Week 6-Improvement

Membership Means

Improvement

John 15: 1-17

Membership Means Improvement

Central Bible Truth

   Improvement through growth and bearing fruit is a natural and necessary aspect of church membership.

Background Passage

            John 15

Focal Passage:

            John 15:1-17, 26-27

Lesson Aim for Week 6: (Instructional, How To?)

Week 1, 3, and 5 are to be informational, or “how come”. 
Weeks 2, 4, and 6 are to be instructional, or “how to”.

    To lead adults to commit to growing in respect to their faith in Christ by placing God at the center of their lives, obeying Him, reading His word, praying, witnessing and committing to regular church fellowship.

The Bible in Context 

    In nature, growth and bearing fruit occurs naturally when there is a good source of nourishment. Your class can see that part of being a member of the body of Christ means abiding in Christ (keeping Him at the center) which will result in improvement in their lives.

     John 15 comes after the Lord’s Supper and after the disciples left the upper room. Jesus may have used the illustration of the vine as He walked past the temple and saw the ornate decorations of the vine engraved there on the gates. Israel was often depicted as a vine in the Old Testament (Isaiah 5:1-5, Psalm 80:8, Jeremiah 2:21). His emphasis of being the “true” vine is an apparent contrast to Israel.

    John 15 speaks of the relationship between believers and Christ (1-11), between believers and themselves (12-17), and believers and the world (18-27). Abidance in Christ produces fruitfulness, fruitfulness produces pruning (some translations say “cleansing” or “purging”) and pruning produces more fruitfulness. Failure to abide with Christ results in spiritual withering, and dryness, leading ultimately to God’s judgment and destruction in this life.

    Today’s focal study will deal with the first section of chapter 15. The latter half of 15 and the first section of 16 falls in our background section for next week’s lesson “Membership Means Intercession,” which shows how church members should relate to the unsaved world.

    Jesus used the vine and the branches to illustrate growth in the Christian’s life. As a working outline of the focal passage, we will use the acrostic G-R-O-W-T-H. These six basic elements for Christian development can also be illustrated as a wheel:

1.     God At The Center Of Your Life (15:1-2,4-6)

2.     Read The Bible (15:3)

3.     Obey What God Says (15:4-7)

4.     Witness To Others About Christ (15:8-9, 26-27)

5.     Talk with God in Prayer (15:7,16)

6.     Have Fellowship with Other Christians (15:12-15)