Encountering Truth: Meeting Jesus in John's Gospel

By Reagan Cocke

Encountering TRUTH Meeting Jesus in John’s Gospel

From the start, John’s gospel is different.

Like a Beethoven symphony, it soars to an encounter with Jesus as the eternal “Word” before returning us to earth for Jesus’s first meeting with his disciples. It invites us into private teachin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bible Study Media, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781942243342

Reagan Cocke

The Rev. Reagan Cocke is the Senior Associate Rector at The Church of St. John the Divine Episcopal in Houston, Texas, where he has served since 2002. He received his theological education at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, England. He is married to Stephanie. The couple has two adult children.

Book preview

Encountering Truth: Meeting Jesus in John’s Gospel

© 2020 by The Church of St. John the Divine

All rights reserved.

Published in Houston, Texas by Bible Study Media, Inc.

Cover and Interior design by Chris Nott.

Paperback ISBN # 978-1-942243-33-5

E-book ISBN # 978-1-942243-34-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020901066

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher. www.biblestudymedia.com

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (MSG) are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

Thank You

John the gospel-writer has captivated me for years through his unique insights into Jesus. His gospel is as powerful today as it was when the Spirit inspired him to write it and when the early Christians read it. It has been my desire for over a decade to write about the truth of Jesus I have encountered in the Gospel of John and make it accessible to others. As you read, I hope you enjoy multiple encounters with Jesus.

I greatly appreciate two people who helped me write this book: my daughter, Catherine Winter Cooke, who was the initial editor, and Ginny Mooney, who did additional and final editing on the manuscript. My wife, Stephanie, also kindly assisted me with her time and talents as did The Rev. Charlie Holt.

I also want to thank the people of St. John the Divine who make all this possible as I serve them as a priest and as they support me as a friend and brother in Christ.

My prayer is that Jesus is glorified by this work of love truth.

Reagan W Cocke

The Feast of the Epiphany 2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Using This Study

Introduction: Journey Into Truth

Week One . Truth in the Beginning

Week One Study Guide

Week Two . The Truth About God & Ourselves

Week Two Study Guide

Week Three . The Truth About Scripture & the Holy Spirit

Week Three Study Guide

Week Four . The Truth About Conversion & Entering the Kingdom of God

Week Four Study Guide

Week Five . The Truth About Passion

Week Five Study Guide

Week Six . The Truth About Discipleship & the Great Commission

Week Six Study Guide

Week Seven . The Truth About the Cross

Week Seven Study Guide

Week Eight . Good News: The Truth About the Resurrection

Week Eight Study Guide

Appendices

Frequently Asked Questions

Small Group Covenant

Group Calendar

Small Group Roster

Small Group Leader Helps

Hosting an Open House

Leading for the First Time

Leadership Training 101

USING THIS STUDY

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR GROUP

1. As with any individual or small-group study of God’s Word, you largely reap what you sow or, as it is commonly put, you get out of it what you put into it. In addition, there are guidelines that can help you get the most from the efforts you put in. Points 2-8 below are good for you and your group to review before you get started.

2. Review the Table of Contents.

3. If you’re hosting or facilitating a group, read the section entitled Small Group Leader Helps. It lays out best practices for how to host or facilitate a healthy small group and avoid common mistakes. It’s a great idea to review this material before your first meeting.

4. Adapt this book to the needs of your group. If a line of discussion leads to green pastures outside the scope of the book, enjoy the leading of the Good Shepherd. Feel free to ask, or allow other members to ask, insightful questions as the Holy Spirit leads.

5. Relax and remember you do not have to ask every question in your group discussion. There is a lot of material here. Feel free to skip questions as needed and linger over the ones where there is authentic conversation.

6. Enjoy the experience. Christian community should be characterized by joy and love. Encourage yourself and your group members to bear such fruit.

7. Pray before each session. Ask God to minister to you, the host, the facilitator, and every group member by name. Pray for the discussion, the fellowship, and the personal application.

8. Read the Outline of Sessions section on the following pages so you understand the flow of the session and how the study works.

OUTLINE OF GROUP SESSIONS

QUESTION

This opening question sets the tone for the week’s study. Read it aloud in your group and encourage members to consider the answer as you move through the study.

KEY VERSES

Each session begins with a key verse or verses. This passage is central to understanding the entire week’s theme. You may want to memorize the key verses. By committing portions of God’s Word to long-term memory, you will have these truths to refer to even when you don’t have a Bible with you.

SESSION INTRODUCTION

This section briefly introduces the subject of the week’s teaching video. The subject will also reflect the theme your group has been exploring in the week’s daily devotions. You may wish to have a group member read this section aloud to the group.

OPENING PRAYER

A prayer included in each session has been specially written by the author to reflect the session’s theme. You may read this aloud to begin the teaching time or have someone in your group lead in an opening prayer.

GETTING STARTED

We’ve included some warm-up thoughts and/or questions to get your group talking some before you begin the video teaching. The questions may help set up the teaching you’re about to hear.

WATCH THE VIDEO

Play the video for your group, making sure the volume is adequate for all to hear and that every member can see the video from where they’re sitting.

STUDY NOTES

This area provides a space to take notes as you watch the video or hear inspirational thoughts from the Lord or from members of your group.

VIDEO NOTES

This section summarizes key points made in the video. It is useful to read aloud after the video if a lot of material has been covered in the teaching or you want to help sum it up for your group. Feel free to bypass this section if you feel it’s not needed.

HEARING TRUTH IN GOD’S WORD

Your group will read aloud a passage of Scripture related to the prior video teaching. A note about why this section is so important: John says toward the end of his gospel that he has written this book so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Every word of John’s gospel has been carefully crafted with this goal in mind. By reading aloud the words John so carefully wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you will be reinforcing your own belief in Jesus as the Son of God and enriching the life you have in him.

TAKING TRUTH TO HEART

This section includes questions about the Scripture passage you’ve just read. In community, we can wrestle with the meaning behind the various teachings, statements, and signs of Jesus. What better way to gain the fullest picture of Jesus as portrayed by John than in community? With help from one another, we can consider how Jesus’s I AM statements, miraculous signs, and witnesses to his divine identity point undeniably to Jesus as God incarnate, the Word made flesh.

MAKING TRUTH PERSONAL

In this section, your group will discuss questions related to the teaching in the video, the Scripture reading, and the week’s daily devotionals. Through these questions, you will dig deeply into what it means to believe in Jesus as the divine Son of God and to have life in his name. How is that life to be lived? How is it different from life the world offers? Encountering truth in the Gospel of John and then making that truth personal will ensure this study is more than just an intellectual or social exercise, but a spiritual journey together that can bring transforming change to every person in your group.

CLOSE IN PRAYER WITH PRAYER REQUESTS

After the group discussion, you have the option of asking members for any prayer requests they’d like the group to pray for. There is an area in each week’s Study Guide to keep track of prayer requests and God’s gracious answers. Close your group’s time in prayer, either with someone leading or several people praying with a designated person to close. Be sure to finish your small group on time.

INTRODUCTION: Journey into TRUTH

To the woman at the well, Jesus declared: The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

John 4:23-24

While I was on sabbatical in the summer of 2009, my family and I decided to take a road trip from France to Spain. Our route looked easy on paper, but an electronic sign on the highway warned of heavy traffic ahead. As we would later find out, the traffic jam was the result of an overturned eighteen-wheeler carrying a load of shampoo. Ironically, a bunch of spilled cleaner can make a very messy situation! We soon came to a complete standstill on the highway faced with the reality that we might be stuck for several hours.

Imagine being trapped in a small European car with your family (which includes two teenagers) and you can understand my delight when my daughter noticed an escape route. Some road workers were removing a section of a concrete barrier to allow a truck with bottled water on to the highway to relieve us thirsty imprisoned motorists.

I maneuvered across three lanes of traffic to squeeze our car through the break in the barrier. Phew! We’d escaped. What a difference we found on the other side. Rather than sitting in our stuffy car hoping for a bottle of water, we were able to find food, drinks, and bathrooms easily. We moved quickly along toward our goal of reaching Spain while foregoing the painful experience of being stuck on a road going nowhere. Thankfully, we had been in the right place at the right time to gain our freedom.

Finding our freedom in Jesus is profoundly more valuable than escaping a traffic jam. Rather than remaining on a path that is going nowhere, tied to death and enslaved to sin, Jesus offers us an off-ramp to join him on a vastly different road—a road that leads to life. This life growth from the truth God reveals to us about who we are and who he is.

As we explore the Gospel of John together, our journey into this truth has three tiers. First, we unwrap and contemplate the overarching Christian truth—found in the person of Jesus Christ, the One in whom Christians put their faith. Second, we delve particularly into the Gospel of John, the gospel most concerned with the theme of Jesus himself as the Truth (John uses the word truth, or forms of it, more than any other writer in the Old or New Testament). Third, we pursue these truths alongside other people, especially in a small group setting. We can certainly engage in this study alone, but as the New Testament powerfully reveals, the most effective exploration of the Christian faith happens in community.

As we delve into this theme of truth, then, we will read the entire Gospel of John. By the end of this study, you’ll have read every word. Each week we will begin by laying out a theme for the week. Then, each following day’s reading (five per week) will include a passage from John along with a devotional reflection.

As the woman at the well encountered Jesus in John 4, I hope you will encounter Jesus in such a personal and powerful way as we journey together through John. May the truth draw you closer the One who is the TRUTH

Reagan+

WEEK 1 INTRODUCTION

Most of us don’t want to build our lives around a myth or a lie. We want to live for something true and real.

Bernie Madoff built his life around a lie; as a result, thousands of people were stripped of the fortunes they placed in his hands. Jim Jones built his life around a lie and nearly a thousand followers were lured to their deaths at the hands of poison-laced Kool-Aid. Adolf Hitler built his life around a lie and dragged his nation into a world war that ended the lives of millions of children, women, and men both in concentration camps and on the battlefield. Eventually, he ended his life of deceit at his own hand.

Lies are terrible things with devastating consequences. They destroy families and marriages, companies and clients, institutions and individuals, countries and citizens, churches and congregants. They are vicious, insidious, and ever-present.

People often run to lies because they seem more comfortable than the truth. But the comfort is short-lived. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote, If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.¹

Just as soft soap slips between your fingers, comfort is something elusive; pursuing it instead of truth results in frustration. Pursuing truth, on the other hand, may eventually lead to comfort, but the journey is not always comfortable. Discovering the truth often requires us to change our ways.

Jesus spoke to his Jewish followers saying, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:31). They responded that they were enslaved to no one and therefore did not need to be set free—they were descendants of Abraham and thereby born of a pure line. These Jews were not looking for the truth; they were offended by Jesus’s words. They were comfortable trusting in their ancestry, resting in the misconception of salvation through genealogy. It appears that at least some of those who came out to hear Jesus were seeking comfort over truth.

Where is truth found, then? According to the apostles Paul and John, it is located in Jesus himself. If their word is not enough, listen to Jesus who declares that he is the truth in a radical statement to his disciples, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). Throughout his ministry, Jesus made known that living in truth meant living in him, abiding in him. He called men and women to follow him and build their lives around him, for his teachings came straight from the source of all truth—God himself.

If truth is located in Jesus, what does this truth tell us? First, it tells us who we are: sinners. This is something uncomfortable to hear. But this truth also tells us the good news of who we will become as followers of Jesus: saints. We will explore more about both these aspects of truth—our need for rescue from sin and our hope-filled future as saints—as we journey through John together.

In an age when many question if there is any absolute truth and have, instead, become self-arbiters of truth, we need to discern and tune out such voices. Instead, we need to lean in close to hear the divine truth God reveals to us in Jesus.

Week 1

Day ONE

John’s Portrait of TRUTH

Read: John 1: 1-18

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.

John 1:1-5

Have you ever tried to communicate with someone in a language they did not know? I remember on my honeymoon in Italy (thankfully my new wife and I spoke the same language!), we traveled to a palace in the town of Mantua to see some famous frescos in the palace’s Camera degli Sposi (bridal chamber). In the middle of our tour, my wife began to feel ill and asked me to tell the guide. The only problem was, our guide spoke Italian. Now the closest thing I can speak to Italian is my basic high school Spanish, so I said to our guide, Mi esposa está enferma. The Spanish word he picked up on was esposa (wife). Thinking I was asking about the bridal chamber and knowing I did not speak Italian, he made some graphic hand gestures to illustrate what happens in a bridal chamber! Talk about a communication fail.

In his gospel, the Apostle John writes for at least two