1. Describe a time where you lost something and the feelings you experienced? What did you feel if it was found? What did you feel if it was never recovered?
2. Read Luke 15:1-7 — What is one thing that stands out to you from the passage or from the sermon this past Sunday?
3. What can we discern about the ministry of Jesus from v. 1-2?
4. Do you see yourself as a sheep? What makes it a struggle to view yourself this way? What can we learn about ourselves through the sheep imagery?
5. What encouragement do you find in the pursuit of the shepherd?
6. On Sunday it was said, “The shepherd is far more interested in saving us than we are of being saved.” Do you agree with that statement? Why?
7. Read Ezekiel 34:11-16 — How is Jesus the fulfillment of these promises?
8. As a disciple of Jesus, who is He sending you to pursue? Take time to pray for that person.

• Read Luke 13:18-21 - What is one thing that stand out to you from the passage or from the sermon this past Sunday?
• Where in our culture do you see the draw/appeal of the big, the grandiose, the spectacle?
• How do these parables push against some cultural norms and values?
• The sermon spoke of 4 patterns (see below) revealed in these parables. Share one pattern that particularly challenges or encourages you in your current season of life.
  • Expansion pattern — from small to great
  • Inclusion pattern — from the few to the many
  • Transformation pattern — from the unseen to the seen
  • Gratification pattern — from instant to delayed
• Read 1 Corinthians 1:22-25. How is the cross the ultimate manifestation of the mustard seed and leaven?

1. To get us going in this series, what is so captivating about a good story?What is one of your favorite stories?
2. Read Luke 8:4-15 - What is one thing that stands out to you from the passage or from the sermon this past Sunday?
3. What do you think Jesus means in verse 10 when he says, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’?
4. According to this parable, what does true hearing and seeing involve
5. Discuss the four types of soils. - What stands out to you? - Where have you seen or experienced the different types of soils? - Where do you find yourself?
6. How can the group pray for you?

1. What are some of the things you have thought is the point of life?
2. What are ways you may be tempted to take what God’s given you and use it for making your own empire?
3. How does Jesus becoming a human, sharing in our smallness, encourage you?
4. The cross was Jesus caring for you, being mindful of you, acting for your good. How can you model his redemptive heart in a place God has called you?

1. Can you share a time you tried out for something and made it? How did it make you feel? What would have been in difference if you were “chosen not choice?” If you were picked not because of your skills and accomplishments but the desire of the person deciding? 
2. As chosen people God calls us to be holy, to be both set apart from the world, and for the world. What is the danger of holding to one truth to the neglect of the other?
3. “Holiness is not something we are called upon to do in order that we may become something; it is something we are to do because of what we already are.” How does God’s grace making you holy change the way you pursue living a more holy life?
4. How can we pray for one another with a particular area of holiness that we would be set apart from the world for the world?

1. Describe some things that bring you life? What comes to mind when you hear “eternal life?” 
2. Which narrative do you feel more pulled toward: the modern narrative of thinking life is just the here and now; or the religious narrative that life is just beyond the here and now?
3. Where is a place you want Jesus to bring more of his resurrection life into?
4. How does it free you to be more present and alive today knowing that in Christ “you’re living your worst life now?”

1. What is the good news of the gospel in Psalm 32?
2. How would you define “sin”? Can you give a recent example of that in your life?
3. How do you normally respond to your sin? Repression (I did nothing wrong); Remorse (I can’t believe I did that); Resolution (I promise to do better next time)? 
4. If a forgiven life is a thriving life, how this week can you begin to experience more of God’s forgiveness of you in the gospel?

1. We are all worshipers, what are some of the things that, without prompting, you praise?
2. We become what we behold, what are the things your heart daydreams about? (e.g. career, comfort, influence, ext…). Can you name any ways these things have failed you, have made you empty and lifeless?
3. Describe as many ways you can the beauty of Jesus.
4. How has Jesus given you life and made you full?

1. Fill in the blank, "If someone knew every part of me, even more than I knew about myself, they would __________ me."  
2. Where is a place in your life where you are tempted to think God's love is conditional?
3. How does the bright future you have in the gospel give you hope for something you are facing today?

1. Who are some people or things you desire? What feelings do they invoke in you? Have you ever been desired by someone? What does that feel like?
2. Is there a place in your life you would be willing to share where you don’t think you’re worthy of love?  
3. How does the knowledge that someone as significant as God the Father desires you in the places you may feel unloveable help you move toward healing?

1. What are some ways our culture views our bodies? Have you seen that change before and after the pandemic?
2. Have you ever seen your physical body being connected to your spiritual life? If so, how?
3. Our bodies have disordered desires, good things we long for above God. Is there a place in your life where you feel a real struggle toward a disordered desire? 
4. “My Master looks out for me,” says Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. How does God’s good care for you in the gospel free you from pursuing your inordinate desires? 

• Be brutally honest
• Come to Jesus for restoration
• Help each other sit under the waterfall of God's grace

Community Group Questions

1. What strikes you about God’s grace toward Abraham in the birth of Isaac?
2. Isaac means “laughter”, which has a duel meaning. It speaks to Abraham and Sarah laughing at God's promises and the laughter of grace in God fulfilling his promises. Where has God’s promises reversed a seemingly hopeless situation for you?
3. The "way of Ishmael" was Abraham trusting himself and living by his own power. The "way of Isaac" was Abraham trusting God’s promises and living by God’s power and grace. Where do you need to trust the promises of the gospel more and live more by God’s power and grace?

Community Group Questions

1. Where is fear on repeat in your life?
2. What is the fear underneath your fears?
3. How do those fears leave you feeling trapped?
4. How does God’s love in the gospel set you free from specific fears?

Community Group Questions

1. What doubts do you have, or have had about the resurrection of Jesus?
2. Where in your life are you longing for the new life of the resurrection?
3. The resurrection leads to mission where the power of the gospel is displayed through our weakness. How can you think about sharing Christ with a specific person through sharing your weakness and God’s grace?

Community Group Questions

1. What’s your need you're bringing in tonight? Have you named your need to Jesus?
2. Is your cry in your need more often “help me” or “save me”? Why?
3. How can we help one another behold the king together?

Community Group Questions

1. Is there something you are facing that seems impossible for God? Maybe cognitively you know God is powerful enough to move i this situation, but your prayer life would say otherwise?
2. Where do you need God to show up in your life right now?
3. Three great promises we can take from Genesis 18 is that God is for us, with us and working in and through us. Which of these promises of the gospel do you most need to be reassured of today?

Community Group Questions

1. Abraham is almost 99 years old and still waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled. How are you with waiting for God? Is there something right now you are waiting for him on?
2. In the sign of circumcision, God communicates his grace to Abraham in a place of sin. What place of sin and need to do need to hear God’s grace to you in Jesus?
3. God’s call to Abraham is to respond to his love, to participate in what God is doing in our world. Is there a new place or way God is calling you to respond to his love?

Community Group Questions

1. Abram and Sarai are impatient, distrustful of God and skeptical of his grace. So they decide to take the shortcut. Where in life may you have a similar heart-posture toward God and his promises? Where you may be tempted to shortcut faith in Jesus?
2. If you had to distill what it means to be a Christian into one word, what would it be? Does it differ at all from how Hagar shows us a Christian is fundamentally someone who has been found?
3. Jesus meets Hagar with the strong and tender love of God. Which do you more need right now?

Community Group Questions

1. Abraham Lincoln once wrote, “you can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.” What makes you angry? Where is it righteous anger, reflecting the values of God’s kingdom, and where is it unrighteous anger, reflecting the values of our “kingdoms of self”?
2. Are there places of comfort God may be calling you to leave for the good of your neighbor?
3. Read Hebrews 7:23-26. How does Jesus, the true and greater Melchizedek, the king of righteousness and priest made sacrifice, free you to seek the Justice of your neighbor?

Community Group Questions

1. “The heart-difference in [Abraham] depended upon whether he trusted or distrusted God’s word.” How would you complete this sentence: my time recently spent in God’s word has been ____________.
2. Is there a place you are living through the lens of fear right now that you can pray the Holy Spirit will enable you to live through faith?
3. Read Romans 8:31-39. What promise of the gospel do you most need God to assure you of this week?

Community Group Questions

1. Can you name some ways God was pursuing you before you were converted? And what are some ways God has continued to pursue you throughout your Christian life?
2. Faithfulness meant Abraham loving God even when it cost him. Can you name a time when you were faithful and it cost you?
3. Is there a place in your life right now you feel convicted you haven’t set apart for God?
4. The gospel radically re-writes our story. What is a part of your story you can pray for Jesus to re-write with his death and resurrection?

Community Group Questions

John 11:45-12:11

The Scheme (11:45-57)

Why won’t they believe?

Surface v. Root

People try to persuade us that the objections against Christianity spring from doubt. The objections against Christianity spring from insubordination, the dislike of obedience, rebellion against all authority. As a result people have hitherto been beating the air in the struggle against objections, because they have fought intellectually with doubt instead of fighting morally with rebellion.

- Soren Kierkegaard 

“You know nothing at all! You’re not considering that it is to your advantage that one man should die for the people rather than the whole nation perish.”

- Caiaphas 

The concept of substitution may be said to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.

- John Stott, The Cross of Christ 

2 Corinthians 5:21

He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The Surrender (12:1-11)

A Snapshot of Surrender

Humility / Vulnerability / Security

denarii & decidere

Is Jesus useful or beautiful to you?

Look at him. By faith, see his dying love for you. What is it worth? His blood is flowing down into pools at the foot of that cross. But it doesn’t lie there in waste and loss. It flows out toward us — guilty, sad us. His blood flows out toward a woman who has shamed herself in a desperate craving to be loved. His blood washes her shame clean off her. Then that shame flows back to the cross, where it shames Jesus and is no longer her burden to bear. His blood flows out toward a man held in bondage to lust. He has discovered too late that there is no comfort there, only emptiness and self-hatred. But the blood of Jesus flows out to that man, cleanses him entirely, and takes that painful wrong back to the cross where Jesus suffers for it as his own wrong, freeing that man forever. The blood of Jesus is flowing out to sinners of all kinds, taking from them their guilt, their shame, their loss, their tears and despair, and giving them a whole new life. Jesus is saying to you right now, “I don’t want you to bear your burden one moment longer. Let my chastisement give you peace. Let my stripes heal you.”

- Ray Ortlund

The Scent

2 Corinthians 2:14-16

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in Christ’s triumphal procession and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. For to God we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To some we are an aroma of death leading to death, but to others, an aroma of life leading to life. Who is adequate for these things?

How’s your smell?

The fragrance of Christ can only come through being led in triumphal procession as captives of the cross…The way to live is to understand that weakness, suffering, and death are the means by which the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ wafts to the ends of the earth.

- Kent Hughes  

How Will You Respond?

REPENT. REMEMBER. REJOICE.

John 11:1-44

Jesus Loves (1-16)

Jesus Reveals (17-37)

Jesus Raises (38-44)

John 10:22-42

The Need For Renewal (V. 22-26)

Festival of Dedication

Antiochus IV Epiphanes

Judas Maccabeus 

This isn't the first time the temple has been desecrated...

“How long are you going to annoy us?”

The Picture Of Renewal (V.27-29)

THEY LISTEN TO JESUS’ VOICE

- Makoto Fujimura, Art & Faith

THEY ARE KNOWN BY JESUS

THEY ARE WALKING WITH JESUS

THEY ARE GIVEN LIFE BY JESUS

THEY ARE SECURE IN JESUS

Romans 8:31-39

What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. 

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Those who hear Jesus’ voice and recognize it as the voice of ‘their’ shepherd will be safe for ever. He will look after them, and even death itself, the last great enemy, cannot ultimately harm them. The reason Jesus can be so confident of this is that the guarantee is his own unbreakable bond of love and union with the father, and the fact that the ‘sheep’ he owns are the ones the father has given him…Christian confidence about the future beyond death, in other words, is not a matter of wishful thinking, a vague general hope, or a temperamental inclination to assume things will turn out all right. It is built firmly on nothing less than the union of Jesus with the father—one of the main themes of this whole gospel.

- N.T. Wright 

The Source Of Renewal (V. 30-42)

“I and the Father are one.”

“Isn’t it written in your law, I said, you are gods?”

Psalm 82

Set apart. Consecrated.

John 2:19-22

Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.” Therefore the Jews said, “This temple took forty-six years to build, and will you raise it up in three days? ”But he was speaking about the temple of his body. So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made.

And many believed in him there.

Ephesians 2:19-22

So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole building, being put together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you are also being built together for God’s dwelling in the Spirit.

John 10:1-21

The Danger (V. 1; 8; 10)

How do you see yourself?

What are we on the lookout for?

False Leaders & False Messages

Ezekiel 34:1-6

The word of the Lord came to me:

“Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy, and say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says to the shepherds: Woe to the shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding themselves! Shouldn’t the shepherds feed their flock? You eat the fat, wear the wool, and butcher the fattened animals, but you do not tend the flock. You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bandaged the injured, brought back the strays, or sought the lost. Instead, you have ruled them with violence and cruelty. They were scattered for lack of a shepherd; they became food for all the wild animals when they were scattered. My flock went astray on all the mountains and every high hill. My flock was scattered over the whole face of the earth, and there was no one searching or seeking for them.

Acts 20:28-31

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Men will rise up even from your own number and distort the truth to lure the disciples into following them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for three years I never stopped warning each one of you with tears.

2 Timothy 4:2-4

Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths.

What shepherd are you following?

You may regularly go to a place of worship. You may have a full, devout set of doctrinal beliefs. You may be trying very hard to believe and obey God. However, what is your real, daily, functional salvation? What are you really living for, what is your real - not your professed - god?

- Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods 

The Declaration

I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD

What makes Jesus the BEAUTIFUL SHEPHERD?

JESUS CALLS US BY NAME (v. 3)

JESUS LEADS FROM OUT FRONT (v. 3-4)

JESUS IS THE GATE (v. 7-10)

Particular - Protection - Provision

JESUS LEADS WITH SERVICE (v. 11-13)

JESUS LEADS WITH SACRIFICE (v. 11-15)

The Shepherd becomes the Sacrificial Lamb

Isaiah 53:6-7

We all went astray like sheep;

we all have turned to our own way;

and the Lord has punished him

for the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,

yet he did not open his mouth.

Like a lamb led to the slaughter

and like a sheep silent before her shearers,

he did not open his mouth.

John 1:29

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

JESUS MAKES US ONE (v. 16)

JESUS HAS ALL POWER (v. 17-18)

He’s not the victim, he’s the VICTOR!

Colossians 2:14-15

He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him.

Our Decision (V. 19-21)

Will you trust the Good Shepherd?

If Christianity were a philosophy, it wouldn't have such a personal impact. If Christianity were principles, or a way of life, or an ideal, we wouldn't react so strongly. Mere concepts and lifestyle choices we can fit into our own prearranged reality. But Christianity is the person of Christ himself. And he is threatening, he is invasive, because he comes to us not as our lifestyle coach; he comes to us as our King, our Messiah.

- Ray Ortlund 

John 8:12-59

Where are you experiencing darkness?

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

- C.S. Lewis 

The Claim (8:12-18)

Bread. Water. Light.

The Exodus Story

“I am the light of the world.”

Zechariah 14:6-7

On that day there will be no light; the sunlight and moonlight will diminish. It will be a unique day known only to the Lord, without day or night, but there will be light at evening.

The Confrontation (8:19-59)

Where are you in the story?

“You know neither me nor my Father.”

Hebrews 1:3

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

“I’m going away; you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I’m going, you cannot come.”

Ephesians 2:1-3

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.

“Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.”

“You are of your father the devil…he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Matthew 23:15

 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to make one convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a child of hell as you are!

“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.”

“Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”

The Comfort

“Anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness…”

“If you continue in my word, you really are my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

“Truly I tell you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

John 10:10

A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.

“When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own.”

John 7:37-52

How do you picture Jesus?

The False Dichotomy 

Matthew 12:20

He will not break a bruised reed,

and he will not put out a smoldering wick,

until he has led justice to victory.

The Controversy Of Grace (7:53-8:6)

…brought a woman caught in adultery, making her stand in the center.

Leviticus 20:10

“If a man commits adultery with a married woman ​— ​if he commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife ​— ​both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

What’s the trap?

Grace For The Religious (8:6b-9)

Jeremiah 17:13

Lord, the hope of Israel,

all who abandon you

will be put to shame.

All who turn away from me

will be written in the dirt,

for they have abandoned

the Lord, the fountain of living water.

To this day we have not the slightest idea what it was Jesus twice scribbled in the sand. By and large the commentators have asked the wrong questions…They ask what without ever realizing that the real question is why. It was not the the content that mattered but why He did it. Unexpected. Irritating. Creative. …What Jesus did that morning created a space in time that allowed the angry mob first to cool down, then to hear His word, and finally to think about it, be convicted by it and respond – or not…Jesus’ action created a frame around the silence – the kind of silence in which God speaks to the heart.

- Michael Card 

“The one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her.”

What Jesus is NOT saying

Are you the lead repenter?

they left one by one, starting with the older men

Grace For The Rebellious (8:10-11)

Christ was “without sin,” and might cast the first stone; but though none more severe than he against sin, for he is infinitely just and holy, none more compassionate than he to sinners, for he is infinitely gracious and merciful, and this poor malefactor finds him so.

- Matthew Henry 

Romans 8:1-3

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering…

The Order of Grace

Indicative to Imperative

Colossians 3:12-14

Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

John 7:37-52

The Practices (John 7:37a)

The Promise & The Proclamation (John 7:37-39)

Jesus is the Messiah

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!

We bless you from the house of the LORD.

- Psalm 118:26

Jesus is the new Temple

On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem…

- Zechariah 14:8

Jesus is God

For my people have committed a double evil: They have abandoned me, the fountain of living water, and dug cisterns for themselves ​— ​cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.  

- Jeremiah 2:13

The Problem (John 7:40-52)

The Provision (John 7:39)

John 7:1-36

Jesus Unsettles The Nominal

Jesus Uncovers The Devout

Jesus Unburdens The Sinner

1. The proof of your salvation is in God's presence
2. You are in God's presence

John 6:22-71

Forgetting Jesus (6:22-34)

Are you mistaking the menu for the meal?

“Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you at the loaves and were filled…”

Do you desire Jesus or just His stuff?

10,000

Don’t work for the food that perishes…

Most people, if they have really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we have grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us.

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

What can we do to perform the works of God?

John 6:29-34

Jesus replied, “This is the work of God ​— ​that you believe in the one he has sent.” 30 “What sign, then, are you going to do so that we may see and believe you? ” they asked. “What are you going to perform? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” 32 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 Then they said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Feasting On Jesus (6:35-59)

"I am the bread of life..."

So Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves.

What feasting on Jesus provides…

CONTENTMENT

“No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again.  

- John 6:35

COMFORT

Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. 

- John 6:37

CHALLENGE

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.  

- John 6:44

You’re not chosen because you believe; you believe because you’re chosen.

Security

If I’m chosen because I believe, that means I’m a Christian because I’m a little better, I’m a little wiser, I’m a little humbler. There’s something in me that’s better. What that means is there is something in me that brought the grace of God into my life that if I lose that, I lose it. But if it’s not I’m chosen because I believe but rather I believe because I’m chosen, then that means the love of Christ has come into my life unconditionally. Unconditionally!

- Tim Keller

Humility

Community

Isaiah 55:1-2

“Come, everyone who is thirsty,

come to the water;

and you without silver,

come, buy, and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

without silver and without cost!

Why do you spend silver on what is not food,

and your wages on what does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,

and you will enjoy the choicest of foods.

Following Jesus (6:60-71)

So Jesus said to the Twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?”

Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Will you feast on the broken Bread of Life?

John 6:1-21

A Story Of Power (6:1-4)

Demonstration Of Power (6:5-21)

Experiencing The Power

John 5:30-47

The Trial (5:30-31)

The Testimonies (5:32-39)

Turning The Tables (5:37-47)

John 5:16-29

Jesus Has Life (5:19-23)

1. Deference
2. Unity

Jesus Gives Life (5:24-27)

1. Future
2. Present

Jesus Determines Life (5:28-29)

1. Life
2. Death

HOW WILL YOU RESPOND?

John 4:43-5:17

Admit Your Need (4:46-47; 5:5-7)

Believe The Word (4:48-54; 5:8-9)

Consider The Cost (5:10-17)

John 4:1-42

The Context (1-8)

The Conversation (9-26)

The Calling (27-42)

John 3:22-36

The Problem (22-26)

The Posture (27-30)

The Perspective (31-36)

HOW WILL YOU RESPOND?

John 20:24-29

The Doubts (24-25)

The Declaration (26-28)

The Decision (29)

HOW WILL YOU RESPOND?

John 1:35-51

The Seeking

JOhn 1:35-39

The Sharing

John 1:40-45

The End Of Striving

John 1:46-51

John 1:14-18

The Presence

John 1:14

The Posture

JOhn 1:15

The Provision

John 1:16-18

HOW WILL YOU RESPOND?

John 1:1-13

Divinity Revealed

John 1:1-2

Mission Revealed

John 1:3-5

Witness Revealed

John 1:6-9

Responses Revealed

John 1:10-13

HOW WILL YOU RESPOND?