Note 1: This sermon can be used as a companion sermon to "Knowing God," which is also posted on Sermon Central. They are not redundant, and may be used separately or presented on consecutive occasions.
Note 2: I have developed some simple PowerPoint slides that I used in presenting this sermon. If anyone is interested in them send your request to me at sam@srmccormick.net with the subject "Knowing God slides" and I will send the PowerPoint file along with the sermon notes in MS Word with prompts I used to remind to advance slides or activate animations.
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KNOWING CHRIST
2 Cor 5:16 Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him in this way no longer.
I believe the deepest, most penetrating revelation of the identity of Jesus and his relationship with his Father are in the account given by the apostle John. For example,
• 1:1 John’s gospel account begins by saying, “In the beginning was the word.” Reading on, we learn that the “word” was Christ.
• 4:26 Speaking with a woman of Samaria about the Messiah, he said “I that speak to you am he.” While we might wonder at his revealing it to a Samaritan woman, it is the key truth that all men and women everywhere are called upon to believe.
• 10:11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
• 10:30 I and the Father are one.
• 14:6 I am the way, the truth, and the life (In chapters 14-17 we see directly and deeply into Jesus’ heart)
• 15:1 I am the true vine. V6 “anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up.”
• 18:57 (to Pilate) You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born…
In John’s account, he calls God his Father over 100 times.
Over half the book is given to the last days of Jesus.
A current of thought runs through the gospel – faith is necessary to recognizing Christ’s identity as truth, and that truth, when it is known, frees the believer from the most oppressive tyrant, sin.
John’s purpose in writing this account of Jesus’ life and work was to acquaint the reader with Jesus’ true identity – not just a baby, a boy, or a man but as the Christ, and to produce belief in him as the Son sent by God.
There is a difference between knowing about Christ, and knowing Christ.
John 20:31 These have been written, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.
To believe in Christ we must know him:
2 Tim 1:12 …I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.
To know Christ, we must be acquainted with and seriously consider his claims about himself.
Jesus’ claims in John 8:
Although Jesus’ claims are scattered throughout John’s book and the other accounts, there is one concentrated collection in the 8th chapter. Whereas Jesus had discouraged any bold advertising of himself by people he healed in the early part of his ministry, now he confronts the scribes and Pharisees in a very public way with one jaw-dropping declaration after another—things the listeners considered arrogant and blasphemous.
These things were said in the treasury of the temple, which according to the Mishnah, was an area in the Court of Women, where 13 containers were located to receive offerings donated for various purposes. I want to look at some of them, although time will not allow us to examine them all.
John 8:12 I am the light of the world.
John 8:14 You do not know where I came from, or where I am going.
John 8:15 I am judging no one
John 8:16 My judgment is true, for I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who sent me.
John 8:23 You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not (check wording)
John 8:24 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.
John 8:26 The things I heard from him [God], these I speak to the world.
John 8:28 When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he.
John 8:29 I always do the things that are pleasing to him [God].
John 8:34 Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.
John 8:36 If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
John 8:42 If God were your father, you would love me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God.
John 8:44 You are of your father, the devil.
John 8:54 It is my Father who glorifies me.
John 8:55 You have not come to know him, but I know him.
The ones we examine today:
A. John 7:53 – 8:11 (read the passage)
“Let him that is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her…and…neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
The story of the woman caught in the act of adultery (7:53-8:11) is missing from the oldest manuscripts of John’s gospel, those considered most reliable, leading many to believe that it was not in the text as originally written, and therefore not scripture. I prefer to think it is scripture because it fits into the stream of thought in these chapters. It might have been in still earlier manuscripts and the original, but deleted by copyists who believed the story contradicted law keeping, consequences for actions, and virtue.
What did the law require?
Lev 20:10 'If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
But the scribes and Pharisees did not come to Jesus to learn the Law’s requirement so they could act upon his instruction. They came to set a trap. Jesus was thought to be “soft” on sin and sinners.
In Jesus’ response, did he countermand the requirements of the law, or set a new standard for applying the law (in that those must be sinless who apply its strict demands and inflict the specified punishment)?
What would you have said to the scribes and Pharisees? If we would have said the stiff penalty for adultery ought to be imposed because that’s the law, have we known Jesus? Can we know him better through this story, and therefore can we know better how he would want us to act toward a person caught in sin?
Jesus did not come to be a magistrate and adjudicate cases. he refused to become involved in a dispute between brothers over their inheritance. Who was right? It wasn’t Jesus’ mission to solve.
He was not a member of the Sanhedrin, or someone recognized as having official capacity under the Jewish society of the time to exact judgment on anyone.
John 3:17 …God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
Notice carefully that Jesus did not say, “Do not impose the law’s requirements.” He merely suggested who should be the first to throw a stone. Being convicted in their own minds by their own sins, they went away rather than claiming to be without sin. They were not sent away by Jesus, but by their own shame.
The world is not saved by sorting our civil and criminal matters and imposing penalties prescribed by law.
The world is saved by grace. Grace, not condemnation, is what Jesus brought.
If we think he came to condemn, we deny his very own words and we do not know Christ.
John 1:16-17 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
B. 8:21 I go away and you will seek me, and will die in your sin. (Repeated in v24)
Seekers die? Really? Genuine seekers who want to know Jesus will die with their sins unforgiven? Why?
Jer 29:13 “You shall seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart…Where I am going you cannot come.”
The cornerstone of the Jewish system of belief was that the Messiah was coming. They sought the deliverer and expected him to appear at the Passover and free them from Roman rule. They had a passion for that dream, but while they sought such a Messiah, Jesus the Messiah standing before them, said they would die in their sins.
They rejected the real Messiah while they sought a false one. It was because of this that he said, “you will die in your sins,” and “Where I go you cannot come.”
But to his disciples it was a different story. In his final evening with his disciples he said to them:
John 14:2-3 "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also.
Segue…the disciples had a different standing than the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus’ accusers.
C. John 8:31-32 "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."
What is the truth that frees?
Do we know the truth that frees?
What often is presented as bedrock truth is nothing but a point of view.
“In Search of Certainty” by Josh McDowell and Thomas Williams explores the widely accepted notion that something becomes “my truth,” simply because I believe it…so to me it is truth. (Part of postmodern thought.)
Truth is not derived from being believed.
Believing a thing does not make it true, just as disbelieving a truth does not make it false.
The truth stands as truth whether anyone believes it or not.
The freeing truth is Jesus’ identity and the gospel that flows out of his life’s work, his death, and his glorious resurrection from the dead.
That truth is:
that Jesus is the Son of God,
everything he said and did,
that he is logos, the word,
and that in his death the price was paid for sin and the debt cancelled for all who come to him in obedient faith, and that his resurrection shows the promise of eternal life for all who are in him.
The gospel of Christ is the power of God for salvation, and that is what makes you free.
No one is truly free except he for whom the power of sin is destroyed. The bondage of sin is more grievous than Roman rule was to the first Christians.
Freedom from sin’s guilt, influence, and final consequence is the greatest liberty, for only in that freedom is life.
John 14:6 - I am the way, the truth, and the life.
I am the truth! Pilate wondered “what is truth?” The truth stood before him at that moment!
John 8:36 If the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
Faith is the Christian’s response to truth – not the opposite, that truth is the response to faith.
D. John 8:58 Before Abraham was, I am.
Jesus had said, “If anyone keeps my word he will never see death.” John 8:51-52
The Pharisees pointed out that even Abraham, the most revered figure in their history, had died. How dare Jesus be so bold as to say that whoever kept his word would not die?
To their outrage, Jesus showed himself to be greater than Abraham.
That Jesus’ declarations were true made them no less astounding and alarming to the people who heard them. On their face, it was easy for a doubter to consider them patently untrue.
Upon hearing these claims, the Pharisees picked up stones to throw at him. But he went away unharmed.
I cannot help but wonder if the woman who had been caught in adultery stayed near and listened to Jesus’ words. I wonder if she came to know Christ as the truth that frees.
Jesus’ claims were true, and no amount of rejection by the Pharisees (or anyone) could make them untrue. They might as well have tried to rearrange the constellations in the night sky, than make the truth about Christ something other than it is.
(Phil 3:8-11)
If one begins with the idea that Jesus is not the Christ, he may try for a lifetime to understand who Jesus is, and never know Christ! He cannot be known except as the Messiah.
Php 3:8-11 …I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Although almost 2,000 years have passed since Jesus ascended to heaven, he still receives on earth but little of the honor he deserves. If the claims he made were true, it might be thought that he would be the theme of universal praise, yet on earth there are more who reject him than those who receive him as Lord, and more who profess him than those who follow him. Many who call themselves by the name “Christian” pay little attention and have little regard, and lack the interest to probe the statements he made concerning his identity, his work, and his relationship with his Father in heaven. Not that we can fully understand that relationship– but since God’s own words were spoken by Jesus, they are precious and ought not be set aside casually as not worth pursuing for understanding.
Knowing Christ helps us to be like him. We could go astray as easily as the Pharisees, who thought they knew what Jesus ought to be like, but didn’t recognize him as he really was.
It is Jesus, the truth, we are to seek to emulate with our actions, conversation, and relationship with the Father. Do we?
