Chapter 8, the passage that you will set your eyes upon will begin with the word again, again. And so we understand that this passage is a continuing of the same vein of teaching, a continuity of the flow of the witness and the testimony concerning where Jesus has come from, where He is to be going, who the Father is, and who Jesus is. And now, as we will see and has already been alluded to, that the opposite of all of these things revealed about Christ applies to the Jews because Christ is from above and they are from below. Christ is light and they are of the darkness, and we likewise find ourselves in stark contrast to Jesus' self-revelation. Let's look together at John the 8th chapter, picking up at verse 21, reading through, reading through verse 30. So he said to them, again, I am going away and you will seek me and you will die in your sin, where I am going, you cannot come. So the Jews said, will He kill himself since He says where I am going, you cannot come. He said to them, you are from below, I am from above, you are of this world, I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins. So they said to Him, who are you? Jesus said to them, just what I have been telling you from the beginning. I have much to say about you and much to judge, but He who sent me is true and I declared to the world what I have heard from Him. They did not understand that He had been speaking to them about the Father, so Jesus said to them, when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing on my own authority and speak just as the Father taught me, and He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him, as He was saying these things many believed in Him. May the Lord bless the reading of His Word and the hearing of His people. There are two things that become clear as we near the end of the road. I say the end of the road because that's what I often hear when I am in attendance at a funeral service or speaking with a family. I have been called to do a number of funerals outside of a church and my role as a military chaplain, where I had no acquaintance with the family whatsoever. I might not know anything about them or who they are. I was there to provide a military honor for a veteran. And there have been mixed blessings in those encounters. As you might surmise if you call a military chaplain or you have a stranger to do your funeral, it most likely means that you do not have a relationship with the church and that you do not have a pastor. And so oftentimes as I go into these situations, I am facing a family with no real assurance of the destiny of their loved one. And so as we talk together, I will hear some grasping for assurance and it's clear that they've never really talked about it. That they never considered where a mom or a dad or a grandfather or a grandmother or a brother or a child would go after death. And then talking to those people, it's an incredible and sad contrast to those that I experience within the church family, within my own biological family, but certainly within the family of God's people. And those times when there is a funeral and we talk about someone coming to the end of the road, we only mean the end of their fleshly journey. We understand that at the end of this life, there lies a transition to a new life, a greater life, a more glorious existence as they begin an eternal procession into the presence of God. How sad it is, however, to try to find some way to console a family who have no sense of assurance and no evidence whatsoever that anything beyond simply being a good old boy or a very proper lady is their assurance of God's grace or salvation. All that a minister can do in a situation like that is certainly not offend the family and preach the gospel in the funeral. But how sad it is to have a casket in front of you and know that the gospel has been preached too late for this one, for the one who has passed. And so you prefervantly that the family would hear and as the very last verse of our passage here today explains as he was saying these things, many believed him that even in a moment of crisis, even in a moment of confrontation, that there will be someone who will hear and as Jesus has said is required to believe that they would hear and that they would believe. Jesus is announcing here to the Pharisees, not blessing for them, but doom. We have here a judgment scene. Jesus is saying to them, I am going away and you will seek me and you will die in your sin. He is saying not that he will walk away from them physically, the context as well as the tenses here indicate to us that Jesus is talking about at the moment of their death. They will look for him and they will not find him and they will die in their sin. He is talking about the end of their life. He is saying to them, I am going away and in the day of your demise you will seek me and you will not find me because you have not believed me and you will die in your sin. Thomas Payne, a great intellectual, a founding father of our nation, philosopher of his time and an unbeliever to the day that he died. He said this is quoted as being said on his last day of life as he lie on his bed. I would give worlds if I had them that the age of reason had not been published. Oh Lord, help me. Christ, help me. Oh God, what have I done to suffer so much? But there is no God. But if there should be, what will become of me hereafter? Stay with me for God's sake. Send even a child to stay with me for it is hell to be alone. Even if I ever the devil had an agent, I have been that one. What? A tragic and heartbreaking approach to the end of life. Send even a child to stay with me. It is hell to be alone. Let's contrast that however. To Isaac Watts, one who wrote many of the hymns and our book just before the service, I flipped to, I was going to count and name a few but our hymn book is filled with many of the works of Isaac Watts. He wrote, oh God, our help and ages passed. These were the words of his last day. It is a great mercy that I have no manner of fear or dread of death. I could, if God please, lay my head back and die without terror this very afternoon. What a difference in the disposition of a soul who has walked with Christ and the disposition of a soul that knows no help. Who in the day of their last breath realizes they are utterly alone and dying in their sins. How clear the spiritual realities of life become on the last day of life. Even an atheist, an unbeliever, calls out to a God and then says, but God can't exist and yet his soul screams within him for help and he calls out in the only spiritual language that he has been taught and knows. He calls out to God, he calls out to Christ Jesus and then the doubt begins to flood again into his mind and all he knows is aloneness and all he knows is isolation and the terror of death. This is the same contrast between these two men that Christ is making when he says, I am the light but you are born and dwell in darkness. There is a time he says when you will look for me. He doesn't say there's a time when you will seek out salvation. He says, there is a time that you will look for me because all that he has announced that he is that they have challenged each and every step along the way deposits within his person salvation. There is no salvation outside of Christ. He is not a way of salvation. He is telling them in the day of your demise. You will not cry out for a soothsayer or for some religious person to come or an intellect to come and explain to you how you can have a hope for the life after. He says, you will seek for me but you will not find me. You will not find me and you will die in your sin. So the Jews said, will he kill himself? The Jews response to Jesus' warning to them, to his pronouncement of judgment to them, is to chide him in an effort to reassure themselves. Left all of their tactics and all of their arguments having failed, they are left with nothing but sarcasm to Christ as their final defense. Suicide was considered by them to be a path directly to hell. And so when Jesus tells them, I am going away and where I am going, you cannot come and they are self-righteous convictions. They could not fathom that they would be condemned to hell so they figure since they are going to heaven and Jesus says that they must be telling them he is going to kill himself and go to hell. Isn't it interesting that they only focus on the part of Jesus' comment that has to do with his departure. They really don't even consider what he is saying about them seeking him and them dying in their sins. How can a religious people like the Pharisees lose their way? How is it possible that these people so studied and so steeped in the Scriptures could so lose their way as to miss this very basic and very clear pronouncement against them by the Christ whom they have yet to disprove a one of his sayings? C.S. Lewis in his writing The Great Divorce which I went through again last night as I was reviewing, I pulled it back out and I only meant to search for this quote but I found myself about 45 minutes to an hour later having flipped through that and also the screw tape letters again. I commend both of those to you but start before 1030 at night. C.S. Lewis is the Great Divorce. Here you have, if you are not familiar with it, more or less a dream of a man's destiny after death and he finds himself a disembodied spirit, a ghost is what he calls himself and there is a bus for any who desire to take it. For all of those who have departed to get on and it takes them not into heaven but certainly to a narthex of heaven I guess we might call it. It's a beautiful field, it's a place of serene beauty and there are spirits there but they have whole bodies and these are people who have passed before and have because of their love of Christ been ushered into the presence of God or soon to be. And they are left here or they have come back here to try to explain this truth to these who have just died, to these who have still whose minds are still firmly entrenched in the world. And as they try to explain these truths to the people, it's clear that they just can't see and they can't understand and they just don't get it. And in one of the conversations there is this dialogue concerning how even a religious people can lose their way. There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist. They have been there have been some who were so occupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought Christ. Did you ever know of a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them or an organizer of charities that had lost all love for the poor. But it is the subtlest of all the snares. Can we become like the Pharisees so involved with our religion that we forget the Christ of religion that we forget the whole purpose and the whole goal is eternal life? The gospel of Jesus Christ, can we like the one that is such a lover of books that we forget to read the books? Have we forgot to live to Christ even while we proclaim the Christ? Is it possible for the Pharisees to have been so caught up in their own issues of religion, their own interpretations of the book and the scrolls that they could not hear God Himself speaking to them and carnit in Christ? So instead of responding to Christ they chide Christ. They hurl sarcasm at Christ and they accuse Christ Himself. Oddly enough Jesus was going to give his own life so in a sense in a twisted way they were correct but not suicide instead it would be sacrifice. Three times they tested Jesus and three times Jesus answered. They first saw His arrest but because Jesus was teaching the guards they sent to arrest Him found He was such a profound teacher that they couldn't arrest Him. They sought to entrap Him and defame Him by dragging into Him a woman of offense and in dragging her in there they thought they could catch Him in hypocrisy. Jesus again answers in such a way that they leave in shame. They sought to disqualify His testimony on technical grounds by saying He was bearing witness to Himself. Again Jesus's argument is such that they lose again and now they are left with that final line of defense of hypocrisy. There is no logic, there is no reason, there is no scholarship they are left only with personal insult, sarcasm, mockery. Is that what the Pharisees are left with? Is that all that they have to offer for their hope? This is their hope and finally defeating Christ with sarcasm, mockery and chiding Him. Honest inquiry, as we hear people ask questions today as you are witnessing to Christ and you have people who are unbelievers and they want to know how can a good God allow evil or if there is a God why is there war or if there is God why did this child grow sick and die? These are honest inquiries and they should be dealt with tact and with honesty and with the scriptures but the Jews had lost their honest inquiry. They weren't looking for an answer anymore, they were only looking for an excuse. There was no honest inquiry in Jesus's teaching and Matthew is that we are to not cast our pearls before swine. When the honest inquiry ceases so does the argument in Jesus here has responded over and over and over again until now finally faced with their dropping of any decent questions and now faced with nothing but their sarcasm and their mockery he will not cast pearls before swine and he says, yeah, well come a day and you will look for me and you will not find me. You will call out and I will not be there and you will die in your sins. Here comes a point when even an inquire is proved to be nothing but a mocker. How is this so? How is it that it happens that an inquire is nothing but a mocker and Romans chapter 1 verses 18 through 23? We read through these quite often, there are a number of chapters of the Bible that should be instinctual for you that you return to them and times when there are certain issues of faith and life and you ought to have those committed to mine. Romans 1 is one of those chapters as it forms our seminal thoughts about the depravity of man, the condition of man in his natural state, and where man's thinking goes when it is not under the power and influence of the Holy Spirit. In Romans chapter 1 verses 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. The suppression of the truth is the work of the ungodly and the unrighteous. The suppression of the truth is the testimony of those who are opposed to Christ, who are anti-Christ. The suppression of the truth, for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse, without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God, or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who was blessed forever, Amen. Jesus is telling these Pharisees their true nature. He's telling them that they cannot know him, that they are of the earth, and he is from heaven, that they are of darkness, and he is of light. Three times in Romans 1, Paul tells us that God gave them over, three times in that whole chapter we read, God gave them over to their own corruption. He gave them over to themselves, Jesus tells the Pharisees, unless you believe, unless you believe Jesus announces that they will die in their sins. The Bible gives us two ways to die. Only two ways to die are announced in the Bible. One is to die in Jesus Christ, and one is to die in our sins. Why will they die in their sins? After all, don't we all sin? Which one of us is without sin? Because they wouldn't believe. What would they not believe? They wouldn't believe. As Jesus said, I am He. I am He. Where does this language come from? We would find it there in Exodus 3, 13, and 14 when Jesus, or rather when God, is speaking with Moses, and Moses says, who will I tell them sent Me? And God tells Him, you tell them, I am who I am, and I am sent You. This is when Jesus was announcing His name to Moses. I am the great I am. Jesus has already employed I am statements, and He does it again here. He says, unless you believe, I am He. This language is most clearly given to us in Isaiah 43 verses 1 and 10 and 11. I'll just read those three verses for you. But now, thus says the Lord, He who created you, here Isaiah 43, is clearly talking about God Almighty, the Creator God. But now, thus says the Lord, He who created you, O Jacob, He who formed you, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, and you are mine, and then verses 10 and 11. You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He before me, no God was formed. Nor shall there be any after me, I am the Lord, and besides me, there is no Savior. I am He. I am He, who is He? The Pharisees missed it, and they were asking Him to reply by providing what I believe would be a predicate nominative in the sentence. They are warning Him to complete the thought. They are saying, you are who? You are the prophet, you are the voice of one crying in the wilderness. You say, I am He, who is He? Who is it that you are speaking of? Because if they leave it with that, Jesus is clearly claiming divinity. And so they say, who then are you? I am He? What is that? What is that? I am He. Who is He? Why is it that they had to believe that Jesus is the living God? Why couldn't they just believe that He was a good teacher? Why couldn't they believe that He was a good man? Why couldn't they believe that He was a man of miracles or a prophet? Why couldn't they believe that He was everything up to, but not including the one true God? But Jesus makes it very clear, only that and nothing else will secure for you salvation and eternal life. The I am He. And if you do not believe that, you will die in your sins. It should have been familiar to them. This past Thursday night, mentioned the Temple Sacrifice at a Bible study, and I mentioned it again here, it fits here well. The Temple System used animal sacrifices of which we understand Jesus fulfilled, and so that is why there is no more animal sacrifice. But have we really thought much about that? Have we really pondered that sacrificial system? What did the animal do to merit being killed and burned? To being sacrificed and then transfigured through fire to become a fragrant aroma to God? What offense had this animal caused? God. Why was God so interested in the death of this animal? He was not, was He? What did the animal represent then? Why did the animal have to die? What was it a substitutionary sacrifice for me? You, the Pharisees in the time of the Temple and the Tabernacle? The animal never represented itself. It represented the people. That's why it had to die. Because of the sin of the people, and God said in the very beginning, if you sin, you will die, and so over and over again, an innocent had to die. Because that was God's judgment against man. You sin and you die, and Jesus is saying, once I am completed here, you will die in your sin if you do not believe that I am He. The dying sin is to die with the burden of your own sin still strapped to your neck. It's to take the place of the sacrificial animal yourself, and to be destroyed in the fire. Why don't people believe? Why? Why won't they believe? It seems like such a simple thing. Believe in Christ that He died for you and for your sin and study the scriptures and simply live and work and worship and speak and think according to the Word. And eternal life is yours. What obstacle is there except our own sinfulness? The reprobate is what they are called, those who can't see. I remember when these posters were popular, and you would see them in the malls a lot of times or places, and it would be just a mess as far as I could tell. I didn't know what it was, but they said, if you stare at the middle long enough, that something would emerge and you would be able to see it. I can't tell you the frustration I have experienced. I have yet to see anything in one of the 50 that I have looked at. They have them even in books. If you go and you can find books of these pictures and I suppose people sit for hours and stare at these messes of color to try to see some picture emerge. I don't know a bad boon or an elephant or something. I don't know what it is that comes out. I can't see anything. I just can't pick it up. I don't know why if it's a color issue with my eye or ability or I'm just way too intelligent. I don't know what it is that I can't stare at this picture for too long and nothing comes out. I am blind to what is in there. I see the color but I can't see the hidden picture to each of us. To each of us there's only two dispositions that we can be in possession of. One is spiritual sight, the other is spiritual blindness, Romans 11-22. Not them, not them, the kindness and the severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen but God's mercy to you. Note then rather the kindness and severity of God. Severity towards the one who have fallen but kindness to you here we have mercy and judgment. The two dispositions of God because there are two states of mind and man and the Belgian confession and paragraph's Article 16 of that, it says we believe God has shown Himself as He is, that is merciful and just. He is shown to be merciful in delivering and saving those who in His eternal counsel He has elected. He is shown to be just in leaving the others in their ruin and perdition in which they have involved themselves. The state of the mind of man and birth is worldly. It is in darkness. It is in lostness. What else can it be? How can we impart to ourselves any holiness to make ourselves righteous? Where will we find it? Where will we give it to ourselves? To make ourselves holy and to make ourselves righteous we cannot. In Acts 751, Stephen speaking to the council said, you stiff-necked, you do always resist the Spirit. Man's natural disposition is to resist the Spirit. We are spiritually blind until we are given sight by God. Those to whom God shows mercy will begin to adopt God's will as their own. They will begin dying to self and living to God for the reprobate, for those outside of God's grace. The more God reveals Himself to them, the more they will rage against it. They are at peace only when God is not revealed. But the more they see of God and the more of God that is revealed to them, just as the more Christ was in their presence, the more those who are of the world and who are of the flesh will rage against it. Whether they are the most carnal center on the worst street of town or whether they are the most fashionable, professing Christian, practicing religion and the most prestigious of churches, even if they are behind the pulpit. Those who are not of Christ will rage against the gospel of Christ. The more of God they see, the more of God they hate. To be saved from this, we must believe that Jesus is all that He claimed to be, that He is the bread of life, that He is the Lamb of God, that He is the light of the world, that He is God. That Jesus, the Christ, is God. I ask Him, who? Who are you? They wanted Him to complete the fault because they weren't willing to receive it. Jesus's reply is basically saying, I've already told you. He says to them, it's exactly as I told you before. Who are you? Jesus said, just what I have been telling you from the beginning. But yet they have not heard, because they have new ears to hear. Jesus is not sidetracked by their response and He returns again to the theme of judgment. I am just what I have told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you and much to judge, but He sent me as true and I declared to the world what I have heard from Him. They didn't understand that He had been speaking to them about the Father, so Jesus tells them then about His crucifixion. He tells them about when they will be lifted up, and then they will see, then they will know what it is that they have done. I can remember being in what we call the back 40 at Fort Campbell. We were out in the field for about three weeks and it was particularly quiet night. I was by a landing zone where helicopters would be coming in and out, and I was lying there with our company commander and a couple of other folks. We were just lying on the ground waiting because we would be getting on the next flight that came through. As we were lying there waiting, there was very little ambient light that night. Skies were clear, there was no real moon, and I only saw a couple of stars in the sky. I remarked about how dark it was and how there was really nothing that we could see in the sky. Captain Kennedy asked me, have you ever looked at the stars through night vision goggles? I said no, it hasn't occurred to me to look up into the sky. There wasn't much there that I thought I would want to see with night vision. He said, you have looked at the sky until you see it through these. He handed me a pair of, I think they were in P9s. I can't remember exactly, but military night vision goggles. I was on and I looked at the sky and where I had saw nothing but a blanket of darkness, I could not find a bit of darkness and it was all light. So many stars, so many stars that were shining in the sky that it covered it as far as I could see across the horizon from left to right in East and West and North and South. The sky was filled with stars that I could not see, I was blind to the stars, I did not have with the naked eye, with the eye of flesh, I could not see the light from the stars in the sky. Is it that Christ can be so clearly manifest before us, is it that Christ can be so standing before people and yet they have no eyes to see this Christ who has proclaimed to them? May our song be the same as was sung in Luke 2 verse 30. My eyes have seen your salvation, my eyes have seen your salvation, salvation of God, come for man in Jesus Christ who lives God.