Let's turn to John chapter 8. We finish this chapter today. It has taken a while to get through John chapter 8, because this chapter has been a breaking point in the book. As you'll see at the conclusion of this chapter, Jesus now having presented Himself fully to the Jews, they are now fully rejecting Him. And they are rejecting Him as He has presented Himself. They would not reject their own concept of Him, but they have rejected Christ's self-concept and self-presentation of Himself. It has been a chapter that has been full of drama. I bring to you recall His presentation of Himself as living bread. And then as they drug the adulterous woman and trying to entrap Jesus in a legal snare. And then Jesus going into the temple as the priest stood, you recall with the pictures of water pouring out, signifying the hope of their outpouring of the Spirit of God and how Jesus said, I am the living water in a place of high drama and in a time where the people were whooped up as it were in their enthusiasm in the middle of a celebration. And then in the evening as the huge torches were illuminated in the court and in all of the courtyards of the people's homes and the light was shining out of Jerusalem. Jesus again stood and said, I am the light, come to me. And then as we have continued on, He has here been speaking with those who thought they believed and He's told them that if they would only believe the truth, it would set them free. They were challenging Him, saying that they were not slaves. And then again Jesus more pointedly says that His Father is the God of heaven, whereas they were serving their Father Satan. And in this sort of environment now we bring this to conclusion as they are continuing to try to draw off of their understanding of physical decency from Abraham. And Jesus is now teaching them about His eternal generation from the Father about His being the incarnation of God and of life coming through Him because He is the eternal God made flesh in the Son of God. Let's look together. John chapter 8.
Let's move down to verse 53. We've considered the verses before. Are you greater than our Father Abraham who died and the prophets died? Who do you make yourself out to be? Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me of whom you say He is our God. But you have not known Him. I know Him. If I were to say that I do not know Him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know Him. And I keep His word. Your Father Abraham rejoiced that He would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to Him, you are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham. Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. So they picked up stones to throw at Him. But Jesus hit Himself and went out of the temple. May the Lord bless the reading of His Word, the hearing of His people. Who is Jesus? This is the question that the church is occupied with. It is the question that the world more and more questions the church about. Who is Jesus? It is the question we are presented with. It is the question we have contemplated. It is the question that we ourselves seek to grasp. We might say that this is the entire focus of the gospel of John. Does any start in chapter 1 in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God? If we were to flip over towards the end of the book in chapter 20, verse 30 and 31, now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name. Who we believe Jesus to be is John's purpose in writing. He wants to very clearly not just tell stories of the wonders of Christ's life, not just present the gospel in a sort of a side light fashion, but to present to us very pointedly the person of Jesus Christ, that there would be no ambiguity in the presentation of the gospel of the subject of the gospel which is not us, but Christ. Now I would present to you and I firmly believe that is a major misconception upon many churches we consider to be evangelical. The object of the gospel is not man, but God. Here is where we can find the fallacy in that thinking. Do we believe God's purpose and existence is to save man? Do we believe that the signs of the covenant, for example, or our signs of the covenant, that they are the expressions of our attitude or our faith or our testimony? It is so easy in our presentation of the gospel to have such compassion for the lost which is not misplaced, and I'm not discouraging that, but it's so easy to get lost in that expression of compassion so that we so empathize with the lost, that we begin to receive the gospel with them at the center of the gospel, but it is Christ who is at the center of the gospel, in an objective sense and in a sense that we would observe the gospel, it is Christ who is at the center of the gospel, and it is the gospel that radiates from Christ, not from us to Christ, but from Christ outwards, and so the person of Christ, and knowing particularly the person of Christ, is essential to hold the truth of the gospel, and so John begins with the person of Christ, and then he ends his book by saying the reason I wrote all of this is so that you would know Christ, so that you might hold Christ and then knowing Christ that you would believe the truth about Christ and believing the truth about Christ that you might be saved, and so here we have the gospel, is to believe the truth to hold the truth about Christ. Now in that we know that we must also understand ourselves, we must know that we are sinners and that we are without hope saving the Lord Jesus Christ, and not knowing ourselves, we never can truly discern Christ, but knowing ourselves is not the gospel, knowing ourselves is where we are lost, but in knowing ourselves we then cry out, we never know ourselves, we never cry out, crying out in our lostness to Christ and Christ alone, this has been the focus of the gospel, it's been the focus of the church, it was held that Christ was divine, that he was God and man throughout the history of the church, but since the council of Calcedon, the church has formally confessed that there were two natures in Christ, that he was 100% man and he was 100% God, that's the point of contention for many today, they would hold that Christ existed, they would hold that he was a great prophet, a great teacher, a great moral and ethical figure, a great mover in history, they wouldn't deny any of this, but that he was God, there they draw the line, because then the charge is will you Christians or polytheistic, you believe there's more than one God, you believe there's a creator, but then you believe that there is God who was Christ, and you also believe in God, the Holy Spirit, well that's three, therefore you believe in three gods, but the church has always held, there's one God, three persons, the father and the son and the Holy Spirit, at the council of Calcedon, it gave us our great creeds, they weren't saying that there wasn't still some mystery concerning the two natures, they didn't answer the question about the two natures of Christ, that he was fully man and fully God, they didn't answer it completely, they simply affirmed that it was these two natures that are clearly taught in the scriptures, that's one of the great values of our creeds, and that's one of the great misconceptions of the creeds, many believe the creeds come from man, man is observing the scriptures and is not seeking to expand on the scriptures, the creeds are simply saying this is what the scriptures teach, and so these councils and the Westminster Confession and the Belgium Confession and all the others, the canons of door, none of these seek to answer or seek to clarify all the mysteries concerning Christ, but they do seek to record for us and summarize for us that which the scriptures teach, and that is Christ has two natures, he is both man and God, and the church preaches that Jesus is God, we're seeking to cause people not only to affirm that truth, we're not seeking just to have people nod their heads and say, yes, Jesus is God, and that's what the Bible teaches, but we are also seeking to have them realigned their lives to this truth, to recognize that the great and terrible Almighty God, the creator of all things that are that was and is and ever has been, the Alpha and the Omega, the great and awesome God that we cannot look upon and live, this is also Christ, we can become so casual about Christ, that we can lose our reverence and our all for Christ and in losing our reverence and our all of Christ, we then take His teaching lightly, we take it as brotherly advice, we take it as something that we should seek to understand but that we're not compelled to understand because He's so compassionate and He empathizes with us or sympathizes with us because He also was tempted. A manual is God with us, He came, He tabernacle, He dwelled with us, God came to us and we know Him as Christ Jesus, Philip Shaft, the great church historian, said this, Jesus of Nazareth, rather, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Muhammad and Napoleon, without science, He shed more light on things human and divine that all philosophers and scholars combine. Without the eloquence of schools, He spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since and produced the facts which are beyond the reach of orator or poet. Without writing a single line, He sent more pins in motion and furnished themes for more sermons orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times. Such is the work and the person of Christ, but Christ we see is rejected. Rejected by those He has come and presented Himself too in His own person. At the end of chapter 8 we find those who have not only observed but heard His testimony picking up stones to stone Him. Jesus was rejected as He presented Himself as the bread of life. He was rejected at the time when He was making a righteous judgment on the woman accused of adultery. He was rejected and presenting Himself as the water of life and the light of the world. He was rejected as He was seeking to clarify for them their spiritual paternity crisis. And He is rejected now as He talks about His eternal existence. Our Westminster confession of faith phrases it both eloquently and succinctly. Chapter 8 and the second paragraph, the Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very an eternal God of one's substance and equal with the Father did when the fullness of time was come. Take upon Him man's nature with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof yet without sin. He has been eternally God and took upon Himself the nature of man. And it was this that the people rejected. It was this. This aspect of Christ that was rejected. He is being eternally God. They heard clearly that probably is what is so heartbreaking in chapter 8. We're not left with any place to sympathize because they make it clear by their decision to pursue capital punishment that they understood Jesus was claiming to be God.
Rejection. Jesus experienced it and we experienced it. There's a humorous story told of a young lady who was sitting at an airport and she was very attractive and had been approached by one man after another and after a few moments being polite. They left. There was another fellow across the way who had observed the whole afternoon as they were waiting for their flight. And so he stood up and he walked over and he remarked at what bad taste it was for these men to be coming over and talking to her that way and he wondered. He said, you know, how in the world do you handle it? And she laughed and she said, well, when I just want them to go away or I don't want to pay any attention to them, I always tell them that I'm just here visiting, that I don't live here. I'm from somewhere else. And so he laughed with her and he said, so where are you from? And she says, well, I'm just visiting from somewhere else. Rejection. Rejection can be funny when it's somebody else. But how do we reconcile the world's rejection of Christ and us? And at what point are we willing to lay aside Christ to be received by the world? Christ had never laid aside His essential divine nature even when it came to the point that they were going to stone Him and to kill Him. And so Jesus is claiming to be eternal. They interpreted it as simply older than Abraham. It's so incongruous with their own material and fleshly understanding of the world that they find it to be offensive that Jesus would say that before Abraham was, I am. And so they immediately, they respond to Jesus and they say, oh, you're not even 50 years old yet. Abraham existed thousand years ago, 2000. How can you say that you are as old as Abraham? So to them, that made no sense at all. It was nonsensical because they were thinking their minds were locked into the material and a fleshly realm of the world. Jesus is claiming that He Himself is the object of Abraham's faith. Verse 56, which raised your finger down there. Your father, Abraham, rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. How is it that Abraham saw Jesus's day? How is it that he saw it? Hebrews teaches us. It was by faith and you can turn to Hebrews 11 and read this great hall of faith as it goes through all of the saints of old and often people will ask, what about all those old testament people who served God? Their faith was fixed on Christ because they believed the promise of God. What was the promise of God that He would send a Redeemer? Abraham knew that it was through his seed that the Redeemer would come. Isaac was born. Abraham rejoiced even when God told Abraham to take Isaac up the mountain and sacrifice him. They were traveling up the mountain and Isaac turned. He said, Father, where is the sacrifice? What did Abraham say? God will provide the sacrifice. Abraham had been told his own son would be the sacrifice that day, but his confidence in his faith is that God's promise was so sure. Hebrews teaches us that Abraham believed that even if Isaac had been killed that day, God would bring him to life because God's promises will not fail. And God believed that, or Abraham believed that God was bringing redemption through his son, Isaac. Maybe not directly in Isaac's person, but through the bloodline of Isaac. When he looked at Isaac, he saw God's promises being fulfilled. Abraham, a hundred years old. When he thought he could not have a child, when he thought he could not sire a child, I guess men shouldn't take credit for the bearing. When he thought he could not sire a child, you know, I have to say as a side like anytime I talk about childbirth and I talk about men don't understand or women go through it. We're not this kind of congregation, but if we were, I get more visual amends and nods from the ladies and the con, I don't think you know that you all join in concert, but there's this mass movement when I talk about childbirth and the horrible issues with that and the men's not understanding. I get this, I suppose that's how I can check to see if someone's paying attention. I'll just say something about childbirth and the ladies that don't nod weren't listening. Abraham looked at Isaac and he saw in Isaac God's promise and God's plan for redemption and he believed it. He believed it so much that he was willing to take Isaac's life believing that God would raise him from the dead because God's promises will not fail. And so when Abraham realized God's promise in the birth of Isaac he saw God's promise and he rejoiced. Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise. Abraham saw it and rejoiced because God's promises are true. Abraham's name for the place where he took Isaac is Jehovah Jairah. God will provide and indeed God did. Jesus is not infuriating the Jews because he's insinuating that Abraham had some prophetic insight. That's not why they're seeking to stone him. They're not seeking to stone him because he's saying that Abraham could see the future that he believed God. They're mad because Jesus is calling it his day. Isn't that what he says? He says, Abraham saw my day. What day? The Lord's day. And Jesus is calling this Lord's day, the day of the fulfillment of the promises his day. And that infuriates them because they understand then that when Jesus says, I am that he there is taking the very proper name of God that was revealed in Exodus 3 to be his own. Jesus is claiming that he not only knows who Abraham is and that he's the realization of Abraham's promise but that he's greater than Abraham. And answer to their challenge against Jesus in his age he then turns around and makes an outright claim to be God. What an interesting way to debate when you are accused of saying something ridiculous. How could you say that you saw Abraham? You're not even 50 years old. Some of us here are older than you are and Abraham is a patriarch of the faith. Instead of trying to explain or back off, Jesus goes a full step further and says not only that I see Abraham but I'm God. Now that infuriates them. Before Abraham was born, Jesus says, I am. He says to them, truly, truly, I tell you the truth. Here he is saying, when we see this truly, truly and I talked about this at length before, so I'll just here remind you. When he says truly, truly is here saying he is affirming something. The same thing is when we say, now for the record, a lot of us like to speak off the record. Most of what we say, we like to say off the record but when we know something counts and when it will be repeated and when we will be held accountable for it, we might say something like, now for the record, here is where I stand on this issue, meaning this is uncompromising. This is for the record. Write it down. This doesn't change. This is where I stand, so help me God I can do no other as Martin Luther said, for the record concerning justification by faith alone. For the record, Jesus said, for the record before Abraham was born, I am. The fact that they picked up stones here shows that they understood. Stoning was the penalty for blasphemy and they understood what Jesus was saying to be blasphemy. It's not just his claim of pre-existence that the verb tense here is asserting the I am that he's saying. He's not just saying I existed before I was born. They might have even been willing to work with that. What he is saying is that the name of God that he speaks is his own. He is saying the God of your fathers sent me. When they asked his name, Jesus, or the Lord told Moses, Moses told the people, when he went to tell the people God said that when they asked you who sent you, tell them I am sent you. Tell them I am sent you. In Hebrew, this is Jehovah. Tell them Jehovah sent you. Tell them I am sent you. The I am saying that Jesus made in the New Testament or being linked to the sufficiency of God. He says, I am the bread, I am the light, I'm the gate, I'm the shepherd. Some of these we haven't explored yet. They're later in the book. I am the resurrection in the life. I am the way to truth and the life. I am the true vine. Every time Jesus says this, he's saying God is sufficient. God is all, God is salvation and I am that salvation. The I am sayings are linking him with the sufficiency of God and coming to his people with salvation. Testimony of this comes not only from Jesus, but from a doubter as well. After the resurrection, Thomas in the upper room said, I just can't believe it. I just can't believe that he's raised from the dead unless I see him myself. I cannot believe Jesus came to Thomas and Thomas touched the wounds in Jesus side and hands and he said, what? I believe you've resurrected. He says, no, he said, I you are my Lord and my God. Even a doubter is made to believe. My Lord and my God, Adonai, Elohim, Jehovah, you are my Lord and my God. This Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Their response here was to pick up stones to throw at him and so Jesus hit himself and went out of the temple in Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount. We are commanded not to cast pearls before swine. What does that mean? That means that there will come a time that people will finally and utterly reject Christ. And when that happens, we no longer would hold the gospel for their ridicule. We no longer would let them trample upon the gospel of Jesus Christ. We don't cast these precious pearls before swine. Jesus, as they were picking up stones, he didn't, he could have, couldn't he? He is God. Couldn't he have somehow caused the stones to fall from their hands? Couldn't he have forced them back as he did the guards when they came to arrest him and when he spoke his name and said, here I am and they fell backwards. He could have by the force and the power of God caused anything to happen, but he withdrew. He withdrew because of their fleshly antagonism towards his person. We are in an age where we are presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are tempted to prematurely withdraw. I am not saying that there is not a time that we do withdraw when it becomes clear that there is such a venom and a hatred and an understanding followed by rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Isn't that what happened here? They demonstrated they understood that Jesus was claiming to be God and the answer of the promise they said they were waiting for and they rejected it. So Jesus withdrew. We proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and we proclaim until there is a rational apprehension of the words that we speak. That rational apprehension of the word of God when conjoined with the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit brings salvation, but that rational understanding without the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit will only bring the fleshly and material rejection and eventually violence which we see in the national war which we now are involved in. It will bring such a violent rejection as to create a hatred for the claims of Christ. How is it if he was not true that this man who claims to be Christ could elicit such a violent response among people? We have folks claiming to be all sorts of things all the time. We have people who are wearing fake medals of honor claiming to be soldiers and heroes in battle that never had the courage to walk into a recruiter station and it doesn't drive people mad to where we want to stone him. A few veterans might like to get their hands on him but we don't pick up stones and chase him to kill him but Jesus claims to be God drives people to a fury of madness to destroy him. Further testimony of the truth of the spiritual warfare that we are in. We have heard the claims of Christ and as we finish this great chapter of Christ's conflict as we have walked through and we have seen the drama of this chapter we now end on this note. How wonderful the claims of Christ, how wonderful are his claims and rather than with drawing now and ending the book at chapter 8 where we no longer see further. Next week we move on with Christ in chapter 9 and we continue our journey and our study with Christ because we have heard the claim and we have believed. We have believed in this one called Jesus who is God. So important now keep repeating that simple phrase that we all assume we know that Jesus is God so important that John has spent his whole book reiterating over and over again that Jesus is God because when we hear Jesus we hear God. God incarnate among men. God has come to save man and we call out upon to Jesus and we call out to God. The word that became flesh, the word that saves. We do not pick up stones. We lift our hands and we call out to Christ because he has lived that we might live. He has died that we might have hope and that we would be resurrected following him the first fruits of the resurrection because he is God. The same focus of the hope of Abraham is our focus of hope. Let's narrow our vision to Christ. Let's focus on Christ. All about Christ, the center of the gospel, not man, but Christ.