That You May Believe

Good morning, everybody. Greetings from Bethany Baptist Church. Thankful to be with you again this Lord's Day. I invite you to turn with me to John chapter 20. And we'll consider this morning, verses 30 and 31.

And then later this evening, we'll be also in John 20, considering Doubting Thomas, just prior to this. But this morning, we want to focus on John 30, John 20, verses 30 and 31. And when you get there, please stand for the reading of God's Word.

This is the Word of God. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name.

Amen. Amen. Please be seated. Let's unite our hearts and let's pray together. Father, as we've read Your Word, we now respond to Your Word in prayer. And we pray that the very thing that You command, that You would also grant it unto Your people.

We pray that this Lord's Day, in particular now this morning, that we would believe in Jesus Christ and that by believing, we would have life in His name. Father, we pray for the great and the small in our midst, the young and the old, male and female, slave and free, every single person made in Your image.

We pray that all of us would be found safe in the arms of Jesus Christ. In Him is life. He is the light of men. He is the light that has come into the world to give the light of salvation to the ends of the earth.

Father, we are sinners. We are beggars. We are by nature children of wrath. We are owed no good thing by You according to Your justice. And so, Father, we ask for Your great namesake, You who show mercy to whom You will show mercy and have compassion upon whom You have compassion.

Have mercy and compassion upon us. We pray for Your Holy Spirit to move in every heart. We pray that His Word that He inspired would now come upon us with power to convict, to unshackle the bound heart, to break the heart of stone, and to give life through Jesus Christ.

We pray for Christ's glory, that His kingdom would expand, that sinners would be saved from the domain of darkness and that they would join as members in the kingdom of light and worship and serve the King of kings all their days in this life and forevermore in the life to come.

Have mercy, Father, we pray. Let our hearts be earnest, even as we ask these things. Let us not be dull. Let us not be indifferent. Let us not have hearts that are far from You. But let us, with all that is in us, all the zeal we can muster, genuinely storm the throne of grace pleading with You to show us Jesus Christ.

John's Gospel Gives Sufficient Evidence for Faith

We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Well, we come in John 20 right here at the end to what is essentially the beginning of the conclusion of the entirety of John's Gospel. And John's conclusion itself is actually bookended by two similar statements.

One is what we just read. And the second is right at the end of the book, if you look at John 21 .25, he says again, now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

So, taking these two bookends together, what they emphasize is that though there were many other things that Jesus did, signs He performed, things He spoke, and though they also would have been worthy of being set down and recorded in Scripture, what John has recorded and what the Holy Spirit has intended for us to have in the Scripture is sufficient to compel our belief that Jesus is the Christ.

Notice, it is not as though John says, you know, if I really wanted to, I could have bolstered my case even by another 2 or 3 or 5%. He says there are so many other things that if all of them had been written down, I suppose all the books in the whole world, the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.

Now, what are we to draw from that? What we are to draw from that, the point that John's making, is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is so sufficiently compelling and has been so sufficiently proven by God to be the truth, that John and all the other apostles had plenty of evidence to spare.

If anything, what they recorded was the smaller portion of God's revelation to the world, and that even that smaller portion is sufficient to command and compel our belief in the Gospel. Now, it's fascinating.

Even modern behavioral people who do studies in modern behavior, they note that deceptive people and people who are lying often frequently over-explain. And in fact, they often use even up to ten times more words than they need to to try to make something that is false sound true.

And we understand why they do that. They do that because they're desperate. They're trying to build a case out of fluff, and therefore they are desperate to reach for anything that they think might possibly be a shred that shows this is actually true.

Proverbs 10 .19. Where words are many, you can be assured sin is not lacking. But, when someone has the truth on their side, they don't feel compelled to do that because the truth is in itself compelling.

Truth is convincing. And that is what John is essentially doing here. Matthew Henry says, had this history been a mere human composition, it would have been swelled with a multitude of depositions and affidavits to prove the contested truth of Christ's resurrection.

But, being a divine history, listen to this, the penmen write with a noble security relating what amounted to a competent proof sufficient to convince those that were willing to be taught and to condemn those that were obstinate in their unbelief.

And if this is not enough to satisfy, more would not. That is a very key insight that Matthew Henry's picking up on and it's very biblical. What God has given us in the Scriptures, and even in the Gospel of John itself, is sufficient to compel the belief of all who are humble in heart, willing to be taught and learn of Christ, and it is also sufficient to condemn all those who disbelieve.

And indeed, those who are not persuaded by what God has given, even 10 ,000 more signs would not persuade you. Luke 16. You know the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Both of them die. The rich man goes to Hades.

Lazarus goes into Abraham's bosom. He is in paradise. And there's this conversation between the rich man and Lazarus, and the rich man begs his father Abraham, he says, please, send Lazarus back to my brothers and tell them not to come to this place.

And Abraham tells the rich man, he says, no, they have Moses in the prophets. Let them listen to them. And once again, the rich man pushes back and he says, but no, Father Abraham. If someone returns to them from the dead, then they will listen.

And Abraham's response to the rich man is no. If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not listen even if someone returns to them from the dead. And so John says these things, these signs are written that we may secondly, believe.

Notice that. There are many things not recorded for us, but what God has recorded for us, He has recorded to persuade us to believe. And we need to realize, brothers and sisters, in a very real sense, God has gone above and beyond what He even owed us to compel us to believe in His Son Jesus as the Christ.

Signs. When John says signs, I believe he's referring to the miracles that he's recorded throughout this Gospel. Signs are not even owed to us sinners. Signs themselves, miracles themselves, are divine condescension.

Matthew 16 .4 Jesus says, an evil and adulterous generation demands a sign. But no sign will be given them except for the sign of Jonah. Talking about his own resurrection from the dead. Let me give you an analogy.

God's Word, well first let me say this and then I'll give you an analogy. God's Word in and of itself is self-authenticating and authoritative. When God says something, it is God's Word inherently and it carries His power.

So here's the analogy. What if every time I walked in my kids' room and I told them to do something, they said, well Dad, first you have to submit yourself to this six step process to actually validate and confirm that you actually are our Dad.

It doesn't work that way. My voice is Dad's voice. It's self-authenticating. You know you're Dad's voice. God could have just given us His Word, but He goes further. He stoops, I think Calvin said, He stoops to our sinfulness and our weakness in that on top of His Word, He gives attesting signs to prove that this message is indeed from the God of heaven and earth.

That is what signs do. That's the function of miracles in the Bible. They come alongside the message and in a way that cannot be refuted or doubted or challenged, they say no one can do this except for God and therefore you must believe His Messenger.

Right? And we know that. That's exactly what Nicodemus said even the Jews were persuaded of of Jesus in John 3 .2. He said, good teacher, rabbi, we know that you are sent from God. Why? Because if you weren't, you would not be able to do these signs that you do.

And so, John is basically collecting the entirety of his Gospel here at the end and saying, reader, listener, the turning of the water into wine in 2. Telling the woman at the well everything she had ever done.

Healing the paralytic in 5. Multiplying the bread and fish in 6. Healing the man born blind in 9. Raising Lazarus from the dead in 11. And finally, the Lord raising Himself from the dead in 20. All of these are written to persuade you that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

Eternal Life Comes Through Faith in Jesus Christ

And lastly, he says, that by believing, you may have life in His name. You may believe that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing, you may have life in His name. If you are here this morning and you are an unbeliever, I don't know all of you the same way I know my congregation.

I don't know who is a visitor that you maybe are in church for the first time. Please listen to me. John is explaining in a way that a 3-year-old can understand. This is the Gospel of God's salvation to this dying and sinful world.

You do not obtain eternal life based on earning because of the things that you are or the things that you have done. Ok? That is not how Christianity works. There are plenty of other false, man-made religions and that's exactly how they say it works.

Do enough good and God will reward you with life. That is not biblical. Rather, the Bible says that if you want to approach God on the basis of what you deserve, if you want to get paid, if you want the wages from God of what you have earned, if you want to appeal to God on the basis of His justice, there is only one thing you will receive and it is eternal death.

Romans 6 .23. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. If you approach God according to His justice, you deserve the wrath of God because your sins are heinous in His sight.

And it does not matter how religious you have been. It does not matter how you helped the old ladies get into the church building. You have not, you cannot do enough supposed good to overcome the debt you have incurred by your sins against Almighty God.

And John is making plain his day. How does a sinner receive life? By believing in Jesus, the Son of God. By faith. Not giving to God. Receiving from God the righteousness that is only in Jesus Christ and is only received by faith.

Only one man came into this world and did not sin, and His name is Jesus Christ. Only one man perfectly obeyed all the commands of His Father and His name is Jesus Christ. And only one man, the God-man, offered His holy, sinless, blameless life upon the cross to bear in His own body the wrath of God due for our sins.

And only one man rose from the dead conquering sin and death and hell, and His name is Jesus Christ. And my friend, if you want life, if you want to make it to heaven, if you want to avoid the terrors of hell, there is only one name given under heaven by which you must be saved and it is Jesus Christ.

You can cling to Him right now by faith. You can trust Him and receive His blood and righteousness on your account, and you will become a child of God and have life in His name. Now, that brings us to our second movement in this morning's sermon.

The Sufficiency of Scripture

Our doctrine and our application. I've got three things. And some of these lean more on the doctrinal, instructional side. Some of them are more practical. Most of them are kind of a mix of the two. I've got three things, Christian.

So how should we respond to this section, this portion of the Word of God? There are more than three, but I want to give you three that I think are primary. In fact, this first one goes right in line with Pastor Conley's comments from Colossians 2.

Number one, we are taught in this passage regarding the sufficiency of Scripture. The sufficiency of Scripture. Let me read you the opening line from our confession, 1689. Chapter 1, paragraph 1 says,.

We confess that the Scriptures alone is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Do you believe that? Do you believe that the Scriptures are the only sufficient rule for how to be saved, what you must believe, and how you must live to the glory of God?

I hope you say yes and amen to that. And praise God for His Word. Where would we be without the Word of God? We would be groping around in darkness. Now, we carefully qualify what we mean by sufficiency.

We are not saying that the Scriptures by themselves do away with the need of general revelation. We don't say that it is an exhaustive medical book or a book exhaustive on all things nutritional or scientific, or you name it.

Though the Bible does speak to all those things, and when it speaks on those things, it speaks truly. But primarily, the Word of God given to us in the Scripture is an all-sufficient guide. Only sufficient.

Meaning we don't need anything else for how to be saved, what we must believe, and how we can live to the glory of God. In fact, and I don't even know the best way to put this, but I'm just going to say this and I think you'll know what I mean.

In some senses, the Bible is more than sufficient. The Gospel of John, John says, is sufficient in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ. Right? And if it wasn't, John would have kept writing some of those many other things that Jesus did, but he didn't have to.

And he brings it to a conclusion why this is enough. This is enough to teach those who are humble in heart. And it is enough to condemn those who refuse to believe the truth. And yet, God has not just given us John, He's given us the whole tapestry of all the Scriptures of Old and New Testament.

Leviticus, Exodus, Genesis, let me ask you, do you believe that Leviticus, Genesis, and Exodus are sufficient to lead you to salvation in Jesus Christ? The Bible says it is. We're going to go to 2 Timothy 3 in a second.

And Paul says to him, Timothy, you've been acquainted from childhood with the Scriptures, not the Old Testament Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through Jesus Christ. Remember the end of John 8?

Jesus said, Abraham, what? Rejoice to see My day. Abraham saw Christ. Hebrews 11, Moses saw Christ. And on top of the Old Testament, He's given us Acts and Romans and the Gospels, the pastoral epistles, Revelation.

God has furnished us with abundant truth. Sufficient proof of the salvation that He has revealed through Jesus Christ. Turn to 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3 .15 -17. Oh, I'm in 1 Timothy. 2 Timothy 3 .15. Paul talking to Timothy.

And how from childhood, you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Ok? Go on. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Such that Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 10 .31, whether you eat or whether you drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God. And I can imagine a young Christian in Corinth saying to Paul, really Paul, whatever I do?

God doesn't speak exactly about this situation in my life or this situation, or how to do ethics in this particular situation. And Paul says, yes He does. Yes He does. It is profitable to equip the man of God for every good work.

I told my church a while ago, the Puritans, you probably know, are one of my favorite time periods in church history. And the Puritan theologians and preachers that came out of that part of history. And I include myself in this.

Our generation is so unacquainted with the Scriptures in comparison with the generations that have gone before us. We don't believe the Scriptures are sufficient, because our problem is we don't know the all-sufficient Word of God.

And I admire your pastor, Conley. He is a man of the Word. And I read the Puritans, and I include Conley in this in one sense because he'll do this to me at times too. I'll be reading something in the Puritans and they will make a point from some obscure text and it literally makes me think, is that even in the Bible?

And then I go there, and sure enough, there it is. And oftentimes, it's not even the main point of the verse. It was kind of just a secondary implication. And I'm just sitting there, how did they remember that?

With hardly any tools. They didn't have the treasury of Scripture knowledge on their Logos app right in front of them where they can search all sorts of links digitally. They just knew the Word of God.

That really is the primary key to ethics, by the way. I'm teaching my people in our Sunday school on ethics. There's no shortcuts. You want to be good at ethics and knowing how to do things to the glory of God?

You have to know your Bible. Not only the things that are explicitly stated, but things that are deduced by good and necessary consequence. Jesus proved the resurrection from the dead on the basis of the tense of a verb.

That's in the Scripture. Luther compared the Bible to a great tree with many branches, and he said, I have pulled on every branch to see what fruit it would give me. Fathers, let me exhort you. Fathers, will you, the man of the household, the leader of the household, will you commit to reading through the Bible regularly with your kids and deducing good doctrine and application and instructing your children?

Moms, will you commit to catechizing your kids in the Word of God? Let me speak to you if you're here and you're not a Christian. So, believers, you should be cut by the sword of God's Word. Hey, you need to know Me better.

You need to study. You need to meditate. How do you obey what you have not read? But unbeliever, feel the cutting edge of the Word of God. This text is bringing you what you think is your own human autonomy.

It is bringing you and forcing you to face the reality of divine authority. You might be sitting here and you're thinking, it's not enough for me. I'm not persuaded. I'm not convinced. Okay, I want to challenge you.

Have you read the Word of God? And have you read it with respect? And if not, your objection is already nullified. Here's the thing. The Scriptures are enough to compel your belief, and they will condemn you on the last day for your rejection.

You know why? Because God Himself has said it is enough. And I include myself in this. We are not in the place of God to determine what standard is necessary to compellingly persuade me that something is true.

God is the One who determines that standard. And you might not like that. You might resent that. And that makes you angry. I wish I could make the rules. I am sorry. Welcome to being a creature. God is God and you are not.

And instead of trying to kick and scream for no point, would you not humble your heart and come and bow the knee to the King of kings who roars like a lion when He speaks in His Word? You know it. You know there is a God.

Literally, you are made in God's image. You are swimming in a world filled with the revelation of God. Romans 1. Everything around you is speaking forth plainly that there is a God that you owe Him worship.

You know something of His divine attributes. His eternal power. And I want to plead with you, it is a fool's errand to spend this life foolishly kicking against that thinking that somehow on judgment day, you're going to come out on top.

It's not going to happen. It doesn't work. Every mouth will be stopped. Not one excuse will be admitted to Him who sits upon the throne. Revelation. The books will be opened. And all, great and small, young and old, male and female, servant and slave, will be naked before the all-searching and all-authoritative Word of God.

Come to Jesus Christ. He calls out with mercy right now. Yes, does the Word of God scare you? It should if you are dead in your sins. And it should scare you to flee. Flee towards that cross. Flee towards the One who hung there.

And as His arms were outstretched that day, they still from heaven are stretched wide, and they say, Sinner, come to Me. Ho, come to the waters and drink. You who have no money, come by without money and without price.

The Purpose of Revelation Is to Elicit Faith

Why would you die? Second thing. And I'll be more brief here. The purpose of Revelation is to elicit faith. Okay? So the first was the sufficiency of Scripture. Secondly, the purpose of Revelation, the purpose of the Scriptures, is to elicit our faith.

John, notice he has a purpose. He doesn't just write for academic credit. He doesn't just write for fun. He writes for a purpose that you who read this would believe. And that by believing, you would be saved and have life in His name.

Christian, do you read the Word of God that way? Do you read the Word of God, I pray, not just as academic, intellectual, let's gather up information and facts, but do you come to the Word of God believing this is the bread from heaven and it is the food for my faith?

And when you come to it, do you come with a posture and a heart of prayer, praying, Lord, what is it, Psalm 119, I think, verse 36, open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things in Your law? Is that 36 or 18?

Okay, they say similar things. You can look them up. Do you come to the Scriptures that way? Lord, if You don't open my eyes to see Jesus Christ and to believe more in Him, I will have no life in me. Feed me from the bread from heaven.

Fill me. I told my people, this book, this is not an algebra book. This is not math class. You can learn algebra and you can do nothing with it, and honestly, who really cares? This is the Book of God, holy, powerful, in a category by itself, the Word from God who sits in heaven.

And it is the Word that the Spirit uses to keep His people believing in Jesus Christ and drawing life from Him who is the fountain of life. No one gets turned away from heaven because they never learned algebra.

But you will get turned away from heaven if you never learned Christ. And it will be the worst for those who were taught about Christ, but they never truly learned Him. They never truly received life in His name.

I pray that's not true of a single soul this morning. That you will go to hell from sitting in a pew. And not just any pew, you have a pulpit and a pastor who faithfully opens up to you the Word of God.

That is the most dangerous place a sinner can be. Under the means of grace, around the means of grace, tasting. They have a taste of the age to come. They've sensed the power of the Spirit at work around them.

And they sit there and their own heart remains rock hard. And that can happen a couple of ways. That can happen by you just, I don't know, for one reason or another, you like coming to church, but you know and you tell people, I don't believe, I'm not convinced.

It also happens in an even more scary way. More scary because it's self-deceptive. You come here and you join the church and you fool everyone. But you're not actually repenting. You're secretly living in sin.

If you were to be honest, you would never tell a soul this. But to be honest, you live in daily fear. And you have conversations with yourself in which you tell yourself, I need to repent before I die.

If I die right now, I have no confidence I am truly a Christian. And you have those internal... They kill you. They keep you in bondage. And you want out, but you know, I'm too prideful. I can't admit that.

I want to say to you, if that is you, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Just repent. Come clean. Come step into the light. Be open. You are not going to shock us. We know what it's like to be a sinner.

We know what it's like to be self-deceiving. Praise God, another sinner. This time it was a hypocrite that the Spirit opened their heart and their eyes such that they overcame their own pride and they actually opened up, guys, I have been a fake, but I want to come to Jesus Christ.

Come to Him. Come to Him. My unbelieving friend, how long have you been sitting under the ministry of the Word without believing? A year? Two years? Ten years? What more can He say than to you He hath said?

What are you waiting for? I hope that point comes through. You are waiting in vain if you are waiting for further proof and evidence from God for why you should turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ.

More is not coming. The next revelation we can expect is the coming of Jesus Christ in glory. And at that point, it is too late. Every eye will see Him. And at that point, whether you are found either in Him or out of Him, your state is fixed.

Evangelism and Calling Others to Believe

And judgment will happen. Believe in the light while you have the light. I have one last thing, and I'm going to be very brief here. Brothers and sisters of Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church, John's whole purpose, he says in writing this, is that people may believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that by believing in Him, they will have life in His name.

Do you know what that means? That means that John's whole purpose is evangelistic. Telling a dark, dead world about the good news and the light of Jesus Christ so that they can be saved. And therefore, Christian, do you speak of Jesus Christ that others may believe in Him and by believing have life in His name?

Seriously, when is the last time you shared Jesus Christ with someone? And you prayed, you were nervous, but you prayed and the Lord helped you and you unashamedly said, I'm a Christian and let me tell you...

It was our call to worship. Let me tell you what the Lord has done for my soul. You do not have to be a professor. You don't have to be a pastor to share the simplicity of the good news of Jesus Christ with sinners.

Spurgeon wrote the quote, he said, If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay.

If hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions and let not one go unwarned or unprayed for. Christian, you want to respond to God's Word this morning? Get on your knees in prayer more often and pray for the unbelievers in your family, your friends, your work circle, and pray, God, open doors.

Or, sometimes those doors need to be pushed open by us. Lord, let me know the doors I need to open to speak Your truth. And Lord, when You answer this prayer, also I pray, give me courage and the words to say from Your Spirit to actually take that opportunity.

Let not one go to hell without being warned or prayed for. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your perfect Word. Lord, we confess our sins right now as Your people. We have regarded Your Word lightly.

We have not searched it as we should as for silver and for gold. We have not known it. We have not sought for wisdom as we ought to as we seek for other things. And so, Father, we do pray, let us seek after it with all of our heart and our mind and our strength and soul.

Let us know Jesus Christ and have life in His name. And let us know Him well that we would be physicians able to minister spiritual medicine to those who are still spiritually sick. Father, we pray, answer our prayers.

Help us to have genuine self-reflection. Let us not look into the law of liberty and then walk away forgetting what we look like. Not forgetting what it says. Let us be changed and shaped. Let us, by Your Spirit, now in this moment, Father, we ask that with power from on high, we would be convicted of our sin, that it would lead us again to Jesus Christ and His cross, and that it would send us to Him for not only forgiveness, but also sanctifying grace.

That we would run in the way of Your commandments. That we would bring glory to Your name in the days You have given us. That You would abide with us. That You would delight in us. And that we would abide in Your love.

We pray, Father, for any here who are strangers to Christ. We pray, bring them into the fold. We pray for that regenerating work of the Spirit to make them alive to Jesus Christ. Glorify Your name, we pray.

We ask in Christ's name, Amen.