That You May Believe | The Gospel of John

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Speaker: Pastor
Series:

When You See the Sign, Where Do You Stop?

When you see a hotel sign on the highway, you don’t pull over and stare at the sign. You follow it to the hotel. When you see a speed limit sign, it’s not the sign itself that matters, it’s what the sign is telling you to do. So here’s a question worth sitting with: when God gives you a sign, do you stop at the sign, or do you follow it all the way to where it’s pointing?

That question sits at the center of John’s Gospel, and it’s where I spent our time this morning as we prepared to jump back into our series. John tells us plainly why he wrote what he wrote, in John 20:30-31: “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.” Not information for information’s sake. John is writing that you may believe and that you may have life.

Some See the Sign and Believe

The first sign we looked at was the wedding at Cana, John 2, where Jesus turns water into wine. But the sign never pointed to the miracle itself, it pointed to the person behind it. “The sign pointed not to the miracle. The sign pointed to Jesus, that they may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing that they may have life, life in His name.” Jesus manifested His glory as creator, in the abundance of six jars filled to the brim, and in the quality the master of the feast couldn’t explain. And the result was simple: “his disciples believed in him.”

We saw the same pattern with the official whose son was dying in Capernaum, John 4. The man believed Jesus’ word before he ever saw the result, and when the healing was confirmed, “he himself believed in all his household.” And with the man born blind in John 9, healed and cast out by the religious leaders, who came face to face with Jesus and said, “Lord, I believe,” and worshipped him. Three signs, three different kinds of people, one response: they followed the sign to the Savior.

Some See the Same Sign and Reject It

But John doesn’t let us stop there, because not everyone who sees a sign believes. In John 5, Jesus heals a man who had been crippled for 38 years, and instead of belief, it produced a plot for murder, “because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.” Same sign, same power, entirely different heart.

Even more sobering is what happens after Lazarus is raised from the dead in John 11. Some who saw it “believed in him.” Others, including the chief priests and Pharisees, saw the exact same miracle and “from that day on they made plans to put him to death.” I asked our church to sit with that. The sign itself did not change. What was different? Their hearts were different.

Right Information, Wrong Application

There’s a third response too, one I think we’re prone to today. In John 6, after Jesus feeds the five thousand, the crowd draws the right conclusion, “this indeed is the prophet who is to come into the world,” but they misapply it, trying to make him king by force instead of following him to the cross. They had part of the truth and got the application wrong. I asked the room, isn’t that still our problem? We come to Jesus because we think he’ll solve all our problems or make life easier, and when he doesn’t, we’re confused, because we stopped at the sign instead of following it to who Jesus actually is.

And here’s what struck me most as we surveyed all seven signs: it was the religious people, the chief priests, the Pharisees, the scribes, who held to the law and the temple and the traditions of their fathers, who missed Jesus most of all. As J.C. Ryle put it, “the tragedy of the Pharisees was never a lack of information. It was a fullness of pride that refused to bend the knee to what the evidence plainly showed.”

Are You in the Hammock?

I closed with the picture I keep coming back to: a hammock. You can stand beside it, study its structure, do the math, and conclude with full confidence that it would hold you up. You can even tell others how strong it is. But none of that is the same as getting in. James tells us even the demons believe that God is one, and they shudder. The question was never whether you can assent to the facts about Jesus. The question is whether you are trusting Christ and Christ alone.

Not your religion. Not your good works. Not your church membership. Not your baptism. Not your sincerity. A split trust is a mistrust. John gave us these signs for one purpose, that we would believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, we would have life in His name.

Discussion Questions

  1. In John 2, the sign at Cana pointed past the miracle to the person of Jesus. Where in your own life have you been amazed by what God has done, but slower to trust who He is?
  2. The same sign, Lazarus raised from the dead, led some to believe and others to plot murder. What does that tell us about the condition of the heart versus the clarity of the evidence?
  3. Think about the hammock illustration. Is there a difference in your own life between agreeing that Jesus is who He says He is, and actually resting your full weight in Him?

If the Holy Spirit has been showing you this morning that you’ve had religion but not a relationship, please don’t put it off. Come talk with me, or with my wife, or with anyone here, we would love nothing more than to sit with you and open up God’s Word together. And if you’re already resting in Christ alone, may this be the week it matters in how you speak to someone else about Him.

We hope you enjoyed the sermon and would love to see you in person. Plan your visit to Community Baptist Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee today!

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