John's Gospel is structured quite differently to the Synoptics. It is less documentary and more meditative, though it does contain a lot of narrative material. John intermingles themes, 'signs' and discourses, so that his Gospel develops in much the same way that a fugue does: themes are stated, then combined, first with one theme, then with another, then put aside for a while and taken up again in yet another combination, and all interwoven with signs and discourses. You can only get the best out of John's Gospel by mulling it over at leisure - and even so, you will never get right to the end of it.

Broadly speaking the structure is built to 7 themes, 7 'signs' and 7 claims.

Seven Themes

1.	Life	Nicodemus, Lazarus
2.	Truth	the 'Word', Prologue, Nobleman's son, Lazarus
3.	Faith	Nobleman's son, Bethesda Cripple
4.	Light	Man Born Blind, Feast of Tabernacles
5.	Spirit	Woman of Samaria, Upper Room Discourse
6.	Judgment	Nicodemus, Jews' response, Adulterous woman
7.	Love	Passion narrative, Peter Restored

Seven Signs

1.	Water into Wine	ch. 2	The Difference He Makes
2.	Healing with a Word	ch. 4	By Faith Alone
3.	A Cripple at Bethesda	ch. 5	Made Whole
4.	Feeding 5,000	ch. 6	Our True Sustainer - Trust Him for everything
5.	Walking on Water	ch. 6	He Who Comes, He Who Watches
6.	Man born Blind	ch. 9	'One Thing I know' - Faith & assurance grow by obedience
7.	The Raising of Lazarus	ch. 11	Made Alive

"All that He is"

1. The Water into Wine
How better can you describe the difference Christ's coming makes? He is the bringer of joy and gladness. This first sign sets the scene ... it establishes the key signature in which the music was to be played ... it makes the point about the purpose of His coming.
He came that we might have life - life that is full and satisfying and joy-filled. He wants to make our dull lives sparkle.

2. The Healing of the Nobleman's Son
The central point of this episode is the need for faith.
The nobleman wanted Jesus to come to his boy at his home in Capernaum, and Jesus said, "No - you go; you have my word that your son lives." And the man had to make that journey home (25 miles) with nothing to go on but Jesus' word. He had to trust Christ - not the evidence.
The life Christ brings is a life of faith.

3. The Healing of the Bethesda Cripple
The point of this episode was the disturbing question Jesus put to a man who had been paralysed for 38 years, "Do you want to be well?" Did he? We do not come to Christ fresh and unspoiled. Some qualities in us are damaged - as the cripple's legs were. By reason of sin - our own or the sins of others done to us, it does not matter - by reason of unbelief, by reason of our selfishness or our sensuality or our self-will, we have lost the 'face of our birth' - the person God made us to be. And we cannot ourselves restore what is so lost.
But Christ can! And we have to commit ourselves to Him so as to let Him do that for us. We have to let go things we have clung to because we could not see how else life could be bearable (as the cripple might well have done), and trust Him to bring us right out into fullness of life.
And to do that we have to come to some point where we obey - where we do the thing we cannot do because Jesus tells us to: "Rise and walk." You trust - and obey.
The life He brings is a life of obedience.

4. The Feeding of the 5,000
The whole point of this sign is that Christ is to be trusted to make provision for our every need. It carries echoes of Israel's wilderness wandering.
Life will present us again and again with crises which seem to deny His promises. Then is when we are challenged time and again to deepen our trust in Him and not yield to unbelief and despair. We can trust Him for every little thing.

5. Walking on the Water
He came to them when the storm was at its height. He had been watching them from the hills where He was at prayer, and when the storm threatened to engulf them they saw Him come to them, making the very waves they so dreaded a path under His feet.
So the risen Christ, ascended into Heaven keeps watch above His own, where He ever lives to make intercession for us, and if we are caught up in the storms of life we can trust Him to come for us in time; for no storm can swamp Him. He makes the waves a path under His feet to come to us.
If we receive Him into our vessel, He will bring us to our desired haven

6. The Blind Man Healed.
This story reminds us of His power to recreate us.
If we yield ourselves into His recreating hands He will make a new man of us. He will light our way. He will become to us the very light of life by which all its glories will be shown to us.

7. The Raising of Lazarus.
And so finally, Christ will become to us, not only our Strength, our Guide, our Light ... He will become to us Life itself, until we say with Paul, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."
We shall discover that there is a power in His calling voice to raise from the dead in us everything that it pleases Him to call forth, so that we may stand before Him, alive and splendoured.
He is able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by Him.

Seven Claims - all beginning "I AM ... "

1.	The Bread of Life	ch. 6	Feeding 5,000
2.	THe Light of the World	ch. 8	At the Feast
3.	The Good Shepherd	ch. 10	Peter's Restoration
4.	The True and Living Way	ch. 14	Philip at Last Supper
5.	The True Vine	ch. 15	Upper Room Discourse
6.	The Resurrection and the Life	ch. 11	Lazarus
7.	The True God	ch. 8	Before Abraham was, I AM
8.	The First and the Last	Rev. ch. 1	A & ‡ , the First and the Last

The Meaning of "I AM"

In the Old Testament God revealed Himself to Moses under a name which translates from the Hebrew into English as "I AM THAT I AM".

Moses knew that the Hebrew people, saturated as they had been for four hundred years with the atmosphere of Egyptian religion, would want to know the name of this God who had sent Moses to them. "This God you want us to adopt l," they would say, "has not apparently troubled himself about us before. What are His intentions for us? What are His powers? How can we make Him work for us? What is His Name?"

i. Beyond the reach of our knowledge
The only answer they were given was, "I AM THAT I AM." In other words, "That sort of knowledge of me you may not have. I am not such a god as can be manipulated at all. I am your GOD, not your almighty servant."

ii. Beyond the reach of our control
The peculiarities of Hebrew tenses, in fact, are such that these words can equally well be rendered, "I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE" ... "I am sovereign in my self-determination. I will turn out to be for you what I will turn out to be for you. Not what you choose, but what I choose shall govern our future together."

iii. Near to us in our need
But not only does He tell us that He is beyond the reach of our knowledge, and beyond the reach of our control, He also tells us that He is near to us in our need. "I will be for you what I will be for you." As well as meaning "I will be" the Hebrew verb also conveys the idea of being present: "I will be present among you as all that I will turn out to be."
"How I will be present among you, you may discover as you obey me.
"What I will do for you you may learn as you walk trustingly with me.
"But all that I do will work for your deliverance."

When Moses bowed his face before God that day and heard Him reveal Himself in this pregnant, weighty word, he hardly knew what God would prove to be. But he took the plunge ... and started learning.
As you read on through the narrative, you come across a phrase that recurs so often it sounds like a monotonous refrain, the phrase "I am Yahweh" - "I am the LORD." Each time, you find that some new discovery about God has been reached, so that "precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little," (Isaiah 28:10) the knowledge of Him grows.
By the time of Isaiah a rich fulness had been given to the meaning of His name; and it is seen that all that He is, He is and will be, not for Israel only, but for all the peoples of the earth:

"I am Yahweh, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you, I have given you as a covenant to the peoples, a light to the nations, to open eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am Yahweh, that is my name; my glory belongs to no other ..." (Isaiah 42:6)

That verse indeed is a fair summary of John's whole Gospel.

So God's Name and Nature is more and more fully spelled out ... until at last there comes forth out of the heart of the Eternal One Who takes the sacred name upon His lips as of right:

"Before Abraham was, I AM," He says.
"I am the Bread of Life ... the Light of the World ... the Good Shepherd ... the True and Living Way ... the True Vine ...
"I am the Resurrection and the Life ... the First and the Last, the Living One ... "

And all that He is, He is for us! In Him God's whole Name and Nature is at last spelled out fully, leaving no part dark. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)

That was the destination of the journey upon which Moses set out in those dim beginnings back in the fastnesses of the Midianite desert.
It is a greater good than any human mind could have dreamed.

"I AM THAT I AM" ... a glory far, far beyond all human comprehension.