Honoring Christ

In the next two weeks, we are going to finishing up our series on Core Christianity by looking at some core truths about Jesus that believers need to understand, be prepared to defend, and even stake their lives on. Our views about Jesus are incredibly important because it may mean the difference between life and death and worshipping the true and living God versus a god our own imagination. One of the saddest moments when I was doing college ministry was a young women who came up to me after a humanities course and she was throughly convinced that mankind had invented God and made Him in our image. Sadly, I could not talk her off that ledge and she proceeded to reject what little she did believe. Unfortunately, this student was ill prepared to stand firm in the truth because she didn’t really have faith in the things that she knew about God. Last week, we looked at those who initially believe in some of the teachings of Christ but ultimately they go on to reject Him based on many of the same objections that we will read about today.

John 8:39–51 ESV

39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40 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. 41 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.” 42 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. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 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, 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. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” 48 The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” 49 Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. 50 Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51 Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

John 8:

John 8:39–59 ESV

39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40 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. 41 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.” 42 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. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 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, 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. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” 48 The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” 49 Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. 50 Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51 Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” 52 The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” 54 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.’ 55 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. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” 57 So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

John 8:39-5

As we prepare for communion this Sunday, we are going to go through a quick study on Christology. More specifically, we’ll take a look at three historic truths of the Christian faith that is embedded into this account.

1. Jesus was born of virgin

calls them the children of the devil, the spawn of Satan. This certainly does not sound like the sweet, forgiving Jesus that I know. Understandably in retaliation

2. Jesus lived a perfect and sinless life

3. His teaching provides the only path eternal life

4. Jesus provides the only path to eternal life

4. His teaching provides the only path to eternal life

I love teaching doctrine out of the Gospels narrative because it shows you the context in which some of the core truths of the Christian faith originated from. The teaching of the apostles didn’t come out of a vacuum, they were formed as the Holy Spirit brought to their memories certain events that happened in the life of Jesus. Many times it is the presence of conflict that helps define and clarify the things that we believe. So to set up this scene, if you were here last week, this crowd was initially in favor of Jesus. Many of them had even had started to believe the things that He was teaching but suddenly they do a complete 180 and now they are ready to kill him largely because they are so offended by Him. And to be honest, when I read the things that Jesus is calling them, I can’t really blame them. At the climax of this argument, Jesus begins to question the legitimacy of their ancestry. Most Jewish people would have been very proud of their ancestral heritage going all the way back to Abraham. As we saw last week, Abraham was a solid follower of God, full of faith, took good care of people around him, pretty good to his wife for the most part. If he showed up on your ancestry.com results you would be happy to be related to him. (I had a friend who was convinced, he was part Jewish so he went on ancestry.com to prove it.) For a Jewish person, being related to Abraham would have been a matter of personal honor and for anyone to put that in question would have been fighting words. And that is exactly what Jesus does in the beginning of this passage. He provokes them by saying, “You don’t act like Abraham because you’re trying to kill me, you must have a different father.” So generally when people are insulted, they usually fight back with an insult of their own.

The easiest come back would have been to attack all of those questions surrounding Jesus’ birth. Essentially what they are saying is, “We may not be Abraham’s children but at least we are not born of sexual immorality. We know who our parents are but your mama came up with some crazy story about being pregnant through the Holy Spirit. She is a liar.” Those would have been the rumors surrounding Jesus throughout his life. People were not stupid, they knew exactly where babies came from and this argument with Jesus must have cracked open a key area of doubt, his virgin birth. Today, liberal seminaries and churches discount or minimize the importance of the virgin birth as being unimportant to the message of Christianity, that it doesn’t matter whether it is a fable or a myth as long as this message of peace and love is spread. But what they fail to realize is that this is a central prerequisite to Jesus being the Son of God. Either Jesus is the Son of God born of the virgin Mary or he is a liar born out sexual immorality. Those are the only two options that we are given. It is true that Jesus never explicitly said this but it’s clear that He believed he came directly from God. And it’s likely that Mary and Joseph must have told him what happened before they got married and how the angel of God visited them with the news that they would have a child conceived of the Holy Spirit. When people ask you and I where we came from, we might say we were born in a hospital in such and such city or country. Unless you are crazy or super egotistical, it would never cross our minds to say that we came directly from God but Jesus showed no reservations in making this claim.

Now it’s understood that just because someone says something, it doesn’t make it true. Our mental institutions are filled with people who say such things. And that is exactly the point. If Jesus is the very Son of God, he would have to prove it by living a perfect life. There is no other religious leader that has ever made that claim because with any level of scrutiny, you would find that claim to be completely false. If you look across the world religions, from Mohammed to Buddha, it would be easy to pinpoint sin and imperfection in their lives. Not so with Jesus! Even those who doubted Jesus still marvelled at the perfection of his life.

John 3:2 ESV

2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

John 19:4 ESV

4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.”

But perhaps even more convincing is the fact that those who were his closest disciples, John and Peter, attest to his perfection. If you spend any amount of time with your friends and leaders, you can see pretty quickly the imperfection in their lives. Jesus had none and He challenges his doubters, then and now, to find any fault, any sin, any wrongdoing, and anything that is untrue in the things that He has ever said. He would challenge us to look through the red letters of the Bible and find any error, anything that is questionable, or even anything that needs to be amended or changed. And here is the clincher, if everything Jesus has ever said is true and now has been tested over time, why then do we not believe them enough to live by them?

Jesus challenges his doubters to find any fault, any sin, any wrongdoing, and anything that is untrue in the things that He has ever said. He looks at this crowd of doubters and challenges them to convict him of any sin and

For those of us who are Christian, it’s because we still have remnants of our old nature. We are still fighting against ourselves. I love how one pastor describes this process of spiritual growth in the Christian. “We have to evangelize to our own unbelieving hearts.” Hopefully this is why you come on Sunday and why go to CG so that the hidden corners of your heart that don’t believe in the truth of the Gospel will begin to change. All of us have some areas of doubt where we need to continue to apply Jesus’ teaching.

For those who are not yet believers, it’s simply because you have not yet been born from above but that is what Jesus is offering you today, a chance to be born again.

This passage is probably one of the hardest sections of the Bible to preach through in a place like the Bay Area for obvious reasons. The majority of people here would ascribe to the universal fatherhood of God, that no matter what you believe in, we are all God’s children, black, white, Asian, Buddhist, Muslim. The human side of me would love to affirm that and people assume that pastor’s enjoy teaching on these hard truths. Some may, I don’t particularly enjoy it. There are days when I can really identify with Jeremiah when he complains to God about what needs to be said.

Jeremiah 20:8–9 ESV

8 For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, “Violence and destruction!” For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. 9 If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.

Jeremiah 20:

I was really debating on whether or not to just jump over this passage but I felt convicted of the fact that this presents the Gospel in its most compelling form and explains explicitly why Jesus is the only path to eternal life. If there was any particular group of people that deserved the title of God’s children, it would have been the Israelites. They were the first ones to receive the written Word of God, they were led out of Egypt personally by the miracles of God, their nation was the birthplace of the prophets and the priests of God. So imagine their indignation when Jesus tells them, “It doesn’t matter about your physical ancestry, spiritually you are the children of the devil.” As Gentiles, none of us have this religious heritage that the Jews have and we have to assume that this is how Jesus would explain the spiritual origins of all humanity. There is a common fatherhood but it’s not the one we assume. (In honor of Halloween, I was this close to titling this message “Children of the Devil” but decided not to.)

John 8:23 ESV

23 He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

John 3:28 ESV

28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’

John 3:18 ESV

18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

I was in my office in the beginning of the week and wrestling with God about this message. I got on the bus and there was a nice guy who was helping people get off and on, I mean he was high or drunk or both but my standards of morality have dropped considerably. I was still conversing with God and pointing out to him, “See there are still good people in this world.” Almost as soon as I thought this, I accidently bumped into his friend and I got cussed out right there on Muni.” I was so angry and I remember thinking, if I wasn’t a pastor and you weren’t an old drunk, I would beat the crap out of you right here. I sat down and and almost immediately, I had to confess to God and myself, we are far more like the devil than we are like God. After all, if we are all God’s children, shouldn’t the world be a much better place.

We continue down this passage, we can see that Jesus further escalates this conflict by identifying who He believes their father really is and he proceeds to tell them that they are the children of the devil, the spawn of Satan. This certainly does not sound like the sweet, forgiving Jesus that we all think we know. Jesus clearly does not believe in the universal fatherhood of God. In fact, he believes in the exact opposite, which is unless you are born from above through the Holy Spirit, you still belong to the kingdom of darkness.

but it also presents the Gospel in its most compelling and As we continue down this passage, we can see that Jesus further escalates this conflict by identifying who He believes their father really is and he proceeds to tell them that they are the children of the devil, the spawn of Satan. This certainly does not sound like the sweet, forgiving Jesus that we all think we know. Jesus clearly does not believe in the universal fatherhood of God. In fact, he believes in the exact opposite, which is unless you are born from above through the Holy Spirit, you still belong to the kingdom of darkness.

When we understand the origin of sin and where our sinful nature comes from:

We realize the magnitude of our sin.

Romans 7:24 ESV

24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Romans 7:24 ESV

24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

2. We realize

Colossians 1:13 ESV

13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,

Romans 6:23 ESV

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

2. We realize the measure of God’s grace.

Romans 3:23 ESV

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Romans 5:10 ESV

10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

3. We realize the marvelous work of salvation.

Colossians 1:13 ESV

13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,

Conclusion:

calls them the children of the devil, the spawn of Satan. This certainly does not sound like the sweet, forgiving Jesus that I know. Understandably in retaliation

So often we take for granted our position as the children of God, not realizing the incredible sacrifice that it took to transfer us out of darkness into the marvelous light. If what Jesus says about humanity is true, that all of us are born out of utter spiritual darkness, it would make logical sense that there could never be anyone born naturally who could teach us, show us, and lead us to God and eternal life, not like the way the sinless Son of God, born of the virgins could.

Honoring Christ

Introduction