Utumishi Blog

A few tips on preaching the Gospel According to John:

• Preach in line with the purpose of the book. You wouldn’t take an electricity bill to a song contest and sing it or take a maths textbook to bed with you for a bit of escapist light reading before you fall asleep – that’s not their purpose. The purpose of John is in John 20:30-31 – an electric moment where the narrator gets in front of the camera and looks straight into the lens at you sitting there and tells you exactly why he’s written these things. LOOK –> LEAN –> LIFE. Look at the witness evidence of what happened in history, the evidence that proves Jesus is the promised king and God come in the flesh –> come to Him, eat and drink Him, lean your weight on Him –> have eternal life, knowing the true God, starting now.  Go back to John 20:30-31 every time you preach on John.  Not so that every sermon sounds the same, but so that you are preaching in line with John’s purpose, according to the will of God. If we use John’s book for some other purpose – studying different characters for motivational encouragements or looking at Jesus’ miracles for promises of healings and miracles now – then we are quite simply misusing the book and we can’t expect the Spirit to bless our words.
• Don’t stop at the sign posts. As it said in John 20:30, Jesus miracles are ‘signs’. They are not the focus in themselves – they are signposts pointing away from themselves to Jesus. There is a great danger that we get stuck at the signpost. That’s what happens in John 6 isn’t it? The crowd liked the bread and fish and they want Jesus to do the same trick again. I’m sure I would have been the same. Free food! Never have to work again! Brilliant! But Jesus says (John 6:26-27) you haven’t seen that the bread I gave you was a SIGN – a signpost pointing away from itself to Me. Very often in John’s gospel you get a sign and you get Jesus interpreting the sign in the discussion that comes just before or just after (esp. Ch. 5, 6, 9, 11). You need both.  SIGN + INTERPRETATION = REVELATION. When you see them together it totally changes how you preach the sign. So for example the healing of the man by the pool (Ch. 5) is not about how to get a healing but about the power and authority of Jesus’ words, about him doing his Father’s work, about the raising of the dead.
• Tell the story. As we’ve said before the Gospels are stories of Jesus – the most amazing story ever told. Don’t let us lose the drama and tension and flow of the story when we preach it. And the particular shape of the story the way John tells it is ‘U’-shaped. Jesus is the one come down from heaven (John 3:13), sent into the world by the Father (John 3:17), then he’s the one returning to the Father (John 16:10) with the aim that we would be lifted up into the mutual love of the Trinity (John 17:24) – true Home. In the upper room you have the turning point (see John 13:3 and 16:28) – the bottom of the ‘U’ as Jesus washes his disciples feet and prepares for the even greater humility and greater washing of the Cross. Have a look at the video below (especially the middle minute) while meditating on John 13:3: “come from God… going back to God…”  If the whole of creation is preaching the Word of Christ, perhaps the osprey is particularly preaching John’s Gospel to us. The majestic one who comes from heaven, into the depths of darkness and slavery and sin, grabs us (John 15:16) and takes us to undreamt of heights to soar with him. If the Son sets you free…

• Preach the gospel from the Gospel. As should be clear by now, that’s what John is all about. All the way through you get this repeated drum beat – “The hour has not yet come”, “The hour has not yet come”, “The hour has not yet come” (John 2:4; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23,27). Then we get to the upper room and the time for the big event has finally come (John 13:1; 17:1). Then finally at John 19:30 the great cry, “It is finished.”  The Lamb of God sacrificed for the sins of the world (John 1:29) – that’s what it’s all been building up to. Substitution comes again and again – Christ’s death for / instead of us (John 6:51; 10:11; 11:50-52; 15:13; 17:19; 18:14). And it’s underlined by the Old Testament allusions – Jesus is the Ladder connecting heaven and earth ((John 1:51 cf. Gen. 28:10-19), the Snake lifted on a stick, made sin for us (John 3:14 cf. Num. 21:4-9), the one who drinks the cup of God’s wrath (John 18:11 cf. Isaiah 51:17,22; Jeremiah 25:15). That’s our focus as we appeal to people to look, lean, live.