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.

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This week’s training notes:

This week, we’re beginning unit 2 of From Creation to Chaos. This unit is called “Let us Make a Name For Ourselves,” and deals with the fall of humanity into sin and God’s response. Session 1 is called “Relationships Broken” and focuses on Genesis 3:1-21, with Adam and Eve’s sin and subsequent expulsion from the garden.

So here are your three things to know, read, and do as you prepare for this week’s session:

Something to know

This session is all about the bad news—it’s about sin, which means that, even though Christians tend to talk a lot about sin, we tend to be evasive when talking about our own sin. Sin is a problem “out there,” an external rather than internal problem. So your something to know for this week is an exercise in self-awareness: take some time to consider how you understand sin, and how you view your own sins, practically. How do you define sin? Where are you most inclined to let yourself off the hook for a transgression that you might hold someone else to account? What are the sins you find “respectable” as Jerry Bridges once put it?

Take some time and actually write these things down—compare your personal definitions with the definition of the essential doctrine for this session, Sin as Transgression. And don’t be afraid to speak up about this inconsistency in your life. Remember, we’re all guilty of holding ourselves to a different standard than we hold others, so don’t be afraid to bring this truth into the light.

Something to read

Ahead of this session, something I would encourage all leaders to do—and encourage group members to do the same—is to read the unit introduction by Ronnie Martin. This intro is important because it helps to frame everything you’re going to be studying through the unit. Because we’re going to be talking about sin a lot over the next few weeks, it’s important to help your group members understand what sin is, and its roots that stem all the way back to the garden itself. That everything we see and do and experience is, in many ways, a repeat of that moment, as Martin writes in the introduction. But that also means that sin has the same solution: Jesus. Here’s how Martin concludes his essay, which I think sums everything up extremely well:

Although the sin of pride will continue to be at the root of our most besetting sins, Babylon paves the way to a far more redemptive narrative. God came down to observe the people’s tower, and in His judgment, He disciplined the Babelites to limit the peril of their own pride. Jesus—God incarnate—humbly came down as one of us to lovingly deliver us from our pride. Far more significant than making a name for ourselves, Jesus redeems our identity by restoring our desire to give glory and honor back to Him, where we find fullness of joy and eternal pleasures (Ps. 16:11).

Jesus is the answer to our sin problem, and our unceasing quest to make a name for ourselves. So as you read the introduction in preparation for this session, take some time to read this introduction, consider the good news within it, and look for opportunities to remind your group members of this good news every chance you get. 

Something to do

One of the big questions that people have when studying the Fall of humanity is wondering who exactly this serpent is, and why we equate him with Satan. This is an important question to ask, which is why we’ve included a very helpful message called The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ in the Additional Resources. This sermon shows how Scripture connect the dots between the serpent of Genesis 3 and Satan, but doesn’t end with that—it is a powerful reminder of Christ’s power and victory over the tempter and enemy of our souls. So do check that out as it will be worth your time, as are all the other links we’ve included in the additional resources. 

As always, this has been a fair bit to cover, but I trust that it will both add to your preparation and help you determine what to focus on in your time.

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