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Andy Stanley - Bystander Part 1 Momma Says · Andy Stanley Sermons

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Today we're starting a brand new series entitled Bystander John and the Rabbi from Nazareth,
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and for the next few weeks we are going to journey with John as
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he journeyed with Jesus. But before we jump into the narrative, Before we
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jump into the narrative in terms of Jesus interacting with people and Jesus's preaching and
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teaching, we have to begin by addressing attention that the gospel writer John addresses
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throughout his Gospel. Perhaps the two most misunderstood and perhaps the two most misused
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words in all of religion, but specifically Christianity, are these two words,
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the words faith and the word believe. Now for just a second, setting
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religion and theology aside, setting all religion and theology aside for just a moment,
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we all know what those two words mean. We know what those words
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mean at home, We know what those words mean in the marketplace, We
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know what those words mean in every other area of culture. But for some
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reason, they get hijacked when they get dropped into theological context. In the
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real world where we all work and where we play and where we have friends,
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we believe based on evidence. In other words, you make decisions about
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what you believe or don't believe based on evidence, what you see, what
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you read. And we also decide what we believe based on our confidence in
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the person delivering the information. When you were a kid, you were taught
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that eight times eight equals sixty four. But I bet none of you went
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home and lined up eight rows of eight things and went one, two,
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three, four or five? Why because you had confidence in your teacher.
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So there's a couple of ways that we come to believe things evidence, what
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we see, what we read, what we hear, and based on the
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confidence in the person that's, you know, telling us whatever the information is.
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Now, from time to time there's conflicting information, right, you get
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two different pieces of information and you're not sure what to believe. For example,
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and this may be the most important question that I ask all day?
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Is coffee still good for us? Is coffee still good for us? Yes?
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Or no? Is it still good for us? Yes? Okay?
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Because I grew up thinking if you have six cups of coffee to day,
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you live six years longer than I learned that it's not six you live six
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years longer, but not six o'cups Anyway, Then there was all this research
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that said, oh no, no, no, coffee is bad for you.
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So I have a cognitive bias. It's where I just decided I'm just
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not gonna listen to that. I'm only going to listen to the information.
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It's called confirmation bias, that you only listen to the information that confirms what
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you already believe. So when it comes to coffee, I only paid the
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attention to the research that confirms what I already want to believe in that coffee
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is good for us. Right, and we all struggle with confirmation bias.
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But the point is this, all of you, in your real world experience
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and in the real world, we all know what it means to believe something.
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We all know what it means to have faith in something. And what
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we're gonna discover in this series together Bystander is that when it comes to those
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words, they do not This is so important. In fact, you won't
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even believe this some of you. They do not take on special meaning when
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they are dropped within the context of Christianity religious faith. This is what's so
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strange. Religious faith and belief are often divorced from reason and confused with hope.
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We all know what hope is as well. But for some reason that
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I don't really know why, when it comes to Christianity or religion in religion
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in general, when it comes to these words, they kind of take on
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a life of their own and they get divorced from reason and they become more
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like hope, Like, well, I hope he shows up. Well,
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did he show up last time? No? Did he show up the time
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before that? No? But I hope he shows up. Well, that's
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hope. And it's good to have hope. But hope and belief or hope
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or confidence are two different things. So unfortunately, when it comes to Christianity,
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some of you, some of us, grew up hearing things like this,
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well, you just have to believe. You just have to believe.
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And if you're from the South, it went like this, you just have
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to believe. Brother, You just gotta believe. Brother, You just got
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to take it by faith. Sister, come on, you need to have
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and somebody's even told you this, you need to have more faith, which
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is kind of a silly thing. In fact, that this phrase doesn't even
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make sense in the real world, because you either believe something or you don't.
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I mean, you can there's a time when you're trying to figure stuff
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out, but when it comes to Christianity, you know, you just have
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to take it by Faith's sister John, the gospel writer John. You know
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what his response to this would be. It would be really says who.
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If you were to ask Peter, who followed Jesus, really says who,
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if you were to ask Jesus, is this true? He would say,
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really, where did you get that? You don't find that in the teaching
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of Jesus. You don't find that in the New Testament. Again, I
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don't know exactly where it came from. Maybe that doesn't matter. But as
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we journey with Jesus through the Gospel of John, we are going to discover
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an entirely different paradigm. In fact, I love what my friend Frank Turrek
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says. Frank does. He lectures and debates on university campuses all over the
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place. In fact, he will step into the arena with anyone that will
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step into the arena with him. He's He's debated in several of The New
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a atheist. He's a brilliant guy. And here's what he says. Frank
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says, this the reason so many people are easily talked out of Christianity is
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because they were never talked into it in the first place. That the reason
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students, the reason college graduates, the reason singles, the reason senior adults,
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it doesn't matter. The reason people are oftentimes and so easily talked out
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of Christianity is because they were never talked into it to begin with. They
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were just told, well, you just have to believe. And perhaps that's
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what you were told, and you believed because you were young enough to just
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believe the Sunday school teacher or the parent or the grandparent or the pastor who
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said you just have to believe. And then you grew up and someone talked
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you out of it because no one had ever talked you into it. You
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read a book and the author talked you out of it because no one had
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ever talked you into it. You heard a lecture, you saw a debate,
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and someone talked you out of it because no one ever took the time
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to talk you into it. And John, who wrote the Gospel of John.
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In fact, John has a last name. Did you know John had
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a last name? Yeah, here's his last name. His name is John
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Zebedeeson. Okay, John Zebedeeson because in the New Testament, I thought that
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was funny. Okay, then thank you. In the New Town, I'm
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glad you anyway. In the New Testament, he is he's introduced to us.
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Is John the son of anybody Zebede? Yeah, John the son of
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Zebede. So in our order, what you would call him John Zebedeeson and
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John Zebedeeson or John to say you finally got it. It says so exciting.
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I work so hard on these things. Anyway, here's what John,
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son of Zebedee would tell you. He would tell you, I did not
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follow Jesus because of faith. I did not follow Jesus because of faith.
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I didn't just take it by faith, brother, I didn't. You just
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have to believe, sister, John did not choose to follow Jesus because of
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faith. And he would caution you against that as well. And if the
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only reason you're following Jesus is because somebody said you just got to believe,
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Hey, I've got some good news. There is more to it than that,
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and I've got some great news. You need to pay attention to what's
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more to it than that? Otherwise somebody may come along and talk you out
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of something that no one ever took the time to talk you into. As
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we're about to discover, there is an enormous difference. There is a big,
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big difference between by faith and because of faith. The Apostle John,
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as he'd be later known in history, the Apostle John left his father's fishing
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business to follow Jesus because of what he saw, not because of faith.
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In fact, he outlived most of his friends by the time you know,
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John dictates, We doubt he wrote this because of the kind of Greek its
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and he dictated this, this document that would later be called the Gospel of
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John. But by the time he'd done this, the Apostle Paul was dead.
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The Apostle Peter was dead. Probably all of his friends were dead.
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He was He was the last, the lone survivor, as it relates to
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the apostles, the people who follow Jesus, the closest followers of Jesus.
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And apparently somebody finally got to John and said, John, you got to
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document this stuff. You're the last guy standing. And we still don't know
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your story. I mean, we have Peter's story because Mark gave it to
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us, we have Matthew's story. You know, Luke thoroughly investigated all these
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things. But John, we've heard you teach. You've got to document this.
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You were an eye witness, you were an ear witness. You need
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to document this. And so he did. And again it came down to
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us to the tradition called the Gospel of John or the good News according to
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John. But here's the cool thing about the Gospel of John. John was
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not content. This is so important. John was not content to simply tell
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us what happened. John tells us why it happened and why he wants us
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to know it happened. And at the very end of his gospel account,
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he gives us a purpose statement or a thesis. Remember in college or maybe
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even high school, you had to write a paper. You had to have
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a thesis statement or here's the big idea, and on our term papers you
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had to put it up front, here's the big idea, here's the thesis.
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Well, John saves his thesis statement or his purpose statement to the very
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end of the gospel. So I'm gonna I'm gonna read this to you.
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This is at the end. Then we're going to go back to the beginning
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and look at the journey with John, with Jesus. But here's here's the
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purpose statement. He says, Hey, if you miss it all, or
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if you're wondering why I wrote this, or if you're wondering what the point
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of this is, here it is he said this Jesus. He wrote this.
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Jesus performed many other signs, and we're going to come back to that
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word to hang on to it. Jesus performed many other signs in the presence
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of his disciples. In other words, this wasn't somewhere where no one saw
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which are not recorded in this book. And this book does not refer to
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the Bible. This book refers to the document that John was writing. So
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John says, look, you're about you've come to the end of my account
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of the life of Jesus. And I've told you a lot of things he
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said, but he said a lot more. I've explained a lot of things
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he did, but he did a lot more. But I have chosen these
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specific things that I refer to as signs. And here's why I chose these
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particular Be you ready for this? Here it is, but these these signs,
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but these are written that this a little Greek term is called a Henni,
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it's a connector. A Henoclaus means purpose or result. He said,
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the purpose for me writing what I've written is not simply that you'll know what
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Jesus did and know what Jesus said. But these are written that you may
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believe. I want you to believe. But I'm not content saying, well,
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just believe, brother, you got to take it by faith's sister,
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he says, oh, no, no, no. I want you to
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journey with me and my experience with Jesus, and my hope is that you
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will experience through my experience, Jesus in such a way that you will be
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convinced that he is who he claimed to be. He's not simply telling us
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what to believe. He's building a case as to why we should believe it,
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because John did not embrace this crazy idea of faith or belief that just
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kind of hangs out there by itself. But believe what. He's very specific.
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He said, here's what I want I want you to believe. I
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want you to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.
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But it goes beyond that, because there's a result to placing your faith in
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Jesus as your savior. There's a result in understanding that Jesus is the Jewish
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Messiah, and that by believing that, by placing your faith in him,
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you might have life in his name. In other words, the sequence that
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brought John to the point where he believed Jesus was who Jesus claimed to be,
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the sequence that brought him to faith, is the very same sequence he's
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gonna lay out in his gospel that we know as the Gospel of John.
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And it goes basically basically like this. He's gonna tell us there were events,
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and as it turned out, they just weren't random events. They were
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signs that pointed to something. And those signs pointed to something in such a
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way that they served as evidence. And because of the evidence, because of
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what I saw, because of what I heard, I decided I believed that
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Jesus was who he claimed to be. And when I began to believe Jesus
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was who he claimed to be based on the evidence, the signs, and
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the events, then I placed my trust in him. And here's why this
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is so important. John doesn't begin with I placed my trust in Jesus,
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and I hoped it would all work out. In fact, throughout his gospel
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account and Matthew and Marx and Luke's what we defined with these disciples are the
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apostles, is that they believed, then they disbelieved, and they believed,
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and then they weren't so sure because they weren't easy to convince. They didn't
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believe in superstition. They were trying to sort this out. And in the
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end, it wasn't faith that moved them. It wasn't faith that convinced them.
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It was what they saw and it was what they heard. And here's
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his thinking. If this is good enough for me, I'm hoping it's good
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enough for you. If this was the sequence that convinced me, I hope
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it's a sequence that will convince you as well. So what he does in
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the Gospel of John, he's not just giving us random events and random conversations
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with Jesus. He organizes his entire account around what he calls sign seven signs.
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He organizes the whole thing around these seven signs. Now, we're gonna
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look in this series at all seven, but here's something interesting before we jump
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into the first one. It's interesting that John chooses the term signs read the
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certain term sign rather than the term miracle. And this is so important,
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and this was so easily confused even by modern Christians. The supernatural acts of
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Jesus, the supernatural events of Jesus, the healings, the walking on water,
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all those things. The sup natural acts of Jesus were not random acts
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of kindness, and he wasn't just showing off. They weren't just random acts
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of kindness, and he wasn't just showing off. These were signs. And
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John realized that these were signs that pointed to something, and specifically what they
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pointed to was Jesus' identity. Now, it's easy to get enamored with the
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signs, and it's easy to get enamored with miracles, especially when you knew
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when you need one, right But John knew that was a mistake, and
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throughout his gospel he makes it clear, Hey, these miracles aren't daily occurrences
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for the sake of daily occurrences. These miracles have a specific purpose, and
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their purpose is to point people to the identity of Jesus. So he does
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his best in this gospel to help us not become enamored with the miraculous,
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but to become enamored with the person that the miraculous pointed to any question.
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So far good. Okay, so let's jump in Sign number one. Every
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single person listening, every single person watching already knows this one probably. And
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the interesting thing is this, this very first sign was so well known as
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we're about to discover that when John tells us the story, he doesn't even
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tell us the miracle because he assumes everybody reading his gospel already knows about it.
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Now, why would he assume that. Here's why this is so important,
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because by the time he documented it, it was such a part of
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the Christian teaching and Christian preaching. It had been such a part of it
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for so long he almost doesn't even have to give us the punchline. Christians
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by this time were like, oh yeah, you remember the one about Oh
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yeah, I remember the one about Right, the first sign is turning water
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to wine. And this is the only one that rhymes. The first sign
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is water to wine. It's the only one that rhymes. Okay, So
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here we go, John Chapter two, we're jumping right in. On the
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third day, a wedding took place in cana and Galilee, way way way
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north of Jerusalem, and Jesus's mother was there all this detail, because these
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aren't once upon a time fairy tales. These are things that actually occurred.
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Now. What we find out later in this account is that Mary was part
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of the hosting committee for this wedding, or perhaps she was part of the
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group that did the catering. We don't know exactly, but she had a
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very specific responsibility, as we discover as the story goes on, and Jesus
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and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding, which means
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John, who gives this account, was actually there. Now, as you
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may have heard, wedding celebrations in those days went on for days and days
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and days. There were very expensive events, and so that's what sets up
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what happens next, And that's why what happens next with such a catastrophe,
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even though it would be a similar catastrophe that something like this happened at your
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daughter, your son, or perhaps at your wedding. When the wine was
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gone, Jesus' mother said to him, they have no more wine. So
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if they run out of wine, this would be like running out of dessert,
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or you know, they go back for a wedding cake, there's no
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more wedding cake, or there's no more punch, or there's no more wine,
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or you know, whatever there is going on at your wedding that everybody
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expected, and suddenly there's no more of it, and you're the host,
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or you're you know, you're in charge of catering, or perhaps you're the
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mother or the father of the bride or the groom, and suddenly it's just
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it's just this is a very embarrassing moment. And so this is this is
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the part where we all have questions and we don't have answers. She turns
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to Jesus. She she knew that in a crisis she could call upon or
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lean into her very resourceful son. It's like she knew he could do something
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about that, which is just makes you so curious, Like what was it
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like to grow up with Jesus? You know, you didn't run to the
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grocery store. You just turned to your son and said, son, could
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you, however you do that? Get me some of that. I'm just
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gonna turn I won't even look. I don't I don't know, I don't
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know. But somehow she knew it was okay to turn to Jesus in a
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crisis and anyway, And so Jesus responds like this, it's a little offensive.
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He says, woman, do not try that at home, and do
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not say, well, I'm just quoting Jesus. No, now, this
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is actually the right translation of the word. But we miss the we miss
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what's behind it. It would be more like if he said to his mom,
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my lady. It's like he's in a formal context and he didn't want
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to say mom, you know, or I can't do that thing women do.
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Mom, He's not gonna do that. It was a terrible illustration anyway,
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So he doesn't say mom. So it's like he kind of keeps it
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formal. Maybe he meant to be funny, my lady. And then he
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asked this question, this is so cool. This is my lady, a
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woman. Why do you involve me? Jesus replied, my hour has not
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yet come, mom. I've come to save the world, not weddings.
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Okay, this was This was not how I planned to go public. Okay,
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this wasn't going to be how I came out to the world. Okay,
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this is not very messianic, right. This reminded me when I was
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studying this week. This reminded me of a situation that not too long ago
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when my mother in law, who's actually here with us today, so you
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know, I'm not making this up. My mother in law called and she
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asked me to speak at the Christian Women's Club in Dublin, Georgia. Andy,
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I need you. We didn't need a speaker, We need you to
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come speak at the Christian Women's Club in Dublin, Georgia. And my first
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thought was, well, that's not what I do, but I did because
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of who asked, right, So Mary, I think she just smiles and
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says whatever. She turns to the servants and she says, you just do
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whatever he tells you, and then she just walks off because after all,
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she's the mom, right, she can do this. Now, what's so
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cool? And this is why John saw this because when you read this story,
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think what kind of sign is that? It's kind of the most random.
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He didn't heal anybody, didn't really help anybody. Why why would John
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start here? And what is the significance of this? And I don't know
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when it dawned on John. Maybe Jesus you know, spelled it out later.
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Maybe John just put two and two together, or maybe as an old
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man when they said, John, you got to document, you know,
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your time with the life of Jesus. And he thought back, and he
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remembered this, and maybe as an old man, it dawned on him,
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Oh my goodness, this was the perfect way. This was the perfect way
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for Jesus to step into his role as messiah and savior. This was the
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perfect introduction. And even though the wedding guests never knew what happened, because
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they never understood that there was a miracle right in their midst, but John
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seemed to know that. For us future readers, this was the perfect introduction
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to the message in the Ministry of Jesus'. The story goes on, and
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here's when that begins to make sense. Nearby stood six stone water jars,
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the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to
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thirty gallons. So this was a family who was somewhat wealthy that was hosting
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this, and they were good Jewish men and women. And the Jewish law,
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and the first century application of Jewish law, demanded that Jews do certain
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kinds of washings before they do certain things. To say, ceremonially clean,
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you had to wash your hands sometimes you had to wash to your elbows.
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There's all kinds of different traditions that told people how to wash. So these
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you can imagine, these are really large stone jars, and they're sitting there,
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and they're sitting there empty. But and here's the significance of this.
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These are icons. These stone, these stone are clay jars, are icons
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of the covenant and traditions that Jesus had come to replace that Jesus decided this
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is so brilliant. Jesus decides to go public. I don't know if he
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decided in the moment or if this was all prearranged, but Jesus decides to
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go public by using something that would soon be replaced to point to what would
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soon be put in place. That God's temporary We've talked about this, that
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God's temporary covenant with the Nation of Israel, that God's temporary arrangement with Israel
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established at Mount Sinai was disappearing. It was coming to an end. When
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it was given, it was perfect when it was given, it was way
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way way ahead of its time, but it had a timer on it.
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And that covenant was slowly coming to an end. And these jars represented the
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entire sacrificial system, and Jesus decides to use this moment to illustrate something that
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nobody there would understand. It was so under the radar, but it was
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so significant. God's temporary arrangement was disappearing, and something new had come because
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someone knew was on the scene. The story continues Jesus. The text says,
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Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water, because they
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were empty, so they filled them to the brim. I love what F.
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F. Bruce says. F. F. Bruce died a few years
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ago. He was a British theologian that wrote commentaries, and in his commentary
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he says this about this particular incident. He said this, He said,
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the water that they poured into these empty vessels, the water provided for purification,
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as laid down by the Jewish law and custom, stands for the whole
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ancient order of Jewish ceremony, which Christ was to replace with something better.
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So there's all this foreshadowing. It was the perfect introduction to his ministry.
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He says, fill up the empty jars, fill them up with water as
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they were normally used. And then something's going to happen, and they are
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going to do something they have never done before, the oldest passing away.
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Behold, something new, someone knew has come. Then the text goes on,
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Then he told them, now draw some out and take it to the
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master of the banquet. Now, the master of the banquet was the head
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waiter, basically who was responsible for what was served and when it was served
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and who got served first. The text says that they did so, and
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when the master of the banquet tasted the water. Now, if you didn't
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know this story and you didn't know how it ended, you would think,
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oh, no, they're taking him what he expects to be wine and he's
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gonna drink it and it's just gonna be water. But again, John never
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even tells us a miracle took place, because John assumes everybody who's heard this,
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like, do I really need to put this in? I guess I
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should, because it's so significant in terms of the beginning, But everybody knows
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how this one ends. So here's here's how he writes it. They did
23:45
so, and the Master of the banquet tastes tasted the water that had been
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turned into wine. He just assumes everybody knows, like, oh, yeah,
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we knew it turned into wine. They don't even He doesn't even state
23:53
the miracle. But he did not realize. He did not realize where it
23:57
had come from. The headn't though. The servants who had drawn the water
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they knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside, and he said this,
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He said, this is amazing. You've done something very unusual. I've never
24:10
seen this done before. Everyone usually brings out the choice wine first, and
24:15
then the cheaper wine after the guests have too much to drink. By the
24:19
time they're a little drunk. They don't care what it tastes like. So
24:23
everybody starts with, you know, the fine wine. Oh, this is
24:27
so great. By the end of the night, by the end of the
24:30
week, they don't care. They don't know, he says, but you,
24:33
this is so powerful. But you, but you have saved the best
24:40
till now. And God had as well, because the sacrificial system set the
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stage for the new that was coming, just as the original wine set the
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table for the better wine that was to come later in the wedding feast.
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In the same way, God, through the nation of Israel his people established
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a covenant that would set up the world to expect one to come after to
25:10
fulfill that covenant. So that when John the Baptist on the banks of the
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Jordan River says to the people gathered there from all of Judea and all of
25:17
Jerusalem, thousands of people potentially behold the Lamb of God who comes to take
25:22
away the sin of the world. There was a context that made sense.
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Every Jewish person there knew exactly what that pointed to. This was the original
25:33
wine that set up the coming of the new and the better wine. And
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so Jesus uses this kind of metaphor. He creates an illustration right there at
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the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee to say to the world, even though
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the world at the time wouldn't understand, something new has come, something better
25:51
has come. There was nothing wrong with what came before, But what came
25:55
before was there to establish what is happening now. In other words, this
26:02
was more than a miracle. This was a sign. It pointed to something
26:08
and somebody, but nobody would fully understand it until later. The story wraps
26:14
up like this, what Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first
26:19
this chapter two John, he says, we're getting this thing started. It
26:22
was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory and his disciples.
26:27
Don't miss this part. And his disciples believed in him. There's a
26:33
little there's a little connector word attached to the Greek word for belief. They
26:37
placed their trust in him. But here's the question. Why did they believe
26:41
in him? Because he got him together and said, come on, guys,
26:44
believe, Come on, believe, you can do it. Just have
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Faith's sister, just have faith, brother, just gotta believe. No,
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the reason they believed is because there was a reason to believe. So from
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the very outset, John and his gospel establishes this paradigm, and we're gonna
27:03
find it throughout because never once is anybody asked to believe without there being evidence
27:10
or without there being confidence in the person who brings the information. After this,
27:14
the text says he went down from Capernaum with his mother and brothers.
27:18
By the way, Mary had many children after Jesus went with mother and brothers
27:22
and his disciples, and there they stayed for a few days. And so
27:29
it begins, this is so cool. Now here's the thing, because I
27:33
know, if you're tracking along, you've gotta have some questions that we all
27:36
do. But here's the thing. Unlike John and unlike Peter, but let's
27:40
just stick with John. Unlike John, our faith in Jesus does not come
27:45
by seeing. Now you may disagree. You may say Andy, no,
27:48
no, no. Let me tell you what. I didn't believe in God.
27:52
I didn't believe Jesus anybody. And then I saw something and now I
27:55
believe. Well, I'm so glad that happened for you, or you say
27:57
Andy. I met this couple and they were so fanta and I realized they
28:00
had this extraordinary faith and I wanted faith like them, and they sat down
28:03
with me, and that's when I began to believe. And I think that's
28:06
fantastic. Sometimes people come to faith because of something they see, but for
28:11
most people, we don't come to faith by seeing like John saw. We
28:15
come to faith by hearing. But we're not asked to just believe. We're
28:19
not required to take it by faith. We are invited. This is what
28:22
makes Christianity so significant and so different. We are invited to believe what happened.
28:29
We're invited to believe what happened based on the testimony of the people who
28:32
were actually there. People like John. In fact, John came away from
28:38
his experience with Jesus and looking back, even though there was bloodshed and heartbreak,
28:44
and perhaps the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed and tens of thousands of
28:48
Jews had been carted off and sold in the Roman slave markets. We don't
28:51
know exactly when he wrote this, but we know that the Apostle Peter was
28:53
dead. The Apostle Paul was dead again. He was probably the last apostle
28:59
left in spite of all that. Because of what he saw, not because
29:03
of what he believed, because of what he'd heard, not simply because he
29:06
had faith. He arrives at this conclusion that has echoed throughout the generations,
29:11
because he's the one who brings us, who brought us these famous words.
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He said, because of what I've seen and because of what I've heard,
29:18
I'm convinced that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only
29:25
son, that whoever, well, okay, John, you mean, like
29:30
whoever you know, whoever, Okay John, There's gonna be some horrible things
29:34
that happen in the future, that whoever places their faith in him would not
29:41
be lost to God, would not perish, but would receive eternal life.
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Okay, John, how can you say such a thing, he would say,
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because of what I saw, because of my experience with the Rabbi from
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Nazareth. He was convinced. And whether you're convinced or not, this should
30:03
settle in, This should make you think. That's why he wrote it.
30:07
He was convinced that the word the logos that God. He was convinced that
30:12
the Word became flesh. And he said, and he made his dwelling among
30:17
us, and us? Isn't we us? Us? Was him and his
30:19
friends us? He says, I'm just telling you what I saw. I'm
30:22
telling you what I've concluded based on what I heard and saw that God.
30:26
Don't ask me to explain it. God made his dwelling with us, and
30:32
we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who
30:36
came from the Father, full of grace and truth. And I was just
30:41
a simple fisherman. I was just a bystander. But I thought what happened
30:48
was so important. I wanted to document my experience for you and for future
30:55
generations. But not simply said that you would know what happened. No,
30:59
it's way bigger than that. I wrote these things with a specific purpose in
31:03
mind. These things I have chosen to document, these conversations I've chosen to
31:08
document, these events I've chosen to document. These are written that you may
31:14
believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that once
31:18
you believe, that you, like me, might have life in his name.
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Before this series is over, we're going to go through all the seven
31:30
signs. It's going to be so much fun, so much narrative, so
31:32
much conversation, so much new stuff. My prayers that before this series is
31:36
over, as we move from sign to sign, my hope is that you
31:40
would believe and that you would have life in his name as well. But
31:45
not because you took it by faith, but because you took it from John,
31:49
an eyewitness to the life and the ministry of Jesus. You have not
31:56
been required, you have not even been invited to believe in belief. You've
32:01
not been called to follow Jesus because of faith. It is way way way
32:07
better than that. And if you were talked out of it, because you
32:13
were never talked into it. Don't miss part two of Bystander