Signs

Date: September 20, 2020

Series: The Journey

Title: The Reason for “Signs”

Text: John 20:30-31

Read text:

John 20:30–31 NKJV

And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

Do you remember the movie, Back to the Future. In case you weren’t around in the 1980’s, which is probably a lot of you, this mad scientist creates this time travel machine that operates that is incorporated into a Lambergini. In the movie, you can just set the dial to any moment in history or in the future and travel there. The movie plot follows the characters to various times in the future and in history. I recently saw this picture that captured how many of us feel about this year in history.

PIC - Back to the future - SHOW PICTURE – Never set it to 2020.

And that was true of our time even before we experienced the joys of Covid or the unrest of our culture. Back on March 4th of this year, George Barna reported that:

· That the percentage of practicing Christians (defined as those who strongly agree that faith is very important to their lives and who have attended church in the past month) has been cut in half since 2000. Then, 45% were practicing Christians; now only 25% are.

· Where did these practicing Christians go? Well, half of them fell away from consistent faith engagement, while the other half turned away from Christianity altogether become atheist, agnostic or “nones.”

Of course, pastors like me are distressed by these statistics. We want to ask why this is so? Why is it that the number of those who seem to have no interest in a relationship with God is growing over time? Well, there are many reasons, I am sure, but I just have to believe that this phenomenon is the natural outgrowth of a philosophical commitment on the part of the academic community to deny the spiritual dimension of life. Decades of sowing the seeds of atheistic materialism are bearing fruit in the hearts of many who are increasingly disconnected from God. They are left to face the pain of life and the horror of death all alone.

What a tragedy! As a follower of Christ who has found in Him the greatest joy I have ever experienced, it breaks my heart. But while this trend is distressing it is not surprising and it is not new. Since Adam and Eve sewed their own clothes out of fig leaves, man has sought to hide from God. In our sinfulness, knowing the real God is just too painful. We may construct an idol to worship or embrace some addiction to dull our emptiness, but we will not seek the real God. No, if God is going to have a relationship with us, He has to take the initiative. He has to intervene in our lives. If God is going to speak into our hearts, He has to step into our lives.

Which just brings me to today’s message. We’ve been on this journey through Scripture together and we have come to the book of John. In my D-group when we were going through this book, we were all commenting on how powerful the message of John is. Throughout the book John talks about the miracles Jesus performed that were intended to be a “sign” of Who He was.

BACKGROUND

Now here’s the thing we have to realize. Just because we may have more encyclopedic knowledge of how the world works than did Jesus’s listeners in the first century, that does not mean that they were more prone to hear Him. Quite the contrary! John 1:11 tells us that Jesus came to His own, but His own didn’t receive Him. Why not? Because they suffered from the same sickness you and I suffer from. They were sinners. On their own they would never believe and they would never seek Him. Jesus knew that, if He was going to speak into their hearts, He was going to have to step into their lives. He was going to have to intervene. He would have to show them Who He was. He would have to give them Signs of Life.

NEED

Which is why I want to ask you to listen this morning. Maybe you’ve come here today in need of being convinced. You know you need help but you don’t know if God is the answer you need or not. All you know is that you need something. There is an emptiness on the inside of you that is growing every day and it has gotten to the point that you know you’ve got to do something about it. I’ve got good news: the fact that God has given us a gospel like John’s tells me that He is in the business of convincing people like you and me. Listen!

And maybe you’ve come here today in need of being encouraged. The onslaught of one “expert” after another has battered your faith, or maybe you’ve lost your sense of God’s greatness and power in the substitutes this world offers. God wants to step into your life all over again. Listen!

So let’s begin: In the first place, when I say that God “steps into our lives,” I mean that God has a way of miraculously intervening in our lives to create the faith that we need to trust Him. Now, as soon as I say the “m-word”—you know, “Miracle,”—some people roll their eyes. “Signs” may be something that John believed in, but it is just a little too “first-century” for them. So, at the beginning of this series, we need to face this objection head-on. How can I really expect someone like you—a good looking person with a college education, a generous I.Q., and a headful of sense—how can I possibly expect someone like you to believe that there is a God who has actually thought enough of the billions of people on this tiny planet to intervene here and reveal Himself through “signs?” Why should you believe in miracles. Why should you even be open to “signs of life?”

Well, I’d like to try to answer that question this morning with two clear reasons. The first one is this: You can believe in miracles because of their:

You can believe in miracle because of their possibility.

D1 POSSIBILITY.

EXP

What I mean when I say that you can believe in miracles because of their possibility is that, whether Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins agree, I think a strong case can be made for the possibility of miracles. Now the reason I say that is because of how miracles are defined.

Webster defines “miracle” as an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs. There are two words in that definition which get at the heart of what a miracle is. They are: divine intervention. It is this divine intervention that actually makes a miracle a miracle. But God is not just showing off His unlimited power whenever He slices the fabric of this natural universe to show who us Who He is. He has a purpose: He wants to show us Who He is.

In preparing for this message I read a lot from the book Miracles by Eric Metaxas. In fact, some of the material I am presenting was taken from that book. Metaxas says that a loarge part of performing a miracle has to do with communicating with people who are observing or experiencing the miracle. He says, So we can ask, if a miracle happens in the woods and there’s no one around to see it, is it a miracle. To put it yet another way, why would God perform a miracle if no one realized he had done it.

God’s purpose in miracles is to communicate with us in some way. This is why the gospel of John calls them “signs:” they are signs that point to Who God is. Again, Metaxas says, Miracles are signs, and like all signs, they are never about themselves; they’re about whatever they are pointing toward. Miracles point to something beyond themselves . . . To God Himself.

But once I know what it is, I must know IF it is. Do miracles really happen? Many academics and scientists would say know. In a 2013 article in The New Yorker magazine about faith and belief, Adam Gopnik wrote the following:

We know that . . . in the billions of years of the universe’s existence, there is no evidence of a single miraculous intercession [sic] with the laws of nature.

Carl Sagan, the astronomer glumly said: The Cosmos is all there is and all there will ever be. In other words, all we can ever hope for is a material universe that is it’s own god and which, in some freak of nature, created itself. There is no benevolent God Who has intervened in our affairs to bring us to faith in Himself. Such thoughts are extravagances of faith that have no basis in reality and should be rejected by those who want to be taken seriously in the academy.

But I still believe that miracles are possible. You see if materialists like Sagan and Gopnik reject my position because they say it requires too much faith, I must reject their position because it requires much, much more! To say that our earth exists without any intelligent design is to make a faith statement of gigantic proportions. Why do I say that?

Well, I say that because of the miracles that define every day of your life. Did you know that just the fact that you are here breathing today is a miracle? By any measure the fact that man exists on earth is a miracle. You say how can you say that, Rusty?

Well, back in the 1960’s there was a lot of speculation about the possibility of there being life on other planets. The thinking went something like this. If life evolved on earth, why couldn’t it have evolved in other places. At that time it was thought that there were basically only 2 criteria that had to exist in order for life to be present: The planet would have to be located near to the right kind of star and the planet would have to be the right distance from that star. Based on this, Carl Sagan estimated that 1 out of every 10,000 stars would have a planet like the earth that could support life. Given the vast number of stars and galaxies, there would have been a vast number of planets capable of supporting life. The scientists were so confident that they established SETI: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

PIC - UNIVERSE

But after more investigation, scientists began to realize that the earth was really unique. They began to see that, in fact, this planet was so “fine-tuned” to support life that it was statistical impossibility for it to happen unless it were designed that way. Need proof?

PIC - EARTH

Well, consider just three of the some 150 characteristics that make this planet uniquely suited for life: Consider the size of our planet. The earth is the perfect size to support life. It is the mass of a planet that determines it’s gravity. If the earth were only slightly larger, the gravity would have been strong enough to keep methane and ammonia close to the surface making our breathing impossible. Methane and ammonia of molecular weights of 16 and 17.

However, if the earth were only slightly smaller, the gravity would be less. In that case, water vapor, which has a molecular weight of 18 and is also necessary for life, would not be held close to the surface and would dissipate into the atmosphere. The earth is the perfect size to sustain life.

And just consider the rotation of the earth. A slower rotation would bring much more severe temperature swings. Days would be so hot that you would literally cook like your Sunday morning pot roast. Nights would be so cold that you would freeze. On the other hand, a faster rotation would bring winds that would be impossible to survive. For instance, Jupiter routinely has winds of 1000 mph!

And speaking of Jupiter, just consider the earth’s strategic proximity to that massive planet. Jupiter has 318 times the mass of the earth so it creates 318 times the gravity. Jupiter literally acts like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up all the meteors and other space debris which otherwise would make a catastrophic impact with our planet.

Now those are only three of the 150 characteristics of fine tuning that make the earth unique, and by the way, the number of those characteristics keeps rising. In the 60’s when there were only two such characteristics, it was thought that 1 out of every 10,000 stars would have a planet capable of life. But as the number of fine tuning characteristics have risen the number of potential stars have shrunk to less than zero. As a matter of fact, now only 1 out of every 10 to the 73rd power stars could support life. That’s a 1 with seventy-three zeroes behind it. But get a load of this: There are only about 10 to the 23rd power such stars in the KNOWN UNIVERSE! You see, just the fact that you are sitting here today sleeping through this message is a miracle!!! I tell you miracles ARE POSSIBLE because YOU ARE ONE!

ILL

And, by the way, it’s not just preachers who are saying so! Even philosophers and scientists are beginning to admit that godless materialism will not work.

PIC - ANTHONY FLEW

When I was in seminary in 1998, I heard his name for the first time, and I wasn’t impressed. His name was Anthony Flew. He was an atheistic philosopher who arrogantly said that any argument about the existence of God had to begin with the presumption that He did not exist.

And Flew was no fly-by-night internet blogger. In fact, for more than half a century, he was the most noted atheist in the world. But then came the shock. Six years after I first heard of him in 2004, he publically announced that he had changed his mind and now professed faith in God

In his book There Is a God, Flew reflects on an argument regarding the probability of human origin that he had to deal with in his younger days. The argument runs like this: given enough time and chance, life on planet earth could have just happened without God's design. Researchers tried to provide an example of this "time + chance = life" theory with a well-known experiment that posed the following question: How long would it take for an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters to compose a sonnet by Shakespeare? (Believe it or not, this argument was based on an experiment conducted by the British National Council of the Arts.)

Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias offered the following summary of the experiment:

PIC - MONKEY TYPING

A computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys, and after one month of hammering away at the keys … the monkeys produced fifty typed pages—but not one single word. This is amazing, considering that the shortest word in English could be a one-letter word such as the letter a or I. But a one-letter word is only a word if there is a space on either side of it.

Flew points out that if one considers that there are thirty keys on a keyboard, the possibility of getting a one-letter word is one in 30 x 30 x 20, which is one in 27,000. If these attempts could not even result in one one-letter word, what is the possibility of getting just the first line of one of Shakespeare's sonnets, let alone a whole sonnet?

For Flew, the entire universe (which of course is infinitely more complex than a Shakespearian sonnet) couldn't have just happened. You will never get a sonnet—or the entire works of Shakespeare, or the entire universe, for that matter—by just allowing enough time + chance. And yet, Flew (quoting a contemporary scientist) said, "Some people still contend that the monkeys can do it every time."

TRANS

You know the saddest thing about all of that, however? As far as we know, Flew’s conversion to theism never brought him to Christ. He found some logical answers to some questions and accepted that God existed, but he never completed the loop. His questions never found the ultimate answer. Why not?

Because just believing the miraculous . . . That God has really intervened in this material universe . . . doesn’t tell you WHY God did that or WHO the God was that did that.

To really get what this miracle thing is all about, you must go beyond the possibility of miracles. You must also believe in them because of their:

You can believe in miracles because of their purpose.

D2 - PURPOSE

Now we said at the beginning that God intervenes in the natural order of things to communicate with us . . . to help us to KNOW Him. Let’s see how that works.

Sources of knowledge: experience.

Basically there are four ways of knowing anything or anyone. First, there is experience. This is the realm of science. If you can touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it or see it, then you can know it. So scientists take us to the lab and conduct sensory experiments that yield data upon which they claim knowledge. It’s the realm of experience.

Sources of knowledge: reason.

But there are more than scientists in the world—there are also mathematicians. Mathematicians (and philosophers, etc.) use the realm of reason. They work with abstract ideas that you may not be able to touch or see, but which, using logic, they can deduce. They claim knowledge based on deduction. They operate in the realm of reason.

Both of these ways of knowing will tell you a lot about the existence of the world but little about it’s origin. They will describe you to yourself, but they cannot explain you to yourself. They can tell you the what, but they cannot tell you the why. They cannot tell you why you are here. They cannot tell you why you exist or where you are going when you die. Reason and experience are good teachers but they just don’t answer the why questions. How, then, do we find those answers?

Sources of knowledge: Revelation

You find them through revelation. Generally the earth and all that is around us reveal that there is someone behind the something. We just spoke about how fine-tuned this world is. The Bible says that The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork; Day unto day utters speech and night unto night reveals knowledge. The universe is shouting God’s glory and that is enough to even convince atheists like Anthony Flew that there has to be a God, but still the knowledge is inadequate. We know that we exist and we even know that someone had to create us. What we still don’t know is why.

Sources of knowledge: Special revelation.

For that, we have not general, but special revelation. If cannot, with the force of my will and the strength of my wit, convince you of Who Jesus is. It takes the Holy Spirit speaking through the Word of God to do that. Paul said it like this: Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. You need SPECIAL revelation.

I love what Charles Spurgeon, a great preacher from the 1800’s, said about the Bible. In a day when attacks against the truth and authority of Scripture were just beginning, many were stepping to the defense of the truth of Scripture. In that environment, Spurgeon said:

There seems to me to have been twice as much done in some ages in defending the Bible as in expounding it, but if the whole of our strength shall henceforth go to the exposition and spreading of it, we may leave it pretty much to defend itself. I do not know whether you see that lion— it is very distinctly before my eyes; a number of persons advance to attack him, while a host of us would defend [him]. . . . Pardon me if I offer a quiet suggestion. Open the door and let the lion out; he will take care of himself. Why, they are gone! He no sooner goes forth in his strength than his assailants flee. The way to meet infidelity is to spread the Bible. The answer to every objection against the Bible is the Bible.

So, this morning, I want to let the lion out! I want us to let the lion of God’s word loose. I want to meet unbelief with God’s word. Whether you’ve been a believer for many years, or whether you do not yet believe, I want to encourage you to come face to face with God’s word found in the Gospel of John. Perhaps you have just read some of it in our Journey through Scripture. I want to challenge you to go back and read it again.

Maybe you’re here and you are not a believer, but you are curious. I want to challenge you to go and read the book of John carefully and with an open mind and an open heart. You say, “Why, Rusty, Why is this book so important?” I think it’s important because it’s purpose is so clearly stated. You find that purpose in John 20:30-31. There it says:

John 20:30–31 NKJV

And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

There you have it: John writes about Jesus and His many signs for one purpose: So that you might believe and he offers three different kinds of evidence to encourage you to believe:

Jesus offers plentiful evidence.

He offers PLENTIFUL evidence. V30 begins, And truly Jesus did MANY OTHER SIGNS IN THE PRESENCE OF THIS DISCIPLES WHICH ARE NOT WRITTEN IN THIS BOOK. In other words, there’s more where this came from. In fact, in the next chapter, he says that there were so many miracles that Jesus did that if he was to write them all down, the world could not contain all the books that could be written. He offers plentiful evidence . . .

Jesus offers public evidence.

And he offers PUBLIC evidence. He says again in 20:30 And truly Jesus did many other signs IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS DISCIPLES. That’s a significant statement. He didn’t do a miracle in a corner over here and then come back and brag about it. He did it right in front of His disciples and everything He did was so convincing that most of those men went to their death for Him. It was public evidence . . .

Jesus offers powerful evidence.

And it is also POWERFUL evidence. From the beginning of his book, John offers witness after witness and miracle after miracle that powerfully proclaims Jesus to be God’s Son.

· In chapter one John the Baptist proclaims Him to be the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.

· In chapter two, Mary, Jesus’s own mother, after she asks for His miraculous help, tells the caterers at the wedding: “Whatever He tells you to do, do it!”

· In chapter three, Nicodemus, a religious ruler proclaims Jesus to be a “man sent from God, for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

· In chapter four, the Samaritan woman tells the men of her town, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

· Also in chapter four, the Nobleman, after Jesus heals his son, believes in Jesus along with his whole house.

· In chapter eleven, Lazarus is raised from the dead, the Bible says that many people believe in Jesus to the point that the Pharisees get together and say, “What shall we do? For this Man works many signs. 48 If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him,”

· And finally in chapter 20, Jesus Himself rises from the dead, putting God’s great exclamation point on every miracle He had performed and on every message He had delivered.

And every miracle, every sign is pointing somewhere. It is pointing you to Christ and shouting to you “Believe in Him!” You see it right here in v31.

John 20:31 NKJV

but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

It says, these things are written that you may believe. Believe what? Believe that Jesus is the Son of God. But be careful here. It is sometimes easy in our culture here in the Bible belt to misunderstand what it means to believe in Christ—to mentally assent to the facts about Jesus without actually connecting with Him and becoming His follower. That’s why that last phrase is so important. It says, and that believing, you may have LIFE in His name. There you go! It’s all about LIFE Change. When I believe Him . . . when I trust Him and become His disciple, He comes into my life and brings great change! That’s the purpose of His miracles.

APP

Let me draw it all together with four brief statements. Here are the take-aways this morning:

You must believe enough to trust.

First: You must believe enough to TRUST. There were plenty of people in the gospel of John who followed Jesus for a while, but they never committed their lives to Him in complete. Undoubtedly, some of the very people who sang hosanna to Him when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey in chapter 12 were some of the same people who cried “Crucify him” in chapter 19. You must do more than mentally assent to Christ, you must trust Him. You must believe enough to trust . . .

You must trust enough to change.

And second, you must trust enough to change. That means Jesus never did miracles to just make someone comfortable. He was seeking to create the kind of faith that would produce a change of heart. If all you pray for is for God to do the things in your life that make you comfortable, you are totally missing the purpose of Christ’s signs. His signs are not about comfort; they are about life change. You must believe enough to trust and you must trust enough to change, and then . . .

You must change enough to follow.

Third: You must change enough to follow. Some people came to Jesus thinking that they were ready to change, but they weren’t ready to follow. One guy who came to Jesus was called to follow and then said, “First let me go say goodbye to my friends and family.” Jesus said, basically, “You’re not ready. You haven’t been willing to change your priorities and follow me. You must change enough to follow and finally . . .

You must follow enough to forsake all.

Fourth: You must follow enough to forsake all. I firmly believe that this is the problem with today’s American Christianity. The reason so many are lukewarm and indifferent to their Christianity is because they’ve never been so captured by Who Jesus is and what Jesus did, to totally forsake all and follow Him. Ultimately, this is where the signs . . . the miracles of Jesus point us: To full and complete surrender.