Adult Bible Studies Spring 2024 Student

By Robin Wilson

Grow your faith. Transform your life.

Cultivate a deeper relationship with God through Adult Bible Studies. This resource, endorsed by the Curriculum Resources Committee of The United Methodist Church, offers a year-round, weekly Bible study plan for Sunday school classes and other small groups.

Each weekly lesson offers background and focal Scriptures, key verses, and doctrinally sound and relevant biblical interpretation and application in a readable font size. Annual plans provide comprehensive coverage of the Bible, special lessons during the church seasons of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter, and suggestions for developing spiritual practices such as prayer, worship, community, and service, among many others. Adult Bible Studies is a reliable companion and guide for learning and growing in Christian faith.

With the help of the Adult Bibles Studies Student Book, Teacher/Commentary Kit, and DVD, your group will embrace that it’s not just about learning - it’s about living out biblical teachings.

Spring 2024 Theme: Encounters in Prayer and Love
This spring, our Bible lessons follow the theme “Encounters in Prayer and Love.” Because Lent falls during this quarter, the first unit has five lessons and ends with Easter Sunday. The second unit has eight lessons. The writer of the student book is Robin Wilson.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Cokesbury
• Release date: Jan 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781791027599

Robin Wilson

Robin Wilson is the Senior Pastor of First UMC in Opelika, Alabama, and has a passion for helping all people discover and respond to God’s call upon their lives. Having served on the Board of Directors of Discipleship Ministries and the Upper Room Ministries, Inc., Robin currently serves on the Board of the Stegall Seminary Scholarship Foundation. Robin is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Duke Divinity School.

Book preview

Unit 1

Jesus Prays

If Jesus is God, then why does he have to pray?

If I had a dollar for every time I have been asked that by inquisitive children during my time as a pastor, I could have retired long ago. But I must confess, I don’t think any answer I’ve given is close to complete. Perhaps this is another reason that we spend a lifetime pouring over the words of Scripture, as God is revealed more and more as we journey with God from Genesis to Revelation. I can’t answer why Jesus has to pray, but I do think that since Jesus does pray, it’s worth our time to pray, too.

In the lessons in this unit, we will examine some of the prayers and occasions on which Jesus prayed, especially as we continue our journey with Jesus toward the cross this Lenten season. We will embark on a spiritual deep dive as we examine the themes and people for whom Jesus prayed in days before his crucifixion and resurrection.

In his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Richard Foster writes, The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son.¹ When we open ourselves to be with God through prayer, stopping our lives to acknowledge and commune with the Holy One, we cannot help but be transformed. God’s grace is poured out on us in prayer.

If your prayer life has waned, perhaps this journey with Jesus will inspire you to commune with God in prayer. And by the very grace of God, you might find yourself praying as Jesus taught his followers when they asked him to teach them to pray: Father, uphold the holiness of your name. Bring in your kingdom. Give us the bread we need for today. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who has wronged us. And don’t lead us into temptation (Luke 11:2-4).

¹ From Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, by Richard Foster (SanFran, 2002); page 101.

March 3

Lesson 1

Jesus’ Dinner Prayer

Third Sunday of Lent

Focal Passage: Matthew 26:26-30

Background Text: Matthew 26

Purpose Statement: To discover how the use of established liturgy can help us pray in difficult times

Matthew 26:26-30

²⁶While they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, Take and eat. This is my body. ²⁷He took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink from this, all of you. ²⁸This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many so that their sins may be forgiven. ²⁹I tell you, I won’t drink wine again until that day when I drink it in a new way with you in my Father’s kingdom. ³⁰Then, after singing songs of praise, they went to the Mount of Olives.

Key Verse: Then, after singing songs of praise, they went to the Mount of Olives (Matthew 26:30).

I played softball during the summer after third grade. I was not particularly good and used my sister’s hand-me-down glove, but I enjoyed learning a little bit about the rituals that teams have. One player insisted on using the same bat each time she got up to hit. Another player performed a series of hand gestures while approaching home plate to bat.

But the most important thing to the team every week, which therefore became important to me, was the cheer we shouted in a huddle with our hands all in before each game began. It centered us all, and each person felt connected and needed as, with touching hands, we shouted the words that would surely propel us to victory!

Sadly, we won only two games the entire summer, both against the only team in the league that was worse than we were. I have often wondered and tried to remember the words in our pre-game cheer that kept us focused and hopeful and caused us to enjoy the sport and one another for the summer season. Alas, they are gone from my memory, but I know that connection, gathering, and cheer brought us together for each game.

I suppose that without practice and gathering, the rituals that seem important can slip away from our recollections. When a team dissolves at the end of a season, the members go their separate ways, and the ritual actions and words are shared no longer. The warm feeling of nostalgia remains, but the hopefulness and unity are gone some 40 years later.

Perhaps there have been rituals that have given meaning to you for a season. In the text for this lesson, Jesus and his disciples gathered for a ritual commemoration important in their Jewish tradition. But on this occasion, it took on a whole new meaning.

The Special Meal

Matthew 26:17 tells us that Jesus’ disciples asked him about the preparations they should make for the upcoming Passover meal. For centuries, and to this day, Jews told the story from generation to generation of God’s delivering them from bondage in Egypt (Exodus 12–27).

A meal during this time would have been familiar to the Jewish disciples. Scholars love to debate what ritual and details were in place for this meal during Jesus’ time, but we know that this meal had come to be eaten with ritual, food, and liturgy, all to tell the story of God’s faithfulness to save God’s people.

Exodus 12 describes God’s instructions for the first Passover. The details required of the people for this special meal are intricate. From the selection of the lamb to the speed and attire required to partake of it, details mattered. The detailed requirements for the Festival of Unleavened Bread are outlined as well. The blood of the lamb placed with obedience to instruction was to save the firstborn of the household.

From the time of Moses to the time of Jesus, many centuries passed. But the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were still practiced, albeit with changes over time, as all rituals do. Imagine the generational faithfulness that had shared the stories of God’s faithfulness to God’s people.

What rituals do you hope are handed down in the coming centuries to those who follow in the Christian faith? What stories and prayers of our faith do you want to tell the next generations?

Nothing They Expected

When Jesus sat with his followers on the first night of Passover, they would have expected him as their teacher and leader to recount the story of God delivering the Israelites from captivity in Egypt. This was a ritual that his disciples could probably recite with him, as they had heard the story every year with their families. They probably found comfort in this, knowing that the head of the family or the host would offer a blessing and tell the story. But with Jesus as the host, this night was turned upside down.

Jesus announced that one of the disciples would betray him (Matthew 26:21), and in the midst of their distress and denial that any of them could be the betrayer, Jesus shifted the tone abruptly from talk of betrayal to a blessing. He offered a blessing over the bread (verse 26). Perhaps the disciples thought that this blessing took them back to the normal expectations of a Passover meal. After all, this was what a host usually did. Instead, following the blessing, Jesus broke the bread and told them to eat and that the bread was his body!

If that wasn’t confusing enough, Jesus gave thanks and told them about the cup being his blood of the covenant poured out for the forgiveness of sins (verses 27-28). And the disciples thought it would be just another ordinary Passover meal!

Have you ever had an expected event interrupted? How did you respond?

The Meaning Ascribed to Ritual

Christians will recognize our focal passage, Matthew 26:26-30, as the institution of the Lord’s Supper. For churchgoers, it is interesting to notice the brevity of Matthew’s account