I AM - Week 3 - Who is Jesus

I Am – Week 2

Who is Jesus?

Series Slide

Good morning and welcome to worship today. What an amazing and beautiful week we have had. I actually had to mow the yard and rake leaves at the same time. I think my grass and trees are a little confused. And yesterday, I trimmed my grapevines and they are starting to bud! Anyway, we aren’t here to talk about my horticulture practices…

As you may remember, we are in week 2 of Lent and week 2 of our sermon series on the self-designation of Jesus Christ as the I Am.

So, as we get started, let’s pray for God’s word to be made real in each of our lives today…

<Prayer>

Last week we looked at the origin of the name. It is the name God gave for Moses to declare before the people of Israel when they were in bondage. In Hebrew it is YHWH, we pronounce it Yahweh and see it in our English Bibles when we see the work LORD (in all caps.) In the Greek, as written in the New Testament it is Ego Eimi.

This week we begin the journey through the book of John as we look at the popular 7 I Am statements of Jesus. What are they?

1. I am the bread of life. (6:35)

2. I am the light of the world. (8:12)

3. I am the door… (10:7)

4. I am the good shepherd. (10:11)

5. I am the resurrection and the life. (11:25)

6. I am the way, the truth, and the life. (14:6)

7. I am the true vine. (15:1)

We will cover each of these in the next 7 weeks, but there are actually 2 other passages in John where Jesus declares that he is God in the flesh. But, before we get to them, let’s just get to know the Gospel of John.

Sermon Title

John was the last living of the 12 Disciples. All the others were martyred for their faith. Peter was crucified upside down, Thomas was impaled in India where he brought the gospel to Asia, Matthew was killed at the altar in Ethiopia, James the Disciple was beheaded in Jerusalem. I could go through all the gory details of each of them, but there was something different about John. He actually lived through his execution. He was boiled alive, and survived, being miraculously delivered. After that he was exiled on Patmos, eventually freed, and served as Bishop in Turkey. He was the only one to die a peaceful death. One of my favorite stories of John is that he was being carried into worship on a litter. Walking was so difficult that he was usually carried into the church. One day of worship as he is being carried, the crowds gathered around to see the last living Disciple that walked with Jesus. Someone in the crowd yelled, “John give us a word.” John waved his hand for those carrying him to stop, they helped him lean up to face the crowd and he said, “Love one another.” To which the man in the crowd replied, “John you always say that.” And John smiled and said, “Yes, and if you love one another, everything else will take care of itself.”

John wrote his Gospel, his account of the good news of Jesus Christ, about a decade after the others. Most Scholars believe Mark was the first Gospel written with Matthew and Luke using it as a guide to tell their stories of Jesus birth, life, death, and resurrection. These three are called The Synoptic Gospels because they are so similar. Their goal seemed to be to introduce the world to Jesus. Matthew quotes a lot of scripture, Mark lists miracles, and Luke reels off parables. Each has their own special focus for the community to which they wrote, but the one thing they all have in common is to say something about the time Jesus lived on the earth. John, on the other hand, seems to have something else in mind.

John has no account of the birth of Jesus, instead he focuses on the fact that Jesus was present at Creation. There is no story of Jesus calling the bread and wine his body and blood. There is no Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus and the others prayed. There are no parables in John’s account. Why? He didn’t need to tell those parts of Jesus’ life. By this point the oral traditions of Mark and Matthew had been penned, and Luke had penned his Gospel, John wasn’t trying to introduce the person of Jesus who was God in the flesh to us, John wanted us to know the Christ, the Messiah, who was Jesus. He wanted us to know that Jesus was in existence before his birth in Bethlehem, He just put on our flesh at that point and became one of us. John wanted to counter the cultic thoughts of Gnosticism so we could truly know that God became flesh and dwelt among us.

John is focused not on the Jesus that he walked with, but the Christ who saved the world. Jesus is Yahweh.

So, as we get into these statements of Jesus let’s look at the ones where he says, “I am.” The first one I want us to consider comes from John 8:58. Jesus is being grilled by the Sadducees and Pharisees. The Sanhedrin, the Jewish court, was out to get him and they were trying to trap him with questions. The entire chapter is a conversation about the identity of Jesus, who the Pharisees and Sadducees were, and Jesus’ claims about himself. He wraps it up with these words.

John 8:54-58

Jesus answered, “If I want glory for myself, it doesn’t count. But it is my Father who will glorify me. You say, ‘He is our God,’ but you don’t even know him. I know him. If I said otherwise, I would be as great a liar as you! But I do know him and obey him. Your father Abraham rejoiced as he looked forward to my coming. He saw it and was glad.”

The people said, “You aren’t even fifty years old. How can you say you have seen Abraham?”

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was even born, I AM!”

Make no mistake… Jesus’ hearers didn’t just hear Jesus saying something crazy – that this 30 year old was with Abraham some 2000 years earlier. When Jesus said that, “Before Abraham was ever born, I AM” they knew Jesus was claiming to be co-existent with Yahweh. For the Pharisees and Sadducees, it wasn’t absurd, it was blasphemy. This nobody, this carpenter from Nazareth, was claiming to be the pre-existent God. That is the very definition of blasphemy. And, If you read the next verse you see that they were ready to stone Jesus, but he disappeared into the crowd.

Like I said last week, Jesus does not leave us an option to say, “He’s a good moral teacher.” Jesus was either a lunatic, a liar, or Jesus was the Lord, the Great I AM.

Sermon Slide

Another passage where Jesus proclaims his identity is in John 4. Go ahead and turn to that passage and we will talk through it as we move to Jesus’ statement.

Jesus and his disciples are traveling back to Jerusalem and the Scripture says they “must go through Samaria.” Well, if you look at a map, they didn’t have to go through Samaria. In fact, most Jews would walk around Samaria and avoid going through it. They considered the Samaritans half-bloods. These were the people left behind while the ‘muckety mucks’ of Israel were deported to Babylon. All the priests, all the leaders, all those that would help them maintain the faith according to the traditions were gone, so these people were left on their own. They tried to keep the Jewish practices, but they also intermarried with the others in the region. So, the Samaritans and the Jews didn’t get along. In fact, when Jesus asks the Samaritan woman for a drink, she says, “you a Jew are asking me a Samaritan for a drink?” In other words, she’s asking, Why would you be interested in me?

Have you ever asked that question?

God, Why would you be interested in me? (Vs 9-10)

Don’t you know who I am?

Don’t you know what I’ve done?

Don’t you know what I’ve been through?

It’s like my story when I talked to my pastor in Beaumont. I listed all my sins, all my failures, all the reasons I couldn’t be a preacher. But Danny asked me, “Don’t you think God can forgive you for that?”

Likewise, Jesus said to the woman at the well, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who I am, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” (vs 10)

So, she asks, how are you going to get me water, you don’t have a bucket… the wells deep… you think you’re better than our father Jacob who dug this well?

She’s telling our story. First she makes the excuse – what me God?

Then she has a second excuse:

God, I have a physical problem (Vs. 11-19)

She still thinks Jesus is talking about H2O, not spiritual matters. We do the same thing. We focus on the physical so we don’t have to consider the spiritual.

God, I don’t have enough Money… I need more money to buy what I want.

I don’t have a good job… I need a new job so I can be happy.

I don’t have a good marriage… I need a divorce, I married the wrong person.

I’m too fat… I need to loose weight

I don’t want to go to church… I’d rather be out doing whatever hobby I like.

We turn on the TV and see all these commercials and they tell us of all the things we need in our lives to be satisfied… but they are a lie. What you need is Jesus.

I remember when we went to Belize on a mission trip. We spent most of the week in these villages where homes were made of bamboo, roofs were thatched, floors were dirt, and the people were satisfied. They didn’t need the latest and greatest technology to be satisfied… they were happy. In fact, I think they were more happy than we are here in our homes with our cars and technology.

The excuse, that our problem is physical, not spiritual doesn’t fly.

Neither does the woman at the wells next excuse…

I’m not interested in religion, it’s just a bunch of rules(20-24)

She throws the argument about Jew vs. Samaritan up. Well, Jews say we have to worship in Jerusalem, but we worship here on this mountain…

Sounds kinda like:

Catholics pray to Mary and Protestants don’t

Methodists baptize babies and Baptists don’t

You have a praise band and a piano and an organ, but the Church of Christ sings acapella…

On and on, we could talk about the differences in denominations and religions, but Jesus doesn’t let that phase him. Jesus tells her that where we worship and what methods of worship we use aren’t the focus… We are to worship God in spirit and in truth.

So, now that that excuse is out of the way, she says,

Yes, I believe in God, but what difference does he make in my life?(Vs 25-26)

Oh, what an argument.

Yes, I was baptized when I was a kid, so I’ve got my fire insurance and I get to go to heaven when I die… but what difference does that make now?

Yes, some day, when I die, Jesus will tell me the rest of the story.

Yes, that’s all for later, I need something now.

Some will say, “It’s OK to believe in God, but he’s almost totally irrelevant to modern life. I’ll just muddle through the best I can, and hope I’ve covered my bases when it’s time to die.”

The woman at the wells story goes like this…

John 4:25-26

The woman said, “I know the Messiah is coming—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus told her, “I AM the Messiah!”

Literally, in the Greek, Jesus said, “Ego Eimi laleō,” I AM speaks to you.

When she realized the truth and did away with her excuses, it changed her life. If you read on, it changed the life of the community where she lived. I love the way the series, The Chosen used this story to close out season 1. It is episode 8 and it is a beautiful retelling of the story.

But, with as beautiful as the story is as a story… it is more than a story, it is the Word of God… it has the power to change your life.

So, which excuse do you use to divert God’s work in your life? We all do it. We all have our excuses and justifications for why we don’t let Jesus make a difference in our lives.

But, Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the remedy. Jesus is the antidote to the life we live.

Five life-changing truthsthat follow because Jesus is “Ego eimi,” Yahweh, the Great I Am:

1. God knows me better than I know myself.

2. The One who knows me best loves me the most.

3. Jesus is the only reliable diagnostician of our real needs.

4. As much as we need forgiveness for our past, we also need hope for our future. We need to know our true self, a transformed self that can actually be a new creation going forward.

5. We can receive power in our spirit to accomplish this work of transformation.

Let these truths move you this week. Let them bother you, encourage you, and challenge you. Next week we take a deep dive into the first of seven I AM statements from Christ.

Let’s pray together.