John chapter 21, the last two verses. 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. And lest I forget later, it just seems fitting for John and his character that he couldn't end with verse 24 because that verse was about him. So we've got to have one more verse where the last thing said is all about Christ. Don't you want that to be your final word? Last thing I said was all about Christ. So verse 25, he pens, now there are also many other things that Jesus did where every one of them to be written. I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Wow, what a wonderful word. Father in heaven, I pray you bless the word this morning as we wrap this book together. I pray that somebody has benefited along the way. And Lord, others may still be contemplating where they stand with you. Lord, it's not a lack of information that is their problem. Lord, Christ has been evidently set forth before us over these last years. And I pray today that they would believe upon Christ, be gloriously saved, to be freed from sin and adopted into the family of God. And I pray for all the saints in the room today, that like unto John, we would love Christ all the more. Pray these things by your spirit, in Christ's name, amen. Oh, if you glance back just a page, John chapter 20, verse 30, sounds very similar to the end of 21, but let me read it. There's a difference in 31 for sure. John 20, 30, now Jesus did many other things in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book. So there's a similar statement. But be reminded of the purpose. But these are written, so what has been written is sufficient. It's been written as all we need, and they were written for a purpose, and that purpose is that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ. He's the very Son of God, and that by believing, you would have life in His name. That's the purpose. If you have failed to obtain life, you've missed the purpose of the book, because that was the purpose. Now, I will attempt to do very briefly, but I don't want to go on without saying it. I want you to be reminded of the prologue, the introduction to this book in John chapter 1. It looks better on paper, and I can't do it for you on paper, you have to use your noggin to think it through. In the prologue, John 1, 1 through 18, if you pair these verses rightly, you get seven major doctrines. You have three, and you have three, and in between those two sets of three, you have one in the center that I think is the climax and the most notable of them. These six all give a highlight in all caps with exclamation marks to the one in the middle. So, if you're glancing there at the prologue, I'm not going to read it for the sake of time. I'm just going to remind you. This was what John introduced. This is what John says to you. I am going to explain Jesus Christ to you. He is the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. I'm pinning this down to explain who Christ is. Secondly, we learned about creation. You look there, he's in the beginning, and all things were made through him. And without him was not anything made that was made. Here is the Christ who spoke the entire cosmos into existence. That's who he is. Sovereign, power, nothing limits him. Out of nothing, everything. This is Christ. Salvation is found in the prologue. You look, say, in verse 16, from Him, fullness, we have received grace upon grace, grace in the place of grace. All salvation is grace, and it's accomplished by Christ giving us salvation. Then you see the blessed doctrine of incarnation, and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." Incarnation, truly God, truly man in physical form before our very eyes. John's laid that out. Regeneration is found in the prologue. You look there in verse 13. How is it that a man is born? How is it that a man receives life? He says, well, I can tell you how it's not. It's not by blood, it is absolutely not the will of man, that won't do it, and it's not the will of the flesh. You see, regeneration is being birthed out by God. John 1, 13, it's of God. And then also the blessed doctrine of justification, you see it in verse 12, but to all who did receive Him. who believed on His name. Everyone who does that is just. God declares them just. Explanation, creation, salvation, incarnation, regeneration, and justification. In the middle of all of those is this blessed word, imputation. He gave the right to become the sons of God. This perfect righteous Christ who fulfilled everything the law demanded, His righteousness is imputed unto the believer that they are then clothed with the righteousness of Christ and are able to enter into heaven. Nothing unclean can enter, only those who have Christ's righteousness imputed. This is the prologue, this is what John introduced five and a half years ago when we started this book. I believe, now you can have your own opinion if you like, but you'd be wrong, but John has proved those things that he introduced. He's shown them, he's laid them out, and we get to these last two verses, we say, everything you need to know. To have a walk and a relationship with Christ is written down for you to be able to read and believe. You have no excuse. He has made Christ known. What a great and wonderful gospel that he has given unto us. My thesis this morning is, still struggling with whether it's hyperbole or not, but a world of books. cannot fully explain the infinite Savior. Here's the issue. How can finite man write in full comprehension the infinite Savior? How can we say all there is to say about this one? We've never met one like this. You've never talked to someone like this. There's no one in this class but Christ. We're going to start talking about Christ today. You think about Paul at the end of the book of Acts, and he says, look, from morning to evening, he expounded them from the Scriptures, the kingdom of God, and how to be right with Christ. All day, just from the Old Testament about Christ. So much could be said. This book's way too short in one regard, but it's sufficient for all you need to know Christ, to walk with Him, to love Him, to worship Him. Maybe I'm reaching too far, and that's fine. If you don't like it, then don't reach that far. But if all I had in my life was a copy of the Gospel of John, I could live for the glory of God. All right, verse 24, herein is the message. Just briefly these things here, hopefully the Lord will help you with some things that will be encouraging to you. Notice here the disciple, I'm not going to belabor this case, it's John. There's enough ink spilt to take up the rest of your day on who wrote the Gospel of John. I'm just going to go with John. You can do what you will. But here's the disciple who's bearing witness. This disciple is the one whom the Lord loved, who leaned his head upon the Lord's breast at that Last Supper, and he is bearing witness, bearing witness, present active. This is the ongoing verbal testimony. existence of the Apostle John. He's not just a guy in a room who wrote scripture under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. He's a guy who opens his mouth on a regular basis and bears witness to Christ. He talks about Christ. He preaches about Christ. He lives in an oral culture in which they communicate truths by verbal proclamation. John is a preacher. John is a Christian. John is a man who loves Christ, and he is bearing witness. The Greek word for martyreo is martyr. Greek word that has to do with testimony, witness, or even can be used in the sense of being a martyr for Christ, bearing witness by sealing your belief with your own blood. This is John. His whole life. Oh, would that not be good for your epitaph on that tombstone to say, bearing witness for Christ. Still bearing witness. Why has the last judgment not come? Because folks like John Owen and John Bunyan and all these others are still preaching. You don't think so? Come to my office, grab a book. They're still preaching every time I open one. The voices are still going out. They're still accumulating rewards in heaven because they're making Christ known through what they've written, what they've said, and what they've preached. May it be for every one of us. as students of the Scriptures that we, on our jobs, in our homes, in our travels, would make Christ known. Bearing witness, it's just what we do. It's just who we are. We talk about Christ because we've been saved from sin. We've been forgiven. We've been adopted. We're part of the family of God. It's Father's Day, and we have the best father in existence. an eternal Father who has adopted us, and because He's been so good, how can I shut my mouth?" You must bear witness. And not only is that true of John, that he bears witness, ongoing and continual. But he also, past tense, thoroughly and completely, has written. Who has written these things? Presumably the things of the Gospel of John. Expressed thought through writing. Not only did he say it in word, he wrote it down. Now this may not resonate with you, but it resonates with me, so I want to say it just for its own record. Plenary verbal inspiration, the spirit of the living God in direct sovereign control over every single word that is written. using his personality to express it in his character, but to be faithfully true to exactly what God wanted to be written on paper. I believe that. You say whether you believe it or not, whether I believe it or not doesn't change the reality of its truth. Verbal inspiration. Every word written under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. Let me give you two verses from Paul. No, one verse from Paul, one verse from Peter. In Timothy, just a short scripture verse, just quoting part of it, he says something like this, all scripture, all of it, every bit of it is breathed out by God. Well, dear preacher, I think this and I think this. I don't care what you think. All Scripture is breathed out by God. How does it get breathed out? I don't know how to spell it out for you, but the Spirit of God within John or another apostle, another writer of the New Testament, the Old Testament, the Spirit of God within them moves them to put these words on paper in Hebrew and in Greek in order that God could be revealed to His people. Or if you want it from Peter, he says it this way, knowing this first of all, this is what we know, when it comes to this matter of inspiration, no prophecy of Scripture comes from Someone's own interpretation. Everybody has an interpretation. Excuse me, when it comes to this book and its written form, this is not interpretation, this is revelation. Now you may have an interpretation, but this is the revelation. Your interpretation may be off, but the revelation is on. No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. Not one prophecy was conjured up by men. Well, it's just a bunch of male chauvinists who wrote the Bible. No, my friend, the Spirit of the living God wrote the Bible. Well, that was their culture. No, no, no, no. This is an eternal author. Look, I got thousands of pages in my office of people trying to explain authorship. Look, could we not back up and just be simple for a moment? I know it's simplistic, but could we just not say, I don't understand a lot of things, but God wrote this book. And then, so bearing witness, writing it down, and then he says this. He says, we know. We know. We know. We grasp the meaning of something. We understand something. We recognize something. We have come to know something from going through this book or other books in the Bible. We've come to some understanding, and because we've invested in reading and praying and memorizing and studying, we know something. Now, I don't want to bore you with Greek details, but I do want to highlight this because you can't see it in English, but word order matters in Greek, and sometimes they put words in the front in order to put emphasis upon them, whereas the English, when it gets translated, it puts it on the end. That's the case here. In the verse, it says, we know that his testimony is true. True is the last word of that phrase. But in Greek, it's at the front, because the emphasis is on truth. Truth is what we know. What is truth, Pilate would ask. Look, dear Christian, we know truth. It doesn't make you prideful. It doesn't make you arrogant. It's just a reality. We know truth because we have a book. It's been written down, and we know it because we can read it in our own language. The thing that is known is truth. Well, why do you think you have truth and nobody else does? I don't know what anybody else does. I just know we have truth. If they have truth, they must have this book, because this is the only truth we have in revealed, objective form that we can read. This is the sum and total of truth. Let's go back, I know I just said it, but let me say it again. The whole question with Pilate, what is true? John closes his book, it's like he's answering Pilate. I know that's not the case, but in a sense, he's answering Pilate. You want to know what the truth is? Read my book! I won't belabor this too long, but commentators get really confused with the, we know, because it's the disciple writing, it's in first person, and then he switches to first person plural. Who's the we? Why is he saying we? Some commentators say, well, it's the elders at the church of Ephesus. There's others that say, well, it's this group, and it's this group. I don't know why they lose their mind on verse 24. Is it not the same way we started in chapter 1? You go back to chapter 1, you look at verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen. We've seen. This is the way John writes. If you want a technical name for it, it's called the editorial we. We have seen his glory. You read the Gospel of 1 John, not the Gospel, Letter of 1 John. You read that and this is common for John. Just going through the text starting at verse 2 and following. The life was made manifest. We have seen it. We are writing these things. This is the message we heard from him. If we have fellowship with him, if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another. Third John, Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself. We also add our testimony. editorial we. All we-ins know something. We-ins know the truth that John wrote that the Spirit told him to write and we know it because we're reading it and the Spirit of God is revealing the truth of it unto our hearts and effectively impacting our lives to shape us into the image of the one who's being written about. This is what's supposed to be going on here. We're going through the Bible in order that we would come out more like Christ. It's a meaningless exercise. Somebody says, well, is expository preaching relevant? Yes, it's always relevant. It's a revelation of God, and it forms us unto the image of His Son. To be a part of the editorial we, you must believe what's written. You don't have to believe somebody's interpretation, but you must believe what's written. Those of us who are of the we should be bearing witness to the one we believe. I would say this also in application. Christianity is not mindless sentimentality. It's not that. It is a resolved faith in the objective truth that has been given to us no matter what happens. This is where our faith lies. Not that we're guilty of bibliolatry or worshiping the Bible. It's just that this book reveals the one whom we worship. That's the message that John has given us and written down for us. And now multiple are adding things to things. Many other things which Jesus did, verse 25. Now there are also many other things. You see this, I don't know, this deal with things in verse 24 and 25 about these things, written these things, and now many other things. John uses that three times in these two verses. Think about this for a moment. There are many other things that Jesus did, bunches of them, unrecorded, forgotten in a sense. We can't forget them because we never knew what they were. There's so many of them. It's like that's not really a far stretch, is it? The writer of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 11, he says this about mortal men. He says, what more shall I say? They have said all this in Hebrews 11. There's not enough time in the world for me to tell you about Gideon, about Barak, about Samson, about Jephthah, about David, about Samuel, and about the prophets. So the writer of Hebrews says, there's not even enough time in existence for me to tell you about mortal men. How is that much different than what John's saying here? Look, there isn't enough paper and there's not enough ink on earth for me to write down everything that Jesus did and the implications of what he did and how it impacts the world. Look, if we wrote all that down, nobody would ever read the Bible because there'd be so much information, they'd never get to the end of it. By the way, there are things that Jesus said that aren't recorded that are quoted. Right? So like, you look in the book of Acts, and Paul in the book of Acts, he says about Jesus, he says, Jesus says, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Find Jesus saying that in the Gospels. It's not there. Well, where'd that saying come from? Jesus said a lot of things. He didn't record every one of them. John Calvin, as you think about all the things, did, said, Calvin says this, not only ought we to take into account the number of Christ's works, but it's a lot of them. We ought to take into account the number, but we ought also to consider the importance and magnitude of each work. If we took just this morning to do the work of the pull of Bethesda and the man that's laid there for 38 years, exactly how long would it take for us to flush out everything that's in that passage of Scripture and the implications of it for the world at large and for me individually? There's a lot going on here. It's going to take a while to write all of this out. or the very majesty of Christ. Think about the majesty of Christ, or think about Dr. Yule on Easter week. Let's marvel for a moment this afternoon, he said. Let's marvel. The majesty of Christ. Can we just sit and have a spell? Can we just sit back and just behold the majesty of Christ? Could you think about his description in Revelation? Could you think about his knowledge and his wisdom? Can you think about his conversations with the religious elite of his day? Remember, he's so wise. You answer me a question, I'll answer your question. Oh, you didn't answer me, then I'm not answering you. We could go on and on and on about the majesty of Christ because his majesty is infinite. I don't know if anybody's getting this. Humanity is quite confusing. We can spend a lot of time on a stupid video game, but we can't marvel at the majesty of Christ for five minutes. There's something wrong. The very majesty of Christ, who is infinite, swallows up the minds of men and all of heaven and earth. There's just so much, you'll never find the end of it. A commentator by the name of William Hendrickson, he says it this way. How could it ever be possible for anyone to deposit in writing the full significance of all that Jesus did, enumerating the facts one by one, bringing out the significance of each word and deed in which his love was so gloriously displayed? How are you going to do that? Hey, there's your one. Take that one. Let's sit back for a moment and let's start writing everything that needs to be written about the love of God manifest in the person of Christ. You want to try that one out? Here's a guy. Long time, not too long ago, 1917. His name is Frederick Lehman. Frederick Lehman was trying to write something down about the love of God. So he writes this song. It has two stanzas. He gets it all wrote out. He's like, this isn't going to work, because in his era, kind of like sermons today, you've got to have three points. To have a song in 1917, you've got to have three stanzas. Well, he only had two. So he's sitting at home, and he's pondering, what is the third stanza going to be? And as he's pondering, he remembers a sermon. And the sermon priest, whoever the preacher was, said this line in the sermon, and it comes back to him, and this line was supposedly written on the wall of an insane asylum by an unknown person. Some unknown person in an insane asylum writes this line down on the wall. But now we know, that line may be true and it may be on the insane asylum, but we know where the line originally comes from. It comes from the 11th century Jewish poet in Germany named Mir Ben Isaac Nahorai. And so that line that he wrote gets put to be the third stanza. So you take your hymn book, you turn to 111, we'll sing along with Tony and pay special attention to stanza number three. The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell. The guilty pair bowed down with care. God gave his son to win. his erring child, he reconciled and pardoned from his sin. O love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong! It shall forevermore endure the saints' and angels' song. When years of time shall pass away And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall When men who hear refuse to pray On rocks and hills and mountains call God's love so sure shall still endure, old measureless and strong, redeeming grace to Adam's race, the saints' and angels' song. O love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong! It shall forevermore endure the saints' and angels' song. Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made? Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade? To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. O love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong! It shall forevermore endure the saints' and angels' song. I don't know how to capture it any better. Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made? Every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade. To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky." That, just on the subject of the love of God, manifest in the person of Christ. There's a lot of other categories. We just talked about one. What a great sentiment that is put there. You want to switch to another subject, let's do this. Let's write down the prayers that Christ prayed. Matthew Henry says that it would take volumes to record the prayers of Jesus. for on multiple occasions he spent the entire night in prayer and without vain, meaningless repetition." How are we going to write all of this down? How much has been written upon what is famously called the Lord's Prayer, our Father which art in heaven? Or what about John 17 and the high priestly prayer? I've got volumes of books just upon that one chapter. Pastor, what are you trying to tell us? I'm trying to tell you there's more to Christ than you first imagine. You have not figured him out. You have not mastered him. You've not got to the end of all things. Whatever you know about Christ is just a little blip. There's so much more. He is infinite in every way. This morning you say, I'm plateaued, I'm bored, I'm just going through the motions. Repent! and put your faith in Christ. Look to Him and shrink from this well that you would have rivers of living water flowing out of you. There's so much more. Don't settle for status quo. Dig for Christ. He's worth it. Many, many other things indeed. God has seen to it that what is written is enough. You lack not one necessary thing in regards for your soul and for all of eternity. Many other words and works could never be exhausted should impress upon you the glorious thought that for all of eternity there will not be enough time to understand all that there is with Christ. He is beyond your mental capacity. He's beyond your intellectual ability. He is beyond your researching tenacity. And there is no doubt that there is not a person in all of creation that compares with the Lord Jesus Christ. You take the greatest minds that have ever lived, the greatest theologians that have ever written, and they have never exhausted this subject. That's why it irks me in the religious world that everybody gets so worked up about all these issues and about all these ministries. Could we not get worked up about Christ? Can we not make much to do about Christ? All these other things have importance, but nothing surpasses Christ. May we spend our entire lives in Him. And then lastly, many other things He did were every one of them written. But I suppose the world itself couldn't contain the books that would be written. It is very magnanimous, large, beyond our capacity for sure, and as I said, John now closes with a word about Christ rather than a word about himself. D.A. Carson said it this way, he must close by saying his own work is only a minute part of all the honors due to the Son. John's like, I just did a little part, but all the honor goes to Him. That's Christianity, preaching, teaching, serving, following, everything for His honor, for His honor, for His honor. We should heed what has been written. It's not written for your entertainment. God didn't write this book to take up space because He needed 66 books to make a whole canon. He didn't do it that way. He wrote it down, where we had heed the instructions that are given that our lives would be conformed to the image of Christ. Now, I know it's a lengthy quote, but I just can't say it any better, so I quote once again from Calvin. He says this, the apostles, they had their duty to write. It's their duty. Now, this is what Calvin says. It is our duty. to depend wholly on their testimony. to depend wholly on their testimony, and to desire nothing more than what they have handed down to us, and especially because their pens were guided by the sure providence of God, that they might not oppress us by an unlimited mass of narratives And yet, in making a selection, might make known to us all that God knew to be necessary for us, who alone is wise and the only fountain of wisdom, to whom be praise and glory forever. Amen. These mindless books that the corrupt organization LifeWay sells, you know, check your brain at the door, get a pen in your hand, wait for God to speak to you. All this goofy nonsense that these women are writing in these books and misguiding women all over the world. Look, you want to hear God speak? Justin Peter says, here's a good way to hear God speak. Read your Bible. That's the only way you're going to hear Him speak. God has spoken. God has written it down. You want to hear an audible voice from God? Read your Bible out loud. This is the way we hear from God. Isn't that transcendental meditation, sit around a room and sing Kumbaya until I get a goose bump on my arm and write something down that's supposed to be good? No, I need truth. We know truth. We know truth. John's written it down for us. Heed, listen to the word of God and let yourself be humble in submitting to what it says. So heavenly thoughts are here about Christ. I must quote one quote from A.W. Pink. Heavenly, like the inconceivable immensity of the heavens. Think, inconceivable immensities of the heavens. Ever increasing as the power of vision is lengthened. Think. No binoculars, no telescope, and you look at the heavens and they're massive. Everything you get to draw them closer just makes them bigger. You find out there's more, and then there's more, and then there's more. We go on to find the farther we go, only the more does the thought of infinity rise upon us. But this infinity is filled with an infinite presence. in every leaf blade, in every atom, yet transcending all his works. And to us, there's but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him. And there's only one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we are by Him." Oh, what a heavenly thought. hearty is it not a hearty statement the book ends just like galatians ended last sunday night and we all said together amen that's the way the book ends amen it's not recorded there but it's the way i'm ending it amen concludes with Amen, setting his seal and letting us set ours. The Amen of satisfaction in what is written and is able to make us wise to salvation. Amen, let it be so. Well, in closing out this great gospel book, Your unwillingness to believe Christ is not for a lack of truth. It's not that. It's not a lack of truth. We spent five and a half years working through this book, and if you have not grown in your love of Christ, it's a tragedy. Five and a half years of setting Christ before you. If you don't love him more now than you did five and a half years ago, Your time has just been wasted. I can tell you this, my time has not been wasted. If your love for Christ has not increased, you at least ought to ask yourself why. Why do you not love Him more now than you did five years ago? Well, He's been set before you in so many ways. He is the Word. He is the Creator. He's our salvation. He is the Incarnation, truly man and truly God. He makes regeneration possible. He makes justification permissible. Glory, glory. He imputes His righteousness to those who believe. For the last word, let us hear it again. And we'll back up to John 20 to hear it again. Now Jesus did many other things, many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these here are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And don't miss the last part, and that by believing, And that by believing you may have life. Some of you in here are not experiencing life. because you can't live without Christ. So in order to live and to experience life to the full the way God intended, you must believe Christ. So I implore you this day to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ.