and can be believed.

One more thing

In 20:17, Jesus tells Mary, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father …”

But since then, he has asscended to the Father. Now is the time to cling to him.

When it seems he has abandoned you,

• cancer
• divorce
• pregnant daughter
• more cancer
• bullied daughter

that is when you should cling to Jesus. But not to the fantasy Jesus of what you would make up, and not to the false Jesus of some of those people on TV. The real Jesus, the one revealed in the Bible.

• Don’t put on a brave face and pretend to be okay.
• Do get to know your Savior in his word, so that when you hit a hard time, you know what you are holding on to.
  • One way to do this: The Gospel of John has 21 chapters. Read 3 chapters each day — that’s one week. Do this every week for a month.
  • The next month, go do the same with Matthew: 28 chapters, 4 each day.
  • Then Mark: 16 chapters, 2 or 3 each day.
  • Then Luke: 24 chapters, 3 or 4 each day.
  • Then the rest of the New Testament in appropriate-sized chunks.
  • Then go to the Old Testament, and see how Jesus is revealed there.
• This is how you learn who you are clinging to.

Jesus crucified

This is the lesson from 2014-02-09. Time was short because of a church function, so I only got 10 minutes to teach. We concentrated on fulfillment of prophecy and the finality of Jesus’s work on the cross.

Pilate’s poke at the Jews

• READ 19:17–22
• Opinion question: Why did Pilate write “The King Of The Jews”? (Because the leaders of the Jews had said “We have no king but C{}sar,” and he was taking them at their word.

Soldiers gamble for Jesus’s clothes

• READ 19:23–24
• All the way through the rest of this chapter, John wants to make sure to connect the crucifixion to prophecies.
• READ Psalm 22:18

Jesus sees that his mother is cared for

• READ 19:25–27
• John was the one who cared for her.
• Why not Jesus’s brothers? We don’t know.

Jesus dies

• READ 19:28–29
• Jesus is thirsty, dehydrated, so the thing they give him to drink fulfills prophecy.
• READ Psalm 69:21
• READ 19:30
• It is finished. ASK What was finished? (All the wrath of God for sin.)
• This is how we were saved. Remember the song we sing sometimes: “Till on the cross where Jesus died the wrath of God was satisfied.”
  • READ Romans 6:10
  • READ Hebrews 7:27
  • READ Hebrews 9:12
  • READ Hebrews 10:10

When Jesus said finished, he meant finished.

• READ 19:31–37
• Prophecy fulfillment keeps rolling in even after Jesus dies.
• READ Exodus 12:46, Numbers 9:12 about the passover lamb.
  • We know it was about Jesus because of 1 Corinthians 5:7

Jesus is buried

• READ 19:38–42
• ASK Jesus was crucified between 2 thieves. Normally when a criminal was crucified, his body was thrown on the burning trash heap. But what happened to Jesus’s body? (Buried in a rich man’s tomb.)
• This fulfilled even more prophecy. READ Isaiah 53:9.

Jesus prays

This is the outline for the lesson of 2014-01-12, on John 17. The outline is short, and (I felt like) class didn’t go well, at least the teaching part. The handout I gave out follows the outline. It’s probably better than the lesson proper.

Intro

Like a lot of John’s Gospel, this chapter is so full that it’s almost numbing to try to organize it into one lesson.

Read

• 17:1–3
• 17:4–6
• 17:7–9
• 17:10–12
• 17:13–15
• 17:16–18
• 17:19–21
• 17:22–24
• 17:25–26

The prayer

ASK Who does Jesus pray for, and what does he pray?

• Himself
  • That he would be glorified so that he could glorify the Father. (v 1, 5)
• The disciples
  • That the Father would keep them in his name. (v 11)
  • That the Father would keep them from the evil one (v 15)
  • Sanctify them. (v 17) ASK What does sanctify mean? (To set apart for holy service)
• Us
  • That we will all be one. (v 21)
  • To be with Jesus where he is to see his glory. (v 24)

The assertions about believers

ASK What does Jesus say about believers?

• We are in the world (v 11)
• Not of the world (vv 14, 16)
• Sent into the world (v 18)

HANDOUT

The Father Gave the Son …	John 17
authority to give eternal life	v. 2
people out of this world	vv. 2, 6, 9, 24
work to accomplish	v. 4
words	v. 8
his name	vv. 11, 12
glory	vv. 22, 24

The Son Gives Believers …	John 17
eternal life	v. 2
the Father’s word	vv. 8, 14
manifestation of the Father’s name	vv. 6, 26
glory v. 22

The Son Asks the Father to …	John 17
glorify him	vv. 1, 5
keep believers in the Father’s name	v. 11
keep believers from the evil one	v. 15
sanctify believers in the truth	v. 17
make believers one	v. 21

Jesus’ Followers and the World	John 17
they are sent into the world	v. 18
they are in the world	v. 11
they are not of the world	v. 16
the world has hated them	v. 14
their unity with each other and union with God may cause the world to believe the Father sent the Son	v. 21

Jesus’s birth

This is the outline of the lesson from 2013-12-22. Note that one of the references in the table under “Rant” is incorrect, and I have been too lazy to correct it. There was some discussion about what Mary’s “character” must have been like to submit to God’s command; I found myself in the minority here, but I let it go.

Rant

We look at Christmas too sweetly. When we consider the brutality of the whole thing we should be in awe of just how far the creator of the universe stooped to save us.

Why did he do this?

John 1:14	Galatians 4:4–5	Matthew 5:17	Galatians 3:24
1 Timothy 1:15	John 9:39	Matthew 20:28	Mark 10:45
Luke 19:10	1 John 3:5,8	Hebrews 9:26

It was not ultimately about the baby. To paraphrase Fozzy Bear in the Muppet Movie, there’s a hundred babies around. From exaltation of being God the Son in the presence of the God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, he came and was born in a borrowed stable and slept in a hay trough wrapped up in rags.

Foretold

• READ Luke 1:26–33
• SAY In verse 30, the angel describes Mary finding “favor” with God. The word for favor is also the word for grace. This phrase echoes Genesis 6:8: “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” But if it’s grace, then it’s nothing Mary could deserve intrisically, and it’s nothing she could earn. That’s the whole point of grace.
• Sometimes we concentrate on Mary, or the baby, or even the hardship, or Joseph, or a hundred things. What does the angel concentrate on?
  • The greatness of the Savior
  • The fulfillment of prophecy
• READ 1:34
• What is Mary’s point? (As delicately as I know how to say it: This is a natural law she understands.)
• READ 1:35–38
• Mary understood the humiliation she was in for, and she somehow decided that she could stand the reproach.
  • We aren’t going to have a new Messiah any time soon. But are we willing to bear the scorn of our neighbors for the sake of Christ?
  • SAY Hebrews 11:24–25: “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.”
• ASK Do you consider Mary blessed? Why? (v. 45, what Elizabeth says)

Praise

• READ Luke 1:46–55
• ASK What phrase shows up over and over in Mary’s song: (He has)
• ASK What has he done:
  • looked on Mary’s humble situation
  • done great things for her
  • shown strength
  • scattered the proud
  • reversed the situations of the weak and the powerful
  • reversed the situations of the hungry and the full
  • helped his servant Israel.
• ASK What does Mary think she has done? (Nothing)

Birth

• READ Luke 2:1–7
• ASK What strikes you here?
  • My main thing: Even though Mary & Josephe lived in the wrong place, God made arrangements for them to be in the right place.

Christ, by highest Heav’n adored;

Christ the everlasting Lord;

Late in time, behold Him come,

Offspring of a virgin’s womb.

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;

Hail th’incarnate Deity,

Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,

Jesus our Emmanuel.

Hark, the herald angels sing,

“Glory to the newborn king!”

The time has (finally) come

This is the outline for the lesson of 2013-12-01. Something weird happened: We actually got through it all.
One disturbing thing: If you look at my previous outlines, you see lots of places where I wrote “ASK,” but there are none of those in this outline. I still managed some questions for the class, but figuring out where I asked them is left as an exercise for the reader. (I’ve always wanted to write that!)

Intro

• Up to now, we have worked our way through most of Jesus’s public ministry. What we will be looking at through February will almost all be contained within a single week. It was a busy week.
• In chapter 11, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, demonstrating Jesus’s authority over death.
• But before that, Jesus already said one of the most important things you must understand about his own death. READ John 10:17–18
  • Jesus wasn’t killed by the Romans.
  • Jesus wasn’t killed by the Jews.
  • READ Isaiah 53:10

Annointed for burial

• READ 12:1–3
• READ 12:4–8
• The perfume
  • Factlet: Nard was imported from northern India. The transportation alone increased the price.
  • 300 denarii was roughly equivalent to $20,000. (based on $8.00/hr in a 6 day work week).
    • Trivia: This is about the price of 10 bottles of Clive Christian Number 1.
  • The “pound” John mentions is a Roman pound, i.e., 12 ounces.
• Judas wasn’t a good guy until Satan entered into him (chapter 13) — he was already bad.
• Jesus explains why it was okay for Mary to do this.

Entry into Jerusalem

• READ 12:12–16
• Just unraveling all the Old Testament quotations and allusions in John’s gospel would take a lifetime.
• READ Psalm 118:25–26
• “Hosanna” means “Save now,” so even that is a quote from the psalm.
• The palm branches were a symbol of the revolution in which Judas Maccabeus kicked the Gentiles out of the temple. This made the Jewish leadership nervous.
• The reaction of the Pharisees: READ 12:19. And what should happen next?

The time has come

• The world (i.e., Gentiles) came to Jesus.
• READ 12:20–21
• The thing the Gentiles said was written or engraved on the preacher’s side of Charles Spurgeon’s pulpit where he could see it when he preached.
• It is uncertain whether Jesus’s reply was for Andrew and Philip or for the Greeks. But it was important:
• READ 12:23
  • Up to now Jesus was concious that his time had “not yet come.”
  • READ John 2:4 (Wedding at Cana)
  • READ John 7:30 (Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths))
  • But now his time has come.
• READ 12:31–33
  • Jesus has said this “lifted up” thing before (3:14, 8:28). Here, John makes it explicit that Jesus is talking about his own crucifixion.
  • Jesus is also pointing out that this was prophesied. The Jews who knew their O.T. could not miss the reference to READ Isaiah 52:13.
• Paul understood what Jesus meant about the time being right: READ Romans 5:6
• Repeat from earlier:
  • Jesus wasn’t killed by the Romans.
  • Jesus wasn’t killed by the Jews.
  • Jesus put down his life himself to pay for our sins.

Power over death

This is the outline of the lesson from 2013-10-24. We got to almost none of it.

Lazarus dies

• READ 11:1–4
• READ 11:5–8
• READ 11:9–12
• READ 11:13–16
• SAY In verses 5–6, different translations have 2 different flows to what Jesus did:
  • Jesus loved them, but he waited.
  • Jesus loved them, so he waited.
  • ASK Which way do you think it is? (So, because he knew it would lead to greater glory for God.)
• ASK In verse 8, what were the disciples concerned about? (Jesus being killed.)
• ASK In verses 9–10, what’s all that about daytime, light, darkness, stumbling etc? (Jesus is the light, so going with him is the way not to stumble.)
• ASK In verse 16, what do you think about Thomas’s attitude?

Jesus arrives

• READ 11:17–19
• READ 11:20–22
• ASK Does Martha’s statement in verse 22 sound like anything else we’ve read in John’s gospel? (Sounds just like Mary in chapter 2)

Who is Jesus?

• READ 11:23–24
• READ 11:25–27
• SAY The teaching of resurrection at the end of time was not something Jesus introduced that they had never heard before. After all, the Pharisees believed in it. Where did they get it? From places in the O.T. like Daniel 12:2: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
• Jesus goes through this Q&A with Martha, and finds her belief is correct about the final resurrection and about himself. But something more spectacular is coming …
• READ 11:28–32
• READ 11:33–37
• ASK In verse 33, how do your Bibles say “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled”? SAY In the original language (and some English translations) it says Jesus was angry. ASK Why was he angry?
• ASK Have you ever felt like Martha and Mary? Have you felt like Jesus let you down? Have you wondered why sickness, death, loss? SAY It is okay to feel that way.

The sign: Lazarus is raised

• READ 11:38–40
• READ 11:41–44
• ASK If Jesus didn’t need to pray out loud, but it was for the benefit of the crowd, did he really need to “cry out with a loud voice” for Lazarus to come out of the grave?
• It’s really tempting to find some kind of moral to the story. But the point is this: Jesus has authority over the grave.
• That’s why he said in 10:17–18: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.”
• This is the Jesus we believe in. This is the reason we have hope.

Light and Blindness

Here‘s the lesson from 2013-11-10. I was really concerned to separate the (related) ideas of sins (things we do or don’t do) and sin (our condition since Genesis 3).

Sin leads to suffering (but not sins)

• SAY Remember a few months ago when we were working our way through Job?
• ASK What was the central idea Job’s “friends” had? (There’s a one-to-one correspondence between sin and suffering.)
• READ 9:1–2
• SAY Apparently, Jesus’s disciples apparently thought Job’s friends were right. But Jesus had a different idea.
• READ 9:3–7 (Mandatory Eye Roll)
• SAY Jesus repeats what he said in chapter 8: “I am the light of the world.”
• ASK Why mud (or clay or whatever)? (Many commentators: Jesus is repairing a man with the substance all men were made of, Genesis 2:7 tells us it was from the “dust of the ground”; also, “Adam”, which means “man” is in Hebrew a pun on “red earth” or “red clay.”)
• ASK If there were no sin in the world, would the man have been born blind?
• SAY We use the word “sin” in 2 distinct ways:
  • Things we do.
    • This was the view of the disciples (and Job’s friends).
    • They wanted to connect some particular action of sin to the man’s blindness.
    • If this were true, it would be really convenient: You would know who the real sinners are.
    • Be glad this isn’t so. Consider yourself. Do you want to suffer in direct relation to your spiritual condition?
  • The condition of all humans (except Jesus) since the Fall (Genesis 3).
    • Romans 5:10 starts with “For if while we were enemies …”
    • We were enemies of God.
    • It is this natural condition of being God’s enemy that allows suffering in the world.
    • This is what Christ died to save us from.
    • Part of our charter is to exhibit God’s mercy on the suffering of people inside and outside the visible church. This recalls God’s mercy to us and to the whole world.

Divided Pharisees

• READ 9:13–17
• I know which group of Pharisees I’d rather be in. But I worry that I am actually in the other group.

Cowardly parents

• READ 9:18–22
• ASK What do you think of how the parents responded?
• ASK Why do you think the parents were afraid? Possibilities:
  • Social position
  • Place in the economy
  • Being in church is good for business

Forcing the hand

• READ 9:24
• When the Pharisees said “Give glory to God,” they were essentially threatening to stone the man.
  • In Joshua 7, after the Israelites were defeated at Ai, when the man who had kept and hidden treasure from Jericho was found, Joshua told him, “Give glory to God.” Then the man confessed.
  • The leaders of the Jews were telling him, “This is really serious.”
• READ 9:25–27
• Did you hear the Mandatory Eye Roll?
• READ 9:28–29
• Where does authority come from?
• ASK If authority comes from God’s word — as the Pharisees said (!) — why should they have paid attention to Jesus? (Because he was fulfilling prophecy.)
• READ 9:32
• The man understands this. If I were blind, just one of the OT scriptures I would know by heart would be Isaiah 29:18: “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see.” SAY Giving sight to the blind was a sign of the Messiah, and the Pharisees refused to see it.

It’s not about the bread, it’s about the Bread

This is the outline for the lesson I taught on 2013-10-20. We mostly skipped the section on The Water, but other than that it was pretty much according to plan. As it says in the notes, there was no way to get through the whole chapter in 30–35 minutes. And I did’t bring up the stuff Jesus says about election at all.

Intro

This is one of the most important chapters in the whole Bible. This is where Jesus starts dividing people (“bringing a sword”) by his declaration of who he is. When he proclaimed the Gospel to the people who enjoyed the miracle, some “disciples” turned away.

There’s no way we can get through all of it.

The miracle of the bread

• ASK What good is a sign if you don’t read it?
• READ 6:1–6
• READ 6:7 (200 deniarii would be 8 months wages for a common laborer.)
• READ 6:8–10
• READ 6:11 (As much as they wanted.)
• READ 6:12–14
• SAY The people saw the sign, but they didn’t read it. They didn’t realize it pointed to Jesus. To show this, READ 6:15.

The water

• Jesus went up the mountain to be alone, and he sent the disciples ahead to Capernaum.
• READ 6:18–19
• They were afraid when they saw Jesus.
• READ 6:20–21
• When he spoke, they were glad.
• This was a sign for the disciples, and if we’re disciples, it can be a sign for us.
  • When the sea is rough, the creator of the sea can come to us.
  • When he makes his presence known, be glad and let him into your boat.

The sign of the Bread

• The people get into boats to chase Jesus down.
• READ 6:25–26
• Why did they go looking for him? (Free food!)
• READ 6:27 What did Jesus tell them? (Physical food is temporary.)
• READ 6:28–29
• … And then they ask for a sign: READ6:30–31
• And they hold up manna as the example!
• SAY It’s easy to critisize: But they still didn’t get it.
• SAY This is not the first time someone in John’s Gospel didn’t get the point:
  • Nicodemus: “born again/born from above”
  • Woman at the well: Where is this water?
  • Now these people with the bread. So Jesus explains it to them:
• READ 6:32–33
• READ 6:34 Yeah! We want that!
• So Jesus explains the metaphor:
• READ 6:35–37
• SAY Here at last is our great Savior: Everyone who comes to him is saved by him, and is kept by him. READ 6:39–40

The Healing

This is the outline for the lesson of 2013-10-13 on John 5. We spent a lot of time discussing the issue of John 5:3b–4 not being in some bibles, added in a footnote in some, bracketed in some, just there in some. We will have to revisit this issue in John 8. Most of the stuff in the middle got skipped (due to time constraints), and I finished up listing the 4 witnesses from the last section.

The healing

• READ 5:1–5
• READ 5:6–9
• Point out that v.3b–4 is not in the oldest manuscripts, and there are reasons to believe it was added later to explain v.7. Mention book: Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace (regarding reliability of the Bible).
• SAY If others got to the water before this man, there must have been other people there. ASK (Uncomfortable question) Why did Jesus bypass all the others?
• READ 5:10–14
• Things we can learn so far:
  • Jesus went where the need was.
  • He met the need.
  • We can do the same.
  • We are nice, middle-class Americans in nice, middle-class houses. It’s tempting to say the needs are “over there.”
  • But our neighbors have needs, too.

The sign

• SAY It appears Jesus left the man with the miracle. But in John’s gospel, the miracles Jesus performs aren’t just wonders, they are signs. ASK Where is the sign in all this?
• READ 5:15-18
• The sign was for the leaders of the Jews (Pharisees & Saducees), not for the man who was healed.
• This is the beginning of the opposition to Jesus from the Jewish leaders who would eventually ask for his execution.

Jesus’ authority

• Jesus tells the leaders that they are right about him: He is claiming to be equal with God.
• READ 5:19–24
• Back in verse 14, Jesus told the man he healed to “stop sinning.” But here he tells what is required for eternal life:
  • Hear the Gospel.
  • Believe it’s true.
  • READ Romans 10:14

The 4 witnesses to Jesus

• John the Baptist: READ 5:33–35
• The works (miracles -> signs): READ 5:36
• The word of the Father (at Jesus’ baptism, at the transfiguration): READ 5:37–38
• The Old Testament: READ 5:39, 45–47. Mention book: Jesus On Every Page by David Murray

Increasing belief

This is the outline of the adult lesson I taught on 2013-10-06 on the last part of John 4. I stuck pretty close to the outline this time.

The Samaritans

• READ 4:39–42
• They believed because of her testimony …
• … then they believed because they heard the word from the Word themselves.
• This is the way it should work:
  1. Your testimony may be enough for people to believe in Jesus in some measure.
  2. But it doesn’t stop there. People must encounter Jesus in his Word for themselves.
  3. Which brings me to one of my primary goals for the class: To get each of us to interact with Jesus as he is revealed in the Bible.
     • Not some flight of fancy based on our feelings about him, but …
     • … interacting with the text inspired by the Holy Spirit.
     • This comes from my conviction that the Bible is the only place to get the truth about God.
• ASK What does the phrase Savior of the world mean?
• ASK Who did Jesus talk to in Chapter 3? (Nicodemus)
• ASK Who did Jesus spend time with in the first part of Chapter 4? (Samaritans)

The official’s son

• READ 4:45–48
• ASK Why did the people of Galilee welcome him? (Signs & wonders)
• ASK What were they missing? (the signs were there to point to Jesus.)
• SAY One of the problems in modern English is the word you. In English, it’s both singular and plural. (It would be much simpler if everyone were a Southerner and said you for singular and y’all for plural.) In verse 48, when Jesus says “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe,” he is (in Greek) saying y’all both times. ASK Why? (He’s not rebuking the official’s request, but commenting on the Galileans generally.)
• About the official: He worked for Herod the Tetrarch, a cultural Jew who worked for the Romans as a governor over 4 cities or regions. I.e., this official was either a Roman soldier or a civil servant.
• READ 4:49
• Now we find out what the official thinks: “All this is interesting, but come heal my son.” He insists on keeping to the point.
• READ 4:50
• The man believed enough to go.
• READ 4:51–53
• When he got the news that confirmed his son’s healing, it seems emphatic: he himself believed.
• SAY Before he got confirmation, he believed the miracle. But after he got confirmation, he believed the sign.
• Increasing belief
• The spread of the Gospel:
  • ASK What kind of person was Nicodemus? (Jew)
  • ASK What kind of person was the woman at the well? (Samaritan)
  • ASK What kind of person was this official? (Gentile)
  • Does this sound familiar? READ Acts 1:8

Come again, Jew?

This is the outline of the lesson I taught on 2013-09-29 on the first part of John 4. The outline is a lot more organized than my delivery, which was a mess, like ”my dog chewed it up and found it distasteful and spit it out and that’s the order it came out in” mess. The pictures are from Wikipedia and under their media license.

The Scripture

• READ

It’s not about water.

• Samaritans: These were leftover Northern Kingdom folks, the poor who had not been carried off by the Assyrians. They intermarried with others brought in by the Assyrians. The Jews, from the Southern Kingdom, considered them to be like that famous song by Cherilyn Sarkisian: “Half-breed”.
• Jacob’s Well: It’s still there today. You can go there and get water from the Greek Orthodox church on the site.
• Here we have a woman from Samaria coming to the well at the “sixth hour.”
  • Either noon (Hebrew time) or 6pm (Roman time).
  • The hottest part of the day either way: Think about the summer weather here: It is really hottest in the summer from early afternoon up to 6–8 oclock.
  • She’s coming to the well when no one else does. (We learn why later.)
• Jesus asks for water.
• “Come again, Jew?”
• Jesus: You should be asking me for “living water.”
  • This was a common phrase meaning spring water or stream water.
  • But Jesus means something else.
• ASK What does she think is going on? (she thinks it’s about the water.)
• Jesus says: Fetch your husband.

Husbands	5
Live-in	Current
Other liasons	Likely

• This is why she came to the well in the hottest part of the day: The half-breeds considered her beneath them.

It’s not about this mountain

• Jesus agrees about the husbands.
• “Hey! You must be a prophet!”

Samaritans say	Worship here.
Jews say	Worship in Jerusalem.

• Weirdness: Samaritan worship is still practiced with animal sacrifice, etc., around Mt Gerizim.
  
  
• What does Jesus say about Jewish worship vs. Samaritan worship? (The Jews have it right so far).

Jesus says

Those who receive the gift of God (v.10) don’t need a location. It’s not about the location, it’s about Spirit and truth.

• ASK Does this mean it doesn’t matter how we worship?

Sowing, reaping, and belief

• Jesus tells them, look at the fields: They’re ready for harvest!
• 22. 36: The sower and the reaper rejoice together.
  • ASK What’s going on here? (Someare sowing, some are reaping all the time).
• The people of the town:
  • Believe on account of what the woman says,
  • and later believe because they’ve heard from Jesus himself.
  • ASK What’s going on here? (Her testimony starts them believing, then the Word strengthens their belief.)
  • “Savior of the world” — not just the Jews.
  • ASK Who is so low as to not be worth it in terms of taking the Gospel to them?

My heart is broken

I don’t mean that I’m sad. Or that I have coronary issues.

What I mean is that I’m unable to have perfect affection — proper, God-honoring affection — for anything. Every like and dislike, every desire and disgust, every craving and contentment, all the jonesing and resignation is flawed. Some days are better than others. But then I read in the Bible, “Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”

This makes me despair.

Then I read, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

In the person of Jesus Christ, who was “crucified according to the Scriptures, and was buried and raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” --- and this in real time and space, not as some bit of undigested beef --- God paid for my broken heart with His own.

Philippians 3

This is the outline of a Sunday School lesson I taught on March 3, 2011. I have no idea how closely I stuck to the outline. Sometimes I can‘t read my own typing.

Intro: A common expression

Have you ever heard the expression “so heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good”? If that’s true of someone, then the one thing you can count on is that the thing that’s that person’s mind is not Heaven as it’s talked about in the Bible.

2 things inside the church that will rob your joy.

• Not talking about the obvious things like drunkenness, violence, etc.
• These are temptations for all of us.
• These will keep our minds and our lives from moving where they should be moving. I.e., they will distract us from Christ, who is our life. (Colossians 3:4)

What are the monsters that will rob our joy?

I.e., what are the wrong ways to think about heaven?

Legalism

Legalism is any notion that you can achieve a right standing with God by personal effort. It is to put “confidence in the flesh”.
“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Everything else is less!
There are different forms of this:

• Roman Catholics who believe that performing a ritual guarantees the results.
  
  • Church of Christ believes this about baptism.
• People like the preacher in the movie Footloose, who believe that avoiding sins guarantees your acceptance by God.

What is Paul’s response?
“not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”
What is Paul’s goal?
“that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Perfectionism

This is similar to (but different from) Legalism. Some Methodists believe you can reach the place where you no longer sin or no longer have great sins.
What’s the problem? If perfectionism is true, then

• Why does Paul say he, the guy writing over half the books in the New Testament, hasn’t got there yet?
• Why is Romans 7 there at all?
• Why, in I Corinthians, the book written against the most sins, does Paul end with the statement of the Gospel? Of all the things he could have built up to (more law, higher spiritual “levels”) does he end with: “This is of first importance &dots; Christ was crucified according to the scriptures, was buried, and was raised on the third day according to the scriptures”

The problem is not with faith, it’s with the object of our faith, with what we have our faith in.

• We put our faith in our obedience.
• We put our faith in our ability to not sin in some way.
• We put our faith in our having overcome some particular sin.
• We forget that God is infinite, and that the smallest sin against him is therefore infinite.

Pursuit of Christ

Paul’s attitude about his past:

• Garbage
• Rubbish
• Dung

Paul’s attitude about his present:

• I have no righteousness of my own.
• Whatever righteousness I have is by faith.
• The faith I have is in the Jesus who was really there, and not the Jesus I imagine.
• I haven’t reached the end yet.
• I press on to know Christ — the Christ who’s really there.

How can we pursue Christ?

• Bible
  
  • Reading — just to know what it says
  • Study — to understand
    • the depth of the “easy” parts
    • the truth of the “hard” parts
  • To find Christ
• Prayer
• Worship
• Fellowship
• Serving our neighbor.

You should be ashamed if this is true of you

“I just spent an evening about a month ago with very close friends of mine who are Mormons. We had a very interesting conversation as we always do when it comes back around to the Gospel, and my friend’s wife said, ‘You know, I just don’t know all the debates between these different churches and denominations … I know evangelicals in town; our kids play together … I’ve even been to their churches a few times … There’s nothing different … My kids wear the bracelet [WWJD] … Look up there on the wall: There’s a picture of Jesus. We teach our children every day who Jesus is and the teachings that Jesus gave us to follow. As long as our children are being taught to follow Jesus, what’s all this division over doctrine?’”

— Mike Horton

The many and the few

Tim Challies is a baseball fan (if you call what they play in Toronto “baseball”) but he manages to hit this one out of the park.

Frankly, …

I keep thinking I'd like to try my hand at debating Frank Turk, but there are 2 problems:

• He's smarter than me.
• I can't find anything we disagree on.

Here's an example.