Before Abraham Ever Was, I AM (John 8:30-59)

Introduction

I once heard a stand-up comedian explain his shtick to his audience.  He would tell whatever story he was telling and then deliver the punchline, leaving the whole room laughing.  Then, he would deliver a little one-liner that would leave three-quarters of the room laughing.  Then another and only a third would be laughing.  And, he said that he would keep delivering these one-liners until only two or three people where awkwardly chuckling and the room was silent—and only then would he move on to his next joke.

As we come to the last half of John 8, Jesus is still addressing the crowd at the Festival of Booths.  He addressed this crowd with mixed opinions about him—some wanted him dead and some thought that he may be the Messiah—that whoever comes to him to drink will have rivers of living water flowing out of his heart and that he is the light of the world, and whoever comes to him shall not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.  And, as we see at the beginning of the text, some were believing in him as he was saying these things, but at the end of the chapter, no one is laughing, and no one is believing.

Do They Believe or Do They Not? (vv. 30-31)

Now, you may have thought it was strange that I cut off last week’s sermon at v. 30 when, in our Bibles, v. 30 is the last sentence in that paragraph.  But, I included v. 30 in this week’s text because of what v. 31 says. “As [Jesus] was saying these things, many believed in him.  So Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.’”  So, it is this group of people who are hearing Jesus teach and confront the Pharisees that John says are believing in him in v. 30, and that Jesus addresses in v. 31 about what true discipleship looks like, which is abiding in his word. But, they are also the group that starts pushing back on Jesus in v. 33ff and leads to this conversation into attempted murder.

So, do they believe or do they not believe?  What is the point here?  Well, John has made this point throughout the Gospel before: some people who say they believe or seem to believe may not persevere in their belief.

We saw this in John 2 when people were believing in Jesus because they saw the signs that he was doing, but he knew the sort of spurious faith that was in them.  And we saw this in John 6 when Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you” and many of his disciples thought it was a “harsh saying” and they turned away from him.  They did not abide/remain in him and in his word, which Jesus explained in John 6 and is again explaining here.

Three Lies (vv. 32-47)

But, as we will see, this explanation that they must abide/remain in his word leads to proving that they are not abiding in his word, but through this back-and-forth with Jesus, they show that they are abiding in three lies; lies which have their own iterations today that we may buy into.

But before the first lie gets exposed Jesus preaches the Gospel to them in in vv. 31b-32: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”  Christ is offering freedom in himself to the people.  If they abide in his word, if they believe that he is who he says he is, they will know the truth and the truth will set them free.  But, the issue that the people that the people raise is, “Set from what?  We already are free.”

Lie #1: “We are free.”

(vv. 33) “They answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.  How is it that you say, “You will become free”?’”

Now, when the people say this, they are not talking about being slaves or free in a political sense.  If you go back into the Old Testament, the children of Abraham were subjugated by foreign nations quite frequently.  At this point in history (~30 AD), the Jews had not been a free nation for almost 600 years.  Whether it was Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome—some empire dominated them.  But, during those 600 years, Israel purged themselves of the worship of foreign gods and goddesses that, according to the Prophets, got them sent into exile in the first place.

So, while they may have been paying tribute to other countries for centuries, they refused to worship their gods.  They worshipped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and him alone.  That is why they say that they have never been enslaved to anyone, because they worship the one true God.  So, they don’t need freedom.  They go to church, they say the prayers, they know they aren’t perfect but they are still “morally good people.”  How can someone like be a slave in need of freedom?

The answer is sin.  Jesus says, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”  They may thing that they are spiritually free but they are in fact in spiritual bondage.  Sin enslaves people.  Paul explains in Romans 6:16, “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? (v. 19) You once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness....”

Sin owns you, and the only one who can free you from sin’s bondage is the Son.  “So if the Son sets you free [if you abide in him and his word], you will be free indeed.”

But this lie is one that persists in our world today.  Do people think they are slaves to anyone or anything?  Do people think that they are in need of being set free?  Do people think that they are immoral or in mortal danger of spending eternity in hell?  And, even if they say “yes” to any of these questions, do they think that Christ is the solution, or just “trying to be better people”?  Any mention of the Gospel, they will just put up their defenses (as we will see in a second).  But, what about you?  When you see your sin, do you remind yourself that you have been set free in Christ, by Christ and repent in faith?  Or do you just try harder in your flesh to keep up appearances?

Lie #2: “We have an ethnic pedigree.”

Like I said a second ago, insisting that someone is a slave to sin and faith in the Son of God is the only thing that can release them from their spiritual bondage is bound to get a self-righteous, self-defensive response from whoever you are talking to.  And, in the case of these Jews, they appeal to their ethnic pedigree—their relation to Abraham.  They call themselves “the offspring of Abraham” in v. 33 and say “Abraham is our father” in v. 39.

In Genesis 12:1-3, “The Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  And thus began a wild ride for Abram/Abraham that spans all the way until Genesis 25.  But, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and told him that he would make his descendants like the sand on the seashore and like the stars in the night sky, and this group of Jews were saying, “That’s us.  We are his offspring.  All of our family trees go back to him and in him we are blessed.”  They believed that their ethnic pedigree, going back to their forefather Abraham, made them free, put them right before God.

Now, talking about forefathers, freedom, heritage, blessing, and the like, makes me think that this lie that the Jews were buying into does have its own iteration today.  It may not be ethnic or biological, but it’s national.

In 1776, our founding fathers declared our independence from the English crown, and we fought a war for our independence, our freedom.  I think I can even use those first-person pronouns “we” and “our.”  And, over the nearly 250 years that the United States of America, the country has desired to stand as a beacon for hope and freedom in the world.

But, according to Jesus’s standard, how many Americans are actually “free”?  Americans know that they have certain freedoms—freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, freedom to assemble, and so on.  But does the First Amendment set you free from sin?  Does being a citizen of a nation that considers itself a “Christian nation” make you a Chrisitan?  No, abiding in the Word of the Son of God sets you free.  Faith in Christ sets you free.  And that is exactly the point Jesus makes.  (vv. 39b-40) “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.”

So what did Abraham do?  Like I said, Abraham’s story goes from Genesis 12-25, but there is one verse that stands out far above any other in those 14 chapters, and it is Genesis 15:6—“And [Abraham] believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

The Lord promised Abraham that he would give him descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and when Abraham heard the promise, he believed.  To use Jesus’s words, he abided in the Lord’s word.  If these Jews were like Abraham in any way, they would hear the Lord Jesus’s words, believe them, and abide in them, and their faith would be counted to them as righteousness.

Paul says this in Romans 4:23-25: But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

It’s not about your pedigree—where you’re from or who you’re from.  It is about your faith in Christ.  But, as they go back and forth, two things happen: the conflict gets personal and the Jews double down on their pedigree.

Lie #3: “We have a divine pedigree.”

Look back at vv. 38 and 41, Jesus has made mention of the Jew’s “father.”  In v. 38, he says, “I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father,” to which they make the reply that Abraham is their father. And in v. 41, he says, “You are doing the works your father did,” and their reply gets a escalates the situation even farther.  “They said to him, ‘We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.’”

“We were not born of sexual immorality”?  See, they must have heard this rumor that Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter, may not actually be Joseph’s son.  They must have heard this rumor that Joseph was planning to divorce Mary, because apparently, she had been unfaithful and conceived this baby named Jesus.  Now, we know that Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and conceived Jesus in her womb with no help from Joseph or any other man, and that an angel needed to intervene so Joseph did not divorce her.  But, this rumor must have spread around Nazareth and Galilee that Jesus was the product of sexual immorality.

And, it wasn’t just enough to level this ad hominem attack on him, but they doubled down on their pedigree.  They did not only have an Abrahamic pedigree, but they had a divine pedigree.  “God is our Father.”  On the one hand, that is a good deflection that our pluralistic society likes to use.  “We are all God’s children.  God loves everyone.  We are all special to him.”  There is a ring of truth to him, since we are all his image bearers, but when that is used to deflect away from talking about sin and the exclusivity of Christ, they are buying into a lie.

But, the Jews here are not advocating for anything pluralistic.  They are referring to God as their Father because of the special covenant relationship that God has with Israel.  He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel, he saved them out of Egypt, he said “Israel is my firstborn son,” (Ex. 4:22).  Therefore, they have, in their mind, a special, irrevocable, righteous relationship with God.

How does Jesus reply?  (vv. 42-44) “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.  Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.”  If they really had God for their Father, they would recognize God’s Son.  But, the fact that they reject him proves that God is not their Father.  But they do have a father.  Jesus has alluded to their father twice: verse 38 (“You do what you have heard from your father.”) and v. 41 (“You are doing the works your father did.”).  So who is their father?

(v. 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.”

Far from being sons of Abraham and far from being sons of God, they are sons of Satan.  They have a Serpentine pedigree.  Jesus points back to Satan and what he did in the beginning, and tells these people that they are acting just like him.

In Genesis 3, Satan, in the form of a serpent, comes to Adam and Eve in Eden and brings a lie that leads to death.  In Gen 3:1, the Serpent, unsolicited, unprovoked, goes to Eve and says, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The Father of Lies told Eve that there would be no consequence for her sin, that God was holding out on her, and that she could be a little goddess once she ate of that tree.  And, when she and Adam bought into the lie, they died.  Yes, they were guilty of sin and couldn’t say “The Devil made me do it,” but Satan had blood on his hands, he was a murderer from the beginning.  And now, Jesus is saying that these people are his children.  Why? Because they want to murder Jesus.  Jesus has been speaking about eternal life, about giving them life, about having living water flowing out of their hearts.  Yet in spite of Jesus’s focus on life, the people want to kill him.  They want to bring death to the one who is offering to give them life.  That is completely backwards.   More than that, it is satanic. And it is because they reject the truth.  There is no truth in Satan.  That is not to say that he does not know true things and speaks false information out of ignorance, but he is full of deception, and these children of his that Jesus is addressing are deceived. “Because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.”  There is something violent, visceral about their unbelief.  Jesus does not simply say, “I tell the truth and you don’t seem to understand where I am coming from.”  But as Jesus is speaking the truth, these people are actively resisting it.  Jesus’s word “finds no place in them” because their hearts are hardening as he speaks. The light turns on and they hide their eyes to keep themselves in the darkness. (vv. 46-47) Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” There is the line drawn in the sand.  On one side, you have those who hear and abide in the word of Jesus, who are set free from their enslavement to sin, who are “of God” and will have eternal life with God.  And on the other, you have those who reject the word, stay enslaved to their sin, who are “of Satan,” and who will have eternal death in the fire that is reserved for Satan and his angels (cf. Matt. 24:41). And what is the response?  (v. 48) “The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”  Really, this remark is such a concise summary of just how deaf, hard-hearted, and deceived the people are.  They are not just rejecting Jesus’s words, but they are even pointing back to those three lies they believed and saying that they apply to them, but not to Jesus. They are free, but Jesus is possessed by demons.  They have an ethnic pedigree because they are sons of Abraham, true heirs of the promises God made to him, but Jesus is some Samaritan who can’t trace his family tree back to Abraham and is not a true Jew.  And, because he is a demon-possessed Samaritan heretic, he definitely does not have the divine pedigree as a son of God. You’d think that this would be the end of it.  If any one of us got called a demon-possessed Samaritan by someone that we were trying to share the Gospel with, that conversation would be over, wouldn’t it?  But, even though he, the Son of God, is being maligned as a demon-possessed Samaritan, he still holds out the hope of the Gospel to this stiff-necked people.  And, to go with the three lies that the people believe about themselves, Jesus gives them four truths about himself.

Four Truths

Truth #1: Jesus is here to give life.

After the outlandish charge from the people, Jesus answered [vv. 49-51], “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, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

Here is the promise of eternal life but stated negatively.  He will never see death, and therefore, he will have eternal life.  Even though death is still reigning on the earth and that, unless the Lord returns before, we will all die, we still have the promise of eternal life.  We go from life in a perishable, mortal body, to life present with the Lord in our spirit, and then life in the new heavens and new earth in an imperishable, immortal body.

This has been Jesus’s message to them over and over again.  If only Jesus’s life-giving, death-cancelling word could find a place in their hard-hearts!  But the crowd does not sense that Jesus is talking about a spiritual, eternal reality.  They are hearing Jesus say that his word will prevent death in general, not reverse its effects and then abolish it once and for all.

(vv. 52-53) 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.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?”

Here is their point: Abraham “believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he died.  The prophets were given the Word of the Lord and they believed it and proclaimed it, and they died.  So, Jesus is here saying that his word is greater than the word delivered to Abraham and the prophets and that he is greater than Abraham and the prophets, because his word kills death.  “Jesus, is that what you are saying?”  Yes.

Truth #2: Jesus is greater than Abraham & the Prophets (and everyone else in the OT for that matter)

This time the people actually do perceive something that is true.  Jesus is making himself out to be greater than Abraham and the Prophets.  But, he isn’t necessarily the one making himself to be that, God the Father is the one doing that.

(vv. 54-55) 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.’ 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.”

The Son does not glorify himself, the Father glorifies him.  The Son glorifies the Father by keeping his word and by making him known to the world.

But, we also know that Jesus is greater than Abraham and the Prophets because Jesus himself said that the Law and the Prophets testified to who he was and what he would do.  The Prophets prophesied about him.  Even though Abraham’s story takes up 14 chapters of Genesis and then the rest of the OT follows the story of his descendants, the promises that God made to Abraham find their fulfillment in the one greater than Abraham—and even Abraham knew it!

Truth #3: Jesus is the fulfillment to all the promises made to Abraham.

(v. 56) “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.  He saw it and was glad.”

Remember what God promised Abraham in Genesis 12: The Lord would make his name great, the he would give him offspring as numerous as the sand on the seashore, that he would give his offspring the Land of Promise, and that all the families of the earth will be blessed.  While all of these promises were foretasted by the physical descendants of Abraham, the people of Israel in the Old Testament, these things find their fulfillment in Jesus.

How?  By faith.  See, the people thought that Abraham was their father because of his family lineage; they were one of Abraham’s grains of sand because he was forefather by blood.  But, Abraham’s true offspring, those who truly are “sons of Abraham” are his children because they also “believed God and it was credited to them as righteousness” and he is our forefather in the faith.  Therefore, being a son of Abraham, “the Father of Many Nations,” is not limited to ethnic Israel, but to Gentiles (like you and me) who believe.

Paul writes in Galatians 3:7-9, “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. [and he explains how Christ fulfills this in vv. 13-14] Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

It does not matter if you have Jewish blood running through your veins or not, you are a son of Abraham because you believed God—specifically, the Gospel of Jesus Christ—and it was credited to you as righteousness.

Abraham knew of this.  He knew that one of his descendants would come and fulfill the promises that God made to him, one known as the Messiah.  But, more than that, Abraham came to know that it was this man, who was standing before the crowd at the Festival of Booths, known as Jesus of Nazareth, who would be that Messiah and through Jesus of Nazareth, all the nations of the world would be blessed, just like God had said.  That’s why Jesus said “Abraham saw my day.”  Not just a Messianic Age/Day, but Jesus’s day.

But, the people ask how.  “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”  Abraham lived about 2000 BC and this is happening in 32/33 AD.  When the people look at Jesus, in his 30’s, hair not yet turning grey or falling out—how could he have ever seen or spoken to Abraham?

Truth #4 – Jesus is. (v. 58) “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham ever was, I am.”

What is going on here?  Something must be going on here if the people’s impulse was to stone Jesus.  Thos one line is the crescendo of the entire chapter.  Jesus has been pointing to who he is; he has been telling people that if they believe who he says he is they will have eternal life, and he ends by saying “He is [full stop].”

Jesus here is invoking the name of Yahweh.  When Moses asked God what his name was in Exodus 3:14-15, God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Jesus is saying he saw Abraham and Abraham saw him because he is Abraham’s God.  He has eternally existed.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  Jesus invoking the name of the Great I AM solidifies the truth that he has come to set the people free from their bondage to sin death, condemns them in the lies that they believe that they are sons of Abraham and sons of God because they are Israelites, yet invites them to come and bow down before their Lord, God, Liberator, Savior, and King.

But, all these hardhearted people hear is blasphemy, so they try to stone him.  These people who started out believing what Jesus was saying end with trying to kill him.  This really shows that there are two types of people in the world: those who abide in his word and those who can’t stand to hear it.  Those who turn their back on Jesus when they hear a hard word, and those who believe that Jesus alone has the words for eternal life.  Those in bondage, and those the Son has set free—and those the Son has set free are free indeed.