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    The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide
    The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide
    The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide
    Ebook166 pages2 hours

    The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide

    By Philip Yancey and Brenda Quinn

    4.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In this Bible study guide—companion to the bestselling book The Jesus I Never Knew—Philip Yancey cuts through existing views and preconceptions of who Jesus is and returns us to the Jesus of the Gospels.

    How does the Jesus of the New Testament compare to the Jesus we think we know so well? From the manger in Bethlehem to the cross in Jerusalem, Philip Yancey presents a complex character who generates questions as well as answers—a disturbing and exhilarating Jesus who wants to radically transform your life and stretch your faith.

    This 14-week study guide will help you and your group press beyond the traditional picture to uncover a Jesus who is brilliant, creative, challenging, fearless, compassionate, unpredictable, and ultimately satisfying. Each chapter:

    • Begins with Yancey’s reflections on rediscovering Jesus.
    • Discusses how different people and cultures view Jesus.
    • Points us back to the Bible with Scripture readings.
    • Asks discussion questions and includes note-writing sections and prompts.

    Included are Yancey’s suggestions for viewing Hollywood films on Jesus, with optional directions about film usage in studying The Jesus I Never Knew.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateFeb 23, 2010
    ISBN9780310866398
    The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide
    Author

    Philip Yancey

    Philip Yancey previously served as editor-at-large for Christianity Today magazine. He has written thirteen Gold Medallion Award-winning books and won two ECPA Book of the Year awards, for What's So Amazing About Grace? and The Jesus I Never Knew. Four of his books have sold over one million copies. He lives with his wife in Colorado. Learn more at philipyancey.com.

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    Reviews for The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide

    4.5/5

    13 ratings13 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Very readable book, exploring the reality of the life of Jesus Christ. Cultural contexts and examination of the writings of the Gospels, in a clear and well-explained format. Not really for reading at one sitting, but definitely recommended for anyone who would like to know more about the real Jesus.
    • 4/5
      Easter was such an appropriate day to finish reading this book! Yancey doesn't shy away from mystery and apparent contradiction. He stays true to the context of Jesus' life and expands on what it all means for those of us who believe.
    • 5/5
      I really feel like I've gotten to know Jesus more through this book and stripped away some of the layers of dust added by centuries of institutionalized religion and theology. I just wish I could be more like him and less like me. All I want to do half the time is hide away somewhere with a good book.
    • 5/5
      Philip Yancey reveals the real Jesus beyond the stereotypes, revolutionizing the reader?s passion for Christ, and offers a new and different perspective on the life of Christ and his work?his teachings, his miracles, his death and resurrection?and ultimately, who he was and why he came. Relating the gospel events to the world we live in today, The Jesus I Never Knew gives a moving and refreshing portrait of the central figure of history. Yancey looks at the radical words of this itinerant Jewish carpenter and asks whether we are taking him seriously enough.
    • 5/5

      I thought this was a very intelligent, perceptive account of the life of Jesus.

      Since childhood - in the West anyway - we've all got used to the story of Jesus, and so to see the Virgin Birth, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and all of the other aspects of Jesus' life in their historical, political and social context is fascinating.

      Phillip Yancey is an incredible writer and, as he states himself, his background is not theology but journalism. This means he approaches subjects from a very analytical perspective, and is often brave enough to say that at certain times in Jesus? life, he wouldn?t quite know how to act as a bystander.

      This is definitely a highly recommended book, and not just for Christians, but for anybody who wants to understand more about the life of Jesus.
    • 4/5
      This book has helped me gain a better understanding of who Jesus really is void of any preconceived notions. I too have struggled with who exactly Jesus is. Yes, I know He is the Son of God and yes, I know He died on the cross for my sins. But, in His humanity how does He relate to me? Through this book, I have learned that Jesus in many ways is like me in that He was human. He endured much of the pains, the struggles, and the intricacies of being human. Because of this revelation there is no excuse in thinking God doesn't understand me. He does, because He became human... like me.Theologically speaking I was struck by Yancey's descriptive of Jesus' last words on the cross. While He was hanging and slowly dying on the cross, Jesus cried out not to Abba, not to Father, but to God. He uses the name of God for the first time in His earthly life. This is when Jesus says, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" This is indicative of a feeling of abandonment, distance, and loneliness. For a brief moment on the cross, Jesus was left alone. Why? God turned His back upon Jesus. God cannot look upon sin and Jesus had become fully sin. He himself did not sin, but He bore the burden of the sins of the world upon Him. He was forsaken, and Jesus in His humanity did not understand why. Was this a result of all the sin that was heaped upon Him while on the cross? Probably.Understanding Jesus in the way that I have come to understand Him through this book will help me better teach others about Christ. As a missionary to Albania, people who have been oppressed under Communism for many years will relate to the way Jesus lived under oppression. They will also relate to the way that Jesus taught true liberation, a spiritual freedom found only in Jesus Christ.
    • 3/5
      Yancey is one of my favorite theological writers, and is both an accomplished writer and a man who holds views that coincide with my own faith. This book is about Jesus, with the intent of re-examining His life and work through fresh eyes, as contemporaries may have seen Him, and attempting to shed the many layers of religious tradition and worship and that have accumulated around His name over the centuries. Not that Yancey is disregarding Jesus' divine nature or the importance of traditions that have been established in the church; rather, Yancey's goal is to see more authentically. Sometimes it is all too easy to accept what human history has gathered and handed down to us, including accepted cultural mores and prejudices, instead of the truth that God gave us. Yancey's claim at the beginning of the book is that he will examine the gospels with a journalist's eye, trying to release preconceived notions and experience Jesus in a new way, hopefully a truer way. What he learned falls under several broad themes of the book. One, that we have softened Jesus over time, that He was full of grace but also drew clear lines of the way to live that were even more exacting than the original law. Two, that Jesus' controversy of being divine was explosive in His time, while now, it tends to be the reverse - we are all so used to seeing him as the Son of God that it is hard to remember his man nature, which was an equally necessary part of the formula to save us. Three, that many of the issues most addressed by Jesus are underplayed in our society, while we focus on our own problems that are more superficial and that Jesus rarely addressed. We tend to ignore those sins that we all struggle against, like divorce, sexual impurity, lies and dishonesty, and emphasize our own social agendas.While I enjoy Yancey's writing style, and agreed with his major points, this book was not as gripping as the two others that I have read by him. Perhaps none of his other books can compare to What's So Amazing About Grace, which I absolutely love. I consider this book an interesting read, and useful to further exploration and understanding of Jesus and faith, but not an essential. It didn't convict me, or reveal to me truths about the Bible that were startling and new, or make me feel that it was maturing my faith. A good read, and I am trying to read more and more about my beliefs and the Bible as I think it is important to spend part of my love of reading in service to my God, but there are other religious books out there that have more impact.
    • 4/5
      Yancey, who wrote this book as a journalist and not as a Bible scholar, is not afraid to express his doubts. He writes about a Jesus who is never boring or predictable. I liked the way he approached the question of who Jesus was. His low-key rational appeal is probably more effective to someone new on their spiritual journey than a more "preachy" style. This is not to say that this is a lukewarm portrayal of Jesus. By the end of a book, the reader has a clear idea of Yancey's deep faith in a loving God.
    • 4/5
      A fine exploration of the life of Christ with great insight into the way we see our Savior. Yancey intentionally tries to get away from our modern cultural perceptions of Christ to see things from a different angle. The result is not a "different" Jesus of course, since the truths of Christ remain constant despite culture, but it is a deep look at the Lord.I would have given it five stars, but for two reasons I could not. In the first place, there were a couple of times I disagreed with Yancey. These were minor, and it probably still would have gained the fifth star with these except for the more major issue.Even though Yancey tried to get away from our cultural views of Christ, he fell into the largest of cultural traps -- seeing Jesus only as a poor Galilean carpenter. He seems to forget the Jesus that created the world or the Jesus that will return with a sword. By only seeing Jesus in the relatively short 33 years, he loses the magnitude of Christ. The result is what seems to be a hippie Jesus. It is the Jesus that we are most familiar with in today's America, but it is an incomplete picture of Jesus. If Yancey really wanted to blow away cultural stereotypes, he would have reminded us of the Jesus who will return to claim His kingdom; he would have reminded us of the Jesus who spoke the world into being.So he loses one star by claiming to examine Jesus, but only examining the part he was already comfortable with. A gret book nonetheless, but one that should be a suppliment to Scripture and not take the place of it.
    • 4/5
      Philip Yancey explores several perspectives on Jesus that would benefit both Christians and non-believers. He shows the humanity and how it let God experience our lives. A dominant theme is freedom. Jesus established a kingdom of goodness from the bottom up. God wants our love, but love must by definition be voluntary. God gave us love and the freedom to choose him. Yancey also advocates separatism from government as the way to ensure a religion imbued with this freedom and distinction. He is skeptical of the extent to which Christian leaders pursue goverment roles and Christians advocate for policy. Yancey describes the politically charged time of Jesus' life and brings out the humanity. He conveys the messages of Jesus actions, a style that included immediately addressing issues, speaking out against hypocrisy, needing time alone to reflect and pray, and demonstrations of strength and compassion.
    • 4/5
      I honestly wasn't sure what to expect from this book (which now that I think of it is particularly appropriate, Jesus), so naturally it surprised me, but I was surprised again that it impressed me too. Evangelical dude Yancey, you are an imagination blowout! An emotionless cosmic God, becoming human through the Jesus Experiment? A showdown in the desert, Messiah and devil growling each other out? Jesus as either/or? Either God or madman, blessed surcease or demented malevolence? Saviour or monster? This book made me feel good about Christianity, and there wasn't much that could do that at this point in my life.
    • 4/5
      What I love about Yancey is that he takes you on a journey, his journey. This book is killer, with wonderful insights into who Jesus was. Priceless.
    • 5/5
      Philip Yancey reveals the real Jesus beyond the stereotypes, revolutionizing the reader’s passion for Christ, and offers a new and different perspective on the life of Christ and his work—his teachings, his miracles, his death and resurrection—and ultimately, who he was and why he came. Relating the gospel events to the world we live in today, The Jesus I Never Knew gives a moving and refreshing portrait of the central figure of history. Yancey looks at the radical words of this itinerant Jewish carpenter and asks whether we are taking him seriously enough.

    Book preview

    The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide - Philip Yancey

    Resources by Philip Yancey

    The Jesus I Never Knew

    What’s So Amazing About Grace?

    The Bible Jesus Read

    Reaching for the Invisible God

    Where Is God When It Hurts?

    Disappointment with God

    The Student Bible, General Edition (with Tim Stafford)

    Meet the Bible (with Brenda Quinn)

    Church: Why Bother?

    Finding God in Unexpected Places

    I Was Just Wondering

    Soul Survivor

    Rumors of Another World

    Prayer

    Books by Philip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand

    Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

    In His Image

    The Gift of Pain

    In the Likeness of God

    ZONDERVAN

    The Jesus I Never Knew, Study Guide

    Copyright © 1997 by Philip D. Yancey

    All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

    ePub Edition August 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-86639-8

    Requests for information should be addressed to:

    Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

    ISBN-10: 0-310-21805-5

    ISBN-13: 978-0-310-21805-0

    All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

    Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers printed in this book are offered as a resource to you. These are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

    CONTENTS

    Title Page

    Copyright Page

    Using This Study Guide

    WEEK ONE

    The Jesus I Thought I Knew

    WEEK TWO

    Birth: The Visited Planet

    WEEK THREE

    Background: Jewish Roots and Soil

    WEEK FOUR

    Temptation: Showdown in the Desert

    WEEK FIVE

    Profile: What Would I Have Noticed?

    WEEK SIX

    Beatitudes: Lucky Are the Unlucky

    WEEK SEVEN

    Message: A Sermon of Offense

    WEEK EIGHT

    Mission: A Revolution of Grace

    WEEK NINE

    Miracles: Snapshots of the Supernatural

    WEEK TEN

    Death: The Final Week

    WEEK ELEVEN

    Resurrection: A Morning Beyond Belief

    WEEK TWELVE

    Ascension: A Blank Blue Sky

    WEEK THIRTEEN

    Kingdom: Wheat Among the Weeds

    WEEK FOURTEEN

    The Difference He Makes

    Movie Appendix

    About the Publisher

    Share Your Thoughts

    USING THIS STUDY GUIDE

    My study of Jesus began with a class I taught at LaSalle Street Church in Chicago. The use of movies about the life of Jesus, the stimulating discussion from class members, and my personal study all combined to give me a new view of Jesus—hence the title of my book The Jesus I Never Knew.

    Yet all along I have had another goal in mind: I hope that my quest for Jesus serves as a guide for your own. In the end, what does it matter if a reader learns about The Jesus Philip Yancey Never Knew? What matters infinitely more is for you to get to know Jesus. If something I write can encourage that process, I am grateful.

    For this reason, we have now produced a guide to help you delve into the topic on your own, either individually or in groups. I have been pleased to learn that people in small groups, meeting in churches and in homes, have been studying my book together. In fact, three people have sent me homemade study guides developed in these groups, and many more readers have written and asked for tools to help with their individual study of the book. (I thank Dick Malone especially for his unflagging support of this project.)

    If you use this study guide by yourself, you should find that the questions build a bridge between my encounters with Jesus and your own. You may want to buy a blank notebook or personal journal (many bookstores sell these) in which to record your responses. Use this guide not as a textbook, feeling obligated to consider every question and fill in every blank, but rather as a series of suggestions. Linger over questions that arouse something inside you. Skip questions that don’t seem to speak to your heart, and ignore those activities we’ve included that are designed for a group. You may find that adding just one person to your study—a spouse or a close friend, perhaps—makes it much more meaningful.

    Most of you, I imagine, will be using this study guide within a group. I like that notion. Jesus no longer lives in Nazareth or in Jerusalem; rather, he lives all over the world in a new form, the congregation of his followers described in the New Testament as the body of Christ. We are the ones whom God has called to represent his presence in the world, and I think it not only appropriate but essential that we meet together to consider exactly what form we should take. How can we be more like Jesus? How can we best embody him in the world?

    The experts I most respect on group interactions are the folks who produce the Serendipity House products, including The Serendipity Bible. For several decades they have been leading small groups and training other leaders, and so I am thrilled to have one of their former employees, Brenda Quinn, working with me on this study guide. In a way I could never have done on my own, Brenda has taken my personal spiritual journey and adapted it into a form that others can use for their own journeys.

    Advice for Small Groups

    Ideally, a small group should not exceed twelve or at most fifteen members. With anything larger than that, you’ll likely find yourself reverting to a teacher-student structure in which the group leader dominates the discussion. In each session, as you’ll see, we encourage you to break into even smaller groups of four to six. Sometimes the best sharing takes place in these smaller groups, which some people find less intimidating.

    We recommend choosing a leader in advance of each week’s meeting (it need not be the same leader every week). This study guide recommends certain group activities, and each session includes far more content than most groups can cover in a single session. A good leader can scout these questions and activities in advance, deciding which seem most pertinent to the needs of your group. The more willing the leader is to open up and share from his or her life, the more willing the group will be, so if you are the leader, take the role seriously. Think and pray about the group throughout the week before each meeting.

    The study guide works best, of course, if everyone in the group has read the book we’re studying, The Jesus I Never Knew. We follow its content chapter by chapter. Readers will need to have the book handy to read the sections referred to in this guide. Yet we also realize that in a busy world some people, no matter how well intentioned, do not get around to reading material in advance. Others read it so far in advance that by the time the meeting rolls around, they can barely remember the content. For this reason, we begin each session with a highly condensed summary of the chapter to be discussed. Some groups may choose to read this summary aloud to set the tone for the discussion to follow.

    Using Movies About Jesus

    A number of readers have written me and inquired about the movies I used in my class in Chicago. I had been teaching a Sunday school class for eight years when we finally got to the New Testament. We had begun with Genesis, and chapter by chapter had been inching our way through the Bible. Crawl through the Bible, we called the class, in honor of the pace. By the time we arrived at the Gospels, I was tired of talking and the class was tired of listening. We needed a change of pace, and that’s when a friend suggested using movies about the life of Jesus. I went on a frenzied search for every video I could find, and the class began using the movies as a springboard for discussion.

    We found Hollywood movies to be a wonderful addition to our study of Jesus. Here is how I used them: The week we studied the Temptation, for example, I would preview from my shelf of movies all the scenes that portrayed Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. I would select about five of the best, making sure they were three- to five-minute clips at the longest. When the class met, I would show these scenes on a big-screen television, starting with the corny and funny ones and progressing to the most evocative and profound.

    While the movies were showing, I could watch their effect on the faces of the class members. Some scenes would draw out looks of puzzlement or bewilderment. Others would have the class members shaking their heads and saying, No way it happened like that. And others would prompt thoughtful nods and remarks like, Yes, maybe that was how it happened. That makes sense.

    Taken together, the movies served an important role. They helped strip away our preconceptions of what took place in the scenes the Gospels describe in sparse detail. They made Jesus seem more human, made him come alive. We could picture ourselves back in his day, standing on the edge of the crowd, watching him and making judgments. How would we have responded to this man? Would we have invited him over for dinner, as Zacchaeus did? Turned away in sadness, as the rich young ruler did? Betrayed him, as Judas and Peter did?

    Obviously, some of the film interpretations

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