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?

Nick at Nite

This is the outline of the lesson I taught on 2013-09-22 on John 3. Sorry for the cute title. I don’t know what came over me …

Preliminary: Signs

• ASK What are signs for? (to point to something else)
• ASK Is there such a thing as a sign for the sake of a sign?
• In chapter 2, in the water-to-wine miracle, John referred to the miracle as “the first his signs.”
• John tells us in chapter 20 that Jesus did a lot of miracles. John just picked out a few to tell us about.
• John calls the ones he picked out “signs”.
• With water into wine, the point seems to me to be that the new is better than the old.

The scripture

• READ 3:1–4
• READ 3:5–8
• READ 3:9–12
• READ 3:13–15
• SAY TOGETHER 3:16
• READ 3:17–19
• READ 3:20–21

Born

• Nicodemus recognized that the signs Jesus did could only come from God.
• John has only told us about 1 sign so far, so Jesus is doing more.
• “Born again” vs. “born from above”: Original language can mean either. Nicodemus takes it one way, but Jesus apparently meant it the other way.
• ASK What does Nicodemus think he means by “born”?
• ASK What about born? What is Jesus getting at?
• ASK What does the wind have to do with it? What’s with “blows where it wishes”? (“wind” and “spirit” are the same in Greek)

Incredulity

• Obviously, Nicodemus doesn’t get it.
• ASK Why does Jesus seem to expect Nicodemus to get it?
• READ Ezekiel 37:1–10 (This seems to cover both “born” and “wind”)

Why did it have to be snakes?

• ASK What’s with the bit about snakes in v. 14? (Numbers 21)
  • The people grumble.
  • God sends fiery snakes.
  • God commands Moses to make a bronze snake.
  • Everyone who looks to the snake lives.
• That is the context for 3:15–16
  • Jesus will be lifted up on the cross.
  • Everyone who looks to him is saved.
• ASK In v. 17, why didn’t God have to condemn the world? (v. 18: it’s condemned already).
• ASK Why is the world condemned already? (Hasn’t believed.)
• ASK Why hasn’t it believed? (Loves darkness/evil)

Christianity vs other religions

What separates Christianity from Mormonism? And from Buddhism? And from Confucianism? And from New Age-ism? In a word: Archeology. None of those religions depends on history that can be verified independently. Christianity does.

Scientific archeology is a young discipline (less than 150 years old). As more and more of the ancient Near East is dug up and handled scientifically, the more proof of the basic historical narrative of the Bible is confirmed.

We don't put our faith in archeology, but archeology confirms our faith.

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.

Get a plan

If, like me, you’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve set out to read the Bible through in a year, you should know that I’m on track to finish the entire thing (New Testament & Psalms twice, rest of the Old Testament once) by Monday, December 31. This is not a cause for bragging (see “lost count” above) but to recommend the one thing that made the definite difference: a plan.

There is today a famine of hearing the Word of God, of not knowing what He has said (cf. Amos 8:11). Make it your goal next year and get a plan.

If you’ve read Radical by David Platt, you know that he recommends getting a plan. He doesn’t recommend any one over another. If you do a Google (or Yahoo or Bing or whatever) search for “bible reading plan,” you get a bazillion links, many of them redundant. Making a choice among them can be bewildering.

So here’s the deal: Justin Taylor of the Gospel Coalition has digested a big batch of the best-known plans, and summarized each one. You can find a plan that matches your preferences and the amount of time you have. The plan I used this year was just a list of references, which meant I could use whatever translation I prefer. Pick any one of them — I don’t care which. But get a plan.

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