Evidence for Jesus

This week we get to finish up chapter 5 in the gospel of John. At the beginning of the chapter, Jesus healed a man at the pool of Bethesda who hadn’t been able to walk for 38 years. It was a miracle, but it happened on the Sabbath when the Jews weren’t supposed to do any kind of productive work. That made the religious leaders upset, and they pushed back at what Jesus had done.

The rest of the chapter has been Jesus’ response, and up till now he’s primarily made one claim that he’s defended and expounded on: that he is equal with God the Father. That’s a big statement.

He said he does the work he sees the Father doing. He said he’s always existed, that he has life in himself, and he’s able to give life to whom he will. He said that those who hear his word and believe him have eternal life, but he will also one day execute judgment.

Of course, if all those things are true, then certainly Jesus had every right to heal that man on the Sabbath. He wasn’t breaking any law. He’s the author of the law, and he gave the Sabbath as a gift so that people would regularly rest and reflect on the God who’s always working and has accomplished for us what we can’t do ourselves.

But if what Jesus is saying isn’t true, then him doing something on the Sabbath is the least of our concerns. He’d be delusional—a blasphemer who’s making himself equal with God.

A lot of times people in our western culture like to sit on the fence with Jesus. They might say that he was a good man, a wise man—but he wasn’t God. But Jesus hasn’t left that option open to us. The last several weeks in John chapter 5 have been calling us to a decision about him: either we submit to him as our Savior and Lord, or we reject him as a crazy narcissist. The historical Jesus was either divine or delusional.

But how do we figure out which one to believe? If I told you that I once taught and led the other Senior guys at my high school to all perform Thriller at a variety show with me dressed as Michael Jackson out in front, that might be a surprise to you.

I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me. You wouldn’t just want to take my word for it; you’d want to see some evidence. You’d want to see the video (and it is out there).

This is what Jesus does for us at the end of John 5. He’s made the massive claim about who he is and what it means to listen and believe in him. But he doesn’t just leave the people there confused with some expectation of “blind faith”. Our passage this morning is asking us to examine the things that witness to him.

But blind faith is an assumption many people today have about Christianity. Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist, once called faith “the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.” He went on to say, “Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."

But that kind of hollow well-wishing has never been the Christian understanding of faith. Biblical faith isn’t blind. In his book, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, John Lennox pushes back that there’s a ground to our belief in Christ, describing faith as “a response to evidence, not a rejoicing in the absence of evidence.”

That’s what we see from Jesus here in these last 18 verses of John 5, and that’s what I hope to lead us toward this morning: evidence that we can respond to and rest in as we look to Jesus as Savior and Lord over every area of our life.

It would be one thing if Jesus made a bunch of claims and simply just said to “trust him”—“I promise I’m telling the truth.” It’s hard for us to believe anyone like that. But in verses 30-32, Jesus points away from himself in order to witness about himself. He says,

John 5:30–32 ESV

³⁰ “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. ³¹ If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. ³² There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true.

You see? Here is Jesus claiming to be the Son of God, and yet he’s not just telling us to take his word for it. In his ministry, he has submitted to the will of the Father as he’s been saying throughout the chapter, and now he points away from his own witness to other witnesses, saying there are many places we can look that testify he’s the Son of God. 

Whether you’re growing in your faith or curious about what it means to have faith in Jesus, he gives us four directions in these verses where we can look for evidence that he is who he says he is. Let’s start with the first one in verses 33-35. Look with me at the passage.

John 5:33–35 ESV

³³ You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. ³⁴ Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵ He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.

The first witness Jesus highlights is John the Baptist. We met him back in chapter 1. He’s a relative of Jesus, and his ministry was explicitly to tell people about the coming Messiah. Back in John 1:29, he sees Jesus coming toward him and proclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Then again, in verse 34, he says, “I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”

That’s the language we see Jesus say about John the Baptist in John 5:33. So, it makes sense that Jesus would bring him up to the Jewish leaders, especially when they had “sent to John” according to the start of the verse. That means they had gone to him in the past to ask if he was the Christ, or the prophet Elijah, or someone else. We actually get that story in John 1:19-28.

Even the first century Jewish historian, Josephus, recorded that John the Baptist stirred up a lot of excitement that the Messiah was coming. And that falls in line with what Jesus says at the end of verse 35 and how the Jews were willing to rejoice in his message for a while. The Jewish leaders clearly saw him to some degree as an authority figure sent from God, and Jesus is saying that John clearly pointed to Jesus as the Son of God.

So, it makes sense why Jesus would bring up John the Baptist here. But how does that help provide us with any evidence for believing in Jesus? We weren’t around to hear John the Baptist’s message. We didn’t experience his life or his ministry.

It’s hard for me to have a debate with someone in their teens or 20s about whether Michael Jordan or Lebron James is the greatest basketball player of all time if they’ve never seen Jordan play.

So, how does this level of evidence reach us today if we weren’t there for it? Well, you might not have met John the Baptist, but you have met others who’ve “borne witness” to Jesus. That root word for “witness” in verse 33 is used again at the launch of the early church in the book of Acts. In Acts 1:8, Jesus tells his disciples, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

The mission of the global church, ever since the beginning, has been to bear witness about the good news of Jesus—just like John the Baptist also bore witness about the good news of Jesus.

The call for the people of God to share about the Son of God has never ended. If you’re a Christian here this morning, there is a version of what Jesus is saying about John the Baptist in verses 33-35 that should also be true of your own life. But what’s important here isn’t just that you tell other’s about him. Your life should also bear witness to the truth.

Look at how Jesus describes John the Baptist in verse 35: “He was a burning and shining lamp.” That speaks both to what he did, and how he did it. John the Baptist gave light. Just like a lamp, that was his purpose. He intentionally helped people see who Jesus is.

But how did he do it? Just like the wick on a first century oil lamp: he burned. He gave of himself, and he did it wholeheartedly. There was no partial burn. It was his sole passion to be used to give light to Jesus in everything he did.

At this point, it’s easy for us to start to focus on ourselves. You might ask yourself, have I fallen short of being a Christian like that who shines a light on Jesus to those around me with every part of my life? That’s a real question, but you might be looking in the wrong place for the answer. It’s easy to assume the solution is that I need to talk to my friends and family and coworkers about Jesus more—that I need to live a Godlier life, that I need to read my Bible and pray more.

And all those are good things, but we cannot forget: a lamp doesn’t create it’s own light; it bears the light that’s been given to it. And before we ever do more or say more, we need to look more and believe more and rest more in who Jesus is and what he has done as the light of our lives. He’s the reason the church has anything to give. It’s him in us, not just us being for him. Let his light fuel your light in every area of life rather than trying to spark more of it through your own effort.

Jesus didn’t depend on the testimony of other people like John the Baptist to establish who he was in his own mind. That’s what he tells us at the start of verse 34. But he highlights the ministry of John the Baptist because God uses those who point to Jesus to help others believe in Jesus, as verse 34 says, “so that you may be saved.”

If you’re not a follower of Jesus here this morning, Jesus is saying that Christians can bear witness to how he’s good news for your life as you see him working in theirs. Not because of how good their life is, but because of how they point to the goodness of their Savior and Lord.

But that’s also not the only witness that we have. Jesus continues on in verse 36 describing what he says is even greater evidence than the testimony of John the Baptist. Let’s keep reading in the passage.

John 5:36 ESV

³⁶ But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.

Do you want to know why Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time? Watch him play a game. The things he could do on the court validate the claim that he’s made on history.

And the same is true for Jesus. You’d expect that if someone claimed to be the Son of God and said that he does exactly what he sees the Father doing that he would be doing some pretty incredible things that back up that claim. And here in verse 36, Jesus is saying that the various signs and miracles from his ministry are evidence that the Father sent him—that he is who he says he is.

I mean, who else is healing blind people and raising the dead? If you were alive in the first century and getting to see the ministry of Jesus firsthand, I’ve got to think that would be pretty compelling. But of course our problem is that we weren’t alive in the first century. We didn’t get to watch Jesus walk on water or heal the sick or turn water into wine.

I’ve never seen the Egyptian pyramids in person. I’ve seen pictures and videos of them. I’ve heard stories of what it would have taken to build them. I can think all that’s pretty cool—but it doesn’t really impact me because I’m removed from it. I haven’t experienced it.

So, let’s take a moment and try to move a little closer to the miraculous signs in the life of Jesus. At the start of chapter 5 we saw Jesus heal a man at the pool of Bethesda who hadn’t been able to walk for 38 years. Now, I know we weren’t there to see that man—but we have seen the pool. Archaeologists have uncovered the pool of Bethesda in the exact location surrounded by the same 5 colonnades that are described in verse 2. The New Testament is full of those kinds of details where we can find evidence of their existence in history.

Of course, you might think the writers just used real settings to make the stories more believable, but it’s harder to convince people something made up is actually true when they’re living in the same area at the same time of the story you’re trying to tell. The biblical writers share these kinds of details, not because they’re trying to make a fake story more convincing but because they’re trying to tell a true story with real facts.

And nowhere do we see that more than with the most important miracle in the entire Bible: the resurrection of Jesus. If you’re going to look for a reason for the Christian faith, then the resurrection is the best place to start.

You might have all kinds of questions about things like the creation account in Genesis, or Noah’s flood, or more existential questions like why God allows suffering in the world. All of those are important questions. All of those are worth asking and exploring.

But I would argue that the way you approach those question depends on the way you answer the question of the resurrection. Did Jesus, the historical Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, die on a cross and rise from the dead three days later? If your answer to that is yes, then you have the foundation of a loving and sacrificial God that functions as the lens by which you’re able to explore so many of these other real and important questions.

Questions like, if God exists, why would he allow suffering? If Jesus rose from the dead, then even if we don’t fully understand why God allows suffering in the world, we can know what the answer is not: it’s not that he doesn’t love us. It’s not that he doesn’t care. God so loved the world that he sent his Son to take on our suffering rather than leave us in it without him. This is why the Apostle Paul tells the church in Corinth at the end of 1 Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 15:13–14 ESV

¹³ But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ¹⁴ And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
¹⁹ If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

If Jesus rose from the dead, then it changes everything. So what evidence do we have? For starters, we can look to the empty tomb. In Matthew 28:11-15, guards for the tomb where Jesus was buried were paid by the Jews to claim Jesus’ “disciples came by night and stole him away while [they] were asleep.” Verse 15 ends saying, “And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.”

And when we look even outside of the Bible, it appears that was historically true. Throughout the 1st and 2nd centuries, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Tacitus, Josephus, and Pliny the Younger all talk about the reported resurrection of Jesus. Clearly, the historical Jesus died, and his tomb that was guarded around the clock by soldiers was found empty.

It’s hard to believe his disciples were able to sneak in and steal the body—not because it would be so hard to get past the guards and then move away a roughly 440 lbs. stone and take the body without them noticing (Certainly, that would be hard!).

But it’s even harder to believe because of what we know happened to the disciples in history afterward: James, the son of Zebedee was beheaded. Peter was crucified, seemingly upside down. Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross. Bartholomew was skinned alive and beheaded in India. Thomas was also martyred in India. Philip was martyred in Turkey. Matthew seems to have been Martyred as well. Thaddaeus was killed in modern day Iran alongside Simon the Zealot. And John was exiled to the island of Patmos before eventually dying in Ephesus—all persecuted and most killed for their faith in the resurrected Jesus.

People die for things they believe in all the time. Not many die for things they know to be false. Even in a cult, somebody might go to great lengths to carry on a claim they know isn’t true, but only if they believe it benefits them. When we look at the apostles, their testimony didn’t lead to their prosperity. It led to hardship. They experienced the death of Jesus, and then they claimed to experience something else three days later—and it changed their whole lives.

And there’s still more we could highlight that point to the authenticity of the resurrection. All four gospel accounts mention women as the first eyewitnesses to see Jesus alive. In a culture where a woman’s testimony wasn’t even admissible in court, where mentioning that women witnessed the resurrection might actually cause more doubt than belief—the only reason the writers would record that detail is because it was true.

And then there’s the actual expansion of the early church. I remember one pastor saying the greatest defense for Jesus being the Messiah is that we’re still talking about him—this presumably nobody carpenter without significant parents who roamed around the country at a time where his people were under the rule of an outside empire—that guy changed the world. Skeptics like his brother James or a religious leader who used to kill his followers named Paul suddenly were converted and spent their lives sharing about him.

In a time where following Jesus meant potentially sacrificing your life, don’t you think people asked the question, “Are we sure the tomb was empty?” That’s why in the same section of 1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul says that, after his resurrection, “[Jesus] appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of who are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.”

He’s telling the church in Corinth, “I’m not the only one that saw him. There’s more than 500 eyewitnesses. You could go check. Ask for yourself.” There’s a reason for our faith, and when you look to the works of Jesus you will find out more about who he is.

And like we’ve already mentioned, it’s those very works that demonstrate the Father’s testimony that he sent him. In verse 32, Jesus alluded to God the Father when he said, “There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true.” Now, in verses 37-38, he expounds on what that looks like.

John 5:37–38 ESV

³⁷ And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, ³⁸ and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.

Jesus lumps these verses into his list of witnesses about him, but they’re also meant to be a gut check and an indictment from him. It’s a bold move to tell a group of Jewish religious leaders that they do not have the Word of God abiding in them, but that’s exactly what he does here.

Back in the first 14 verses of John 1, Jesus is described as the Word of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And as the Word of God, if you don’t have Jesus, you don’t have God. That’s what he’s saying in verse 38, and that’s why in John 14:16 Jesus is going to go on to say he’s the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through him.

In our world where people want to treat all types of faith as the same, Jesus is making a pretty exclusive claim here. How can he say that? Well, look back at verse 37. The people Jesus was talking to had never heard the voice of God. They had never seen the visible form of God… Jesus is saying the people couldn’t know God because they didn’t believe in him, the Word of God. The one whom Hebrews 1:3-4 describes as “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”.

Jesus is the only way to God because he is fully God. If you want to know God, look to Jesus. If you want to grow closer to God, look to Jesus. If you want to live for God, look to Jesus. We can spend so much time on all the outputs of our faith that we lose sight of the author and finisher of our faith. Abide, rest in who he is and what he’s done for you in his life, death, and resurrection to reconcile you to God.

That’s not just the message of the gospel. It’s the message of the entire Bible, and that’s what Jesus points out in the remaining 9 verses of John 5. Let’s look one final time at our passage as we close.

John 5:39–47 ESV

³⁹ You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. ⁴¹ I do not receive glory from people. ⁴² But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. ⁴³ I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. ⁴⁴ How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? ⁴⁵ Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶ For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. ⁴⁷ But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

Two things Jesus is drawing out at the end of his message to the Jewish leaders here: all Scripture points to him, but lots of things can replace him. First, all Scripture points to him. Verse 39 says they bear witness about him. Verse 46 says Moses was writing about him. The message of the Old Testament leaves us with questions: How can we be righteous? Why can’t our sacrifices fully pay for our sin? Where is the kingdom God promised? How is God going to provide for his people? All these questions find their answer in Jesus.

The same is true for so many of the people, places, and things we see in the Old Testament as well. Jesus is the true and better Adam, who chose to submit to the Father as he sacrificed his life to bring us to him rather than rebelling from the Father and separating us from him. He’s the true and better Moses, who led his people out of slavery—Moses freed God’s people from their bondage to Egypt. Jesus freed God’s people from their bondage to sin.

He’s the true and better Temple who isn’t stationary and can be destroyed by an enemy; no, he’s still active and defeated the enemy. He’s the true and better Sabbath, not just a source of rest from our work for a day, but a source of resting in his work for our eternity. And we could go on and on. All Scripture points to Jesus.

But even so, we can be so good at using a lot of things—even good things—to replace him. For the Jews here in John 5, it was the Scriptures themselves. They had committed themselves to studying the truth so much but were missing the way, the truth, and the life standing in front of them that their Scriptures were pointing to. Verse 39 says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.”

As we prepare for a time of response this morning, I want to ask, where are you searching for life today? Where have you set your hope? It could be your religious practice, it could be your moral performance, or your knowledge, or your status, or your accomplishments. Maybe you don’t feel you even have a source for hope right now. Like verse 43 says, when we don’t believe in Jesus, we’re going to look to somewhere else to believe. Somewhere else to set our hope.

Even if you’re a follower of Jesus here this morning, you might still find yourself placing your hope and belief in the things God has given you instead of the Son of God who redeemed you. But Jesus words here in John 5 give us a helpful progression of witnesses that can continually point us to the sufficiency of Jesus as we allow the Bible to teach us about God through the works he has done now made visible through the ministry of his people.

Let’s pray.