John 21:24-25 (The End of John)

The Shepherd's Church

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I remember the first time that I went out in the ocean so far that I couldn't see anything but water in all directions.

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It was 10 years old, and my grandpa decided to take me on a Gulf Stream fishing trip, which is 50 miles out in North Carolina.

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I don't know if that's standard everywhere, but we went out to the Gulf Stream. We went out to 50 miles out, and about after 10 miles,

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I couldn't see anything but water. And I remember straining as far as I could around the 10 -mile mark to see something other than water in all directions, and I remember being captivated by the immensity of it, thinking that I was in the midst of trillions of atoms of water, and I was small in comparison.

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Now, I thought about this also, how volumes could have been written about this particular scene, how there could have been multi -volume works written about the immensity of the water, the different particles that were combined in there, the plethora of the different fish species that were existing below me, the bacteria and plankton probably could have had its own volume written about the crustaceans that attach themselves to the humpback whale, the weather in the mid -Atlantic, all of that could have had volumes of information written.

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In a single second, if you were to snapshot me in a moment, there would have been hundreds, if not hundreds, if not hundreds of scientific volumes written about what was happening around me.

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I think, in some ways, but yet greater and more infinite, this is how

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John felt as he came to the end of his gospel. But even more so, he's talking about the infinite

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Christ. He's talking about the creator of the entire cosmos, and he's trying to capture who

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Christ is in a 21 -chapter letter. And he has to admit, it's insufficient.

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It can't capture everything of who Christ is. Brothers and sisters, this is our final week in the

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Gospel of John. It has been a weird week for me, thinking about this being the end of the

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Gospel of John. Was anyone here, other than Derek and I, who were here for John 1?

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Shannon, obviously. That would have been weird if you weren't. Lena, obviously.

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When I said me and you, I meant our families. Wanda's not here today, but she was here.

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Jeremy, Nicole was here, and you came later. It was a long time ago. 2019 was when we started the

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Gospel of John. Now, we've taken some breaks here and there. I don't want to make it seem like we've only done the

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Gospel of John, but we've been in John for a while. And today, we come to the end of this great and glorious book, this book that has taught me so much of who

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Christ is. And at the end of the book, I have to admit that John just barely scratched the surface.

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But what he's given us has been enough. It has been a sufficient revelation that he has given us, and it has been something that we need.

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If you remember, if you weren't here since John 1, I'll give you a little bit of a flyover of the

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Gospel of John. In John 1, we begin with the preexistent Christ, the

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Christ who lives in eternity, before time and space began. It says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the

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Word was God. So John begins in eternity, before the

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Garden of Eden, before light exploded into the world, before anything, there was Christ.

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And then very quickly, John transitions to talking about the creator who wrote himself into the creation.

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The one who came and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

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John 1 begins in eternity, and then it tells us how Christ himself stepped into time in order to save his wayward creation.

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And at the end of John 1, you have the completion of the first seven days. It begins within the beginning, and then it completes the seventh day.

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You have the story of a new creation. John chapter 2, what does this new creation kingdom look like?

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Well, he goes to a wedding in Cana and he turns water into wine. He supernaturally speeds up the process of water raining down, grapes growing in the ground, being squished, being bottled, being fermented.

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He speeds up time in order to bring wine. Why does he bring wine? Because the kingdom of Jesus Christ is better than the dusty water pots of the old covenant.

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The old covenant brought water for purification. Jesus' covenant brings wine. Jesus' covenant brings celebration.

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Jesus' covenant brings victory. Jesus' covenant brings life over death. Which leads us to the second half of John chapter 2, where Jesus looks at that old dusty temple, just like those old dusty water pots in Cana, and he says, this is insufficient.

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He said, guess what? I'm going to tear it down, and in three days I'm going to rebuild it. And you don't have any idea what

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I'm talking about, because I'm talking about my body. The Jews are like, it took us 47 years to build this, and they're starting to pull out their blueprints and their contractor's plans, and they missed it.

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Because the kingdom of Christ, this new covenant kingdom that's come, is not about buildings. And not about stones.

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It's about a temple of the body of Jesus Christ that you and I are connected to through his shed blood on the cross, where now we get to know

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God in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, instead of Jerusalem. And all over the world,

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Christians gather because Jesus is the true temple, and they meet in his presence, because his kingdom is better.

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He becomes the true priest, the true sacrifice, the true temple in John chapter 2. John chapter 3, what's this new covenant kingdom going to do?

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It's going to confound the theologians and the wise. You remember, he meets with Nicodemus, and he says, are you not a teacher in Israel?

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And Nicodemus misses it. Then what does he do? He goes to chapter 4. These chapters are beside of each other for a reason.

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He goes to the man, the theologian, and he has no idea what Jesus is talking about. Then he goes to the woman, the sinner, the

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Samaritan, and she's saved. Because the kingdom of Christ hasn't come to save the high and mighty and the erudite.

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It's come to save the weak and the lowly and the sinner. So John chapter 3 and chapter 4 tell us that story.

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John chapter 5 exposes the fake religiosity of the first century

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Jews. Who does Jesus' kingdom come to save? What comes to save the weak and the lowly?

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Who does it come to condemn? Those who turn away from him and reject him. You remember the man who was sitting in front of the pool of water for 38 years.

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That number is not insignificant, brothers and sisters. In the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, the wilderness generation, those who rebelled against God, wondered.

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If you've been here for a while, you know why that word is hard for me. I'm from North Carolina. I can't say it. They wandered in the wilderness for 38 years.

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And they ended up what? Dying by rejecting Christ. Here you have this man lying at the pool for 38 years.

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And what does he do? He goes to the temple, and he hands over Jesus to the

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Pharisees, and he dies in his sin. He's a picture of Old Testament Israel.

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John 6, Jesus is the God who walks on water, and he's the one who thins the crowds.

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Jesus even, this is the greatest verse, by the way, or the greatest chapter against megachurch Christianity.

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Just before Jesus could have been a megachurch pastor, he preached the sermon, eat my flesh and drink my blood, and they all left him.

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He was like, I don't want it. John 7 and 8, he calls out the

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Jewish hypocrisy. John 9, he gives the man who is blind vision.

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John 10, he inflames the Jewish establishment so that they want to kill him.

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John 11, he raises the dead. Do you see this sort of tit for tat, chapter after chapter, where he's saving those who are broken, saving those who are down and out, saving the blind, saving the weak, saving the poor, and yet he is bringing condemnation upon those who think that they're high and mighty.

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There's a struggle in the Gospel of John with the Jewish aristocracy who are looking down their nose at Jesus and the weak and the lowly who are being saved by Jesus, and it goes back and forth, chapter by chapter.

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And so you get to John 11, and the Gospel now moves into a fast -forwarded propulsion towards Jesus' death.

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And the event that launched the search party, the brute squad that was going to kill him, the hitmen were released, was the resurrection of Lazarus.

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He comes to the tomb of Lazarus and Bethany. He calls him out, and from that moment forward, the

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Pharisees had no word that they could speak against him, but they hated him all the more, and they put together a plan to kill him.

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John 12, he comes into the city anyway. He rides on a donkey. He says, you're going to kill me, yes, but I'm still king.

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Only in Christ's kingdoms does that even make sense. John chapter 13, as a true priest, he anoints his people.

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John 14 through 17, as a true prophet, he teaches his people. He's prophet, priest, and king.

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John 18, he's the lamb who was led to the slaughter. John 19, he's the true Passover lamb whose blood was painted on the doorpost.

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And John chapter 20, he's the one, the only one who triumphed over the grave. The whole gospel is about the coming of a new kind of kingdom with Jesus being a new kind of king, with the old being put away and the new having come.

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And John, of course, could not include everything. He says that even if he could, it would fill all the books and all the libraries and all the world, but he does include some things.

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And the things that he includes, he says in John chapter 20, that they're for us to believe. And if we believe them, we'll have life in his name.

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So the purpose of John, as we close out today, is that everything that John has spoken about, no matter how long you've been here along the ride, this may be your first week, everything in the gospel of John is so that you will believe and have life in Jesus's name.

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That is the purpose of John, and that is how we will close. Today, I want us to look at three things in John's gospel in the end, the last two verses.

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That John is a faithful eyewitness of the truth, is the first thing. The second thing is that he has shared a faithful evidence, a sufficient evidence.

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And the third thing, the final thing, is that he ends this gospel in a fitting way, as a fitting epilogue to everything that he has done.

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And if you didn't notice, there's three E's for your convenience. Eyewitness, evidence, and epilogue.

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There you go. Let us read, let us pray, and let us dive into this passage. This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things.

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And we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many others which

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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.

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It's the end of John's gospel, let us pray. Lord, we thank you for this dear saint,

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John, who wrote down this book for us that we've been in over the last three and a half years.

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Lord, I pray that everything that has been shared in this book would begin to germinate in our hearts like a seed planted and it would grow into a mighty oak.

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Lord, may we believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing, may we have life in your name.

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And Lord, may that life be full and vibrant. May that life be living.

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It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. He begins the epilogue of his book by saying, this is the disciple who is testifying these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true.

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John has been very coy in his gospel. He's called himself the beloved disciple.

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He's called himself the disciple that Jesus loves, but he's not really called himself out by name.

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This is true to form. Here in the end, he's doing the same thing again. John was known by his community.

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Now, what we need to see here at the end of the book is that basically, this is like a courtroom scene, the way that John has structured it.

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And at the end of the courtroom scene, at the climax of the events, you're thinking, does the club fit? Does it not?

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Is the witness gonna come? This is the star witness that the case has been building up to, and John is gonna put him forward as the witness.

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Now, John is not just some guy. John is an eyewitness to some of the greatest events in history, and of the disciples, he had more that he witnessed than any of the others.

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You remember, it was John alone who didn't abandon Christ at the cross. He's the only disciple who stood there and watched his

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Savior die. He was an eyewitness, probably one of the first disciples called in John 1.

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He was a disciple of John the Baptist before he was a disciple of Jesus, who was one of the first. He was called the beloved disciple.

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He was one of the closest friends of Jesus. He was in that elite group of the top three disciples, Peter, James, and John, so he had access to Jesus in a way that the other disciples didn't have access.

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He was in the boat when Jesus walked on water. He was there when Lazarus was pulled out of the tomb.

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He was the one who leaned on Jesus' chest during the Last Supper. He was the one, the only one, out of the disciples who heard those final words, it is finished, and he's one of the only two disciples who came and saw the empty tomb.

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This is the best eyewitness that we could have to who Christ is, and he has given us the best case that he knows how on who

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Christ is. When you have that kind of witness in a courtroom, the courtroom goes quiet.

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The jury leans in and everyone listens, which is the right posture for us when we read a book like this to lean in and listen, especially in a culture that hates truth, where skepticism runs rampant, where that was an ancient book, and that's not the way things happen anymore.

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John is a bulwark of consistency and truth that we ought to pay attention to and pattern our lives after.

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John says in chapter 21, verse 24, this is the disciple who's testifying to these things. He is actually laying out his own credibility and life.

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Do not forget, brothers and sisters, at what time this was written. This was not written at Starbucks with a soy latte at his side.

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This was written when he was one of the top, most hated people in the country, where his words would be used against him, twisted and maligned, and probably used against him as evidence in a court proceeding that could have killed him.

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This is a man who's laying his entire life, legacy, and credibility on the line to report these things, which takes great courage, which is something that we ought to consider today.

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The courage to speak the truth in a culture of lies, even if they get inflamed by it or hate us for it.

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We have a great legacy, a great cloud of witnesses, of men who even spurned their own life to make sure that they clung to the truth of the word of God.

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We need men like that again, and we need women like that again, and we need children like that again. More than anything, he's just telling the truth, which is the most offensive thing in all the world.

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The only people who are offended by the truth are those who are addicted to lies, and in our sin, we're all, without Christ, addicted to lies.

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He was writing in a city that could have proved him wrong. This is another thing that you should hold fast to, that this is a reliable gospel.

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He was writing in a town that could have produced a body. What are you talking about?

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Jesus rose from the dead. Here he is. They could have dragged him out of the tomb and paraded him across the streets.

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In a town that had every reason to produce a body, in a town that hated anything but Judaism, that had every reason to squash this little movement before it began, there was no body, because the tomb really was empty.

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They even had to pay off the Roman guards to lie about it, which shows you the depth of depravity, does it not?

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What are we going to do? He rose from the dead. Well, maybe start with repent. And yet, in their sin, they couldn't.

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In their hatred of God, they couldn't. They said, I know what we'll do. We'll lie about it.

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We'll cover it up. He rose from the dead. We'll spread a false report.

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How foolish our sin makes us. John wrote boldly in a city that could have killed him.

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John also had community affirmation. So you can believe that this gospel is true, not just because of the testimony of John.

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John is a reliable witness. But he also had the witness of the entire early church.

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It says this, we know that this testimony is true. John is not talking with gender confusion here.

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John is not using the they, thems. John is talking as a man who is deeply connected to his community.

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And John is saying that the entire early church, go ask them if you have a question.

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Go seek them if you have a problem. What I have shared is true. There's over 500 witnesses of the resurrection of Christ.

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Go search them out. Which lets us know that this is a reliable gospel.

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If you're struggling with belief, look to the fact that this gospel still exists today.

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Because if there were any questions about it, if there were any holes in the story, it would have been buried in history and you would have never heard about it unless you were a

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PhD of ancient scholastics. The early church corroborated it.

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Also, there's church historical corroboration. We carry on this tradition today by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. John says just a few verses earlier that blessed are those who believe and have not seen.

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Why can we believe and not see? How can we believe in someone that we've not, like Thomas, seen the wounds, seen the holes?

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How is that possible? By the power of the Holy Spirit of God who from generation after generation after generation has made this word come alive in the hearts of believers all over the world.

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So that we, like John, do not cower to the paper tigers in culture who hate truth.

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We do not capitulate when they mock us. We do not compromise when they try to punish us.

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We keep sharing the truth on and on and on. Why? Because it's true.

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We have the Spirit of God and Paul says that the Spirit of God bears witness to the truth. If you are a

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Christian, if you have the Spirit of God, then you are a truth -loving person.

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If the Spirit bears witness to the truth and the Spirit is in you, you will bear witness to the truth if you're a

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Christian. We are the truth tellers in a world of lies. His Spirit leads us to cling to truth, be built up in the truth, established in the truth, saved by the truth, strengthened by the truth, enriched by the truth, admonished by the truth so that we can repent because of the truth.

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And ultimately, the greatest news of all is that we know the truth because the truth is a person.

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Jesus said, I am the way and I am the truth and I am the life so that if you know

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Christ, you know the truth because the truth is a person. Our faith,

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Peter says, was not devised by cleverly written fables. Our faith was not written by men who got together as co -conspirators and said, let's find a way out of this.

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Let's tell a story. I remember Chuck Colson. Chuck Colson passed away a few years ago, but Chuck Colson was in the

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Nixon administration and forevermore the Nixon administration, although wildly popular before Watergate, will only be ever known by Watergate.

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And he said as a non -believing person that what convinced him of the truth of the gospel was that 12 men in government couldn't keep their story straight for three weeks.

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Because they were lying. And here he read in the gospels 12 men who went to death, who died the most brutal and horrifying, agonizing deaths because it was true.

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None of them abandoned Christ once Christ was raised.

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Peter was crucified upside down. James was killed by Herod. All of them,

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John thrown in a boiling pot of oil, tradition says, and survived, like your nephew, but whole body.

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And none of them denied Christ. The only reason that that can be is because Christ really was raised and because Christ is alive.

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That's the only reason you'd be willing to die. 12 men die for the same thing. He gave everything that we needed to see that this is a reliable eyewitness account.

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And he tells us that it's a reliable eyewitness account. The next part that I would say is he gives us sufficient evidence.

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John says in verse 25, the final verse of the book, and there are also many other things which

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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.

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There's all sorts of analogies that you can describe here. John's gospel is a tiny, small treasure chest.

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You ever watched or read the book? The book is better than the movie, The Hobbit. And you see this great sea of gold and you see this little treasure chest in one of the scenes and you're like, oh, that's nice, but in light of all of this, it's kind of small.

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You think about John's gospel, it's a little treasure chest in the midst of a sea of gold. He's given you just enough, but it's filled with beauty and glory, filled with truth.

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It's like a few drops of water. I was thinking about this. If you stand on the seashore, you go to whichever beach that you like to go to and you take a thimble and you capture a little bit of water, you have seawater, truly, and yet you have so little.

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You have a drop among trillions and trillions and trillions of drops and yet you have it.

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It's there and it's true. John is telling us that the world cannot contain everything that Jesus did, but what we have is good.

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What we have is good. He's telling us that what we have, if it's only a drop, if it's only a drop, it's enough to drown yourself in.

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If it's only a mist, it's enough to satisfy you. If it's only a thimble, it's enough to quench your thirst.

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You have a sufficient word. You have enough in this

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Bible to believe that He is the Christ, the Son of God. You have enough to have life in His name.

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You have enough to be transformed by the power of the gospel, which Paul says that it is the power of God for salvation.

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All who believe, you have enough to know this God. You have a sufficient word.

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We live in a time where the sufficiency of Scripture is probably under attack more than anything. We go to churches that act and behave as if the sufficiency of Scripture is not sufficient enough.

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We need big parties. We need light shows and fog machines, and we need pastors coming in on zip lines because the gospel's not beautiful enough.

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It's not sufficient enough. That thought can go straight to hell. Jesus doesn't need us to dress up His bride like a whore and masquerade her for carnal men.

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His gospel is beautiful, and it's good, and it is enough. He could have given us more details, absolutely.

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He could have told us what Jesus was doing before time and space began. It would have been like an interstellar moment, and you're barely able to understand it.

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He could have told us how the conception of Christ actually worked. We don't understand that. He could have told us what

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Jesus' childhood was like and when He made His first table and what kind of table it was. He could have talked about all the unrecorded miracles, the unrecorded conversations.

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He could have talked about all of the different pithy statements that Jesus made. He could have went down into the theological depths and analyzed every statement that Jesus made, and He could have filled the entire world full of books, and yet He tells us that we have a sufficient word, which tells me something, that John is not holding back.

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He's telling us that what we have is infinite. Jesus is so beyond comprehension that in John's finitude,

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He couldn't describe it. It would be like us trying to count the stars, and then if we actually think that we've accomplished anything, you magnify it, and you realize that you haven't seen anything.

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It would be like us trying to count the sand on the seashore, and let's just say you're really diligent, and you count all of the little specks of sand on the seashore at whatever beach, and then you realize that that beach is connected to another beach, and that beach is connected to another beach, and you have an entire coastline, and then you have an entire continent, and then you have the

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Sahara Desert, and you realize that you cannot do this thing that you think that you can do because it's bigger, and better, and deeper, and wider, and more glorious than you.

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John knew that entire oceans existed in the drops that He gave us. John knew that in every miracle

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He performed was a tidal wave of glory. John knew that everything that He recorded underneath it was something infinite so that you cannot in your lifetime actually exhaust it.

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The one drop that He gave you, you'll read it for the rest of your life if all you had was the Gospel of John, and you would always find new gems.

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You would always find new jewels. You would always find new things, and I think that this is a picture of heaven. Heaven is not like the matrix.

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You don't get to heaven and you automatically get downloaded with everything you ever wanted to know.

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Heaven is where you have been set apart for the glory of Christ to learn and grow forever.

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Imagine this drop of water that we have in the Gospel of John. If you spend,

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Lord willing, a hundred years, you'll never exhaust it. And then let's say you get to heaven and the

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Lord gives you your second drop that He didn't record in the first drop, and you take another hundred years, and then you think,

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I don't know how long that would take to fill a swimming pool, but let's say somewhere in the millions or billions.

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You've just filled a swimming pool in comparison to a cosmos full of water.

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Do you get my point? Forever and ever and ever and ever you're going to be growing to love and enjoy this infinite

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God. What you have is enough. What you have is sufficient. What you have is glorious.

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But for the rest of eternity, you are going to be mining the depths of who God is.

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That is what the Gospel of John is pointing out. And that's why I say this might be the shortest sermon in this whole

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Gospel that it's a fitting end. It's a fitting end. Because what does

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John do in the beginning? He begins with the infinite Christ who exists outside of time, and he ends with the infinite

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Christ who's revealed Himself in time. And he's saying to you that this

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Christ can be known, but He cannot be exhausted. He can be loved, but He cannot be ever tapped.

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Brothers and sisters, my prayer for us is that this

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Gospel would be like an acorn. That after 50, 60, 70 years of you meditating on the truths of these pages, that an oak tree of faith would grow strong in its place.

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We spent three and a half years in this Gospel. I want you to meditate on this

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Gospel for a lifetime and see the beautiful treasures that are buried underneath it.

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My prayer is that we would believe as a congregation. Not, not this Evangeli -fish kind of believe where we sign our name on the card and we're done.

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I want us to believe vibrantly, vigorously, joyfully. I want us to be the kind of people who believe our socks off if that's possible.

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I want us to be the kind of people who every part of who He is defines us.

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That He defines who we are, how we think, how we feel, how we believe, how we behave.

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Brothers and sisters, my prayer is that this Gospel and the whole Bible will change you. That it'll change your marriages.

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That it'll change your spouse that you've been praying for. That it'll change you that you haven't been praying for. That it'll change your children.

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That it'll change your neighbors. That it'll change your coworkers. That it'll change your vocation. That it'll change your job.

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That it'll change our country. That it'll change the world to the glory of Jesus Christ. It starts with us.

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May we vibrantly and vigorously cling to the truth of this Gospel. And as we move towards Proverbs next week, may our base and our foundation never depart from Jesus Christ.

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Amen? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this

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Gospel. We thank you for three and a half years of studying it. Lord, we thank you that you really are the cornerstone.

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You are the foundation. You are the one to which we look for in all things. Lord, let us never forget that.

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Let us always be rooted in the Gospel. Let us never be rooted in our performance or our sufficiency.

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Lord, let us be a people who love the truth, love your word, and who are built up and established by it.

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Like Psalm 1, let us be like a tree planted by streams of living water that bears its fruit in season.

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Lord, thank you for this great gift you've given us three years to study an infinite book. And Lord, let us study it and the rest of the