Musings of a Seminary Grad

This is a sermon I preached at my home church, Lakewood Baptist Church, on 11/20/2024 as a series on scenes from the Gospels. Introduction My wife and I try to reserve Saturday mornings as time together to reconnect after a long week, and we usually like to have a nice breakfast together, so we will make eggs or pancakes (syrup courtesy of Ron Turcotte). This past Saturday, I had a piece of toast, but instead of getting up for a knife, I used a fork to spread jam on my toast. After a few minutes, I commented to Karrie, “I have concluded that a fork is an extremely inefficient tool for this job.” A tool only works well if used for its intended purpose. Tonight, I want to take us to a passage in John, but before we can jump in, we need to know why the Holy Spirit inspired John to write his Gospel. John's Gospel opens with the claim that Jesus is the eternal Son of God come in the flesh to save us from our sins (1:1-18); and his thesis statement in 20:30-31 is "Now Jesus did ma...