I AM, 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 am praying for rain, but other than that, it has been an amazing week. 

I can’t wait for next Sunday’s combined worship service at 10:30 when we kick off our 175th Anniversary year with a combined worship opportunity here in the sanctuary, special music, a historic presentation, and a visit from a 19th-century Methodist Circuit rider named Rev. Obediah Rider.  We will pause our Lenten Series for that day as we hear what it was like to share the faith across the vast frontier of Texas and beyond during the founding of this church. After that, we will have a potluck luncheon. You will not want to miss it!

I also want to remind our parents and grandparents today that we are starting our Confirmation classes and will have a meeting immediately after the first service. Then we will meet with the students at 9:30 each week after that.  We will also have an opportunity for the parents to gather at the same time each week if they don’t already have a Sunday School Class they go to.

But today, we are in week 2 of Lent and of our sermon series on Jesus Christ's self-designation 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 God’s name.  It is the revelation of the name God gave to Moses to declare before the people of Israel when they were in bondage. In Hebrew, it is YHWH; pronounced Yahweh, and seen in our English Bibles as the word LORD (in all caps). In 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 weeks ahead, but there are actually 2 other “I Am” passages we will look at. But, before we get to them, let’s get to know the Gospel of John. 

Sermon Title

John was the last of the 12 Disciples to die.  All 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, and 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 Martyrdom.  He was boiled alive and survived, being miraculously delivered.  After that, he was exiled on Patmos Island, eventually freed, and served as Bishop in Turkey.  He was the only one to die a peaceful, natural 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, as he was carried into worship, the crowds gathered to see the last living Disciple who 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 wrote the first Gospel, 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 was to introduce Jesus to the world. Matthew quotes a lot of scripture, Mark lists miracles, and Luke reels off parables. Each author 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 Jesus’ birth; instead, he focused 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 Synoptic Gospels had been penned, were widely distributed, and were already familiar to the Christian community.

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 existed 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, the Great I Am.

Turn with me in your Bibles to John 8.  The first statement we are going to consider comes from John 8:58. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes were out to get him.  They were trying to trap him with questions as they debated in the courtyard of the Temple.  In fact, the entire chapter is a conversation and debate about the identity of Jesus.  He wraps it up with these words.

John 8:54-57

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.”

John 8:58-59

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!”

At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

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.  These religious leaders would certainly recall the story of Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah from Genesis 22.  Father Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, Isaac before the Angel of the Lord told him, “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”

This was not a being other than God speaking; this was the very presence of God, speaking in first person to Abraham… using the pronouns “I” and “me”.  Some scholars even argue that this was the preincarnate Christ speaking to him.

Here is another interesting thing.  All that took place on Mount Moriah… then fast forward to 2 Chronicles 3:1 and we read, “Solomon began to build the Temple of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah.”  Friends, Jesus is standing in the temple, in the very place where “the Angel of the Lord” appeared to Abraham some 1800 years before.

When Jesus said that, “Before Abraham was ever born, I AM,” standing in the very place that Abraham encountered “the Angel of Yahweh”, 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, as we read the next verse, we 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.  A good moral teacher of the day would never use the words, Ego Eimi, to describe himself.  He was either a liar, he was crazy, or he was who he said he was.  There are no other options!

Sermon Slide

Jesus also proclaimed his identity in John 4.  Go ahead and turn to that passage as we talk through it and move to Jesus’ statement we heard a moment ago. 

Jesus and his disciples were 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 generations before.  All the priests, all the leaders, all those who 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 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)

First, the I am in this verse isn’t the same.  It is Tis Eimi – it's more of, “who it is offering this gift.”  This isn’t the shocking word he has for her… but since he says he has “Living water,” she asks, how are you going to get me water? You don’t have a bucket… the well’s deep… Do 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 lose 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.  It isn’t a physical problem; it’s a spiritual problem.

I remember when we went to Belize on a mission trip.  We spent most of the week in the 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 happier than we are here in our homes with all 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, or a piano, or 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 faze 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 as a baby and I went through Confirmation 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?  I live in the real world!

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

Some will say, “It’s OK to believe in God, but what difference does that make in my day-to-day life?  I’m just doing the best I can until I die and go to heaven.”

The woman at the well's 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 and accepted this truth, it changed her life.  If you read on, it also 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.  I can’t watch it without being in tears every time.

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, just as it changed the life of the woman at the well.

So, which excuse do you use to keep God out of all parts of 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.

As we wrap up, I want to quickly share 5 truths from this passage.  I’ll admit, these aren’t mine; I got them from somewhere else, but they do apply to us here today.

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

1.         God knows me better than I know myself.  He knit me together in my mother’s womb; he knows my inner parts.

2.         The One who knows me best loves me the most. Remember, it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us… that proves God’s love toward us!

3.         Jesus is the only reliable diagnostician of our real needs.  Jesus is the Great Physician who knows our needs, our real needs, better than we could ever know.

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.  That is the work Jesus performs in us.  We are being transformed… we are going on to perfection… we are being made new.

5.         We can receive power in our spirit to accomplish this work of transformation.  The Holy Spirit is working in us and through us to bring about this transformation!

I hope these truths stir your soul this week.  I pray that they will bother you… that they will trouble you… I pray that they will make you uncomfortable and yet, at the same time, challenge and encourage you.

May the Holy Spirit work in you, beginning with your trip to the Altar this morning to receive Holy Communion.

Let’s pray together.