Resume of a Savior – Pt. 2

if God’s people would take their
Bibles, turn to the Gospel of John, and to chapter 8. John, chapter 8. In a very real
sense, we pick up midstream in this dynamic section of Scripture. Jesus has begun teaching there
at the Festival of Booths, and it is a tense situation that
will only get more so as things unfold. For the sake of time,
I’m just going to delve right into the reading of this incredible
section. Beginning in verse 12, if God’s
people would follow along. Then Jesus again spoke to them,
saying, I am the light of the world. He who follows me will
not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.
So the Pharisees said to him, you are testifying about yourself. Your testimony is not true. Jesus answered and said to them,
even if I testify about myself, My testimony is true, for I know
where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where
I came from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh.
I am not judging anyone, but even if I do judge, my judgment
is true, for I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who
sent me. Even in your law it has been
written that the testimony of two men is true, I am He who
testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies
about Me. So they were saying to Him, Where
is Your Father? Jesus answered, You know neither
Me nor My Father. If you knew Me, you would know
My Father also. These words He spoke in the treasury
as He taught in the temple, and no one seized Him. because his
hour had not yet come. Then he said again to them, I
go away and you will seek me and you will die in your sin.
Where I am going, you cannot come. So the Jews were saying,
surely he will not kill himself, will he? Since he says, where
I am going, you cannot come. He was saying to them, You are
from below, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not
of this world. Therefore I said to you that
you will die in your sins. For unless you believe that I
am He, you will die in your sins. So they were saying to Him, who
are you? Jesus said to them, What have
I been saying to you from the beginning? I have many things
to speak and to judge concerning you, but He who sent me is true,
and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the
world.” They did not realize that He had been speaking to
them about the Father. So Jesus said, When you lift
up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, And I do nothing
on my own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught
me. And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone,
for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” As he spoke
these things, many came to believe in him. So Jesus was saying to
those Jews who had believed him, if you continue in my word, then
you are truly disciples of mine. And you will know the truth,
and the truth will make you free. Jesus Christ stood teaching in
the temple. And as we began to look at this
lengthy section last week, which carries all the way down to verse
59, I suggested to you that there are two major sections. We just read the first section,
where Jesus is, as it were, on the offense. Jesus Christ is
giving out His qualifications, if you will, His resume, point
by point, laying out why they should listen to Him, why He
is qualified as the Savior, But there’s a second section, and
we’ll take that up beginning next Lord’s Day, Lord willing,
where the conversation literally is hijacked. This is already
a tense situation. Even in this first section, he’s
interrupted. Did you understand that? The
Lord Jesus Christ, the creator of heaven and earth, is interrupted
on four separate occasions. But, At the end of verse 33,
chaos ensues, and now the Jews literally take over the conversation,
and they begin questioning Christ, posing to Him the questions,
making Him answer. But in the meantime, Jesus Christ
is laying out His qualifications, His resume, His declarations,
if you will, for His calling We looked at several last Lord’s
Day. First of all, we saw that Jesus
Christ is the light of the world. Verse 12 details to us that Jesus
said, I am the light of the world. He is God’s provision of not
just illumination, but salvation by that illumination for the
world. He who follows me will not walk
in the darkness but will have the light of life. It will emanate
from him. He too, the individual saved,
will become a light in a dark world. But there was a second
declaration of the Savior. The second bullet point, if you
will, on the resume of this Savior, Jesus Christ is not only the
light of the world, Jesus Christ is backed, fully supported by
the Heavenly Father. We saw that in verse 14. Jesus answered and said, even
if I testify about myself, this whole line of reasoning is familiar
to us. This is what Jesus has been saying
from the beginning. He literally cannot do anything,
think anything, have a plan other than what the Father has, because
immediately to do so would be to divide and destroy the Godhead. Jesus says, that He is fully
backed. Everything that He says is backed
and supported fully by the Heavenly Father. Well, Jesus isn’t finished. But even at this juncture, they
are already prepared to seize Him, take Him by force, even
kill Him. But He’s in God’s hands. God
is behind him. God sent him. God is fully supportive
of him. He and his Heavenly Father are
in complete concert together in the prosecution of this ministry,
a ministry of reconciliation, a ministry of redeeming sinners
to a holy God. And because of that, verse 20
says, these words he spoke in the treasury and he as he taught
in the temple, and no one seized him because his hour had not
yet come. His hour is coming. There will
be an hour where God relinquishes Christ to the hands of evil men
who will falsely accuse him and ultimately kill him, but that
hour has not yet come. And so Jesus takes occasion To
give a third point, in his qualifications as Savior, look if you would
at verse 21, where Jesus Christ pleads with deadened sinners. You might say, that’s hardly
the qualification of a Savior, but watch the merciful heart
of the Savior at work, beginning in verse 21. Then he said again
to them, I go away and you will seek me and will die in your
sin. Where I am going, you cannot
come. Jesus takes up the opportunity
again to address them. He will not be dissuaded in proclaiming
who he is, in enlightening them or attempting to do so, attempting
to articulate to them who he is and his qualifications as
savior. We can probably surmise that
there is at least some degree of a break here, then again. But whether it was just a few
minutes, maybe it was an hour or several weeks, we really don’t
have a way of determining that. This is an ongoing dialogue. This is a very dynamic series of declarations that Christ
makes. Whether it was even the same
day, we don’t know. I came across a fascinating discovery
this week. Between chapter 7, verse 37,
when it’s clearly articulated there that Jesus is at the feast
of the temples, and chapter 10, verse 22, where there it’s recorded
that He is at the feast of dedication, the interval there on the Jewish
calendar is roughly two months. And so throughout this, all the
way to chapter 10, verse 22, we don’t really have a mooring
as to exactly what day and time, time of the year that these things
took place. But Jesus takes up this opportunity
and begins to articulate his third point and his outline.
And he just tells them, I am going. He embraces his death. He embraces the fact that he
is going to return to his heavenly father, that that is going to
be done through his death. He’s departing. He’s prepared
to depart. His mission is drawing to a close,
and He knows it. He doesn’t fight it. He doesn’t
try to manipulate or steer His way around it. I am going, and
you will seek Me. This is prophetic. He knows their
hearts. He knows everything about them. He knows those in the crowd that
will be saved, and He knows those that will utterly perish. and He’s speaking to them, that
they would seek Him and the search is going to be one of despair,
the search is going to be one of vanity. They’re going to look
for Him eagerly, perhaps even longingly. Jesus had said this
to them once before in chapter 7 verse 34, you will seek me
and will not find me and where I am you cannot come. And on
that particular occasion, they mockingly suggested that maybe
he was going to go out and park himself among the heathens where
they would not dare go. Jesus doesn’t indicate exactly
why they will be seeking him. whether it would be this continued
dogged pursuit of His steps. But I think what He points to
here quite clearly is the fact that they will be seeking Him
for salvation. They will suddenly come to the
realization that maybe this was the Savior and their seeking
will be in vain. There is a point in time where
God’s mercy ceases. And He says to them, you will
die in your sin. We don’t address sin anymore,
especially in our attempts to share the gospel. We shy away
from that, we back away. Not Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ
looks them in the eye and tells them, he tells them how severe
their condition is. We have a tendency to want to
gloss over that, don’t we? We have a tendency to want to
give a good report all the time. But if sin is as deadly as God’s
Word makes it out to be, if it really will take people down
to hell, then why are we so reticent to tell people about the nature
of their activity? That it’s sinful in God’s eyes.
And Jesus Christ doesn’t hold back. He says, you will die in
your sin. And when he talks about sin in
the singular there, he’s talking about the state or condition
of sin. It’s an Old Testament phrase
and it points to that horrible, horrific condition that as people
were born into. I just tested my eighth graders
on the four effects of the fall. inherently sinful. We are born
with the sin nature, temporally vexed. As long as we’re here
on earth, we are going to be under the curse of sin, physically
dying. And as bad as all three of those
sound, inherently sinful, temporally vexed, physically dying, the
worst is yet to come, spiritually dead. Sin takes its toll. Sin has an effect. And sin will
take us down to hell. Jesus says, you will die in your
sin. Where I am going you cannot come.
J.C. Ryle here in this section said
his hearers would one day seek Him too late. Having discovered
too late that He was the Messiah whom they ought to have received,
the door of mercy would be shut. They would seek in vain because
they had not known the day of their visitation. Jesus Christ
with all mercy pleads with them that the course that they’re
on, this mocking, sneering, insolent treatment of the Savior will
not go on forever. Well, even in the face of that,
they mockingly express their skepticism of Jesus’ plans. And
this one, if possible, is worse than the last. The last time
they suggested that maybe he was going to go out and mix it
up with the Greeks, hang out with the heathen. Look at verse 22. So the Jews
were saying, surely he will not kill himself, will he? Just the
mere suggestion of that is blasphemous. It has been said that Suicide
is the ultimate act of pride. And what they’re suggesting to
Christ, they’re suggesting that what he’s considering is that
he would exercise the ultimate act of pride and commit suicide,
take the matter out of God’s sovereign hand and kill himself? Surely he will not kill himself,
will he? Since he says, where I am going,
you cannot come. And you can almost imagine them
standing around, elbowing each other in the side, snickering
at this very amusing suggestion to them. It’s a very different
reply to this repeated statement of Jesus. Last time they wondered
if he was going to head out to the Greeks. Now they go so far
as to mock this statement suggesting that he is considering suicide. Watch Jesus’ merciful reaction. He was saying to them, you are
from below. Now Jesus begins to really draw them in. He has already articulated what
their sin will do to them. Now he zeroes in. And He says
to them, you are from below, you are earthly. I am from above. He begins to create a contrast,
separate out between the two, in these two different contrasts. You are from below, I am from
above. You are of this world, I am not of this world. He says, there is really nothing. that we have in common. There’s no harmony. There’s not
a real degree of fellowship between you and I. Your minds are entirely
caught up in this earthly perspective that you have and you think that’s
all there is. Jesus Christ had already addressed
this, that they judge according to all, all they judge is what
they see. An earthly perspective. Jesus
Christ, on the other hand, came from heaven. His heart is in
heaven. His mindset is oriented in God’s
very throne room. No wonder He says that they are
as different as night and day. Verse 24, He says, Therefore
I said to you that you will die in your sins. And here is the
message of hope. For unless you believe that I
am He, you will die in your sins. He addressed their sins. He talks
about their nature. And now He mercifully pleads
with them, laying before them the severity of the case. That
unless they believe in Him, they are infinitely different
from the Lord Jesus. Jesus Christ is from above. He’s
from heaven. They couldn’t be any more different
than Him. And the only way to remedy their
wretched condition is faith. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And Jesus Christ proclaims it with the utmost emphasis. You
get the sense here that He’s literally pleading with them
to snap out of their foolish and shameful sleep of death. Faith is one of the recurring
themes in this great gospel. We’ve seen it many times already.
John 1.12, as many as received and to them he gave the right
to become children of God even to those who believe in his name.
John 15, at the culmination of his interaction with Nicodemus,
God so loved the world. that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him, Jesus Christ, is offering
them the hope, the hope of faith, the hope of faith in Christ. But I want you to look at one
little feature of this particular section. Jesus says to them,
therefore I say to you that you will die in your sin for unless
you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins. Modern
translators have seemingly offered us some help there in providing
a pronoun. Literally it says, unless you
believe that I am. And what Jesus does there immediately
is declare to them His divine nature. Declare to them that
He is God incarnate. In other words, He says, I am
the divine deliverer. I am the Messiah. This takes
us back, doesn’t it, to the book of Exodus. When God said to Moses,
I am who I am. Deuteronomy. See now that I,
I am He. Statements of God. The Jews knew
this. This was an assertion of deity.
This was a claim to be God incarnate. And he says that unless you believe
that I am. We have a curious phenomena that
occurs in Christianity from time to time. We want to dumb it down
to where it’s just faith. I don’t know what it is. Faith
in whatever. It’s just faith. I have faith. But as one commentator said,
this gives certain intellectual content to faith. That we have
to believe not just that Jesus existed, but that he is God. I am. He goes on and says, basic
faith is a trust, that in our reaction against this view that
faith means no more than a firm acceptance of certain intellectual
propositions, we must not go so far as to say that it is entirely
a matter of personal relations. It is impossible to have the
kind of faith that the Apostle John promotes without having
a certain high view of Christ. Did you get what he’s saying?
You can’t have faith in faith. You can’t just generally believe
that Jesus existed. What Jesus Christ himself calls
us to is to embrace that he was God incarnate, that he was the
Messiah, that he was. the great I Am. Jesus Christ
is revealed in scripture as co-equal with God the Father. He is spoken
of as pre-existing from all eternity. He is, in essence, God. The titles that are given to
Him, the worship that is given to Him, the miracles performed
by Him, the attributes He possesses, all testify of His divine nature. And because Jesus is co-eternal
with the Father and the Spirit, He was present and active in
the creation itself. He is the co-creator of all eternity,
and Jesus Christ declares that to them, plainly. Turn, if you would, to verse
25. This leads to, I mean if there
was ever a time to just sit back and ponder the resume being laid
out before you. That Jesus Christ proclaims himself
to be the light of the world. He claims the Heavenly Father’s
full support. He claims here that he is very
God. If there was ever a time to ponder
and wait and meditate, but not these. They begin this process
of inquiry. Look at verse 25. So they were
saying to him, who are you? And I think because we’re so
polite, we have a tendency to read that question just like
that. Jesus, who are you? Can you give us your family tree?
We’d like to get to know you a little better. Can you tell
us a little something about yourself? The Jews are absolutely befuddled
at this statement. They’re incensed at this statement. And the question that they ask
is one of really trying to get to the bottom of the sense that
they have that Jesus has just committed blasphemy. How dare
you make this grandiose claim? And this claim, as outrageous
as it is, needs to be investigated. And so they literally erupt.
And I would take the course of this somewhat like this, therefore
I say to you that you will die in your sins, for unless you
believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. So they were
saying to him, who are you? Who are you to come before us
and say these things? One characterized this question
as scornfully emphatic. How dare you stand before us
and claim to be the I Am. You know what they wanted? In
a sense, they wanted what the translators have provided here
in some cases. What they wanted him to do is
complete this seemingly obtuse, incomplete statement, this I
Am. They wanted him to finish this
I Am. I am a prophet. I am a servant
of God. They wanted him to finish it
but to stand before them and claim to be the I am was to them
utterly blasphemous. And it is absolutely amazing
that the Jews here standing before him, these detractors, don’t
even take time long enough to examine his statements. He had just declared to them
that he was from above, that he was from heaven itself. That
the heavenly father was fully in concert with who he was in
his ministry of reconciliation. And even if they were a little
fuzzy on these words, I am, they had to have known. They had to
have known that the statements that Jesus Christ was making
had never been made by anyone. Something to be pondered. And
Jesus said, what have I been saying to you from the beginning?
This isn’t anything new. And in a sense, this is a severe
rebuke on Jesus’ part. Mark 9.19 has a similar exchange. He answered them and said, oh,
unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long
shall I put up with you? Perhaps Jesus was even wondering,
what is even the point of this conversation anymore? What have
I been saying to you from the beginning? I have many things
to speak and judge concerning you. He who sent me is true,
and the things which I have heard from him, these I speak to the
world. Jesus Christ is telling them
once again, he and the Father He and the Father are on exactly
the same page and He has come to literally speak into the world. And as amazing as it is, look
at verse 27. They didn’t realize that He had
been speaking to them about the Father. That is absolutely amazing. This is willful blindness. Absolutely
amazing statement. This comment, verse 27 is one
of John’s many comments as he courses through this gospel. They asked him this simple question,
who are you? And it points to their misunderstanding,
their utter ignorance in the nature of Christ. The sad thing is we face this
every day in the world. where we take and proclaim the
gospel. Paul faced it. Jesus Christ is
facing it here head on. He was the first and foremost.
You and I as we take the gospel and it should be a heart of pity. This is what Paul said as he
took the gospel and as he laid out the gospel and as repeatedly
that gospel was shrugged off Like so much trivia, Paul in
2 Corinthians 4 said, even if our gospel is veiled. It’s not
if, it’s a matter of time. You wouldn’t have to share it
with too many people before you would see what don’t they understand. Even if our gospel is veiled,
it is veiled to those who are perishing. Jesus Christ is talking
to those, pleading with those who are already Perishing. Even if our gospel is veiled,
it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the
God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving
so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory
of Christ, who is the image of God. Their salvation is not your job. Your job is to proclaim Christ.
but know full well that as you go to proclaim Christ, you are
going to come across those who are so utterly be clouded by
the devil himself, they cannot possibly, they cannot possibly
grasp what you share with them. They cannot possibly grasp the
subject of the gospel. And I fear, I always fear that
there are some in our own, our very midst this morning who are
so clouded Even though we preach and talk and proclaim year after
year, time after time that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh and
that he bids us to come in faith to a finished work that he accomplished,
even still I wonder, I wonder how blind, how utterly
blind some are. I intended to get to point four.
And for the sake of being able to spend some good quality time
at the Lord’s table, I’ll introduce you to point four, let you know
what direction we’re heading, and then we’ll close. Jesus Christ
is giving us His resume, laying it out. He’s told us that He’s
the light of the world, fully supported and backed by the Heavenly
Father, pleading with dead and sinners. Go do that. Go plead with dead and sinners. Go plead with those who are out
there. You don’t know who they are,
that God and His mercy might unlock those truths, might bring
them to life, might draw them to Himself. You don’t know. But
it will never be done without the Gospel. It will never be
done without sharing God’s Word. The fourth gives us hope for
next Lord’s Day. Not only is Jesus the light of
the world, pleading with deadened sinners. Verse 28 begins to tell
us that Jesus Christ fulfills God’s plan of redemption. And
he talks about the Son of Man being lifted up. Lifted up on
the cross. As we draw near to the Lord’s
table, let’s take great confidence in
that. Jesus said, when you lift up
the Son of Man, then you will know. And he was talking to the
Jews, telling them that one day they were going to crucify him.
He knows it, he knows it already. And that when they do, in that moment, that solemn moment,
perhaps as the nails were being driven, perhaps as the cross
was being hoisted and dropped into the hole, perhaps as the
clouds overshadowed the earth, perhaps
as the veil was rent in two, perhaps as Jesus Christ was laid
in the tomb, perhaps as he was resurrected, perhaps even as
he was ascended into heaven, there were some that knew. There
were some that knew in horror what they had done and could
not, because of their pride, bring themselves to repent. There
were some that came to know and mercifully fell on their knees
and pleaded with God for mercy. There were some. Jesus Christ says, when you lift
up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, that I do
nothing on my own initiative, Jesus Christ will fulfill God’s
plan of redemption. Let’s humble ourselves before
the cross. Our Lord God, we thank you and
we praise you for the richness of this section, for just the
clarity with which Jesus proclaimed his nature, Father, we thank you for this
merciful Savior that even stood toe-to-toe with dead sinners,
careful to tell them about their sin, careful to tell them about
the effects of sin, careful to tell them that without repentance,
without faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, they would face an eternity
without Christ because of their sin. Lord God, as we come to
the Lord’s table, we come not in pride, because after all,
we believe, while so many do not. We know that we, too, were blinded. We know that we, too, were dead
in our trespasses and sins, that purely by your mercy, you came
You opened our eyes. You brought us to life. And as
we saw our sin for what it was and saw our Savior for the first
time, we could not but place our faith in Him for forgiveness,
for salvation forever. Lord God, we thank You as we
draw near to this table. And we do so with a heart of
joy. We thank you for our salvation. And for any in our midst who
do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, to hedge, to wait, to put off,
is to begin to embrace a Christless eternity. Draw them to faith,
we pray. It’s in Jesus’ name that we ask.
Amen.