Tips for Teaching This Week’s Session of The Gospel Project for Adults
Every week for Volume 4: From Captivity to the Wilderness, Ken Braddy, Lifeway’s director of Sunday School, will offer guidance to help leaders prepare to lead and teach each session of The Gospel Project for Adults.
Podcast (adultsleadertraining): Play in new window | Download
This week’s training notes:
This week, your group will be studying Unit 2, Session 2, Sin Spreads, which focuses on the first murder as we see how sin progressed from the first humans to all who would follow after them. Here are three things to know, read, and do as you prepare for this week’s session:
Something to know
This week’s essential doctrine focuses on the distinction between temptation and sin. And this is important for us to remember because there is a difference. Temptation is, essentially, the allure of sin—the attraction to it, rather than the act. Temptation leads to sin, but isn’t sin in and of itself. So you can go back into the archives of the Hero of the Story podcast and listen to a fairly in-depth discussion of this relationship as you prepare, as well as get a solid foundation using the video included in the Additional Resources.
Something to read
In the extras section of your leader guide, there are two important points for you to read related to point one of this session. The first is related to God’s acceptance of Abel’s offer, but rejection of Cain’s. This extra bit of commentary helps outline the most common interpretations of this particular issue and I would highly recommend spending some time reading that as this is a question that comes up often in groups of any age and stage of growth in the faith.
The second is the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde illustration. This illustration gives us the opportunity to remind ourselves about the reality of sin itself—that when we look at the sins of others, including the sin of Cain, we should not stand in judgment, at least not entirely. Instead, all of us are capable of unspeakable wickedness, and while we might commit different sins than the more horrific that we can think of, the source is the same: it is the same evil that resided in the heart of Cain, the same propensity toward sin that has existed ever since his parents rebelled against God in the garden.
Something to do
All this talk of sin is never fun, and never easy. It often causes some of the more unsavory things we’ve done to rise to the surface—the acts we’d just as soon like to pretend never happened. It’s likely to happen to you as you prepare, and it’s almost certainly going to happen to your group members as they study and discuss together. So something for you to do this week is to spend an additional few minutes in prayer for each of your group members. Pray specifically for them to not be overwhelmed by memories of past and present sins. Pray that the Spirit would lead them to confess anything that requires confessing and repentance. And pray that they would keep looking toward Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
