Lesson 1: “That Ye Might Believe that Jesus is the Christ”
Isaiah 61:1-3
Luke 3:4-11 (JST)
John 1:1-14; 20:31
Purpose: To encourage class members to strengthen their testimonies of Jesus Christ by studying the New Testament.
Lesson Development
1. Isaiah and John the Baptist prophesy of the Savior’s mission
2. The Apostle John testifies that Jesus Christ is “the true Light.”
1. Overview of the New Testament
3. “He … was sent to bear witness of that Light” (John 1:8)
Scripture Discussion and Application
We’ve spent much of the past six weeks or so learning about the return of the Jews to Jerusalem after their Babylonian and Persian exile. We’ve talked about how only a part of the Jews returned to Jerusalem; many more stayed in the old Babylonian cities where they had lived for two or three generations; as the years passed and Nebuchadnezzar’s dream – the one interpreted by Daniel – came to pass, with one civilization after another conquering what we know as the Middle East, groups of Jews migrated to other parts of the ancient world, until by the time of Christ, there are Jewish communities as far away as Egypt, and Greece, and Rome.
We see a number of changes take place in Jewish life in Jerusalem, and especially in these far-flung Jewish colonies. For one thing, the scribes, the educated scholars who could read and interpret the scriptures, gained prominence. This began at least as early as when Ezra led a group of Jewish exiles back to Jerusalem.
Ezra 7:10
10 For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.
Ezra and the other scribes had an enormous task in front of them, “to seek the law of the Lord, and do it, and teach it. For one thing, they had to interpret – orally, at first – the scriptures that were written in Hebrew into the Aramaic, the language the Jews had adopted while in captivity. The scribes also undertook to explain what those scriptures meant, and what the people were required to do, to be in compliance with the law.
Would it surprise you to know that different scribes interpreted and taught the law in different ways? [encourage brief class discussion]
During the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and for a time thereafter, the scribes worked on defining exactly what was sacred scripture. They re-wrote their national history to suit the needs of the new world in which they were living – for example, the Books of I and II Chronicles were written at this time, as a rewriting of the books of I and II Kings. Whereas Kings had stressed the political history of Israel as a separate and conquering nation, Chronicles focused on the ways in which Jehovah had blessed and cursed Israel according to their obedience and disobedience. Kings, in other words, is generally a secular history, while Chronicles is a spiritual history of the same times.
Does that remind you of another time when the Lord’s people kept two sets of records – one secular and the other spiritual? [one set with “an account of the reign of the kings, and the wars and contentions of my people” (1 Nephi 9:4) and a second set with “the ministry and the prophecies, the more plain and precious parts of them” (1 Nephi 19:3).]
Do you think it would be possible to write two histories of our own time, both focused on the history of the Church, with one being mostly temporal and the other being spiritual? What would be in one, and what would be in the other?
The scribes also attempted to compile an authoritative version of the scriptures from all the many versions that had been handed down over the thousands of years of their history. This rewriting and compilation possibly accounts for some of the puzzles in our Bible today, as when two different and sometimes mutually exclusive accounts are given for the same events.
[Examples, if needed, but omit in the interest of time unless the class wants to discuss it: There are two accounts, quite different from each other, of how Hagar and Ishmael are driven out of Abraham’s household – see Genesis 16 and 21; see Genesis 7:2 which tells Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean animals, while 7:9 and 7:15 direct him to one pair of animals regardless of the kind; and the Genesis 37 story of his brothers selling Joseph is apparently garbled – is it Reuben, or is it Judah, who pleads to save Joseph’s life through this method? These and other instances seem to be cases where the scribes extracted stories from different sources.]
Stories that had apparently existed only in oral form were written down during the first generations after Ezra and Nehemiah. Interestingly, two of those stories that entered the Hebrew canon at this time may reflect some of the struggles that the Jews were having in adapting their religious life to the new realities:
While one faction of Judaism made it imperative that a man be a blood descendant of Abraham in order to be a Jew – an emphasis that contributes to the rejection of the Samaritans by the Jews — another faction of Judaism emphasized that Jehovah was the God of the entire world, not merely of the Jews. It was this second faction that was responsible for the books of Ruth and Jonah. Ruth, of course, tells of a righteous woman who is not of the blood of Israel, but who nevertheless becomes an ancestor of King David, and eventually of Jesus Christ. Jonah tells of a prophet who is sent to a non-Israelite people, who repent and accept Jehovah as their God. We see echoes of this struggle within Judaism at the time of Christ, when John the Baptist tells the Jews that blood isn’t what matters, because “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (Matthew 3:9).
And in addition to writing their past history, the Jews continued to write their contemporary history. Much of this history is contained in the books that we call the “Apocrypha.” The Apocrypha are writings which were considered sacred by some branches of Judaism in the years between the Old and New Testaments, but which were not included in the final compilation of Jewish scripture. Many Christian churches – Catholicism, and Greek Orthodoxy, and Russian Orthodoxy, primarily – accept the Apocryphal books as scriptural, as being as fully authoritative as any other book in the Bible, and many Bibles published today include these books.
Latter-day Saints do not study and quote from the Apocrypha as we do the rest of the Hebrew scripture – but this does not mean we treat these books as untrue or false or apostate. Far from it. In practice we ignore these books, but as a matter of doctrine we do not discredit them.
The copy of the Bible that Joseph Smith used when he began his editing of what we call today the Joseph Smith Translation included the Apocrypha. This Bible – [hold up my copy of such a Bible] – is a modern Bible that includes the Apocrypha. You can see that these books – [indicate by means of previously placed bookmarks] – constitute a considerable number of pages. They cover quite a bit of history and prophecy. Joseph Smith considered the Apocrypha while he was making his translation, and made them a matter of prayer. He received a revelation in response, recorded in Section 91 of the Doctrine and Covenants.
That revelation confirms that “there are many things contained therein that are true” but also cautions that “there are many things contained therein that are not true.” The Lord told Joseph that “it is not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated,” but also told him that “whoso is enlightened by the Spirit shall obtain benefit therefrom.”
Even though the Apocrypha are omitted from our LDS Bibles, our Bible Dictionary contains a long article listing many of the most important Apocryphal books and suggesting what may be of value and what not be, according to the judgment of the men who worked on the dictionary. If you’re not already somewhat familiar with the Apocrypha, you might like to spend some time at least with the Bible dictionary.
During the same years that Ezra and Nehemiah were rebuilding the temple and defining what it meant to be a Jew after the Exile, Greece was becoming a powerful nation – Aeschylus and Sophocles and Aristotle and Plato and Socrates and all the other names you remember from school were living at this time and in the hundred years following. In 323 B.C. the Greek general Alexander the Great began his conquest of the known world; soon Palestine came under Greek control. Greek colonies were built in Israel itself, and Greek governors were placed over the Jews. The Greek governor of Egypt built the city of Alexandria with its great library and attempted to collect every manuscript ever written, including the Hebrew scriptures. Hebrew scribes carried those scriptures to Alexandria, and for the first time they were translated into a language other than Hebrew – Greek.
Greek culture and civilization began to have a serious effect on Judaism, as Greek became the language of government, and Greek policies controlled the Palestinian economy, and as Greek schools and gymnasiums and theatres were built in Palestine and as the Jews spread into other parts of the world controlled by the Greeks. Many Jews welcomed the wealth and education and political position that came with Greek control; many others resented it as a threat to Judaism. During these years we see a divide develop in Judaism that still existed at the time of Christ: The Jews who welcomed Greek advances and who adopted a more liberal, more go-along-to-get-along philosophy, became the Sadducees of Jesus’s day; the Jews who rejected Greek influence and stressed more complete devotion to the Law of Moses became the conservative, law-bound Pharisees of Jesus’s day.
At first the Jews were free to have these debates and make their own religious choices under Greek rule. But eventually, under new governors, Greece was not content merely to spread its cultural influence – there was a serious, prolonged attempt to stamp out Judaism altogether. Critical elements of Jewish practice – the circumcision of male children, the reading of the scriptures, the keeping of Sabbath laws – became capital offenses. The temple at Jerusalem was seized and sacrifices of unclean animals – pigs – were made on its altar. A statue of Zeus was erected on the temple grounds.
It is at this time that we turn especially to the Apocryphal books to read Jewish history and to recognize their continued devotion to Jehovah: the Jews of Palestine revolted against their Greek masters. They committed themselves to Jehovah again, and he helped them gain control of Jerusalem and drive the aliens from their temple. The Books of the Maccabees tell us how they cleansed the temple and re-established the worship of Jehovah there. During the shortages of the war, they could find oil enough only to light the temple for one day – but miraculously the lamps burned for all eight days of their services, a sign of Jehovah’s acceptance of their efforts, and the origin of the modern Hanukkah celebration.
Although the Jews regained their religious freedom, they remained under the political domination of foreign powers. The Greeks gave way to the Romans, who were in control of Palestine at the time of Jesus’s birth.
It was into this world of political turmoil and recommitted dedication to Jehovah that the angel came to announce, first, to the priest in the temple, the coming of John the Baptist, and soon after, to his mother Mary, the birth of Jesus Christ, which will be the focus of our lessons in the next two weeks.
The Jews of Jesus’s day were well aware of the prophecies in their scriptures about the coming of the Messiah. Some recognized Jesus Christ as that Messiah; most did not. One of those prophecies is found in Isaiah 61:1-3:
Isaiah 61:1-3
1 The spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.
Luke tells us that when the Savior began his formal ministry, he read these lines from Isaiah to the men in the synagogue, and announced that he had come to fulfill those words. Let’s read Luke 4:16-21:
Luke 4:16-21
16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.
17 And there was delivered uno him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
18 The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
20 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
21 And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
Most, of course, did not understand or did not accept that Jesus – the carpenter’s son – was the prophesied Messiah. One who did, who had been prepared from before his birth to proclaim the coming of the Savior, was Jesus’s cousin, John. He, too, quoted from the prophecy of Isaiah when he announced the coming and the mission of the Savior. Let’s read from the Joseph Smith Translation of Luke 3:4-11 (p. 805-806 of LDS edition of Bible):
Luke 3:4-11 (JST)
4 As it is written in the book of the prophet Esaias; and these are the word, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight.
5 For behold, and lo, he shall come, as it is written in the book of the prophets, to take away the sins of the world, and to bring salvation unto the heathen nations, to gather together those who are lost, who are of the sheepfold of Israel;
6 Yea, even the dispersed and afflicted; and also to prepare the way, and make possible the preaching of the gospel unto the gentiles;
7 And to be a light unto all who sit in darkness, unto the uttermost parts of the earth; to bring to pass the resurrection from the dead, and to ascend up on high, to dwell on the right hand of the Father,
8 Until the fulness of time, and the law and the testimony shall be sealed, and the keys of the kingdom shall be delivered up again unto the Father;
9 To administer justice unto all; to come down in judgment upon all, and to convince all the ungodly of their ungodly deeds, which they have committed; and all this in the day that he shall come;
10 For it is a day of power; yea, every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;
11 And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
And this brings us from the close of the Old Testament to the opening of Jesus’s earthly ministry as recorded in the New Testament. We’ll be reading and discussing the New Testament throughout 2015, adding our own testimonies to those recorded in scripture.
We will talk about Jesus as being identical to the Jehovah of the Old Testament – the one who covenanted again and again to remember Israel as often as Israel would repent and return to the Lord. We will talk about what it means for Jesus to “the Christ” and “the Savior” and “the Redeemer” and the other titles that he bears. We will talk about what it means to follow Jesus, to be his disciples and to rely upon him for our salvation.
Almost certainly, everyone in this room has sat through Sunday School lessons multiple times, drawn from the same manual and focusing on the same scripture stories and verses. What are some specific steps that we can take, as a class and as individuals, to make this year’s Sunday School lessons not just the “same old same old,” but to make our discussions more meaningful, more likely to strengthen our belief “that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”?
[Accept all suggestions, commenting as appropriate on those that are relevant to me as teacher; also state that I will try to involve class members more, especially with assignments for the following week’s class.]
Class reading assignment:
Read Luke 1; carefully consider how each character – Gabriel, Elisabeth, Zacharias, John the Baptist, Mary, and Joseph – could testify of Jesus Christ. How did each one know that Jesus was the Christ? How would the testimony that each could give differ from the testimony of the other witnesses?
Class participation assignments:
Ask two class members to take 2-3 minutes (mention how quickly that time passes, and emphasize that they need to stay within that time) to discuss some New Testament character – other than Jesus Christ – whom they might enjoy meeting (who and why). If that person could bear testimony that Jesus is the Christ, what would that testimony be?
Ask one class member to be prepared to read Luke 1:5-25 next week. Ask class member to think about the passage during the week to be sure he understands what is happening, and also to read it aloud several times so that he can read it in class fluently, with good expression.