I want to dig into that this morning, because it's no secret to anyone in this room that the truth is always under attack. We can all agree there, and the church must in every age, but especially in a post-modern age, in a relativistic age, and in a rationalized age, we must have an unwavering confidence in the Word of God. And anytime the Bible makes an internal claim about itself, We need to pause, and we need to listen, and we need to do the hard work of getting up underneath that and understanding what the Bible is telling us about itself. And we need to flesh out the implications of that, and the reward, I trust, will be well worth it. And so my hope this morning is that the Spirit would come and that He would strengthen our belief in the Scriptures. and that He would come, and that we would have the utmost confidence that every word in this book has been given by God, and that we can base our entire eternity upon the words of this book. That's my hope for us this morning. And I trust that the Spirit will show us that as we hear from Him. Because, I mean, think about it. What are all the things that Christians throughout the world place their confidence in, many of them not good things. Maybe it's an emotional experience, right? For many, maybe it's external evidence, or maybe they say, well, there's just no other way but the Christian way, and I've thought about all the other religions, and this one just seems like the best one. And many are just merely taking someone else's word for it. And many Christians throughout the world base their confidence in shaking foundations. And yet God is here in the scriptures giving us an unshakable foundation to rest our hope in. So let's jump right into this. John begins this conclusion by calling our attention to the signs that Jesus has performed in the presence of the disciples and that he has recorded. So verse 30, now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these, so these signs, are written so that you may believe." And so this is the first time that John has used the word sign since back in chapter 12. But we know from our study of the gospel of John, and this is consistent among all conservative scholars of the gospel of John, that John focuses his gospel on signs that Jesus did in the presence of the disciples, which prove the fact that Jesus really is the Messiah. And that by believing in him and in him alone, one can have eternal life. The first of these takes place back in chapter two, when Jesus turns the water into wine at the wedding at Cana. And John tells us in chapter two, verse 11, this, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and listen, listen to what it says, and manifested His glory, and the disciples believed in Him. Jesus's signs reveal His glory. They reveal His person, and that through seeing that by faith, we can have eternal life as we come to believe in Him. From chapter two through chapter 12, we have what we call the book of signs, where John records seven signs that Jesus performs in his public ministry that point to the fact that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. He is the Son of God. He is the incarnate word that John talked about back in John chapter one, who dwells, who has dwelt with the Father from all eternity, but yet he has come to us in the flesh. and has made His tabernacle with us. And if we are to have eternal life, we must believe in Him and receive Him. In chapter four, Jesus heals the official son. In chapter five, Jesus heals the lame men by the pool. In chapter six, He feeds the 5,000 and also walks on water. In chapter nine, He heals the blind man. And in chapter 11, He raises Lazarus from the dead, and just before raising him from the dead, Jesus prays to the Father in front of all these people, all these Jewish people, all the Pharisees, everybody who's come to the funeral, and he says this, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but listen, but I said this on account of the people standing around that they may believe that you sent me. So there is a consistent relationship in the gospel of John between Jesus's signs and belief. The signs are recorded and meant so that people would read them and receive them and believe in Jesus and have eternal life. Yet in chapter 12, where we get to the conclusion of Jesus's public ministry, John tells us in verse 37, though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him. Think about this for a moment. There were thousands of people who witnessed Jesus performing signs in public, and they all pointed to his deity. They all proved from the Old Testament that he was the Messiah that they were waiting on, that they were studying, that they were praying for, and yet they did not believe in Him. Now, these seven signs that John records are not the only miracles that Jesus did in public. We know that. We know from Matthew, Mark, and Luke that there were many other miracles that Jesus did. We have about 40 of Jesus's miracles recorded, and certainly Jesus said things and did things that we don't have recorded Scripture. And this is where skeptics will come in and they think that they see an avenue to attack the reliability of Scripture, especially the Gospel of John. And they'll say things like this, you know, why is the Gospel of John just so much different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke? You see, that right there just shows us that John is just some later deification of Jesus. It's not historical. It's not real. They just later on, they tried to really prop Jesus up as God. And they'll say, because there's just so much inconsistency between John and the other Gospels. And I think that's ridiculous because John clearly tells us here in this passage that there were more signs that Jesus did that he did not record. In verse 30, he tells us this. Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. So he's specifically telling us with that statement, I have chosen these signs. The ones I recorded, I've chosen them. I've written them down. There's more, but I've written these so that people would believe. John, under the inspiration of the Spirit, has a specific theological purpose. He has an intended audience. He has things in his minds. And so to try to force our modern, enlightened, rationalized way of storytelling and detail recollection onto an ancient document is what C.S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery. And most, if not all, of the perceived problems with the Scriptures are a result just of this. Modern skeptics forcing the Scriptures to play by their rules, their means, and pass their qualifications as if their enlightened standards are the authentic way to judge truth claims. But as soon as you let the Bible define its own terms, and you let the Bible define what it means by inerrancy, and what it means by truth, and what it means by consistency, and you let the Bible set the rules of the game for its own terms, you begin to see that these are not problems. They are just perceived, and they are not legitimate. And these seven signs lead to what many call the great sign, which we've been studying the last few weeks, the sign of Jesus's resurrection that we have in chapter 20. And this great sign of resurrection climaxes in the passage that we studied last week where Jesus appears to the disciples for the second time and he shows Thomas the doubter his wounds and Thomas comes to faith in Jesus and he makes that confession, my Lord and my God. That's the gospel of John in a nutshell. It's Jesus performing signs in public, pointing to his deity so that doubters, so that skeptics will believe in him and come to him and make a public profession about him. He is God and he is Lord. And that through believing in him, I have eternal life. That's the gospel of John. And so to understand this purpose statement, we need to understand the previous section of scripture, which we looked at last week. And what comes next in verse 29 is just simply amazing. After Thomas makes that confession, Jesus says to him, have you believed in me because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. It's amazing. So there is a blessedness, Jesus says, for those who have not seen the way the apostles saw. They have not seen with their eyes the marks on His hands and in His side and in His feet, but what they have done is they have received the testimony of those who did see by faith, and they have believed every word written in it, and they have received Jesus on the written testimony of His apostles, and Jesus says they're blessed. They are blessed because of their faith. This hearkens back to Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17, where Jesus says, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us. So brothers and sisters, we need to slow down and really consider what the Holy Spirit is communicating to us here. The view of Scripture that we get here is strikingly high. What's the conclusion of all this? Well, resting one's faith in Jesus on the basis of the words of the apostles is akin to having actually seen Jesus in the flesh and touched Him and handled Him. And there were many, listen, there were many who saw that and did not believe. And those who believe in Jesus on the account of the apostolic writings have the same union, and the same eternal joy, and the same hope, and the same treasure that the apostles themselves have. And Jesus Christ calls them blessed. I don't want us to move too quickly past this because we live in a day where to suggest that divine revelation is the highest form of knowing And the only infallible form of knowing is absolutely ludicrous. We live in that day. And not only that, but we all have our own struggles with unbelief, and we have hearts that at times resist wanting to bank everything upon the words of Scripture. And we say things like, if I could just have a little bit more assurance, if He would just give me a sign, if He would just show me a little bit more that all this stuff happened, then I could be sure. No, it's not true. We would not take that because to refuse to take the scriptures at their word is the ultimate form of unbelief. The emphasis in this text is on the fact that all this has been written for the purpose that people would receive what has been written and therefore believe in Jesus and therefore have eternal life. That's what this text is showing us. And when we put all this together, brothers and sisters, it is clear that it is the will of the triune God that all people who would believe in Jesus after the first century would believe it by receiving the words of the apostles by faith and trusting in that as if it is totally authoritative, totally real, totally true, more real than anything that you and I can see. That's his will, that's his plan. Just let that land on you for a moment. I know we assume that, but let that land on you for a moment that God's will for your belief is in a book that was written by his apostles 2,000 years ago. That's his plan. God has given us a book, and brothers and sisters, you need not have any doubt that the words in this book are not the words of God, because they are. They claim to be that. God says that they are, and Jesus says, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And just as Thomas should have believed the apostles' testimony who saw Jesus a week before, we are to believe the apostles' testimony about the Christ. That's how we receive Him. When you consider a passage like this, it is so clearly God's plan that Jesus Christ would reveal the Father and show us the Father, the God who no one has ever seen. Jesus Christ has made Him known through His person and through the written revelation about Him. And then the apostles would would take that revelation, and they would teach it, and they would preach it, and they would write about it. And the Holy Spirit would carry them along, and accompany them as they preached, and as they taught, and as they wrote, to make sure that they wrote the very words of God, even down to the grammar and to the syntax. It is the very mind of God, every word. so that people throughout the ages can believe with a full assurance that what has been written has for itself as author God. That's why these brothers are doing what they're doing next week. Because there are people who need to hear the words of this book. And if they believe in them, they will have eternal life. We can place our utmost confidence in the scriptures. This is what John Owen means when he argues that the faith of the believer is infallible because the source upon which their faith rests is infallible. He says this, we ought not to believe that it is only highly probable that the Scripture is God's Word, nor because we have seen or been persuaded by human reason or argument, which are fallible, we believe Scripture to be God's Word because God's truth and authority seem there. This is divine supernatural faith. Without divine supernatural faith, we do not truly believe at all. So it's not that our faith is infallible because it can't be strengthened. Of course it can be strengthened. But our faith is infallible because it's not resting in a fallible source, like a historical argument, or like empirical evidence. But it's resting in an infallible source where God says, this is My Word. And God cannot lie. Owen goes on to say, so we declare that God requires us to believe Scripture for no other reason but because it is His Word. Scripture is God's revelation to us and we believe it on His authority and because He is truthful. The basis of our faith is, thus says the Lord. Now, it is helpful to understand historical arguments. I'm into that. It is helpful to understand textual criticism and how we got the Scriptures. I'm thankful for the people who have done the hard work of studying that stuff out and understanding language. All that is extremely beneficial. It's a gift to the church. And we should study that stuff and we should know that. But ultimately, spirit-wrought faith in Jesus Christ comes only as we receive His Word as His Word from God. And we see here in this text that one of the means by which God has spoken to us is through inspiring the eyewitness accounts of the apostles. And they recorded infallibly what they saw and what they heard. And again, we are to receive what they recorded as the very words of God. And that's not just their Puritan or Reformed view of Scripture. That's Jesus' view of Scripture. Let me read for you Luke 24-25, where they're on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus appears to the two disciples, and He rebukes them, and He says to them, "'O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.'" So the prophets have spoken about the suffering and death and resurrection of Christ, and they all come to fulfillment in Jesus, and Jesus rebukes them for not believing written Scriptures that were written hundreds of years before. Why don't you believe the Scriptures? Why don't you believe the Word of God? How could this even be the case? Well, because Jesus' view of the Old Testament, which is the same Old Testament that we have, by the way, is that it is the Word of God and therefore we are to receive it and believe it and not doubt it and not question it and put our utmost confidence in it. And I know that that sounds absolutely ridiculous to so many people today, but here's the thing that people have to reckon with. And I would encourage you, if you find yourself in one of these conversations, this is the thing to put before people because it's inescapable. If Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, And He was. We have full confidence of that. There's no way that can be disproven historically. Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. And if that is true, then everything He said is true. And everything He believed is true. And so through the resurrection, God validated everything Jesus ever said or did or believed. And that's what people have to reckon with. So rest assured, brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, the ultimate judge has a higher view of scripture than anybody in this room. And so you can have a high view of scripture because Jesus has a high view of scripture and he is Lord and he will return to judge. And listen, when we consider even the historical reliability of the Old Testament, Jesus' authority has to be the final word on all these issues. There's always attacks on the historical reliability of the Old Testament. You'll have liberal scholars saying things like this, well, there's no Egyptian records of the Exodus, so it must not have happened. Must be just a fabricated story. Or they'll say, well, the kings in Persia don't line up perfectly with the history that we have, so the Bible clearly has been made up in all of these types of things. Or maybe a specific timeline doesn't add up perfectly with what we think happened in history, so the Bible clearly is false. And you hear this stuff, and it's taught in universities, and there are key historical issues like the historical Adam, the six-day literal creation of the universe, a universal flood, A historical person named Jonah being swallowed up by a fish and living for three days and three nights in its belly. All these things are under attack and even well-meaning Christians will come to passages like this and they'll say, you know what? That is just so unfathomable. It just can't mean that. It's got to mean something else. It's got to be figurative. It can't be literal. It just can't be so. But again, when we look at Jesus's view of the Old Testament, you see him saying things like this in Matthew 12, 40, for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So Jesus believes that Jonah was a historical person and that a fish actually swallowed him and that he lived in the belly of that fish for three days, and then that fish spit him up, and that everything in the book of Jonah is historically reliable. That's Jesus' view of the Old Testament. And we could walk through the Gospels and we could see Jesus doing this over and over and over again. And that gives me so much comfort. when I hear the sophisticated, sophisticated arguments of the skeptics. Because here's the thing, I will never be, I will never have omniscient knowledge, none of us will. We will never have omniscient knowledge of history. And many of us will never be able to enter into historical conversations at that level and be able to hold our own. And that is okay. And here's why, here's what we can do. We can make sure that our view of Scripture is the same as Jesus' view of Scripture. And as long as we have the view of the Bible that Jesus had of the Bible, we'll be right every time. We will be right every single time. And I want to just take a few minutes and talk about the nature of Scripture, especially the Gospel of John. You know, one thing that hangs up modern Christians is that we tend to want everything in propositional form. I think this is why we love systematic theology. One, because it's extremely helpful. When someone's done the hard work of digging out all the truth about a doctrine and giving it to us in a 15 or 20 page chapter, it's very helpful. But also because we just love propositional statements. We love definitions. And so if you go to a systematic theology and you want to know about the deity of Christ, you can go to the chapter about the deity of Christ, and it will give you a concise definition, and it will lay out all the passages that deal with that doctrine, and the author will give a conclusion, and you're blessed by that, and you walk away knowing about that doctrine. But here's the thing, the Bible itself does not give us many propositional statements. It actually very rarely does, and we today, in our rationalized, enlightened minds, We think in a way that we cannot bring down and expect the biblical authors to think in those ways because they didn't. We cannot forget that systematic theology or propositional theology is at least three steps removed from the pages of Scripture themselves. And so Pastor John Mark shared this diagram a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was very helpful. But when we want to do good theology, when we want to know what the Bible says and then live it out well, we have a system for doing that. And at the foundation of it all, you have the canon of Scripture, the books and the words themselves, and all the literary genres that this book gives us. And that is there. And then we have hermeneutics, which is where we have to determine what principles we will use to figure out what the canon is telling us. And then we have what we call exegesis, which is where we go to a passage and we apply those principles and we draw out from that passage what it means. And then we have what we call biblical theology, which is where we look at all of the scripture as a unified whole and we apply exegesis to the passages and we see what the whole Bible says about a certain thing. So we could look at, we did this a few weeks ago or a few months ago now with covenants. We went through all the covenants in scripture and we saw how the whole Bible dealt with covenant in order to show that covenant was the way by which God would redeem his people. That's biblical theology. And then after that, you get into systematic theology and then practical theology, which is applying the word of God to life. and biblical counseling and all of these things. But we like to simply skip straight to systematics and practical theology. Just tell me what the doctrine means or is, and tell me how to live. Tell me what it means, and then tell me what I need to do about it. And we talked about this in my city group this week, because of the last week's sermon on the deity of Christ. If you run into a Jehovah's Witness, and it's likely you will, And they say, hey, your Bible's good, my Bible's good, whatever Bible you wanna use, show me from the Bible. Don't give me a systematic theology definition. Show me from the Bible that Jesus is God. Could you do it? And we talked about that in our city group. The need to be able to get into the canon, to know what the texts say about these issues. He says this in verse 30 and 31, We are to believe because we believe what has been written. So how are the signs that John recorded, how are they given to us? Well, they're given to us in narratives. They're given to us in narrative form. So narratives were recorded so that people might believe. Because the performance of the signs show us the incarnate Word has come to the world. They testify about who He is, and it's given to us in narratives. And then the apostles go and they flesh that out in what? In epistles. And we have to be able to go into these things, to get into the narratives, into the epistles, and know God's will, know His revelation, know His Word. What's incredible about all of this is that Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit would come and accompany the apostles as they preached and taught and wrote Scripture. We saw this back in John 16, when Jesus says, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. Listen, when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth. For He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak. and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is Mine, therefore I said that He will take what is Mine and declare it to you." So Christ here is promising that the Holy Spirit will come after He leaves, and the Spirit will guide them into truth. all the things that Christ has taught them, and all the things that Christ lived out before them, and He will guide them to understand those things, to understand their implications, and to write it in Scripture, and to preach it, and to teach it. And even those like Mark, who are not apostles, but who followed the Peters and the Pauls, the Holy Spirit would guide them to record their words with accuracy, with divine accuracy. And we see the implications of the life of Christ and the teachings of Christ fleshed out in the epistles. And so again, we can't miss this on the nature of revelation, the explicit revelation we have of Jesus Christ. Think about this, the explicit revelation that we have of Jesus Christ comes through four gospels. that are narratives and then some epistles where the apostles flesh that out in epistles. And the church's task is to humbly depend on the spirit and go into these texts in the context of community and draw out what Paul calls sound doctrine, healthy doctrine, and to preserve it and to guard it and to hand it down to the next generation. That's why we have to keep preaching on the deity of Christ. We can't just move on from these things. We gotta know it, know what the Bible says so that we can teach it and hand it down. A lot of us think in evangelism in terms of propositional statements as well. You know, you think of our gospel catechism, which is very helpful, which we're gonna continue to do. What is God? Answer. Who are we? Answer. Who is Jesus? Answer. And again, it's very, very helpful to think that way but we need to see that the words of Scripture themselves which are intended to strengthen the faith of believers and to lead others into belief are largely recorded in narratives. And these signs that John recorded are in narrative form with Jesus then taking up long discourses to show and to prove with his teaching that that sign actually points to an eschatological reality about himself. I mean, think about this for a moment. John likely had multiple audiences in mind when he wrote his gospel. One of his intended audiences certainly would have been unbelieving Jews or Jews who were close to believing or who had believed but had not yet made the confession public like Thomas did, maybe because of remaining doubts or fear of persecution. And so you could imagine a believing Jew sitting down with a non-believing Jew both having an excellent understanding of the Old Testament, and the believing Jew walking the unbelieving Jew through the Gospel of John, showing him or her these signs prove that Jesus is our Messiah. It's clear. Believe it, brother. Believe it, sister. Don't swerve. Don't be afraid of the Jews. If you believe it, you will have life in His name. And we need today to have a robust understanding of the Old Testament. Number one, because the Old Testament is the Word of God and written for our instruction, but also so that we can take someone through the Gospel of John or through the New Testament and show them from the Old Testament that Jesus is the Messiah. And you may say, why? You know, it seems with the way the world is headed, with the progression of secular humanism, Nobody believes that the Old Testament is God's word, so why even bother with something like that? Don't we need to think of other arguments and other ways to get people to come to faith? And I would say, not so fast, because secular humanism is a failed project. It cannot last. It brings no fruit. It only brings destruction and dysfunction. And people, despite what the media tells you, people all over the world are seeing that, and they are turning to religions. As Pastor John Mark mentioned last week, in many states, Mormonism is the fastest growing religion. So people are flocking to cults and they're flocking to religions. And many of them are flocking to what are called Abrahamic religions, like Judaism or Islam. And in the days to come, we need to be able to sit down with these people and show them from the Old Testament that Jesus is the Messiah. and that only in Him will they have life in His name." The Gospel of John was also likely written to Greeks, the wise of this age, the philosophers. Yet John shows Jesus to be the logos, and the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God. John shows that Jesus is the truth, aletheia. He shows that Jesus is Sophia, wisdom. And there are many people today who, yes, they are blind. Yes, they are dead in their sins. Yes, they are darkened, but they have not totally lost their minds. And they are still holding on to the fact that there could be truth. There could be absolutes. And they'll claim that they're seeking it. And we need to be able to say, reject the worldly philosophies. Reject the modern skeptical ideas. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and life only makes sense through him. Think about a wedding. Go to a wedding, you celebrate the bride and the groom. How does that all make sense? Well, to most people, you just go and you celebrate the bride and the groom. But when we read the Gospel of John, going to a wedding and celebrating the bride and the groom and having wine and enjoying the fellowship of the wedding, it's pointing to an eschatological reality. That Jesus Christ came into the world and there will be a wedding feast. There will be fullness of joy in His presence. Perhaps you're here and you say, you know, I really struggle in evangelism. You know, it seems when I'm out and I have the opportunity, either I don't know what to say or I say too much, so I usually don't say anything and I'm just discouraged because I know I need to be sharing my faith and I'm not. I would encourage you, read the gospel of John with someone. Ask someone, ask a friend, ask a coworker, ask a mom at the park, hey, will you get together with me? for seven or eight weeks and let's just read the gospel of John. And when they get to these statements where Jesus says things like, I am the judge and I will raise everybody from the dead and judge them according to my law, what do you do with that? Or when Jesus says, if you don't believe that I am, you're dead in your sins, what do you do with that? And evangelism, is very effective as we put people in front of the very words of God. And as you do that, you're praying for the Spirit to work through His word to bring people to conversion. That's why the gospel of John was written. And it's clear also that John wrote his gospel for believers to strengthen their faith in Christ, to strengthen their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. And if there's ever a time that we need the gospel of John to strengthen our faith in Jesus as the Messiah. It's right now. And it will be every moment of our lives. And God has given us this glorious book to show us Jesus is who he says he is. And it gives us an eschatological hope of the life to come, culminating with the resurrection. So as we sort of bring the gospel of John to conclusion, again, there is another chapter that we will get into and we will preach through it. But again, in terms of the signs and all that John is recording, he's saying here, I've accomplished my purpose. I've recorded the signs, I've written them for you so that you would believe. Our hope and our prayer is that we would avail ourselves of the richness of this gospel. that we would read it often to ourselves privately, that we would read it with other believers and strengthen our faith in Jesus together, that we would read it in our homes, read it to our children and our grandchildren, and yes, that we would even read it with non-believers as we pray that God would lead them to saving belief. And God has given us this table as an ongoing assurance and an ongoing confidence that Jesus did come and He did die and He did shed His blood for us. And so I would encourage you, brothers and sisters, as we come to the table, to fix your gaze upon Jesus Christ the Messiah and come confidently knowing that through belief in Him and Him alone as revealed in Scripture, you have eternal life. Amen. And so if you are a visitor with us this morning, you've believed in Jesus, received Him by faith, and you've been baptized, we would welcome you to come to the table and take the supper with us. And if not, we would ask you to refrain, but there are some prayers that you can pray in your bulletin that you can pray and have a meaningful time here. I'm gonna pray for us, brothers and sisters again. Come confidently. Come confidently in Jesus. Let's pray. Father, we ask by the power of your Holy Spirit that you would strengthen the faith of every believer in this room, in Jesus Christ, in the Word of God. And we ask for any who have not believed that they would see the glory of Jesus Christ. and that they would bank everything on His claims and come to Him by faith and receive Him and receive eternal life. Help us, Lord, as we come to the table to rejoice in all that You have done. You have finished the work. And we give You praise. And we pray it in Jesus' name, Amen.