Accept: His gift of mercy, grace & peace

Be Aware: Peace is having His perspective of the final score & also part of His family

The question today is, have we received the gift of faith, & do our actions show this; so the world might see Jesus in us and through us!

Jesus makes it clear that our Kingdom reputation is about our identity as sons and daughters- we ARE salt, we ARE the light of the world.

This is not about striving harder, but living out who Jesus already says we are. All for His Glory and the good of humanity.

• How can we as followers of Christ pour our "perfume" on Jesus's feet today?
• Are we more worried about our financial stability or being faithful to what Jesus has called us to? 
• Are our desires lining up with Jesus's desires for our lives or are we trying to make Jesus's desires line up with our plan? 
•  Do we truly trust in His will for every aspect of our lives? (Finances, Relationships, Health, etc.) 

• Jesus brings division among the Jews
• Jewish leaders were full of pride and jealousy because they were losing their power

Topics to discuss

• Embracing the inevitable tension: God's sovereignty and human responsibility 
• Do we trust God enough to lead our lives?
• Where in the car of my life is God? Back seat, passenger seat, or drivers seat?

• What keeps us from believing something, even if we've heard it a 100 times?
• Do we continually refuse to accept, see, and believe in what Jesus is saying?
• What does it look like to listen to the shepherds voice today?

Application:
Every morning ask: Jesus, how do I hear your voice and follow your voice today?

Daily application questions:

1. Which voice do you hear, and choose to listen to?
2. What do you need to tune out, to better hear God's voice? 
3. What does it take to daily tune into the Good Shepherd's voice?

• When has Christ walked gently along side you in your life?
• Who are you a disciple of if you're honest with yourself?
• What has influence over your life other than Jesus? 
• Are there moments in your day/week when you say yes to Jesus and create space to listen to him?
• How could you create more space to walk with Jesus this next week?

1. How does the context of scripture change the meaning of the text?
2. What is John trying to tell us through all the imagery?
3. What are we willing to risk to follow Jesus?
4. What is blinding me from seeing Jesus? 
5. What "normal" am I willing to let go of to be closer to Jesus and be more like Him?
6. How do we become more aware of what God is doing around us as we go through our day?

As you go through today and this week, look for the light of the world working all around you.

1. What does it mean to actually believe in jesus?
2. Do we forget the power of the truth setting us free as we journey through the faith?
3. What does it look like to live and walk everyday in the freedom Jesus offers?

• What are all the times in scripture where light is mentioned?
• Look for repetition in the scripture
• Where do we make space for Jesus to show  up as the light?
• What have been the dark moments of this last year?
• With the light of life dwelling in us, how does that change how we walk through this week?

• How do you know that the Biblical text is accurate and reliable?
• How does Jesus respond when the religious leaders attempt to trap him?
• What does this passage tell us about how God treats us in our sin? 
  • and how God treats us in our shame?
• What does this passage tell us about the divinity of God?
• What does the passage tell us about the Character and nature of God?

• When have you doubted God's goodness?
• How can we as a group remind each other of God's goodness?
• Take some time to journal ways you have seen Jesus's goodness in the last year. Share as a group.

Exegetical Tool: Characters In Narrative Genre

Main Characters-Multidimensional characters who play a key role in revealing the Big Idea of the text.

Secondary Characters-Often flat or static characters who remain the same throughout the narrative. 

Identifying the characters and their role in the narrative helps us understand the authors intended meaning.

Witnesses Who Testify To Christ’s Identity & Mission:

John The Baptist: Preparing the way.

God the Father: Pointing to the Son

The Word of God itself: Pointing to Christ

The life and work (signs) of Jesus: Self-Testifying

Moses: Wrote Ultimately About Jesus

Exegetical Tool: Noticing Historical & Background Context

• As you read, be alert to the New Testament use of the Old Testament text & themes. 
• The primary story that gives meaning to the world of the New Testament is Old Testament narrative--a story of God calling out a people has his own, delivering them from slavery, and God bound Himself to them through a covenant of law and the promised land.  (Gordon Fee-Introduction to New Testament Exegesis) 

Sabbath: Jewish identity was built upon setting themselves apart from surrounding nations and keeping themselves holy. When Jesus heals on the sabbath, its not just that he is breaking the sabbath law, but it is that he is challenging the very core of Jewish identity

Jesus is God: If Jesus is God, then He demands a response from us. And the only response is belief, worship, surrendering our entire lives to Him. 

Questions for reflection and application: 

• How is Jesus different then every other religious figure through human history? 
• If Jesus is God, why is it not an option for someone to simply consider him a “good moral teacher?” 
• How does seeing the relationship between God the Father and Jesus tell you something about God? 
• Why is it important to notice the trinity when we read the text? 
• How does the divinity of Christ change every moment of our day to day life? 

Exegetical Tools: 

• Our goal is to ask the right questions about the text
• Good exegetical questions fall into two categories: 

1) Questions of Content (What is said) 

2) Questions of Context (Why it is said) 

• Geography reveals clues about the meaning of the text--why is Jesus going to certain towns/places to carry out his divine mission
• Signs-The Why Behind The What--what are the signs revealing to us about God? About the hearts of those who ask for a sign? 
• Questions For Application: 
  • What do the 2nd & 3rd signs of Christ in the book fo John reveal to us about His identity and mission? 
  • What is John revealing to us through the narrative of opposite responses of either accepting Christ (like the royal official) or rejecting Him (the religious leaders).
  • What does Christ’s question to the paraylzed man reveal about his heart? (Do you want to get well?)
  • Personal reflection: Do I know that I am sick? (i.e. am I continually living in a place of desperate dependence on Christ?) 

• What happened, Why Here, What does John want us to know feel do?

(Go to 31-36 for the know feel do part in particular because that the the takeaway John has for us from the brief exchange between JB, his disciples, and the Jews.)

• How were John’s disciples measuring success?  How was John measuring success?  
• Why is John happy that Jesus is gaining a greater following?
• In John the Baptist's analogy there are three characters, the bride, the groom and the friend of the groom who stands with him.  Which one is John?  Which one is Jesus?  Whose is the bride? 
• Trace the logic and flow of 31-36. What is the author saying about Jesus? How is this similar to 3:16-21? What does John want us to know about Jesus in 31-36? How does this contribute to your understanding of belief so far in John?

BIG IDEA:
Jesus is better than any human system of success especially in the context of eternal (the “good”) life.

APPLICATION:

• At the end of your life, what would need to have happened for you to be able to say, "I lived the 'good' life"?
• Humans struggle to get off the throne of their heart in part due to their own inflated Ego, how do you think you might be better than you actually are?  What strengths of your own may actually get in the way of putting Jesus on the throne and distort your view of “the good life?

• Resist the temptation to think more highly of ourselves than we ought. (#Humility)
• Understand our position. (#Humility)
• Celebrate our role. (#JOY!)

Guiding Questions:

• What barriers does Nicodemus have to belief?
• Jews like Nicodemus believed they were saved by their heritage, how is what Jesus said about being born again different from that?
• What is John trying to say about Jesus by recording him referencing Daniel 7:13-14?
• Read Numbers 21:4-9 as a group. John records Jesus allegorizing this narrative in 3:1-15, what do the following elements represent; snakes, stick, bronze serpent? What was Jesus trying to get Nicodemus to understand about his mission?
• What is essential to belief in Jesus?

Big Idea:

• Believe in Jesus and have life.

Application Questions:

•  What barriers are in the way of you seeing Jesus as the “good” life?
•  Where do you look for the “good” life?
•  What’s something you used to look to for the “good” life but now you look to Jesus?
• What’s something right now that you’re willing to admit you’ve been looking to for the good life that is not Jesus? 

Questions from the Conversation:

• Why was Jesus mad about the individuals selling goods and exchanging money in the Temple?
• How does John connect Jesus’s actions to Old Testament Prophecy? Why is that an important aspect of Jesus’s character?
• How does Jesus’s cleansing of the temple foreshadow the way he will cleanse us?
• What’s the significance of Jesus’s comment about tearing down the temple and raising it back up?

Big Idea:

Jesus purifies our access to God. → both the things we put between us and God AND the things innately within us between us and God.

Application:

What is something in your life that has been getting in the way of time with Jesus? How can we help keep each other accountable as a group to seek the unhindered presence of God in our lives?

Questions from the Conversation

Narrative Questions:

In narrative, we’re always asking these 3 simple questions to get to the big idea.

• What happened? (summary & key points)
• Why here? (how it fits in John’s Gospel)
• What does the author want us to know/feel/do? 

Supplemental Questions:

• What did Jesus mean when he said, “My hour has not yet come”?
• What is significant about the wedding metaphor?
• In what way does this sign glorify Jesus? What are we supposed to know about Jesus as a result of this sign?

Big Idea:

Jesus is all we need → Links to messianic provision of wine and implication of the sign. 

Application:

• How do we know if we’re living in a way that we really believe Jesus is all we need? (Desperate/Dependent)
• When was a time in the last month that you were desperate and dependent on Jesus?
• What would it look like to be desperate and dependent on Jesus every day? What rhythms do you need in your life to consistently return to a posture of desperate dependence?

Questions from the Conversation:

1. Summarize the narrative in your own words. (Try breaking it up into Day 1 and Day 2 v35-42 & v 43-51)
2. What words, phrases, or ideas are repeated? How do they point to a main idea?
3. What titles are used for Jesus in this text? What do they tell us about the identity of Jesus?
4. How did Jesus invite people to follow him? How does he do that today?
5. How does this story reinforce the point John is trying to make in this gospel?
6. Invite your group to reflect, when were you first invited to come and see Jesus? 
7. How can you invite others to come & see Jesus?
8. Who is one person this week you can invite to come and see? Pray together for the named individuals.

19 And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight[a] the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

24 (Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) 25 They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 26 John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, 27 even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” 28 These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son[b] of God.”

Questions For Discussion & Reflection:

·     How does the background help you understand John 1:19-34?

·     Where else in the Gospels are we told about John the Baptist? What does it tell us about him?

·     How does John the Baptist continually point to Christ as the main focus of the narrative?

·     Application:

o  How do we find our identity when Christ is the center and focus of our lives?

o  What does it look like to actually live and walk by the Spirit throughout your week?

    Key Themes:

·     Pay attention to the background! The background often reveals to us why certain things are said, and often why certain things are not said.

·     There is curiosity and also confusion about John the Baptist. This has primarily to do with the way God revealed Himself in the Old Testament. Throughout all the Old Testament, God spoke through the prophets.

Prophet, Priest & King:

·     John answers this question by explaining that he is not the Messiah—not the promised deliverer & King. 

·     He is not Elijah, which is a reference to Malachi 4:5, where there was an expectation that Elijah would come as a priest before the day of the Lord.

·     John the Baptist is not these things (interesting he reveals his identity by what he is not). Rather he is “preparing the way of the Lord.” Which is a reference to Isaiah 40:1-5.

John’s Baptism:

·     Baptism wasn’t a new thing. There were other baptisms that occurred, all around special cleansing ceremonies.

Behold The Lamb of God:

·     Jesus comes into the narrative for the first time and we get another picture of John and Christ’s relationship. “After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.”

·     John the Evangelist, is showing us how John the Baptist is pointing to Christ. Again John the Baptist is pointing to Christ. Its not about him, its about Jesus!

19 And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight[a] the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

24 (Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) 25 They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 26 John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, 27 even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” 28 These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son[b] of God.”

John 1:6-18 (ESV)

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.

Questions from the Conversation:

1. Who was John the Baptist based on this text? What do you notice about John the Baptist’s job description in this text?
2. What words are repeated in 9-13, what do they tell us about the main idea of the passage?
3. What are the two ways the light was received?
4. What are the attributes of Jesus in verse 14? How can verse 14 serve as a summary of the whole passage (6-18)? 
5. How do grace and truth work together in this text?
6. How did Jesus make the father known?
7. BIG IDEA QUESTION: What does John want us to know about Jesus in this text?
8. How does recognizing Jesus is full of grace and truth demand a reorientation of our lives?
9. What does it look like to live a life characterized by grace and truth?
10. How do we speak the truth without shaming, and show grace without pleasing?

Chiastic Structure Example:
Here’s a great example of chiastic structure and a fun look at a modern take on it...
https://medium.com/@eabiusi/kanye-west-and-the-adaptation-of-ancient-hebrew-poetic-form-d8319b661ef

Book References:
How to Read the Bible for All its Worth - Fee & Stuart
How People Grow - Cloud & Townsend

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Questions from the Conversation:

1. What do you think John is referencing in verse 1? How does that contribute to what John is trying to prove in his gospel? (See John 20:31 for author’s intent)
2. What is John saying about Jesus when he refers to Him as light and life?
3. Overall, what is John saying to his audience about who Jesus is? keep in mind John 20:31
4. What does it mean to you that Jesus is the creator, the Word, life, light?
5. If Jesus came to give us life to the full, (John 10:10) what is the “good” life Jesus wants us to live?
6. How is the “good” life Jesus came to give us different than the “good” life the world says we should have?
7. In what ways have you missed out on the “good” life Jesus wants for you?
8. Who is one person on your pray watch list you are praying will get the “good” life in Jesus? Pray for them as a group.

View Trinity Chart here:
vintagegrace.org/textlabblog/s01e01