John 20:31
Believe!
Have you ever tried to convince someone of something?
A man stopped into a small general store, and he was looking for a bottle of mustard. The shelves were loaded with salt -- bags and bags of salt. The owner of the store said he had some mustard, but that he would have to go down to the cellar to find it. The man went down with him, and there to his surprise were still more bags of salt. Everywhere he looked he could see salt.
"You must sell a lot of salt in this store!" the man said to the store owner
Are you kidding? I can't sell no salt. But I'll tell you who can - that fella who sells me salt -- that guy can sell salt!"
If you’ve ever tried to convince someone of something, you can begin to understand the purpose of John’s gospel. According to chapter 20 verse 31 his whole book was pointed in one direction: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” He wants you to believe, he wants you to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and he wants you to believe so that by believing you can have life.
As a matter of fact, this gospel mentions the word "believe" 98 times. That's more than twice as many times as the other 3 Gospels combined. And every time it occurs, the word believe is in the verb form - not once is it in the noun form. What that means is that he never ever mentions the phrase, "your faith", or, "our faith", as if it's a thing you possess. It's not a stagnant thing we have and kind of keep on the shelf. Instead, every time he mentions the word “believe”, it is as an ongoing, continuous action of believing; to be continually growing in faith - to be believing.
John wrote to convince his readers that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, so that by believing they would have eternal life. He wants us, he wants you to have eternal life and he tells you that believing is how you get it.
We are going to begin a series through the book of John. Why?
First, [tie Philippians in with John’s gospel.]
Second, we are studying it for the purpose of evangelism. My purpose is the apostle John's purpose. Through this study it is my prayer as a pastor of God’s people and a preacher of God’s Word that people in my hearing would believe for the first time in God’s Son. If you never in your life have trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior - your Savior from your sins - then I praise God that you are here and that you can hear so that hopefully you may be convinced by the words of this gospel. Your eternal destiny hangs in the balance.
Thirdly, so that those who believe in Jesus Christ already would gain a greater knowledge of Him and a greater assurance of their eternal life in Him. It is impossible to measure the reward of growing in your knowing of Jesus Christ. You can't exhaust all there is to know of Jesus Christ, and you certainly can't exhaust all there is to benefit from knowing Him more. All that is revealed of who Jesus is in this gospel will strengthen you if you devote yourself to knowing your Savior more.
One author said, "This book readily welcomes the humble, and endlessly challenges the wise." Often it is the first book in the Bible that new believers are told to read. (If you are here and you are a new believer, or, even if you have been believing for a while but you don't spend much time reading the Word of God, this preaching series is great timing for you).
The reading is the most simple in all the Bible, but the truth that is told is the most mind-blowing in all the Bible. The New Testament was written in Greek, and as a matter of fact, if you were to go to study Greek in Bible college, the gospel of John is the first place you go to when you begin translating. John writes with very simple language making it perfect for beginning Greek students.
But do not mistake John, simple language is not simple theology. He tells us the most marvelous things of God, and he packages this knowledge of God in the easiest and most simple language. One author said that John's Gospel "is a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant can swim." It is sophisticated simplicity. So, John's gospel is not only for beginners. It is for the more mature and the wiser among us. It will meet anyone where they are at and challenge them appropriately if they come with an open and humble heart.
As we begin this gospel, consider what Warren Wiersbe says about how you should approach it, "Please come to this book with the heart and mind of a worshiper. John did not simply write a book, he painted exciting pictures. These pages are filled with such images as the Lamb, the Door, the Shepherd, the new birth, light and darkness, the Water of life, bread, blindness, seeds and dozens more. Use your "sanctified imagination" as you study and the gospel of John will become a new book to you. And remember you are not studying a book, but you are seeing a person..." (Be Alive, p.15).
And that is my passion for this series, that through the pages of this gospel and the preaching from this pulpit the person of Jesus Christ would be painted so clearly in your minds eye that His truth would burst like light within you. Let your heart and mind be the canvas and the words of John be the paint and let the picture of Christ be painted. I want our seeing of Jesus Christ to be so clear from our study, that we can say with John, "we have seen His glory." Just as the Word of God, became flesh, and made His dwelling among us, I pray that you find the Word of God dwelling richly within your own heart by faith.
John's gospel is a distinct gospel. It's different than the other three. Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic gospels. The Greek word for Synoptic means "to see together", or, "to see the same". What that means is that much of the content and the style of those other three gospels are very similar. They see things the same way.
John's gospel is very different. It does not contradict or conflict with the other gospels, but, rather it supplements them. Over 90% of John's gospel is new information - new information that is not included in the other gospels.
Someone might have a problem with that, but, there is no need to. John was the last one to write a gospel, around 90AD, and by that time Matthew, Mark and Luke were already written. He knew about and no doubt had read these gospels. He knew what accounts of Jesus' life and ministry had already been given. But, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he was compelled to give an account of Jesus Christ from his own eyewitness experience - not to re-write the same information again, but, to include information that wasn't in the first three. He didn't make anything up; none of the information is in conflict with the other Gospels; and, it's not that these gospels were insufficient.
Someone has said that if you took all the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels and you just read them out-loud straight through, it would take about 3 hours. Amazing. Only three hours! Three hours of sermon out of more than 3 years of preaching! Think about that in light of the very last verse in John's gospel, chapter 21 verse 25, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."
It would be like getting a piece of cake. You get one slice. It's from the whole cake, it is cake, but, you only have one slice of the whole cake. The four gospels are like four slices of Jesus. Each one gives you a different slice of the whole Jesus. But, there just aren't enough plates to go around for all the Jesus that there is because as I said earlier you cannot exhaust all there is to know about Jesus Christ.
The point is that the amount of information these Gospel authors had available to them to write about was far far more than what they actually wrote down.
So, why did they write the things they did then? John tells us in the 20th chapter, verses 30 and 31, "Jesus did many other miraculous signs which are not recorded in this book." So why did you include these John? "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name."
You see there too that John's emphasis is the deity of Jesus. He wants you to understand, to know, and to believe that Jesus is the Christ, He is the Son of God, He is God.
That is the distinctive feature of John's gospel and we see that in the very first words he writes down. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." John begins his gospel in the first 18 verses with arguably the most profound theological statements in all of human history. He comes right out of the gates with the deity of Jesus.
The other gospels teach the deity of Jesus too for sure, but, each one has had it's own emphasis. Matthew, since it was written to the Jews to show Jesus as their promised King, begins appropriately with Jesus' genealogy. Matthew shows that Jesus is in the correct lineage of the promised Messiah. If you were a Jew at that time and someone were claiming Jesus was the King, the very first thing you would do would be to verify who has Jesus descended from? Is He a descendant of King David?
Mark starts His gospel out with action. He doesn't mess around with genealogies, with the birth or the childhood of Jesus. He jumps right into the ministry action starting with John the Baptist and we see from His gospel an emphasis on Jesus as the great Servant. Luke starts His gospel with the birth of Jesus and goes on to show Jesus as the perfect man. Luke emphasizes Jesus' humanity.
John, however, emphasizes the deity of Jesus. Matthew - King, Mark - Servant, Luke - Perfect Man, and John - God.
And throughout his entire gospel we see one of two reactions by the people Jesus encounters: belief and unbelief. People either accepted or rejected Him as the Christ, as the Son of God. John wants us to see the only two possible reactions to Jesus - belief and unbelief - and he wants you to believe because he wants you to have eternal life.
Let's get to know our author. John comes from a family of four - from what we can tell. His father was Zebedee, his mother was Salome, and his brother was John. They had a fishing business on the Sea of Galilee and apparently it was fairly profitable because John's mother financially supported the ministry of Jesus. Jesus chose John to be one of his 12 disciples, and moreover, Jesus made John one of the "inner-three" disciples along with Peter and James.
He was a man with a fiery temperament. In Mark 3:17 Jesus calls John and his brother James, "Sons of Thunder." And no doubt, in Luke 9:54 we read the account of what I call overkill by these two brothers. While on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples pass through a Samaritan village and are not welcome. Jews and Samaritan's don't get along. And on their way out of town, James and John, the "Sons of Thunder" are rather indignant at such treatment. "Lord," they ask, "do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?"
He wrote a total of 5 books that are included in the NT that you have in your hands - 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, Revelation, and his own Gospel. You have in your hands the words of a man who was with Jesus from the very beginning of his ministry, who ate the last supper with him, who watched him be crucified and die, who saw the empty tomb 3 days later, who saw the risen Christ, who saw Christ ascend to heaven, who saw the flaming tongues at Pentecost, who was a pillar in the church at Jerusalem for more than 20 years and who saw the spread of the gospel, his beloved friends and apostles martyred for the faith, and who saw the Revelation of Jesus Christ as recorded in the book of Revelation. You have this man's witness in your very hands of who Jesus is and he has written this testimony so that you will believe who Jesus is so you can have eternal life!
He was the disciple that Jesus loved, and John was the one whom he told to take care of His mother Mary while hanging on the cross. He was the only apostle not martyred, and he was the one whom Jesus said
Let's look at our theme verse, or, our purpose verse. Since all of what John wrote is summed up in this verse, I think it serves as a launch-pad for us as we flyover these 21 chapters.
First of all, what is in John’s gospel is sufficient to believe. He says "These are written that you may believe..." What does “these” mean? What is John talking about? Well he says in the previous verse. “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.” Of all there was to write, John chose 9 miracles to record.
In chapter 2 he turns water into wine. In chapter 4 he heals an official’s son. In chapter 5 he makes a man walk who has been crippled for 38 years. In chapter 6 he feeds 5,000 people with one boys lunch, and after that he walks on water. In chapter 9 he gives sight to a man who was born blind and in chapter 11 he raises Lazarus from the dead. Now many scholars only identify those 7 miracles in John’s gospel. But, to do so leaves out Jesus resurrection in chapter 20 and the miraculous catch of fish in chapter 21. I think many will agree those are miracles too and we’ll account for those and give God glory for them.
What is the purpose of Jesus miracles? Why did he do them? First of all they were to reveal his glory. In chapter 2 verse 11, after he turns water into wine, John says, “This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.”
But Jesus didn’t come to be a doctor and heal everyone. He didn’t come as a magician to show off His miracles. The miracles were for the greater purpose of demonstrating to His disciples and the crowds His power is from God so that they would believe in Him. Jesus didn’t do miracles to give people physical fitness, but, to cause them to put their faith in Him as the One sent by God.
That’s why Nicodemus says in chapter 3, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” Jesus’ miracles meant he was from God.
Jesus himself tells us that the miracles he is doing are to cause people to believe. Listen to what he says in chapter 10 verse 37 and 38, “Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you don’t believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.”
And when his disciple Philip says to Him in chapter 14 that if Jesus shows the Father to them that will be enough to satisfy them, Jesus is stunned. He says, “Don’t you know me Phillip even after I have been among you such a long time? Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”
Of all the 3 years of preaching and teaching, the gospels give us 3 hours of sermon. That means that what the Holy Spirit inspired John to write about Jesus Christ was enough for someone to believe.
But believe what? Believe that the Son of God is Jesus Christ. First, John’s gospel is sufficient for someone to believe. Second, John’s gospel says what to believe – that Jesus is the Son of God. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ...”
John gives us abundant testimonies of men who knew Jesus personally. John the Baptist says in 1:34, “I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.” Nathaniel says in 1:49, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Jesus spoke of himself as the Son of God (John 3:16; 10:36); The Jews knew Jesus was claiming to be the Son of God (John 5:18). It was because Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and equal with God that He was crucified (John 19:7).
Everyone testifies as to who Jesus is. Listen, everyone is gives a testimony just like each person in John’s gospel. There are only two testimonies, either He is the Son of God and you believe in and worship Him, or, He is not the Son of God and He is not the only way, and He is not God. Every single person gives testimony to one of those. They either believe or they don’t. And listen, one of those is right. One of those is the truth. John is writing so that you will believe. That you will testify with your words and your life that Jesus is the Son of God. John, speaking of himself, says in chapter 19, “The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth and he testifies so that you also may believe.”
He is a witness, and you are the jury. Witnesses are brought into court to give testimony to the truth so that the jury will know the truth and believe and decide according to truth. You are the jury. You have the decision before you. Is Jesus the Son of God or not?
But understand this, you are not only the witness hearing this testimony, but, you are also the one on trial. You are standing before the Judge, as the defendant. The case has been clearly made before the Judge, you are guilty for your sins and the punishment is death. John 3:36 says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” Listen the courtroom isn’t to determine if you are guilty, the Bible says we already are guilty. We’ve already been declared guilty.
But, the witness is testifying that Jesus, the Son of God has died on the cross to pay the price for your guilt and you are presented with the decision to accept or reject that. To believe it or to scoff. To receive Him by faith or to turn away in unbelief. But understand this, if you turn away from Christ, you turn to your own Judgment. There is no other place but Hell to turn. God has given His Son to ransom you because of His great love for you. “For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
God is the Judge, and His wrath is coming someday because of the sins of the world to judge the sins of the world, but, He has sent His Son first to rescue those who would receive His Son Jesus Christ from His coming Judgment. Accept His rescue by turning to Christ in faith; believe on His Name for your salvation.
Believe!
Have you ever tried to convince someone of something?
A man stopped into a small general store, and he was looking for a bottle of mustard. The shelves were loaded with salt -- bags and bags of salt. The owner of the store said he had some mustard, but that he would have to go down to the cellar to find it. The man went down with him, and there to his surprise were still more bags of salt. Everywhere he looked he could see salt.
"You must sell a lot of salt in this store!" the man said to the store owner
Are you kidding? I can't sell no salt. But I'll tell you who can - that fella who sells me salt -- that guy can sell salt!"
If you’ve ever tried to convince someone of something, you can begin to understand the purpose of John’s gospel. According to chapter 20 verse 31 his whole book was pointed in one direction: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” He wants you to believe, he wants you to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and he wants you to believe so that by believing you can have life.
As a matter of fact, this gospel mentions the word "believe" 98 times. That's more than twice as many times as the other 3 Gospels combined. And every time it occurs, the word believe is in the verb form - not once is it in the noun form. What that means is that he never ever mentions the phrase, "your faith", or, "our faith", as if it's a thing you possess. It's not a stagnant thing we have and kind of keep on the shelf. Instead, every time he mentions the word “believe”, it is as an ongoing, continuous action of believing; to be continually growing in faith - to be believing.
John wrote to convince his readers that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, so that by believing they would have eternal life. He wants us, he wants you to have eternal life and he tells you that believing is how you get it.
We are going to begin a series through the book of John. Why?
First, [tie Philippians in with John’s gospel.]
Second, we are studying it for the purpose of evangelism. My purpose is the apostle John's purpose. Through this study it is my prayer as a pastor of God’s people and a preacher of God’s Word that people in my hearing would believe for the first time in God’s Son. If you never in your life have trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior - your Savior from your sins - then I praise God that you are here and that you can hear so that hopefully you may be convinced by the words of this gospel. Your eternal destiny hangs in the balance.
Thirdly, so that those who believe in Jesus Christ already would gain a greater knowledge of Him and a greater assurance of their eternal life in Him. It is impossible to measure the reward of growing in your knowing of Jesus Christ. You can't exhaust all there is to know of Jesus Christ, and you certainly can't exhaust all there is to benefit from knowing Him more. All that is revealed of who Jesus is in this gospel will strengthen you if you devote yourself to knowing your Savior more.
One author said, "This book readily welcomes the humble, and endlessly challenges the wise." Often it is the first book in the Bible that new believers are told to read. (If you are here and you are a new believer, or, even if you have been believing for a while but you don't spend much time reading the Word of God, this preaching series is great timing for you).
The reading is the most simple in all the Bible, but the truth that is told is the most mind-blowing in all the Bible. The New Testament was written in Greek, and as a matter of fact, if you were to go to study Greek in Bible college, the gospel of John is the first place you go to when you begin translating. John writes with very simple language making it perfect for beginning Greek students.
But do not mistake John, simple language is not simple theology. He tells us the most marvelous things of God, and he packages this knowledge of God in the easiest and most simple language. One author said that John's Gospel "is a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant can swim." It is sophisticated simplicity. So, John's gospel is not only for beginners. It is for the more mature and the wiser among us. It will meet anyone where they are at and challenge them appropriately if they come with an open and humble heart.
As we begin this gospel, consider what Warren Wiersbe says about how you should approach it, "Please come to this book with the heart and mind of a worshiper. John did not simply write a book, he painted exciting pictures. These pages are filled with such images as the Lamb, the Door, the Shepherd, the new birth, light and darkness, the Water of life, bread, blindness, seeds and dozens more. Use your "sanctified imagination" as you study and the gospel of John will become a new book to you. And remember you are not studying a book, but you are seeing a person..." (Be Alive, p.15).
And that is my passion for this series, that through the pages of this gospel and the preaching from this pulpit the person of Jesus Christ would be painted so clearly in your minds eye that His truth would burst like light within you. Let your heart and mind be the canvas and the words of John be the paint and let the picture of Christ be painted. I want our seeing of Jesus Christ to be so clear from our study, that we can say with John, "we have seen His glory." Just as the Word of God, became flesh, and made His dwelling among us, I pray that you find the Word of God dwelling richly within your own heart by faith.
John's gospel is a distinct gospel. It's different than the other three. Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic gospels. The Greek word for Synoptic means "to see together", or, "to see the same". What that means is that much of the content and the style of those other three gospels are very similar. They see things the same way.
John's gospel is very different. It does not contradict or conflict with the other gospels, but, rather it supplements them. Over 90% of John's gospel is new information - new information that is not included in the other gospels.
Someone might have a problem with that, but, there is no need to. John was the last one to write a gospel, around 90AD, and by that time Matthew, Mark and Luke were already written. He knew about and no doubt had read these gospels. He knew what accounts of Jesus' life and ministry had already been given. But, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he was compelled to give an account of Jesus Christ from his own eyewitness experience - not to re-write the same information again, but, to include information that wasn't in the first three. He didn't make anything up; none of the information is in conflict with the other Gospels; and, it's not that these gospels were insufficient.
Someone has said that if you took all the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels and you just read them out-loud straight through, it would take about 3 hours. Amazing. Only three hours! Three hours of sermon out of more than 3 years of preaching! Think about that in light of the very last verse in John's gospel, chapter 21 verse 25, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."
It would be like getting a piece of cake. You get one slice. It's from the whole cake, it is cake, but, you only have one slice of the whole cake. The four gospels are like four slices of Jesus. Each one gives you a different slice of the whole Jesus. But, there just aren't enough plates to go around for all the Jesus that there is because as I said earlier you cannot exhaust all there is to know about Jesus Christ.
The point is that the amount of information these Gospel authors had available to them to write about was far far more than what they actually wrote down.
So, why did they write the things they did then? John tells us in the 20th chapter, verses 30 and 31, "Jesus did many other miraculous signs which are not recorded in this book." So why did you include these John? "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name."
You see there too that John's emphasis is the deity of Jesus. He wants you to understand, to know, and to believe that Jesus is the Christ, He is the Son of God, He is God.
That is the distinctive feature of John's gospel and we see that in the very first words he writes down. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." John begins his gospel in the first 18 verses with arguably the most profound theological statements in all of human history. He comes right out of the gates with the deity of Jesus.
The other gospels teach the deity of Jesus too for sure, but, each one has had it's own emphasis. Matthew, since it was written to the Jews to show Jesus as their promised King, begins appropriately with Jesus' genealogy. Matthew shows that Jesus is in the correct lineage of the promised Messiah. If you were a Jew at that time and someone were claiming Jesus was the King, the very first thing you would do would be to verify who has Jesus descended from? Is He a descendant of King David?
Mark starts His gospel out with action. He doesn't mess around with genealogies, with the birth or the childhood of Jesus. He jumps right into the ministry action starting with John the Baptist and we see from His gospel an emphasis on Jesus as the great Servant. Luke starts His gospel with the birth of Jesus and goes on to show Jesus as the perfect man. Luke emphasizes Jesus' humanity.
John, however, emphasizes the deity of Jesus. Matthew - King, Mark - Servant, Luke - Perfect Man, and John - God.
And throughout his entire gospel we see one of two reactions by the people Jesus encounters: belief and unbelief. People either accepted or rejected Him as the Christ, as the Son of God. John wants us to see the only two possible reactions to Jesus - belief and unbelief - and he wants you to believe because he wants you to have eternal life.
Let's get to know our author. John comes from a family of four - from what we can tell. His father was Zebedee, his mother was Salome, and his brother was John. They had a fishing business on the Sea of Galilee and apparently it was fairly profitable because John's mother financially supported the ministry of Jesus. Jesus chose John to be one of his 12 disciples, and moreover, Jesus made John one of the "inner-three" disciples along with Peter and James.
He was a man with a fiery temperament. In Mark 3:17 Jesus calls John and his brother James, "Sons of Thunder." And no doubt, in Luke 9:54 we read the account of what I call overkill by these two brothers. While on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples pass through a Samaritan village and are not welcome. Jews and Samaritan's don't get along. And on their way out of town, James and John, the "Sons of Thunder" are rather indignant at such treatment. "Lord," they ask, "do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?"
He wrote a total of 5 books that are included in the NT that you have in your hands - 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, Revelation, and his own Gospel. You have in your hands the words of a man who was with Jesus from the very beginning of his ministry, who ate the last supper with him, who watched him be crucified and die, who saw the empty tomb 3 days later, who saw the risen Christ, who saw Christ ascend to heaven, who saw the flaming tongues at Pentecost, who was a pillar in the church at Jerusalem for more than 20 years and who saw the spread of the gospel, his beloved friends and apostles martyred for the faith, and who saw the Revelation of Jesus Christ as recorded in the book of Revelation. You have this man's witness in your very hands of who Jesus is and he has written this testimony so that you will believe who Jesus is so you can have eternal life!
He was the disciple that Jesus loved, and John was the one whom he told to take care of His mother Mary while hanging on the cross. He was the only apostle not martyred, and he was the one whom Jesus said
Let's look at our theme verse, or, our purpose verse. Since all of what John wrote is summed up in this verse, I think it serves as a launch-pad for us as we flyover these 21 chapters.
First of all, what is in John’s gospel is sufficient to believe. He says "These are written that you may believe..." What does “these” mean? What is John talking about? Well he says in the previous verse. “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.” Of all there was to write, John chose 9 miracles to record.
In chapter 2 he turns water into wine. In chapter 4 he heals an official’s son. In chapter 5 he makes a man walk who has been crippled for 38 years. In chapter 6 he feeds 5,000 people with one boys lunch, and after that he walks on water. In chapter 9 he gives sight to a man who was born blind and in chapter 11 he raises Lazarus from the dead. Now many scholars only identify those 7 miracles in John’s gospel. But, to do so leaves out Jesus resurrection in chapter 20 and the miraculous catch of fish in chapter 21. I think many will agree those are miracles too and we’ll account for those and give God glory for them.
What is the purpose of Jesus miracles? Why did he do them? First of all they were to reveal his glory. In chapter 2 verse 11, after he turns water into wine, John says, “This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.”
But Jesus didn’t come to be a doctor and heal everyone. He didn’t come as a magician to show off His miracles. The miracles were for the greater purpose of demonstrating to His disciples and the crowds His power is from God so that they would believe in Him. Jesus didn’t do miracles to give people physical fitness, but, to cause them to put their faith in Him as the One sent by God.
That’s why Nicodemus says in chapter 3, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” Jesus’ miracles meant he was from God.
Jesus himself tells us that the miracles he is doing are to cause people to believe. Listen to what he says in chapter 10 verse 37 and 38, “Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you don’t believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.”
And when his disciple Philip says to Him in chapter 14 that if Jesus shows the Father to them that will be enough to satisfy them, Jesus is stunned. He says, “Don’t you know me Phillip even after I have been among you such a long time? Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”
Of all the 3 years of preaching and teaching, the gospels give us 3 hours of sermon. That means that what the Holy Spirit inspired John to write about Jesus Christ was enough for someone to believe.
But believe what? Believe that the Son of God is Jesus Christ. First, John’s gospel is sufficient for someone to believe. Second, John’s gospel says what to believe – that Jesus is the Son of God. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ...”
John gives us abundant testimonies of men who knew Jesus personally. John the Baptist says in 1:34, “I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.” Nathaniel says in 1:49, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Jesus spoke of himself as the Son of God (John 3:16; 10:36); The Jews knew Jesus was claiming to be the Son of God (John 5:18). It was because Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and equal with God that He was crucified (John 19:7).
Everyone testifies as to who Jesus is. Listen, everyone is gives a testimony just like each person in John’s gospel. There are only two testimonies, either He is the Son of God and you believe in and worship Him, or, He is not the Son of God and He is not the only way, and He is not God. Every single person gives testimony to one of those. They either believe or they don’t. And listen, one of those is right. One of those is the truth. John is writing so that you will believe. That you will testify with your words and your life that Jesus is the Son of God. John, speaking of himself, says in chapter 19, “The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth and he testifies so that you also may believe.”
He is a witness, and you are the jury. Witnesses are brought into court to give testimony to the truth so that the jury will know the truth and believe and decide according to truth. You are the jury. You have the decision before you. Is Jesus the Son of God or not?
But understand this, you are not only the witness hearing this testimony, but, you are also the one on trial. You are standing before the Judge, as the defendant. The case has been clearly made before the Judge, you are guilty for your sins and the punishment is death. John 3:36 says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” Listen the courtroom isn’t to determine if you are guilty, the Bible says we already are guilty. We’ve already been declared guilty.
But, the witness is testifying that Jesus, the Son of God has died on the cross to pay the price for your guilt and you are presented with the decision to accept or reject that. To believe it or to scoff. To receive Him by faith or to turn away in unbelief. But understand this, if you turn away from Christ, you turn to your own Judgment. There is no other place but Hell to turn. God has given His Son to ransom you because of His great love for you. “For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
God is the Judge, and His wrath is coming someday because of the sins of the world to judge the sins of the world, but, He has sent His Son first to rescue those who would receive His Son Jesus Christ from His coming Judgment. Accept His rescue by turning to Christ in faith; believe on His Name for your salvation.
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