Go ahead and open your Bibles to the Gospel According to John. The Gospel According to John will be our study today, and I've been thinking through what's going to come next, what are we going to do in the fall, and I'm leaning very heavily to doing the Gospel of John as a full book study starting this fall. That's not finalized, but that is likely to be the case, but today we're doing an overview of the gospel. According to John, it's this gospel is one of the most beloved books in the entire new Testament. That's honestly one of the most beloved books in all of the Bible because on one hand it is so simple and so basic and so clear that a child can grasp the gist of what's going on and can follow the essentials of the book. But on the other hand, It is so deep and profound in what it reveals, particularly about the relationships within the Godhead that the most accomplished theologians of our day and of days past feel that they're barely scratching the surface of its implications. One great Bible commentator, Leon Morris, compared the Gospel of John to a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant can swim. It is both simple and profound. It is for the various beginner in the faith and for the mature Christian. Its appeal is immediate and never failing." And I think that's a good way to look at it. You can get the gist of it right on the surface, and yet there's so deep that you can plunge into it. Part of that's probably because the author, the Apostle John himself, was so close to Jesus that he speaks with this familiarity, and he's able to record and recall his teaching in a way that is so elegant that he can relay it in ways that speak to all people. John's Gospel, as you'll recall, last week we did the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John is its own thing. Not because it tells a different story, but because it has a different focus, if you will. The gospel of John speaks of the Logos. You're probably familiar with that word used in John's prologue, the Greek word Logos that's translated the word. It speaks of him coming down from heaven. And there's this very vertical dimension of John's gospel that's focusing on the Lord coming down. Whereas in the synoptics, the focus is more on the progress horizontally through redemptive history. So one is primarily vertical, the other is primarily horizontal. The gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptics, are primarily concerned with talking about the age of the kingdom of God being inaugurated as this major point in redemptive history and awaiting its consummation to come. Whereas John is primarily concerned with the reality that God has come to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. Now I want to say that those are primary emphases because you'll find both of those components in the synoptics and in John, right? So John also deals with the progress of redemptive history. He deals very much with the horizontal unfolding of the gospel. And the synoptics likewise also deal a lot with the vertical. I think perhaps the best analogy for this is how many of you are right-handed? Your right hand is your dominant hand. Most of you. Okay, myself included. I'll throw myself. Do you ever use your left hand? All the time, right? Like without even thinking about it. And yet, the fact that your right hand is dominant is a real thing. Like it's the primary one that you reach for, the primary one that you used to write with, all these kinds of things. And I use that illustration to show that while we're saying John has a primary focus, we don't want to deny that he engages with the other way of relaying the information. Does that make sense? We don't want to say that John never does this. John's gospel is almost certainly written in the late first century, probably in, the 80s, 90s AD. We have record of it being circulated in Egypt, which is not near as early as 125 AD. And it's being cited by church fathers that we know died early in the second century, so early in the 100s. And this is important to know because skeptics will often tell you that that this idea of Jesus as God in the flesh is so exalted, so high that it must have taken some time to develop. Because after all, these skeptics will tell you that Jesus was just a man and just a popular teacher. And it was only after several generations of people following him that he went from a good teacher to the best teacher to a divine teacher to ultimately God. They'll tell you that's kind of the way it works. And yet, John's gospel is so clear on these kinds of testimonies within a single generation. Um, it's because they have that bias against it, uh, that they'll tell you it was, it was done sometimes later. Uh, they'll tell you often you'll hear, and even like cults, like Jehovah's witnesses will promote that, uh, no church people believed that, uh, no church fathers, no church leaders believe that Jesus was divine until the council of Nicaea in three 25. And yet we have John saying it plain as day in the late 1st, early 2nd century. That's just a thing to have in the back of your mind as you hear those skeptical arguments, know that the archaeological record is clear and plain that this was early. Whatever perspective one may have though on John's emphasis, His purpose for writing the book is crystal clear. Those of you that went through my study in Romans know that I'm a big believer, especially as you get into the New Testament, that books have themes or theses that they're unfolding and unpacking throughout. Paul gives us his often in the beginning. John gives us his at the end. If you want to flip in John to chapter 20, verses 30 to 31, John tells you, the reason that he wrote this book. I'm not laying on this anything more than John himself said. Would somebody please read for us John chapter 20, verses 30 to 31. Miss Duncan. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in the 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. Thank you very much, Ms. Duncan. So John says there, Jesus did a lot of stuff. I didn't record all of it. He's going to say at the end of the next chapter, if I had tried to, the earth could not have fit all of the books that would need to be written. I selectively put stuff in here. Why? What's the purpose? So that you, the reader, might believe that Jesus is the Christ, that is that he is the Messiah, he is the anointed one, he is the one promised and prefigured by the Old Testament, and that by believing, you might have life in his name. That's his goal, that's his aim, that's why everything that's in here is in here, it's a means to that end. And so we'll spend our time this morning tracing that singular theme, because it is the big theme of John, through the four sections of the book, and John does, break down rather neatly into four sections. The first is a relatively short, but it is important nonetheless. The prologue, and that's John chapter one verses one to 18, the prologue, John one, one to 18. And then there's, um, two very large sections in the middle. One is the book of the signs, the book of signs, and that's John one 19 through 12 50. So essentially, 11 chapters there, the Book of Signs. Third, the Book of Passion. That's John 13, 1 through 20, 31. The Book of Passion, John 13, 1 to 20, 31. And then lastly, the epilogue, which is chapter 21. The epilogue is chapter 21. Just a fun aside here. When I did my licensure exam for Calvary Presbytery, Both dr. Phillips and dr. Piper who's the former president of Greenville Seminary were on the examinations committee and I was asked to outline the gospel of John and I just went with a very narrow breakdown of 1 to 12 is the book of signs and 13 to 21 is the book of the passion because that's an easy one to memorize They got into they got into an argument over that answer and because they wanted a more thorough breakdown. I offered chapter by chapter. They said, no, that's not an outline either. But when I offered that, both Dr. Phillips said yes and Dr. Piper said no at the same time. So I went chapter by chapter and then made up things that connected those chapters as I went. It's very nerve wracking to have the two men that are evaluating you arguing over what the right answer is and trying to serve both masters. I always think about that interaction with the Gospel of John. That has nothing to do with our study today. It's just a funny story. All right, so the prologue. The prologue of John is unique in a number of ways, but let's start with one similarity it has with Matthew. And that is that it begins with echoes of the book of Genesis. You'll remember last week, and there's still some remnants on here because I need whiteboard cleaner, I wrote out the Greek of Matthew 1.1 to show you that it could be rendered the book of the Genesis, the book of the beginnings of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew's first words in Greek, literally a book of Genesis, indicates that he, that is Matthew, would have us understand that the human race's new Genesis takes place now in Jesus, so writes Dr. Kidd. But John takes it actually a step further. He doesn't just allude to the title of the book, he actually begins by echoing the very first words of Genesis, in the beginning. There is no other way that a first century Jew would have heard those words and not thought Genesis 1-1. And what's really interesting is if you compare the Greek rendering of Genesis to the Greek of John, it's exactly the same. An-ar-cane-ho, and then you either have God or the word. And so what John is doing is he's going back to the very beginning of scripture. And he's taking the Lord Jesus, who we know is the word who became flesh and dwelt among us as you read the rest of the gospel. And he's saying that one goes in the place of God. That one is God. He puts him in the slot of Theos. And so we are four words into John's gospel. And he's telling us that Jesus pre-exists creation. He exists before creation. You'll recall when we were doing the confession of faith, we spent a lot of time on that creator-creature distinction and divide. Jesus is on the creator side of that equation. And in case that isn't clear, look at verse three. He says, all things that were made. So everything that's ever been made were made through him. And without him was not anything made that was made. He states it both positively and negatively. All things were made by him. Nothing that was made was not made by him. He could not be more clear. Jesus is the creator. But we also see in this prologue that he is distinct from God. We see that in John 1.1. In the beginning was the word. That's testifying to his deity. And the word was with God. He's separate, he's distinct from God, and yet also the word was God. A truly profound verse that hopefully we'll get to more in detail maybe in the fall. And he also gives us that famous verse in chapter one, verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And that word for dwelt is the word for tabernacle. The word for God's tent that he had erected in Exodus chapter 26 to dwell with his people. And so John is continually pointing us back and showing how Jesus is the full reality of all these Old Testament passages. He is Yahweh in the flesh and yet Jesus is also distinct from and sent by Yahweh. You see that again also in verse 18. No one has ever seen God. So no one has ever seen God. And then to explain that, the only God, who's the only God? The one who was at the father's side has made him known. So Jesus is God and yet is sent by God to reveal the character of God. He is in some sense, the one that's prophesied, not in some sense, he's in the most literal sense, the one that's prophesied by Moses, the coming prophet in Deuteronomy 18, 18, who would reveal God more fully. We do not have time for this aside on the idea of the word Logos, but we'll get to that maybe another time. If anybody wants to chat about that, let me know. And so we see in the prologue though that God's word, that is Jesus, which has been at work powerfully revealing himself through all of redemptive history, has now come in the flesh. And part of why he has come, is to do many signs and wonders, as is recorded in the first half of John's gospel. Dr. Kruger writes, the book of signs, which is John 119 to 1250, gets its name from the fact that Jesus performs his six key miracles in these 12 chapters, which John prefers to call signs. These six signs include turning the water into wine, this is in chapter two, the healing of a noble man's son in chapter four, the healing of the crippled man in chapter five, the feeding of the 5,000 in chapter six, healing the man born blind in chapter nine. And does anyone want to take a guess on what is the sixth sign in the book of signs? Anybody? You guys are clearly not going for licensure in Calvary Presbyterian. The raising of Lazarus from the dead. Yes. Chapter 11. Very good. So those are the six signs. And unlike the synoptics, these acts were not so much designed to display God's power, though they did, but they were prophetic symbolic acts designed to validate Jesus as the Messiah and the son of God. This fits quite well with the purpose of John discussed above, namely that John was written to a Jewish audience to demonstrate that the Messiah, the Christ, was Jesus. And you see this occurring throughout the Old Testament, right? When Moses is commissioned of the Lord in Exodus chapter three to go and tell the people that they're going to be delivered out of captivity and bondage in Egypt. He says, how are they going to believe me? And what does God do? He gives him signs. He gives him acts that he can perform that validate that this is my guy. This is my messenger. Pastor Brennigan is preaching through the Elijah narrative in 1 Kings when he has the opportunity to preach in the evening service. And what is it that God does over and over again through Elijah? He does signs and miracles. The primary import of which is to validate that Elijah is his prophet. And so in the same sense, all of these signs that occur in the Gospel of John, I like the way Dr. Kruger pointed out, yes, they demonstrate God's power. But according to the purpose statement of John, they're written so that we might know Christ is the Messiah, that Jesus is the Messiah. So they're demonstrating, they're validating Jesus's teaching on who he is. Now, we don't have time to look at all these miracles in depth, but it is worthwhile to look at the, it's worthwhile to look at all of them. We are going to look at the feeding the 5,000 in John chapter six, so you can go ahead and flip there. The reason I picked this one is that it's, apart from the crucifixion and resurrection, it's the only story of Jesus' life that's recorded in all four gospels. So that alone tells you this is important. This is significant. And I don't think that's an accident. Most scholars tend to date the synoptics earlier than John. And so John writes his gospel with almost unique material that he wants to fill in some gaps that were left. And yet he keeps this in there. And I believe it's because this event uniquely shows that Jesus is the Messiah, uniquely shows that he is the anointed one of God. because it's going to show us him as prophet, priest, and king, all three in the one sign. They're all here. So what are we told at the end of the feeding of the 5,000? How did I get there? At the end of the feeding of the 5,000, we read John 6, 14 to 15. It's written, when the people saw the sign that he had done, They said, indeed, this is the prophet who is to come into the world. They're thinking Deuteronomy 18, 18. This is God's man. This is the one that's going to ultimately deliver us. And what else did they understand? Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. So, I mean, They said he's the prophet and Jesus knew that they also thought he was the king. So that's two of the three offices ticked off right there on the surface. Now, where do we get priest from? They catch up to him on the other side and he rebukes them for being only, he flees, they catch up to him on the other side of the river and he rebukes them. He says, you're just here to fill your stomachs again. You're just here to get more bread. And he launches into the bread of life discourse. And I'll read some parts of this. John 6, 35, Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. And then skipping down to verse 50, he says, this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." He's pointing to himself as the sacrifice. that would atone for the sins of the world. He's pointing to himself as the sacrifice that would renew right standing before God for the people. The Jews then disputed among themselves saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink." This highlights that he is the sacrifice that would bring about eternal and eschatological life. So we see in the feeding of the 5,000 and in Jesus's explanation of what it all meant, that he is highlighted as the prophet, the priest, and the king of God's people. So let's look now at the book of... Actually, there's one other sign that I feel burdened to share with you guys and to bring to y'all's attention. It's actually a chapter earlier. Chapter I'm sorry. It's a chapter later chapter 9 the healing of the blind man And this isn't the main point of the text But it is important John chapter 9 beginning in verse 1 as he passed by he saw a man born blind from birth And his disciples asked him rabbi who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind That will be a question that will be asked of you in some form or another all the time. Why did this bad thing happen to this guy? Why did it happen to me? Why did it happen to my friend? Why did it happen to someone I care about? Why did this bad thing happen? And the disciples ask him, we know it was sin. Whose sin was it? What Jesus says here is so instructive and so helpful, and we need to remember it. Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents sinned. It wasn't because of any individual person sin. He's not saying that this man and his parents were sinless, right? We know that, but he's saying that the fact that he was born blind is not a direct retribution for their individual sin. but that the works of God might be displayed in him. Why did this bad thing happen? In one sense or another, that the works of God might be displayed. So it might be that God might do a miraculous healing for the praise of his name. That could be. It might be that you would learn to trust him, rely more faithfully on him, even in the midst of the affliction, right? I think a lot of the apostle Paul in second Corinthians chapter 12, where he's got his thorn in the flesh and he prays three times, Lord, please take this away from me. And God says, no, I'm not going to do that because my strength is made perfect in your weakness. And sometimes these afflictions are there to draw us closer unto God. Um, Again, that's an aside, but it's an important thing to hear over and over again as you will be wrestling with those kinds of questions. All right, back to the main point, the book of the passion. Would somebody please read for me John 13 in verse one. John 13 in verse one. Mr. Leathers. Thank You mr. Leathers So remember that John is the one that tells us pretty clearly that Jesus has a three-year earthly ministry And he spends almost half of his book on one week And it's particularly actually This is the night before he's betrayed. It's really spending half of his book on half of a week, just three days of his trial, his crucifixion and his resurrection. That's important. Everything that's contained in this section of the book is teaching us about the Lord's great love for us. That's why it's called the book of passion because he is devoted to his people. He loved his own in the world. And he loved them to the end. And this is a really important concept for us to get drilled into our minds. And Paul will pick this up and run with it in his epistles as we'll see in the coming weeks. But I want to say plainly now that it says here, Jesus loved them before he went to the cross and he loved them up to that point. He loved them to the end. And the point is, The message of Christianity is that he lived the righteous life that you and I were required to live and that he kept the law to the utmost, taking upon him the death that you and I deserved to die. And he did all of that because he loves you. He does not love you because he has done those things. He did not do those things to give himself permission to love. loved you, and therefore he redeemed you. It goes in that order. Jeremiah 31.3 says, I have loved you with an everlasting love, meaning as far back into eternity path as you want to go. God knew you, he knew he was going to make you, and he loved you. And so he did what was necessary to redeem you from your sin. This is all a demonstration of that love. It's, it's, he saved you from your sin because he loved you. And, and in this section is probably, uh, the greatest treatment on the doctrine of the Trinity and especially the person of the Holy Spirit in all of the Bible. Uh, that would be an excellent devotional reading for you guys today is John, uh, 14 to 16 and just seeing what the Lord Jesus says. about the Holy Spirit. I would highly recommend reading those three chapters and just soak in those words and let them resonate in your minds. Uh, what it is that Jesus says, it's better that I go away because if I go, then the helper, the Holy Spirit will come and he will lead you into all truth. Uh, but I want to leave us with one last passage and this is at the end of the book of passion. John chapter 20, beginning in verse 24. You all will know this story as soon as I start reading it, but it goes like this. Now, Thomas, we already know one of the 12 called the twin was not with them when Jesus came. So this is after he's gone to the cross, after he's been raised, after he's had his first appearance. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord, but he said to them, unless I see in his hands, the mark of the nails, and to place my finger into the mark of the nails on his side, I will never believe. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. And although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them. Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here, and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Thomas answered him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed. There's a lot going on there. But the point is, that type of encounter is what the Apostle John is shooting for in this book. He wants the words of Jesus to be the basis on which you would believe in his name. He wants you to not just learn information, but to learn to know him as you read his teachings, as you read his interactions with his disciples. He wants you to walk away from the gospel of John saying about the Lord Jesus, my Lord and my God, this is the one who has purchased me. And then those of you, uh, that will read through this gospel and you will feel, um, at times so convicted of sin and wrought with, uh, imperfection that you will question whether or not you have life in his name. That'll happen at points. Remember also the second to last story that, that John ends with, and it's that of Peter. You remember Peter famously denying the Lord three times the night of his trial, before his crucifixion. And it's so powerful that Jesus gets Peter aside away from the others and meets with him personally. And this is John 21, 15. When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, I love you. You know, I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs. He said to him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, tend my sheep. He said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. And Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. Jesus denied Christ three times. And then he, Jesus, excuse me, Peter denied Jesus three times. And then Jesus restored Peter three times over. And that's what it means to find life in his name is to find forgiveness and restoration for every single sin. Every single offense is cleansed and covered by the blood of Jesus received through faith in his name. Let's pray. God in heaven, we thank you for the gospel of John and how rich and powerful it is. And Lord, there's so much left untouched this morning. But I pray that as we become lifelong learners and students of your word, that we would come to a greater appreciation for what it means to say that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing in him, we might find life in his name. I ask this in Christ's name and for his glory. Amen.