John 21:25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
INTRODUCTION
Good morning, Grace. I hope you all had a joyful, Christ-honoring Christmas.
Because you asked… two of the harder aspects of my job are starting and finishing preaching through a book of the Bible. Starting is hard because it takes an exceptional amount of work and thought and prayer to get my head around the whole of the book—which is a prerequisite to handing any of it well.
And finishing is hard in a way that is similar to having a child graduate and move out—it’s hard to overstate the emotional, spiritual, and chronological investment it takes to make it through an entire book (especially one like John). If anything, it’s an underestimate to say that I’ve spent well over 1000 hours of my life in John’s Gospel since we began. That’s over 40 full days of feeling the weight of being responsible to faithfully and accurately exposit the Word of God for you all.
At the exact same time, however, spending thousands of hours preparing to and preaching through whole books of the Bible is by far one of the most rewarding aspects of being a pastor as well. What a gift it is to be able to sit in the very words of God, aided by the work of others over the centuries (commentaries), day after day, year after year, experiencing God’s presence and grace through His words, being continually renewed and reshaped by them, and then sharing them with a people I love. I wish everyone could experience this weight of glory.
And with all of that, this is my last sermon on John’s Gospel (at least as a part of this series). In it, I intend to give a quick overview of the Gospel and then highlight a few of the main themes that God especially used to challenge and strengthen us from it. My hope in doing this is to encourage you all by taking one more look at the unique glories in John and to strengthen you all to live more and more fully—following Jesus—in light of those glories.
THE BIG PICTURE OF JOHN’S GOSPEL
Again, there are two main parts to this final John sermon. We’ll spend some time loocking back at the big picture of the Gospel and then we’ll consider some of the particular ways God was gracious to us in it.
To help you see the big picture of John, we’ll revisit its main purpose and primary divisions.
Right from the start, I want to simply tell you what I think the big picture of John is. We see it in the final verse of the Gospel, our passage for today.
25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
What, then, is the big picture of John’s Gospel? The big picture is that Jesus is glorious beyond measure. In one way, shape, or form, every word of John is an unfolding of this fact.
Grace, the thing to grasp, should the Spirit be pleased to help, is that even in humbling Himself in such a way that He took on flesh; even in humbling Himself such that He allowed Himself to be misunderstood, dismissed, rejected, despised, mocked, and beaten; even in humbling Himself by allowing Himself to take on the shame of death by crucifixion (Philippians 2:8); the big picture of John’s Gospel is that even in this humble state, in just 30 years, Jesus’ revealed enough of His glory that an entire world of books could not contain it.
The big picture of John’s Gospel is an invitation to behold, believe in, and worship the One whose glory cannot be exhausted by all eternity, much less a mere world’s worth of books about it.
Today, thirty years after I came to faith in Jesus, this is still—I think—the biggest burden I have in life and ministry: Helping people to recognize the fact that their view of God, their understanding of Jesus, however big it is, is far, far, far, far too small. That’s what John is mainly about, that’s what my life is mainly about, and John’s Gospel invites you all to be mainly about that as well.
The Main Purpose
Again, I think you’ll see that clearly as we consider John’s main purpose and primary divisions.
As I mentioned in my very first sermon on John’s Gospel, John wrote his first letter so that his readers might know that they have genuine faith in Jesus. That is, John wrote 1 John to give assurance of salvation to those who those who truly believe in Jesus.
But that begs the questions of who Jesus is, what exactly we need to believe about Him, and why we would believe those things. That’s where John’s Gospel comes in. It was written, John tells us in chapter 20, “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
The main purpose for the Gospel of John, according to John, is to help his readers understand and accept the shocking fact that Jesus is the Christ that God had long promised to send. And that, in order that they (we) might believe upon Him and have life.
That is, of course, no small thing. Considering this from any other perspective might be necessary to really grasp how spectacular of a claim this is.
In other words, imagine getting a letter from Pastor Colin that opens with the line, “I am writing to convince you that John Caneday is the savior God promised to send.”
Even though John is a very godly man, there’s no way Pastor Colin could possibly convince you of that claim, is there? What could it possibly take?
Well, that’s exactly what John did. He was a “nobody” writing to convince everybody that another “nobody” (Jesus) was the Christ. Again, what could he possibly say to convince anyone?
As I mentioned a minute ago, that’s the entire thrust of his Gospel. That is the big picture of what John was trying to do with every word on every page—describe the unmatched glory of Jesus such that believing in Him as the Christ not only seems plausible, but inevitable.
The Primary Divisions
So how did John go about describing the measureless glory of Jesus in order to achieve his purpose?
On a literary level, he did so by writing his Gospel with four main “sections.” I don’t mean to suggest that John has four distinct chapters or that it has the kind of divisions we might find in a modern history book. What I do mean is that the Gospel has four discernable areas of focus and that by recognizing them, we are best able to grasp the big picture John was trying to communicate.
Specifically, there is an introduction in John 1:1-18, a long description of Jesus ministry on earth in 1:19-12:50 (sometimes called “The Book of Signs”), an account of the passion week in 13:1-20:31 (sometimes called “The Book of Glory”), and then a sort of conclusion in chapter 21.
In the introduction, as I’ll come back to in a few minutes, John put most of his cards on the table in just a small handful of verses.
The climax of John’s Gospel is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. His main point in his conclusion was to solidify that by describing His continued ministry to His followers in His glorified state.
In a book that is 21 chapters, the introduction and conclusion make up one-and-a-half of them. That leaves nineteen-and-a-half more chapters. In them we find the two main sections. And in them, we find John’s “proof” for the claims he made in the introduction and the “evidence” he offered to accomplish his purpose.
If John was going to convince his readers that Jesus really is the glorious Christ, that they should believe in Him as such, and that by doing so they would gain eternal life, he was going to have to make a very compelling case. And so he did.
In the Gospel’s two main sections, the book of signs and the book of glory, John recorded the aspects of Jesus’ life on earth—story after story, teaching after teaching, miracle after miracle, response after response—that most clearly demonstrate His nature, glory, and purpose.
The Claims of Jesus
As we consider the big picture of John’s Gospel—that Jesus is glorious beyond measure—and John’s primary purpose in writing his Gospel—to convince His readers to believe in Jesus as the Christ—we would do well to consider the claims made about and by Jesus.
Let’s begin at the beginning, in the Gospel’s introduction (1:1-18). There we’ll quickly see that the claims John makes about the glory of Jesus are staggering.
John’s first awesome claim about Jesus is that He is the very “Word” of God. That is, in referring to Jesus as “the Word,” John was indicating that Jesus is the full and final revelation from God. Jesus is the manifestation of God’s power and wisdom. Jesus would speak only that which is true and He would perfectly accomplish all of the purposes for which He was sent.
That’s quite a claim, but John was far from done. Echoing the first words of the Bible (Genesis 1:1), Jesus was, John wrote (1:1), “in the beginning” with God. From the very first act of creation, Jesus was with God.
More than that, though, as spectacular as that is, John claims that Jesus was not merely with God in creation, but that He was God’s instrument of creation, “All things were made through him, and without him not anything was made that was made” (1:3).
More than that, Jesus was the life by which all life came and the light by which all things are seen (1:4).
More than just the physical light, Jesus is the moral light that shines into evil, exposing and overcoming it (1:5).
Still in the introduction, John claims that Jesus was so worthy and glorious that God send a man, John the Baptist, to prepare the way for Him, to announce His coming, and to be a witness to the truthfulness of Jesus’ claims.
John declared that Jesus had the power to give people “the right to become children of God…born of God” (1:13).
John said that Jesus was God incarnate; God become man; possessing supreme glory as God’s only Son; full of divine grace and truth; full of the fullness of God; the image of the invisible God; making God known to the world (1:14-16).
These types of claims are concentrated in the introduction, but also spread throughout the entire Gospel. And yet, as clear as they are here, they are never clearer than in what Jesus says them about Himself. That is, the most explicit claims about the nature of the glory of Jesus were made by Jesus.
I am the bread of life (6:35; 41). Grace, Jesus claimed that it is from Him that all nourishment—both physical and spiritual—comes.
I am the light of the world (8:12). Similar to John’s claim in 1:4, Jesus claimed to be the (only) way in which all mankind can see physically and spiritually.
…before Abraham was, I am (8:58). John said that Jesus was before him (1:15) even though he was older than Jesus. But Jesus claimed to be before Abraham even, echoing another of John’s claims that Jesus was with God in the beginning.
More significantly, though, in this Jesus was making a much, much bigger claim. Here’s how I explained it when I preached on this verse: “To Jesus’ hearers, to those steeped in generations of reverence for [the name of God, Yahweh, I Am], it hit like a ton of bricks…That is, in John 8:58 Jesus took for Himself God’s most holy name. Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the same God who appeared to Moses in a burning bush 1300 years earlier, the God of the covenant promise that shaped their entire lives, the God of whom the Jews said “He is our God”.
The big picture of John’s Gospel is that Jesus is glorious beyond measure and it is claims like this one that help us to see that. And yet, there’s more still…
I am the door of the sheep (10:7) and I am the good shepherd (10:11). For an ordinary shepherd to be the door of the sheep meant himself at the entrance of the place where his sheep rest. He would do so to make sure that all his sheep were brought in, that none were missing and also to keep everything else out.
All good shepherds functioned in this way. But good shepherds did a lot more too. They make sure their sheep are protected not just at night, but always, that they are well fed and watered, and that they are led to the right places at the right times.
Jesus claimed to be all of this both physically and spiritually for all of His sheep, for all who believe in Him.
I am the Son of God (10:36). As the catechism says, “There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” Jesus claimed to be “the Son,” the second person of the Holy Trinity.
I am the resurrection and the life (11:25). Jesus made this claim in the context of healing Lazarus from the dead. One of his sisters, Martha, was upset both that Jesus failed to heal him before he died, and because Jesus seemed only to be offering some kind of future resurrection for Lazarus. But Jesus corrected her with these words, “I am the resurrection and the life.” You want something for your brother, but you should want Someone, Me, for “Whoever believes in me, though He die, yet shall he live….”. What a claim.
I am the way, and the truth, and the life (14:6). This next “I am” claim is one of His most familiar. In this Jesus was expanding on previous claims by making them exclusive. Jesus was not merely a way, one source of truth, or one of the many ways to find life. He was THE way, THE truth, and THE life. Truly, no one comes to the Father (for forgiveness, freedom, everlasting life, immeasurable glory) but through Jesus. That was His claim.
I am the true vine (15:1). Finally, Jesus claimed to be the “true vine”. He had and would succeed where all Israel—every former prophet, priest, and king, every shepherd and sheep, every descendant of Abraham—had failed. He was the means by which nourishment and fruit would spread throughout the world.
These are, of course, claims that no mere man can make. They are claims of power and nature and glory that are at the heart of John’s Gospel and his understanding of Jesus.
At the same time, it’s one thing to make claims about someone, or about yourself, but it’s another thing altogether to back those claims up. That’s where we turn now, to the signs of Jesus.
The Signs of Jesus
Of all the things Jesus did during His earthly ministry, John made a particular point of highlighting several of Jesus’ most spectacular signs. These were the things Jesus did that most clearly proved the truthfulness of the things He said.
Turned Water into Wine (2:1-12). Jesus first sign was to miraculously turn water into the best wine (2:10) at a friend’s wedding. John concludes his retelling with these words, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him” (2:11).
Healed the Official’s Son (4:46-54). Jesus’ second sign was in healing the terminally ill son of an official in Capernaum. All by itself that is, of course, miraculous. But the fact that Jesus healed him with only a word, without even going to the boy is more glorious still.
Healed the Man at the Pool (5:1-11). The third sign took place in Jerusalem. There He found a “multitude of invalids” (5:2) who were waiting around a pool, superstitiously believed to possess healing powers. One of the men by the pool had been an invalid for thirty-eight years (5:5). Jesus walked right up to him and simply said, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk,” and the man did so immediately (5:11).
Fed the 5,000 (6:1-15). We read of Jesus’ fourth sign in chapter 6. Jesus, looking down from the side of a mountain, saw a “large crowd [that] was coming toward Him” (6:5). Knowing they were hungry, but having no earthly way to feed the 15,000 people, Jesus commanded His disciples to “Have the people sit down” (6:9). In a way that would leave no doubt, He took five loaves of bread and two fish, gave thanks for them, and then fed the entire crowd with them until every single person “had eaten their fill” (6:12) with twelve baskets of leftovers to spare (6:13).
Walked on Water (6:16-21). In the very next passage John wrote of Jesus’ fifth sign. Amazed and tired from the work it took to distribute miraculous food to 15,000 people, Jesus’ disciples went down the mountain to the Sea of Tiberias (without Jesus), and “started across the sea to Capernaum” (6:16-16). As they rowed, it became dark and stormy. In the midst of the darkness and storm, Jesus walked out on the water to them.
Are you beginning to see why John can make the claims he makes about Jesus (as spectacular as they are) in a way that Pastor Colin could never make about John Caneday? Is it becoming clear that John’s claims come not as a result of an overactive imagination, and Jesus’ claims come not as a result of megalomania, but both come as a result of the truth displayed with overwhelming evidence?
John’s not done describing the miraculous works of Jesus, giving evidence of Jesus’ infinite glory and Christ-nature. There’s more.
Healed a Man Born Blind (9:1-7). In chapter nine, John recorded a sixth explicit sign of Jesus. He told of Jesus healing a man who had been blind from birth. And He did so, once again, in the least likely and most glorious way imaginable. “He spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud 7 and said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’…So he went and washed and came back seeing” (9:6-7).
Resurrected Lazarus (11). Most significantly yet, Jesus’ seventh sign is found in chapter 11, at the end of The Book of Signs. There He brought back to life one of His dearest friends, a man named Lazarus. But Jesus didn’t merely raise Lazarus from the dead, He purposefully did so after he had been dead for four days. Once He got there Jesus commanded that the tomb Lazarus was in be opened (11:39), He “lifted up his eyes [, to the Father,] and said, “Lazarus, come out” (11:41-43). And the dead man obeyed!
Rose from the Dead (20-21). Finally, and most miraculously of all, Jesus, having been crucified, died, and buried, rose from the dead on the third day and appeared to many of His followers. Everything—every claim, every teaching, every action, every sign—pointed to this. Far more than any other reason, John’s readers ought to believe in Jesus as the glorious Christ because, just as He and the prophets foretold, Jesus conquered death. How’s that for a sign?
The big picture of John’s Gospel is that Jesus is glorious beyond measure. The main aim of John’s Gospel was to convince his readers to believe that Jesus was that glorious because He was the Christ, the Savior of the world. To explain Jesus’ glory, John recorded many claims about Jesus. And to prove the validity of those claims John named specific miraculous signs that Jesus performed, culminating in His resurrection from the dead.
THE GRACE OF GOD FOR GRACE IN JOHN’S GOSPEL
Before we put a bow on John, it’s important to give glory to God for the fact that He was pleased to use our time in this particular book to give particular grace to us at Grace. That is, I want to briefly reflect on four aspects of John’s Gospel that God seemed especially pleased to use to bless us. These are four areas in which I consistently heard stories of conviction of sin and help for ministry and strength to grow in faith. I share these to help you all praise God for the fact that the things John wrote about are as true and powerful today as they were when John first experienced and wrote about them. More importantly, I share them to help us all recognize that Jesus, the center of John’s Gospel, is every bit as alive and glorious and active today as He was then.
The Glory of Jesus and the Various Responses to it
John’s Gospel, as we just saw, is uniquely filled with descriptions and explanations of Jesus’ glory. As simple as it is, I heard many times, from many of you how God used it to make you more impressed with, amazed by, filled with worship for, and delighting in Jesus.
It is no small thing that God was so kind as use our time in John to further heal our eyes, allowing us to see with greater clarity the glory of Jesus.
Along with that, I heard a great deal about how significant it was to many of you that John really and honestly emphasized the various responses of those who encountered Jesus (friends, enemies, leaders, followers, foreigners, those He healed, etc.).
I think the main help came from the fact that we all found ourselves in the different responses. Just as we all experience (often many times in any given day), there was doubt, frustration, confusion, misunderstanding, excitement, belief, disbelief, obedience, disobedience, etc.
In this there is hope and help and clarity; especially in the fact that we know from the Gospel that people with every possible initial, ongoing, and level of reaction were eventually made right with God through Jesus. And if He can save and heal and redeem people just like us, we know He can do the same for us.
Unbelieving Believer
Probably the most feedback of all came from one particular response to Jesus. John wrote his Gospel so that we might believe in Jesus and therein gain eternal life. But not all “belief” is the same. Some people in John clearly and emphatically disbelieved in Jesus. Others, with equal clarity and emphasis, believed in Jesus with their whole being.
But many throughout John’s Gospel responded with something different, something we called “unbelieving belief.” Unbelieving believers mistakenly believed they believed in Jesus. They really thought they believed, but as life got harder or the cost was made clearer, they turned away, proving that they never truly believed to begin with.
I think this resonated so much because we’re all almost certainly experiencing that on some level right now. That described me for the first 20 years of my life. I know it describes some of you still and someone we all love.
Seeing unbelieving believers so frequently in John’s Gospel helps us make sense of what we often experience in certain people in our lives. It helps us know how to talk to them. It helps us have and give hope because some who were initially unbelieving believers in John’s Gospel eventually because genuine believers (like many of the disciples).
Again, God seemed especially pleased to bless us with this aspect of John’s Gospel.
Following Jesus
Another theme in John that really connected with us is the idea of following Jesus as the essence of the Christian life. I just preached a whole sermon on this so I won’t belabor the point, but I will say that it’s a helpful term for a few main reasons. First, it is not how we normally talk about what it means to be a Christian, so it causes us to slow down and consider our hearts and lives in a way we might not otherwise know to do. Second, it clarifies a lot of things that would otherwise be foggy. Did Jesus go there? Did He command us to go there? Is it in keeping with what Jesus did, said, or felt? Those questions make simple certain things that can otherwise appear complicated. And third, the idea of following Jesus stuck, I think, because it’s such a straight-forward and repeated command from the beginning to the end of John. It’s such an obviously biblical way to describe our purpose in life that we can focus on living it out rather than debating its merit.
Follow Jesus, Grace. It is what we were all made for. John’s Gospel is a great place to start if you want to know what that means.
The Sovereignty of God
Finally, the sovereignty of God in John as both a fact and an explanation led to many, many conversations over the last couple of years (some hopeful, freeing, confusing, frustrating, etc). That God is sovereign means that He is ultimately in control of everything. That idea is everywhere in John, but is especially concentrated in chapter 6.
We see it there in the fact that Jesus is able to make food and water act out of accordance with their ordinary properties in the feeding of the “five thousand” and in His walking on water. That is, we see the sovereignty of God in what Jesus was able to do.
We see it as well in what Jesus is able to offer. He alone is able to offer food that endures to eternal life (Himself) and resurrection on the last day.
We see it in what He said also. “All that the Father gives me will come to me.” And “No one can come to me unless the Father…draws him.” And “It is the Spirit who gives life the flesh is no help at all”.
There is simply no question in John’s mind that all mankind makes real choices for which we are really responsible and that at the same time, God is sovereign over everything.
There is, of course, mystery in that, but it is also why God is able to make the promises He does and why it is good and right for us to believe them with every fiber of our being. It is (along with His goodness, wisdom, and love) the source of our hope and salvation.
While this can be a hard pill to swallow for some, for John it is a plain and glorious fact. It is a source of worship, hope, and belief. It is a truth for John and for Jesus’ followers that is good, beautiful, and true.
Again, I’m thankful that God was pleased to use John’s Gospel to further convince us of God’s sovereignty, expand our understand of what that means, and fill us with a fuller measure of hope in His promises.
CONCLUSION
There you have it. A recap of John’s Gospel and a few brief reflections on some of the ways God used it among us.
The goal of all of this, once again, is not to merely fill your mind with facts. It’s not even merely to impress you with John and Jesus’ understandings of Jesus. All of it is written so that you may believe in Jesus and gain eternal life.
We can have it all memorized in three languages, we can paint and compose masterpieces on these things, we can teach it perfectly, but none of that matters if we do not turn to Jesus in simple, childlike faith and worship because of it. This Gospel, John’s aims, John’s structure, Jesus’ glory, Jesus’ signs, are all graciously given to us that we may graciously believe in Jesus and graciously follow Him to the cross and from there all the way to eternal life in heaven. May it be so.