let\’s grow.

John 4:1-26

 Recap of Last Bible Study: Last time, we looked at the end of chapter 3, where John the Baptist is talking about why Jesus is above all. What were the five reasons why Christ is above all? 1) He had a heavenly origin. 2) Christ knows the truth firsthand 3) Christ’s testimony always agreed with God 4) Christ experienced the Holy Spirit in limitless power 5) Christ received all authority from the Father. We closed with John the Baptist’s final invitation and warning: Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Believing in the gospel goes hand in hand with obeying. I challenged us to truly believe and truly obey, because if not, God’s wrath will remain on us. (more…)

 John 3:31-36

Recap of Last Bible Study: Last time we looked at John the Baptist and his ministry, telling people to repent and be baptized. What happened with John the Baptist’s disciples? They came to him and were bothered that Jesus was baptizing nearby and that people were going to him. John the Baptist responded in a way that showed his humility. He knew that Jesus was more important than him, so he said, “He must increase, and I must decrease.” He wanted his life to point straight to Jesus. I closed with the question, “Does your life point straight to Jesus?”

This week we are continuing with John the Baptist and what he has to say about Jesus. Last time, it would have been good if I ended with a “To be continued”, because we stopped in the middle of John the Baptist’s thoughts. We ended with John the Baptist saying, “He must increase, and I must decrease.” Question of the night, “Why does Christ deserve to increase, while I must decrease?” What do you guys think? According to the text for tonight, there are 5 reasons for Christ’s superiority to John the Baptist. 1) Christ’s heavenly origin 2) Christ knew what was true by first hand experience 3) Christ’s testimony always agreed with God 4) Christ experienced the Holy Spirit in unlimited power 5) Christ was superior because the Father had granted him that status.

Let’s read our text for tonight, John 3:31-36. (more…)

No Condemnation for Those Who Believe

John 3:18

Recap of Last Bible Study: Last time, we were continuing with the story of Nicodemus, who was still shocked at what Jesus told him about having to be born again. Jesus told Nicodemus that the only way to not perish was to believe in him. We looked at the most famous passage in the whole world, and how there are two options for us, as humans. It was to either believe and have eternal life or not believe and perish. We talked about how God can be loving and send people to hell, and the answer was because God is not only loving, but just and holy. But in his love, He provided a way through Jesus. We had some fun asking Ray some tough questions afterwards. If you guys want, we can do that again.

Let’s jump right into our verse for tonight.

18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

The word “condemned” in the original language is “Krino”, which in this context refers to “undergo the process of trial”. The Bible speaks a trial that will take place at the end of life. Let us turn to Revelations 20:11-15: (more…)

Believe or Perish

John 3:10-17

Recap of Last Bible Study: Last time, we were looking at the story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night. Nicodemus starts complementing Jesus and saying nice things about him, and Jesus responds and tells him that he needs to be born again to see the kingdom of God. We talked about how it was an impossible thing to do on your own, to be born again. We also looked at why we needed to be born again, which was because we were just by “flesh” previously, and we needed to be born “by the Spirit”. We looked at how the Holy Spirit is the one causes the new birth, and he goes around like wind. So what is our response to be, if we are not in control of that? Our response is to be of desperation.

This week, we are continuing to look at the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus. Let’s read John 3:10-17.

Verse 10: The last thing we heard Nicodemus say was, “How can this be?” How did Jesus respond to this question? He asks another question, but what he was really saying was “You are a prominent teacher, you should know this.” There are references to the spiritual cleaning in the Old Testament, but apparently, Nicodemus did not know of them. (more…)

The New Birth

John 3:1-8

 Recap of Last Bible Study: Last time, we were finishing up John Chapter 2. We looked at a passage that talked about how many people were observing Jesus perform miracles, but Jesus did not commit himself to these people. Why didn’t Jesus commit himself to these people? Although the passage says that they “believed” in Jesus, He knew their hearts and knew they did not have true belief. What makes up true belief? True belief consists of commitment, “Denying yourself, taking up your cross and following Jesus” and joy. We ended with a realization that we don’t have enough joy in God, and that we had to fight for joy. I gave the people who were here a copy of John Piper’s talk on How to fight for joy. I hope that you guys did the homework.

This week we will be starting in John 3. Before we start, has anyone heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? This is not something that I made up. There is an actual Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The guy who made up this religion is Bobby Henderson.  The religion is satire and a parody of Christianity. However, there are people who claim to follow this so called FSM. So, what is the difference between someone who believe in the FSM or someone who believe in God? People argue that both are the same. But, what does the Bible say? Tonight, we will be talking about the new birth. As Christians, when we believe, something changes in our lives, and it is not just what we think. But we will look at that later. Let’s go ahead and turn to John 3:1-8. Read John 3:1-8. (more…)

True Belief in Jesus Christ

John 2:23-25

Recap of Last Bible Study: Last time, we look finished the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. Some of the authorities at the temple were perhaps shocked by what Christ was doing, and they questioned his authority. They asked for a sign, and Jesus told them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, they didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about. He was not referring to the actual temple, but to himself. We looked at some of the OT prophecies concerning the resurrection of Jesus and how after Jesus resurrected, then the disciples remembered these things. We also looked at why Jesus had to die on the cross for our sins, to take the punishment for our sins, and why he had to resurrect, which was to show that the payment was sufficient.

This week we will be finishing up chapter 2. We will be looking at a very serious topic tonight, which is what true belief in Jesus really is. Before we start, let’s talk about what it means to be a believer. What does that mean to be a believer of Jesus?

We are going to take a look at what the Bible has to say about what true belief in Jesus really meant. Let’s look at John 2:23-25.

Verse 23: What’s going on here? Jesus is still in Jerusalem, where he cleansed the temple, and he is performing signs. What kind of signs? We aren’t talking about sign language here. Whenever Jesus did signs, it always showed something. What did it show? It always pointed to him being God. Jesus didn’t just do signs for the sake of doing them, or because they were cool, he did them to show that he was God, so the people could believe in him. So we have Jesus doing these signs, what is happening with the people? Verse 23 says that, “…many believed in His name when they saw the signs he did.” We don’t really know what miracles or signs Jesus was performing, but whatever it was, people liked it. It caused them to react, and it says here that they believed when they saw Jesus performing these signs. Alright! That’s awesome! People believe! Now let’s move on to chapter 3. Oh, wait, there are 2 more verse. Read verse 24-25.

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Claim to Authority-The Death and Resurrection of Christ

John 2:17-22

Recap of Last Bible Study: Last Bible study, we talked about when Jesus cleansed the temple. We looked at the reason for Jesus doing this, which was that the merchants and money changers were exploiting people and making it harder for the people to worship God. By doing so, they were acting like God didn’t even exist and were corrupting the pure worship of God. We also talked about how Christ is the perfect picture of a lion and a lamb, holiness on one side and love on the other. I asked you guys what Christ’s response would be if he came to us, if it would be a reaction to the pure worship that was in our lives, or a reaction against the things that have corrupted pure worship in our lives. I closed with a plea for us to get a right picture of Christ in our minds, one who is holy and hates sin, and another who is loving and forgiving and takes us in when we fail.

This week, we are going to be finishing up the story of the cleansing of the temple. When we last left off, Jesus had just finished driving the merchants and money changers out of the Temple. Let’s pick it up from there.

Read John 2:17-22

Verse 17-18: When the disciples saw this, it reminded them of an Old Testament passage, which pictures Jesus being consumed with an intense determination that the worship of God be pure, which we talked about last time. This is the Lion we looked at last time. I want you guys to be able to picture “Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up.” How would someone look if they were eaten up by zeal? Zeal means: fervor for a person, cause, or object; eager desire or endeavor; enthusiastic diligence; ardor. When Christ was doing this, he wasn’t lightly kicking people out and driving animals away. Think of someone flipping over a table in movies. When people do stuff like that, they don’t carefully flip the table. This stunned the people that were watching it unfold. (more…)

Cleansing of the Temple-A Picture of the Lion and the Lamb

John 2:12-21

Recap of Last Bible Study: Last Bible study, we talked about the first miracle that Jesus performed. Anyone remember what that was? That’s right, turning water into wine. We talked about how Mary told Jesus about the situation at the wedding, and how she was probably telling him so that He could do something about it. We noticed that Jesus responded in a way that was surprising to us, but that He wanted to make sure that she knew that He was doing it for God’s glory, and not for her. We also looked at how Christ commanded the servants to fill the water pot with water and how that might not have made sense to the servants, but they obeyed and got to witness the miracle. We talked about how sometimes what God says to do doesn’t make sense to us, but if we obey, we will see how it makes sense later. Finally, we looked at how the world provides the best now, but the worst later, and how God doesn’t work like that. He provides the best later, after this life. I challenged you guys with that, to live your life with the reward of being with God in Heaven later, and to live a life that is not wasted.

This week, we are going to be looking at an event that would might seem uncharacteristic of Christ according to what we might have been taught of Christ, but in reality fit perfectly with how the Bible describes Christ. First, let me show you some pictures of Jesus Christ I found just by searching on Google. (more…)