Group Expectations
Leaders. It might be a great opportunity (as we discussed in our team celebration) as we begin 2021 to take a couple minutes to refresh, remind and reset some healthy boundaries/guidelines/expectations for our small groups
Purpose of Groups: To provide a safe open environment where students can pursue healthy relationships, spiritual growth through conversation, dealing with doubts and can ask all kinds of questions.
The win is when students do most of the talking
Make the meeting fun, social and conversational
On occasion take five minutes at the end of the meeting to tell the group what excites you about where the group is headed.
What is shared in the group should remain in the group.
Ask someone in your group to collect and share everyone’s contact info
Reminder: Take a few minutes prior to the arrival of your group members to pray for the evening.
For Students
When someone is talking respect their voice and listen
Be mindful of side conversations, tangents and disruptive behavior
Cell Phones should be out of sight
Always be respectful bearing with one another in love
Get them Talking
- Would you rather change your eye color or your hair color?
- Would you rather live the rest of you life like a monk or be constantly followed by paparazzi?
- Share something that made you laugh today
Overview Week 1
During the month of January we are going to study the gospel of John. We have a cool devotional for you guys that you can download. This week we will be talking about John Chapter 1.
This conversation looks at the stunning picture John paints in the opening passage of his Gospel. In a relatively short amount of verses, John packs-in some pretty awesome truth. Through this passage in John ,we hope you will see Jesus as the eternal (preexistent) Word who came to save all people from their sins. We hope you will see Jesus as God who took on human flesh and made His home among us.
Theme Week 1. The greatness of Jesus
Studying John
The fourth Gospel was written by Jesus’ closest disciple, John
This Gospel was written much later than the other Gospels and is very different in content, style, and structure. Its purpose is clear: But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:31).
John emphasizes the dual nature and mystery of Jesus: God became man.
Getting Started
Prayer– It is always a good idea before we read the Scriptures to pray and ask God to speak to you through his word. Have a student pray as you jump into John chapter 1.
Gospel Check Ask, to you who is Jesus? Take a couple minutes and let people answer. This question can reveal someones understanding of Jesus, salvation and the gospel. Take mental notes of who might beed some follow up…it might be an opportunity to share the gospel or simply to check to make sure the gospel is clear in the heart and mind.
Reads John 1:1-14 Read it three times. The first time have them close their eyes and listen as you read it out loud. Second time have students volunteer to read. As they read have students underline a phrase that jumps out to them. Repeat the reading one more time and have them circle words that describe Jesus or are about Jesus.
- What did you think about when you listened to the passage the first time
- What phrase did you underline the second time?
- What words did you circle? Ask, why that word?
John 1:1-14
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Digging In
Consider John 1:1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Question: John begins his writing with, In the Beginning… Where else have we seen this opening in the scriptures? Why might this be important?
Leader Notes: In the beginning immediately reminds us of the opening verse of the Old Testament, ’In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Both in Genesis and here, the context shows that the beginning is absolute: the beginning of all things, the beginning of the universe.
Question In the second part of verse 1 John writes, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
- What is John saying in this powerful sentence about Jesus?
- Why is Jesus’ divinity a crucial theological belief?
- What does this say about the greatness of Jesus?
Leader Notes: Not only was the Word with God, John further explains that the Word was God. This verse explains the building blocks that go into the doctrine of the Trinity: the one true God consists of more than one person, they relate to each other, and they have always existed.
This word was a personal being who preexisted with God, shared God’s own identity, acted as Gods agent in the creation, and in Jesus Christ became incarnate (“enfleshed”) – that is Jesus become a human being complete with a physical body to communicate Gods glory in grace and truth.(We see this in John 1:14).
Look at Verses 3-4
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
- What does this say about Jesus’ role in creation?
- Have someone read Colossians 1:16-17 16For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. – How does this add more insight to the role Jesus daybed in creation. — How cool is that!?
- What does verse 4 say about Jesus?
- Is there a verse that comes to mind where Jesus talks about light and life? Hint: John 14:6 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me
Leader Notes: v. 3 simply insists that the Word was God’s Agent in the creation of all that exists. Through him all things were made; and the flip side is that without him nothing was made that has been made.
Leader Notes Verse 4 ‘Life’ and ‘light’ are almost universal religious symbols. In John’s usage they are not sentimental props but ways of focusing on the excellencies of the ‘Word’: In him was life, and that life was the light of men. Many commentators draw attention to the formal parallel in 5:26: ‘For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself’. The relationship between God and the Word in the Prologue is identical with the relationship between the Father and the Son in the rest of the Gospel. Both 1:4 and 5:26 insist the Word/Son shares in the self-existing life of God. Later on Jesus claims that he is both the light of the world (8:12; 9:5) and the life (11:25; 14:6). Both Wisdom and Torah are commonly associated with life and light in the [John, p. 119] Jewish sources; John ties them in with Christ, the Word.
In verse 5
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
- Who does John say is the light?
- What does this say about the greatness of Jesus?
- How is Jesus the light in your life?
Leader Notes: v. 5 is an anticipation of the light/darkness duality that dominates much of the rest of the book. The ‘darkness’ in John is not only absence of light, but positive evil (cf. 3:19; 8:12; 12:35, 46; 1 Jn. 1:5, 6; 2:8, 9, 11); the light is not only revelation bound up with creation, but with salvation. Apart from the light brought by the Messiah, the incarnate Word, people love darkness because their deeds are evil (3:19), and when the light shines on them they hate it, because they do not want their deeds to be exposed (3:20). In fact, wherever it is true that the light shines in the darkness, it is also true that the darkness has not understood it. It is quite possible that John, subtle writer that he is, wants his readers to see in the Word both the light of creation and the light of the redemption the Word brings in his incarnation.
Verse 12
12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
- What is verse 12 expressing about our identity?
- How would you describe being born of God to one of your friends
These is so much in the first chapter. I am jumping over a few verses to John 1:14
Verse 14
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
- How would explain to a friend the, Word became flesh?
- From this verse where does it say Jesus resides? (Answer….Among us)
- What does it say abut our savior that He willingly cloth himself with humanity?
- Bonus: Have someone read Philippians 2:5-11
Leader Notes 14. For the first time since v. 1, the term ho logos, ‘the Word’, reappears. At this point the incarnation, the ‘in-fleshing’ of the Word, is articulated in the boldest way. If the Evangelist had said only that the eternal Word assumed manhood or adopted the form of a body, the reader steeped in the popular dualism of the hellenistic world might have missed the point. But John is unambiguous, almost shocking in the expressions he uses (cf. especially Barth, pp. 85ff.): the Word became flesh. Because succeeding clauses in this verse allude to Exodus 33:7-34:35, it is tempting to think this first clause does the same. The ‘tent of meeting’ [John, p. 127] was the place where the Lord ‘would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend’ (Ex. 33:11). In Exodus Moses hears the divine name spoken by God himself, and this is followed by God’s word written on two stone tablets. Now, John tells us, God’s Word, his Self-expression, has become flesh.
This is the supreme revelation. If we are to know God, neither rationalism nor irrational mysticism will suffice: the former reduces God to mere object, and the latter abandons all controls. Even the revelation of antecedent Scripture cannot match this revelation, as the Epistle to the Hebrews also affirms in strikingly similar categories: ‘In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son’ (Heb. 1:1-2). The Word, God’s very Self-expression, who was both with God and who was God, became flesh: he donned our humanity, save only our sin. God chose to make himself known, finally and ultimately, in a real, historical man: ‘when “the Word became flesh”, God became man’ (Bruce, p. 40.20
The Word made his dwelling among us. More literally translated, the Greek verb skēnoō means that the Word pitched his tabernacle, or lived in his tent, amongst us. For Greek-speaking Jews and other readers of the Greek Old Testament, the term would call to mind the skēnē, the tabernacle where God met with Israel before the temple was built. The tabernacle was erected at God’s command: ‘Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them’ (Ex. 25:8). The people were to make this ‘tabernacle’ (Ex. 25:9; Heb. miškān; Gk. skēnē) and all its furnishings in exact accord with the pattern God had provided. Still later, the ‘tent of meeting’ (Heb.ʾōhel mēʿōḏ, Ex. 33:7) is called, in the LXX, hē skēnē martyriou (lit. ‘the tent [tabernacle] of witness’).21 Whether the allusion in John 1:14 is to the tabernacle or to the tent of meeting, the result is the same: now, the Evangelist implies, God has chosen to dwell amongst his people in a yet more personal way, in the Word-become-flesh.
Prayer
Have each person ask the person on their left what they need prayer for. Then go around the circle and pray for the person on your left. If your group isn’t comfortable praying out loud have students pray for the person an their left during week. Close by having a willing student pray to close.