Father, as we prepare our hearts to come to your Word today, we ask that you would bless the preaching of your Word, and we ask that you would use it to strengthen us where we need to be strengthened, to weaken us where we need to be weakened, to comfort us in our afflictions, and to afflict us if we should become so comfortable that we take these things for granted. But we pray that Christ would be glorified. We pray that your people would be edified. And we pray that should any who do not know Christ hear this, that they would hear Christ himself calling them by name into your light. Use this time to feed us, to nourish us with your word, to strengthen us, but above all to glorify Christ. In His name we pray, Amen. If you have your Bibles with you, please turn to John chapter 20. We're going to be looking at John chapter 20 verses 30 and 31 today. After today we're going to have, I believe, three sermons left in John. And our next study, in case you didn't know, our next study is going to be in 1st and 2nd Samuel. starting with 1st Samuel chapter 1 verse 1. So that'll be in about a month, but today we're going to be looking at John chapter 20 verses 30 and 31. The book of John, really, if you think about it, it's kind of a biography in a sense. It's a historical account, but it's also a biography about Jesus. People love to read biographies. Back in the day, when bookstores were all bricks and mortar, it was not uncommon to walk by a bookstore and see pictures of well-known people, political leaders, celebrities, whose faces were gracing the cover of their latest book written about that person. I think biographies are popular because we want to know more about people who seem so great to us, people who have done great things, accomplished great things. Maybe you want to learn what it takes to be a famous scientist. So you read Einstein's biography. Or maybe you want to learn what it takes to be the next Steve Jobs. So you pick up his biography. One synopsis of his biography. It says that it divulges the details of Jobs' little-known childhood and tracks his fateful path from garage engineer to leader of one of the largest tech companies in the world, not to mention his formative role in other legendary companies like Pixar. and indeed with the Silicon Valley ecosystem as a whole. And you're thinking to yourself, wow, I could become just like Steve Jobs. What do I have to do? And you read his biography and you realize, oh yeah, success is never really so simple, is it? When I was in 7th or 8th grade, I remember reading the Diary of Anne Frank. Most of you guys have probably read the Diary of Anne Frank. It has sold tens and tens of millions of copies. It's probably been read by, I would guess, hundreds of millions of people. And the purpose for reading it, at least in my case, in the class that I took it in, it was in a history class. And it was to give us a particular understanding, a specific perspective of the awful atrocities that had been committed by Nazi Germany against people of Jewish descent. And that biography has been in publication now for over half a century, and it's still ranked in the top 20 in both women's biographies and World War II history on Amazon, which is really phenomenal for a book that's been around that long. But one of the things that makes her biography, Anne Frank's story, so compelling is that she was an actual eyewitness of all of those terrible atrocities and a victim of all these atrocities that were committed by Nazi Germany. It's one thing to read about someone and their experiences from someone who didn't even know that person personally, so it's not an autobiography, but just a biography. But it's quite another to read the testimony of someone who was actually there, and who actually knew the person that's being written about. And that's one of the things that we should love and appreciate about the Gospel of John. One of the things that makes the Gospel of John so compelling and so widely loved. It's often the first book that people are encouraged to read, even before they become a Christian. But the thing that makes it so compelling and so widely loved is that it was written not only by an eyewitness of the things that he attests to and records for us, but he was clearly among Jesus' closest companions among the disciples. It was basically John, Peter, and James as Jesus' kind of inner circle. Matthew was there too, of course. He was an eyewitness. There's good reason to believe that Mark was also an actual eyewitness of Jesus' ministry. Luke went around and interviewed eyewitnesses, multiple eyewitnesses, but none of those people got as close to Jesus as John did. And what makes his testimony even more compelling, even more interesting, is the fact that he leaves his name out of the story completely. And not only did he leave his name out, but he even omitted events and instances in which only he and a couple of other disciples were privileged to be there as witnesses, such as the Mount of Transfiguration. In fact, everything in his testimony is written in such a way that one person and one person only is ever focused on. And that's Jesus. There's no focus on John whatsoever. We started this study of John's gospel, if you can believe it, we started this study back in 2018. Today we come to the verses that are effectively the conclusion. of this book, the conclusion of John's eyewitness testimony. Yes, there is still one more chapter to go, but chapter 21, as we'll see, is really more of a postscript or an epilogue. But the conclusion of his testimony is here in the passage that we come to today in chapter 20 verses 30 and 31, where he tells us why he wrote this book. In fact, these are verses that I have touched on. I touched on this in the very first lesson, lesson one. We're in lesson 152 today, by the way. But these are verses that I've probably touched on dozens of times throughout our study of John. And since I have mentioned these verses or touched on these verses so often, I was actually tempted to just kind of breeze past them by, you know, including them as the conclusion of our previous lesson. But as I thought about it, and as I prayed about it, I kind of got to the point where I felt like doing that really wouldn't have done justice to how important these two verses are. The point of our passage today is that because Jesus has made it abundantly clear that He is God in human flesh, You have no excuse but to believe on Him and to trust Him alone for your salvation. Let me say that again. Because Jesus made it abundantly clear that He truly is God in human flesh, you have no excuse but to believe on Him and to trust in Him with your salvation. You and I have to understand that John didn't write this book so that we would simply have a handful of new information about Jesus. He wasn't just writing it to say, oh, you know, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you know, they left out some really cool stories. Let me fill you on these neat stories. This book was not written to merely add information to your intellect. See, if John had just wanted to give a historical account of Jesus, he could have told us about anything. He could have told us about Jesus' childhood, his upbringing, the things that he enjoyed. He could have told us what happened to Joseph, his earthly father. He could have told us about Jesus' happy times in his young adult life, and so on and so forth. He could have told us about All kinds of things. But John starts out this passage by letting us know that he was not trying to record everything that Jesus ever did. Let's look at what he says. Verses 30 and 31. He says, Therefore, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but These have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name." Implicit in that statement is that if you do not believe in Him, you do not have life in His name. And friends, that's a dangerous place to be. And so John wrote this book. John isn't trying to give us a comprehensive history or record of Jesus' time on earth. He's not even trying to record a comprehensive history of everything that Jesus did with the disciples. He immediately lets us know, Jesus did all these other things with the disciples that I haven't recorded. As we'll see at the end of the next chapter, John will add to this the fact that, and he says in chapter 21, verse 25, there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written. What does that mean? It means that Jesus did so many amazing things that if you were to try and record all of them, number one, you couldn't. You couldn't do it if you had 500 lives. Jesus did so many amazing things. He just wants us to know that. In fact, if we review John's book carefully, we'll see that there weren't really all that many things that he recorded for us. He recorded some of Jesus' signs and some of Jesus' wonders. He recorded some of the things that Jesus said. It's as if he's telling us though, hey, you know, I haven't told you everything there is to know here about Jesus, but I've told you enough. What I've told you is sufficient for you to recognize who Jesus is, and I've told you enough that you have no excuse for not completely casting your faith upon Him, surrendering all of yourself to Christ in saving faith. That's basically what he's saying here. But notice very carefully what John says. He says, many other signs Jesus also performed. And the key word there is recorded, is that John recorded. He says they were signs. Now a sign is something that contains information. In the ultimate sense, a sign exists not to draw attention to itself, but to something else, to give the viewer, the reader, information upon which they should act. Whether that's a stop sign, or whether that's a McDonald's sign on the side of the road that tells you, take the next exit for food. A sign is what gives you the information and or directs your attention to something else. Now John has told us about seven miracles. He's recorded seven miracles or signs, to use his word, that revealed Jesus to be the Christ, John says in verse 31. Now keep in mind that the word Christ is simply the Greek word for Messiah or the Anointed One. That is to say that the signs that John recorded were each pointing to that fact. All the miracles that Jesus recorded, that Jesus performed, that John recorded for us are pointing to the fact that Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus is God in human flesh. So what are these seven signs that John recorded? First one, chapter 2, we saw Jesus turn water into wine at the wedding in Cana. In chapter 4, verses 46 to 54, we saw Jesus heal the royal officer's son without even going to visit him. Third, in chapter 5, we saw Jesus heal the paralytic who was by the pool of Bethesda. In chapter 6, we saw Jesus feed 5,000 families. And fifth, Jesus walked on water also, same chapter, chapter 6. Sixth, in chapter 9, He gave sight to the man who was born blind. and seventh, and finally we saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead in chapter 11. Now you might say, wait a minute, what about the resurrection? Well the resurrection is indeed the sign of signs, right? Many commentators argue that the resurrection should count as a sign, and maybe it should. But the resurrection was kind of distinct from the other miracles in that all those seven miracles were performed very publicly, both for the disciples and for anyone in the public to see. Whereas the resurrection, only believers, only those who believed in Jesus saw Jesus after the resurrection. But all of these things point us to one true central reality, which is, in fact, the most important thing in the world for a person to understand. And not only to understand intellectually, but to believe. And not only to believe, but to believe in such a way that you act on it. And that is that salvation is only found by believing in Jesus. There is no other way. Those who do not believe in Jesus do not have this life that He offers. This life that's found in Him. And so what John has recorded for us is sufficient to call every single person who reads this book to forsake any attempt of being reconciled to God in any other way, whether that's through works or whatever, but to place our faith entirely and exclusively on Jesus Christ. John's purpose in writing this book was so that we would see these miracles, see these signs, see that these signs point us to this truth, to this reality, and that by seeing and understanding what these signs are directing us to, we would echo the confession of Thomas, who said, my Lord and my God. John's hope is that we would join him in that profession. See friends, we aren't supposed to just be drawn to the miracles themselves. And there's so much of Christendom today that just focuses on the miracles. They don't see them as signs, they just see them as neat things to behold. But they're signs, they're pointing us to something. The miracles aren't an end in and of themselves. Each one of them has some kind of spiritual lesson and spiritual application. They're all pointing us to something else and someone else. They're calling us to abandon every effort that we might make to try to save ourselves or to work our way to God or to in any way earn our salvation and to see that salvation is found not by doing this or that or this or that like every other religion in the world. No, the thing that makes Christianity different is we don't say you have to do this and that and this and that. No, we say it's already done. And that Jesus did it all. It's simply by believing that Jesus did it all that a person is saved. believing that He is who He says He is, believing that He came to redeem us, that His blood was sufficient for our atonement and our reconciliation with God. This is why it's so, so incredibly dangerous and terrible when some people see the signs that Jesus performed. And some people even go so far to think, oh, if Jesus did this because the Spirit was dwelling in Him, then I should be able to do the same thing because the Bible says that the Holy Spirit's dwelling in me. And so I should be able to do exactly what Jesus does. And so they see themselves in the text rather than seeing what the miracles are pointing to. When we understand that the miracles were only signs that were meant to point to Jesus, we understand that the only person who sees the miracles and thinks to myself, oh, you know, hey, I can do that, is someone who don't stands and misreads the signs. And the danger is that you don't see it and you don't understand it because you don't have ears and eyes to see and understand. The signs are not about you. They are not pointing to you. They're not telling you anything about yourself other than the fact that you need to believe in Jesus. They point to Jesus and they only point to Jesus. People who think that the miracles point to themselves are really no different than Simon the Magician in Acts chapter 8, who wanted the power for himself for his own selfish reasons. Jesus Christ, friends, is the one and only object of saving faith. And make no mistake about it. Don't deceive yourself. If you are not trusting in Christ for your salvation, it's not that you're trusting in nothing. You are trusting in something else. In which case, something else, whatever that may be, that something else is the object of your faith, and it has no power to save you. But Jesus is the only object of faith that can and does actually save. See, if John had recorded maybe only one miracle, We might have thought that Jesus, at least theoretically, could have been the equivalent of Pharaoh's magicians who made it look like they were working miracles, but by trickery and sleight of hand. But when you consider these signs, how publicly they were done, how frequently they were done, how spontaneously they were done, There's only one conclusion. There's no way to explain them. There's no way to account for them, other than by concluding that Jesus is exactly who He claims to be, that He is indeed Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate. Just like He said, just like He claimed over and over again through John's narrative, and just like Thomas just recognized in the text. when he professed Christ to be his Lord and his God." Think about it. How do we explain Jesus going to Lazarus' tomb, standing before the tomb of Lazarus, when Lazarus had been dead for four days, and calling him out by name, and for him to actually then emerge from the grave before many eyewitnesses, all of whom knew that he had died, and all of whom had been gathered there to grieve his death. I mean, with all of our technology and advancements that we have today, we can't bring someone back from death after they've been dead for one hour, sometimes even one second. If the whole body shuts down, it's just gone. There's nothing that we can do. But four days? That's impossible. We all instinctively know that only God is capable of doing something like that. And that's the only explanation that fits with the miracle, that Jesus is truly God incarnate. No other explanation will suffice for how he brought someone who was dead for four days back to life. This and the other six signs were all given to us for the same reason. So that you, personally, so that you would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, God in living flesh. Think about what happened in Exodus chapter 4. That's of course right after Exodus chapter 3, duh, right? Where Moses encountered God in the burning bush and was given God's name. But in chapter 4, Moses He's been given this charge of bringing the good news back to the Jewish people, back to the Hebrew people, back in Egypt. That good news was that God himself was about to deliver them from slavery to the Egyptians. And what we read in the first nine verses of Exodus chapter four is the record of the conversation that took place between God and Moses, where Moses raised some objections with God, some concerns that he had about being sent back to the people with this good news of deliverance. See, Moses' concern was that he'd go to the people with the good news of their deliverance and they'd say, come on. Yeah, right, good one, Moses. That's what they called him, I'm sure. And Moses was thinking to himself, why in the world would they not say that? Why in the world would they not think that I am just absolutely bonkers? Why should they believe me if I go to them with this news? And in response, God grants Moses the temporary ability to do signs, miracles. And that's even what God called them. He called them signs. He said to Moses in verse eight, if they will not believe you or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe the witness of the last sign. Signs of what? What were those signs pointing to? To God's deliverance, to God's promise of deliverance. They were pointing to the farrelding. And the same is true of the signs that John has recorded for us. The purpose of these signs is to support the claims that Jesus made about His identity as the Son of God who was sent into the world by the Father out of love so that every single person in all of history who believes in Him would not perish but would have this free gift of eternal life in Him. Friends, if you are hesitant, if you are apprehensive to believe savingly on Jesus, what more could you possibly need than these seven signs to persuade you fully? And don't say that you would need to see a miracle with your own eyes. That myth has been so thoroughly debunked in John's testimony. He's clearly shown us that people won't believe even if they see the most spectacular miracle in the world. Jesus fed 5,000 men and their families back in chapter six. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 people, with two fish and five small barley loaves, and they had leftovers, and all these people saw that that's what Jesus was distributing. And of those 25,000 people who saw this great miracle, how many of them savingly believed in Jesus when all was said and done? zilch. Not a single one of them. Instead they were focused on the miracle itself. And so they showed up the next day expecting Jesus to feed them again instead of following him because they savingly believed upon him. He had come to give them something better than fish and bread. He came to give himself. He came to give the free gift of eternal life to all who believe on Him. But they weren't interested in that. They were no better than Esau who traded his inheritance for a bowl of bean soup. They saw this sign of Jesus feeding the masses. was so little, and they saw it as a ticket for free food, rather than seeing Jesus as the one who had the authority to forgive them of all their sins. The fact is, friends, you don't need to see another miracle in order to believe. What John has recorded in his book is sufficient for you to believe. The signs that John has recorded have all pointed to one destination, and another sign isn't going to give you any additional information that you can't have already gathered from the seven signs that he's recorded, not to mention the resurrection. Think about it this way, if you've ever driven long distances before, you know, I've driven all the way across the country, you know, a couple times, but you know that when you see a sign that says next gas 80 miles, what's the first thing you do? You look down and check the tank. You make sure that you've got enough gas to get 80 miles. Now let's say that you don't have that much gas. Maybe you have a quarter of a tank, but you know that your car can make it 80 miles on a quarter of a tank, because you drive the latest and greatest eco-friendly car that's on the market. You drive by that sign that says next gas 80 miles. You think to yourself, OK, it's going to be cutting it close. But this car can and will make it another 80 miles with what I've got. And so in another 20 miles, you see another sign that says next gas 60 miles. Another 20 miles, you see another sign that says next gas 40 miles, 30 miles, 20 miles, 2 miles. Finally, a sign that says exit here for gas. And let's say that you just breeze right on through, you just blow right through that town, and you end up running out of gas 10 miles past the gas station back in that little town. It wasn't that you needed more signs. It was that you didn't heed the signs that were there, and now you're left with the consequences. And so it is for anyone who reads John's gospel message. The signs have been given to you, and now it is your duty, it is your responsibility, it is your obligation to act on them by believing in Christ savingly, trusting in Him alone for your salvation. Not trusting in Him partly, not one foot on, one foot off, but trusting in Him alone. Trusting in Him entirely. And the consequence for refusing to heed the signs, the consequence for refusing to believe is that you do not have eternal life. Because there's no other means, no other source of eternal life that can be found anywhere. you could search 10 billion galaxies, you could search 10 billion times 10 billion galaxies, and you would still not find one other drop of eternal life anywhere. It's found in Christ alone. And that's the conclusion that John has been directing you personally toward for 20 chapters now. He's been encouraging us to believe in Jesus all along. I don't know if you've noticed, but consider the flow of John's narrative and how he developed the theme of believing and how he nudged us to believe. Think about chapter one. John gave us an elaborate prologue about Jesus, the Word, who in the beginning was with God and who was God. He told us of Him in John chapter 1 verse 3, all things came into being through Him and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. Who can that be said of? Nobody but God. Nobody but God. By the end of chapter 1 we saw John the Baptist clearly identify Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world in verse 29. Should that not have caused every single one of us to think long and hard about our need for an unblemished lamb to take away our sin? John the Baptist would then say in verse 34, I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God. You can't even get out of chapter 1 without that testimony. Chapter one concludes with John telling us of how Andrew went and told Simon Peter, we've found the Messiah. And then Jesus calls Philip and Philip goes and tells Nathanael, we've found him of whom Moses mows in the law and also the prophets wrote. And Nathanael at first is a little bit skeptical. Does anything good come out of Nazareth, right? But after Jesus puts his doubts to rest, Nathanael ends up declaring of Jesus before the chapter concludes, you are the son of God. Chapter 2, we saw Jesus turn water into wine at the wedding in Cana, and the pinnacle of the story is reached in verse 11, where John tells us that this beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him. In chapter 3, we were introduced to Nicodemus, and while It wasn't at least immediately made clear that Nicodemus believed. Jesus, in conversing with Nicodemus, said of himself that he is the Son of God and that believing in him is the means given by God for a person to receive eternal life rather than perishing. In chapter 4, we're introduced to the Samaritan woman at the well, who was the exact opposite of Nicodemus. He was this highly esteemed rabbi. She was a social outcast. He was a morally upright and religious Jew. And she was a very immoral person from a despised ethnic group. He was a man. She was a woman. They were radically different. They were opposite ends of the spectrum. But Jesus engaged in conversation with her as freely as he had with Nicodemus, which was very much taboo among the Jews, by the way. And he ends up leading her to saving faith in no time. So great was her faith. that she immediately ran into town and started telling people to go and to meet this Jesus for themselves. And by the end of the chapter, we read that they say to her, "'It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.'" Chapter 4 then ends with Jesus healing the noble man's son, all without even going to personally visit his son. And what was the noble man's response to this incredible sign? John tells us, "...and he himself believed, and his whole household." In chapter 5, we saw Jesus heal the paralytic man at the pool of Bethesda, but He did so on the Sabbath. And so the Jewish leaders end up interrogating Him, and Jesus ends up explaining to them that He has the authority to give eternal life to whoever He wishes. He says to them in verse 21 of chapter 5, For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom He wishes. John told us that he said to them, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life. Who? the one who hears his word and believes. Do you see how all these are encouraging us to believe? They're nudging us to believe. Chapter six, Jesus feeds the 5,000 men and their families somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 people. Many followed him for a short time for the sake of personal benefit, but by the end of the chapter, Jesus is left with only his 12 disciples. And so Jesus turns to them and asks them if they were gonna leave him as well, and this is where Peter made his famous profession of faith in Christ. He says to Jesus, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God. Chapter 7, John told us that at the Feast of Tabernacles, many of the crowd believed in Him. And they were saying when the Christ comes, or when the Messiah comes, He will not perform more signs than those which this man has, will he? That's in verse 31. This was the setting in which Jesus openly proclaimed, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. That's in verses 37 and 38. Chapter 8, Jesus continues an argument with the religious leaders that started in chapter 7, where they tried to have Jesus seized or stopped. And He declared in verse 12, I am the light of the world. He who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life. The result that we see in verse 30 is that as he spoke these things, many came to believe in him. Chapter 9, we are introduced to a man who was born blind. Jesus restores his sight, which resulted in the man's excommunication from the Jewish community. Even the man's parents wouldn't stand by his side. And so as the Jewish leaders were interrogating him, He's talking about Jesus. First, he refers to Jesus as a man. Then he refers to Him as a prophet. And then he reports that Jesus was from God. He's right in all these instances. But the chapter then ends with Jesus revealing Himself to be the Messiah to this man, to be the Son of God to the man. And what the chapter ends with is the man falling at Jesus' feet and worshiping Jesus as Lord. Verse 38, Chapter 10, Jesus taught about himself. He was likening himself in that chapter to a shepherd, saying, I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And then in verse 28, he would declare, I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. And when you read and consider these things, should that not cause you to think to yourself, oh, how badly I need a shepherd who will love me like that. Oh, how desperately I need a shepherd who will save me, who will lay down his life for me, who will give me abundant life, who will be the shepherd to me that we see in Psalm 23. Yeah, it should have made us think about those things. In chapter 11, we see Jesus bring Lazarus back to life after being dead for four days. And the result of this sign, which was the final sign before Jesus' death and resurrection, was that, verse 45, many of the Jews who came to Mary, who was grieving the death of her brother, many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what he had done, believed in Him. Chapter 12, Jesus enters into Jerusalem to chance of Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And we're told that the Jewish leaders were planning on putting Lazarus to death at that point. It says in verse 11, because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus. Do you see this theme? Do you see what happens when people see these signs and interpret them correctly? From the beginning of John's gospel to the end, John has one purpose, and it signs right in front of you, so that you would believe that Jesus is the Christ, that you would believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name. What does that mean? What does it mean to have life in his name? Maybe your answer is, well, it means to receive salvation or to be saved. And yeah, that's true. That's certainly part of it. It's at least where it begins. But let us not also forget what Jesus said in chapter 17, verse 3, in his high priestly prayer, where he prayed to the Father saying, This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. See, the life that Jesus offers as a free gift, the life that's eternal, the life that's found in Christ. It's not only marked by its duration, the fact that the moment you believe it starts, but it's also marked by the fact that it's a new kind of life that we immediately possess upon believing in Jesus. Believing in Him is certainly a theological matter, yes, but it's not only a theological matter, it's also a matter that is deeply, deeply relational. according to what Jesus says here. It's the means by which a person not only knows about God, but begins to know God. Notice that Jesus didn't say this is eternal life, that they may know about you. That's not what he says. That's not relational. That's intellectual, right? That's just putting information in our mind, right? To know something about God. Well, the natural man knows, the unregenerate man knows things about God. His majesty and his power are clearly revealed in nature, and yet what does man do with that? Apart from God's grace, he will suppress that truth in unrighteousness. That is what our nature demands. Well, it's good to know about God. That is good. It is good to know about God. We have to remember that every person, every single person who ends up spending eternity in hell will have known things about God. And yet, they will not have actually known Him. And there is a huge difference between those two things. It is not enough to just know about God. You must know Him. And the way to know Him is in Christ. See, the life that Christ brings is a life that begins here and now. It begins wherever you are, whenever you believe. But the more you come to know Him, the more you come to love Him, not just to know about Him, but to walk with Him. The more you do that, the more you come to love Him, and the more we come to love Him, the more gladly we walk in obedience to Him. Not because we're motivated by fear. That's the unregenerate man. The unregenerate man knows that his day of judgment is coming, and so his reaction to God, everything that he does in reaction to God, is motivated by fear and hatred. But no, we're not motivated by fear and we're certainly not motivated by hatred. We are relationally motivated to walk in obedience to God by love. By love. Something else happens when we come to know God. And it's actually a theme in this book. It's something that we saw time and time again throughout John's testimony. That other thing that happens when you come to know God, not just know about Him, but to know God, is that you don't want to keep that relationship to yourself. You want other people to know. You understand that they must know or they will perish in their sins. You want the people that you know. You want the people that you love to experience this great and free gift of not just knowing about God, anybody can do that, but actually knowing God. And that, friends, is exactly why John has written this book. That's exactly why we have gone through this study for the last almost five years. So that you would believe and would thereby enter into a relationship with God that is different from the relationship to Him that you were born in. Some people say that Christianity is just having a relationship with God. Listen, every person on the face of the planet has a relationship with God. But for the unregenerate man, it's the relationship that a convicted criminal has to a judge who's about to sentence them. But in Christ, it's different. You're declared innocent because of Christ's obedience, because of His perfect righteousness being transferred to you. In Christ, the relationship that we enter into with God isn't the relationship between a judge and a criminal, it's the relationship between a loving and compassionate and gracious father and his adopted child. Friends, your life is also meant to be something of a sign to those who are around you on a daily basis, to your spouses, to your children, to your family, to your friends, to your coworkers, even people maybe you encounter in just common places. Have you noticed that throughout John's gospel, how often we've seen of people telling others about Jesus. From Philip in chapter 1 telling Nathanael, to Mary Magdalene being sent to tell the disciples, to the disciples going to Thomas and telling him. Do you see how this theme has been everywhere? The woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well, what does she do? As soon as she believes, She doesn't want to hoard that relationship. She wants everyone to enter into this relationship with Christ. And so she goes and she tells people. And so John has been showing us all along, throughout his testimony, that those who truly believe in Jesus, those who truly believe the good news, want to share the good news. We have much to learn about that from John. when it comes to this. Consider the way that he's just drawn no attention to himself. That's what evangelism is supposed to look like. You draw no attention to yourself, but consider the way that he has lived out the words of John the Baptist, who said of Jesus in chapter 3, He must increase, but I must decrease. Every single one of us can say the same thing, yes? John the Apostle, the author of this text, has drawn no attention to himself. He hasn't even told us his name. Scholars had to figure it out. But the example that he sets for us, that the goal of our witness is to advance the glorious gospel of Christ and never to advance our own selves, never to build a bigger platform for ourselves. This is so antithetical to social media, by the way. No, our goal is to lift Him up, but never to exalt or lift up ourselves. Friends, we all know how dark the world around us is right now. And what this world needs, friends, is light. Is light. You must let your light shine. If you have believed on Jesus, you have light, and you must let it shine. And so I urge you to live a life that points to Jesus. And do not be ashamed, do not be afraid to tell people about their need for Jesus. If you have believed in Jesus, and if you have received this free gift of eternal life in Him, you know, you know of yourself that you were once a rebel. as far as God was concerned. But now that you are in Christ, you're no longer a rebel toward God, but you must rebel against the ways of the world. That means committing yourself to glorifying Jesus, to the exclusion of yourself. It means worshiping and yielding yourself to him and to no other. This world is so backwards these days. Think about it. This world is so upside down and backwards right now. It's not difficult to live in a way that is radically different from the ways of the world. What the world needs now is light and life. Because we are surrounded by people who are spiritually dead. Alive to the flesh, perhaps, but dead in their trespasses and sins before God. Recent studies showed, and this is awful, Americans have a biblical worldview. 4% of Americans have a biblical worldview right now. A way higher percentage of Americans than that go to church every week, by the way. You know what that means? It means you even need to be evangelizing most of your friends who go to church. Get yourself out of the way. Lay your ego down. Lift your Savior up. Your own testimony of faith. You have one. If you know Jesus, you have a testimony of faith. And your own testimony of faith is a powerful witness to your neighbor, and it both can and should point them to the truth of who Jesus is, what He's done, and what He freely offers for all who will believe in Him. Friends, the message that we preach is simply this, Christ and Him crucified. The message that we preach is that because Jesus made it abundantly clear that He truly is God in human flesh, you have no excuse but to believe on Him, trusting Him alone with your salvation. for those of you who have believed in Christ and have received this free gift of eternal life that John has told us about so many times throughout this book. I offer in closing Paul's words from Ephesians chapter 5 verses 6 to 8 where he says this, let no one deceive you with empty words. for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience therefore do not be partakers with them for you were formerly darkness but now you are light in the Lord walk as children of light and that dear friends is what those who have received and the free gift of salvation, the free gift of eternal life in Christ are called to do. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, we thank You for Your Word, for the way that it confronts us in our sin, so lovingly, so tenderly, so firmly, And yet it reminds us also of what you once did when you called us out of darkness and the way that you've changed our lives so that we no longer have any right to believe that we belong to ourselves. But we see that we belong to You, we belong to Jesus, who shed His blood that we may be washed clean of our sin, that we might be reconciled to You because of His merit, not any merit of our own. What a great thing that is to be confronted by and what a great thing that is to be reminded of. And so we thank You, Lord, for Your glorious, beautiful gospel that called wretched sinners like us out of the darkness that we loved so much. And into your marvelous light for the glory of Christ. Teach us, O Lord, to be lights that shine in the darkness. Whatever light we have is the light of Christ shining in us. And we pray that you would give us the wisdom and the desire to just get ourselves out of the way and point others to Christ. For His glory, in His name we pray. Amen.