And take your Bibles with me, and let's turn to John chapter 21. I don't know exactly how long, but I know it's been a while, and today we're finally, finally reaching the conclusion of this wonderful book. John chapter 21, and we're actually going to read two verses out of chapter 20 as well. So as we're bringing reflection upon this wondrous book to a conclusion today, I want us to ask the question about motivation. I don't know how old John was when he wrote this book. It doesn't, there's no internal evidence that answers how old he was or even where he was. I'll quote in just a little while a man who probably knew John personally. His name is Irenaeus, and he tells us that John published this gospel while he was a resident in Ephesus in Asia. I'll talk more about that, but I just want us to think about who is this who's writing to us? Someone who knew that he was loved by Jesus himself, who had leaned back against his breast, who had been close to Jesus, and indeed was admitted to his trial there in the palace of the high priest. He told us about that back in chapter 18. There's numerous things that we can remember here, even as the Apostle John is now bringing this home to the reader. Whoever reads this book has to encounter these two verses and then the two in chapter 21 that are our text for today. So let's begin our reading in John chapter 20 and verse 30. says, now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written 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. And then over to chapter 21 and verse 24. John 21, verse 24. This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things and who has written these things. And we know that his testimony is true. Now there are also many other things that Jesus did where every one of them to be written. I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. This is the word of the living God. Well, I wonder when the last time was that you were in a big library. The library here in Topeka is pretty impressive. I have to boast in my city a little bit. But I've been to some bigger ones. I've been to the library at Pittsburgh Seminary. Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and went from building to building to building and wandered through endless stacks of their research library. It was fabulous. Imagine a library though, the way John talks about it. A library as big as the world. that was filled to the brim with all the books that could have been written about this incredible life that was lived in the world. It's a tragedy in a way that we can't have movies, home video footage, Or that we couldn't have satellite pictures of the crowds that surrounded Jesus. But friends, in the providence of God, God has given us exactly what we need for Jesus to be the shepherd of all of His sheep. John's gospel contains 18,898 words. I did find that for the ESV. It contains a vocabulary of just about exactly 600 Greek words written arguably at about a sixth grade level. It features seven miraculous signs as preludes to the climactic eighth sign, that is the self-sacrificial death of the Word of God, John chapter 1, and of his victory over death in the resurrection, chapter 20 and verse 17. Look at what Jesus said to the very first eyewitness. I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Can you imagine being Mary Magdalene entrusted with that message? Okay, Jesus told me to tell you, He's going up to heaven to my God and your God, to my Father and your Father. And John and Peter are like, what? Mary, what happened to you? We've read today the concluding words of a gospel written by an apostle, one of 12 of them, whose entire life was transformed by the person and work of the teacher. John knew he was loved by him forever. In honor of his master, he left behind a small cup full of the ocean of literature that coulda and arguably shoulda been written. Faithfully ferret out the truth in the gospel according to John. I remember one time being down in Florida. Our family went to the Gulf side of Florida, down near St. Petersburg, Florida, and we went to the beach. And I remember going out into the rolling waves with my father. And we had a few little toys and we were watching boats float and other things, but my dad took a little teacup, little plastic teacup of my sister's. And he dipped it in to the water and he said to me, look, Brad, a teacup full of ocean. And that's what I have in mind here today. How much of the story does John tell you? Well, he gives you 18,000, almost 19,000 words. That's a pretty good paper. Probably you've written some papers in college or in high school about that long. And yet, what coulda, and I'm gonna even argue today, no disrespect to the apostles, but shoulda been written. What do you think Bartholomew could have told us about? What do you think that Judas, the zealot, could have told us about? What do you think that Peter himself could have told us? I'm persuaded part of the reason Peter didn't write very much himself, first Peter is Peter with a secretary. Second Peter is Peter without a secretary. As long as he had a secretary, you could read it, number one. And second of all, it was smooth, normal Greek. But Peter, the Hebrew speaking fisherman, when he didn't have a secretary, watch out. It was the word of God, but it's a challenge both to read and to understand. Oh friends, think about the role of libraries in civilizations around the world. Think about how a book plants a seed in your mind that then grows over years. Think about the places you've been in books. Think about the power of looking at a satellite photo taken from hundreds of miles up into space of your back porch. Think about how far we've come in terms of libraries that are growing faster than they've ever grown in human history. There is so much to know, and we know so little of it. In fact, I think I've come to the conclusion that one of the signs of immaturity is to think that you know very much. High schoolers, college students, And I see about five people just smiling right now. You know what I'm going to say. Don't think you know very much. You get a big head because it's filled up with a teacup of knowledge. And then you think you know about the whole ocean. Oh, friends. What is John teaching us here? Well, there's four things I wanna mention today. Number one, what John brings is an eyewitness account. The unique value of the 20,000 words that John brings to us is that he was in the room. One of the presidential candidates has said several times, I was in the room. And that's actually really, really, really important. Doesn't mean you made the right decision in the room. We could talk about some of those things. But being there is of critical importance. John was one of perhaps only a dozen people who heard what we now know as the upper room discourse. Virtually none of that long speech given by Jesus over several hours in the upper room was recorded in any of the other Gospels. And imagine being one who had studied Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and you said, oh, why didn't they include that part? And then, somebody did. And if you think about John as a supplemental Gospel, The value of it is it's giving all kinds of new data from an eyewitness. That's the value. Friends, there are literally hundreds of books from subsequent centuries written by Christians who never knew Jesus. In fact, they never knew an apostle. The only thing they had was what we have. And then from the knowledge gained by the eyewitnesses to Christ's ministry, those men then proceeded to write huge tomes that would fill libraries of the world. It wasn't that many years ago, I believe it was in the 1950s or the 1960s, that in an obscure library in Italy, In one of those book stacks, clear in the back, it had actually fallen back behind other books. That they discovered for the first time, so far as we know, the only surviving copy of the Didache. One of the very earliest Christian manuscripts outside the Bible. That we had had snippets from it, it had been quoted in many other places. But the manuscript as a whole had been lost. Until in one of those world-sized libraries, we went going and poking back and discovered something that had been lost. I want you to understand the importance of what it says here. Look at what it says in verse 24. This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things. What is the disciple? Well, look back in the previous verses. Peter turned around and he saw the one whom Jesus loved walking behind them. And Peter said to Jesus, what about this man? These are eyewitnesses, friends. Somewhere along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, probably somewhere near the town of Capernaum where Peter's home was, this eyewitness account took place. I want you to understand that this is one of the issues that's involved in the dating of the various books of the New Testament. The latest date that is reasonable, if you actually take this book at its word, is somewhere in about the year 90 AD. There's an argument for a 70 AD dating. I'm very sympathetic, that may well be right, but at the latest date where John himself could be writing this gospel, and in which case he would be a very old man, is probably 90 AD. If you hear any date after that, then you need to know that that scholar is most likely motivated by an extreme cynicism toward the biblical text. Rather than actually letting the text speak, they come to the text with an agenda. They come with a presupposition. Now they won't tell you that, but if you ask them, how do you know They won't give you any good answers. But people who dedicate themselves to the study of a text have to let the text speak. And this text, it doesn't have a date in it, but the things that are said, the way it's written, there's simply no reasonable argument that this was written any later than 90 Thus, it's an eyewitness account. As I mentioned, Irenaeus, in his book, Against Heresies, book three, chapter one, paragraph one, says, quote, John, the disciple of the Lord, who leaned back on his breast, there's a reference to the upper room, published the gospel while he was a resident at Ephesus in Asia. Now the significance about this is that Irenaeus was taught by Polycarp. Polycarp of Smyrna, I'm gonna switch over to this other mic, I think my battery's going out. Polycarp of Smyrna was his teacher. So Smyrna in Turkey, one of the seven letters of John was written to Smyrna. John lived in Ephesus and taught Polycarp, who then became the bishop of the church in Smyrna. And while he was bishop, he taught Iridaeus, who then became a missionary to France, Leon in France. And there's tremendous value to these things. And so again, to read Irenaeus is to read a spiritual grandson of the Apostle John. To read Polycarp, you can also read some of his writings, is to read of a son in the faith of the Apostle John. But to read the gospel according to John is to read the eyewitness account, the people who were in the room. This brings us then to the second point. What John brings is a personal account. I want you to just consider how intimate some of John's stories have been. To describe himself rolling back as they're there probably on their elbow eating at the Last Supper and to lean back against Jesus' breast. and to whisper in his ear. He said in 1 John 1, that which we have touched, Jesus was real. He was human. And yet, he was also the eternal son of the eternal God. John's account is a personal account. Thirdly, I want to point out that John's account is only a highlights reel. He says there's so much that could have been spoken that the world could be filled with a world-size library. I remember my friend, some of you have met my friend, Eric Filson. Eric, I persuaded, was born with a video camera in his hand. Not actually. When he was probably five, he was using his dad's big video camera with a cord going to, remember the old VCR that you carried on your hip over your shoulder? And he was using that to take video. And his cameras have kept getting smaller and smaller. I'm waiting for him to show up with glasses that are a video camera. He's just an amazing videographer. You've probably seen some of his stuff. In fact, a plug, if you go to our Church's brand new website, TopekaRPC.org. You can see, okay, Matt's back there. Matt's excited. You can see Eric's video on the splash page. When he was here, he had his drone flying around our church building. Eric has taken all the video he's ever done and has created a 90-second, it's called a demo reel. And I was there for a lot of the video that he took. He's now traveled worldwide, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. He's been to the Sinai Peninsula with Egyptians. He's ridden an elephant in Africa, all while taking his video. And I imagine that 90 second clip, which is literally just... And there's just all these impressions. That's what we have from the Apostle John. Like, where do I start? I traveled with the man for years. I saw things that bent my mind and I'm telling you guys, this is what happened. There were seven miracles and I thought that was amazing. And then he rose from the dead. And I thought that was amazing. And then we watched while he ascended to this being that he said is my father and your father. It's in Christ that we are translated into this family that has the creator God as father. Friends, do you see what this means? And isn't it interesting that it's the eyewitness accounts that are the ones that are most maligned by those who say, if only God would speak to me. If God would come down in all of His glory and stand in front of me at my command and say, here I am, then I would believe the Bible. But eyewitnesses, oh, well, we're smarter than that. We've evolved beyond that. Those people, they walked around on their knuckles. They were half ape. Friends, don't despise the eyewitness accounts of the apostles of Jesus Christ. Do you see how important our Bibles are? It's not a complete record. but it's a true record. This brings us then to the fourth point this morning. What God, sorry, what John brings testifies to Jesus's person and work. What John brings testifies to Jesus's person and work. One of the very first verses that I ever memorized, my father, challenged me shortly after I'd made a profession of faith in Christ. He said, Brad, you need to begin to memorize the Bible. I was five. And he said, you need to learn the verses that I taught you that were the means God used to bring you to faith in Jesus Christ. 1 John 5, 11 through 13. And this is the testimony. that God has given us eternal life. And this life is in his son. He who has the son has life, already has life. He taught me that. He who does not have the son of God does not, and then he said the word, yet have eternal life. I'm writing these things to you who believe on the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." Wow. It took a little bit of work and probably six months for a five-year-old to memorize that. But those words were emblazoned on my heart forever. And I know some of you have verses of Scripture emblazoned on your heart forever, that guide you, that support you when you're weak, that protect you when you're afraid, that motivate you to get up in the morning in service to the Lord. Tonight, we're going to be talking about Scripture memory. For those of you who come, I wanna give you an assignment. I want you, and we're gonna just go through these really quickly and we're not gonna spend time on them, but we're gonna write up on the board tonight what are the top, however many people are there tonight, Bible verses that are emblazoned on the hearts of Topeka Reformed Presbyterian Church. I may do some writing on that theme in the future, but tonight I want you to come What's the one verse that you say, this has been written by the Holy Spirit upon my heart. This is a verse that I regularly access in my mind that goes back and especially to the early days of my Christian life. This is a way of bearing testimony. Jesus is the object of the believers affections. And Jesus comes to us in one or two Bible verses. I've been reading about Christians in North Korea recently, who will literally have a secret pocket in their clothes where they will keep one little roll, some of them written on toilet paper, of verses of the Bible. They have maybe 10 or 20 verses of the Bible. And that sustains their faith. under the heel of the totalitarian government of North Korea. Friends, we have become soft. Stop it. It's time to dig in to the Word of God. And I know many of you are doing that. Don't listen to your intuition. Some spirits speak into you, but I'm not sure it's the Holy Spirit. Listen to the words of God, the words of Christ, as they're revealed in the Bible. Just to point out that when we talk about Christology, the big category, we divide Christology into two parts. One is the question, who is Jesus? And secondly is, what has Jesus done? Those are the two big parts of what John is doing. He's answering the question probably more thoroughly than any of the other apostles. Who is Jesus? In the beginning, the Word already existed. He already existed with God, and He was God. And the Word became. That's the Word that just causes me to marvel. The Word. became flesh. Without the Word, nothing was made that has been made. John 1 3. And God said, let there be light. And ten times God speaks in Genesis 1. And then it happens. And Jesus is the Word. And the Word became. Denny Pruto taught me this phrase, continuing to be what he was, the Son of God became what he was not. And then John met him. That part, Denny didn't teach me that part. But then John met him and said, uh, where are you staying? And Jesus, I imagine him looking back over short. He's like, come and see. Come on guys. You have no idea what the heavenly plans are for your life. You have no idea. But the heavenly plans are for your life. You have no idea where God will take you if you are sold out to him. And if you are guided by the apostolic witness. Acts 2.42, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to the breaking, to the fellowship. the body, life, to the breaking of bread, the sacraments, and to prayer. This is a proof text for reformed people of the means of grace, the word of God, the apostolic teaching, the fellowship, living together as brothers and sisters, as the flock of God under the protection of Christ and of his appointed shepherds. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread. It only mentions one of the elements. But that's how Reformed interpreters have traditionally understood that verse. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. And finally, prayer as a means of grace. Featured and meditated upon in the shorter catechism, as well as in the confession of faith. But friends, notice that all of these things sit, rest, abide, not upon human intuition or emotion. They abide, they rest on the eyewitness accounts that have been copied and preserved down through the ages. One of the things that I am becoming more persuaded of is that as we move to a digital age, the textual witness to the veracity of the Bible is going to become more and more and more important. One of my dreams within the next year is to take hopefully some of us and go down to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Down there is one ancient text of Romans chapter 1. that was dug up over in Egypt about 50 years ago. And I want to go see it. I want to like put on the white gloves and hold the little plastic covering. I want to hold that thing in my hand. So at least I can be an eyewitness of an early edition of the Bible. How do you know that the Bible hasn't been changed? They're flipping up new website pages every day. Where is the canonical scripture? Number one, and is it written on your heart? Oh, friends, there is a world-size library of reflections. of those who have thought long and hard about the mystery of the incarnation, about the worldwide advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to remember that we live at a time when every man is doing what is right in his own eyes. We don't really think about universals today. We just think about how we feel and what we like. And that will kill us if we don't repent. We need to go deep. We need to stand strong. We need to not be blown about by every wind of doctrine, by the teachings of men, but rather being rooted in love. We need to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, even our Lord Jesus Christ. How do you do that? Go to the text. Listen to the eyewitnesses. Hear the apostles teach about Jesus. Become a disciple of Jesus. Dedicate yourself, body and soul, to the means of grace. I don't care how you feel on Sunday morning. I'm very interested, though, in the effectiveness of the means of grace. Do you anticipate them? Do you love them? Do you treasure them? Will you prepare your heart for the next couple weeks As the means of grace will come here and Christ will make himself known in the breaking of the bread. Remember when he did that? In the book of Luke. It's an amazing thing. So consider Jesus' identity. Consider his intervention in humanity. Consider that he did not leave us to perish in a state of sin and misery. but that he has redeemed us through his preaching, through his miracles, through his perfect obedience, and above all, through his death upon the cross, his resurrection from a tomb, and his ascension into heaven, from whence he will come to judge the living and the dead. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, how we thank you for all of your provisions for us. Lord, as we come into a Thanksgiving season of the year, we say thank you for alerting us to our sin, for persuading us that we have been deceived by the world. And Lord, for laying before us the perfect righteousness of Christ. These things are written that we may believe And that by believing, we may have life through His name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Yahweh, to the glory of God the Father. Oh Lord, we pray that you would help us to be a people who stand in the abiding truth of the one who evidenced himself to be your answer to humanity. I pray, Lord, that you would expose in us the cynicism that we may well have picked up from the world, from the flesh, and from the devil. Lord, help us to stand on the rock of Jesus Christ and help us to look to him in his present reign in heaven. And Lord, help us to be faithful, to be faithful, to be faithful unto death. And you have promised us that you will give us a crown of life. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.