Each year the MU Sydney Education Department Coordinator writes, or organises to be written, a series of four Bible Studies that MU Branches are encouraged to incorporate into their yearly program.
MU Bible Studies 2012,
"I am Jesus", 4 studies from John's gospel
written by the current Department Coordinator Mrs Wendy Mayer.
I grew up in an era when teaching was generally done by a method best described as ‘chalk and talk’. Our visual learning needs were met by a teacher, writing on a blackboard. We didn’t have any smartboards, listening posts or classroom computers.
If we go back 2000 years, we find that teachers didn’t even have the blackboards and chalk! Admittedly there were different forms of slates, and scribes had their scrolls, each hand written and so very costly, but if teachers wanted to instruct the general population, they usually just used the spoken word, because many of the people couldn’t read.
Jesus’ teaching often took the form of parables. The definition of a parable I learnt as a child was ‘a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning’, and I don’t really know a better definition today. Jesus’ parables were designed to teach about God and heaven and he used familiar objects or events such as guests attending a wedding feast, a farmer sowing or harvesting his crops, a prodigal son coming home, to illustrate the nature of heaven and the difficulties in entering. The parables were particularly good educational tools for a people who needed instruction and encouragement.
Usually Jesus didn’t include himself in these stories. But the parables in this present series of studies from John’s Gospel are different. Here Jesus talks deliberately about himself. He chooses images that can illustrate aspects of his own divine nature and his unique work of salvation. He doesn’t say he is ‘like’ those things, but he claims to BE those things. He IS the vine that God planted in the Promised Land; he IS the bread of life that was far superior to the manna in the wilderness; he IS the good shepherd of David’s Psalms; he IS the light of the world from the time of the creation. These are all images of God himself from Old Testament teaching and by applying them to himself Jesus was claiming to be God.
Why did Jesus choose these particular items? Apart from using them to establish his claim to be God, each one illustrates a different facet of God’s nature, and Jesus came to show us more clearly than we had ever seen before what God is like. In John 14:8-9 when Philip asks to see the Father, Jesus replies “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
The aim of these studies is to see what we can learn about God as we study these familiar images of a loaf of bread, light, a shepherd with his sheep, a gate, and a vine.
The book of studies can be purchased from the MU Shop for a cost of $5.
Attached are some Studies written in previous years. While copyright remains with MU Sydney, the studies can be downloaded from this page and copied for use in private study or groups. File format is pdf.
