”John, The Gospel of Belief” by Edwin Jones Part 8

October 28 2020 - Wednesday PM Bible Class

SUPPLEMENT B

CONSUMING JESUS

John chapter 6, note Matthew 13:10-17

 

• 27 “food which endures to eternal life.”
• 29 “believe in Him whom He has sent.”
• 32 “bread out of heaven.”
• 33 “bread of God.”
• 35 “I am the bread of life.”
• 36 “you have seen Me and yet do not believe.”
• 40 “beholds the Son and believes in Him has eternal life”
• 41 “Jews were grumbling … because He said, “I am the bread of life.”
• 44 “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws”
• 45 “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me.”
• 47 “he who believes has eternal life.”
• 48 “I am the bread of life.”
• 50 “bread…which comes down out of heaven so that one may eat of it and not die.”
• 51 “I am the living bread, … anyone who eats, … the bread which I give for the life of the world is my flesh” (note John 1:14).
• 52 “give us this flesh to eat.”
• 53 “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you have no life in yourselves”
• 54 “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.”
• 55 “My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”
• 56 “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in Me and I in Him” (note Jn. 15:4-10; Matt. 10:32, Gk., Jn. 14:15, 17, 18, 23, 26; 16:13-15; Jas. 1:21-25; II Pet. 1:2-4; I Cor. 2:16; Phil. 2:5; II Cor. 3:18; Eph. 4:15; Rom. 8:29; 12:1-2; Eph. 4:20-24).
• 57 “He who eats Me, he will also live.”
• 58 “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven; … he who eats this bread will live forever.”
• 63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I speak to you are spirit and are life.”
• 64 “But there are some of you who do not believe.”
• 65 “No one can come to Me unless it has been granted from the Father” (note v. 45).
• 68 “You have the words of eternal life.”
• 69 “We have believed and come to know.”

 

 

 

QUESTIONS

 

1. In addition to “bread,” what other words and ideas does Jesus use to both figuratively and concretely speak of how He is consumed?

 

2. John 6:63 is a key to understand what Jesus is teaching here. This key requires a student “disciple” to invest significant time in the learning project as well as requiring a strong desire to learn, driven by an understanding of Jesus’ identity as the needed motivation. What would these things suggest to us about our discipleship?

 

3. In the West, our educational models have gravitated toward the culture developed by the Greeks and generally away from the ways characterizing Jesus and Middle Eastern methods. It can be argued that this pronounced drift toward Greek ways has not served us well in modern education. Greek models are more analytical (ordered arrangements and categorizations pre-developed for presentation such as outlines). Eastern, spatial models, were more a part of Jesus’ culture and characteristic of how He taught, as in John chapter six (points seen in a space or holistically, three dimensionally with patterns presenting themselves as they are observed or discovered in the course of a presentation or study). Both have a place in the bigger picture of learning and Western and Eastern thought overlaps. Having been exposed to the more Eastern model of John chapter six, what advantages might it offer at times?

 

4. The contrast between temporal and eternal values are at the heart of John chapter six; why do so few engage eternity?

 

5. Jesus explanation for why He taught in parables is very applicable to John chapter six (“parables” having a much broader definition in His culture inherited from an Old Covenant perspective than in our standard contemporary definition, “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning”). The broader understanding of a parable included teaching such as we find in John chapter six where a variety of metaphors, connecting words, and concepts are used that the student is supposed to configure into a self-contained whole (known affectionally as a “clump” in education circles). Jesus expected peasants to get it; how would this relate to what He expects of us today?

 

6. Explain how we might effectively consume Jesus today as His disciples.

 

 

Edwin

Duration 43:01