Quick viewing(Text Mode)

TEACHING PLAN Study of John

TEACHING PLAN

Study of

APRIL 25 21 FOLLOWING THE LAMB

JOHN 1:19-50 APRIL 25, 2021 TEACHING PLAN

PREPARATION

> Spend the week reading through and studying :19-50. Consult the commentary provided and any additional study tools (such as a concordance or dictionary) to enhance your preparation.

> Determine which discussion points and questions will work best with your group.

> Pray for your pastors, the upcoming group meeting, your teaching, your group members, and their receptivity to the study.

HIGHLIGHTS  TAKEAWAY: CALLED HIS FIRST DISCIPLES, IGNITING THE FIRE OF DISCIPLESHIP THAT WILL CONTINUE TO BURN INTO ETERNITY.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: WE ARE CALLED TO FOLLOW JESUS IN THE SAME WAY HE CALLED THE FIRST DISCIPLES.

GOSPEL CONNECTION: AS WE EXPERIENCE THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF IN OUR LIVES, WE ARE CALLED TO INVITE OTHERS TO “COME AND SEE,” SO THAT THEY MIGHT EXPERIENCE THE POWER OF THE AS WELL.

2 John | TEACHING PLAN APRIL 25, 2021

INTRODUCTION As your group time begins, use this section to help get the conversation going. Notes: 1 Have you had a mentor you “followed around” when you first became a young adult, or at another time in life?

2 If this person had asked you what you wanted, what would you have said?

Many people look for mentors to “show them the ropes.” The disciples had the greatest teacher and mentor in history: Jesus. After writing on Jesus’ identity as the eternal Word of , John switched to a historical account of Jesus’ selection of His first disciples. The interesting thing here is that Jesus did not directly recruit some of them, as seems to be the case most often in the (Matt. 9:9; :16–17,19–20), but the new disciples went out and recruited other disciples. In these stories, we find some of our best examples of evangelism— telling someone else what we have experienced in Jesus Christ. Andrew brought his brother Peter, while Philip went out and recruited his friend Nathanael.

UNDERSTANDING Unpack the biblical text to discover what Scripture says or means about a particular topic.

> HAVE A VOLUNTEER READ JOHN 1:19-34.

° How does our culture determine who is important or worthy of attention?

3 John | TEACHING PLAN APRIL 25, 2021

John moved out into the middle of the desert. He lived as a hermit, wore clothes made out of camel , and ate (Matt. 3:4). He made a point to insult pretty much everyone Notes: of importance. For example, he called the religious a brood of snakes (Matt. 3:7). He publicly rebuked the ruler of the region and later got himself thrown in prison and ultimately beheaded (Matt. 14:3-10). Some might John the Baptist as a man of wasted potential. But John’s life can be summed up in John 1:29, when he said, “Look, the .”

° How did John point others to Jesus instead of pointing to himself?

° What can we learn about following Jesus from John’s words and actions?

There was a time when we all might have known facts and stories about Jesus but not have believed in His true identity and confessed Him as Lord. At some point, though, we had a personal encounter with Jesus and saw Him as He really is. For John, that moment came during Jesus’ . John suddenly realized that his relative, whom he thought he knew for so long, was more than just a relative. He is the , the one and only .

° What are some experiences that have shaped your understanding of Jesus?

° How has encountering Jesus transformed your life?

° What are some things that help you remember your encounter with Christ and remain focused on Him?

4 John | TEACHING PLAN APRIL 25, 2021

> HAVE A VOLUNTEER READ JOHN 1:35-42.

° In what ways was Jesus’ question in verse 38 so unexpected and challenging? Notes:

° What are most people looking for in life today? Why do you believe that?

The calling of the first disciples is packed with some great moments! John the Baptist had disciples who followed him, and when he made a comment about Jesus being “the Lamb of God,” two of his disciples slipped away and began following Jesus from a distance. Jesus’ question of them in verse 38 was on point. He knew the two men were searching for something in life. His question challenged them to think about what really mattered. This very question can still be asked of people today: “What are you looking for?”

The two followers asked Jesus a question, but Jesus chose not to answer it directly. (See the last part of verse 38). This probably caused the men to be even more curious about Jesus. They committed to spend the day with Him and learn more about Him.

After a time, one of the two followers, Andrew, became convinced that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. He found his brother, Peter, and brought him to meet Jesus. Immediately Jesus spoke to Peter and called him by name. Then He gave him a new name.

° Why is it significant that Peter got a new name? How does one’s name influence his or her identity?

° When has God “called you by name” and “given you a new name”?

5 John | TEACHING PLAN APRIL 25, 2021

It is important to note that Jesus called Peter by his name. Jesus knows each of us by name, and Scripture says that He even knows the number of hairs on our head. (See :7.) Notes: When Jesus calls us to be His disciples, He does so knowing everything about us—the good and the bad. Nothing is hidden from Him. In spite of our shortcomings, Jesus still calls us to “come … follow.” Jesus’ giving Peter a new name signifies Peter’s new identity—he became a follower, a of Jesus.

° Can you name any other people in Scripture whom God gave new names?

> HAVE A VOLUNTEER TO READ JOHN 1:43-51.

° What was the last thing you discovered that was so good, you could hardly wait to tell someone?

° When you have good news to share, who is the first person you want to tell?

The calling of the first disciples continued the very next day. When Jesus saw Philip, He stopped and told him to “Follow Me!” Philip did what Andrew had done the day before – he went to someone he cared for, Nathanael, and challenged him to come and meet with Jesus. Philip believed Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah.

A wonderful pattern emerges in these verses. Jesus calls people to “Follow me,” and those people in turn call others to “come and see,” to follow Jesus as well. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you can ask friends and family to “come and see” Jesus, too. That was the pattern among Jesus’ first disciples. They were called. They called others.

6 John | TEACHING PLAN APRIL 25, 2021

° When you consider that Jesus knows everything about you, how does that make you feel? (i.e. Proud – living my life to please Him; Afraid – I about being punished for wrongdoing; Thankful – I am grateful He knows me personally; Amazed – Notes: With the billions of people on the planet, how can He know me?)

Jesus proved He was the Messiah by revealing knowledge of Nathanael’s activities just before their meeting—Jesus saw him sitting under a fig tree, perhaps taking a break from his work or enjoying the shade on a hot day. Nathanael quickly acknowledged Jesus’ deity (v. 49). Jesus’ calling of the first disciples was done in a personal way. Jesus singled out people He called to be His disciples, and He called some of them by name. He knew things about them that only God could know. He called these men to a life of discipleship, and He is doing the same thing today.

Jesus knows you. He knows us all. And He calls us to follow Him, making Him the Lord (boss) of our lives. Jesus loves you just as you are, with all of your imperfections and weaknesses. He knows your potential, and He has great things planned for your life. What Jesus told Nathanael could be said to you and I today: “You will see greater things than that.” God has a wonderful plan for your life, and it begins with you saying “yes” to the call to follow Him as a disciple.

7 John | TEACHING PLAN APRIL 25, 2021

APPLICATION Help your group identify how the truths from the Scripture passage apply directly to their lives. Notes: ° Just as the twelve disciples had to learn what it meant to follow Jesus, so do we. What have you been learning recently about what it means to be Jesus’ disciple?

° As a group, how are we doing at following Jesus? How can we do better, so that people will recognize our commitment to be His disciples and want to “come and see”?

° Who can you reach out to, like Andrew and Philip did, and invite to this group to learn about Jesus?

PRAY

Thank God for His personal and distinct call on your life to follow Jesus. Ask Him to help you continue learning who He is and what it requires for you to be His disciple. Ask Him for opportunities this week to invite other people to “come and see.”

8 John | TEACHING PLAN APRIL 25, 2021

FOLLOW UP Midway through this week, send a follow-up email to your group with some or all of the following information: Notes: > Questions to consider as they continue to reflect on what they learned this week:

° What changes will you make to help you be more intentional about longing for, looking for, and living for opportunities to demonstrate the power of the gospel?

° What are the main challenges or barriers that keep us from living a life that demonstrates the love and grace of Jesus? What opportunities are presented to us daily to do so?

> A note of encouragement, following up on any specific prayer requests mentioned during your group gathering.

> The challenge to memorize John 1:29.

> The text for next week’s study, so group members can read it in anticipation of next weekend: :1-25.

9 John | COMMENTARY APRIL 25, 2021

JOHN 1:19-51

1:19–22. Picture the rugged John the Baptist storming up and down the desert, telling people the Notes: Messiah is coming. He wore animal skins and ate locusts and wild , hardly a refined with the proper credentials. So formal religious investigation gets under way. The phrase “the ” appears nearly seventy times in this Gospel. Sometimes it is used favorably, but more often it expresses hostility. The represented the and the Levites guarded the correctness of temple worship. All the delegates had a simple question for John the Baptist: “Who are you?” Lest anyone con- fuse the messenger with the Messiah, John quickly told them, I am not the Christ. “Christ” (christos) is simply the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah. Both words mean “anointed.”

Then they give him two other suggestions to deny, and the Prophet. No portraits of Elijah hung in first-century museums, but John may have reminded his contemporaries of the verbal descriptions in 1 Kings. More than likely, however, this dialogue referred to 4:5–6: “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”

The Prophet probably referred to ’ promise in Deuteronomy 18:15: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.”

1:23. We can hardly imagine the shock the dele- gation must have felt upon hearing this rugged mountain man quote 40:3 to describe himself. Think back to Isaiah’s warnings about the future rise of with the sharp break in the narrative which begins at chapter 40 to describe the future of Israel. Here is the context for John’s answer:

10 John | COMMENTARY APRIL 25, 2021

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak ten- derly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for Notes: all her sins. A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken (Isa. 40:1–5).

So John was Elijah after all (Matt. 11:14; 17:10–13). He fulfilled the of Malachi as the forerunner who would proclaim the coming of the king.

1:24–28. Enter the Pharisees, often depicted in the as the bad guys in the black hats (though there were notable exceptions like and of Arimathea). They were not satisfied with John’s answers; they wanted a picture I.D.—particularly because John was not just preaching. He was also baptizing people without proper credentials.

John’s response rings as one of the great statements of history which our text will amplify in verses 31–34. Water baptism for John’s disciples was a ritual act of cleansing demonstrating and anticipation of the Messiah. But already in their very midst he had come. John considered himself unworthy to do the chores of the lowest household slave—loosen Jesus’ sandals.

John the Gospel writer was not as concerned with geog- raphy as Luke. But he let his readers know where it all began. We should not confuse this with the home- town of Mary and (11:1) just outside Jerusalem. John designated it as the Bethany on the other side of the , east of the river.

The answers of John the Baptist offer us three important lessons as : (1) We are not the focus of the

11 John | COMMENTARY APRIL 25, 2021

witness; (2) we are not the light; and (3) we proclaim belief in Jesus.

1:29. What a and proclamation of the gospel! Notes: Imagine the scene as Jesus approached the area of Bethany and John spotted him in the distance. We have come to the second day of John’s narrative, and we will see yet one to come in this first chapter. The first biblical men- tion of the Lamb appears in Genesis 22 when went to the altar to offer his son . Leviticus 14 talks about lambs as a guilt offering. John came back to it in Revelation as a triumphal title for the conquering Lord.

The full expression Lamb of God is found only here and in John 1:36. But the emphasis on substitutionary atonement and the universal offering of salvation and forgiveness of sin form the heart and core of the gospel. As we think about the theme of substitutionary atone- ment, our minds again rush back to the prophet Isaiah:

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed (Isa. 53:1–5).

1:30–31. John 1:30 is a restatement of John 1:15, empha- sizing again John the Baptist’s claim of the priority of Christ. John admitted that he did not know his own cousin was the Messiah until Jesus’ baptism in the desert.

1:32–34. The (see also Matt. 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; :21–22) took place before this announcement of John 1. The purpose of his baptism,

12 John | COMMENTARY APRIL 25, 2021

according to Jesus himself, was to fulfill all righteous- ness—to demonstrate his consecration to the heavenly Father and approval by him. God had obviously given John a direct revelation, telling him that when he saw the Notes: dove come down during the baptism he would know the Son of God.

John the Gospel writer continues chapter 1 in high drama. The first people who saw Jesus as the Messiah observed him not in monarchial splendor, but as a Lamb. John the Baptist tells us this Lamb came to take away the sin of the world, that he first revealed himself to Israel, and that he is the Son of God. How easy it would have been to speak in lofty theological language of themes. But John wanted no misunderstanding among his hearers, either disciples or religious leaders, so he affirmed what he knew: I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.

1:35–39. John’s Gospel does not say much about the calling of Jesus’ disciples, but the remainder of chapter 1 introduces several of them. The spotlight falls on two of John’s followers, quite possibly one of them the author of these words. Upon hearing their leader announce the second time that Jesus was God’s Lamb, they both left John and followed Jesus, only to have their motives chal- lenged. Rabbi was a term of great respect, acknowledging Jesus as a master teacher.

The text seems to suggest that these two disciples spent the evening with the Lord (the tenth hour would have been 4 p.m.)—an evening which led to their affirmation that he was indeed the Messiah. The evening also led to witness, since Andrew began his ministry with family evangelism by bringing his brother to Jesus.

1:40–42. Jesus, these disciples would learn, sometimes issued shocking statements. The first thing he did with Peter was to change his name. Cephas, the Aramaic form, became Peter, the Greek version. Both names mean “rock.” Andrew was the first disciple to follow Jesus, but he is never mentioned first in any list of the disciples in the

13 John | COMMENTARY APRIL 25, 2021

New Testament. Peter, on the other hand, rose to domi- nance in the Jerusalem . He was hardly a rock when Jesus called him, but he became that after . Notes:

1:43–49. Philip went off to find another friend, telling Nathanael about their discovery, and mentioning in his announcement. Nathanael asked a ques- tion which, though probably intended quite innocently at the time, has become a cliché among Bible students: Can anything good come from there?

Philip wasted no time arguing the point. He took Nathanael (also called Bartholomew in the New Testament) directly to Jesus. Again Jesus stunned a future disciple with his first words. He affirmed Nathanael as a genuine student of the —a righteous Jew taught to live in accordance with all the light he had.

Upon learning about the Lord’s omniscience—having known his exact location even before Philip found him— Nathanael, like John the Baptist, declared Jesus the Son of God and added, “You are the King of Israel.” The phrase under the fig tree was used in rabbinical literature to describe meditation on the law. Nathanael had apparently been reading Genesis 28. Jesus contrasted ’s guile with Nathanael’s integrity.

1:50–51. The last two verses of chapter 1 seem difficult to understand. Had Nathanael been reading about Jacob’s dream under the fig tree? Is this why Jesus referred to the open heavens? Should we view this as a future prophecy? Tenney suggests that “he himself was to be the new medium of revelation, a surer link between heaven and earth than the ladder which for the errant Jacob meant a way to God” (p. 82). Whatever the interpretation, Jesus indicated that Nathanael’s old covenant faith must now center in him, the focus of the . Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man, a term he used more than eighty times. This title emphasized his humanity and suffering as well as the perfection of his human nature.

14 John | COMMENTARY APRIL 25, 2021

John 1 describes five men who met the Lord and the Lamb. All different. All believers. All models. What great lessons they teach us. We learn that witnessing is everybody’s Notes: responsibility. We also learn that witnessing begins at home, either in one’s own family or hometown, not nec- essarily by going to another country. A third lesson is that witnessing promotes the Lord, not ourselves or some per- sonal agenda. And finally, these early disciples show us that witnessing is both verbal and specific.

During one of my pastorates, I conducted a Thursday - ning visitation program, after which those of us who went out sharing the gospel would come back and describe our experiences. On one occasion I asked the group, “What did you pray as you left the building and started out to knock on doors?” One young man responded in refreshing candor, “I prayed nobody would be at home.”

How often we feel that way. Witnessing sometimes seems so difficult, such an imposition on people who do not want to hear what we have to say. Yet we must learn to start at home and, without wasting words, direct people to Jesus. Like John the Baptist, we must say to our modern world, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

15 John |

Top View