title="English

The I AM

John 8:58

My oldest granddaughter, four-year-old Riley, loves to line things up. She always has. Even before she could walk, she would gather all her cars, trucks and planes and line them up in neat rows. A few Christmases ago, we gave her a “Little People Nativity Set”. And, true to her organizational self, every Advent Season she takes all the dolls, play animals and whatever other toys she has and organizes them around the manger. When she’s done, she says, “Everyone want to meet Jesus.”

This Christmas Season, I’m going to trust that Riley’s instincts are largely right, i.e., that everyone would like to know more about Jesus – both who he is and why he came to earth. I find there is still a lot of interest in these questions – and no small amount of confusion. In fact, I think a lot of churchgoers find it hard to explain fully this beautiful person whose birth we celebrate every December. And, I also think the best place we can go to get answers to the questions is to Jesus’ own descriptions of himself. In the Gospel of John, Jesus talks about who he is by saying, on at least 7 occasions, “I am…” So, that’s what we’ll think about all through December here at LAC, i.e., the “I Am” statements Jesus made.

I believe the best place for us to begin is in John 8 in which in v. 53, a group of people not unlike many of us (for they were called people who were believing in Jesus) asked Jesus, “Who do you think you are?” And, Jesus’ answer was, “Before Abraham was, I am” (and Abraham about 2,000 years before Jesus). Their question could be innocent and honest, couldn’t it? But, we’ll see that it was far from that. They were angry and accusing when they asked it. They were more like my mother was when one of us children defied her authority. But, when we look at the story leading up to their question, we’ll see that it teaches us some profound truths about Jesus. So we’ll consider three things:

#1: Who did Jesus think he was?

#2: Who did these professing believers think he was?

#3: Who do we think he is?

#1: Who Did Jesus Think He Was?

Let’s look at what leads up to Jesus simply saying, “I am.” Beginning with 8:31, Jesus had made two other enormous claims about what he could do for people who follow him:

1. 1) He claimed to be able to set people free (Read 8:31-32).

This claim, of course, presupposes that the people he’s speaking to are not free. The supposed believers bristle at Jesus’ words and claim in v. 33 that they are Abraham’s descendants are therefore are not slaves and never have been. Of course, the people of Israel had often been enslaved by several nations so it’s clear that the listeners were speaking not about technical slavery but about inner slaver – spiritual slavery. They were talking about something in human nature that makes it so people are incapable of living the way we know we should – the way, according to the Bible, that our Creator God created us to live.

I think most of us can understand what they were talking about. Some of you may remember a story I told about one of my childhood Christmases when I became aware of this. I wanted a new basketball for Christmas but I knew my parents thought the basketball I had was good enough. And a basketball wasn’t a “family-type” gift because I was the only one in my family who liked basketball. Our folks gave us each year a set amount of money that we could use to buy Christmas presents. When Christmas morning came, we began opening our presents and when my brother Chuck opened his present from me, he found I had given him… a basketball! I’ll never forget the frustration with me I saw on my parents’ faces and the disappointment on my brother’s. He simply flipped the ball over to me and said, “Great present, Greg.”

Immediately, I knew I had done something selfish. I remember going up to my room and feeling terrible. I said, “What’s wrong with me? Why do I do things like that?” And, I wish I could tell you that I was forever set free from living selfishly – from doing things that I simply knew were not right. (I cannot.) The Bible is clear when it says we all are bound by ways of life that fall short of God’s intention for us – we even fall short of our own standards. So, we all need to be forgiven of our pasts and set free for the future.

But, these listeners would not own up to the fact that they needed freedom. They said, “We are Abraham’s children. We have God’s Word and God’s laws. It’s the Gentiles – it’s the pagans – who are messed up. Not us! Who are you to tell us, Jesus, that we need forgiveness and freedom -- and that you are the only one who can set us free?”

So, they were like the way many of us pretend to be when someone talks about problems in the world. “Oh yes,” we say. “This world has lots of problems. Those people out there have problems with sex, drugs and rotten music. They need help. But, we’re in church God.” Essentially, Jesus said to the people, “You may have God’s laws but you know you don’t keep them perfectly. You may have God’s Word but you’re not obeying it fully. You too need forgiveness and freedom. And ‘I am’ – I am the only one who can give them to you.”

2) He claimed to be the one who gives eternal life (Read 8:51).

So, Jesus claimed not only to be able to set us free to start living well now -- but also claimed to be able to give us a life that cannot be taken away. “Trust me,” he said, “and through me you will be with God. Nothing will ever be able to separate you from God and his love.”

Are you beginning to see why these listeners got so riled up? They would say, “Are you saying you’re greater than Abraham? Abraham didn’t pretend to give eternal life. Why, Abraham even died. Who are you to say such things?”

To this, Jesus simply said that Abraham – indeed, all the prophets – longed to see “his day” (v. 56), i.e., the day that Jesus the Messiah would bring in. And, indeed, this “day of the Lord” is what all the prophets wrote about and longed to see. When God’s Messiah came, the prophets said, all the nations of the world would be blessed, all who follow the Messiah would find freedom and life, and all that is wrong will be judged. To their shock, Jesus claimed that this day was “Jesus’ day”. Do you see what he’s claiming? He’s saying he is the long-awaited rescuer of the world. And that claim led him to today’s third claim.

3) He claimed to be one with the eternal God (Read 8:57-58a).

Notice, that Jesus doesn’t just claim to be old but to be eternal. He didn’t say, “Before Abraham was, I was.” He said, “I am.” He’s referring here to the holiest and most sacred name used for the eternal God. This is the God who met Abraham, gave him a new identity – a new purpose for living, and promised that Abraham’s descendants would be a blessing for all the people of the world. This was the God who met Moses in Exodus 3 and gave him a reason for his existence and a meaningful mission in life. This is the “I am” of Isaiah 40ff who would come to save and rescue his people. The “I am” is the creator God who calls all people into being. The “I am” is the uncaused one whose existence has no beginning and no end. These people may have been Abraham’s children but Abraham’s existence depended on Jesus. The same one who gave a new identity and life to Abraham is claiming to be able to do the same for them – and for us.

That’s who Jesus claimed to be.

#2: Who Did These Professing Believers Think He Was?

If you read through John’s account, you’ll see that these people really liked Jesus’ miracles. They loved what Jesus called “signs” even though they didn’t seem as interested in the one to whom the signs pointed. But, they seemed perfectly willing to believe in Jesus as a miracle worker, a healer, and political food giver.

And, these particular people seemed to like some of his teaching too. When he spoke of being light to the world in 8:12-30, they didn’t quite understand what he was saying, but they seemed to find Jesus’ words inspirational and enlightening. So, they were willing to believe that he was one who could do good things for them and that he was a wonderful moral teacher.

But, the conflict that fills our text today comes out of the fact that Jesus wouldn’t allow them to believe only those things about him. He insisted that they had to come and follow him as their savior and lord. He insisted that all they had done in keeping the law and going to religious services was meaningless unless they put him at the center of their faith and their lives.

Let me put it this way: Imagine going to Vroman’s Bookstore to hear an author rising in prominence in the country. He stands up and says, “I am the truth. I have always existed. In fact, I have personally brought everything into existence that is – including you. I am the only one who can forgive you and give you eternal life. In fact, you won’t even know who you are and what life is about until you give your life to me. Where you spend eternity depends whether you believe in me and obey me.”

Do you go home and say, “Chris, that man was a good teacher. What a speaker. How inspiring! He had some great lessons for life, didn’t he!” No, you might say, “I believe him and I’m going to follow him.” Or, you might say what these people said, “That man is crazy. He may be demonic. He’s either deluded or he’s a deluder. For the most part, those who heard Jesus that day chose to believe he was either crazy or he was demonic. But, they did so because Jesus forced them to get off the fence. They had to believe he was more than just a “sweet little Jesus” come to bring good will.

At this point, I have to show you again the famous quote from CS Lewis about this. He saw so many in his own country wanting to be religious and to think of Jesus as a moral teacher. Here’s what Lewis wrote:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus: “I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

What Jesus dealt with in John 8 is exactly the same thing Lewis saw at Oxford and Cambridge in his day. And I think we see the same things every December in our world. We still live in a world in which many people want to like Jesus but not obey him. Jesus doesn’t leave that option open to us. Basically, he told the people in John 8, “Make me the Lord of you life or hate me and put me to death. There’s nothing in the middle.” Some people wonder why Jesus was so gentle with lepers, prostitutes and even tax collectors who came to him -- and so firm with these religious people. My answer is this: The hurting people already knew they needed a savior, a physician, and a forgiver. These people did not. Jesus was firm with this group because he loved them. They thought they were fine as they were and they were not. Their eternal souls depended on them getting this right. See v. 43. They needed to trust him and follow Jesus as their God.

Jesus would soon die for them and he knew they were not listening. He had to break through their self-righteousness. He had to get them off the fence. And, he wants us to get off the fence too. We need to decide whether we truly are his followers or not this Christmas season.

#3: Who Do You Think He Is?

If you have a sheet of paper in front of you, write down your first thoughts when you hear this: To me, Jesus is _________.

As you think about that, remember that those listening to Jesus were not antagonistic to him at the beginning. In v. 30, they had said they believed in him. And in v. 31, they are described as people who believed. But, the New Testament is clear that simply believing certain things is not necessarily saving faith. The devil believes Jesus is who he says he is but he is not a Jesus- follower.

I think about these professing believers in John 8 and I have a heart for them. They were so close to the truth. They had the great godly heritage going back to Abraham. They had the law of God teaching them how to live – and, even though they couldn’t live that way perfectly, they sought to. They had the prophets telling them about the Messiah. They thought they were fine as they were! But, they were not. They were so close to the truth and yet they missed the main thing. They missed the one to whom all their religion pointed.

I don’t want that to happen to any of us. So, does Jesus help us in this passage to determine whether our faith is true saving fatih? I think he does – so I’ll mention three related checkpoints:

1) True faith is deeply dependent on Jesus – Have you noticed that, in contrast to shallow belief, Jesus says in v. 31, “If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples.”? The word for ”hold to” is a word for grabbing onto something and not letting go. Sometimes, it was used in times of desperation. It means you hold on to Jesus in those times when you know he is your only hope, you hold onto what he has taught you about himself, and you hold on to how he has taught you about the world. You may feel like giving up but your faith is in Jesus. True faith holds on because true faith is real. True faith is known because it lasts through the doubts and the storms of this world.

2) True faith longs to obey Jesus – Jesus says in v. 39, “If you were Abraham’s children, then you would do the things Abraham did?” And what Abraham did was that, when God’s Word spoke to him he obeyed. When God told him to leave home simply following God’s directives, Abraham obeyed. When God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham obeyed – though God did not require that sacrifice. The point is that Abraham’s life was surrendered to God. How about you? When God’s Word speaks to you about any area of your life, your attitudes or your thoughts, do you long to obey? Ask yourself this question soberly. Is your life still self-directed or is it God directed? True faith is shown when our lives are surrendered to God.

3) True faith loves Jesus – Jesus says in v. 42, “If God were your Father, you would love me…” When you read about Jesus, do you love him? Is your deepest heart’s desire to please him? Jesus makes this very practical in John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commands.” Do you love him?

The people Jesus was talking to were not those who had openly rejected him – but those who claimed to believe in him. But, they did not – not true and rescuing faith. Jesus loved them too much to let them miss finding their lives. But, they wanted somehow to believe Jesus without surrendering in faith to Jesus.

I saw Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln last week and it made me think of what happened here. The south was being soundly defeated and sent an envoy to meet with the generals from the north. But, they went arrogantly into the meeting thinking they would negotiate a peace as a separate nation. Lincoln would have none of that. Then, later, when the war was over, the Confederacy’s leaders met and wanted undo the 13^th amendment, i.e., the one abolishing slavery. Lincoln’s message was that they would be treated with respect as citizens, but a surrender is a surrender.

And that’s what we need to do if we will find freedom and eternal life, i.e., surrender to the Maker of the universe. They would not. And, in the end, they simply became disillusioned with him – angry with him – and tried to put him to death. In v. 59, they wanted to stone him. But, Jesus was not to die by stoning – but by crucifixion. And that brings us to our communion remembrance today. Jesus loved you so much that he gave his life in your place. Do you love him enough to surrender to him – to receive him deeply into your life – to make a new commitment today to have the Jesus, the “I am”, be the savior and Lord of your life.

 

To His glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor