Alliance Christian Church
November 16 2025

      • 2 Corinthians 9:7GS-NETBIBLE

  • My Testimony
  • Jesus Loves Even Me
  • It Is Well with My Soul

  • Can I Get a Witness

    Introduction
    P52 Papyri.
    I showed this on tuesday night a few weeks ago.
    Oldest surviving manuscript of the new testament in existence. Dated to the early 2nd century. This was written within 30 years of when John wrote his original. Less than a hundred years after the events of Jesus took place.
    The fact that we even have this nothing short of miraculous.
    Think about how long a walmart reciept lasts when you leave it in your wallet. That thing is basically unrecognizable after about a month.
    It was sold on the black market in egypt.
    The text on it (Front and back) is this:
    John 18:37–38 NET 2nd ed.
    ...“You say that I am a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world—to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked, “What is truth?” ...
    I don’t know about you, but I can not think of a more poetic verse in the Bible to be on the oldest surviving fragment.
    Jesus, as He’s going to the cross, tells Pontius Pilate I came into the world to Testify to the Truth. My words are Truth.
    And pilate responds by saying, what even is truth?
    This question, “What is truth” is something that Humans have been struggling with for millennia.
    Pontius pilate, almost in sort of a hand wavy way, ask’s jesus, what really is truth anyway? Is there even such a thing?
    Today, we are constantly bombarded by people trying to convince us that their version of reality is in fact the truth.
    Marketing and advertising, culture, media, politics, religious. Everyone wants you to believe their “version” of the truth.
    But there aren’t really versions of the truth. There is only “The truth”
    In the ancient world, when John sat down to write his gospel account, the early church was struggling with the question what really is the truth about Jesus. And just like today, you had all sorts of people trying to sell you their version of what they thought the truth about Jesus was.
    And John, as he sat down to write his gospel, as we said a couple weeks ago, was the last surviving eye witness of Jesus that we have on record.
    And so he set out to write an account of Jesus’ life to settle the debate that was going on once and for all, this is the truth about who Jesus Really is.
    Transition
    We’re going through a series for the next few weeks called “Sevens”
    and we’re looking at how John uses all of these different groups of sevens in order to point to the idea of the fact that Jesus is the Messiah a word that means anointed one… in other words he is the one God appointed and anointed to be king over all creation.
    And that he’s the son of God. That he is 100% God, who came in the flesh, to live and teach and die for our sins, and be raised on the third day.
    And so John has all of these groups of sevens… seven miracles, seven conversations, seven festivals, all of which the original audience would have picked up on as john’s way of very subtly pointing us to the truth.
    Roadmap
    This morning, we’re going to look at seven different witnesses, or “Testimonies” about Jesus, and what they reveal about who he truly is.
    A lot of people throughout the book of John make statements about Jesus. Some say he’s a rabbi. Some say he’s the messiah, some say he’s simply “Jesus of Nazareth”
    Seven different people who john specifically uses the word “Testify” or “Testimony” when describing what they say about Jesus.
    The reason that’s important is because the word “Testimony” is a legal term. It’s a court of law term. And so by using this specific phrase “Testimony” or “Testify” to describe these seven people, Jesus is pointing us to the idea that what they say about jesus is the truth. You can count on it in a court of law.
    The Big idea this morning, through these seven testimonies about Jesus, they reveal to us that Jesus is:
    Jesus is Lamb, the unifier, The son of God, the resurrection and the life. (Repeat)
    Point
    Statement
    Jesus is the Lamb.
    Explanation
    John 1:19–20 NIV
    Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”
    John the Baptist is out in the wilderness, Baptizing people and telling them to repent. Telling them to turn away from evil, and turn toward Good.
    One of the things that we mentioned last week, very briefly, is this idea that the Jewish people had, over time, developed this idea of ritual washings to make someone spiritually clean.
    I didn’t go into very much detail on this idea last week, but The short version is, during the time of the old testament, the Jewish people had the sacrifical system.
    And everything they did revolved around going to the Temple in Jerusalem and offering up an animal as a sacrifice.
    If you commited a sin, you brought an animal for sacrifice. If you had an infectious disease, you brought an animal as a sacrifice. If you wanted to celebrate a holiday, you brought an animal as a sacrifice.
    But In 538 BC, The Babylonian empire came and destroyed the temple, and hauled the Jewish people off into captivity for 70 years.
    So there’s no temple any more, the people are scattered all across the world. They want to continue to practice their faith, but if there’s no temple, and no altar, desperate times call for desperate measures.
    And so they developed this system of ritual cleansings. And water began to be used as sort of the stand-in for the temple system.
    And even after the temple was re-built, they had been using water for so long, that it sort of became a new part of the jewish faith.
    Baptism in water, full immersion, was a practice that was reserved for two very specific purposes.
    It was one of the things a Gentile who wanted to become Jewish made their conversion.
    It was associated with a prophecy in Zechariah chapter 13
    Zechariah 13:1 NIV
    “On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.
    In other words, Full immersion of Jewish people was associated with the coming of the Messiah.
    So when John the Baptist is out in the wilderness, practicing baptism of Jewish people, the religious leaders were like, we need to go out there and investigage.
    Because this guy out Dunking people in water which means he’s either claiming that he’s the messiah, or that the Jewish people are so far gone that they need to re-convert to their own religion.
    And so they go out there and they ask, are you the messiah? And he says not.
    John 1:21–23 NIV
    They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.” Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ”
    John 1:24–25 NIV
    Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
    And the intonation here is not one of curiosity. It’s not like they’re really excited about John the Baptist and they want to know more.
    The tone is more like “Who do you think you are?”
    John 1:29 NIV
    The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
    Testimony number 1 tells us, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World.
    Argumentation
    Some 600 years before Jesus was even born, The prophet Isaiah said this about who the messiah was going to be:
    Isaiah 53:4–7 NIV
    Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
    Application
    John’s testimony points to this bigger truth that all of us are like sheep who have gone astray from God.
    All of us are spiritually lost, spiritually broken, spiritually separated from God.
    And it doesn’t matter what ritual system we try to use to get in God’s good graces.
    In the old testamnet it was the sacrifical system.
    In the New testament, and the time between the testaments they were using water in a way where again and again and again you had to come back and be washed clean.
    Because they were temporary fixes to the permanent problem of brokenness that exists in us at our core.
    Like trying to put a bandaid on a bullet hole.
    Jesus Christ is the lamb who doesn’t bandaid over the sins of world. He doesn’t temporarily relieve the sins of hte world. HE takes them away. once and for all.
    Do you trust in that fact? Do you trust in the fact that Jesus Christ can make you whole once and for all, or are you in a sort of cycle where you are constantly trying to put spiritual bandaids over your sin?
    Because when you’re broken, only Jesus can make you whole.
    Transition
    That’s the problem that our second witness to Jesus was going through. in chapter 4.
    Point
    Jesus is on his way from a Passover festival in Jerusalem, back up to galilee
    And he decides to take a route through the region known as samaria.
    I want to give you the super quick back of the napkin history of who the samaritans were.
    Samaritans and Jews are culturally, and religiously related. Back during the time of the assyrian conquests of israel in the 700’s BC, when the norhtern tribes were hauled into captivity, a small group of jews remained behind in israel, and sort of split off and became known as the samaritans. There’s a lot more to it than that, you can read 2 Kings 17 if you want to know more.
    The samaritans started off as being not right with God.
    But by the time the new testament came around they went through a period of revival, just like the jewish people had, and forthe most part believed much of the same things the Jews did. But they fought about everything.
    It honestly reminds me of the protestants and Catholics today.
    Obviously, some major differences, but if you really start drilling down to the core beliefs you end up finding out that there is a lot more in common than there is in difference. But because tensions have been so high for the last 500 years, nobody is willing to try to sort out the differences. Everyone is in their corner, and nobody is willing to come to the table and have a conversations
    That’s a lot like what it was like for the Jews and samaritans.
    And so as Jesus is traveling through samaria, he comes across this woman at a well.
    And as they’re having this conversation, the Jew vs samaritan tension is thick.
    A lot happens in this conversation, but I want to point you to one specific part of the conversation, where Jesus miraculously knows that this woman has been divorced 5 times.
    And the woman says to him.
    John 4:20–24 NIV
    Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
    Because of the history between the jews and the samaritans, they were split on a lot of things. The jews and the samaritans each had their own temples, their own region, their own mountain that they worshipped God at.
    And because a lot of the later books in the old testamnet (The prophets, a lot of the history) were written after the split, the Samaritans didn’t have much of those books in their bible.
    But they did have the torah, the first five books of moses, and they practiced what was in it, the same as the Jews.
    And again, if you could have gotten both of them in the same room together, you could have probably drilled down to the fact that at the core they weren’t that different.
    Do you believe that God is one, yes. Do you believe he created the heavens and the earth and everything in it? yes. Do you beleive he made a covenant with abraham and his decedents? Yes. do you believe that he gave us the law on mount Sinai through moses after he led our ancestors out of Egypt? yes. Do you believe that you should worship him and him alone? yes.
    But they couldn’t do it.
    Both the jews and the Samaritans were like, you know what, as soon as the messiah comes back we’ll know for sure which one of us was right.
    John 4:25 NIV
    The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
    And interestingly, Jesus says, look, the Jewish people were right.
    John 4:22 NIV
    You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.
    However. That’s not the point. Jesus didn’t come to win an argument. He came to unify God’s people.
    And a little further down, in verse 39
    John 4:39–41 NIV
    Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.
    Statement
    Our second testimony, our second witness, points to the idea that Jesus is the unifier.
    Explanation
    There was this split that existed among the people of God that had gone on for 700 years.
    And nobody could figure out how to fix it.
    Jesus came to fix the divisions and splits that we have over who God is.
    He came to unite not just the jews and the Samaritans, but all the world.
    Think about this for a second. Christianity is the only major religion on planet earth that isn’t culturally or ethnically based.
    It’s the only major religion that doesn’t have an official language.
    Almost every other major religion (and I’m talking about major religions, not like little religious groups that have popped up over the past hundred or so years) major religions that have a history and a large number of followers.
    Christianity is the only one that doesn’t have an official culture or language.
    Because Jesus is meant for everyone.
    I believe that we as the church, (Big C) have done a terrible job acknowledging that fact.
    We are so split, so divided, Catholics, protestants, and Calvinists and baptists, and all the rest of it, we are so split, so divided.
    Make no mistake, Jesus will come back and he will fix what we couldn’t
    He will unify what we couldn’t.
    But until he does, we as the church have an obligation to at least work toward unity around Christ.
    We can work out the differences, we can debate, and discuss, and all of that, I’m not saying we should all just abandon what we believe.
    But at the very base level, we ought to be able to break bread with another Christian over the question of Jesus.
    Because he is the great unifier.
    Transition
    Point
    Statement
    Our third, fourth, and fifth testimonies, witnesses to who Jesus is, all come in one passage, In john 5. And they all point to the truth that Jesus is more than just the lamb of God, More than just a unifier.
    But that he is in fact the Son of God.
    Explanation
    In John 5, Jesus is continuing the cycle we talked about last week, where he performs a miracle, and then instantly says or does something to get under the skin of the religious leaders.
    In this specific instance, he performed a sign or miracle on the sabbath.
    And in that time, that was not ok.
    Because the religious leaders of the day had almost over interpreted the commandment from Exodus 20 that said the sabbath is holy, do no work on the sabbath, rest on the sabbath.
    And they had basically over-interpreted anything that could possibly be technically conceived as “Work” on the sabbath.
    To the point where, like, if you went out in your back yard, and you picked an apple off of a tree to eat, that was considered “harvesting” which was technically considered “Farming” Which was technically considered “working”
    It was absolutely ridiculous.
    And so when Jesus comes along, and he heals a man on the sabbath, he literally just says the words “Pick up your mat and walk” and a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years was healed.
    And instead of being amazed by the fact that a paralyzed man walked, the pharisees were like “Hmm, technically, you performed a healing, which is technically a form of work, making you technically in violation of ten commandments.
    Jesus snaps back by saying
    John 5:17–18 NIV
    In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
    This really got under their skin.
    And so again, much like with John the Baptist, the religious leaders were like “Who do you think you are?” Prove it. Does anyone else back you up on this claim that you are the son of God?
    John 5:31–33 NIV
    “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true. “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth.
    Look, For starters, John the baptist testified who I am. You didn’t believe him.
    He doesn’t even mention the samaritan woman’s testeimony. Number 1, she was a woman, number 2, she was a samaritan, so they wouldn’t have given here the time of day.
    And so jesus basically says, ok, you’re not going to believe what I say about myself, you’renot going to believe what John said?

    John 5:35-40

    John 5:35–40 NIV
    John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light. “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
    This is a big claim. Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th testimonies: God the father himself, the works and miracles that Jesus is performing, and the entire Bible, all point to and testify that Jesus is the son of God.
    Application
    We can’t speak the truth about Jesus if we do not acknowledge that fact.
    There are beliefs in the Christian faith that are debatable
    We can debate over the question of, can Christians drink alcohol? It’s debatable. We can look through the Scriptures and come away with different answers depending on our point of view
    What kind of music should we have in worship. Debatable
    How exactly do we interpret the end-times, and exactly what is going on there, and exactly how is that going to look? Debatable.
    There are also beliefs in the Christian faith that are essential.
    These are things that the Bible leaves no room for debate.
    The fact that Jesus wants us to be unified, when he met with the woman at the well, it was an act of uniting Jews and Samaritans, implies that there are going to be debatable matters.
    Romans chapter 14 talks all about “Debatable matters”
    But the notion that Jesus is anything other than 100% God in the flesh is not debatable.
    and we as the church need to stand firm on the convictions that are not up for debate
    I encourage you to practice convictional unity.
    That means you take time to know what the debatables and the essentials are.
    And we ought to approach the debatables with humility. We ought to be able to “Agree to disagree” on the debable issues.
    But when it comes to the essentials of the faith, Jesus is the Son of God, we stand on our convictions.
    Transition
    One or two sentences to smoothly shift to the next part
    Point
    Explanation
    Our 6th and 7th witnesses, or testimonies, comes after the account of Jesus raising lazarus from the dead.
    We mentioned this sign, this miracle, last week, but really briefly:
    Jesus found out that his best friend had fallen seriously ill and died
    And Jesus, knowing that is was a death sentence for him, went into bethany near jerusalem, and sought to raise him back to life.
    And as Jesus gets there, he’s talking with lazaras’s sister Martha, and she’s distraught, her brother was dead.

    John 11:23-27

    John 11:23–27 NIV
    Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
    And Jesus goes to the tomb where they had burried lazarus, he calls him out from the grave.
    And we get this little note, in the next chapter, chapter 12
    John 12:17 NIV
    Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word.
    The NIV here uses the phrase “spread the word” In the original language, the word there is the same word “Testify” Testimony, bearing witness.
    ESV, NASB, and a couple other translations have something like that.
    And I want to mention our 7th witness testimony because it ties together
    Jesus goes into jerusalem, he’s crucified, buried, he appeared to the disciples
    And at the very end of the book, after the resurrection and the appearances to the disciples, john writes.
    John 21:24–25 NIV
    This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
    We’re getting a flash forward from the time that the events happened, in around 30 AD, to the time that John sat down and wrote his account in around 85 or 90 AD.
    John was living in Ephesus under the reign of the Roman emperor Domition.
    Who, like Nero before him, we discussed when we went through 1 Peter, had begun a campaign to have Christians rounded up and executed for their faith.
    Conclusion
    And the parallel we see here between the crowd at the tomb of lazarus, testimony number 6, and John the apostle, writing his testimony under the reign of Domition is this:
    They both feared retribution, punishment, because they witnessed a resurrection, and would not stop telling people about it.
    The crowd at the tomb faced retribution from the pharisees.
    John, and the other witnesses to Jesus’ resurection faced retribution from Rome, retribution by being thrown out of the synagogues.
    But they knew what they saw. And it didn’t matter how many times someone told them, stop going around telling people that he had risen.
    Stop saying that Lazarus rose from the grave. Stop telling people that Jesus rose from the grave.
    and if you don’t stop telling people there’s going to be consequences.
    Church if there is one thing that we absolutely can not do. We can not stop proclaiming, bearing witness to the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the grave.
    Because there are too many people who are walking around spiritually dead, just like lazarus was physically dead, who need to hear about Jesus.
    Our mission, full stop, no questions asked, is to be people who give testimonies to the death, burial, and resurection of Jesus. Because the one’s who believe in him will live.
    We live in a world surrounded by lies.
    And we have an obligation to spread the truth
    Pray

      • John 18:37–38NIV2011

      • John 1:19–20NIV2011

      • Zechariah 13:1NIV2011

      • John 1:21–23NIV2011

      • John 1:24–25NIV2011

      • John 1:29NIV2011

      • Isaiah 53:4–7NIV2011

      • John 4:20–24NIV2011

      • John 4:25NIV2011

      • John 4:22NIV2011

      • John 4:39–41NIV2011

      • John 5:17–18NIV2011

      • John 5:31–33NIV2011

      • John 5:35–40NIV2011

      • John 11:23–27NIV2011

      • John 12:17NIV2011

      • John 21:24–25NIV2011

  • Cleanse Me
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