Bible Study: September 23, 2026
Prayer
As always, we'll begin with a prayer. Is there any great thing from the past week (or since our last Bible Study!) you'd like to mention for us to praise/pray about? Perhaps a prayer was answered since our last meeting, or maybe something wonderful happened that you want to praise God for by sharing with us? Afterwards, we can also discuss prayer requests for any challenges and for the people we know who are close to our hearts.
Praise
Blessed Jesus, At Your Word
Blessed Jesus, at your word
we are gathered all to hear you.
Let our hearts and souls be stirred
now to seek and love and fear you.
By your gospel pure and holy,
teach us, Lord, to love you solely.
All our knowledge, sense, and sight
lie in deepest darkness shrouded,
till your Spirit breaks our night
with your beams of truth unclouded.
You alone to God can win us;
you must work all good within us.
Glorious Lord, yourself impart;
Light of Light, from God proceeding,
open lips and ears and heart;
help us by your Spirit's leading.
Hear the cry your church now raises;
Lord, accept our prayers and praises.
Psalter Hymnal, 1987
Passage
John 1:1–18 : The Word Became Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
Ponder
1. As you heard John 1:1–18 (or the Psalter Poem), what single word or phrase stayed with you, and why? Where did you feel the Light or the nearness of God? Why?
2. John says "the Word was with God and was God", and that “the light shines in the darkness which did not overcome/comprehend it (v.5).” Do you think the same darkness from 2,000 years ago remains today? If so, what do you think it is and how do you think it’s still manifesting in the world today?
3. In our Bible Study before, we’ve heard something like John 1:14–18 before: Exodus 33:18–23 (and 34:6–7). In what ways does John not only nod to…but actually reframe Moses’s encounter with God’s Glory and Name? What’s John up to here?
4. John the Baptist is called “a witness to the light.” But John also makes something else very clear here: John the Baptist is not the light. In essence, JTB points to the Light without taking the spotlight himself. At City Centre Church (or out at work or home or others places), what would it look like to point clearly to Jesus’ light without making it about ourselves?
5. Personal reflection: “To all who received Him… He gave power to become children of God” (v.12). Where do you long this Fall to live even more deeply as a child born “of God”?
6. If Jesus the Word “tabernacled” among us, do you think He still does that? And if so, how do we point to that when there is a loved/broken world that still shows so much of itself in pain and darkness?
Purposeful Prayer
Part
