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John 8:53-59

I don't know about you, but I can understand why people don't become Christians. I mean crazy Christians aside, there are fantastic miracles like pillars of fire and talking donkeys and giant fish swallowing a guy and then there's Jesus born to a virgin. Really? Doing more fantastic miracles like feeding tens of thousands with five pita bread loaves and two tiny fish or walking on water or calming storms. But then if somebody gets past all of that, they have to deal with what Jesus actually said, like our text today. Our text today has one of the most fantastic, unbelievable things that Jesus ever said and which, if true, it makes sense that people find Christianity hard to believe. "Why is that?" You ask. Well, because they have to receive Jesus as God. They have to receive this, embrace this, accept this as true before becoming a Christian, which again is why I can understand why people don't become Christians.

In fact, were it not for God's grace, no one would ever become a Christian. Now Christians are convinced Jesus is God. This is the core, this is the center, this is everything. We are fine with saying that any group, any person, any organization that disagrees with Jesus being God is not Christian. In fact, they are anti-Christ by saying anything other than that Jesus always has been and always will be God. Now anybody can say what I just said and anybody can disagree with what I just said. The question is, "What does the Bible say?" The Bible is God's word. It's his message to humanity from him as if he wrote it himself. So today I want to show you what our biblical text says about Jesus. This is the heart of the controversy in John chapter 8, between Jesus and a crowd full of non-believers and make-believers, almost Christians, believing unbelievers.

This is what they are because chapter 8:31 says that's what they are. They believe in Jesus, but they also want to kill him. These two things don't go together. You either believe in him and you commit your life to him or you want to reject him and kill him. There's no middle ground and so these people, it says they believe in him, but they also want to kill him. That's why they are believing unbelievers. Ultimately the Jewish leaders and the people reject Jesus because it sounds to them like he's saying that he is God. Now, I remember meeting a guy once after preaching at a church who sounded like he was saying that he was God. We were talking after the service and it became very clear he is saying that he's God. Turns out, that's what it sounded like, and it turns out that's exactly what he was saying, which suggests that he was either insane or demon possessed.

It was the latter. That is actually what the people with Jesus in John chapter 8 concluded about Jesus. Look at verse 52. It says, "Now we know that you have a demon." Now, as we proceed through our text today, just know Jesus does not make it easy for them to believe. He doesn't shave off the hard edges of truth. No, he actually sharpens them. He leaves them with what we are all left to decide if we take Jesus word seriously, either he's deranged or he's demon possessed or he is deity. The people there that day had to make their decision and so will all of us here today. What he says in this text is outrageous and it demands a decision. Is he right or is he wrong? Now, in addition to what this text says about Jesus, it also teaches us how to share Christ with people who are hostile to him, and we do that like Jesus did, with grace and kindness and compassion.

He didn't vaporize them all for their blasphemy against him multiple times, but we also do it with clarity and truth and courage just like he did. This is what we'll see Jesus do in our text, but our main goal today is to see what this text says about Jesus. Let's start in verse 51 for context. Jesus says, "Truly, truly I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death." The Jews said to him, "Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, as did the prophets. Yet you say, 'If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.'" Jesus offers mercy to these believers who want to kill him and they ignore the offer of mercy. Saying his word keeps people from death they think makes him an arrogant, demon-possessed heretic, unless of course, what he said is true, but that's something they can't fathom. They can't even accept that as a possibility.

So verse 53, they ask him more questions almost like they're trying to get him to say something to get him in trouble. Verse 53, "Are you greater than our Father Abraham who died and the prophets died?" Their question assumes a negative response like, "No, no, of course, not. I would never say that I'm greater than Abraham," but this is ironic. Why? Because he actually is greater than Abraham and greater than all the prophets. Now, Jesus is going to answer this question all the way in verse 58, but before we get there, if verse 51 is true, that those who keep his word will never experience the second death in hell, that would make Jesus the greatest man that ever lived or a liar. So they follow up with a second question just to clarify what's really the heart of the matter for them.

Verse 53, "Who do you make yourself out to be?" Translation, "Who do you think you are talking like this?" Well, what we see in this text is point #1, The Superiority of Deity. The Superiority of Deity, if you're taking notes, point number one. Is Jesus greater than Abraham? Yes, he is. Is he greater than all of the prophets? Yes, he is. What makes him better than any man who has ever lived or ever will live? Answer, he is God. That's where this text is headed, but it's not just this text. Philippians 2:6, for instance, this text says about Jesus he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, which means held onto and not going to let go.

No, he lets go, in that he adds humanity to his deity to be punished in the place of sinful humanity on the cross, and because he endured that as a servant in obedience to God, it says in verse 9, "God has highly exalted him, highly exalted him, bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." So Jesus only is Lord, which puts him above what? Above everybody. Abraham will bow, Moses will bow. David will bow. Every prophet will bow. Muhammad will bow, Buddha will bow, Joseph Smith will bow. Every celebrity, every politician, every king, every queen, every one of us, all of us, not to mention every fallen angel, demon, the devil himself, all of them all will bow, all will confess, which means they will agree and proclaim that Jesus is Lord.

Just like the sun outshines all of the stars, so Christ outshines all of us, every last one. He has no rivals and that's because as God who became a man to save men from our sins, Jesus and Jesus alone is the hero of Christianity. No pastor, no author, no teacher, no speaker, no missionary is the hero of Christianity, nobody. We may admire them for the Christ that we see in them, but no one deserves a pedestal. Jesus is already there. That is his home. That's where he belongs. He's in a winner circle of one because for many reasons and one of which is he has the superiority of deity. He is greater than all because he is God.

Now, Jesus begins to answer their questions in verse 54, take a look. "Jesus answered, 'If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.'" Let's pause there. He's not going to bring honor to himself. He's not going to say, "Okay, yeah, well, I am greater than Abraham." He's not going to do that even if it's true. That's pointless. It's empty, it's meaningless, and really, he doesn't even need to. Look at verse 54 again. "Why, it is my Father who glorifies me of whom you say, 'He is our God.'" See, he reiterates what he said back in verse 50, that he does not seek his own glory because the Father seeks it for him.

The Father brings honor and glory and recognition to Jesus. Jesus' glory, in other words, is not self-driven. His glory is God-given, which is the way it should always be and then he adds, notice, "My Father is the one you say is your God." It is their own God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it's their own God that he calls Father. Again, more irony. The Father of the one they hate so much is the one that they say, "He’s, our God." It's like, "Oops, that's a big mistake." In all of this, we see point #2), The Exclusivity of Deity. The Exclusivity of Deity. Big word I know, but what does it mean? It means no one has God unless they also have Jesus. Nobody, not one person. The people there that day arguing with Jesus, they thought God and they were cool, they're good, but Jesus is clear.

God was on his side. God was giving him glory. So to resist him, to reject him is to be on the wrong side of God. It's to be under God's wrath, not under God's blessing, regardless of the position they held, regardless of the good things in their lives, regardless of their influence and their riches and their gifts and their talents and all of their privilege. Regardless of all of that, to reject Christ is to be without God. Period. There are a lot of texts we can go to for this idea, but just listen to one. Listen to Jesus in Matthew 11:27. He says, "All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." So what is he saying?

He's saying that he alone must reveal God to somebody or they will never know God. In other words, he's the exclusive path. He's the only way to know the only God that there is. It's another way of saying John 14:6, that, "No one comes to the Father... No one comes to the Father, except..." There's one exception. "Except through Jesus." Notice Jesus says, "My Father brings me glory, the one you say is your God." "This is what you say, but it's not the truth." Why? Because their Father, verse 44, is who? Your father is Satan. Think about it. All kinds of people say that God is their God, but only those who believe in Jesus have God as their God. That's because 1 John 2:23, "No one who denies the Son has the Father." How many ones can deny the Son and still have the Father?

How many? No one. None. Nobody. Not even one. Or to put it differently, Jesus says in John 8:24 that, "You must believe I am you must be committed to the truth that Jesus is God or you will die in your sins." So to have Jesus as God is to have the Father. To reject Jesus as God is to be without God, leaving a person still in their sins. Now, Jesus digs deeper into his relationship with God, starting in verse 55, but go back to verse 54. He says, "It is my Father who glorifies me of whom you say, 'He is our God,' but you have not known him. I know him." So they say God is their God and Jesus' assessment of that is what. They don't know him. Now, this text is interesting because Jesus uses two words for know in this text. The first use, he says, "They don't know him."

He's saying they don't have true information about him. They've not acquired accurate knowledge about him, but that is the only kind of information Jesus has when it comes to knowledge of God. The rest of the times he uses the word know; he uses a different word than the first time. This word for no means full, direct, intimate, inherent, intuitive knowledge of God. So it's the knowledge of information versus the knowledge of relationship, like we heard last weekend from Pastor Jeremiah in his sermon. Then Jesus drives this point home, verse 55, "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." I mean, where's Jesus meek and mild? It's kind of offensive.

He strongly... He sharpens the truth here for them and he shows them in no uncertain terms the absolute contrast between truth and error between his relationship with God and theirs and notice, end of the verse, there's a connection between the knowledge of God and obedience. He knows God and because Jesus knows God, he does what God says. So in this verse, point #3), we see The Intimacy of Deity. The Intimacy of Deity. As God, Jesus knows the Father directly, inherently, intuitively. This speaks of intimate relationship that exists between the Father and the Son. This is John 1:1. It starts, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word Jesus, he was with God." The word "with" doesn't mean "in the same location as," like you're with somebody right now maybe. This word speaks of relationship. It speaks of being in the presence of someone.

It is being face to face with someone. So the words close or intimate that we would use to try to describe this, they don't really scratch the surface of this deep and profound interconnection between the Father and the Son. Jesus can say he has direct intimate knowledge of the Father because he was always with the Father. Or it's John 1:18. Jesus was "at the Father's side." Again, speaking of the closest, most intimate relationship of love and trust and knowledge in existence. One author even put it this way. He said, "When God gave us Jesus, it's as if he gave us his heart." That's how close he is. Meaning not only does Jesus know God directly, but because of this direct knowledge, nobody knows the Father better than Jesus. There's not a single thing Jesus ever said that is not accurate, especially what he said about God.

Now, think about it. To know someone or to be with someone or to be at their side, is at the same time to be a separate person from the one that you know and the one you're with. I mean to say you know your spouse and are with them is to assume that you are not them. You're like, "Whoa, I came to church for that?" Yeah. This is where the biblical idea of the Trinity comes in. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but yet there is one God. One God, three persons and three persons in such a way that the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father and vice versa. The Father is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father.

So one God, three distinct persons, which is why Jesus can know the Father and be with the Father, but not what? Not be the Father. While there is one God, there are three distinct persons that are equally called God. Now, if I did that too quickly or if that was confusing and you want to dig deeper into this, you can go to our website, our YouTube channel, type in Trinity. Did my best through multiple messages to try to make this biblical teaching about the Trinity make sense, even though what we're talking about is this infinitely beyond us God. Keep in mind what we saw at the end of verse 55, intimacy with God leads to obedience to God just like Jesus says, John 14:23, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word." Then listen to the intimacy. "And my Father will love him and we, Father and Son, will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words."

Obedience flows from intimacy. The more you love Christ for all that he has done for you, all that he's done to save you, the more you love him, the more you will live for him. Some today want to pit love for Jesus and obedience to Jesus against each other, but that's just not true. The truth of his love for us leads to love for him. We love him because he first loved us, but then that love for him leads to our what? Our living for him in obedience. So be careful of anyone who downplays obedience for the Christian. We will never obey perfectly, but that doesn't mean obedience doesn't what? It doesn't mean obedience doesn't matter. Obedience for Jesus comes from love for Jesus, grow in your love for Jesus, and one of the proofs of that will be more obedience to Jesus.

Now, this brings us to the most confusing text we're going to look at today. Verse 56, Jesus says, "Your father, Abraham, rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad." Well, why is that so confusing? Well, when did Abraham see Jesus' day and when did it make him glad to see Jesus' day? What in the world is Jesus' day anyway? You see why it's confusing? Now notice back to the question, verse 53. If Abraham rejoiced to see Jesus' day, that means Jesus is greater than Abraham. In fact, Abraham would probably be pretty angry at how they were treating Jesus if he rejoiced in Jesus and they rejected. Now, the text does not say Abraham saw Jesus. You see that there? He didn't see Jesus; he saw his day. Therefore, I don't think Jesus is talking about any appearance to Abraham in the Old Testament or that Abraham is watching Jesus live from heaven, which is what some people say Jesus is saying. Notice he sees Jesus' day, and Jesus' day refers to this whole ministry of the Messiah from birth to reign.

So God told Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him and his descendants. That's Genesis 12:3. However, that's going to be kind of hard for him because he and his wife can't have kids because they're way too old. God promised a son and what did they do? Remember? They laughed. But then when their son, Isaac, was born, Isaac means laughter. God had the last laugh on that, which he always does. I think what's being said here is this. Abraham saw the promises God made, that all the families of the earth would be blessed through his descendants. Galatians 3:16 says the ultimate descendant is Christ. So Abraham sees the fulfillment of that promise begin to be fulfilled when Isaac was born, this miraculous child. That is how that promise... That's the only way that promise could come to pass, if Abraham had a Son and that was Isaac.

In the words of Hebrews 11:13, Abraham "died in faith not having received the things promised." So he got the promise, he didn't receive them. All he got was the promise, but having seen them... How? He saw them in the promise. "Having seen the things promised, and he greeted them from afar." So Abraham rejoiced with the promise of his descendants, ultimately Jesus blessing the world, and he saw the fulfillment of that promise begin, and he was glad when Isaac was born. That's my take on how to understand this text. Now, what is this saying? The point being made here is this, point #4), The Prophecy of Deity. The Prophecy of Deity. He's claiming to be the promised Messiah, yes, but the promised Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament was identified in some of those prophecies as God.

Isaiah 9:6, Christmas is coming and one of the songs that are sung during that time, "His name will be called wonderful counselor..." Then what? Mighty God. Listen carefully to Isaiah 44:6. It starts, "Thus says the Lord, the king of Israel." So we've got the Lord, and then he continues, "And..." So now someone else is going to speak. "And his redeemer, the Lord of Hosts." So the redeemer, the Messiah in this text is called the Lord and he's called the Lord by who? By the Lord. So the Lord calls the Messiah the Lord, same word because the Messiah would be God. Listen to Jeremiah 23:5. "'Behold the days are coming,' declares the Lord." So the Father is speaking. He says, "Days are coming when I will raise up for David a righteous branch." So that's the Messiah. "And he will reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days', Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely, and this is the name by which he will be called."

So now we're going to find out who is this, Messiah. Answer, the Lord is our righteousness. So the name of the Messiah will be Yahweh, the Lord, and who is it that said that's what his name would be? Answer, Yahweh, the Lord. Among the many prophecies about the Messiah like he'd be born to a virgin and born in Bethlehem and be rejected by the Jewish people and crucified and rise from the dead, among the many prophecies about the Messiah one is that he will be Emmanuel, which means God with us, God who became one of us to save us. By the way, writing history beforehand by many different authors separated by hundreds of years on different continents and even in different languages, but when all of it is examined, they are 100% consistent.

That is what we have here with Jesus. They were pitting Abraham against Jesus, but Abraham was pro Jesus. Abraham will worship Jesus as the one he was told about 2000 years before Jesus was born and about 4,000 years at least before Jesus accomplishes everything that has been prophesied that he will do, including being the one who the entire world receives God's blessings through. This brings us to the climactic moment in chapter 8, and in this entire event, the Feast of Tabernacles. This feast started all the way back in chapter 7:10, which we looked at 51 weeks ago, and here it is in verse 57. So the Jews said to him, "You are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham?" They try to make Jesus look like an idiot, but they're idiots. Again, Jesus said Abraham saw "his..." What? His day, his era, his work in history.

He didn't say that Abraham saw him, which this is what make-believers do. They twist the scripture to fit their biases. They reject him, so they don't even consider that he is, once again, offering them Salvation. "Abraham rejoiced to see my day. You should too. Believe in me." I mean, can you say, "I see Jesus' day, his ministry, his death and resurrection. I see his day and I'm glad?" Can you say that?" That's what he wants for them, but they refuse. They wouldn't. They mock him. They rebuke him with this question. This was another in a long line of disrespectful questions in this chapter. Well, to this disrespect, Jesus just drops another truth bomb, one with the most megatons of truth so far in chapter 8. Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was, I am." Now, we'll dig into the details in a minute, but think about it.

They just mocked him for seeing Abraham, which isn't even what he said, but whatever. They mock him about seeing Abraham and what does he do? He doesn't just double down. He doesn't just take it up a notch. He takes it up an infinite notch because he declares that he's God. When they think this is the height of heresy, the height of arrogance, the height of apostasy, this is precisely how Jesus answers their question. He is in fact their God, and I'll show you that's exactly what he said in what I've called point #5), The Testimony of Deity. The Testimony of Deity. He didn't just say it, he declared it. He is God, he's deity, he's divine. He's the second person of the Trinity. He's the everlasting God. He is everything God is. He is God who became a human being and lived among us to save us from our sins.

That is who he is. He's nothing less than God. He's nothing else than God. He's just as God as the Father is God. That is the truth about Jesus. Now, let's dig into this a bit. Verse 58, five quick points. First, notice the fact of Jesus' deity. Just so we don't miss it, Jesus front-loaded his testimony about his deity with the words "truly, truly." In other words, before he says it, he says, "What I'm about to say is fact. It's reality. It's true." Then he doubles it for emphasis. "It's true truth, it's really true. It is certain. Do not doubt what I'm about to say because it's fact, it's reality." Then second, we see the authority of Jesus' deity. Think about it. He adds the words, "I say to you," but he says this as the one who also said, John 7:16, "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me."

Or John 8:28, "I do nothing on my own authority but speak just as the Father taught me," and this is because, John 12:49, Jesus says, "I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has given me a commandment what to say and what to speak. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me." So every single thing Jesus ever said, he said because the Father said it first, including, "Before Abraham was, I am." Ultimately everyone should receive Jesus' testimony to his own deity because if he said it, God said it first and God cannot lie, which means that what Jesus said here is truth from reality's highest authority, which leads to number three, the eternality of Jesus' deity. Sorry for another big word that nobody uses, but listen to what Jesus says. "Before Abraham was, I am." Now, Jesus didn't claim to come into existence before Abraham.

That's not what he's saying. He's not saying he's pre-existence. If that's what he was saying, he would've said, "Before Abraham was, I was. I came into being before him," but he's saying something much more than he existed before Abraham. He's contrasting Abraham who began to exist with himself. He's saying, "Before Abraham came into being, I already existed and I always will." This is a claim to being eternal. No beginning, no end, just like God because that's who he is. There's no moment in time, in other words, when Jesus did not already exist. In fact, this is the first phrase in the entire book of John. "In the beginning was the word." The word Jesus already was. He already existed when time and space began to exist.

Now, fourth, we also see in those two words what I call the identity of Jesus' deity. By using this phrase, "I am," Jesus is identifying himself not only as eternal, but also as their God, Yahweh, the I am. Notice, he specifically doesn't finish his sentence, he just leaves it. "I am," like, "I am here. I am eternal. I am God..." He just leaves it. But he does that on purpose so that his hearers will make a connection, so that we will make the same connection that he's alluding to texts like Exodus 3:14 and Isaiah 43:10 and applying the "I am" in those texts to himself, that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one who spoke to Moses and gave the law, the one who led to Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land, who fought their battles, installed their kings, established their nation, and founded their religion. Jesus is him, which leads to fifth, the hatred of Jesus' deity. The hatred of Jesus' deity.

In case we miss that Jesus declared himself God, in case we just kind of think he's saying something else or he's saying something less, that he's not really saying it, it's something less, the people there that day make it clear for us that this is exactly what he was saying.

Verse 59. "So they pick up stones to throw at him." Now, according to John 2:20, the temple was under construction so stones could be easily found in that moment. So why do they want to throw stones at him until he dies? This is the punishment for blasphemy, Leviticus 24:16 which says, "Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him." Now claiming to be a great man isn't blasphemy. Even claiming to be the greatest man that ever lived, that's not blasphemy. Neither is claiming to be an angel, but declaring yourself to be God? That would do it. That would qualify. It was the death penalty for that, but only after a fair trial and on the basis of credible witnesses, but not this. They're so enraged, they're just going to kill him on the spot. Rome doesn't even give them the authority to do that. They're going to do it anyway. They don't care. He had to die because he declared himself to be God.

How ironic. God committed blasphemy for saying he's God. They want to kill God for telling them that he's God. So passionate for the honor of God that they will kill God to honor the God that they would kill. That act of seeking to kill Jesus is the only real blasphemy in this text. Seeing rebellion makes people insane, which is what we see here. I say all of that to say this, resist any so-called Jesus that you ever come across isn't eternal deity. Now, you might be like, "It's so simple, basic." Being a pastor is really disappointing sometimes because you can pour into people's lives with classes and preaching and all that stuff, and then somebody watches a YouTube video or gets a knock on the door and after two minutes they're like, "I reject everything. I'm just going to follow this fake Jesus."

Listen, resist any Jesus you ever come across that isn't an eternal deity, any that isn't God, any Jesus that isn't anything other than God, any Jesus that became a God but isn't eternally God. That's not the real Jesus. False teachers will use the word Jesus to sell you a counterfeit of the real thing, and because it's a fake Jesus, he cannot save you from your sins. Only a Jesus who is eternally God can do that. This is the test for anyone you come across in person, online, anywhere else who claims to speak for God. Ask them, "Who is Jesus?" After they wax eloquent for a while, if they never get around to this, ask them, clarify, "Who is Jesus?" If they do not get to this answer, say to them, "Okay, thank you for that. But is he God?"

Any answer other than an unqualified, "Yes, the second person to Trinity," anything other than that is a lie. John 8:44, where do lies come from? Who is the father of lies, the devil? What do you think he wants to lie about most? How about three things? Who is Jesus, what did he do, and how do you receive the benefits of what he did? That's why there are so many fake Jesuses out there, but there is only one real one, and he is the Lord Jesus Christ. Receive him for who He really and truly is, the God man sent here to save you from your sins when you believe in him. Now, after all of the grace and all of the truth that Jesus shows these people, these make-believers, people who seem to believe in him, but didn't really believe in him because they want to kill him, after all of that, grace and truth, just buckets of it and a torrent of it, chapter 8 ends with these sad words. "Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple."

Whether Jesus hid himself or he was hidden by the Father, the text is not clear. But either way, he got away unharmed from this bloodthirsty mob, at least... What? At least for now. He left in secret, just as John 7:10 says, he arrived at this feast in secret, which is interesting. Now, Hebrews 1:3 says Jesus "is the radiance of God's glory." So Jesus is the glory of God. Ezekiel chapter 11 describes the glory of the Lord leaving the temple and judgment for the sins of the people. It just seems like this text is reminiscent of that text because here Jesus, the glory of God, leaves the same temple in judgment.

One author was studying the Feast of Tabernacles in ancient Jewish literature, and he noticed something interesting about this feast in John chapter eight. He writes, "It is ironic that at the Feast of Tabernacles the Jews rejected Jesus and as it were, turned their backs on him. The Mishnah," which is these ancient Jewish sources, "describe one of the daily rituals of this weeklong feast. So every day, two priests would go to the East Gate, they'd turn around to face the west and face the temple and say to the people, 'Our fathers, when they were in this place, turned with their backs toward the temple and their faces towards the east, and they worshiped the sun. But as for us, our eyes are turned towards the Lord.'"

The author continues, "While the priests distance themselves from their ancestors who turned their backs on the temple to worship the sun, so the Jews in John 8 turned their backs on the Lord himself when they refused to worship him through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ." They had a choice to make, worship Jesus as the God he really is or reject him for claiming to be God. Hard to believe. I know, I get it, but you and I, we have the same choice before us right now. What's it going to be? Receive him or reject him? Another author put it this way. He said, "As man, Jesus fled from the stones in John 8, but woe to those from whose stony hearts God will flee because they reject Christ." The team is going to come back up in a minute to sing one more time. Before they do, let's pray.

Jesus, it is incredible that these powerful statements of truth that you made were not made in a classroom with a bunch of your disciples. They were made in front of your enemies, people that wanted to kill you for the truth. I pray that you would use this text in our lives. Maybe it's to give us courage like you had to speak the truth no matter what. Or maybe it's to draw us to in more love for you because of the greatness and the glory of all that you are. Or maybe it's to draw us to you for the first time in repentance and faith and trust that you are the one who is not only Lord, but you are our Savior who will save us from our sins. Whatever it is, use this text, use these truths, use this event, this historical account, use it in all of our lives, I pray. Amen.

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John 8:48-52

Last weekend, we talked a lot about Satan. Since we teach verse by verse through the Bible here. Text about Satan was the next text in John 8, and so that's what we talked about. We talked about him. Jesus emphasized in the text that he's a liar. He's the first liar. Revelation 12:9. He is called the deceiver of the world. His deception has enslaved billions and when his deceived family interact with God's family, the result is often suffering.

He's the adversary, so his family can be against us. He's the slanderer, so his family can spread wickedness about us. He's the accuser so his family can charge us with things that we've never done causing a whole lot of suffering. Suffering at the hands of Satan's family is what Jesus was going through in John 8. The context is it's the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus is on the Temple Mount. He's proclaimed to many thousands of people there that He is the light of the world, meaning that He's the only source of salvation that there is for the entire world.

Predictably, the Jews there that day, including the Jewish leaders, they take offense at this. They don't like this, so they confront Him and since Chapter 8 Verse 12, they've been going back and forth at each other. Jesus speaking the truth and the people there that day attacking the truth and attacking Him. Now, we're in the middle of this last and really the most aggressive and most vicious of the three rounds of confrontation in John 8. I say that because by the end of this last confrontation, the decision will be made to kill Jesus where He stands. His suffering is coming from speaking the truth. But the truth that we're going to see in the text today will apply to any kind of suffering we might go through.

Our text today will clarify our motives in suffering. In other words, what should our motives be when we hit miserable times or when miserable times hit us? Times that cause us to suffer. Times that cause us to doubt God's love for us. Times where we don't see in any good way that suffering is going to end. What should we be focused on? What goals? What desires should drive us in our suffering?

Much of the suffering I'm going to talk about today is suffering for being a Christian because that's why Jesus was suffering in John 8 because of the truth, because of the gospel. But again, the motives that we will look at, the responses to suffering we will see, are universal. They should be there regardless of the specific form that this suffering takes in our lives. Listen, if things are going well for you right now, don't think that you can just check out.

You will need this when the good times become bad times, which they always do and you will need this because you know people who are suffering, and they're going to need the truth that we're going to see in this text today. So in Chapter 8 Verse 44, Jesus has told these people that... Verse 31 says, "Believe in Him." He's told these believing unbelievers that they are of their father, the devil, that they belong to Satan. They don't belong to God. They're part of Satan's family. They're not part of God's family and as you can imagine, they didn't take too kindly to that.

Verse 48, they answer him, "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?" So rather than answering Jesus' questions, rather than responding to His statements, they just resort to personal attack, which is what losers tend to do. They're done with any meaningful dialogue about theological truth. Then notice Verse 48, by starting their rhetorical question by saying, "Are we not right in saying," they're actually expressing their common opinion about Him. This is how they talk about Him when they're together. He's a Samaritan and demon possessed.

Jesus must have really hit a nerve with these people. Because I learned this week that calling someone a Samaritan is the most insulting thing that somebody could have called, one Jewish person could have called another Jewish person. It's kind of saying to somebody who lives up here, "Oh, you live in Tucson, right?"

Yeah. The other services laughed at that, but you guys were like, "Oh, yeah, that's insulting." Yeah, I know. I know. See, based on Chapter 7 Verse 41, 7:52, the people there, many of them, they know that He's not from Samaria. They know that He's from Galilee. But this isn't a question about where He's from. They're calling Jesus a heretic. The Samaritans they say, "You've left Judaism. You call God your own father. You're not a Jew and by the way, you don't even submit to us. We are the leaders in Israel. You don't support us. You're not for us. You're an apostate. You're a traitor. You're a false teacher." That's what they're saying.

Then they add to that, "You have a demon," which is like you're insane. So you are a demon... "You're a crazy heretic. That's what you are." Now, after Jesus responds to that which we're going to look at in a minute. They go right back on the attack. Look at Verse 52. The Jews said to him, "Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died as did the prophets. Yet you say, 'If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.'" So they totally misunderstand, and we'll see that they thought, they're like, "Oh, you're talking about physical death." But He wasn't.

For Him to suggest that His words can keep people from dying when men of the word like Abraham and the prophets that they died, but your words are going to keep people from dying. They're like, "We know you are insane. You're just crazy. You've lost your mind." Those words in Verse 52 where it says, "Yet you say that." That's an expression of shock and surprise that what they perceive to be a satanic level of pride, unless of course, what? Unless of course what he's saying is actually true, that His message really can rescue people from death.

Well, needless to say, what we see here is religious persecution based on theological differences. That's the nice way to put it at least. This is the kind of suffering that happens. Should you tell a make-believer that they're not right with God even though they think they are? That in fact they are his enemy and they need to repent when all the while they think that they're okay with God and that you're just a hater.

Many will see this. What Jesus does here with these people, they will see that as bigotry and arrogance as they just live and they let other people live too. But you have to come along and shine the truth in their eyes and they react like vampires to the light. Most people believe that if there is a good afterlife, they're going. But here, you come along with a Bible and the audacity to challenge the assurance of their salvation. That's what Jesus does here, and He suffers for it.

Let's learn from Him, our Lord, our teacher. With us as His disciples, let's learn from our master what our motive should be in suffering, whatever that suffering turns out to be. So go back up to Verse 49 and let's get some clarity from Jesus' responses about how to suffer well in regard to our motives when we are suffering.

Verse 49. They call Him a Samaritan and a demon. Jesus answers that by saying, "I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father and you dishonor me." Before I get into the content of what Jesus says. Can we all just marvel at his composure? His response doesn't start with, "Who do you think you are talking to me like that?" His response doesn't start with, "Oh, what did you just say to me?" Boom, you're dead and they just disappear. Think about what they're saying to the God who gives them life and breath and everything else. His response is total composure and infinite grace. To people with rage in their eyes, people with murder in their hearts, He responds by saying He's not demon possessed and He can't be a heretic. Why? Because all he ever does is honor His father and no demon-possessed heretic can constantly do that.

He's the exact opposite of everything they're accusing Him of, and they're dishonoring him for the exact same activity that is constantly honoring God. and as the Father's representative, dishonoring Jesus is equivalent to dishonoring God. This is John 5:23 where Jesus says, "All may honor the Son just as they honor the Father." The Father... No, the Son deserves the same honor as the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.

Okay. Well, how does that clarify our motives in the midst of suffering? Well, Jesus shows us here in Verse 49 that when we suffer, one of our motives should be point #1), Honor God. Honor God. Honor Him, submit to His will, make Him look great in your suffering. When we suffer, no matter what the suffering is, let's make sure that honoring God in our suffering is the motive that we have.

You see this in Philippians 1. Paul is suffering in prison for being a Christian. He's not sure if he's going to go free or he is going to be executed, but listen to the motive that drove him while he's suffering in prison. He says, Philippians 1:20, "It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage, now as always, Christ will be honored in my body whether by life or by death." Did you hear that? He would not be ashamed when his suffering was over because whether he lived or whether he died, his motive was Christ, what? Being honored.

That's what mattered most to him. Not being free from his suffering, but that Jesus would look great through him while he was in his suffering. He did this with the hope that he would not at all be ashamed. But if we're honest, isn't that the source of our shame when it comes to suffering? Don't we often look back at our suffering and wish we handled our experience of suffering in a more God-honoring way?

You know why we didn't? Because for whatever reason, honoring God stopped being our motive. Something else took its place like the motive to be comfortable or the motive to get attention or the motive to be right, or the motive to have the suffering end, or something else. When other motives eclipse the motive to honor God when we suffer, the result is shame for how we acted and then if it's shame, then it should move to confession and then repentance.

We see this with Job. Not at the end of the book, but at the beginning in Chapter 1, when he lost all his property and all his employees are killed and all of his children are killed in a natural disaster. It says in Chapter 1 that his response was to fall on the ground and to worship and all of that, the text says he did not sin against God but this story continues. When the suffering didn't end, when it continued, and he continued to go through it, that motive to honor God stopped and he started complaining.

Much of the book, the middle section of the book, the massive bulk of the book is him complaining, "I don't deserve this. I'm a righteous person and bad things happen to bad people and I'm not a bad person. Therefore, bad things shouldn't be happening to me." Then God shows up and the result is Job 42:3. He says, "I have uttered what I did not understand. I talked a lot about things that I really had no clue about." Then he adds Job 42:6, "I despise myself. I'm ashamed and I repent and dust in ashes." In other words, "I'm ashamed because honoring God by trusting Him, stopped being my motive. Please forgive me, Lord, I'm ashamed of how I acted in my suffering."

I mean, how good would it be to not have to pray those prayers? How good would it be when your suffering is over to not have to ask God for forgiveness for rebellious thoughts or prideful anger at Him or your lack of trust of Him or self-centered behavior because instead of all that you honored God? So next time you find yourself suffering either because of something you did or something that's done to you, make sure underneath all the thoughts, underneath the emotions, underneath all the questions, and the motive for the activity, make sure that there's another motive, a strong motive to please God, to act in ways in your suffering that you won't be ashamed of.

Now, the people Jesus is speaking to in John 8, this group of believing unbelievers, they are so deceived by their father, the devil. They think they honor God by insulting Jesus, but they're dead wrong. Look at Verse 50. He says, "Yet I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks it and He is the judge." The only way that Jesus could say that He did not seek His own glory is if what? If He was right in what He said in the previous verse, that He only ever honors the Father.

Interesting, that word I in Greek is emphasized here. Jesus says to them, to the people there, "Unlike you, I do not seek my own glory." He's separating himself from them. He's separating His motives from theirs. They couldn't be any more different. He didn't have time to constantly seek His own glory because no matter what was going on in His life, He was consumed with honoring God. Well, how does that clarify our motives when we suffer?

Again, Jesus shows us in suffering, one of our motives should be point #2), to Stay Humble. Stay Humble. Seeking glory, attention, recognition, seeking praise for yourself, has a hard time existing in the heart of somebody who stays humble. Now, I say stay humble because no one can become a Christian while being prideful. Yes, there's pride in our lives that stays until we die. But pride is a death blow when we recognize that we are sinners, that we can't save ourselves with our good works regardless of how many we have, and that we have to surrender our rebellion. We can't be rebels anymore. We got to give that up. Got to repent. We got to trust in Christ to save us, not ourselves. All of that takes humility and the idea is that that's the humility that needs to remain, especially in suffering.

Now, listen. God can humble us and He will often do that with suffering. That's not fun. That often hurts. It hurts a lot. So instead of that, let's remember a verse like James 4:10 which says, "Humble yourselves. Humble yourselves before the Lord." To those who are suffering from being Christians, Peter writes, "Have a humble mind." Verse Peter 3:8. The context is not returning insults when someone insults you for being a Christian. Instead of insulting them, giving them a blessing.

I don't know about you, if someone insults me, it's going to take humility for me to return that insult with a blessing instead. Because pride, I mean, it's just natural is going to be you insult me, I insult you. No, I am going to need mercy. I'm going to need humility to respond to an insult with a blessing. Blessing people that are causing your suffering, not insulting them back. It's only possible with humility.

Psalm 147:6 says, "The Lord lifts up the humble when they suffer." So Colossians 3:12, "Like spiritual clothing were to put on humility." One of the reasons we do that is that God shows favor to the humble, Proverbs 3:34. 1 Peter 5:5, "God shows grace to the humble." So in the midst of suffering, what I want is God's favor. What I want is God's grace and what the Bible says is that that is yours when you're humble. So you often think maturity in the Christian life is just something that kind of just happens to us. Maybe we're praying or reading in the Bible or in church, and then we just get zapped by something. We're like, "Whoa, I'm holy now. I'm good. I can honor the Lord now."

Now, when a person becomes a Christian, the spirit lives inside of them. They're a temple for His spirit. They begin to walk in His ways, but it's not either/or, it's both/and. That's true and then we are to cultivate obedience. And part of that is cultivating humility. So how do we do that? How do we dig pride out of our lives?

I did a whole sermon on this a couple of years ago at the beginning Pride Month, but it starts with this. Ask God to do three things. First, ask Him to reveal your pride to you. Psalm 1:39, "Reveal any wicked way within me." Show me where there's pride in my life. Then second, ask Him to make you disgusted with your pride.

One of the ways that this opened my eyes to how disgusting pride is having a pastor say, "Hey, you realize the sin that led to all the sin in all the world, the first sin was pride." It's like, "Oh, yeah. It's true." Then third, ask Him to give you a genuine love for humility. There's nothing in you that's going to think humility is all that great. There's certainly nothing in the world that's going to think humility is all that great. The entire world exists for you to prop yourself up and show how great you are. So you got to ask God, "Please give me a love for humility."

Now, start there. Pray for this. Pray for this often and when you go through a period of suffering in your life, the cultivation of humility that you've already been doing will come out in a humility when you suffer.

One of my professors in college, really, I was one of his Timothies and he was my Paul, my mentor, my spiritual father. I remember him saying to us once that we are all sponges and who we really come out of us when we're squeezed. So when suffering squeezes us, pride is thinking, "I don't deserve this." Pride is thinking, "God is doing something wrong to you." Pride is thinking that you need to forgive God for putting you through the suffering. Pride is demanding that people serve you. Pride is expecting that people will focus on your life and getting mad at them when they don't because they're too busy focusing on theirs.

Pride is not caring about honoring and pleasing God because all that matters is pleasing yourself and getting what you want when you suffer. Pride is manipulating others and instigating conflict rather than trusting God. You see, pride can cause so many issues in our lives when we suffer. It can actually make our suffering worse. But if we have the same motive that our Lord did here in this text, if we're His disciples when we suffer and we don't seek our own glory, but we stay humble, again, we have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to confess as sin when the suffering passes.

I look back at Verse 50. We're going to see a third motive in suffering. Again, Jesus says, "You dishonor me, yet I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks it. There is one who seeks my glory and He is also the judge." He didn't seek His own glory, but the Father did seek His glory and the same one who sought His glory is the same one who is going to judge. In other words, the Father will determine who is right and who is not in regard to this confrontation in John 8 and in regard to one's relationship to Christ.

Jesus is saying He didn't need glory from any man because He left any glory that He would ever receive up to the one who would give it to Him at the proper time. At that time, the Father will show that Jesus was right and the people here were wrong for rejecting Him. He will avenge their dishonor and because of that, Jesus is unconcerned with what the people here thought about Him. For Jesus, what God thought was everything. What these people thought was nothing. They could judge Him all they wanted. It didn't matter to Him. While judging Him, they were actually under God's judgment for their rebellion, for their dishonor. It didn't matter to Jesus what they did because the Father's judgment reigned supreme in His heart and in His life.

Well, how does this help us with our motives in suffering? Well, when we're in the midst of suffering, one of our motives should be point #3), Remember Judgment. Remember Judgment. Think about it. Jesus was thinking about His judgment on the last day when the Father shows all of creation that He is pleased with the Son and that every knee should bow to the Son and recognize that He is Lord. He is also thinking of the judgment that the people in front of Him would face at God's hand.

God will both honor Jesus and condemn all who dishonor and reject Him. Both realities were in His mind in the midst of the suffering that these people were putting Him through in this moment with their insults, their hatred, and their rejection. So to motivate Christians to live for Christ, one of the things that the Bible does. Paul brings up the Bema Seat. 2 Corinthians 5:10. The Bema Seat is the judgment that Christians will face not for salvation that was taking care of on the cross, but judgment for rewards, judgments for living for Him in this life or the loss of rewards for not living for Him, for living for ourselves.

Then, on the flip side, in John 12:48, Jesus speaks of the judgment of non-Christians saying, "The one who rejects me and does not receive my words as a judge, the words that I have spoken will judge him on the last day."

Now, why does this matter for times when we suffer? Well, if people are causing your suffering like the people, we're doing here in John 8, He remembered their judgment. He even reminded them of their judgment. So the people causing your suffering, they will stand before God, and they will give an account and, on that day, they will be found guilty and you'll be found innocent. Like Jesus, you'll be vindicated for your commitment to Christ regardless of the judgment they heap on you, regardless of the suffering that they're causing you now and may even be the right thing to do. That like Jesus did here, you tell them that they will be judged for the suffering they're causing you.

Then also remember your judgment. Remember that you'll give an account for your life after being saved and let that motive to honor God and stay humble. Let that motivate you in your suffering.

My kids, my three oldest kids, they like my car because for them it goes really fast, and they love going fast, it revs and they are, "Oh, that's awesome." So they always want me to go fast, especially on the way to school between Power and Recker on Williams Field. Now if you're familiar with that stretch of road, you know that there are often what? There are police hiding on that road. It's a speed trap. Let's just be honest. Because it's 45, as you lead Power, it's 45, and then all of a sudden it just drops to 35 and then about a quarter of a mile later, it goes back up to 45. There's a speed trap right there. That's where my kids always want me to go fast. "Go fast, Daddy. Go fast." So in that moment, I have to decide whose judgment matters most.

If I don't think about the cop's judgment of my driving, well, I'm going to get in trouble. I want his judgment of my driving to be favorable, which means that I'm going to disappoint my children and they're going to judge me. "Why don't you drive fast, Dad? What's wrong? Why don't you do that?" Always disappoints them like it did earlier this week, but that's okay. I'd rather have their judgment of me be one of disappointment than the cop's judgment of me being, "You are speeding. Here's a ticket."

See, we're often motivated to do the right thing when we remember judgment. A favorable judgment in the future motivates us to do the right thing in the present and I'm actually surprised how many Christians don't think about this at all. They're just deceived into thinking, "Well, it doesn't really matter. Jesus just forgives." Well, you know they're half right. He does forgive. But He will also reward us or discipline us when we stand before Him at the Bema Seat. So let's let that motivate our thoughts and our emotions and our activities while suffering and listen, let's also let that reality keep us from causing other people to suffer.

See, you're not the one receiving the suffering, but you're the one causing the suffering. Remember your judgment, and repent. Get right with God and get right with the people whose suffering you're causing. Also, let's let the judgment day of those who are causing our suffering. Let's let that motivate us like it did Jesus in our text who after warning them in Verse 50, turns right around, and says this in 51, "Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death." Before He says what He's about today. He strongly emphasizes it with the words, truly, truly. This is full assurance that what I'm about to say is fact, reality. It is real. It is true. Then He proclaims as fact, "If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."

Think about what He just did. He reminds them of their judgment, and then He immediately very kindly invites them to salvation from that judgment. The experience of a death that will never end and notice who the invitation goes out to. To anyone. No matter who they are, no matter what they've done, no matter how they are treating Him in this moment, hearts full of hatred that in just a few moments later are going to bubble over into, "Let's kill Him." To that group of people, He says, "To anyone who keeps my word. They will never see death. He will never see death."

To keep His word is synonymous with Verse 31, abiding in His word. That is staying committed to Him, staying committed to His word. It's the result of salvation. It's discipleship. It's staying committed to Him. Staying committed to the teachings of the Bible. It's doing the Word. It's paying attention to what is said here in order to know it and believe it and do it and even guard it if it's attacked.

"That person," Jesus said, "Will not see death." That is, they will never experience the second death, which is eternal separation from God in hell and then the lake of fire after that, after they're resurrected. Whoa, what? Just read Revelation 20. Very clear.

Instead, he or she will experience eternal life. Eternal life is a quality of life that only people who've committed their lives to Jesus have. A life that cannot even be touched by death. Listen to how Jesus puts it in John 11:25. His friend has died. He's been in the grave for four days and He says to all the people there mourning, "Whoever believes in me though he die yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die." They will never die eternally though we all die physically.

In other words, when our bodies die, Christians don't die. Death cannot break our connection to Christ. In fact, that connection, that fellowship that we have with Jesus is perfected at death. So regardless of your suffering, whether it's in a hospital bed or it's on the job or at school or it comes from a family member, even with people who see you as an enemy and want to kill you, where you stand like the people in our text, when you are suffering, be motivated to point #4), Offer Mercy. Offer Mercy.

Often the people who are causing our suffering are also what? They are our mission field. They're the ones God put around us to tell them about Jesus. We can't let our suffering eclipse the mission that God has given us, which is the same mission that He gave Jesus to seek and save the lost. By the way, a mission that wasn't eclipsed by the suffering, the people in our text were causing Him in the moment He says Verse 41.

We see this in the trials that Jesus endures before Pilate and Herod, and we see this in the trials that the apostles endure before the religious leaders in Jerusalem, that whether it's Gospels or Book of Acts, regardless of the suffering they face, even when their life is on the line, still in that moment, they offer their enemies mercy for their sin. They were relentless at this. So if we're not careful, suffering can have the effect of eclipsing the mission of helping people no love and serve Christ. In our suffering, in other words, we can become angry or irritable or whiny or slanderous, blasphemous even. All of which destroys our witness. So we won't offer mercy to anybody who really needs it because we'll be embarrassed. We'll be too embarrassed to do it.

We can become depressed or too self-focused to offer mercy to someone. We become so focused on getting out of our suffering that people become a means to that end rather than you being a means to their ultimate end, which is freedom from sin and eternal death and judgment. See, when our suffering does not eclipse our mission, God is honored. He looks great, and His will looks great when instead of talking about our suffering, we talk about Him and His mercy and we show that He really is the most important thing in our lives, not us.

See, suffering comes in all shapes and sizes and levels of intensity. We've all gone through it. We might be going through it now and/or we will go through it again. It's not a matter of if it's just a matter of when. With that in mind, what can we do if we're in it right now, or what can we do to get ready for it the next round of suffering that may come our way?

Well, I mean to start, the question is, are you secure that if this or if the next round of suffering were actually so intense that it would take your life, are you secure that in the words of Verse 51 that you would never see death? God is very generous with his invitation to mercy, right? Even if you've heard it a thousand times and you've rejected it a thousand times, here he is right now offering it to you again. Verse 51 says, "If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death." It doesn't say, "They will never see death," because this promise is individual. It's person specific. It's for you. It's for anyone. So believe in Jesus and your resistance. Commit your life to him today and what He says here in Verse 51, to people that hated him and rejected this, you will not be like them. You too will never experience death.

You're a Christian. If you believe in Christ, you've given your life to Him, but you know haven't been faithful in suffering. I want you to remember two things. Number one, remember that Jesus suffered without sin and His righteousness is yours. His resume of perfect suffering has replaced forever, your resume of sinful suffering. Then second, remember that He died for your sin, including your sins when you suffered selfishly or suffered angrily or suffered pridefully and then from there, giving your life to Jesus, Him being your Lord, you being His disciple, that's then seen in His motivations, becoming your motivations, one of which is to honor God even in your suffering.

People seeing how wonderful God is becomes the goal, even when you're in the midst, in the very intense center of suffering. That commitment to Jesus is also seen as staying humble in your suffering, not demanding your way, not trying to assert your rights, not believing that God owes you anything while we're suffering. He doesn't owe us anything ever. All of that is pride. Stay humble, and suffering, your commitment to Jesus is also seen in remembering judgment. Remembering your judgment will help you honor God, and it'll help you stay humble in your suffering and remembering judgment will encourage you that those who are causing your suffering will be held accountable for it. But remembering judgment will also help you offer mercy to the people you interact with when you suffer, even offering mercy to the people who are causing your suffering.

Greatest example of this is the Savior, right? He's the Lord. We're His disciples, which means we follow him. It means we adopt His worldview as our worldview. It means that we adopt His life as our example. That's what it means to be a disciple. I want you to remember this. Think about this. In the worst part of His earthly suffering, His body is wracked from pain after being beaten, filleted with whips, nails in His hands and His feet. People below Him are mercilessly mocking Him, and on top of that, He's enduring the wrath of God for the sins of the world.

In the midst of physical, psychological, and spiritual torture, what does He do? He offers mercy to the people who were beneath Him, mocking Him, and cheering at His death. He says, "Father, forgive them. Forgive them," as he hangs on the cross. That is our Savior. That is our Lord, and we are His disciples. It is that cross that we're going to remember in a moment. But before we do, the team's going to come back. Let's pray together.

Jesus, your words here and your incredibly merciful example here are the kinds of things that draw people to you. Your mercy in the face of murderous intentions, one who has all power, one who is holding every molecule in their rebellious bodies together, and yet you very graciously give them an opportunity to turn from their sin into trust in you. That is a level of mercy that is so incredible, and so there are some here who need mercy and pray that your example, your words would melt their hard hearts and that they would come to you and believe and for the rest who are your disciples, give us the grace. Give us the determination. Give us the humility that we need in order to follow your example here. Not easy, but we need you for that. Thank you for your infinite grace. We pray this for the glory of your name. Amen.

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John 8:44-47

The devil, what comes to your mind when I say those words? Red man with a pointy goatee, long tail, goat legs holding a pitchfork, chubby little cherub sitting on somebody's shoulder, tempting them to do what's wrong? Maybe I say that, and you think it's a figment of religious imagination used to control people, and keep them afraid and obedient, a metaphor for evil desires maybe. I mean, what comes to your mind when I say the word devil? Interestingly, 56% of Americans all agree that the devil is not merely a symbol of evil, but is a real spiritual being that influences human lives. In fact, a majority of Americans could disciple a majority of American Christians because 60% of American Christians agree that the devil is not a living being, but merely a symbol of evil.

Well, what does the Bible say about the devil? He's called Satan, Beelzebub, Abaddon, Apollyon, Belial, Lucifer, the tempter, the evil one, the ruler of this world, the prince of this world, the god of this world, the prince of demons, the one who has the power of death, the deceiver, the accuser, the adversary, the serpent, the dragon, the angel of the abyss, and in our text, he's called the father of lies. That is who he really is. He is the arch enemy of God. He is hostile to God's will, God's ways. He's hostile to God's son, and he is hostile to God's people. However, his rebellious hostility will not last forever. It will come to an end. It is only a matter of when.

He may be stronger than every human being that's ever existed, but he is nothing compared to Christ. Christ came to destroy him and his work, and he did that putting Satan and his army to open shame, defeating them on the cross, and that defeat happens six months after the events in John chapter 8. In John 8, Jesus is in Jerusalem. It is the time. It's around September or October. It's during the Feast of Tabernacles. It's the last day of the feast when thousands are in the temple to worship God, to worship the God who visited them there that day. So, with a being who lives in darkness, who thrives in the shadows, who's convinced much of the world that he doesn't even exist, here is Jesus exposing the devil, and exposing his children.

Now, when I say children of the devil, what comes to mind? Dark clothing, black eyeliner, funny hair, black robes. I'm going to warn you the truth about who Jesus says are the children of the devil may shock you more than what He says about the devil himself. Now, in John 8, again, going chapter by chapter verse by verse through the Bible, here we are in John 8, where Jesus is in the middle of a conflict with people that I previously called believing unbelievers. Why? Because verses 30 and 31 say that the people that Jesus is talking to, in verse 44, it says that they believe in him, but to the same people that the text says believe in Him, the text also says they don't love him. They reject His teachings, and they want to kill Him.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't really sound like a true Christian, a true believer. Sounds like a false believer, fake, Christians in name only or sounds like a believing unbeliever, people who say they believe in Jesus but they don't really believe in him. Maybe they kind of, but they don't really believe. Maybe they almost believe, but they don't really believe. Jesus then with clarity and conviction, with truth and grace, He exposes the bottom-line truth about who they really are and why it is that they were rejecting Him. So, notice in verse 38, Jesus said that these believing unbelievers, that they're doing what they'd heard from their father. In verse 41, it says that they were doing the works their father did. Twice, He's cryptic. He just says that.

But in verse 44, He exposes the identity of their father when he says, "You are of your father, the devil." Now, to fully grasp what Jesus is saying here, let's start with this point #1, Understand The Devil's Character. Understand The Devil's Character. Jesus wanted His hearers, and today, He wants us, His readers to understand who the devil is, and He packs a ton of truth into these three sentences. So, I'm going to give you five truths, five characteristics of Satan as taught by Jesus, the master teacher. Jesus, the one who knows Satan better than Satan, knows Satan because He created Satan.

Now in saying that, just know this before I get started, the text will show that Satan was created good, like all of God's creation is created good, but like humanity, he fell from that goodness when he rebelled against God. So, what can we learn about the devil from Jesus in John 8:44? Well, first, we learn the devil is a fact. The devil is a fact. The devil is real. He exists. According to Jesus, he is not imaginary. He's not the personification of evil or the name given to our evil desires. No, he's a real being, just as real as you, just as real as me. Second, the devil is a person. How do I know that? Look at the text. Six times in verse 44, Jesus refers to the devil using pronouns, he, him, or his.

In other words, the devil is not an it. He is not a force like gravity. He is a person with the same capacities that persons have. He can think, and he can feel, and he can make decisions, and he can do things, because he's a person. We are human persons. He is an angelic person. Third, the devil is an influencer, an influencer. That's what it means that he is their father. He is their leader. He is the one they follow. He's the one in charge. He's the one they belong to. They resemble him, because he persuades and moves them forth. Fourth, the text says the devil is a murderer. Notice the text says he was a murderer from the beginning.

Well, what beginning? I don't think it can be the beginning of his existence. I don't think it goes back to his creation. I don't think that's what that means. Why? Because that would mean he was created evil, and he wasn't created evil. But it would also mean that he's a murderer from the moment he is created, but murder can't exist when everybody's immortal. There's just a bunch of immortal beings around him when he's created. There's nobody to murder. So, what is the beginning that Jesus is talking about here? I think it's the beginning of humanity, from the creation of humans. Why? Because he murdered humanity spiritually when he convinced Adam and Eve to eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and at that moment, spiritual death enters the world, and eventually, physical death as a result of sin.

The devil did that because he is a murderer. Fifth, the devil is the deceiver, and this is what Jesus really focuses on in verse 44. Notice, it says that the devil does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. So, let's break down each phrase. Notice, it says, "He does not stand in the truth." That is he does not continue in the truth as he was originally created. He was in the truth, but he left the truth. He revolted. The religious word for that is he committed apostasy in the truth and defected.

Notice next, he did that "because there is no truth in him." He was full of lies on the inside. So, he committed apostasy on the outside. He did what was on the inside, inside no truth, inside full of lies. Therefore, outside, he leaves the truth. It was his core filled with lies. It was the lack of truth on the inside that caused his apostasy, and notice and not only caused his apostasy in the past, but it's why that apostasy continues. Notice the text says not there was, but there is still to this very day no truth in him. That's what he is. Next, when he lies, he speaks out of his own character, means out of himself, when lying, in other words, comes naturally. Lying is his normal form of communication, convincing people, "Evil is good, and good is evil, and right is wrong, and wrong is right, and true is false, and false is true."

Out of the abundance of his heart, he speaks, and what he says is lies because lies is what he is full of. Finally, the devil does what he is in verse 44. He lies because he is a liar. "He is a liar, Jesus says, and the father of lies." So, what does it mean to be the father of lies? It means that he started the whole activity of lying, and he started it with the first lie, Adam and Eve, Genesis 3:4, "You will not surely die if you eat from that tree." "Just as it is impossible for God to lie," Hebrews 6:18, so it is impossible for the devil to tell the truth unless he tells the truth to what? To advance more of his lies.

Now, before we move on, it's important for all of us to understand that in addition to these five points, the Bible also teaches that the devil is limited. In other words, the devil might be God's rival, but he's not even close to God's equal, not even close. In other words, he may be powerful, but he's not what? He's not all powerful, right? He may be super smart, but he does not have all knowledge. As a person, as an individual, that means that he is not omnipresent. He can't even be in two places at once, meaning that most likely, he has never personally tempted any of us ever.

We put all that together. Let me ask you, is this how you think about the devil, or do you just see him as some imaginary bogeyman meant to scare you and keep you in line, but you're above that now? I just want you to notice Jesus was not above that at all. He believed in and taught a real devil who was personal, influential, and a murderous deceiver. The word devil means slander. So whenever there's slander against God, against Christ, slander against the Bible or true Christians, whenever there is slander of those things, the source of all of that, the father of it all is the devil. The word Satan means adversary. He's the enemy of God. He's the enemy of truth.

We learned from our text he's the enemy of life. He's the enemy of eternal life. He's the enemy of God's people. So whenever God's will, God's ways, whenever God's people are opposed, just know you followed that all the way back. The father of that opposition source is the devil. He hates humanity. Listen, he really hates believers. He really hates us. Why? Because we are traitors to his satanic family. So, he opposes us and accuses us and slanders us and tests us and even causes some of our suffering just as by the way he opposes God, and slanders God, even blasphemes God, tested Jesus in the wilderness, but failed. He's caused much of the suffering that Jesus went through beginning the night that he was betrayed.

He tempts us to leave Christ, exploits our weaknesses, entices us to sin, entices us to put God to the test. But if we're watchful, if we know this stuff, and we've got this in our minds, and we're like, "Okay, this is the truth about what's going on in the world and what's happening in my life. This is what's happening, and we're praying about it." Bible says we can resist him, can resist his power. So, we trust in God's faithfulness as we rest in Jesus' prayer for us, but again, when I say he tempts us, exploits us, incites us, all of that, again, it's not him personally, because he is not omnipresent.

Could be his agents, his demonic army, or it could be the world system that he set up, that he's the leader of, the prince of, the god of, the major influencer of a world system set up to oppose Christ, and to oppose anybody living for Christ. Now, in saying all of that, you know that the devil and God are not arm wrestling for your soul, right? Have you ever seen that picture? Just type in the devil some day in your search engine, and look at the pictures, and one of them, you'll see God, huge muscles, and Satan, huge mind. Then there's your little soul right there. Which way is it going to go? Not sure, or playing chess for your soul.

God's like, "Oops, lost another one. Best two out of three, Satan." Satan is no match for God. He is the arch loser. One day soon, all creation will watch his defeat, and we will cheer as he is cast into hell, which means by the way that he's not the ruler of hell. You know that right? Hell was created for him. He's never been in hell. He doesn't control what's going on in hell, but soon, hell and then the lake of fire will be his forever home. So, understand the devil's character, and realize who he is, and you'll better understand what's going on not just in the world, but you'll better understand what's really going on in people's lives. How effective is the devil with people? Oh, he is some people's spiritual father, their spiritual leader.

Look at verse 44, "Like a bomb, Jesus drops these words. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires." See, these people in verse 39, they thought Abraham was their father, and physically, they're right about that, but spiritually, ultimately, truly, the devil was their father. He was their spiritual leader, and I want you to think about this. They didn't even know it, right? Didn't even know it. They lived in blissful ignorance thinking God was their father, when in fact Satan was their father, which tells us that the goal of Jesus' words was not to expose the devil's character, only because he's not saying these things to a group of seminary students who were taking a class on Satanology.
No, he's saying this, he's exposing Satan because as he does, he is exposing how these people are displaying the devil's character. What do I mean by that? Well, notice verse 44, the devil is a murderer. What do these people want to do to Jesus? They want to murder him. He calls them out twice. Notice, the devil does not stand in the truth. What do they do with Jesus? They reject the truth. In other words, once we understand the devil's character, that helps us, point #2), Understand The Devil's Children. Understand The Devil's Children. To understand the first is to explain the activity of the second.

In other words, when we understand the devil's character, it explains the activity of his children, and the devil has children. Matthew 13, "They are called sons of the evil one." Matthew 23, "They are called children of hell." Ephesians 2, "They are called Satan's followers." In 1 John 3, "They are called children of the devil." Why? Because they are ruled by him. They've been blinded by him, so they don't see the truth. They're enslaved to him. They're under his control. They do what they do because of the spiritual father that they have. They take on the family resemblance. They are deceived, yes, but they also willingly and happily choose to follow that deception, so they are responsible for being in his family.

In our text, what Jesus does is he gives us three descriptions of the devil's children. The first one is this, verse 44, "They do his will." Jesus says, "Your will is to do your father's desires." As their spiritual father, they do what he wants them to do. The easiest way to understand what he wants them to do is that it's what? What he wants them to do is the opposite of what God wants them to do. So, whatever God wants them to do, they do the opposite. As their father, they're under his influence. As his children, they want to do what he wants them to do, whether they know it or not. He encourages rebellion. He entices to sin. He inspires them to reenact the same apostasy that he committed.

"Oh, I'm free. I'm free. So, I just can rebel against God." No, actually, you're just doing what Satan did. "Oh, I'm not going to follow that Jesus stuff anymore." Oh, just like Satan did. Oh, you're so free. No, you're not. You're a slave. You're one of his kids, and you're simply doing the rebellion that he did. They share his attitudes about truth. They share his ideas about life. They share his desires. It's like father like Son. Again, do the vast majority of them know that they are the devil's kids? Did these people know that they were the devil's kids? No way, but this is certain, they're not doing what God wants them to do. That's the bottom line. They're against that.

If they're against that, they're against it because they are the devil's children following the desires of their father, whether they know it or not, whether they believe it or not. That's the truth. Second, the devil's children reject Christ. They reject Christ. Listen to how Jesus puts this starting in verse 45. He's talking about Satan. He says, "when he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you don't believe me." What's the connection between the devil being the father of lies and Jesus telling the truth and them not believing in him? Well, notice they reject Christ. They can't stand Jesus. Why? Because he tells the truth, and they're aligned with the father of lies.

Because Jesus loves them, He confronts their rejection, in verse 46, with two questions. First one, which one of you convicts me of sin? Now, they would say, "Well, you work on the Sabbath, or you are blaspheming God." But his question is, "Give me the proof. Lay out the case. Give me the evidence." Just like the trial that's going to happen six months from now, they have to make up crimes about him. Why? Because he didn't have any sin. I want you to think about this too. Would anyone ever ask this question? Which one of you convicts me of sin? Would anybody ever ask that? No, right? What do you have to be in order to even ask that question? You have to know that you're sinless, but only God is sinless.

So that Jesus even asks this question is another veiled assertion among dozens in the Book of John that Jesus is God. Now, this first question leads logically into the second one, which is, "If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?" So again, he challenges them to produce any sin in him that was keeping them from believing in him. Since they had nothing, his response to them is, "Well, why not believe then?" They have no good reason to keep on rejecting him. So, he's pressing this fact down on their conscience with the second question. If he has no sin to convict him of, then he's a reliable source of truth. If he is speaking straight truth, they should give their lives to him.

The logic here of these questions is undeniable. So, why don't they do that? Why don't they believe when it's so obvious? Why do they keep rejecting him anyway in spite of all the truth that he's speaking? Answer. Because they are children of the Father of lies. That's why, which brings us the third. The devil's children believe lies. The devil's children believe lies. Instead of believing in Jesus, they believe lies. Notice how he puts it in verse 47, "Whoever is of God hears the words of God." The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. They follow the desires of Satan. They reject Jesus, and they do not hear God's words coming from him.

They embrace lies instead, because notice Jesus says the reason they do that is because they are not of God. He ends where we started today. They're not of God. Why? Because they are of who? They're of their father, the devil. They are not of God. They don't belong to God. They're not born of God. They're not born again. They're not born from above. They're not his children, because their father is the devil, the liar who lies about Jesus. That is why Jesus says they cannot hear. That's why they can't heed. That's why they can't listen to. That's why they can't follow what Jesus is saying. Why? Because to recognize Jesus' words is true.

To realize that his words are the word of God shows that a person is of God. They've been born again. Before that, they don't hear it, because they're in rebellion, and they can't unrebel themselves. Why? They belong to the arch rebel, so they believe all kinds of lies, instead of believing in Jesus. Simply put, the devil's children do what he wants, reject Jesus, and believe lies about Jesus. If that's true, if that's true, then how many people are the devil's children? It's not just those cultic Satan worshipers out there. It's all who live in rebellion against what God wants for their lives in the spirit of the arch rebel.

It's all who reject Jesus in the spirit of the arch apostate. It's all who believe lies in the spirit of the arch false teacher, lies about Jesus, lies like he's not the Messiah, lies like he's merely a teacher or merely a prophet, but not the son of God, lies like he's an angel, but not the God man, lies like he is Satan's brother and became a God through his obedience, lies like he is a Buddha or a guru or an avatar or an ascended master or a witch or a consciousness, lies like his sacrifice for sin was not enough to save you, so you have to save yourself through your obedience, lies like you can live however you want. You can live like the devil, and you're still saved, because you prayed a prayer, on and on and on and on and on, which means that rebellion against God is numerous. Lies about Jesus are countless.

The result is not just the rejection of Jesus on a massive scale, but it's also the spiritual murder of tens of thousands of people every day. As 150,000 people die every day, the vast majority of them eternally murdered by Satan, deceived that their rebellion doesn't matter, deceived that their rejection of Jesus doesn't really matter, deceived that the truth is a lie, and that lies are truth. They died deceived and discovered that they have been spiritually murdered when it's too late. The whole time, the devil was their father, and they didn't even know it. That is why these words of Jesus, while harsh and offensive, are a gift of his love to sinners, pouring the water of life on their slumbering soul, waking them up as they're on the path to hell.

Let's live like these truths that Jesus says are true about the world and about those that we know and love who are living in rebellion, rejecting Christ, and regarding a whole massive of lies as the truth. In other words, verse 44 is not just for the believing unbelievers who were there that day arguing with Jesus, the things in verse 44 and following are true of all who fall into the same category. What is that category? People who do what the devil wants, not what God wants, reject Christ instead of believing in him, and embrace spiritual lies instead of embracing spiritual truth.

If these characteristics are true for them, they are the devil's children. Whether they believe it or not, whether they believe in Satan or not, it doesn't really matter. This is what they are, his children. That is the truth about them, but the good news is they do not have to stay in his family, right? They can defect. 1 John 3:1 says that being a child of God is ultimately the result of God's love for sinners. How does somebody go from being a child of the devil to a child of God? John 1:12 says, "To all who believe in Jesus, he gave the right to become children of God." When a person does that, when they believe in Jesus, when they give their lives to him, Colossians 1:13 says, "God delivers them from the domain of darkness, and transfers them to the kingdom of his beloved son, and whom there is redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

Christian, I know we talk about being saved from sin and the penalty we deserve for all of our sin. That's what Jesus died on the cross for. But when you think about the salvation that you received, do you think about it in this way that the Savior saved you from Satan's family, that you were rescued from being his child, and adopted into the family of God when you believed making you God's child forever? It's one thing to hear these words, and put ourselves in those shoes, but put yourself in the shoes of the person that can hear those words and say, "That was me but not anymore, because Jesus saved me out of Satan's family."

Also, I hope that reading a text like this gives you compassion for those who are in Satan's family, that there is a sense of, "Oh, God, rescue them from that." There's no pride here. We didn't rescue ourselves. We didn't figure this whole thing out. He saved us. He rescued us from that. How does he do that? It happens by God's grace. Yes, but how is God's grace usually communicated to the people who need it? It happens through us. It happens through us. 2 Timothy 2:24 says, "The Lord's servant, that's us. The Lord's servants, we must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting opponents with gentleness."

So, why do we do all that? The verse continues that God may perhaps grant them. Who grant the opponents of truth? Grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and that they may come to their senses, and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. They belong to him. He is their father. However, through Christians who are kind, patient, and gentle, not just while speaking with them, but even correcting them, that is how God grants repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, the truth that they've been rejecting. They come to their senses, and they escape. They defect from the clutches of the evil one who has them as prisoners in his family, many of them without even knowing it, unless you tell them.

Tell them that Satan is everything Jesus isn't. The devil is a liar. Jesus is the truth, and He only ever speaks truth to us. The devil is a murderer. Jesus is life, and He came to give life. The devil is the ultimate sinner. Jesus cannot be convicted of even one sin. So, if Jesus is the truth, and if he has no sin, and if he came to give life, and you're not a Christian, I ask you what he asked them. Verse 46, "Why do you not believe Him?" If this is who He is, why would you not believe Him? Listen, there are only two families, only two, and all of us are in one of them. If rebellion against God, rejecting Christ, and regarding lies as the truth, if that describes you, Jesus, not me, Jesus made it clear what family you're already in.

So, why in the world would you stay in Satan's family one second longer? Why? Leave. Get out. Flee to Christ. I mean, could you ever hear anything worse than what these people heard that day? You are of your father, the devil. But you know what, they heard those words, because they ignored words spoken just a few moments earlier. Verse 36, "If the son sets you free, what? You will be free indeed, free truly, free actually, free permanently, free from sin, free from the devil, and free from his family." Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in true freedom. Now and forever is yours. That's something to sing about, and we're going to do that in a minute, but let's pray.

Jesus, these offensive words are words of life. These words are true. These words are right, and you speak hard words to soften hard hearts. We all need these words for various reasons, and so I pray that you would use these words in each and every one of our lives, here and anybody watching online, that these words would shape the way that we think about life, that they would shape the way we think about ourselves, and that we would respond in the way that these words are meant to cause people to respond. The people in the text rejected these words, but I pray that those who need you would not reject these words. They would stop acting like Satan, and rejecting you, and that they would repent and give their lives to you, believing in you instead. For the rest of us, use these words to disciple us, to teach us, and to help us take the next step of obedience, whatever we know that should be as a result of our time in your word today. Please humble our hearts, and give us everything we need to follow you, to live for you, for the glory of your name, Amen.

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John 8:31-36

So last week I went camping with my son, Colin, up north on the rim. It was 71 degrees up there. Do you remember what 71 degrees feels like? 71 degrees up there when it was 101 degrees down here, it was glorious. So before leaving the rim, I noticed there was a turn off that we could look out at the mountains from on top of the rim, so I pulled over and we got out of my car and made our way to the edge of the rim, which I learned is really just a cliff, which is the edge of a cliff; didn't know that. So my son runs over there and gets on a rock that's suspended over the valley below and my heart stopped for a split second. Like, "Oh, no, what if that rock falls?" But it didn't. Thankfully. We took our pictures, got back in the car, drove home.

More dangerous than standing on the edge of a cliff is being an almost Christian. Standing on the edge of eternity every second of every day believing you're saved when you aren't. A fake Christian, a believing unbeliever is the most dangerous place you could possibly be. Completely unaware that your destiny is hell while being totally convinced that your destiny is heaven. This is the worst, most dangerous place to be and our text today is in the Bible so that that will not be you. So that that will not be me.

This very famous text about truth setting free and being free indeed is actually a warning to the believing unbeliever. Every weekend, pastors all over the world preach to three kinds of people, non-Christians, real Christians and fake Christians.

Now what the difference is between a real Christian and a fake Christian is what our text is in the Bible to help us all understand. It's meant to help us with this and because it's in the Bible helping us with this. That means this text is evidence of God's kindness and God's mercy to all of us. That he would help us understand the difference so that it would make sure that would help us make sure that we're not fake. 2 Corinthians 13:5 tells Christians examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. That was written to a group of Christians. Examine yourself to see if you're in the faith, test yourselves.

So my hope, my prayer is that that's what will happen today as we test our lives, as we look at ourselves in the mirror of God's words and we see what the truth is about us. Then once we know the truth, that we will either rejoice in our salvation or repent and believe the gospel. So that means that for some of you, I hope that this message gives you assurance that your soul will experience a calm as you see yourself in the word and you become more and more convinced that I am a Christian. For others, I hope this message gives you anxiety, that you'll experience a concern for your soul as the more you see yourself in the mirror of God's words, you realize I might not be saved. I remember early on in my ministry here shaking hands with people and overhearing people talking while I'm doing that and I heard one person complain to another, "Oh, it's another are you sure you're a Christian sermon?"

Well, this is yet another are you sure you're a Christian sermon? Why? Because it's the point of the text and we just preach the next text every week, and as we go through the book of John, this is the next text. You notice John 8:31 says, "Jesus spoke to many that believed in him." Verse 30 says they believed in him. There were many people listening to him that day because he's in the temple at the height of the Feast of Tabernacle when tens of thousands of people are in Jerusalem for this holiday.

Notice verse 31, it begins a third round of conflict with these religious leaders. It's going to culminate at the end of the chapter with them wanting to kill him. So speaking to those that verse 31 says, believed him, Jesus said, "If you abide in my word, you are..." What's that word? "Truly my disciples." That is the point, true discipleship, true Christians.

Now why does Jesus say this to people in verse 30 that says they believed in him? You see that? Look at verse 30. It says that these people believed in him. Verse 31, these people believe him. Why does he say that to them if they believe in him? Because he is warning them. He is unmasking their believing unbelief. He's saying, "I'm glad you believe, but let me help you make sure that you're the real thing." You might be thinking, "Jon, why are you saying they're believing unbelievers? I mean, doesn't the text say? Verse 31, verse 32, it says they believe. Why are you saying they're believing unbelievers?"

Well, take a look at verse 45 about this same group of people. Jesus says that they don't believe in him. Verse 37, to the same group of people, they want to kill him. The same group of people, verse 42, they don't love him. All of that is because same group of people, verse 44, their spiritual leader, their spiritual father is actually the devil.

Well, how can that be true? They believe in him. They don't really believe in him. They're attracted to him, but they are not devoted to which is why Jesus says, verse 31, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples." The true disciple, the real Christian, quote, "Will abide in Jesus' word." To abide means to remain. It means to stay. It means to continue. It means to take up permanent residence in Jesus words.

It's not talking about a perfect commitment to Jesus, right? Because no such thing this side of heaven, right? Every Christian is like, Amen, right? It's not talking about a perfect commitment to Jesus, but it is talking about a permanent commitment to Jesus. One that lasts through the doubts, one that trusts through the temptation, one that remains through the sin, it lasts.

To put it simply, believing in Jesus and abiding in his words is the mark of a true Christian. That's what verse 31 says. Believing in Jesus without abiding in his word is the mark of a fake Christian. So just to be clear, abiding in his word is not a requirement for being a disciple. Abiding in his word is what proves someone is a true disciple. This is what real Christians do, and for those who continue to believe who don't turn away but remain to the end, the result is verse 32, they will know the truth. The truth will set them free.

You see this text is used, especially in a lot of political environments, this has nothing to do with political freedom or economic freedom or social freedom. It has nothing to do with education that frees people from the shackles of ignorance, has nothing to do with freedom from cultural norms that you can be who you think you should be.

It says in verse 34 what Jesus is talking about. He's talking about freedom from sin, which means the truth being known in verse 32 is about him. It's the gospel message, the good news that sinners can be set free from their sin. In verse 36, the one who does this is Jesus the Son, because if the Son sets you free from your sin, you are free indeed. That is the true freedom, freedom from sin, freedom from false teaching, freedom from death and judgment and condemnation and Satan. To being set free in verse 32 then is the same as being saved. It's salvation. All of this goes back to that word in verse 31, abide. Unlike the almost Christian who does not abide in Jesus' words, let's point #1), Stay Committed. Stay Committed. Meaning stay committed to Jesus, continue throughout your life to be a follower of his.

As you think about this commitment to Jesus, think about it as permanent, lifelong, unstoppable. Stay committed to his word. What I mean by that is, what I think he means by that is staying true to what he said about himself and true to what he said about what his followers will do.

Stay committed. Listen to the language of commitment. In Colossians 2:7, Paul describes this as being rooted, built up in him and established in the faith. So like a massive tree rooted, firmly fixed, deeply embedded into Christ, immovable regardless of influences on the contrary. He uses the same language in Colossians 1:23. After talking about salvation, talking specifically about reconciliation, that through Christ's death he reconciled sinners to the God they were at war with.

Paul adds this, he says, about this salvation, this is true for them, quote, "If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard." It's the opposite of the people that Jesus describes in Mark 4 who, quote, "Endure for a while but fall away because of the deceitfulness of riches or the cares of this life or the difficulty of the Christian life or the difficulty of Christian teaching or even persecution from being a Christian. "No, in the words of Hebrews 10:39, true Christians are, quote, "Not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls." Jesus puts it this way in Matthew 10:22. He says, quote, "You will be hated by all for my namesake, but the one who endures to the end will be saved." Despite tremendous temptations to leave, despite tremendous temptations that I don't want to do this anymore. It's too hard. Despite these temptations, the true disciple, the real Christian by God's grace abides, remains, stays committed, endures to the end.

Notice the point isn't stay open to Jesus. It's not stay positive about Christianity. It's not stay in attendance at a local church. It's not stay convinced that Christianity is true. It's just stay committed to Jesus. Why? Well, don't we all know people who once committed to Jesus, but today there's nothing in their lives that says they were ever committed to Jesus?
If we do know people like that, if somebody's face just came to mind, let's take verse 31 and put it over their experience right now and say they were never really Christians. They're not Christians because they're not abiding in this word. Again, this means at least two things. It means that they stopped agreeing with Jesus teachings and/or they stopped living in alignment with those teachings.

So in other words, they rejected the real Jesus for a counterfeit one like the Jesus of Islam or Mormonism or Jehovah's witnesses or the new age or on and on and on. So they no longer, in other words, adhere to the truth of the gospel and/or they rejected the lifestyle that Jesus says his followers will seek to have. So they're the gay Christian or the adulterous Christian or the party Christian or the abandon my family Christian or the secret life of sin Christian or the not-so-secret life of sin Christian, all of which is we're seeing in this word if that's the final conclusion, they aren't true Christians at all. Why? Because notice verse 31, they left Jesus words. They no longer believe what he said. They no longer follow what he wants. Their commitment to him didn't stay. It didn't remain. It didn't abide. It had an expiration date. Listen, people seem to give their lives to Jesus for all kinds of reasons. They want to please their parents. They want to be thought, well-loved. They're interested in what they see other Christians are into. They are looking for meaning in life. They want to be good people.

So Christians might be good people, so I'll be a Christian. They believe in causes that other Christians believe in. I mean, on and on and on. There's all kinds of reasons. Their lives may even change a little bit as they get around Christians and they hear biblical teaching, but the proof is according to the text, do they stay committed?

That's the test. The true, genuine, real, authentic faith in Jesus remains using Colossians words. It's rooted. It's established. It's stable. It's steadfast, endorsed to the end. So I don't know about you with your kids, with our kids. Bible stories and one that just constantly came up, especially as they were younger was Jonah, big fish and all of that and as I talk about this with them, we'd often come back to this what we see in the text, which is that God had things that he wanted Jonah to do and Jonah what? He ran away. He ran away.
So then when I prayed that text for my kids, I will say something like, "God, please, please keep them close to you. Please don't let them run away from you like Jonah did. May they stay committed to you all the days of their lives." So my 6-year-old, Emma, last night after we prayed, she said, "Daddy, you always say all the days of my life. Why do you do that?" Because true Christians stay Christians.

I grew up in church. I was in Sunday school, three services every weekend, from eight o'clock until two o'clock in the afternoon I was in church for all of my upbringing. I prayed the prayer. I walked the aisle. I did all of the youth camps. I did all of those things, but my commitment didn't remain until something happened at 18. 18, something changed. Something was different now. It was no longer, like, "Hey, this Jesus thing, I'm into this. Yeah, I think it's true." But if you would've met me then, I'm certainly not living it in my normal life. I'm just living that for the hours that I'm at church. But then something happened at 18, and that being born again in new creation, once that happened that was like, "This is my life now. This is taking over. This is different, something has changed."

Every Christian knows what I'm talking about. Something changed and it's part of the proof of that change is you continue for the rest of your life in commitment to him. So you happen to be here today, but you haven't stayed committed to Jesus. You've had moments of excitement only for it to fade out or for you to go back to normal, living for yourself, maybe some passing thoughts of Jesus.

Did you once embrace truth? Truth like the deity of Jesus or that salvation can only be found in him or that no good work is ever able to save you. Only now to find yourself embracing contradictory false teaching. Today is the day not to renew your commitment to Jesus. Today is the day to make a real commitment to Jesus. One that's not impacted by what's happened to you or what's happening around you, but one that is rooted and established and stable and enduring to the end in Jesus words.

Today is the day to commit your life to Christ, not for your parents and not for your friends and not so people will think good things about you. Today is the day to commit your life to Jesus for you. Verse 32, so that you will know the truth. You will have an experience. It won't be intellectual. It'll be experiential knowledge of Christ in your life. You will know the truth and that truth will set you free from sin, death, and hell. Listen, I don't know what you're going through today. Could it be that you're here today deeply tempted to leave Christ, tempted right now to check out, to be done, like I'm over this thing? This is a phase that I just want over now.

Could that be you? If it is, please look at verse 31. Please look at verse 31, and abide, remain, stay committed to Jesus and to his word, stay. As you might imagine, these leaders didn't like Jesus saying that they needed to be set free. They're insulted because that implies what? That they're enslaved. So verse 33, they respond. They answer him. "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free?" They try using theology against Jesus like the theology ninja. Not a good idea. Not smart, but that's what they do. But I want you to notice. He says verses 31 to 32, and what do they do in verse 33? They do not what? Abide in his word. So they prove right there in verse 33 that they are not the true disciples that he talked about in verse 31. Something they're saying that they've never been slaves to anyone, that they just kind of forgot about Egypt and Persia and Babylon and Greece and Rome, all peoples that to one degree or another, enslaved the Jewish people.

I don't think that's the kind of slavery they're talking about here. I think they're talking about spiritual slavery, namely we're God's chosen people, descendants of Abraham, not one of us is a slave. We are all free. We all live in spiritual freedom. What are you talking about, and then they arrogantly challenge Jesus, you just read it here. How is it that you say you'll become free? But what this says here is they say, "How is it that you, of all people, you say you'll become free? If anyone is a slave, it's you. Slave to Satan, you false teacher."

Jesus is going to confront this in verse 34. But before we get there notice as believing unbelievers, they assumed that they were okay spiritually, didn't they? They assume they're okay spiritually when they're not. Guess what? It's not just them, is it? This is true for the almost Christian. So before a person can ever be a true disciple, a real Christian, they must point #2), Reject Assumptions. Reject Assumptions. In other words, they must do away with the assumption that they're already a Christian.

In the Oxford Dictionary, the word assumption means a thing that is accepted as true without proof. That's the problem. The assumption of the fake Christian is the proof that they give that they are a real Christian. What does it sound like? Oh, I prayed a prayer. I came forward at a youth camp. My dad's a pastor. My grandma's a missionary. I grew up in church. I believe in God. All of these assumptions, all of this proves that I'm a Christian. They give all these proofs for being a Christian while rejecting what the Bible says the proofs are for being a Christian, one of which is abiding in Jesus' words.

So John, the one who wrote this, also wrote three letters at the end of the Bible and in his second letter, he says this in verse 9. "Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching." So here's the teaching, they don't abide in it, they move on ahead of it. He says, "They do not have God." Whoever abides in the teaching, whoever stays there in Christ's teaching has the Father and the Son. So the assumption is I cannot abide in Jesus' teachings. I can live how I want to live or I can believe what I want to believe and it's okay because I'm still a Christian. John who was there that day hearing Jesus say this goes, "No, they're not." They must reject the assumption because the proof in the Bible is that a person's not a real Christian if they don't abide in Jesus' word.

Here's another common assumption from I John 2:4. It says, "Whoever says I know him, whoever says I have a relationship with him, I'm committed to him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar." What are they lying about? That they have a relationship with God and the truth is not in him. "Whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected, by this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him." Says, "I am committed to him and I'm abiding in him," ought to walk in the same way as he walked.
So the assumption is I can live however I want and still be a Christian. The truth is the real Christian is seeking to live how Jesus wants them to live as spelled out in the Bible. Here's another assumption. I John 2:9, "Whoever says he is in the light, whoever says I'm a Christian, I'm in the light, and hates his brother is in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother, abides in the light and in him, there's no cause for stumbling." So here's the assumption. I can treat people however I want and still be a Christian. The truth is real Christians love the people in their lives and treat them, seek to treat them how? The way Jesus wants them to be treated.

So let me be clear. None of this is mark, none of this is perfection is the mark of a Christian. Are we all clear on that? In order to abide in Christ, you need the grace of God in order to accomplish that, right? His grace, his spirit empowers you to remain and yet you must remain. It's not either or. It's both. One comes before the other, but it is both. You must remain. There's always going to be a battle between the flesh, remaining sin in our lives and the spirit and that by the way, is another mark of the true Christian that there is that battle.

For the true Christian, it is a battle as remaining sin fights against this new motivation that didn't exist before. But now does this new motivation from the spirit, a compulsion to live for Christ.

So what is the truth about those who say now I believe in Jesus, but don't abide in his words to either reject what it says or stop living in alignment with that? What's the truth about that or what is true about those who seem to have believed in the past? Who once identified as a Christian, but they don't now? Or even said, like I said, they're Christians, but they stopped abiding in his word.

What is that? Are they still Christians? Are they backslidden Christians? Are they carnal Christians? Did they lose their salvation? No. I John 2:19 gives the truth about the almost Christian. I John 2:19 says, "They went out from us." So they left. They left his teachings, and in this case, they actually left the community of Christians. "They went out from us, but they were not of us." That's the truth. They weren't really one of us for, here's the reason they weren't one of us. For if they had been one of us, if they'd been of us, they would have continued. Same word is abided in 8:31. They would've abided. They would've continued with us, but they went out, they left. They said, "I'm done with this." That it might become obvious that they all are not of us.

So the assumption is they were once Christians, but now they aren't. The truth is they were never really Christians to begin with. They're going, meaning, them not abiding is the proof that they were never really Christians at all. So I wonder what assumptions maybe you've brought in here that make you think, like, "I hear what you're saying, John, but I can get around that. I got... You don't understand. I prayed a prayer when I was a kid. I prayed a prayer. I'm good. I'm a Christian." That prayer wasn't magic. If it wasn't sincere, it wasn't real. Well, how do you know if it was sincere? If you abide, if you've stayed committed to Jesus or not? Well, I'm a Christian. I think this entire Jesus thing, it's all true. I think it's true. I believe it.

Well, great. The entire army of darkness, Satan's entire army knows it's true. The issue isn't do you think this Jesus thing is true. The issue is what are you doing with the truth that you know? If you're not committed to Jesus, if you're doing your own thing with an occasional hat tip to Jesus, maybe for an hour or so every weekend, that's not what it means to believe. It's not what it means to trust. It's certainly not what it means to abide.

True Christians are disciples, their followers, adherents and enthusiasts. Why? Because Jesus word, his ways, his desires for one's life has come to dominate their lives, becomes the dominant force in their soul as I want to live for the Lord. I don't do that perfectly. Nobody does that perfectly. It's only accomplished by the work of the spirit in our lives. However, that domination is there because God's spirit is there and he's leading, guiding, pushing towards commitment as the flesh is going, "No, come back." The Christian in the midst of that battle stays committed to Christ. Is that the case for you or is our time in John 8 today been tightening the noose around the neck of the idea that you're a true Christian when, in fact, this look in the mirror of God's word, maybe making it look more and more like you're a believing unbeliever?

That was the truth about the religious leaders in our passage. Their faith in Jesus was a false faith as we've been seeing, wasn't the real thing as we see now verse 34, Jesus answers their insult. He answers them, truly, truly... This is Jesus' way of saying bold, underline, all caps, this is important. "Truly, truly, I as the God of the universe come to save humanity from their sins. Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin."

So Jesus has to explain to these guys what he meant in verse 32, that they need to be set free. What he said shows about, he's talking about spiritual slavery too, but not the kind that can be fixed by any connection to Abraham. This true slavery is slavery to sin, its rebellion against God. So in one way, the Jewish people are absolutely unique among all the people on the planet in their ancestry to Abraham and all of the promises that God made to the ancestors of Abraham. But at the same time, they're just like all the people on the planet in that they too sin.

They were descendants of Abraham who regardless of that, are still enslaved to sin. Notice the text says they don't just sin, but they sin because they sin, they proved that they're slaves to sin. The ongoing rebellion against God is evidenced in this text how? In the way they're treating God in this text. That's the proof that they need to be freed from their sin. Paul reiterates the same idea, Romans 6:17 calling non-Christians slaves to sin. Romans 6:19, "Slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness." He also describes it in Titus 3:3, "As slaves to various passions and pleasures."

Think about that word slave for a second. The idea is that they're slaves. They cannot free themselves. Well, they could run away, but that's not really freedom. They haven't been granted freedom when they run away, they could still be caught and enslaved again because they weren't really free. See, it is their sin that Jesus says they were enslaved to. So they need a power greater than themselves to free them from their own sin, which is where Jesus goes next. "The slave," verse 35, "does not remain in the house forever. The Son remains forever." In other words, a slave doesn't have a permanent place in the house, and he's like, "These men are slaves. They're not sons. They didn't have a permanent place in God's house." They just assumed they were part of God's house, but they weren't because they were slaves to sin.

They didn't belong there. It wasn't their house. But what about a son? A son has a permanent place in his father's house. But did you notice verse 35 doesn't say a son, but what? It says the son. Why? Verse 36, because if the son sets you free, slave can't set you free. But if the son sets you free, you'll be free, indeed. The son can turn slaves into sons because Jesus is the son of God. He can really, truly, indeed free people from slavery to sin. As the son, he alone has the right and he alone has the ability to set sinners free so that all the non-Christians and to all the fake Christians within the sound of my voice, I appeal to you.

Point #3), Embrace Freedom. Embrace Freedom. Embrace the freedom from sin that can only be found in Jesus. Before you embrace freedom from sin, you have to admit what? But these guys were unwilling to admit that you're still a slave to sin. The freedom from sin that Jesus has as the Son, he gives that freedom to all who trust in him. To go from slaves to sin to sons of God.

Let me just say if you're kind of twitch a little bit, because I didn't say sons and daughters, just understand that in the biblical world, daughters did not get the inheritance, only the sons did. That's why we're called sons of God. Men and Christian women are sons of God. Why? Because we get the inheritance of the son. We get what he deserves, which is sonship, adoption in the family of God.

If you're like, "Ah, that doesn't help. Imagine being a guy and called the bride of Christ." This is true freedom that Jesus is talking about. Freedom without which all economic freedom, all political freedom, all social freedom is empty without this freedom. Embrace the freedom from sin that you can have when you turn from your sin and you give your life to the one who will free you from all of your sin.

Luke 4:18 says, "Jesus came to proclaim liberty. Liberty to the captives and to set at liberty those who are oppressed." Captives to Satan, oppressed by their sin. I wonder has he freed you? The 50-cent term for this freedom in the Bible is the word redemption.
Romans 3:24, "Redemption is in Christ." Ephesians 1:7, "In Christ, we have redemption through his blood." Hebrews 9:12, "Jesus obtained eternal redemption." Okay. Great. Well, what does that word mean? The word translated redemption is a technical term for the purchase of slaves. Released from slavery through the payment of a ransom, to buy freedom for the slaves.

It is a price paid, trading that price for their freedom. You see, those needing redemption are in trouble, in exchange for their freedom a price had to be paid, and we just heard in Ephesians 1, and we just sang, right? What was that price paid? It was the blood of Christ shed on the cross. He releases people from slavery to sin, making them sons of God by taking their place and being punished by God as if he was a slave to sin. They get his sonship, his adoption. Well, his status as son. He gets their status as slave to sin. They get eternal blessings. He gets punished on the cross.

This redemption we heard in Hebrews 9:12 is not fickle. It doesn't go on for a while and then stop. It is eternal. It is an eternal freedom, a never-ending freedom, an everlasting freedom from sin, from Satan, from death, from wrath, from hell. All of that forever, now and forever, the moment they believe, free, free forever.

We are not set free to now live however we want. But now we are set free to live how God wants us to live because we were bought with a price. In the words of I Corinthians 6:20, "You were bought with a price." That price is the precious blood of Jesus. You were bought with a price, therefore, based on that purchase of you out of slavery to sin, based on that redemption, glorify God in your body.

Make Jesus look great with your life because of what he did to free you from slavery to sin. Have you been redeemed? Has Jesus the Redeemer redeemed you from slavery to sin? After I look at John 8 today, I hope all believing unbelievers never respond to Jesus the way that these men we're going to see next week, how they responded, anger, more insults, disregard.

I hope that will not be you. All of us now, they're hearing, seeing ourselves in the mirror of God's word. We're either rejoicing in the salvation that we've experienced. We know the truth, and the truth has set us free and we rejoice in that truth, or it's become more and more clear that we need to repent and believe in Christ.

So if your assessment of yourself after comparing your life to God's word is that you're not a real Christian, my hope for you is that you will reject the assumptions you had that you are a Christian, that you will embrace freedom for your sin by believing in Jesus, and that you will stay committed to your redeemer for the rest of your life, so that on that deathbed, barely able to breathe, not able to think barely, your hope is still in Christ in that moment and that it stays that way all the way into glory when you hear well done for staying committed throughout your life.

May you respond to God's word today the way that God's spirit is telling you to respond. If you'd like to talk about any of this, I will be at that back door. There'll be people up here to pray for you. If you're like, "I don't want to talk to a pastor." There's like 27 pastor's emails on the back of the program. My email's there, you can email me there. If you're watching, you can email me, info@redeemeraz.org. Why? Because the most dangerous place you could possibly ever be is an almost Christian. But the best, the safest, most wonderful place you could ever be is committed to the one who redeemed your soul. As the team comes back, let's pray together.

Jesus, these are very famous words. These words are said in a context that is stark. It's serious. It's real and it could be hard, really hard for somebody to have seen themselves in the mirror of your word just now and to realize my life is not in alignment with Jesus' words. My doctrine is not in agreement with what Jesus says. Gosh, I've been calling myself a Christian, but maybe I'm not. It'd be hard to admit that. It would take courage. It can be embarrassing. It can be fearful, and so God, I pray for some that you would give them the help they need, the courage they need to embrace the truth and then from there, the truth that they're still slaves to sin and that they need to be free, and that they would turn from that rebellion and trust in Jesus as their savior. For others who have heard this message and realized, I'm not a perfect Christian. Gosh, there's no such thing, but I'm committed to Christ. I seek to live for him. I haven't turned back and pressing on. I'm not looking back. I'm moving forward. I'm not doing that because I'm so great. I'm doing that because you're so great, Jesus. That reality in our lives would give us an assurance. So many come here doubting. Am I really a Christian? I don't know. May a sermon, may a text like this one give us the assurance we need. Jesus, do this work and hundreds of other works that we need as a result of our time together for the glory of your name. Amen.

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John 8:12

So we live in a day, it's pretty easy to say, that is marked by confusion. A lot of it, right? Confusion in our world, confusion in morality, confusion in theology, in leadership, in government, in entertainment, in education. It's like a fog has rolled in. A fog of darkness and doubt. A fog of error. A fog of confusion. A fog that makes it hard to know up from down, right from wrong, truth from error. Where what is evil is now good, and what is good is now evil into the darkness of this confusion steps Jesus of Nazareth, who declares with clarity and conviction, John 8:12, "I am the light of the world." There's a mountain of truth in these seven words. A mountain of truth that when we embrace them, it brings clarity to our confusion. It brings certainty into our doubt. It brings truth into a world full of lies.

What does it mean for Jesus to be the light of the world? We've heard that phrase about Him, but what does it mean? What does it mean that He is the light of the world? Well, to answer that, let's start with this. Point #1) The Light Celebrated. The Light Celebrated. According to 7:2, the context of these words is the Feast of Tabernacles. This is a holiday week in the fall when every Jewish male over 20 was expected to be in Jerusalem. So as you think about Jesus saying these words, picture tens of thousands of people filling Jerusalem in the Temple Mount. In the Temple complex itself, in what was called the Court of the Women, right outside the central building of the Temple itself, there was a patio, and in this patio the priest would set up four giant lamp stands. They're made out of gold, and each lamp stand had four golden bowls on top of those lamp stands.

Four young men would climb these ladders with a jug full of oil and they would dump it into these bowls so that they could light them, these lamps, and so the light would fill all of Jerusalem. It may have looked something like this. Now, it's not clear in the Jewish sources whether these lamps were lit every night, or they were lit on the last day of the feast only, but according to 7:37, this is the last day of the feast, when Jesus says that He is the light of the world. So either they are about to be lit, or when He says it, they are lit.

Now, if you're like, "Wait a minute, there's a whole day that happens in between there from 7:53 to 8:11." Well, remember the woman caught in adultery was likely added after John completed this book. So the message that I did before Easter covered this, but you can ask me after at the door. John's original was exactly how I read it, from 7:52. The very next thing that John wrote was what we have in our Bibles, 8:12. It is said that these lamps were so bright that they filled the entire city with light. So all night long this light is shining, all the way until sunrise. The greatest and holiest men of Israel would joyfully sing and they would dance with lit torches in their hands. They're singing and they're dancing as the priests are playing instruments and the people are up on the ledges looking down into the patio, singing and rejoicing as well and on their mind as they are worshiping the Lord is two things, primarily.

First, is the Exodus. If you remember that event, there was a pillar of fire, which was a symbol of God's presence with His people and that pillar of fire led the people at night out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. What was their job with that pillar of fire? It was really complicated, right? When it left, you just follow it. The pillar of fire not only led the Israelites, but it also protected them from their enemies. Like the Egyptians when they tried to attack and kill all the Israelites, the pillar of fire went in front so that they were protected as they crossed the Red Sea from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

Second, the light reminded them of the Messiah, who in the words of Isaiah 9:2, "Would be a great light." In Isaiah 49:6, "He would be a light for the nations, and that salvation may reach to the end of the earth." So here they are singing and dancing. They're celebrating. They're worshiping God. They're worshiping Him for His provision and His protection in the past they are anticipating His provision and protection through the Messiah in the future.

It is into this religious and biblical context that Jesus said that He is the light of the world, and where exactly was He when He said these words? Take a look at 8:20. It says, "These words he spoke in the treasury as he taught in the Temple." Now, the Temple treasury, interestingly, was located in the Court of the Women. So Jesus proclaims Himself the light of the world standing in the Court of the Women, standing near or maybe standing under these four giant lamp stands. The text doesn't say it, but if it was evening, and the lamps were lit in this moment, and the light is filling the city, and he's like, I'm the light, not just of this city, I'm the light of the world. That would have been awesome. I don't know, but picturing that, I was like, that would be amazing.

Now from the light, celebrated the feast. Let's look next to point #2) The Light Clarified. The Light Clarified. There is a mountain of truth, like I said in verse 12. I kind of toyed with just summarizing it briefly and then moving on to preach the rest of the paragraph, but then I remembered that you love God's Word and you like to go deep a little bit. So, with you in mind, I have 10 explanations, 10 descriptions, 10 clarifications of what Jesus meant when He called Himself the light of the world. And I want you to notice right off the bat that Jesus doesn't say that He has the light, but what? He is the light. So with this, Jesus is saying, this is who I really am. This is the truth about me. He is revealing reality about Himself with this phrase, this imagery, the light of the world.

So first, being the light of the world means Jesus is the only light. Jesus is the only light. That word I in Greek is not necessary. It is added for emphasis. In fact, His words could be translated, "The light of the world am I," showing that He is putting stress on that first letter, that first word, I. In other words, the I here could mean, I and I only, I and I alone. I and no other am the light of the world. So Jesus is the only light, and second, Jesus is the divine light. The divine light. Those words, I am, I and I only am, reach all the way back to Exodus chapter 3, and God saying that His name is I am. The always existing one. The never having a beginning and never having an ending one. The eternal one.

Remember the lamp stands in the Temple that He is speaking from underneath in some sense, reminding people of the presence of God. By saying He is the light of the world in that moment, He is strongly implying here that He is their God, the one they are there worshiping in that moment. He is truly God. He is divine in every way that God is. We can see this in 1:1 of John, where it says, "The Word was God and the Word is Jesus."

"He is the only, the one-of-a-kind God," according to John 1:18. "When Jesus called God His Father, or Jesus called Himself the Son of God," we saw in the last message, John 5:18, "when He says that He is 'making himself equal with God.'" Beyond that, there's Titus 2:13, where He is called our great God and Savior, or Hebrews 1:8, where the Father Himself uses the word God to identify Jesus. That is why John writes this book, to prove the unbelievable truth that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, is in fact God.

So as the words, "I am the light of the world," rolled off of Jesus' lips, He's declaring Himself to be their God. Jesus is the divine light, and third, He is the true light. The true light. Notice He does not say that He is a light of the world, like He's merely just one of many lights that are out there. No, He is the light of the world. John 1:9, "Jesus is the true light." Which means that in a world full of so-called lights that claim to speak for God, that claim to have revelation from God, that claim to explain reality accurately, that claim to give truth, Jesus proclaims that He is the only, He is true light of the world.

Saving light therefore is not something that is natural to humanity. Saving truth is not found within us. It is found outside of us. It is not natural to humans, which means that the best of the greatest empires in history, Egyptian and Babylonian and Persian and Greek and Roman, all the way down to this day, whether it's in the past Chinese empires or Byzantine empires or Spanish or the UK, or even the American empire, the best that we could possibly have is to have the light. That these are marked by spiritual darkness when it comes to saving truth. The greatest men of all of those empires. The reason and philosophy and science and politics and authority and organization, all of that. It is darkness when it comes to spiritual truth. There is only one true light, and it is Christ.

Always remember, any subject in school, any person you meet, at best, they can merely have the light. Jesus is the light. He brings clarity into confusion. He brings certainty into doubt. When He speaks, it is true, because He is the light. When He speaks about God, it is true. When He speaks about human beings, it is true. When He speaks about creation, it is true. When He speaks about men and women in marriage, it is true. When He speaks about Himself, it is true. If He says it, it is true, because he is the true light.

Forth, Jesus is the saving light. He is the saving light. He is the light of the world in that He is the light for the world, for the benefit, for the blessing, for the salvation of the world. So light has different meanings based on context. It can mean physical light, but it can also have figurative meanings in the Bible as well. It can refer to God's holiness, for instance. Like 1 John 1:5, which says that "God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all."

Now, when used for Jesus in John, light means truth that saves. Because you think about, what does it mean for Him to be the light? Jesus is the truth that saves, which connects perfectly to Isaiah 49:6. Speaking about the Messiah, God says this. "I will make the Messiah a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." So there's a connection there between the Messiah being the light and salvation reaching to the end of the earth. Why? Because the Messiah is the truth that saves. So into the darkness of spiritual ignorance and idolatry, Jesus shines truth. Into the darkness of sin, Jesus shines salvation. Into the darkness of death, Jesus shines eternal life. He came to give us the truth about God. He came to save us from sin and death. We've seen this already in John. He's the water of life in chapters 4 and chapter 7. He's the bread of life in chapter 6, and now, in chapter 8, He is the light of life.

John 1:4, his quote, "His life was the light of men." In other words, in His life, the light of saving truth has come to us. He is the saving light, and fifth, He is the people's light. The people's light. Notice He is the light of the world. Like the word light, the word world has many definitions based on context too. So it can mean the planet, the ball floating in space. But in John, this word world has two main features. First, it refers to humanity in rebellion against God. That's why Jesus will say, John 15, "If the world hates you, just know that it hated me first." It is a description of humanity in rebellion against God. Second, the word world refers to Gentiles in contrast to Jews. So in the Bible there are kinds of people, and there are only two kinds of people, Jews and Gentiles, Jews and non-Jews.

You can hear this in Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49, where the Messiah is called, "A light to the nations." Not just a light to the nation of Israel, but a light to the nations. That He's not just the Messiah for the Jews, He's the Messiah for all kinds of people. Like Revelation 5 says, "Every tribe, every language, every ethnicity, every nation, He is the Savior, He is the light for them all."

So world in John does not mean every person without exception, every single person individually. The word world in John means every person without distinction. What does that mean? Well, Jew and Gentile, no distinction. He saves them all. Men and women, young and old, rich, and poor, ruler and the ruled, the healthy and the sick. Any kinds of people that you can come up with, He can save. He will save them all. He is the light for all of them. No group excluded. He's the light of salvation for all humanity. It's John 4:42, "He is indeed the Savior of the world."

Let's think about this so far. So far, we have seen Jesus claim to be God. He has claimed to be the only way of salvation, not just for the Jewish people, but for all humanity. Now, we hear that and we're like, "Yeah, of course." But listen, that is sheer arrogance, total arrogance, and insanity, unless what? It's true. Unless it's true, right? So He doesn't allow us to stay on the fence about Him. You notice that? Jesus says things that force us to respond.

Well, that's five down. Still with me? Yeah? Told you, a mountain of truth in this phrase, "I am the light of the world." You got room for five more? You're excited. All right, well, we're going to go anyway. Six, Jesus is the promised light. He's the promised light. As I said earlier, Jesus fulfilled prophecy, and part of the prophecy of the Messiah is that He will be the light. Light is actually one of the many titles in the Old Testament for the Messiah. We already saw that the Messiah would be a light who brings salvation to the end of the earth in Isaiah 49:6. I've quoted it three times now. But Isaiah 42:6 says God would make the Messiah "a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness." Those who are blind to truth, those who are prisoners to idolatry, to sin, to death, Jesus, the light, will set them free.

When Jesus was eight days old, He was presented at the Temple, and there was a man there named Simeon and as he was holding Jesus, he proclaimed, "My eyes have seen your salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel." Funny thing, in John 7:52, the religious leaders, you remember, they scold Nicodemus by saying, "Search and see that no prophet comes from Galilee." The very next thing that John writes is 8:12, where Jesus says, "I am the light of the world," which is a reference to Isaiah 9:1, where it says, "The Messiah will come from Galilee." Whoops. "No prophet comes from Galilee." Well, just the Messiah, that's all.

Isaiah 9:1 puts it this way. "In the latter time, He has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness, those Gentiles have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness on Him, on them has light shown." So now when Jesus calls Himself the light of the world, He's not only calling Himself God, He's not only saying He's the only way of salvation for all of humanity, He's also saying that He is the prophesied, long-awaited promised Messiah.

Seven, Jesus is the leading light. The leading light. Notice verse 12, "I am the light of the world, whoever follows me..." Stop there. Like being in the dark and following a light to get out, so Jesus, the light, is to be followed to get out of sin, to get out of death, to get out of hell. Like the Israelites, remember with the pillar of fire? What did they do? Just followed it. So we are to follow Christ. The word follow means the same thing as to believe. It's not a casual, occasional tip of the hat to Jesus when you think about Him. No, it means to trust in Him, to commit yourself to Him, to attach yourself to Him, to adopt His teachings as your standard, to adopt His life as your example. It means that He never follows you, because when you follow Him, He becomes your leader, your Lord, your God, your King, with you now as his subject, his servant, even his slave, no will of your own. Your will is now gone. Replaced. Replaced by His will for your life.

We come to Him for salvation, and the requirement is belief, or in the words of the text, "Follow me." So like a student to his teacher, like a traveler to his guide, a soldier to his general, a servant to his master, a sheep to its shepherd, Christians follow Christ. By the way, this is permanent. This is a lifelong commitment to Jesus, or you simply just prove that you were never really a follower if you suddenly stop following Him.

Jesus is the leading light. In eighth, he is the exposing light. The exposing light. It's the light of the world. Verse 12, those who follow him, quote, what? "Will not walk in darkness." In other words, Jesus will rescue His followers from darkness. As the light, He exposes the darkness to be what it is, to be truly darkness when it is compared to Him. So what is darkness here? What does He mean by this word? Well, it is a figure of speech, just like the word light. It is a figure of speech for spiritual ignorance of God, idolatry. It's a figure of speech for lies about God, for sin, and for spiritual death that sin brings. So darkness is conflict towards God. It's conflict in the way that we think. It's conflict in the things that we feel. It's conflict in the things that we want, and it is conflict in how we live. It is this rebellious world. It is our wretched flesh. It is the devil himself. It is everything that stands in opposition to God. That is what it means to be the darkness.

In John 1:5, "Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness." The darkness of sin, the darkness of air and idolatry, the darkness of all forms of rebellion, all of it, "has not overcome the light." You just think about light. Darkness cannot conquer the smallest little piece of light, and all of the collected darkness of this entire world cannot overcome the light that is Christ. Cannot ever overcome Him. Rebellion will no longer be what His people notice what they walk in. Their existence, the way they think, how they feel, what they want, what they do will begin to be dominated less and less by rebellion and more and more by light and truth and listen, just like in the world, far easier than stumbling around in the darkness, is walking in the light.

So Jesus is the exposing light, and ninth, He is the permanent light. The permanent light. This light won't ever go out. "Notice whoever follows me will have the light of life." He is permanent in at least two ways in this verse. First, He is the permanent possession of His followers. Notice we have Him and the idea of that word is that we cannot ever un-have Him. Or having Him means a lasting, lifelong commitment, relationship, transformation that happens. His leadership of our lives doesn't abandon us halfway, but He takes His followers all the way to the second thing that is permanent in this text, which is that He gives permanent life.

So we permanently have the light, which is Jesus, and notice with Him, we also have life. The word life here means eternal life. Life that belongs to God. Life that is alive permanently, just like God's life is alive permanently. All the so-called lights that people trust in, that people are hoping in, that people attach their lives to, all of those lights will blow out in the valley of the shadow of death. But Jesus, the light of the world, is a permanent light that cannot ever go out.

Which means finally number 10, Jesus is the separating light, just like light separates light from darkness. So Jesus separates people into those who follow Him and those who refuse. Those who suicidally continue to live and walk and exist in that darkness. To those who lived in the darkness of idolatry, Jesus offered the one true God. To those who lived in the darkness of human tradition, Jesus offered them truth. To those who lived in the darkness of sin, Jesus offered salvation. To those who lived in the darkness of death, Jesus offered eternal life, and yet sadly, tragically, most of the people there that day who heard these words with their own ears, they refuse. The greatest gift imaginable. Set free from sin's penalty, set free from eternal death, set free from slavery to sin and Satan, and they refuse.

These 10 clarifications about Jesus being the light of the world reveal the real Jesus. This is the real guy. This is the truth about who He really is. There are all kinds of Jesus' out there, all kinds of imposters. The real Jesus matches what we've seen in our text today. Which brings us all to point #3) The Light Communicated. The Light Communicated. Once Jesus communicated that He is the light of the world to the people who were there that day, it left each one of them with a decision, follow Him or flee from Him. In the same way that's true for us. After I've communicated the truth about Jesus, that he is the light of the world, all of you are left with the same decision, follow Him, or flee from Him.

To flee from Christ is to remain in the darkness of idolatry, worshiping false gods, false religions, false ideologies instead of Jesus, the one true light. To flee from Christ is to remain in the darkness of sin awaiting judgment, and a godless eternity where everything good and everything true and everything beautiful is gone forever. Where only guilt dominates your conscience and regret tears at your soul. Where you will long to be set free, long to be saved, but it will be too late. To flee from Christ, like most of the people did that day, is to remain in the darkness of the evil one, the devil, who holds people captive to do his will, who deceives people as the angel of light to convince them to follow his ways and demand his desires and promote his lies as the truth.

Listen, you can be set free from all of that. All of it. Just come to Christ. He says, verse 12, "Whoever." Isn't that a beautiful, wonderful, incredible word? Whoever. Doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter where you're from. Doesn't matter what language you speak. Doesn't matter who your people are. Doesn't matter what you have done. Doesn't matter what's been done to you. Even if you are a Satanist here right now, He says, "Whoever follows me will not ever walk in darkness but will permanently have eternal life."

In the words of John 3:19, "The light has come into the world" and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. Do not love the darkness to your own destruction. People lost in the dark will scramble and crawl and inch their way through intense pain just to go towards the light to be set free. The light actually invites people to be free from the darkness. Jesus says, "You can't free yourself. You can't inch your way. You are fatally trapped. But I will grab you. I will pull you out. I will save you because I am the light of the world." Jesus offers to set you free from all darkness, all of it. None of that darkness can possibly overpower Him. So end your rebellion and believe in Him. Become a follower of Jesus instead of yourself. A follower of Jesus instead of some so-called light, some organization, instead of the devil, and instead follow Him and He will set you free.

Listen, if you have been set free, if you are one of His followers, this same title, the light of the world, is also used for you. Matthew 5:14, Jesus speaking said, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. No, they light a lamp and put it on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house." Then He says, "In the same way as lighting a lamp and putting it on a stand, in the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

So we, too, are the light of the world, but we're lights like the moon is a light, right? So He's the only light. We're lights like the moon. Like the moon reflecting the sun, we reflect Jesus, who is the light of the world. But Jesus says the primary way that we do that is how we live our lives. As light, we are to live our lives in such a way that in our obedience, in our holiness, people see how wonderful God is. It's like recessed lighting. The goal of recessed lighting, when you see it, you know what you don't see? You don't see the light. All you see is what? What the light is shining on and that's the idea. That people see our lives and go, "Your God is amazing. That He's done that in your life, that He's changed your life, that you are this now. Tell me more about this God who changed your life."

That's the idea of this text. In the words of Matthew 5:16, "People give glory to God because of our good works." Now, easy to do that? No. We need God's strength to do that, obviously. The goal to strive for with God's grace? Yes, that's it. So at home, at work, at school, you are, we are, I am the light of the world. Let's show people how great our God is by not hiding our commitment in the closet, but coming out of the closet, "I'm a Christian," and then living in such a way that it makes it obvious that we belong to Jesus in the way we live our lives in truth and in love and in hard work and kindness and patience and purity and trustworthiness and goodness, and on and on and on.

Paul takes this idea and runs with it in Ephesians chapter 5, starting in verse 8, where he says, "At one time you were darkness." Anybody agree with that? "One time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord." That's what you are. "You are light in the Lord," and he continues, "walk as children of light, for the fruit of life coming out of our lives is found in all that is good and right and true and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness." So we're no longer darkness. That's the past. No longer existing in the darkness of idolatry and lies and sin and death. We are now light in the Lord. We're now children of light, people who are to be characterized by the light, that is, lives that are marked by what we just saw, what is good, what is right, what is true, and seeking to know and do what pleases the Lord. Again, our will, gone. Now all we want is His will. What does He want is what dominates our thoughts.

In that way we show we're children of light, and we also show we're children of light by not going back to our former sinful ways like a dog going back to snack on its vomit. In the words of Philippians 2:15, may we live like God's children "without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted," and I would add confused, "generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world." May that be true for us. That in the midst of this crazy, confused world full of lies and spin, that Christ's people shine, reflecting the fact that He is the light of the world.

You did not know that all that truth is going to be found in one verse, did you? I told you, mountain of truth in verse 12, and truly, we have only scratched the surface. I didn't talk about light in the Old Testament. I didn't talk about light in the coming kingdom. I didn't talk about darkness of depravity and how that works. I didn't talk about any of that. There's a lot that was left in the cutting room floor, but maybe you've heard this. I've heard it said that the Bible is so deep, so mind-stretching, that a fleet of Titanic's could sink in it and yet it is so shallow, so easy to understand, that an infant can play in it and that's because these words in your Bible are the words of an infinite mind. A mind with unending wisdom and knowledge that has been dumbed way down, way down, so that we can understand it. One theologian calls the Bible, God's baby talk. His goo goo gaga, so that we could just scratch the surface of His infinite mind.

Well, with that in mind, you only really know a fraction of what it means for Jesus to be the light of the world. But based on what you know, the issue is no longer what does it mean? The issue now is what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do with Him? As the team comes back up, let's pray.

Jesus, it is right for us to take a step back and to stand in awe of you. The truths that we have heard today put you on such a pedestal that you are far beyond us, and yet you became one of us to save us from our sins. That is a gift of grace that we will spend endless ages worshiping you for, and rightly so. Jesus, what we have seen today is not just awesome and awe-inspiring, it is also challenging. It challenges us at the very core of who we are, because at our core, it's either us as Lord, or you as Lord. So I pray that you will do the work in our souls that all of us need, because you are the light of the world. We pray these things in your wonderful name. Amen.