Life Light

JOHN 5:31-47

JOHN 8:12-30

Twice in a fairly short span of John's Gospel we find Jesus detailing and defending God-given witnesses that testify to His divine identity. Given their similarities, I thought we would consider them together.

Jesus boldly declares to the offended religious leaders of His day that He is "the Light of the World" and that whoever follows Him will "not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." That is quite a claim. We have had time to grow accustomed to thinking of Jesus as such, but imagine being in the original audience and hearing an ordinary looking man declare "I am the (not a) Light of the World." Naturally, they wanted some supporting evidence and thankfully Jesus gives them some. He tells them to look at God's witness, works, and word.

First, Jesus directs them to John the Baptizer. He tells them that, unlike them, He is not looking for the praise that comes from men, but nonetheless John had it right when he declared that Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It is interesting to note Jesus' purpose in directing them to John. He specifically said that He was doing it "so that (they) might be saved." That is important for us to remember when we who by God's grace are being saved by trusting Christ are discussing our Savior with those who currently reject Him. We are not debating to win an argument. We are presenting and defending truth with love for our lost neighbors, even the combative ones, in the hopes that God will grant them exit from death's darkness and entrance into Life's Light.

Next, Jesus calls their attention to His miraculous works. It is one thing to say that you are God's Messiah. It is another to publicly tell people known to have been lame for more than thirty years to get up and then after they do so to claim to be the Messiah. Jesus told the weather what to do, and it obeyed Him. He told sick people to be well, and they obeyed Him. He told demons to leave people, and though they protested, they obeyed Him. He even told dead people to live, and they obeyed Him. Jesus told the unbelieving religious leaders to take a long, hard, serious look at His works, which demonstrated His divinely given authority over the spiritual and physical realms, and most of them foolishly disobeyed Him. Why? Jesus said the main hindrance was their vain glory. "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" - v. 44. How much religious performance flows from our desire for other's approval and admiration! We need to regularly seek God's humbling illumination to see our hidden motivations more clearly, and when He shows us our vanity, we need to sincerely repent to enjoy His restoration.

Finally, Jesus directs them to God's written word. They were quite familiar with God's written revelation, but they were missing the proverbial forest for the trees. To avoid doing the same, we need to be aware that the entire Bible is God's unified revelation. It is not just a collection of disjointed accounts of God's interventions. It is the unfolding story of God's redemption, and His redeemer, Jesus, is centrally featured throughout both testaments. After His resurrection, Jesus walked with two disappointed men on their way back to the town of Emmaus. In Luke's account of their walk with Christ (Luke 24:25-27), we learn that Jesus began with Moses and explained the many Scriptural references to Him. I would have loved to have heard that Bible study! There are many, many Old Testament references to Christ, but let's close by looking at just one - Isaiah 53, and let's help others see the life-saving Light of the World there too.

A Mother's Care

Psalm 127 reads, “Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from Him…Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” Well, Jim Bob Duggar is a very blessed man. He and his wife, Michelle, are currently expecting their 18th child! If being a good mother is strictly based on quantity, Michelle wins. Of course, it's not just the quantity of children cared for that determines a mother's excellence. The quality of care a mother gives each of her children makes the difference. Let's look at a difficult moment in Jesus' mother Mary's life and consider a mother's care.

“Standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.” – John 19:25-27

First, let's look at a mother's care for her child. As a parent, it is extremely difficult to see someone insult, exclude or bully your child. It is even more painful to witness a group of people do so. We want others to love and accept our children like we do. With this in mind, try to imagine what it was like for Mary to watch a mob publicly humiliate, torture and murder her Son. It is difficult to do. Additionally, it appears that Mary was a single mother by the time Jesus was an adult. It is speculation, but most Bible students suspect this because Joseph is completely absent from the gospel accounts of Jesus' adulthood. So again attempt to put yourself in the place of a widowed single mother watching her firstborn Son, the man of the house after the father's death, undergo such extraordinary cruelty and rejection. I am asking us to do so to help us appreciate the depth of a mother's love. A godly mother's love is so great that she knows her place is with her child no matter what it cost. "Standing by the cross of Jesus (was) His mother...." - v. 25. What an example Mary provides, and what an expression of unfailing love God shows us through loving mothers who are there for us no matter what!

As excruciating as it was for Mary to go through this with Jesus, we have no record of her working to prevent Him from faithfully carrying His cross. As parents, we rightly want to protect our sons and daughters from pain, but we cannot allow our desire to protect them prevent them from faithfully following God's sometimes painful path. That is over-protection, and it undermines growth in Christ-likeness. We are called to go through providentially ordained pain with our children when following Christ gets them teased or even tortured, but we are not to spare them or ourselves the discomfort of faithfulness by encouraging them to just quietly go along with a wayward world. Not that she could have, but where would we be if Mary had talked Jesus out of going to the cross?

A mother's care for her child is not all we see in the scene recorded in our text. We also see a Son's care for His mother. Even in the middle of offering Himself up as the atoning sacrifice for humanity's sin, Jesus is not too busy to take care of His mother. I think this has implications for us, particularly in light of His call for us to "take up our cross and follow Him." Think of how His heart must have gone out to His mother as He looked out from the cross and saw her there witnessing His execution. In that moment, He made arrangements for her to live with one of His disciples, likely John who wrote this Gospel, and apparently she did so from then on. Sons and daughters, we have a divine obligation to care for our parents, who have cared so much for us. All of our parents, and all of us as parents, have fallen short in some ways, but no matter what, we are called upon to rise to the occasion and take good care of our mothers and fathers. In our culture, we often think of that as involving assisted living centers and such, but it does not have to. I was privileged to see my mother take great care of her mother by moving her into her home after my grandfather died. Caring for her mother required significant sacrifice on my mother's part. We can not all do exactly what she did, but we can do everything in our God-given power to care for our aging parents, no matter the sacrifices it requires of us. Here again, we are not called upon to avoid discomfort, but to grow in Christ-likeness by denying our selves for our mothers' care.

100 years ago Anna Jarvis, who did not marry and had no children of her own, honored her mother, who had died three years before, by championing the first official Mother's Day at a church where her mother taught Sunday School. They celebrated simply by giving each mother a single white carnation to symbolize the pure, unfailing love of mothers. I pray today our appreciation for our mother's care will grow and show. Thank you Father for our mothers - In Jesus' name.

Healing Faith

If you had to choose one or the other - would you rather have excellent physical health or extremely healthy faith in God? Many people see God as a means to the end of good physical or emotional health. For them, good health is the goal, and God is the way to get there. There is some truth in their position. God, in fact, guarantees everyone who is in life-saving spiritual union with Jesus Christ perfect wholeness in paradise forever. However, temporal good health is not the end. Reconciliation with God is the end, and God uses health, good and bad, to win people to it.

John 4:46-54

In the second miracle John records in his Gospel, we see Jesus winning a household to saving faith in Himself as God’s Messiah by mercifully restoring a man’s critically ill son to full health. This is not so much an account of ‘faith healing’ as it is an account of healing faith. Healthy faith is unconditional, active trust in God expressed through faithful actions. Our actions reveal what we actually believe. For example, if you tell me that you are going to pretend to hit me, and I tell you I have absolute faith that you will not actually hit me. Then I flinch, duck and cover when you swing. My actions indicate that my faith is not so absolute after all. I may doubt your motives or your eye-hand coordination, but I doubt something. Likewise, we can say that we have faith in God, but our actions sometimes demonstrate that we do not. In those moments, we may doubt that God is good all the time or that He is almighty, but we doubt something. Healthy faith acts according to the reality that God is always willing and always able to do the ultimate best for His glory and our good.

So, how did God use physical health to bring spiritual health to the household in our text? Well, what motivated the official to run to Jesus in the first place? It was not his desperation for reconciliation with God. He was driven to Jesus by the painful reality that his son was in the middle of a medical emergency. God can and does use such emergencies to turn us to Him, and I am glad He does! Many of you know my dad’s story. I would not wish the physical suffering he endured during his final years on anyone. It was a brutal combination of amputations and complications that eventually brought my dad to his breaking point. My dad was an extremely independent, self-reliant man, who was hardened to the gospel. That is until God met him at his lowest point and providentially used 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 to win my dad to Himself. I do not wish illness on anyone, but if that is what it takes to get a person to turn to God, I prefer them to find eternal wholeness through difficult means than to temporarily enjoy good health on their way to eternal destruction.

Jesus’ first sign was a miracle of transformation, water into wine. This was a miracle of restoration, illness to health. God promises everyone who turns to Him to save them from sin’s penalty, power, and presence both transformation and restoration. He transforms everyone who turns to Him into new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), and He promises to restore everything we lost in the Fall, including paradise and the eternally healthy bodies perfectly fitted for it (Revelation 21). You and I have a certain date with death unless Jesus returns first. No matter how we try to preserve it, our health is going to fail. A right relationship with God, not health, is the end. Jesus is the Way. Healthy faith in Him will never fail you.

Satisfaction II: Work for Food

Last week we looked at quenching our spiritual thirst for God through worshipping Him in spirit and truth. This week, let’s look at satisfying our hungry hearts with the spiritual nourishment that comes through accomplishing God’s work: JOHN 4:27-42

Have ever noticed that for us to enjoy something completely we need to share the enjoyment with someone else? We see a magnificent sunset by ourselves and think, “I wish_____ was here - they would really enjoy this.” We go to a great game or event but a friend or loved one can’t be there, and while it’s great, it’s just not complete without them. If the Miami Dolphins are ever great again, I’ll enjoy it, but not as much as I would if my dad, who got to play a season with them, was here to enjoy it with me. I think we are made that way. We are meant to be joy spreaders and even if we are enjoying something or someone immensely our joy is incomplete until it is shared with others. This is especially, even ultimately, true about our delight in God.

Genuinely delighting in God - feasting on His infinite excellencies - is the key to losing our appetite for sin’s dumpster scraps, but our enjoyment of God is incomplete when we see empty seats at His table and recall our starving friends still foraging for leftover bits of Big Mac in the dumpster of sin. For the worship feast to be complete we need to share the delight we have found with those who are still starving for love and settling for scraps.

That is exactly what the woman from the well immediately went to work doing. She left her waterpot behind - perhaps symbolically - and went to invite everyone she knew to meet the Way to the banquet. Notice how she used a question and an invitation to get people to investigate Jesus for themselves. She did not go to them arguing a case. She told them about her personal experience with Christ and invited them in an intriguing way to investigate Him for themselves. We would do well to follow the example of God’s ambassador to the Samaritans.

By the way, isn’t it wonderful how God heals and turns lives around?! God chose to save the believing Samaritans through the woman whose search for love once left her so alone that she went to the well at noon instead of in the cool morning or evening when women went together. In an instant, He took her from town tramp to town treasure! God knows just who needs what and He knows just how to work everything together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. He also delights in putting the seemingly foolish and discarded things of this world to great, God-glorifying use. Wherever you have been - whatever you have done - whatever kind of reputation you have - turn to God, the master of turning trashed lives into treasure.

Much as Jesus used the well’s water to help the Samaritan woman discover the eternal spring of living water, He used the disciples’ food to help them and us find our spiritual food. He helped them see beyond the physical realm to the spiritual situation in their midst. He told them that it was harvest time and that He had already nourished His soul when He sowed new life into the woman, who was now working for Him reaping a harvest of new worshippers for God. It may seem ironic that we get nourished by expending energy in God’s work, but we can’t out-give God, who feeds our souls as we work to bring worshippers to Him. Finally, notice Jesus said His food came not just from knowing God’s will or from starting God’s work but from completing God’s work. So as Paul, one of God’s greatest harvest workers, once wrote “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”- (Galatians 6:9) So, never give up. Give yourself to God! Give yourself to treasuring Him and to finishing His work, and He will make you a spiritually satisfied treasure to those He brings to His feast through you!

Satisfaction I: Worship for Water

If life came with a label it might say "Satisfaction NOT Guaranteed." We often feel empty, unfulfilled and dissatisfied. For most of our hungers and thirsts there is some earthly solution. If I am physically hungry, there is food to satisfy me. But, to varying degrees of awareness, there is an often undefined, underlying dissatisfaction deep within every human heart that nothing on earth can fill. We sing about it. Write novels, plays and movies about it. We look here, there and everywhere for the solution to it, but no amount of substances, sex, success, or stuff can satisfy our hungry hearts. In our text, we meet a spiritually parched woman who has been desperately seeking satisfaction in the wrong wells just as she meets the physically thirsty Savior seeking sincere worship for His Father. Let's look at JOHN 4:1-26 and focus on the relationship between God's desire for worship and our need for satisfaction. The two definitely go together.

In our text, we see Jesus intentionally making His way across social barriers to a divine appointment with an important person. Of course, no one would have guessed the Samaritan woman who was making her way to Jacob's well in the noon sun was a VIP. It is very likely that she was a social outcast. It is a tragic irony that this woman's efforts to find love, acceptance, and relationship were the very actions that resulted in her social isolation. The wells we turn to in our efforts to satisfy our thirsty souls seem to work that way. We go somewhere to cope and try to fill the void, and the places we go often take matters from bad to worse. The first key to finding satisfaction for your thirsty soul is to look in the right place and that place is in a right relationship with God. You and I were created to enjoy a living relationship with God and without that relationship, we are spiritually dead inside. Romances, reruns, and religions about God all eventually run dry, but a real living relationship with the real living God never does. No wonder God pleads with us in places like Isaiah 55:1-2 to seek and find our satisfaction in Him.

We not only need to look in the right place - a real relationship with God - we also need to look in the right way. Sadly, many people who have experienced genuine reconciliation with God, by turning from sin to Him and trusting their lives to the care and control of Christ, still fail to enjoy the abundant satisfaction that is available to them. Why? I think much of the answer is found in Jesus' and the woman's discussion about worship. God's glorification and our satisfaction are mutually complimentary. John Piper has done a great job broadcasting his phrase, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." That is true. When we are so abundantly satisfied in God that the world's wells no longer hold any appeal to us, people can see that we have found something superior in God. Filthy food scraps by a dumpster don't look appetizing unless you are starving to death, and in the same way, sin's pleasures don't look nearly as appealing when you are spiritually feasting on the richest fare in the universe by delighting yourself in God. God tells us over and over again in Scripture...Rejoice! Delight! Celebrate! These are not burdensome commands. God works to wean us off of the world's dumpster scrap pleasures not to starve us of pleasure. He knows we need to enjoy beauty. He knows we need to express appreciation for excellence. He weans us off the world's pleasures so that we can enjoy the vastly superior pleasures of delighting in all that God is and in all that God does. God is infinitely splendid and His excellencies (Psalm 103) are an inexhaustible source of celebration!

To genuinely honor God and enjoy soul satisfaction, we must worship Him in spirit and truth. Both must stay together for genuine worship. Truth without spirit is just dead orthodoxy. We have the information correct, but we are unmoved by it. How honored would you feel if I knew a great deal about you but could not care less? On the other hand, spirit without truth is just ecstatic inaccuracy. In that case, we dishonor God by celebrating something He is not. Imagine meeting a famous singer-songwriter and going on and on about how much you love one of their songs only to discover another artist actually wrote and performed that song. The artist you were meeting might be amused, but they would not be honored. We must really delight in God as He really is. When we do, He will be worshipped, and we will be satisfied.

Less is More

Have you ever been disappointed with ministry results? Have you ever believed that the Lord called you to participate in a good work that you had high hopes for and that you zealously invested your time and energy into only to have the results fall well short of your expectations? I know I have. I also know that many of you recently worked hard to prepare and distribute more than a thousand very cool Easter Egg Invitations only to see very nasty weather and very few guests show up for Sunday’s Easter service. First, thank you for your hard work and faithful service. Second, let’s look to God’s word to learn from an exceptionally faithful man of God whose ministry was actually shrinking for the advance of the gospel.

John 3:22-36

In our text, John was tempted to discouragement and self-pity. His ministry had been huge, but now it was declining. Why? Would he take the bait and buy the lie that God was upset with him? Would he think he was no longer blessed or even loved? No! He stayed secure in his relationship with God, and rejoiced to see Jesus’ ministry grow. John was not in a baptism competition or a popularity contest. He was on a mission. John’s ministry was not about John. It was always all about Jesus as all of our ministries should always be. That’s the first thing meant by the “Less is More” message title.

In terms of motivation, our ministry must be less about us and more about Christ. We need to honestly examine our ministry motivations. We need to ask God to search our hearts and reveal our underlying motives. Do we need numerical success to feel important, impressive or loved? If so, that’s got to go. God has already said He loves us as loud as it can be said when He offered up His only begotten Son to save us from sin’s penalty, power, and presence. If you know, love, trust and treasure Christ, nothing in all of creation is able to separate you from God’s love. As it says in our text, those who have the Son have the life. Of course, it also says those who don’t trust and obey Christ remain under God’s wrath. Jesus is God’s Way out of death and into Life. And we must be less and less motivated by our needs and more and more motivated other’s need for our Savior.

Churches can easily fall into a business mindset. They think of starting and growing a church much like building a business. The bigger it grows the better it is, but it might help us to think of starting and growing a ministry more like providing health care. Health care comes to us through everything from huge regional medical centers to small local offices. I think what matters most to most people is not the quantity of people served but the quality of care provided. Similarly, I think the quality of the spiritual care we provide for people may be a better measure of ministry effectiveness than exclusive focus on the quantity of people in attendance. So, let's focus a bit less on quantity and more on quality.

Finally, in terms of the means we use to minister, we need to be less self-reliant and more God-reliant. As John said a person can receive nothing except what is given from above. Consider the effectiveness of Jesus' ministry and the following comments Jesus made about His ministry:

"The Son of Man can do nothing of Himself" - John 5:19.

"My teaching is not My own" - John 7:16.

"The word that you hear is not Mine but the Father's" - John 14:24.

If Jesus said He could do nothing without His Father, how much can we do without Him? The answer of course is nothing...at least nothing of any actual spiritual value. We need to be less and less reliant on our programs and processes and more and more reliant on prayer. Prayer is God's ordained means of effective ministry. I wonder how much ministry empowerment and wisdom we miss simply because we do not ask. As James once said, "We have not because we ask not." John and Jesus humbly relied on God and expressed their reliance through frequent fervent prayer. We need to be less impressed with our programs and more impressed with God, and we need to express that by relying less on ourselves and more - much more - on prayer.

Life in His Name

On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. 2So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him." 3 So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb...(Peter) entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there….9they did not yet understand the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. 10So the disciples went away again to their own homes. 11But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; 12and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying. 13And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him."14When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus said, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?" Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, "Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away." 16Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (Teacher)….18Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord," 19So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you."20And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord…24But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came….He said to them, "Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe." 26After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you." 27Then He said to Thomas, "Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing." 28Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!" 29Jesus said, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed." 30Many other signs Jesus performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31but these have been written so you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name. - John 20

Faith matters. Faith is not just believing something, though it involves it. Faith is entrusting yourself, or at least some aspect of yourself, to the care of something or someone else. Life regularly requires such faith of each us. For example, anyone who invests with a financial institution must entrust at least some of their financial health to that institution's care. Hopefully, none of us banked on Bear Stearns, whose value recently went from $170 to $2 a share. If we had, our misplaced faith would have cost us. Faith is certainly required whenever we go in for an operation. Once we are under the anesthesia, our lives are literally in our surgical team's hands. That is faith - believing in and banking on, and I truly believe your eternal destiny depends on whether or not you trust your life to the care and control of Jesus Christ. I know believing in and banking on the historical reality of Jesus’ bodily resurrection can be challenging, and I pray God will use this message to help overcome obstacles between you and saving faith in the resurrection.

I see three categories of obstacles to saving faith in our text. First, I see Mary struggling with naturalistic faith assumptions. She saw the evidence, immediately jumped to a plausible conclusion, and in her mind that’s the way it was - grave robbers stole the body. The problem was her reality was not really reality and that is the case with all who preemptively rule out the resurrection, simply because they are closed to even considering the possibility of a supernatural event. So many people fall for a false dichotomy between faith (supernatural/resurrection) and reason (natural/robbers). One of the most relentless purveyors of this myth is the biologist Richard Dawkins, who wrote the bestseller The God Delusion, but like all of us, Dr. Dawkins is a man of faith. Consider his quote from a recent NY Times interview: “I cannot know for certain, but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life according to that assumption.” That is faith. So, how do we overcome our naturalistic assumptions? First, we must realize that they are faith-based. Beneath every doubt is a belief. Disbelief in ‘this’ is actually belief in ‘that’, and it helps to realize we are comparing two faiths rather than faith vs. reason. Next, we must be open to the reasonable possibility that if God can create all life from nothing at all, this God can also create life from death. Then we must consider the evidence for Jesus' resurrection honestly in light of that possibility.

The next obstacle to saving faith that I see in our text comes from Peter and the beloved disciple, who had a lack of Scriptural awareness. They did not realize they were witnessing exactly what the Bible promised. The Bible is like no other sacred book, which are usually the product of a single ‘enlightened’ author. The Bible is 66 books written by at least 40 human authors from various cultures and walks of life over a period of 1500 years. It was written about the most profound and often divisive issues of life and yet there is thematic harmony and factual consistency throughout. In fact, it is literally the unfolding of a single, non-contradictory story, and I do not believe that just happens. Still, even during Biblical times, Jesus fulfilled numerous, highly detailed Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah right in front of people, and they missed it. How? He once said to those who did not believe in the resurrection, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). I think that still applies. Knowing God and the Scriptures goes together. The more you know the Scriptures - the more you will be awed by God’s power and the more you will be able to trust in and rely on His resurrected Christ.

The final obstacle to faith in our text is evidenced by the most famous skeptic of all, Thomas, who lacked tangible personal experience. His close personal friends’ experience was not enough for Thomas, and I get that. One of the things I love about Jesus is His willingness to do whatever it takes to overcome our sincere obstacles to saving faith. The One who let Thomas reach his hand into His side will do what it takes to reach you, if you truly want Him enough to sincerely seek Him. Everyone who sincerely seeks Him, like Mary (the first person to see Jesus after His resurrection), finds Him. Mary was seeking Jesus before dawn, and she stayed after everyone else went home. She sought Him with tears, and when He finally called her by name, her tears turned to joy. Yours will too. More than 500 people saw Jesus alive after His death. His first followers went from cowering in fear to boldly giving their lives to proclaim His resurrection. These things and so many more are written that you may believe in Jesus, the living Son of God, and through believing in and banking on Him, may have life in His name.