We are bringing the Gospel of John to a close this morning. We have been in this series for a long time, and we have covered a lot of ground together. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in this book, and I will miss it a little, but I am excited about what God has lying ahead for us. As John brings his gospel to a close, he recognizes that the things he has shared are hard for a human mind to grasp, and if he does not certify these testimonies himself, people will treat them the way we often treat them, as good stories rather than life-changing realities.
As John puts this book to a close, he wants to accomplish two things. He wants to assure us that the things he has shared are more than bedtime stories; they are realities that should change our lives. And he wants us to understand that as amazing as these things are, they are not the end of the story. There is so much more that has gone unwritten, and the story is not done being written. With these last two verses, John wants to assure us of both of these things, and that is what I want to do for you this morning.
I want to stress this again: I believe that we confess these realities, but we do not live every day like these realities are true. If someone asked you whether Jesus actually did the things the Gospels describe, you would say, of course he did. But if they asked you how that changes the way you live today, are you prepared to answer that question? That is what John wants for us, and that is what I want for you this morning, so that is what we are going to seek to do in these last two verses.
Everything You Have Heard About Jesus Is True
The first thing John wants to establish clearly — the first conclusion he draws with these parting words — is that everything we have heard about Jesus Christ is true, and he says it without apology. In verse twenty-four he writes, “This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.” If we read back a few verses, you will remember that Jesus has been talking to Peter and dealing with Peter’s betrayal, restoring him to a place of service. While all of this is going on, Peter turns around, and who does he see standing there but John, who loves Jesus, who loves Peter, and who cares deeply about everything taking place, quietly following along behind and watching it all unfold. Peter turns around and starts asking Jesus some questions about John, and Jesus’s reply is essentially, stop worrying about him — focus on what I have given you to do. I think there is a message for us in that as well, but after giving that account, John says that this is the disciple who testified of these things and wrote them, and we know that his testimony is true.
So what are the things John is talking about? He is talking about everything he has recorded since John chapter one. His expectation was that his reader would sit down and read this account in one sitting. We do not have that kind of endurance today — we are a TikTok generation, wanting about fifteen seconds before we move on to the next thing — but John’s expectation was that people would read his gospel from beginning to end in a single sitting. So he is saying that everything you have just read since you started this scroll, all of it, is true. I want you to think about what John is asking us to believe here, so let’s walk back through what we have heard in the Gospel of John.
He is talking about a man who, just by speaking, took dirty water and turned it into the best wine a party host had ever tasted. Jesus had instructed some people to fill basins with water, and the people who showed up to that party were not looking for water. How many of you go to a party and say you would just like some water today? No, you want sweet tea, you want Coca-Cola — and in that day, since they did not have soft drinks, they drank wine, the good wine, because this was a wedding ceremony celebrating a new husband and wife. Jesus said, fill up these jars, he gave the instruction, and when the servants dipped out of that jar, it was not water anymore. They took it to the host of the party, and when he drank it he said, you have saved the best for last. This was not Kool-Aid mixed together — this was real wine, and the host knew exactly what he was tasting when he said this is real and it is good. Jesus did something impossible.
Then, if we read on, an official comes to Jesus and bows down before him, saying that his son is sick and going to die unless Jesus does something, and that he knows Jesus can do it. Jesus tells him to go home, that his son is fine, and just by speaking from who knows how many miles away, that son was healed. The man does not even make it home before his servants come running to tell him that at the very moment Jesus spoke, his son was healed. How many people do you know who can do that? That was a trick question, because you do not know anybody who can do that.
In chapter five, Jesus comes to a man who had been lame from the day he was born, and Jesus simply says, get up — and the man gets up and walks away. Then in chapter six, Jesus is preaching to a crowd of people who start getting hungry, as people often do, with nothing to eat but five loaves and two small fishes. Jesus takes those five loaves and two fishes, starts breaking them apart, and starts blessing them, and the next thing you know, everybody is eating seconds. Five thousand people eat a full meal, and the Scriptures tell us the disciples had to collect twelve baskets full of the fragments left over. That is what Jesus did with five loaves and two fishes, and in that very same chapter, the disciples go out on a boat in a storm, just trying to stay alive, and turn around to see Jesus walking right across the top of the water. I cannot do that, and you cannot do that, but Jesus did.
In chapter nine, Jesus heals a man who had been born blind and gives him sight. In chapter eleven, he does something nobody would have ever imagined — he walks up to the tomb of a man who has been dead for days and says, Lazarus, come forth, and out he comes, hopping in his grave clothes just as Jesus told him to, called back from the dead. But Jesus did not just do that for somebody else — not many days later, he did the exact same thing for himself. A man who was dead, who had been certified dead by the Roman Empire, which knew how to make sure people were dead, was seen afterward by, as Scripture tells us through the Apostle Paul, hundreds of witnesses who testified that he was alive.
Now let me ask you a question. Is any of what I just described to you physically possible? No — and unless the God who created this world got involved, none of these things could have happened, and we know that. We are raised hearing these stories, and we believe these stories, and we teach these stories to other people, and I could ask you to tell me any of these stories in detail, and I guarantee everybody in this room could give me the story the way it is given in Scripture. You may not be able to quote it verbatim, but you know exactly what happens. We know these stories, but do we actually believe that these things happened? I am afraid a lot of Christians believe with their mouth and believe with their mind, but we do not actually live like these things happened.
But John wants us to understand that these are not fairy tale stories, not just entertaining tales we should pass on to our children as they are getting ready to go to sleep at night. The one who is telling us these things watched them happen — he was there, and he saw it with his own eyes. That is why John made sure to include throughout the book that the disciple whom Jesus loved was standing there, because he wants us to understand there is no doubt he was not getting this information secondhand. This is not a story that was passed on to him — it is a firsthand account of the things he saw with his own eyes. I watched him die, and I saw him alive. I tasted the water turned to wine. I watched the man who could not walk run to his house and his family. John is making it clear that the one who has told you these things is the one who was there for all of it, and he watched it happen.
Notice a small detail he adds at the end of verse twenty-four: “and we know that his testimony is true,” because John was not the only one who saw these things. There were eleven other disciples who lived to tell the tale, and they all agreed with everything John said — I heard what happened, I saw what happened, I was there, I can certify it. And beyond that, the Bible tells us there were five hundred other witnesses that Jesus appeared to after his resurrection to prove that he had actually risen from the dead. John is saying this is not just something he saw, not something he came up with in a vacuum — those who were present, those who were there, those who survived it, we saw it happen, and we know these things are true.
If this were any other historical document, there would be enough verification, enough certification, to take it as history. But because this is a spiritual book, people want to tell us it is just stories. I need you to believe this morning, not just with your mind and not just confessed with your mouth, but believed with your heart, that Jesus actually did everything John said he did. It is real, it is true. He is the one who can raise the dead, heal the sick, and take plain old water and turn it into delicious wine. He is the one who can take nothing and turn it into something, who can take five loaves and two fishes and feed five thousand people. He is telling us these things not just to give us good stories to pass along, but so that we know he is the God who can provide when we cannot provide, who can touch our sick bodies and heal us when no doctor can figure out what to do, and who can raise us up so that if we breathe our last breath in this life, we can be sure that just as Jesus rose from the dead, we will rise from the dead too. That is not our last day. There is more than what we live in this physical world, and there is hope in the face of even death itself.
He wants you to believe — I want you to believe — that what you have heard about Jesus is true, not only what he did, but what he said, because John also got to listen to his sermons. Jesus said, I am the bread of life; if you are hungry, I can fill you and fill you forevermore. I am the light of the world — is your life in darkness? Jesus is your light. I am the door; if you want to enter into the glory of God, Jesus is the way, and he has opened that way to all who will believe upon him. I am the good shepherd, and he will take care of you and guide you; though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you do not have to fear evil, because Jesus is your good shepherd, and he is with you and will walk with you all the way. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the true vine, and I will give you the fruit of my vine and blessings you cannot find in this world.
He is the eternal God of God who became flesh so that he might die for us. He is the new birth, and through him we might be born again. He is the one who existed before Abraham — before Abraham was, I am. Jesus is the eternal God robed in flesh. He is the one who washes the feet of his disciples, who gives us a new commandment to love one another, who promised the Holy Spirit would be with us and walk with us through this life, and who has prayed over us that we might endure to the end. Everything John records in this book is not a fairy tale, not just a hope, and not something that merely makes us feel a little better on a bad day. These are spiritual realities that should shape our lives and change our lives, and John told us back in chapter twenty that he did not write these things to entertain us — he told us these things so that we might believe Jesus is the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life eternal in his name. You can believe on Jesus.
There Is More to the Story
But here is the best part of the whole thing. In verse twenty-five, John tells us one more thing. He says that all the amazing things Jesus did, all the signs and wonders, all the sermons he has shared with us — people would read that and say, that’s too good to be true. John says it is true, and by the way, he did not give us everything. Verse twenty-five: “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” What is John doing here? He is making a point, and he is leaving this book open-ended on purpose. Notice he does not bring it to a tidy, definite conclusion.
He wants you to realize that out of all the amazing things you have read and learned about in the Gospel of John, this is only a portion of what Jesus did. There were more miracles than the ones recorded, more sermons preached, more claims made, more lives touched. John is telling us he does not have time to tell us everything there is to know about Jesus, but he has given us the best things so that we can be sure he is the Son of God. There is more — there are things about Jesus we will not know until we get into eternity, stories we will not get to hear until we are walking with Jesus in the new creation, and he will give us all the other details we did not get to have in this life. We are going to spend the rest of eternity learning about God and about Jesus, and we will never get all the way there. Jesus did amazing things, and guess what — that is not all. Isn’t that amazing?
So why does that matter for you sitting here this morning? It matters because it means the story does not end where the Gospel of John ends. There is more to Jesus than what we find written on the page, and that is good news, because it means Jesus’s best work was not finished while he lived here on this earth. He is still doing his work. He did more, he will do more, and he is doing more right now. The ultimate implication John is making here is that the same Jesus who walked on water, who fed the five thousand, and who rose up from the dead did not stop there — he is still alive today, still working today, and still just as capable of doing miracles today as he was back then.
And the promise Scripture gives us is that Jesus knows you, loves you, and cares about you, and he cares about what you are going through in your life right now. He worked through the storm, he worked in the absence of resources, and he worked in the face of death itself and in the face of sickness. In fact, it was against the backdrop of all this suffering that Jesus did his greatest miracles, and the promise John is making to us as we close this book is that he is still working in your life today. Whatever pain you brought in this morning, whatever fear, whatever distraction, whatever frustration, whatever it is that has you so quiet this morning — Jesus knows, Jesus cares, and Jesus is busy doing a work in your life that you cannot even see right now.
So, church, believe on Jesus. Believe in the reality of what he did, and trust in the reality of what he can do today. You are not alone. You are loved. You are in good hands, and there are miracles yet to be wrought in your life that your mind has not even imagined.
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