Preaching the gospel from John's Gospel

 A few tips on preaching the Gospel According to John:

Preach in line with the purpose of the book

You wouldn’t take a utilities bill to a song contest and sing it or take a maths textbook to bed with you for a bit of escapist light reading before you fall asleep – that’s not their purpose. The purpose of John is in John 20:30-31 – an electric moment where the narrator gets in front of the camera and looks straight into the lens at you sitting there and tells you exactly why he’s written these things:
LOOK –> LIFE.
Look at Christ crucified, come to Him, eat and drink Him –> have eternal life, know the true God, starting now. 
Go back to John 20:30-31 every time you preach on John.  Not so that every sermon sounds the same, but so that you are preaching in line with John’s purpose, according to God's purpose. If we use John’s book for some other purpose – studying different characters for motivational encouragements or looking at Jesus’ miracles for promises of healings and miracles now – then we are quite simply misusing the book and we can’t expect the Spirit to bless our words.

Don’t stop at the sign posts

As it says in John 20:30, Jesus miracles are ‘signs’. They are not the focus in themselves – they are signposts pointing away from themselves to Jesus. There is a great danger that we get stuck at the signpost. That’s what happens in John 6 isn’t it? The crowd liked the bread and fish and they want Jesus to do the same trick again. I’m sure I would have been the same. Free food! Forever furlough! A new King Moses! Brilliant! But Jesus says (John 6:26-27) you haven’t seen that the bread I gave you was a SIGN – a signpost pointing away from itself to Me. Very often in John’s gospel you get a sign and you get Jesus interpreting the sign in the discussion that comes just before or just after (esp. Ch. 5, 6, 9, 11). You need both. 
SIGN + INTERPRETATION = REVELATION.
When you see sign and interpretation together it totally changes how you preach the sign. So for example the healing of the man by the pool (Ch. 5) is not about how to get healed or freedom from depression or dependency but about the power and authority of Jesus’ words, about the Son doing his Father’s work, about raising the dead.

Tell the story

The Gospels are stories of Jesus – the most amazing story ever told. Don’t let us lose the drama and tension and flow of the story when we preach it. And the particular shape of the story the way John tells it is ‘U’-shaped. Jesus is the one come down from heaven (John 3:13), sent into the world by the Father (John 3:17), then he’s the one returning to the Father (John 16:10) with the aim that we would be lifted up into the mutual love of the Trinity (John 17:24) – true Home. In the upper room you have the turning point (see John 13:3 and 16:28) – the bottom of the ‘U’ as Jesus washes his disciples feet and prepares for the even greater humility and greater washing of the Cross. There used to be a video on YouTube (I can't find it now) which beautifully illustrated the U-shape “come from God… going back to God…” (John 13:3). It's an osprey diving out of the sky like a bullet, splashing into the water. The shot then changes to an underwater view as the osprey, fully submerged grabs hold of a trout. The osprey then bursts out of the water, the fish in its grip and ascends into the sky, the fish flapping about beneath it, amazingly flying! As I watched it I got goose bumps. The osprey is preaching John's Gospel: preaching of the majestic one who comes from heaven, plunges into the depths of darkness and slavery and sin, grabs us (John 15:16) and takes us to undreamt of heights to soar with him. If the Son sets you free…

Preach the gospel from the Gospel

As should be clear by now, that’s what John is all about. All the way through you get this repeated drum beat – “The hour has not yet come”, “The hour has not yet come”, “The hour has not yet come” (John 2:4; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23,27). Then we get to the upper room and the time for the big event has finally come (John 13:1; 17:1). Then finally at John 19:30 the great cry, “It is finished.”  The Lamb of God sacrificed for the sins of the world (John 1:29) – that’s what it’s all been building up to. Substitution comes again and again – Christ’s death for / instead of us (John 6:51; 10:11; 11:50-52; 15:13; 17:19; 18:14). And it’s underlined by the Old Testament allusions – Jesus is the Ladder connecting heaven and earth ((John 1:51 cf. Gen. 28:10-19), the Snake lifted on a stick, made sin for us (John 3:14 cf. Num. 21:4-9), the one who drinks the cup of God’s wrath (John 18:11 cf. Isaiah 51:17,22; Jeremiah 25:15). That’s our focus as we appeal to people to look and live.

More resources on John's Gospel:

• TGC Introduction to John course
• D A Carson, The Gospel According to John (Pillar series, stand out commentary)