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Pastor Tim shares a message from John 20:30-31 to close out “Closed Doors” by reflecting on how the signs contained in the Scriptures are for us and how we are a sign to others.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Good evening and welcome to Steadfast. We’re concluding our series tonight, Closed Doors, with one more look at John chapter 20. I’m so excited to share it with you. I think it will be an encouragement to us. And so let’s go ahead and come before God in prayer, and then we will dig in. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your goodness and for your love. Thank you for how you have placed signs throughout all the ages to point to you that we might know you and be able to love you and be restored to life through you. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
So this week’s been a little disorienting, I think, for most of us. It’s been a disorienting year, but it’s been a disorienting week because here we are. We’re in the middle of May now, and I don’t know about you, but I thought yesterday was downright chilly. We had beautiful summer-like weather earlier in the week, and then it was cold. Today, I really wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. And why does that even strike us?
It strikes us because the weather is a sign. It tells us where we are, what season we’re in. And we’re used to it acting a certain way. We’re used to, when we get to the middle of May, that it should be warm, and it should keep getting warmer and warmer until it gets downright hot in a few weeks. But this year isn’t quite normal, and it disorients us, and we don’t know what’s true. We don’t know. I walk outside, and I think it’s going to snow, and in fact, it did snow last week in a few places that normally don’t get snow. It’s weird for us because we depend on signs.
And we’re going to look at John chapter 20 once more. We’re going to look at just the very last few verses, verses 30 and 31. And as we do that, we’re going to look at how Jesus gives us signs. Because as disorienting as it is if we don’t know what the weather is doing, how much more disorienting is it if we don’t know what’s ultimately true in this world, in this universe? So let’s go ahead and dig in by going to verse 30.
We read these words there: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that by believing you may have life in his name.”
So we find these words here and I think probably oftentimes we’ve read the story, we’ve gone through the death and then the resurrection and Jesus’ appearance to the disciples and we kind of just speed right on over these last few words. But we don’t want to. Why? Because it speaks exactly to what God is doing for us.
We’ll see some of these words at the very end of the Gospel of John in the next chapter. “Now there are many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
We see in here this focus on gathering the signs of what Jesus did, and we saw some of them over the last few weeks in this series. We saw the fearful disciples, fearful of men and of God. We saw Doubting Thomas and his desire to be able to feel Jesus’ hand in his side. We thought about how Jesus took those men, those fearful men, those doubting men, and gave them the Holy Spirit so that they could go proclaim the Gospel. And we talked about how that leads to how God equips us as well.
And the very text here that we’re reading, these very signs we see of what Jesus did for the disciples, you may think, well, that’s really nice. It sure would be nice if Jesus would give me a sign today. What do we find here? So important that we not miss what’s in verses 30 and 31. Because Jesus did these things not just for them, but we’re reminded tonight for us as well.
Think about all the things that we read about in the Gospels that Jesus did from being willing to meet Nicodemus in the middle of the night because Nicodemus was too embarrassed, Zacchaeus, who was up in a tree and Jesus paid attention to him as he was the short man up in a tree trying to get Jesus’ attention. The man, the paralytic, who was placed down through the roof, all these different people that Jesus took the time for, and he did it for them.
But the remarkable thing we see in these verses is that this isn’t something that he used to do for people and doesn’t do for us. When he did it for them, he was doing it for us. That’s what we see in verse 31. Let’s just read it one more time so we don’t miss this. “That these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that by believing you may have life in his name.”
That you may have life in his name, that I may have life in his name. These signs weren’t merely where Jesus cared more about that paralytic or the disciples or anyone else that he encountered in the Gospels than he does about us. Rather, he was doing it so that we could look back and see all these eyewitnesses, all these people who had encountered Jesus and were given hope, so that as we see them, we might be given hope too.
Why do we tell stories? Why do we reflect on the past? We do to be reminded of what’s true, just like signs. In some sense, stories are signs.
My mom and I, yesterday on Mother’s Day, were watching a friend preach. As he was preaching, he mentioned eating raw flour and how awful that would be. My mom looked at me, because while that seemed amusing in itself, it was a bit more of a story for us. You see, when I was little, I used to try to cook for her. What did I do to cook for her? I’d take some water. I knew that you put flour in things to cook it, so I’d dump some flour and I made some salt and pepper and just various other things into it, and then I’d hand her the glass. I can’t imagine how she managed to drink that, but she would always drink my concoction that I had cooked for her.
At the time, it may not have even struck me all that much, because I had cooked something for her, and here she was enjoying it. Looking back, what does it remind me of? It reminds me of how much my mom loves me because she was drinking flour water with salt and pepper and all kinds of awful stuff in it. Why? Because she loved me, and she loves me, and so she wanted to do that for me. She wanted to give me that sign that she cared.
Oftentimes, those signs that come in stories, we don’t even fully understand them in the moment. It might make us happy in the moment or encouraged in the moment, but we often reflect even more as we understand later on the fullness of that story. That’s a sign.
If you think about it, in some sense, as we read the Gospels, we read our family story, the family of God. It’s the same thing, because as we’re reading it, the disciples understood a part of it. They understood, for example, when Jesus appeared to them, that he cared about them, but they didn’t know about you or me. They knew that Jesus cared about them, but as we read it and we’re told here that Jesus did these things that we might believe, we’re told, wait a second, he wasn’t doing this purely just for them. He cared about them. He loved them. He was showing his love to them.
But why did he do it? As he was appearing to Doubting Thomas, he wasn’t doing it just for Thomas. He was doing it for me and for you, that we could come to this text. We could read these stories and be reminded of how Jesus went through these horrible things, distasteful things, terrible. He died for us. Why did he do that? We might be brought to life. Jesus loved the disciples, but it doesn’t end there. It’s for all of us who are in our own closed doors in life, too.
You see, as Jesus acted in that locked-up room to help those scared disciples, he had all eternity in view. He had us and people we can’t even imagine yet in view because he cared about them, too. The bottom line is that all of us need Jesus so that we can have life. Jesus knows that, and as he spoke these words to them, he was doing it for us.
I don’t know about you, but when that occurred to me, when I really stopped and started to wrestle with that word “you,” that you may believe that these signs were written for that purpose so these things happened and were recorded, not just for the distant past, but for right now, it struck me because I think all of us do. We wish for those times that God would do miracles like this today, and when we don’t typically see them, it makes us feel distant. And yet those miracles were done for us.
At different times in life, I think we have a greater or lesser sense of how the actions that we’re taking have impact on the world. Many students graduated over the past week or two in a very different way. They didn’t have the normal ceremonies and so on, although there have been all kinds of attempts to come up with alternative ceremonies, whether it’s parades or the principal going by people’s houses or all these different stories, these heartwarming stories we’ve heard.
And as these things happen, I would imagine many of those graduates, like so many before them, like most of us probably at some point thought, okay, I’ve achieved this and now I can go and I can change the world. What happens? Well, a few years go by, we start to lose that hope. We see the world staying the same. We start to say, well, I can’t really have much of an impact, it seems futile, what can we do?
This passage calls us to see something bigger than we normally see. In our normal everyday lives, we go in day in and day out and oftentimes don’t really see that much impact happening. We see these closed-door men, these men who bolted the door shut out of fear, who were transformed, and we know the rest of the New Testament, the very fact that we know these stories testifies to the fact that the Spirit came upon them and transformed them.
Here in this passage, we’re told the reason why. Many more, including us, would know. And we look at that and we see how God’s plan spans far more time than we could ever imagine. When we’re looking at something just like them, it had to feel incredibly significant in the moment when the resurrected Lord of the universe appeared to them. It probably felt like the most significant of all moments, and yet, to Jesus, it was just a part of the significant working of saving all of his people, the people who hadn’t even been born yet, in countries that hadn’t even been named yet, had come to know him.
As we reflect on how all these pieces are woven together into the story that’s significant to God, we’re reminded that this is what we’re invited to take part in. Even if we feel like we can’t do very much and we have become discouraged, that equipping we talked about last week, that we too receive the Holy Spirit, is because God sees us as part of that significant story that he’s placed us in.
Which doors are we hiding behind that he’s calling us out of, even tonight? Which places have we bolted our lives shut because we’re convinced that we can’t have an impact? That either because of our own failures preventing us from doing so, or circumstances in life, that things just aren’t going to work out, and just like those disciples, we’re in those closed doors. We say to ourselves, but Jesus appeared to them.
That’s why these words are here, to remind us that Jesus appeared to them, us too. So that when we’re feeling fearful like they were, or doubting like they were, we’re reminded that we’re just as significant in Jesus’s story. God opens our doors. He—we can’t do it. We can’t do it. But we’re told later in the New Testament how God opens our doors too, and enables us to take part in that story.
In Galatians chapter 5, let’s go ahead and turn there. We read these words, Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
When we think about these things that are described here, this is the key to how God takes us out of our own closed doors, and our own inability to do anything that seems truly significant in the scope of eternity. He uses us for significance.
Because if you think about those things—peace and patience and kindness and goodness and joy, self-control— all these things, they’re not just fruit of the Spirit that we memorize. They’re the way that Jesus enables us to show his love to others.
I was having a conversation this week with another friend and my mom. We were on Facebook talking about an old hymn, “That They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love.” It so beautifully encapsulates the truth of Scripture. And what it talks about through the whole hymn is all the ways that we as we’re united as Christians, and we love each other as Christians, and we love the world as Christians, that people will know that we are testifying to Jesus.
It looks back to John chapter 13, verse 35: “By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
What does this have to do with what we’re talking about? What does this have to do with what we’re talking about? It has everything to do with it.
Because here’s what became significant in the lives of the disciples because of the occurrences behind those closed doors. Jesus gave them the Spirit and he sent them out and he continued to work with them, taking these men who were just as selfish and self-centered as we are. He took them and he enabled them to give their lives for the testimony of the gospel. They would go and give everything that more people might know the truth of the gospel. And that they exemplified those fruits of the Spirit that we get to exemplify too because the Holy Spirit is in us and not just them.
Every one of us, as the Spirit works in us, can show those things. What do those efforts that we feel like we can’t really accomplish anything with, how do they change when we start to have the eternal perspective of Jesus? Well, what we realize is that the very first sign that people often see of who Jesus is, is how we treat them. When we show the fruit of the Spirit, we’re showing something that doesn’t make sense in this world because so often it doesn’t make sense to be joyful. So often it doesn’t make sense to be peaceful. So often it doesn’t make sense not to be focused on myself and what gets me ahead because if there’s nothing else, why not just try to make myself happy?
When the world sees that we don’t play by those rules, that because we know that Jesus has redeemed us, that the story from 2,000 years ago occurred not just for people 2,000 years ago, but for you and for me. And that God wasn’t surprised that we exist, that he knew us then.
It starts to call us to have a different perspective. And as we think about the Gospels and how they show sign after sign after sign, fulfillment of prophecy, for example, that Jesus was the Messiah. We’ve been looking in men’s Bible study at Isaiah 52 and 53, 800 years before Jesus’s life. And when we think about all those years before the Incarnation, all the prophecies that pointed to Jesus so that when he finally was there, when the Messiah was before them, they could look and see it fulfilled. They could see those signs.
So too, those signs occur today in a different way. As God works in us and as we love others, we show the signs of the Gospels. And as we love others, we show the signs of his existence and his continued working to the others around us.
It’s a very tall order, and thankfully it’s not on us. Yes, we’re called to seek after the Spirit to work out our salvation, as it says, with fear and trembling, but not in the sense of saving ourselves and not in the sense of making ourselves better in our own power. Rather, time after time, Scripture points us to the truth that we see in this passage, that Jesus comes to us.
And as he restores us, as he brings us the life that the Gospel writer refers to here, that fruit is going to start emerging in our lives. And as we see it emerge, and as we see the eternal perspective, we can start to have hope that yes, we are actually having an impact because God is equipping us, as we talked about last week, but not just equipping us generically, he’s equipping us to show the signs of his promises.
That as we go out into this world and people see us, they see us drinking flour water. And as they do, they say, that doesn’t make any sense. But it does, because we have an eternal perspective.
We are the sign, the first sign that so many people are going to see about who Jesus is. And so we need to ask the questions the disciples surely asked. How do I show that sign? How do I show Jesus’s love to the world?
And if you think about those fruits of the Spirit we talked about, that’s a great starting point. It’s so contrary to everything in the world. But as people see us do that, and they see us loving Jesus in concert, so they see us being kind and compassionate, they also know that we love Jesus. They start to see the link together there, just as people weren’t just healed without a connection to anything in the Gospels, but rather they heard the Gospel proclaimed in their midst.
So too, as we show Jesus’s love, we also proclaim him. And as those two things come together, a sign comes into the world even today, that more people might have their doors also open.
One way to show kindness is to pray for people. And that’s why I shared last night, and I’ll talk more in a moment, we’re having a prayer walk. And we’ll get to that in just a second. But when you think about it, when we take time to pray for people, when we don’t just say we’re going to pray, but we actually do, what kind of impact do we have in people’s lives?
So many people will be surprised if a week later you come back and say, I’ve been praying for you. How is such and such going? It’s a little way we can show a sign that we actually are testifying to the risen Lord.
Because everyone’s so busy with their own things, it’s easy to forget. We all do it. I do it. And I must want to. But when we prayerfully come before God and ask him to use us, and we seek to use our lives in the best, fullest way possible, to focus on showing his love, what does he do? He continues to bring about that fruit.
And others see the signs that they might believe in his name and have life, just as the Gospel of John says.
All of us are going to go back and forth in life. There are going to be times we want to slam those doors shut and just try to protect ourselves. And there are going to be times where we want to throw them open and testify who God is. But if we keep turning to him and we recognize, just like the disciples couldn’t do it on their own, that we can’t, but as Jesus works in us, that he is using us for significance and purpose, that his glory might be proclaimed, and that more might have eternal life in his name.
We see amazing things happen. And that’s what’s so amazing about what happened in a little room with some closed doors.
Thank you for joining me as we’ve dug into the Gospel of John. Let’s go ahead and pray before our God who opens our doors.
Lord, we thank you for your goodness and your love. We thank you that whatever doors we might have closed, whatever doors might get in the way of us sharing your hope, that while we might time and again fail, we know that your Spirit is working in us. That for all who believe, all who trust, all who have eternal life, that you are working. We can believe even tonight and we will start working.
Wherever we might be on that journey of following you, that you are using us, that we might not see it, and yet we see that you are working in an eternal picture far more wonderful than anything we could imagine. Anything those disciples could imagine, anything the generations afterwards could imagine, anything greater than, anything like what we could imagine, because we know that you are continuing to pull all things together that more might believe in Jesus and have eternal life.
Thank you for your goodness and your love. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, next week we are going to begin a new series and we’re going to take a little bit of a shift. We’re going to go back to the Old Testament. So we’ve been thinking here about the signs that testified to who Jesus is, how the disciples saw them, and how we see them.
Sometimes we go to the Old Testament and we’re confused. How does this testify to who God is? And we may open up the book of Proverbs and find it very encouraging, and yet we also think, but how do those Proverbs work? How do they fit into my life? Because it doesn’t seem like things always work out that way. And then we start to think, well, is this a sign that seems to actually testify against how God is working rather than towards how he’s working?
Well, we’re going to deal with that next week and the following weeks after that. We’re going to go into a new series called Proverbially Speaking and look at some favorite Proverbs and some that make us scratch our heads a little bit and understand a little bit more about how God is working. And through that, continue to see the signs he has left us, know that he is there with us even today.
Also, we have our Men’s Bible Study, and I hope that if you are available on Thursday night at 7 p.m., you would join us for that. So again, the Men’s Bible Study is 7 p.m. this Thursday, and Steadfast is again next week at 7 p.m. on Monday.
But in between there, all day on Thursday, we are going to have a virtual prayer walk. And I shared about this the other night, but if you missed it, just briefly, what’s a virtual prayer walk? We are going to have a live stream all day that’s going to go through slides with pictures and prayer requests from different parts of our community, so we can lift up our community in prayer.
We planned a physical prayer walk earlier this spring that had to be canceled due to the virus. But we’re going to try to have an even bigger, better prayer walk, because what do we know when we believe in the signs that we see in the Word of God? We believe that he is working. We believe that he hears and answers prayer just as he’s promised.
And so I believe this is going to be an amazing day, and I hope from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. you’ll tune in whenever you can. It’ll be rotating throughout the day, so you can just come when you have a few minutes. You can leave a prayer request in the midst of the stream. And we’ll also have some wonderful devotional messages coming.
We have pastors from different local churches, including Bible Baptist and Harvested Christian and Trinity Episcopal. We also have the coach of the Lindenwood Lions football team that’s going to be giving a devotion, and a number of other special guests. It’s going to be a wonderful time. And so I hope that you’ll tune in throughout the day, that you’ll spread the Word, and that we’ll spend the day on Thursday praying.
Again, it’s a way that we show Jesus’ love. And through that, I believe God is going to do amazing things.
You can stay up to date on all kinds of events like this by following us on social media, on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And by doing so, you’ll see the announcements. I also ask, would you please share things that you see on there that you think would be helpful to those that you know, either in person or on social media?
Another way that we testify to Jesus’ goodness, remember we show kindness, but we also testify that we believe in Him and we follow Him. So if you see something that we post that encourages you with a scripture passage, it’s a great way to share that and encourage others and say, this is why I have hope. This is why I have joy.
Or if we’re having an event like this prayer walk, maybe someone actually is desperately needing people to pray for him or her. You share it, and they go on and they ask for prayer and they get prayed for, and they see Jesus’ love through it. There’s all kinds of amazing ways God can work through that. So please do follow our social media and share it and use it as a tool for showing Jesus’ love.
Finally, if I can be praying for you throughout this week, if there’s something you’d like included in our virtual prayer walk, or if you’d like our whole team to be praying for you, you can email me at tim@littlehills.church. That’s tim@littlehills.church. I would be delighted to pray for you. And if you give me permission, I know our team would as well.
Well, it’s been a joy as always to be with you tonight. I hope that this was encouraging to you as we looked at how these signs that we read about are for you and for me as well. And I hope you’ll come back next week as we go into Proverbially Speaking. It’s going to be so much fun. It’s going to be encouraging, and I would love to continue to share digging into God’s word with you.
In the meantime, I hope you have a blessed week, and I hope I see you on Thursday.