There's a quote I like. I want to share with you this quote, first of all. I think it's a significant one.
It says, “People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success, only to find once they reach the top that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.” I've heard that long ago, maybe even as a young person I heard it, but it rings in my life on a regular basis. Because I say to myself, “I want to be careful.” You know, obviously the wall I want my ladder leaning against is Jesus Christ being God and I trust Him in my life. That's what I want in my life. But there are tendencies I think that we have or I have that try to put my identity or confidence in other things and I want to be careful about that.
I think that's the problem the Pharisees have today in our passage in John 8:39-59. So you can open your Bible there to John 8:39-59 today. We're going to look at the Pharisees and we’re going to see the problem they have. Because I believe the problem they have is that their ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. It's a warning to me in my own life. Because I think many of those Pharisees started off well. They love God, they're sensitive to God, they want to serve God. But then somehow they moved in their hearts to something different than the confidence and identity in God Himself and more into some other things, as we'll see in the passage today. I don't want to do that. I don't want to fall into the temptation of relying on other things, other kind of confidences in my life.
I think sometimes today people’s confidence is in their job or in their career. Well yes, there are Christians, but Christianity is kind of that thing they tag on. When really if you ask them, “Who are you? What do you put your confidence in?” and some people put their confidence in their health, or their bank account, or the fact that they have a house, or they live in America. I mean whatever it is, there's a sense of identity and confidence that we all have and we want it to be in God, in Jesus as God in our lives.
That's going to be the message we're going to take away today. Because the Pharisees don't have that. And Jesus is going to be pretty bold with them. He's going to speak very strongly to them in their lives. You're going to see some really hard words here Jesus is going to say. I just pray, “God, please, you don't have to yell at me. Just whisper in my heart.” I want to listen to the whispers of God and not have to wait for the yelling or the intensity that sometimes God can have. I know He can have that. And I really want the whispers. “Lord, just guide me a little bit. I want to stay on track. I want to be like the car, you know. If I'm starting to weave out on the line, I want to be able to make the gentle turn. I don't have to make a major turn. Oh, that's what I need.” And the Pharisees are off base today.
So as we start in John 8:39-59, why don't you stand with me and let's read these first verses together. We're in the middle of a dialogue. They (the religious leaders) answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.”
If we look at these verses and these words, what we see is that these people are relying on what?
What is the confidence that these Jews have? They make it the first statement that they're saying.
“Abraham is our father.” They're going to put their confidence in Abraham. They're going to do their heritage. And Jesus is going to say, “Wait a minute. You're misplacing your confidence. There's something much bigger here that you need in your lives.” He's going to say to them that “I am the one you need to put your confidence. I am from the Father.” That's what He's going to say. And there's this distinction made between them.
Now they make this statement that they say – “We were not born of sexual immorality.” That's a derogatory statement about Jesus Himself. They're saying, well, your father, Joseph, doesn't own you. And so they're making this statement about sexual immorality, not realizing that Jesus is God Himself. So Jesus is trying to communicate that very important message to them.
Notice they believe that they're really trusting in God. They say – “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” They believe that they're trusting in God, but they're really not. What they're really trusting in is their Jewish heritage, their self-righteousness. They're believing that they have something here that's really important, and they're missing the key ingredient. Jesus is trying to boldly speak into their lives. We just got to ask the question, what are we putting our confidence in?
So now let's go to this slide of my own. I know you can't read the words. But you can see the colors and the circles. This is my notes as I was preparing the sermon. All of the red is the word Abraham circled nine times in the passage. And all the blue is Jesus saying, “I am God,” or “here's who I am,” or that “I'm from the Father,” or something like that. Because there's contrast being made. I think this contrast is what we're going to want to evaluate in our own lives. We're going to want to ask ourselves, what is our confidence in? Is it in this thing in the red? Or is it this thing over here in Jesus Christ being God? I think that's really what we're wrestling with. I marked verse 47. That's where the little stars are toward the bottom. We'll look at that first. And then the grand finale is in that big circled part. We'll come to that as well as we're going forward.
But just stop for a moment and think in your own life. What would you put in the red part if it wasn't God Himself? What are you tempted to put your confidence and identity? Those are the two words I wrote at the top. I know you can't read them, but that's what they say. Confidence and identity. Because that's what I'm seeing in the passage as I'm listening. These guys had their confidence and identity in the fact that they were Jews, they were from Abraham himself. And Jesus is challenging that. I go, “Oh, man. I want to be careful in my life.” What am I putting my trust in? What am I relying upon that might be getting me into trouble?
Let's go on in the passage and see what He says. In fact, this is what He’s going to say is the problem. This is how you do the self-correcting with the spiritual driving steering wheel. He says
– “Why do you not understand what I say? Why don’t you get it? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.” So God's word becomes this correcting vehicle in our lives when we start to get off track. When we start to rely on something else besides God Himself. You cannot bear to hear my word, He's saying to them.
And then He starts making some very strong statements. He says – You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth.” The word truth is used several times in this passage because truth is going to be this key ingredient that we all want in our lives. What is truth? He 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. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?” He makes a logical statement. If I tell the truth, why don’t you believe me?
Young people, let me talk to you for just a moment. Because this question of truth is going to be a very important one for you. As you go to school or you go to college, or you're in high school, wherever you are right now, middle school, you will be faced with what the world calls truth. And you're going to have to do some evaluation of that truth. Because the world, if they were going to put something in the red circles, you know what they would put? They typically put science there. Science and studies that have been done. So when you hear something about science and you hear something about studies, you need to raise some questions. Now science is great. Studies are really good if you ask the right questions. But the science has to be interpreted. And people who come with presuppositions to science end up in different places than you and I were. So they’ll look at the data and they'll interpret it differently. So if you rely on science as your authority and you put your confidence and your identity in science, you end up with a problem.
I enjoyed taking philosophy courses when I was in secular university. I would take my faith into my classes and get blown away by these people who didn't believe the things I believe. One class I had in particular was this class…I don't even remember the name of this philosophy class, but the whole class for the whole period of time was about what is truth. What is truth? I thought, well, this is going to be a short class. I'm just going to tell them the truth is the Bible. So I went in the first day of class. Okay, this was a class symposium. We're all sitting around talking to each other about what is truth. And I said, “Well, look, the truth is in the Bible, and if we study the Bible, we have truth.” Someone else in the class says, “Well, that might be true for you, but it's not true for me.” I'm saying to myself, I'm not sure what to say about that.
So I had mentors to go to when I was in college. I went to Dr. Fred Clark, one of my friends. I would explain to him what was going on in this class. And he would tell me, here you can go in and talk about this. That the truth, all truth… There's relative truth, where people kind of think it’s not true for me. And there's truth that is absolute truth. And you could talk about that. I went in there and they're going there's no absolute truth, it's all relative. I'm thinking, okay, well, they don't believe that either. So I go back and forth. And I'm getting a Christian education out of a secular university, believe me. I’m learning all kinds of things about truth.
Here's what I learned in the end from this class and from Dr. Clark. I learned that truth rests upon authority. That there's absolute truth and it rests upon the authority of God's word. When you start relativizing truth and making it relative, then you kind of pick an authority that you're going to rely on. And people rely on what kinds of authorities today. What are you going to rely on to determine whether something is true or not? Is it because some studies been done and most of the people in the world believe this and therefore it's true? That's what you're going to hear in school. Be careful. When you hear that, you got to ask a question. Because there are times when science or the interpretation of science and God's word seem to differ. You want to realize that God's word is true. There's a truth that's there. And so Jesus says – “If I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me?” It's because the people He's talking to have put their identity and their confidence in something different than God Himself.
Well, let's go on in the passage. Because I think this probably is this key verse that I marked at the bottom of the whole passage. Verse 47, I think, is the key verse here to understand. You'll get it here. I think this is what He's saying to them. “Whoever is of God hears the words of God.” Whoever is of God hears the words of God. That's why you can't expect teachers who are not believers to hear the truth, because they're hearing what they think is the truth and they're kind of making it relative. And then we have a problem. But if you are of God, then you hear the truth itself.
See here's one of the things. When you become a Christian, one of the benefits of becoming a Christian is you receive the Holy Spirit into your life. The Holy Spirit has a lot of jobs. But one of the jobs that the Holy Spirit has is to illumine the scriptures. So when you're a Christian and you look at the Bible, you go, “Whoa, I didn't see that before.” The Holy Spirit illumines or makes it come alive for us. That's one of the roles of the Holy Spirit. So if you don't know God, then you have a hard time hearing the word of God. It makes it very difficult.
That's why He's telling them this. He says the opposite here in the next phrase. He says – “The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” It's hard for a person to hear the words of God if they're not of God. So that's why it's so important for us to trust in Jesus Christ as God, as our Savior. And then we turn around, we look at God's word and He shares that with us, and it's the word that keeps us on track as we're going forward.
Verse 48 – The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” The Jews are getting so frustrated at this point. And so they're just making up things. They're saying He's a Samaritan. In other words, the Jews looked down on the
Samaritans. They’re saying, “Oh, you're just one of those guys.” Or to say that He is a demon is like saying He's crazy. You're a Samaritan and have a demon.
Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. Truly, truly…” Whenever you see truly, truly in the gospels, I just want you to know it’s the word ‘amen.’ Amen, amen. In Greek it’s pronounced amen, amen. “Amen, amen, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”
If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. When you trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you receive life, you become a Christian. Every once in a while, if you look at a tombstone, it will say something like this: Born January 1, 1965 – Entered into eternity on January 1, 2022 or something. That's false. You don't enter into eternity when you die. If you become a Christian you enter into eternity then. That's when eternal life starts. When you accept Jesus Christ into your life, you start eternal life. You have all of these benefits, you see life differently. Your confidence and your identity is placed in something different than what the world might have. You're moving forward in this powerful way because you know who God is.
You will never see death, He says. Let’s go on. The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon (or you’re crazy)! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’” Now we’re getting into some rub here and the Jews are not able to grasp this truth. They can’t accept it because their mind is bound by their identity and confidence. This is what makes it hard to dialogue with a person who’s so determined that science is their authority. If you can’t prove it to me, I won’t believe in it. And so it’s hard. Because when we really come to understand God, it’s a statement of faith. There’s only so much you can do on a logical level. At some point, you’re going to be able to take this leap of faith, that you understand the reality of who God is. It’s a big thing.
They all died, they said. “Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? (In other words, Abraham is what we’re holding onto here.) And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” Or who do you think you are?
And this is the crux of the grand finale we’re coming to because Jesus says, “Let me tell you who I am” is what He’s going to say here. “Who do you think you are?” they say. Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’”
See, Jesus is making the link here. He wants to broaden their understanding. Because sometimes we put our confidence in something in our lives. And God wants to say, “I'm bigger than that.” You put your confidence in an Abraham? I'm bigger than Abraham. You put your confidence in your education? I'm bigger than your education. You put your confidence in your money? I'm bigger than your money. Whatever it is, God is saying I'm bigger than that. That's how He's describing this here.
He says to them – “But you have not known him. I know him. 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.” We're back to the word and the value of it, and how to respond to it.
Alright. Well let’s get to the grand finale part of the story here. This is really a fascinating passage. This is one of those you’ll want to mark because you’ll come back to it. If anyone ever says to you, “Jesus never said He was God,” never read this passage.
Let me explain it to you. “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” In other words, I’m bigger than Abraham. He’s stretching their ability to think about their own confidence and identity. So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” Whoa. This is really big. It’s so big that these frustrated Jews don’t know what to do. They’re just overcome with anger, and maybe fear, and disgust maybe, rage. And so in verse 59 – So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. They pick up stones to throw. Even though it's illegal under the Roman rule for them to execute someone, they're going to pick up stones and try to execute Him right now. Why? What's going on? In order to understand this, we have to go back to another Bible story.
Jesus says – Before Abraham was, I am. It's a story back in the Old Testament about a man, a leader. If there was one leader in the whole Bible that you would say didn't have a lot of confidence, struggled with his ability to do what God wanted him to do, you would say it would be Moses. And that is true. Moses was adopted. And I love to hang around adopted people because God is obviously protecting them from something, rescuing them from something. So I want to hang around adopted people. Maybe some of the blessing that God has given to them will rub off on me. So I really like adopted situations. Moses was adopted. God rescued him out of this difficult situation. He's raised in the palace. He has a lot of confidence because he goes out and he sees a Hebrew (and he knew he was a Hebrew) fighting with an Egyptian, and he had enough confidence to step in there and kill the Egyptian, bury him in the sand. Oh, that didn't work out too well. Because people found out about it and he had to run for his life. He spends the next forty years on the backside of a desert. A lot of his confidence gone, I think. Now he's just taking care of sheep. He doesn't realize that God is preparing him to take care of His sheep, but he's taking care of these sheep out in the wilderness.
While he's out in this wilderness area, he sees a bush burning. And that's kind of interesting. It’s rather boring in the wilderness and taking care of sheep. So, well, there's something interesting to look at. So he goes over to see this bush that's burning and the bush starts talking to him. Obviously it’s God speaking to him. Tells him to take off his shoes. This is holy ground. This is about to be a holy conversation. I think we need these holy conversations in our lives, especially when dealing with our own confidence, to understand what that looks like. And God says to Moses, “I have picked you to go to Pharaoh to tell him to let my people go.” Moses does not know how to handle this information. He has no confidence at all because he looks at himself and says, “I can't do this.” He starts giving God five different excuses. Who am I? They're not going to listen to me. I can't even talk well. So he's got all of these excuses.
I want to focus in on one of his excuses. He gives five. One of them in Exodus 3:14. He says to
God, “God, look. If I go into these people, and I say to them, ‘God told me to tell you to let these people go,’ they're going to say to me, ‘What's the name of your God?’ What am I going to tell them? They got all kinds of gods. They got the sun god, they got the flies god, the frogs god, they got the Nile god, they’ve got the emperor to god. What am I going to do? What am I going to say to them?” And God answers him. He says, “I'm going to tell you what my name is. You're going to know me on a first name basis. My name Yahweh. My name is I AM. The self-existent one. I AM.” Now that's in Hebrew. But the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew. The Septuagint would be what many of these scholars would know about. The Septuagint has the words that are translating this. It says Ego Eimi. Two words. Ego Eimi. Those are the exact words that Jesus is now using over here. Before Abraham was born, Ego Eimi. That's why they're so upset because He's calling Himself by the personal name of God.
Now in your Bibles you will not see YHWH, the tetragrammaton in your Bibles in our English translation. So the translators don't translate it YHWH. They do it out of respect. But instead, you'll see capital L-O-R-D. All the letters are capitalized. Whenever you see that, you know that's the personal name of God. If it's all small letters, you'll know that it's the name Adonai. Because the Jewish people would not even say the name of God. Because in the Ten
Commandments it says do not take the name of (Yahweh) your God in vain. And so they would not even use this personal name of God. The Jewish people will call it the unpronounceable name of God. When you see a Jewish person writing an article, they'll write God and they'll put G-d to represent the fact that we don't even talk about Him in real language. We are very careful about what we say. I think that's a misunderstanding of that commandment in the Bible. It's not just about swearing or taking God's name in vain. It's about taking on the name of God as if you don't mean it. Taking it on in vain. And so they would often not even use that name, the most holy name of God.
But it's such a powerful name. Because it represents the personal relationship we have with God. God says, I want to tell you what my name is. You don't have to just call me God that I'm different than a man. You don't have to just call me Lord, that's who I'm in relationship to you, like a husband or a wife. He's the Lord. But you can call me by my personal name, Yahweh. I want you to know that's what my name is. I want you to understand that name because it's the personal relationship that we have with God that provides for us this identity and confidence that we need in our lives. That's what God has for us. That's what He wants for us. He wants us to be able to enjoy Him and to experience Him. But most importantly, He wants us to have confidence that He is God. He wants to have confidence that He's the one we can put our confidence in. That we can have our identity in Him so our ladder is leaning against the right wall in our lives.
I just want to be careful that I don't become a Pharisee. I think as Christians we can move in that direction and we don't even realize it. We start moving in a direction where something goes into the red circle that we have to guard against. So when we're tempted to start thinking about whatever it might be, then we have to be careful.
Let me close with this story. A woman comes to the Lord and says, “God, would you just tell me who you are?”
And God says, “I am good. I am loving. I am hope. I am peace. I am joy. I am the Father. I'm in control.”
As she hears those words, she just starts crying, recognizing that that's what she needs is to know
God that way. After crying for a bit, she says to God, “God, I understand. I'm getting to understand who you are. Who am I?” And God says, “You are mine.”
That's the identity we need. That's the confidence we have, that we are God's children. It requires from us a response to say, “Okay, God, I'm willing to give my life to you. I'm willing to serve you, I'm willing to give you all that I have, put my confidence in you.” I would just hope that today as you look at this passage you’d think about what temptation might you have that would draw you away from putting your confidence and identity in Jesus Christ as God.
