The Purpose Of The Gospel Of John Series

Sermon: The Purpose of the Gospel of John

Series: The Gospel of John Part 1

Slide Introduction

Today we’re kicking off a brand-new message called, ‘The Gospel of John.’ And what we’re going to do over the next several weeks is walk through the Gospel of John.

For those of you that might not know the Gospel of John is one of the four gospels found in the New Testament.

It was written by…anyone want to take a guess? It was written by the Apostle John, the Son of Zebedee. He had a younger brother named James and what’s interesting about John and James is that Jesus actually gave them a nickname.

Jesus called John and James ‘Sons of Thunder.’ And so, anytime I hear that name I always think of the song Thunderstruck by AC/DC

Slide (maybe play brief song intro)

And legend has it that the inspiration for that song actually came when their plane was in the middle of a thunder storm and it was hit by lightning. And so, there is a little fun fact for you.

And so, for a moment I want you to think about thunder, thunder can be loud, right? Thunder can be a little unpredictable, right? You don’t know how loud it will be or the exact moment it will hit. And let’s be honest thunder can be powerful.

And yet this is how Jesus is describing these two brothers. There unpredictable, there a little self-centered, we can see some examples of them being forceful, we’ll see some examples of these guys just losing it and becoming angry.

For some of you, you’re going to realize that you're really not too different from these two brothers.

But here’s the thing, and this is true for us, Jesus saw something in these two men. He saw some potential in them. Jesus understood what they could be. And the same is true for us. Jesus has this ability to see things in us that we could never see. Jesus has the ability to see what we could be.

Matter of fact, these two brothers were a part of the inner three. There was Peter, and then there was John and James. All three of these guys were there at the transfiguration. There was such a closeness with these three and Jesus, that Jesus would refer to John as the disciple that he loved.

Matter of fact, John was the only disciple that wasn’t martyr for his faith.

And what’s really key to all of this is that John wrote this gospel 60 years later after Jesus had been resurrected. And so, this gospel was written around 90 AD and it came from the hand of John.

And the reason why this is important is that this is firsthand information. It’s not from someone, who heard it from someone, who heard it from someone, and so we better write this down.

No, these are creditable facts coming right from John who had spent three years doing ministry with Jesus. John had seen the crowds, he had witnessed the healings and miracles, he heard the words of Jesus as he taught, and John was present when Jesus was crucified and raised back to life.

And so, John saw all of this first hand and decided to write it down so that those that had never seen Jesus could have the opportunity to believe in Him. John wrote this amazing, life changing book so that we as believers could go deeper in our relationship. John wrote this book so that unbelieving people could have the opportunity to put their trust in Jesus.

Matter of fact, look at what John states right here, look at the purpose of John’s gospel…

Slide Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.

Now why in the world are they not recorded? Because later on John is going to tell us that if everything had been written down there wouldn’t be enough room or enough books to hold it all.

Slide But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John 20:30-31 (NIV)

And so, we can basically summarize the whole entire gospel with one word, ‘believe.’

John is basically saying to his reader, ‘Hey, I didn’t include everything, I didn’t have the time or resources to include everything, but I’ve included these few things so that you might believe.’

John selected certain stories, certain miracles, certain conversations so that you and I could believe.

And in our world today, that word ‘believe or belief,’ has almost become this spiritual buzzword. A lot of times you’ll hear people say, ‘It doesn’t matter what you believe, you just need to believe, right?’ We hear this all the time. ‘It doesn’t matter who you believe in, you just need you to believe in something.’