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Week of:  December 30, 2007 (Included in January - Part 1 of Study of John Series)
Title:   "So that you might believe"

Series:    Study of John - Part 1

Scripture:    John 20:31

1. There are Four Gospels. Has it ever occurred to you why there are four; not one, two, three, or more? No one (except for God) knows for sure why there are not more than four that made it into our Holy Cannon, because there are other writings that were called gospels. For example, you’ve no doubt heard of the Gospel of Thomas? How about the Gospel according to Hebrews? Have you heard of the Gospel according to Ebionites? The Gospel according to the Egyptians? Gospel of Peter, Phillip and more?* Of course when you start looking at some of these writings, you see why the early church could not agree on accepting them into our Cannon. Hear me out… until three or four hundred years after Christ died, Christians could not always agree on the number of Gods; whether Jesus was human, divine, or both; who created the world; whether the Jewish scriptures were inspired by a good God or an evil god.* You think that we have a hard time agreeing on how to interpret scripture; they could not even agree on what was scripture until four hundred years after Christ. Imagine 400 years… we’ve been a nation for just over 231 years.

2. As time progressed, four of the earliest Gospels rose to the top of the rest. The four that God decided best represented the teachings and life of our Lord.

3. But even with the four, they are not alike; they have their differences. Now, some people are very uncomfortable talking about the differences in scripture about the life and teachings of Jesus because they think that these differences somehow say that the Bible is unreliable. Well, I know that this is not right, and you know this is not right. The Bible is reliable, true, and it does present a wonderful account of the life of Jesus, and that account is rich beyond our wildest dreams. You could live a thousand lifetimes studying the Bible and not know everything you need to know about Jesus. In fact, I don’t know of anyone that I would declare an expert on the Bible. We are all just amateurs and students of the Bible!

4. Let me give you just two examples of the difference between John (which we are studying) and Matthew, Mark and Luke.

          a. One, where do we get the ideal that Jesus’ ministry was three years long. Matthew, Mark, and Luke just have Jesus going to Jerusalem one time in their Gospel (at His crucifixation), so you might conclude that it was just one year in duration. However, John has Jesus in Jerusalem three times once in 2:13, another time in John 5:1, and then in John 12:1 and following until His death.

 
          b. Another striking difference in John opposed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is that John has no account of the Lord’s Supper. Instead, John commands His disciples to wash one another’s feet. When I get to heaven I want to ask the writer of John why he left out the Lord’s Supper from his Gospel.

5. Now as far as we know, not every community and not every church had access to all four Gospels after they were written. In fact, do you realize that the Gospels were not written for 40 or more years after the death of Jesus? That means that the life and the teachings of Jesus were passed on orally for all those years. Folks just told the stories and teachings of Jesus.

 
6. The early church expected Jesus to return in their lifetime (1 Corinthians 15: 50-51), but slowly they realized that Jesus might not return during their lifetime and the stories of Jesus might be lost unless they wrote them down.

7. In addition, every community had different needs and problems. Turn in your Bibles to Revelation 2 & 3. Note the different strengths and weakness of each church. So, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel writers tailored these stories and teachings of Jesus to speak to the needs, strengths, and weakness of their community. Every Gospel was written in a different way to help its readers become the community of God that they needed to be. Imagine if there was an Apostle of Jesus Christ living among us telling stories of Jesus and His teachings, and finally writing a Gospel to us telling us what we needed to know about Jesus.

8. Are there differences in the Gospels? Yes, because as I said, they were written to different communities with different needs in mind. Look in Mark 1:15 to understand the supreme theme of Jesus’ teachings in Mark. “The time has come….The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.” The Kingdom of God is mentioned numerous times in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But only once or twice in John.

9. Another difference in John than the other three is that John makes things explicit that are implicit in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Let me give you this example: All four Gospels have the account of Jesus feeding the 5,000. But it is only John who has Jesus going on to say: “I am the bread of life; this is the bread that has come down from heaven.” If the other three Gospels leave any doubt or questions in your mind about Jesus being God, John clears it up very quickly. He makes things obvious what the others are beating around the bush trying to say.

10. What is the purpose to which John is writing to his readers? It is in our Scripture this morning: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs….But these where written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

11. The present tense of the verb believing says literally, “that you may go on believing.” Evangelism is not the primary concern of the Gospels. The main purpose is to strengthen, reinforce, and correct the faith of those who are believing.

12. John says, “listen to me I’ll tell you who Jesus really is.” In other words, there are many different ideals and opinions of who Jesus is and what His teaching are. Listen to me and believe what I tell you because it is true.

13. Are you willing to listen to John, listen to the word of God…?


* see Lost Christianities page xi.

Week of: January 6, 2008
Title: The Bread of Life
Series: Study of John – Part 2

Scripture: John 6: 35-64


1. Last Sunday we saw that the Gospel of John is remarkably different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

2. In fact, do you know what we call Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s Gospels? Synoptics. Why? Because they are similar. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so similar that they are called the synoptic Gospels, while John is so very different.

3. Some of the differences are very obvious: For example, John has Jesus’ ministry lasting almost three years, while the synoptics just one year.

4. In addition, the Synotics all have an account of Jesus and the disciples having the Last Supper together, while John doesn’t even mention it.

5. However, John does have a wonderful dialogue/monologue with Jesus and the Jews that causes Him to give this wonderful speech about being the Bread of Life.

6. I am going to ask you to remember one more thing from last Sunday’s teachings: John makes explicit what the Synoptics leave as implicit. In other words, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have Jesus taking a piece of bread at the Passover meal, holding it up and saying something like “take, eat; this is my body.” (Matthew 26: 26)

7. John doesn’t have this at all, but instead has a wonderfully obvious and interpretative teaching on what it means to eat from the bread of life.

8. Let’s look at it together. We’ll begin in John 6: 25. Jesus has just fed the 5,000 and crossed the Lake of Galilee by walking on water. In John, they follow him to the other side of the lake, and are surprised He beat them to the other side. In truth, they believed He walked around the Lake to the other side while they took a boat to following the disciples. It is funny; in verse 30, they are asking for a sign so they can believe Jesus but they have just missed a sign that would have knocked their sandals off—Jesus walking on water.

9. But they come seeking Jesus. It is a reoccurring theme in the Gospels, and especially in John, that people come seeking Jesus for one reason or the other. Jesus is elusive and must be sought after. Look what He says to them: “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate your loaves of bread and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but food that endures to eternal life…”

10. People also often seek the wrong things, and end up finding Jesus. I remember when I was a young lad that I went to church seeking a group of girls. But, after a time of going to church for the wrong reasons, I found Jesus and started coming for the right reasons. That’s the reason no person should ever fuss about people for coming to church for the wrong reasons, because I believe that, if they hang around long enough, they’ll start coming for the right reasons. Many times its just getting people exposed to the gospel that hooks them.

11. Anyway, this group of people following Jesus around for a free meal gives Jesus an opportunity to talk about hunger and thirst in ways they never thought of.

12. They want literal bread, but He says to them in verse 35, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty…”

13. They wanted food that nourished the body, or filled the tummy, but Jesus wanted to give them something that nourished the soul. Look in verse 48: “I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die.” He continues on to say “I am the living (breathing) bread…If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

14. Our physical livelihood depends on food, but everlasting livelihood depends on Jesus as the bread of life.

15. We eat Jesus, by believing in Him. John 20: 31 says: “These things were written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ… and by believing you may have life in his name.”

16. Have you eaten and digested Jesus?

Week of: January 13, 2008
Title: Born From Above
Series: Study of John – Part 3
Scripture: John 2: 23-3:21

1. How many of you have brothers and/or sisters? Do you think it really mattered in what order you were born into your family?

2. How many parents or grandparents have more than one child or grandchild? Is there a difference in the children that might be attributed to their birth order?

3. If birth order is important, then how important is the family you are born into? Very, considering the parenting skills of some parents, the level of care giving, parent involvement, economic opportunities, and the level of emotional support and love. All these things are not equal in every family.

4. In Jesus’ day and time, honor and shame were at the very core, at the very heart, of social life in the Mediterranean culture. By honor I mean one’s public reputation. I believe that what got Jesus into so much trouble with the religious rulers of His day was that He publicly embarrassed them. He shamed them, or I should say they shamed themselves, publicly and they hated Him for it.

5. Honor in Jesus’ day was primarily achieved by birth. If you were born into a good and wealthy family, were male, and the first born male, you had it made. Your status was set for life unless you did something to shame yourself or your family.

6. In Chapter 3 of our scripture, Nicodemus comes to Jesus. He was a Pharisee and a ruling member of the Jewish high council. It is evident that he wasn’t coming from humble and impoverished origins to have the status in their society that he enjoyed. In fact, he was so comfortable in his standings in his society that he didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize his position, so he came to Jesus by night.

7. In fact you might say that every day people came to Jesus (the Light) from the darkness (night) of their sinful existence. It is a definition of salvation that says in order to be saved we turn from darkness of our sin to the light of Jesus Christ. John loves to contrast light and darkness, and what it means to walk in one or the other. And yet, too many people are “silent or secret Christians” because they are not sure that Jesus is worth the trouble or the embarrassment of being associated with Him. It could be argued that Nicodemus was a believer who was seeking to know more about Jesus. Have you ever been embarrassed by Jesus?

8. Anyway, Nicodemus comes to Jesus and says: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

9. Jesus’ reply is, “I tell you the truth…” or as the King James version says: “Verily, Verily, I say to you...”  The “Verily, Verily I say to you” is found 25 times in John and it is Jesus’ way of saying, “Look this is the truth, I am not kidding; I am telling the truth that no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Actually, the phrase that we interpret as “born again” would be better translated “born from above.” We are born on earth, and to be a Christian we must “be born from above, from God.”

10. We are born into a family at birth—that family can have wealth, prestige, power, talent, and influence. It can be the most loving, caring family that anyone could possibly imagine, but unless we are born of God, born from above, we are lost and doomed to hell.

11. Being born from above means that we are born again into another status, into another family, into another place—not just into life, but into eternity. This level of life has only one status, the highest status possible in which all people are equal, all are forgiven, all have a new beginning, and all have the help of God to live as they should live. It is an honor status of the highest origins—it is called a “child of God.” I might be the son of Fred Leon and Azalee Marie Moore, but more importantly, I am a born-from-above child of the one and only living God. That is my status, and no one, not even the devil himself, can take that away from me.

12. How is that achieved? By the sheer grace of God and the power of believing. I wish I could tell you it was something more, but, it is the unmerited love of God as seen through Jesus Christ and is also, by the grace of God, my willingness to believe.

13. Look at John 1:12 “Yet to all who received him, to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

Title:  Seeking God's Approval - Basketball Team Sunday

Series:  Study of John - Part 4

Scripture: John 5: 1-45; 1 Kings 19: 1-18

1. Isn’t it great having folks cheer for you? If you steal the basketball and go in for a lay-up, folks go crazy for you and your team. If you sink a three-pointer to take the lead, people scream their lungs out for you. Man that’s great!

2. I’ve heard performers and entertainers say that getting a crowd of people to cheer for you is like no other high a person can have. They say it creates the ultimate rush.

3. Simply put, human beings are social creatures and we like the approval of other people.

4. In fact, public approval is the very reason that more people don’t misbehave because they are afraid of what other people will think. It works both ways—when the public is cheering us on, we work harder to do what pleases them. When they scorn and shun us, we back off and try other ways of getting what we want. It’s called honor and shame. Honor is having a good reputation to win public approval; shame is having a bad reputation and getting public disapproval.

5. In Jesus’ day having a good reputation (honor) was all-important. Shame was the just opposite. It was the ultimate slap in the face, it was something to avoid at all cost. One of the reasons Jesus ticked people off was that He shamed them or He pointed out their shameful behaviors which shamed them.

6. In chapter 5 of John, Jesus has just told the crippled man at the pool of Bethesada to get up and walk. You think that healing a man who had been crippled from birth would be something that everyone would have liked, but not so. The Jews, the Pharisees, the religious establishment of the day didn’t like it because it was the Sabbath and no work was to be done on the Sabbath.

7. Jesus responded to them with a series of statements that directly identified Him with being God, He says: “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” He continues in verse 19 by saying “…the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what He sees the Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

8. Does anyone remember what Joseph, Jesus’ surrogate earthly father, did? He was a carpenter. So Jesus is saying “just as I once watched my earthly father practice the craft of woodworking, now I watch my real Father practice the art of being God. And I tell you the truth I don’t do anything unless I see God doing it first.” I love that!

9. The result of all these things, that Jesus is doing, is to get people to honor the Son just as they have honored God, because in honoring Jesus the Son, they are honoring God. It is no wonder that the Jews were upset with Jesus and sought to dishonor and discredit Him because He was saying that He was the same as God.

10. So given the nature of what He was doing, He said: “If I am showing you God by being God in front of you, why don’t you believe in me? Why don’t you trust me?” This is what Jesus asks for all generations and of all people, “why don’t you believe and trust in me?” Before you leave here today, you will be given an opportunity to accept and believe in Jesus. Sadly, some of you will leave here rejecting Jesus. But I wonder, at the end of the day as you lay your head down on your pillow, if you’ll be asking yourself “why don’t I believe in Jesus?”

11. Jesus knew that many of those around him were skeptical about what He was saying so He tells them: “If you don’t believe me in what I say about myself then why don’t you believe in John the Baptist, he knows who I am. Personally, I don’t really care what John says about me, because I don’t really care about the testimony of people. However, I am telling you to listen to John so that you might be saved.”

12. I’ll do better than John. I have someone who is testifying about me that is greater than anyone, God Himself. Verse 37 “And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me.”

13. Jesus goes on to say: “I don’t accept the praise of men.” In this statement, Jesus is laying down the gauntlet. He is saying, in my culture where the honor and praise of my fellow human beings is paramount, I don’t care if people praise me. Look in verse 44, I care only about “the praise that comes from God.”

14. In fact Jesus says: “How can you believe, (in God) if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from God?” Have you ever thought about this: ultimately, we all seek praise from the ones that we value the most? I’ve heard it said before by people who are doing courageous things, “I just want my family to be proud of me.” Jesus is saying “who you value the most is who you want to be the proudest of you.” So, are you seeking God’s approval or do you not really care about God?

15. Seeking the approval of God at the expense of the opinions of other people can be rather lonely. If you are at a party and someone shoves a beer in your hand, and then looks at you like you are really weird by not taking a drink, then you might understand how lonely a party can be. If you say no to your boyfriend when he is pressuring you to have sex, then you may find out that your dating and social life can be rather lonely. Doing the right thing and therefore the unpopular thing can be very lonely.

16. If you’ve felt lonely before because you make the right decision to please God, rather than other people, then you might want to pay attention to our scripture this morning.

17. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah, the Old Testament prophet, has just called fire down from the heavens and had the false prophets of Baal put to death. When Jezreel, the Queen of Judah, hears what Elijah has done to her prophets she threatens to kill him. He takes it seriously and runs for his life. He becomes so depressed and scared about his situation that he prays to die…because he thinks he is by himself.

18. Have you ever been so upset and depressed about something that you’ve prayed to die? Have you ever made a gutsy decision because you thought it was the right thing to do, and got depressed about it? Elijah did….and look at verse 18, the Lord God says to him: “Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal, and all whose mouths have not kissed him.”

19. The moral of this story and sermon is “listen to God, do what is right, seek His praise and approval above all else. It may not be easy but someday you’ll find out that you are not alone…God is with you, and others are too.
 

Week of:  January 27, 2008

Title:  Faith and Belief  "Now we have heard for ourselves"

Series:  Study of John – Part 5

Scripture: John 4: 1-42

 
1. Our scripture this morning is the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. The Samaritans were the descendants of intermarriages between the Jews of the Northern Kingdom and pagan colonists that Assyrian conquerors had settled the land with long ago. They were considered half-breeds at the very best and scorned by most of the people in the Southern Kingdom (Judah and Jerusalem).

2. Their religious faith was basically Mosaic with their scriptures being only the first five books of the Old Testament. They rejected the prophets and their writings. They also rejected the emphasis that was put on the Jerusalem Temple.

3. Matthew, Mark, and Luke have no mention of a ministry to the Samaritans; yet historians tell us that the early Christian church quickly evangelized Samaria. Who knows, it might have started with this Samaritan woman. (She could have been the original Annie Armstrong, not that Annie Armstrong was married 5 times. J)

4. What happened to this woman so that John said in verse 39: “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony?”

5. First off, Jesus got her attention. He got her attention by asking for something to drink which surprised her. It was surprising because, according to John’s editorial remark in verse 9, “Jews do not associate with Samaritans.” So, I can see the shock in her face when she looks at Jesus somewhat suspiciously and says, “why are you asking me for a drink, you people don’t like us? You don’t even associate with us.”

6. Have you ever done something really nice for a stranger or for someone who doesn’t expect it and have them question your motives? No, that’s not what I mean… have you ever done something for someone, “with pure and caring motives” and had them question your motives? When they find out that you have no hidden agenda, it blows their minds. It quickly becomes, why do you bother with me? The problem with a lot of our witnessing today is that we don’t know how to surprise people “with pure and loving acts of kindness.” We’ve got to be able to get their attention in a good and positive way.

7. Second, this woman was caught off guard, literally amazed, that Jesus knew her situation in life. In fact, you might say that Jesus could see into her innermost being. He could tell she was hungry and thirsty for something that only He could give her. When we begin to connect with Jesus, we begin to realize that our thoughts, feelings, and actions are opened to Him to judge. And he helps us see ourselves the way we really are.

8. Look, when you have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, two things are going to happen. One, you are going to see Jesus for whom and what he is. Two, you are going to see yourselves for who you really are—a sinner saved by grace.

9. What was the first reaction of the Samaritan women to what Jesus told her? According to verse 39 & 40, she went and told the people in the town that Jesus had told her “everything I ever did.” William Barclay says that “the Christian life is based on the twin pillars of discovery and communication. No discovery of Christ is complete until the desire to share it fills our hearts; and we cannot communicate Christ to others until we have discovered him for ourselves.” (John vol. 1 page 164)

10. In fact, you might say that the desire to tell others about her discovery of Jesus killed in her any feelings of fear and shame.

11. Now remember the Gospel of John was written for what purpose? John 20: 31 “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

12. Now there is a curious thing about “believing in John.” Look in John 2: 23 “Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men.” What kind of belief is this that Jesus could not trust them?

13. And then, back in our scripture, it says that many of the fine folks of Sychar believed in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony, yet once they meet Jesus (verse 42), they turn to the woman and say: “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (Do a study of Matthew 13, parable of the soils, to further understand the nature of belief and salvation.)

14. The bottom line is that belief in Christ needs to be, and really must be, a first-hand encounter with Christ that essentially we come away saying in some form or the other: “I’ve seen the beauty of Christ and I have seen just how ugly I really am, and know that Jesus can make the difference in my life."