I have to admit I was in a bit of a state of denial this past week.
I kept thinking to myself, okay, doing a summary message of John is going to be nothing but
delightful and easy.
Turns out it was delightful but not at all easy.
How do you summarize two years' worth of material in just one message?
And obviously you can't, but what I'm going to try to do this morning is help us remember
some of the key things that we learned together throughout this series.
And I'm hoping that as we go along your memories get jogged in the best way possible, that
your hearts are both convicted and encouraged as we go along, that you have some of those
aha moments where you're like, oh yeah, that's right, I remember when we were in that particular
chapter.
By the way, I went back and I looked in our archives at the first message in this series
and I watched it.
It was back on August 23rd of 2020.
And I say watch because our first message in this series came from our studio at the
height of the COVID-19 scare when we had no place to gather and we were all sort of huddled
around our TVs and our computers trying to stay as connected as humanly possible.
And what a crazy time that was.
And I'm so grateful to the Lord that we came through it so well as a body just trusting
in Him and showing great grace and patience towards one another.
But it was a crazy time.
So I went back and watched that first message in the series and I laughed so hard when I
looked at it.
I'm going to show you why in a second.
As we were launching from our studio, we were still trying to figure out how to make that
work, how to design the set and prep it for a live stream.
And so here's a picture of what the live stream looked like when we came on.
And you know what?
Kudos to Alex.
It was lit really well.
I mean it's my face, but that's a whole other issue.
But look at the painting behind my right shoulder.
What happened was is right before the live stream went on, when the red light came on,
it slipped and came down like that.
And what happened was so I started preaching and about eight minutes in we went to my first
slide so the camera cut away from me.
And I'm up there trying to focus on my message, right?
And it's already weird because I'm staring at a camera, not an audience.
It was just really hard.
And so I don't know what's going on behind me, but this big amount of noise starts happening
behind me and I turn around and somebody's trying to fix that sign.
And it's not happening.
Every time, I think it may have been Stacey or somebody ran back there was trying to fix
it and meanwhile I'm stretching my description of the slide that's now on the screen because
I hear all this noise behind me.
It doesn't work.
So when it comes back, it looks like this.
And the rest of the message was like this.
Amazing.
The miracle of television.
Anyway, what a great memory.
So here we are two and a half years later.
It's nuts.
If my math is correct, this is message 103 in the series.
And I did again, I'm not a math guy, but I did some calculations at an average length
of 50 minutes, no comments from Adam, 50 minutes.
That means you all have endured 86 hours of teaching from John's gospel.
So give yourselves a hand.
Well done.
And then just for fun, I started calculating the amount of time that I spent in study and
prep for those 103 messages.
And it's just over 3000 hours.
And I'm not complaining in the least.
Trust me, in fact, quite the opposite.
It was nothing but a blessing and a privilege for me every step of the way.
You've probably heard this before.
Who learns the most in a preaching series?
The guy who has to study to preach it.
Right?
And that is true.
And so the Lord has shown me so much in the last two and a half years and grown me in
so many ways through this study.
And so I hope it's been the same for you, but I thank him for all that.
Okay.
Grab your Bibles.
We got to dive into it because we got lots to do this morning.
You know that I skipped over two verses back in chapter 20, knowing we'd come back here
today.
And then we're going to look at the final two verses in the last chapter in John chapter
21.
So we're going to jump around a little bit and then we're going to do a flyover.
So this should be interesting.
If there's one thing that really irritates me, it's deceptive advertising.
Or people who just don't come out straight and tell me what their goal is when they're
talking to me.
They're selling something, but they're not getting to the point.
I'd much prefer they just come out and tell me, here's the goal.
And even if it's a difficult thing to hear, that's what I would like.
And the apostle John does this in his gospel.
He tells you, he's very clear about his intent and purpose for writing down his gospel.
And you see that here in the passage in chapter 20, verses 30 and 31.
Now just before this, John has finished relaying the story of Thomas to us, right?
Who confirms that Jesus has been resurrected from the dead with those famous words, my
Lord and my God, right?
And then verse 30 says, therefore many other signs, many other signs Jesus also performed
in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book.
And by using this phrase in this book, what that tells us that in that moment, John sort
of stood back and looked at all that he had written and he's letting us, the audience
know that, gosh, there were so many things I could have said or could have written, but
this is what the Spirit led me to share.
And so these are some of the many signs that point us toward the truth about who Jesus
is.
Then he goes on in verse 31, but these, meaning the signs that I did select and shared in
my book, these have been written so that you may believe, that's the title of our whole
series, right?
That you may believe that Jesus is the Christ or the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing
you may have life in his name.
So there it is, right?
There is his entire intent and purpose of writing down this gospel.
It's twofold, that all who read his account would believe that Jesus is who he claimed
to be all along, the Christ or the Messiah, that he is the one and only unique Son of
God.
And number two, that through believing, and by that I mean through genuine faith and trust
in Jesus alone, that you would take hold of eternal life forever and ever.
Now flip over to chapter 21.
Let's finish the last two verses of that chapter, the last two verses of the entire book.
Chapter 21 verse 24, John sums up by saying, this is the disciple who is testifying to
these things.
Remember we've seen throughout this series, John never mentions his own name, right?
He speaks of himself but never mentions his name.
This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things and we
know that his testimony is true.
Now what should jump off the page there is who's the we in that last phrase?
We know that his testimony is true, right?
John says, I'm the guy who testifies to all this.
I've seen it with my own eyes and we know that what I've just written is true.
So who's he including in that?
There's two options historically that scholars have chosen.
Number one, remember where is John writing from and when?
Somewhere around the year 90 from Ephesus.
So the events he's writing about here took place 50 years before he wrote this down.
So there's time between the events and his writing.
So there's time to reflect.
So one option is he could be saying, we the church know that this testimony is true and
that's the church at Ephesus or the church collectively having 50 years now to look back
on it, we know this testimony is true, right?
Or second option, John's referring to his fellow disciples and he's done this before.
He did it in chapter one.
The ones who are eyewitnesses to the life of Christ and in that case he'd be saying,
we together as his disciples, we know that this testimony is true.
Remember back in chapter one, John said, the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we
saw his glory, an editorial we.
In other words, we, those who walked with him, saw his glory up close and personal.
Let's keep going, verse 25.
And there are also many other things which Jesus did.
So he repeats here in chapter 21 what he said at the end of chapter 20, that there are many
other things I could have talked about, right?
He says there are many other things which Jesus did which if they were written in detail,
I suppose even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.
Now is that hyperbole?
Some people think so.
Some people think he's using a figure of speech here, right?
Common day language and that's possible.
But then when you really start to think about this and I spent some time this week just
meditating on this, started really thinking about it.
What if John had written down every single thing about his life with Jesus?
Think about it.
Over three years together, in full detail, all of his teaching, all of his interactions,
every conversation they had, every day-to-day activity they shared together in traveling
across the land of Israel, every single part of it.
What if he'd done this?
I want you to think about this for a second.
And it hit me this week as I was considering it.
I actually saw somebody else make a note of this.
It said if you calculate the number of days that John spent with Jesus, say three years
or roughly a thousand days, okay?
Do the math.
Like, a thousand days that they spent together.
And then you go through John's Gospel and you count the number of days that John actually
describes in his account.
What's the percentage of time do you think John actually describes out of those thousand
days?
It's very few.
It's very, very few.
History nerds have looked at this really carefully, okay?
I'm making fun of history nerds, which is ironic.
They've looked at it very carefully and they have said of the a thousand days, there's
about twenty days described in the Gospel of John.
Because you know from chapters thirteen to twenty, it's all the upper room, right?
Twenty days out of a thousand that John describes.
That's two percent.
John writes about two percent of his experiences with Jesus in this Gospel.
So it's a small sampling.
Based on just some key events that took place on a relatively small number of days.
Had he written about the other ninety-eight percent in detail, can you imagine?
We talk about multi-volume sets of commentaries.
Imagine how massive this Gospel would have been.
It would have been huge.
But even more interesting to think about, and this may be where John is angling, can
you even employ human language to describe a being who is eternal and limitless?
How do you do that?
What amount of words can be employed to describe a being who is actually beyond our comprehension?
Is that what John was referring to here?
D.A. Carson in his commentary is how he says about it.
He says, the Jesus to whom John bears witness is not only the obedient Son of God and the
risen Lord, he is the incarnate Word, the one through whom the universe was created.
Sometimes we forget that.
If all his deeds were described, the world would be a very small and inadequate library
indeed.
Let that sort of blow your mind.
Because of who Jesus is, it couldn't contain all the information about him from a human
perspective.
But the fact of the matter is the ancients didn't write massive biographies.
They just didn't.
You can search and search and you won't find them.
Why?
Because resources were sparse.
And because if you were going to copy a work, it had to be done by hand.
You couldn't just hit, what is that, Alt C?
Is it Alt C?
Command C?
Command V?
Did I get that right?
Shortcuts.
Anyway, you couldn't just copy and paste.
So they didn't write these massive books.
Today you can go on Amazon, you can buy a 500 page biography of Abraham Lincoln.
And that's fine because they can be run off very simply.
But that wasn't the case back in the day.
So you just don't find them.
Ancient documents across all walks of life, historical, legal, religious, they were always
kept short and to the point.
And from John's perspective, and he says it here in these verses, it wasn't necessary
to write everything down in order to give us enough evidence to come to the right conclusion,
which is to believe.
Having read and perhaps even possessing his own copy of the other three gospels, John
decided to write from a fourth perspective.
Now he chose to repeat some of the essentials of the story that he felt needed to be repeated,
like the passion.
But most of the material is not found in the other gospels.
In fact, over 90% of John's material is unique to his gospel and not included in the others.
And because we believe that God was carrying John along, that he was inspired by the Holy
Spirit, we can trust that what he's given us is exactly what we needed as God's people,
both in what he included and what he chose not to include.
But it's a unique work, which gives us so much extra insight into the life of Christ.
There's a few key things we have to say about John's testimony.
Number one, it's intended to be historically factual.
He's not making it up, right?
He emphasizes that he and the other disciples were eyewitnesses of these events.
Listen, even today in a court of law, what's the most powerful testimony?
You put an eyewitness on the stand.
There's nothing better.
There really isn't, because even today, videos can be faked.
Am I right?
But you put an eyewitness on the stand under oath, and that's the most powerful testimony
there is.
And that includes the miracles.
Unless you were predisposed and biased against believing that miracles can happen, John says
I was an eyewitness and these miracles took place.
You've got to either accept that or not.
So these weren't secondhand accounts or thirdhand accounts.
This wasn't a game of telephone, right, where the details get all mixed up.
No.
You can make the case that John was Jesus' closest earthly friend, an eyewitness to his
life up close and personal.
And he writes these things down as historical fact.
Number two, and I know this sounds like an oxymoron, John's gospel is both simple and
inexhaustible, right?
New Testament scholar Leon Morris once said this, the gospel of John is like a pool in
which both a child can wade and an elephant can swim.
It's a great quote.
So I could take portions of John's gospel, go over to our acorn ministry over there and
read it to them and they would understand the basic message.
But at the same time, believers who've been, you know, we've been in the family of God
for 30, 40, 50 years, every time we open up this gospel, we see new things, don't we?
And we grow deeper in love with Christ every single time because you really can't get to
the bottom of its riches because it poses so many questions that require constant prayer
and constant meditation and reflection, especially related to one's own life.
So it is simple, but it's also inexhaustible.
Number three, John's testimony is intentionally purposeful.
We've already seen that in chapter 20.
Here's what John didn't do.
He didn't sit down and go, okay, I'm going to write all this down so that people can
read it and go, oh, that's interesting, and then go on with their lives.
That wasn't the purpose.
He also didn't give us all the material so that believers 2,000 years later can go on
Twitter and fight about it.
He wrote so that everyone who reads his testimony would personally believe that they would receive
eternal life and that they would spend eternity in heaven and not in hell.
Could there be a higher purpose than that?
There's so many unique features about John's gospel.
Honestly, as I was doing this last night, I was like, Lord, I need three or four more
weeks, but I'm not going to do that, right?
We have these seven great signs that John gives us.
This is the evidence he's putting forward.
I'm going to give you seven signs or seven miracles so that you will believe.
He goes, I could write about the other 98%, but these are enough.
The issue isn't is there enough evidence?
The issue is will you submit to it?
I'm going to give you seven great signs.
Then woven in between these seven great signs are seven great I am statements that Jesus
makes about himself, which points to different aspects of his Messiahship.
I am the bread of life.
I am the light of the world.
I am the door to heaven.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the resurrection and the life.
I am the way, the truth and the life.
I am the true vine.
What a treasure the gospel of John is to the church, right?
To every believer.
What I want to do in the time I have is to do a flyover of the book in a unique way.
What I want you to do as we finish this up is to see John's gospel from the big picture.
One more time, I want to put up our outline.
I put this up on the very first message from that studio.
I've come back to it a number of times, but really brief, this is very skeletal, but you
see here the first 18 verses, that's John's prologue that talks about the divine nature
of the word.
The prelude, the rest of chapter one is a focus on John the Baptist preparing the way.
Then you have this massive section in between.
That's the public ministry of Christ where he's out there amongst the people and amongst
the religious leaders of Israel.
In chapter 13, he retreats to the upper room and now there's this private ministry, just
Jesus and his guys, his disciples.
Then you have the passion and the resurrection and then what we've been looking at recently,
the epilogue, which is John putting a cap on the story as Peter is restored and recommissioned
for ministry, right?
So there's a few ways that New Testament scholars outline the book of John.
This is one of the most common ways.
A second way is to use those seven signs as markers as you go along.
There's a third way, and guys, I've been saving this for two and a half years.
Tuck this away.
A third way to look at it and that is to chart John's narrative by Jesus's movements.
It's so interesting.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus visits Jerusalem four times in chapter two, chapter five, chapter
seven, and for the last time in chapter 12.
You may or may not know this, but this is one of the most unique aspects of John's account
and what makes it so special.
Other Gospel writers do not mention any of the first three visits to Jerusalem.
In Matthew, Jesus doesn't arrive in Jerusalem until chapter 21 of 28.
In Mark, it's chapter 11 out of 16.
In Luke, it's chapter 19 out of 24.
But in John's Gospel, it's in chapter two.
So why is that?
Well, the other Gospel writers give most of their attention to Jesus's ministry in Galilee,
and rightfully so.
There's so much great material about what happened up there.
But John alternates his account, and maybe you saw this in our study, between Galilee
and Jerusalem, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth,
which we'll walk through in just a second.
And for a very important reason, I think, John's Gospel, more than the others, reflects
the strategy of the Lord in dealing with the leadership of Israel.
And basically cultivating this, what I call a slow burn, which eventually leads the leaders
of Israel, forces them to have to arrest and crucify the Lord, because that was the God
sovereign plan, right?
And Jesus is going to force that.
So each time he retreats from Jerusalem and heads back up to the north, the temperature
amongst the religious establishment cools a little bit.
And then every time he comes back to Jerusalem, most often because of what?
The feast, the high holidays of Israel.
He comes back, boy, that burn starts up all over again, right?
So each of those first three times that Jesus comes to Jerusalem, John gives us, this is
so cool, new information that the other Gospel writers haven't given us.
So that's what makes John so cool in terms of getting divine revelation that aren't found
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
So I'm going to walk through this, and it's probably not going to surprise you that I'm
going to use a map to do that, okay?
So again, if you're visiting with us, I'm sorry.
This is my nerdiness.
It's just, it's great.
Maps really give us visuals and they help us.
So there's your typical, you know, ancient map of Israel.
You always want to look for the two bodies of water, right?
Sea of Galilee in the north and the Dead Sea in the south.
And in between we have Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, right?
Everybody got that?
Okay, good.
So let's start with John's prologue.
The first 18 verses of the book, guys, the first 18 verses of John 1 are chock full of
some of the most rich theology in the entire New Testament, right?
John obviously begins his Gospel completely differently than the others.
He doesn't start with the genealogy.
He doesn't start in Nazareth.
He doesn't even start with the birth in Bethlehem.
John goes all the way back to what?
The very beginning, to the point of creation.
And so he's making a point right out of the gate.
Again he's not dissing the other three and where they started, but what he's saying is
here, the central character of the Gospel, the one he calls the Word, has no beginning.
That's the point.
He has no beginning because he himself is God.
You can't miss it.
In fact, John says, he is the one who called everything into being.
In fact, nothing came into being apart from him.
Which leaves you with only one conclusion that he himself is eternal, right?
He has to be eternal and uncreated.
There's no other conclusion, rational conclusion to come to.
And then we're told 14 verses in that this eternal being entered into his own creation
taking on flesh, taking on the form of a human being, and John declares, we were eyewitnesses
of this.
That's so important.
He says, we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son of God full of grace
and truth.
So in the fullness of time, God the Son came down to earth and he added a sinless human
nature to his already perfect divine nature.
And nothing could ever be the same.
The kingdom of God had come to earth.
The old covenant's about to give way to the new.
Forgiveness of sins were soon to be available to the entire world and death itself would
be defeated.
There's no other way to look at this other than this is the decisive moment in the history
of mankind, the history of our entire universe that John describes here in the first 14 verses.
He covers it so beautifully and yet so succinctly, right?
From verse one to verse 14.
Then we come to the prelude, right?
And the prelude is all about John the Baptist and his first followers.
And what do you think about when you think of John the Baptist?
What's the first image that pops in your head?
Camel hair.
Camel hair and a belt and a wild beard and wild hair like all over the place.
He's waist deep in the Jordan River and he's baptizing.
And he's just, everybody in the magazine said, that's that crazy guy out at the Jordan.
But he's one righteous man, one voice crying out in the wilderness, repent.
Take straight the path of the Lord because the Messiah is here.
That's what he was announcing, right?
And so we see Jesus going out to see John.
Where was that?
Green dot on the map.
Somewhere around that area.
We're going to go look at that in November when we're in Israel, right?
And we hear John's voice, behold, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world.
And this launches Jesus' public ministry as the Messiah.
Now he travels to Galilee.
And this is where we get the first of John's seven signs to the town of Cana.
Now you see our two primary areas circled there.
Galilee, the red circle in the north.
Judea with Jerusalem, the blue dot in the center.
And that purple dot is where Cana is located.
And in Cana, Jesus attends a wedding where he keeps the celebration going by turning
water into the highest quality wine possible, right?
He transforms simple water into wine.
And how better to demonstrate in this moment that he's actually the creator.
That he is able to change the molecular structure of liquid.
Who does that?
And John 2, then Jesus first travels to Jerusalem for the Passover.
And immediately, what I talked about, that slow burn begins, the conflict that he has
with the religious establishment.
He goes into the temple courts and he begins to turn over tables and toss people out.
Why?
Because they had taken a holy place of worship and prayer and turned it into a profane marketplace.
So this is a decisive moment.
The first shots are fired in this battle between Israel and her Messiah.
And the Jews certainly notice it.
They challenge him, by the way, what's your authority to do such things?
And he responds with a claim that nobody understood at the moment.
He said, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.
People went, huh?
In chapter four, Jesus is determined to go back north into Galilee now.
And John's the only one who covers this.
But Jesus says, we're not going in the normal Jewish way.
What was that?
To go around Samaria, right?
That defiled land in the middle.
We don't go through there.
And this disciple said, excuse me, we're going where?
It was a scandal.
But this marks another turning point.
It sends the message that the salvation Jesus brings is not exclusive to Israel.
Earth shattering.
At a place called Sikkar, pink dot, right?
He talked privately with a Samaritan woman.
I mean a woman first of all, but a Samaritan woman who is coming to draw water at a well.
And to her, this is so amazing, not to a Jew, but to her he first declares that yes, I am
Israel's Messiah.
Amazing.
And then we find out shockingly that the news travels to the rest of the city and many Samaritans
come to believe in Jesus.
What a story, right?
But then continuing north into Galilee, Jesus is now warmly welcomed.
Why?
Because a bunch of people have been in Jerusalem, seen his power and said, you know what, well
maybe this guy's going to bring all that miracle working power up to our neck of the woods.
Jesus rebukes them for being sign seeking.
But there is a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of faith in Galilee, and this is John's second
sign of all people, a royal official.
And you're starting to see the theme in John, right?
First a Samaritan woman, now a royal official of all people finds Jesus and says, I live
in Capernaum and my son is close to death.
Where's Capernaum?
Yellow dot, right up on the Sea of Galilee.
And Jesus simply told him to go home, assuring him that his son would live.
And we're forced to ask the question, what kind of man can heal like that?
A deadly sickness and from a distance, didn't even touch the child.
What kind of a man is this?
In chapter five it's time to go back to Jerusalem again, this time for an unnamed feast.
And Jesus enters through the sheep gate and there there's a pool called Bethesda and a
man who's been crippled by disease and he is laid there for 38 years.
Imagine, he can't even walk or get up to get himself into the pool and Jesus is filled
with compassion.
And he simply commands the man to stand, to pick up his pallet and walk, which he does.
Point number three that John gives us, that Jesus is the Christ.
This man gets up, can you imagine?
You've known everybody in Jerusalem knew this guy.
It had been 38 years he'd been laying there.
That bum, right?
That's what people said.
And here he is walking through the streets now.
Now you would think such a miracle would result in great rejoicing.
You would think that people say, surely the Messiah is here.
But no, Jesus had did this when?
On the Sabbath.
And so a dispute over the law now causes the religious leaders not to rejoice but to begin
to harass him.
Where is he going to go next?
Chapter six, back up to Galilee.
And this is going to be his last tour of Galilee really.
John chapter six is a turning point for the residents of Galilee in terms of their response
to Jesus.
Again he's welcomed by large crowds but as we soon find out for all the wrong reasons
with his disciples Jesus withdraws to a mountainside across the sea of Galilee and he feeds 5,000.
Sign number four.
And then later that night after sending his disciples home on a boat the Lord comes to
them walking on the waves of the sea of Galilee.
The fifth sign.
Again this is John's eyewitness testimony.
He was in that boat.
He's not making this up.
He was walking on the, what do we learn from this?
First of all Jesus is able to create matter from nothing.
X knee hello.
And second he has authority over nature.
He has authority over physics.
He can walk on water.
Do you believe it?
John wants you to believe it.
And soon the word about Jesus spreading all over Galilee.
Everybody wants to hear from him and see him but Jesus is not fooled.
He sees through their self-centered motives, right?
They want what?
Free stuff.
They don't want to save you.
They don't want to die to themselves.
They want free stuff.
They want miracles.
Give us more of that bread.
More of that fish.
And so in Capernaum Jesus delivers his great bread of life discourse and among other things
he says to enter eternal life they would have to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
Shock comes over people.
Here's an old truth in ministry.
If you want to drive away false converts preach really hard messages and they will flee for
the doors.
And that's what happened.
The crowds thin out after this, right?
Only his disciples remain.
Even Simon Peter is shook.
Remember what he says though?
Jesus says do you guys want to leave too?
He's like Lord where do we go?
There's nowhere else we can go.
You have the words of eternal life.
So Jesus drives away the false converts.
Then we come to chapter 7 to 10 and this is a long record of Jesus.
Where is he going after being in Galilee?
Yes.
Back to Jerusalem in chapter 7 through 10.
This time for the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles.
And this time is interesting.
He travels quietly.
He wants to go under the radar.
Why?
Because he is now the biggest topic in Jerusalem.
And there's great division among the Jews about him.
But because people feared the leadership so much they wouldn't even speak about it openly.
So that's the tense situation happening in the city.
Midway through that feast Jesus sort of comes out of hiding.
He goes right into the temple courts, the home of the Pharisees and the scribes and
he begins to teach.
And that's when it all breaks out.
That's when the crowds begin to turn against him.
They accuse him of being possessed by a demon.
And in response Jesus boldly claims that he has come from the Father.
And if you don't believe he's come from the Father then you don't believe in the Father
either.
So the authorities send the temple guard after him.
And the temple guard goes to arrest him and they come back empty handed and they say,
yeah we were just so blown away by his teaching we forgot to grab him.
Frustrating for the leadership.
And the motivation to grab him intensifies in chapters eight and nine.
Remember the crime is blasphemy.
That by the words that Jesus is teaching in the temple courts he's making himself to be
equal to God.
That is the charge.
So Jesus cries out to those who have ears to hear that he is the light of the world.
What an audacious claim.
And that brings an immediate and ugly objection from the Pharisees.
They now accuse him of being an illegitimate child whose father is unknown.
And Jesus counters by saying, well you know what I know who your father is.
He's the devil.
And this is why they can't believe he says because they don't belong to God.
They never have.
And when they lash out again and refer to Jesus as a demon possessed Samaritan he responds
by saying well before Abraham was born I am.
I mean just a smack him.
I am he says.
And of course with that the Jews explode.
And for the first time they take up rocks.
They're going to stone him on the spot but he escapes.
And then in the midst of all this chaos and conflict in the city Jesus and his guys are
walking through the streets and we come to the sixth sign.
We read of a beggar who's been blind all of his life and so Jesus stops in front of his
disciples take some mud simple mud from the ground puts it on this man's eyes and says
go wash in the pool of Siloam and his sight is restored.
Never before had a man been born blind who was now given sight.
Now the religious leaders they don't know what to do about this.
How do you deny this miracle.
Everybody knew this beggar but now he sees they're in a frenzy over this and things are
really heating up.
In Chapter 10 Jesus keeps poking.
And this is really the undercurrent of the story.
Jesus is he is poking the bear so to speak because God's sovereign plan is that he will
go to the cross.
He pokes the Pharisees again.
He speaks of himself as the good shepherd and then he contrasts himself with those who
are get this strangers thieves and robbers.
And the meaning was clear.
He was claiming to be the Messiah and at the same time identifying them as the wicked shepherds
of the Old Testament destined for judgment.
Ouch.
He continues to make things plain.
Why would they not receive his words because because you're not of my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.
But not you.
You're not of the sheepfold.
And then he drops this bomb.
I and the father are one.
And that was all they could take.
And they pick up stones to to kill him right on the spot and again he miraculously evades
their grasp.
Now at that point things are just too hot.
So Jesus now is going to retreat but this time not to Galilee.
At this point the ministry in Galilee has gone cold.
False.
There's some legitimate converts in Galilee but most of them are following for all the
wrong reasons.
Jesus does not go back to Galilee this time.
The Sanhedrin now is plotting his death but it's not yet his time.
He keeps saying that throughout.
My time my time my time.
That's still a few months away at Passover.
So Jesus' disciples go back actually to back where that green dot is.
Back to where John the Baptist had ministered.
That's the sticks in Israel.
The wilderness.
And guess what?
He's well received there.
When the people and the sticks find out Jesus is there they come out to greet him.
And again John says many believed in his name.
The disciples were content to stay out there.
They're like this is really good ministry Jesus.
Jerusalem's super dangerous.
Let's just stay here.
But that's not going to happen.
In chapter 11 another huge turning point.
Jesus comes so close to Jerusalem he goes to a place called Bethany which is the light
blue dot right about two miles outside of Jerusalem.
This is where the straw breaks the camel's back.
This is the raising of Lazarus from the dead.
The seventh and final of John's signs.
He raises a man from the dead just two miles outside of Jerusalem.
And the people who were there that day who witnessed it some came to saving faith but
others did the opposite didn't they?
They ran to Jerusalem and they tattled straight to the Sanhedrin.
You've got to hear what's going on.
And when the Sanhedrin hears about this they call an impromptu meeting right.
They bring all the big power players together in Jerusalem they say what are we going to
do about this guy?
They realize in that moment that Jesus is starting to win the hearts and minds of the
entire nation.
We have got to stop him and we've got to do it now.
It's panic in Jerusalem.
And so there we go.
Sets the scene.
The triumphal entry right.
And John paints such a perfect picture of it right.
Chapter 12 this point Judas Iscariot is already seeking to betray him and the plots are going
on right.
The Jewish leaders leap at the opportunity that an insider from within Jesus' circle
has come to them.
But they know they have to be patient.
We can't grab him during the feast.
The people could riot.
But then you can imagine the sound of people cheering and palm branches being waved.
Hosanna to the highest they're screaming.
Be the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
And Sanhedrin I picture him peeking out of the temple and going oh no it's him.
It's him.
That's the ruckus.
He's coming into the city on a donkey fulfilling Zechariah 9.9.
Can you imagine the panic of the religious establishment as this happens?
Zechariah 9.9 shout in triumph O daughter of Jerusalem.
Behold your king is coming to you.
Imagine the panic.
Imagine then in chapter 13 we see Jesus retreating with his guys.
This is the transition from that public ministry which ends at the triumphal entry and goes
into the upper room.
Now Jesus is going to minister privately to his guys.
He knows his time is about here.
He's got to prepare them before he's taken away.
They've got to know what's coming.
They've got to be ready.
This is the important transition.
So Jesus starts by doing what?
Washing his disciples feet of all things right?
To show them what it means to serve and to love.
And then he predicts his betrayal and his betrayer which sends Judas out of the room
right in a rush and that forces the hand of the religious establishment.
They know the plot now.
Jesus knows the plot.
And now the senate hitter says there's no time.
We have got to grab them tonight.
And that's what they do.
Jesus' time had finally come.
He had forced it to be the Passover lamb.
Why was he in Jerusalem this last time?
For the Passover.
He had forced it.
Now the sovereign plan of God for the sacrifice of his son as the Passover lamb was set in
motion.
In the meantime Jesus patiently teaches his guys in the upper room and on the way out
to the garden of Gethsemane.
He prepares them for what's to come.
He says I'm returning to my father.
I know you can't follow me.
I have to go alone.
Simon Peter boasts one last time.
I will lay my life down for you.
And we all know how that ends.
But the greatest promise of all in that upper room that night Jesus says that I will send
another who is like me.
When I go I will send another, the Holy Spirit.
And it will actually be to your advantage that I go away and he comes to you.
What a great promise.
Now obviously this is Jesus' last stop from an earthly perspective.
He's not going to leave Jerusalem alive.
At least that's what it looks like.
Chapters 18 and 19 tell us of his arrest, of the trials that he suffers, the brutal
scourging, the crucifixion where the Lamb of God lays down his life for all those whom
the Father would give to him, paying the ransom for their sins.
It is finished.
He cries out on the cross.
It's done.
Completely paid for.
But that's not the end of the story.
Then we get to chapter 20, right?
John recounts that great story of him racing past Peter to the empty tomb, right?
See you, Pete.
He makes it to the tomb, the joy, the unbridled joy and the shock of the empty tomb.
And then we have the resurrection appearances of the risen Christ.
And we learn that Satan and sin and death have been defeated.
And although most scholars speak of those seven signs there that you see there, how
can we deny that there wasn't an eighth?
In fact, the greatest of all, the resurrection.
The resurrection is the greatest of all.
It's the capstone of all the signs.
It's the vindication of all Jesus' claims to be the one and only Son of God.
That's where John wants to take us, to show us that.
But it reminds me of this great exchange.
Now I'm jumping over to Matthew's gospel, but it's so important.
Matthew 12, this great exchange.
Some of the experts in the law, along with some Pharisees, said to Jesus, teacher, we
want to see what?
A sign from you.
A sign.
But he answered them, an evil and adulterous generation asked for a sign, but no sign will
be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
And you're like, what?
Jonah?
For just as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish for three days and three nights,
so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.
John makes it so clear in his gospel that the disciples were not predisposed to believe
in the resurrection.
They were clueless.
It's only after they have this most compelling evidence put before them that he's really
alive, that they're able to see him, able to touch him, able to hear him speak, then
they believe he's truly risen from the grave.
But the cool thing to know from that point forward and into church history, once they
knew that was true, they never stopped proclaiming it.
It becomes the centerpiece of all of the preaching of the early church, that Jesus rose from
the grave.
So John says these signs were performed in the presence of his disciples so that 2,000
years later, you guys can open your Bibles and you can see eyewitness accounts of who
Jesus is and what really happened.
Simon Peter confirms it in his second letter.
Listen, again, another eyewitness says, we did not follow cleverly devised tales when
we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses
of his majesty.
They're not making up stories.
There's nothing in it for them to make up stories.
There is no riches and fame to go with this.
They actually saw it.
John says we saw his glory up close and personal.
So now I've written it down, reader, so that you may believe that what I've said is true,
that Jesus is who he said he was and so that you might have life in his name.
That's the purpose of everything we've done over the last two and a half years.
But it raises one last question and I promise I'll close with this, but it's almost too
simple to consider, but it has to be considered.
What does it mean to believe?
We just run right over that word, don't we?
What does it mean?
Well, there's three components to it.
So test yourself on this.
First there has to be knowledge and understanding about the basic facts of a couple of things.
First of all, your lost and sinful condition that you were born into because of the fall.
Secondly, who Jesus truly is.
And third, and this is the one that I'm constantly talking to people about, why is he alone able
to make atonement for sin?
Because the death of some dude 2,000 years ago on a Roman cross is meaningless if he's
not who he says he is.
Why is he capable of atoning for your sin?
So that's a good start, but it's not enough just to acknowledge that those facts are out
there, right?
You have to give assent to them that they're true.
But even that's not enough because the demons know those things are true and they are not
believers, right?
So yeah, there's the facts, I assent that they're true, but there has to be a third
component, right?
And that's what, this is the tipping point, is it not?
I have to abandon trust in myself completely.
I have to abandon my own good works in any way that they merit any favor before God or
that anything in me can somehow earn my way to heaven.
I have to abandon that completely, not 50-50, not 90-10, completely, that I cannot do it.
And instead trust only in Jesus as the Christ and as the Son of God, relying solely upon
the sacrifice that he made on that cross and relying solely upon the resurrection, the
fact that he was alive again as a guarantee that someday I will be raised to life, solely,
nothing in me.
And listen, it's not for lack of evidence that people disbelieve today.
The evidence abounds.
If you want it, the evidence is there, the verdict is clear, the question is, will you
abandon yourself?
Will you submit to that truth?
That is the crux of the whole thing.
This is the kicker.
We saw this in our study last week in John's epilogue, remember?
What's Jesus' command to Peter?
You follow me.
Abandon yourself and follow me as the Lord.
So believing means more than just saying, well, thank you, Jesus, I trust you as my
Savior, now I'm all set.
I can go back to prioritizing my life, doing what I want, and yeah, I'll still devote a
sliver of my time and energy to you.
Sure.
That's not it.
That's not following.
That's not dying to self.
That's not taking up a cross.
That's not submitting to Jesus as Lord.
Not just Savior, but Lord.
The problem that so many of us face today is that we really do want Jesus to be our
Lord, so the basic idea is there in our minds, but then our hearts betray us when we go set
out to pursue everything but the Lord.
All these things in the world that we're running around so busy with.
One of the great lessons from the Gospel of John is how many times we see people in the
narrative, some in Galilee, some in Judea, falsely believe.
They show eagerness.
Oh, we want to hear from Jesus.
We want to see him.
There's energy there.
There's excitement there, but the reality is they're looking for signs.
They want miracles.
They want stuff from him, and so they mutter and they vacillate and they're fickle, and
one minute they're in, the next they're out.
Oh, he didn't do a miracle today?
Well, I'm on with my business.
That's the story of John's Gospel.
So take it as a warning.
Jesus said he would not entrust himself to such people who are double-minded, who vacillate
back and forth, or who are self-centered in their approach to him.
And it reminds me of what he says to the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2.
He says, I know your deeds.
I know your toil and your perseverance, but I have this against you.
You have left your first love.
You've left.
So there's actual Christian work being done there in Ephesus, but the heart motivation
for it is lacking.
It's empty.
And it brings us back to the question that Jesus asked Peter.
What was the big question at the end in chapter 21?
Above all else, he said, Peter, do you love me?
And that question hangs in the air for each one of us as we assess our own hearts.
Do we love him?
Your life will show it if you do.
And you say, well, I do.
I do love him, and I do believe good.
Okay.
Now fix your eyes on him and pursue him with a greater passion than you pursue anything
else in this world.
Make him your first love.
And when you've made him your first love, let that love then overflow into every area
of your life to love and service to your brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, in serving
each other, in loving your neighbor as yourself, in all those ways.
But let it start with loving Christ and letting that define every area of your life.
Listen, at the end of these two and a half years of study, it's my prayer that the gospel
of John has brought you closer to Jesus than ever before.
That his love for you, you feel that more deeply.
His sacrifice for you is more powerful in your heart than it was two and a half years
ago.
And I pray that you will listen carefully to John's testimony because that's what he
wants to give.
Let me just read these words again.
This was our call to worship.
John in his first epistle says, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands
concerning the word of life, we've seen it, we testify it, and we proclaim to you eternal
life.
That's what John says to you across 2000 years today, to us in this building today, do you
truly believe?
Let's bow our heads.
I'm going to give you a minute or so to answer that question in your heart.
Maybe to answer a couple of questions about believing, about loving Jesus, about making
him your first love.
And if you failed or fallen short in this area, as I have so many times every single
day, know that there is grace when you come to his throne.
Ask him, confess, ask for forgiveness, recommit your heart to him even now before we sing
some more.