Pastor's Outlines

      Abide-7   TITLE: Living and Flourishing in Christ TEXT: John 15:1-17 TONE: Encouragement TARGET: Believers TASK: To encourage believers to abide in Christ for life, nourishment, and strength. TRUTH: A skillet with burnt eggs will be hard to clean in the morning. An alternative to scrubbing is soaking the dish in hot water and dishwashing liquid. Letting a dish abide in the solution will allow a hard cleaning job to become a lost easier. This is what abiding does for a Christian. TEACH: In the time of Jesus a great golden vine hung over the entrance to the Jerusalem temple. Josephus describes it: ‘The gate opening into the building was, as I said, completely overlaid with gold, as was the whole wall around it. It had, moreover, above it those golden vines, from which depended grape-clusters as tall as a man’ ( Jewish War v.210–212). If the second part of Jesus’ farewell discourse was given en route from the Last Supper venue to the Garden

      TITLE: Just a Voice TEXT: John 1:19-34 TONE: Exhortation TARGET: Believers TASK: To encourage believers to be a voice for the Lord. TEACH: This past week in SE Asia our team encountered a man who had been searching for Jesus for 23 years, all he needed was a voice to share the Gospel with him. God used our voices to save his soul. TRUTH: Apart from Jesus Christ, John the Baptist is probably the most theologically significant figure in the Gospels. As was the case with Jesus, his birth was meticulously recorded (Luke 1:5-25). His entrance into the world was marked by angelic proclamation and divine intervention (Luke 1:57-80). John’s birth not only parallels that of Jesus, but echoes the momentous occasion of the birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah (Gen. 17:15-22; 21:1-7). John is clearly a pivotal figure in redemptive history. Although his formative years were lived in obscurity in the desert (Lk. 1:80), his public ministry ended nearly four h