John: The I Am
Notes
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Exegetical Point: Jesus claims are valid because he is the eternally existent God.
Homiletic Point: Jesus is God, obey His Word.
Intro
Intro
Recap
Continued conversation after the feast of tabernacles, but we will come to the conclusion of that conversation today.
Jesus is speaking to a crowd, some of whom were staring to believe in Him
Jesus has revealed that they are not true disciples, and in fact are sons of Satan.
They can’t receive Jesus, because they don’t belong to God. The evidence is obvious.
This gets the crowd riled up. They are not happy to be accused of not being God’s children.
Q&A - Three questions asked in ignorance, but Jesus answers with powerful truth!
Three questions. Three Answers.
The first Q&A reveals the...
Life Giving Word (v48-51)
Life Giving Word (v48-51)
Wild accusations - You’re a demonic heretic!
They would rather cast aspersions on Jesus than deal with the statements. Deflection is a familiar thing… whether you be arguing with your spouse, your bother/sister, or suffering persecution from the world. Instead of dealing with the actual content of the issue (in this case their attitude and actions), they insult Jesus.
The Jews answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”
This is not a mere racial slur and casting aspersions on Jesus’ sanity, they are suggesting that he is outside God’s kingdom, heretical, and under the control of God’s enemies!
Jesus responds and implies that they best be careful about such aspersions, because to dishonor Jesus is to dishonor someone else too:
“I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”
Jesus is our honoring his Father with words and actions, and their response is to dishonor Jesus. Jesus is doing the opposite to what they’re doing.
But in case you got the idea that Jesus was doing all this for his own reputation and honor, he’s not. But there is someone who is trying to glorify Jesus.
Who is this mysterious “glorifyer”? “The Judge”
How will he Judge? He will Judge according to the Word of Christ. Jesus words are the guide and standard for all people, because they are God’s words. He only speaks what the Father Says.
Earlier in John we are told that Jesus is the judge, John 5:22, but here Jesus talks about the Judge as if he were someone else. The Father Judges through the Son! The Son of God is the agent of Judgment of the world. It’s like when the police commissioner speaks at a media conference and talks about “our investigation” or “we arrested” somebody. The commissioner himself doesn’t do the investigating or the arresting, but he is the one who delegates that authority in some sense.
God is the Judge of the world. He is one God in three persons, Father, Son & HS. The scriptures teach us about different roles that they have and how they interrelate. John is famous for the way it reveals this relationship so clearly. Everything that Jesus does is for the Father, including judgment. So we can speak here of the Judgment of God the Father, even while we recognize that Jesus the Son is the “face” of that Judgment! The Son and the father are so entwined that sometimes it is hard to tell them apart!
Jesus is not seeking glory for himself, but the Father is seeking glory for Christ, and he will judge those who dishonor him!
But there is a way to please God. There is a way we can face the Judgment of God with hope. And that’s where Jesus goes. He really wants you to hear this, so he starts with” “Very Truly” or truly truly”, this is super important.
The one who keeps the word of Jesus will never see death. There is an escape from death!
So there is a simple application here: Keep Jesus’ word. Obey Jesus.
Are we to sophisticated for such rudimentary statements? We want to dull the sharpness. Perhaps explain it away with other verses. But we must resists this temptation!
This is God’s word. Let it stand.
It is the way of life!
Obey Jesus’ word! Then you will have life!
Yes, you are a sinner, and no you can’t earn your way to eternal life by keeping Jesus word, but if you are keeping His word, you would acknowledge your sin, and believe in Jesus for salvation. If you were keeping His word you would take seriously the call to discipleship. You would fight sin in your life!
If I started naming those sins, you know what would happen? Many of us have proud hard hearts that would resist this call to repentance. Like Jesus hearers on that ancient day!
We will happily cast up deflections, like Adam & Eve, blaming everyone else.
How about you own up to your failures and repent of them!
What is to be gained by living in excuses? Will they cause you to grow in Godliness? Will they give you eternal life?
Every time your wife brings up that ungodly fruit in your life will you deflect and get angry? Will you make excuses and blame everything else? Or will you own up to it? And deal with it?
In Adam we die as cowards, ashamed of our sin. But, Christ has appeared as the second Adam, and he has given us a word of life: Whoever believes on the Son of God will be saved from their sin.
Stop making excuses for your sin, and come to the one who will wash them all away. Then strive, strive for the holiness that you need to see the Lord.
Run that you may obtain the prize!
Keep the word of Jesus. Obey him! And receive eternal life!
But,
Do you know what Jesus says? How will you keep His word unless you know it? Search the scriptures! Meditate on them! Learn what Jesus says so that you may keep His word and obtain eternal life!
Our next Q&A Reveals...
Abraham looked to Jesus (v52-56)
Abraham looked to Jesus (v52-56)
This statement, that if you keep Jesus Words you will not see death, has made the crowd even more incredulous. They, as is usual for the Gospel of John, miss the spiritual, heavenly meaning of what Jesus is saying, and get caught up on the literal physical implications of what Jesus said:
At this they exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”
They think that this is patently false, what Jesus has said. They can’t believe it.
Abraham, their father in faith, and the literal father of their nation, he has died. He heard from God, he lived a nice long life, but then he died. As did many holy prophets down through the ages.
Yet, here is this upstart Jesus saying that his words would prove to be more powerful than the great fathers of Israel!!
It was crazy to them!
They ask what they think are obvious rhetorical questions: Are you greater than Abraham and Moses? They expect the answer to be no.
This crowd could not conceive of the idea that someone greater than Abraham and Moses stood in their midst, who was trying to teach them the Word of God and who was holding out hope of Salvation.
They though that Jesus was making claimed that elevated himself, they glorified himself. How does Jesus respond to their questions?
Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word.
Once again, Jesus assure them that he is no elevating himself. It is God the Father who is glorifying Jesus.
But, they wouldn’t be able to tell because (as we discussed in the previous section) they don’t know God. How can they recognize the work of God when they don’t know God?
When you write things out by hand, you have a distinctive hand writing style. The way you curve your pen strokes, the slant of the text. The pressure. The spacing. If you look at samples of different hand writing you can tell it’s different people. If you get a bunch of letters from the same person you will learn their writing style, so you can recognize it.
The Jews of Jesus day had heaps of opportunity to see how God worked in History, and Jesus was doing heaps of stuff to tip them off to who he was, but they couldn’t see it. They didn’t recognize God’s handwriting.
Jesus on the other hand, was intimately away of God’s handiwork, and he knew the Father. He essentially says “Though you do not know the Father, I understand him”
As one who know the the father, what does Jesus do? The same thing he calls us to do!
He keeps God’s word. Jesus keeps God’s word, just as we are called to keep Jesus word!
Which bring us back to the question about Abraham and the prophets. Is Jesus greater than Abraham?
Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”
Abraham was looking forward to Jesus. Abraham was held up as a respected figure, and Jesus says that honorable man was hanging out to see him.
What Abraham was looking forward to in hope was the day of Jesus Christ.
We don’t know how much Abraham knew in detail, but he at least knew this:
That God could raise the dead, even a sacrificed son (Hebrews 11:17–19),
That God would bless the whole world through Abraham's children (Genesis 12:3),
That by faith you can be credited as righteous (Genesis 15:6),
In Jesus, all these things would be fulfilled! Abraham did not get to see the fulfillment of the promises God made to him in his lifetime, but he trusted God, and hoped for the day they would all come true.
In Jesus all of God’s promises are “yes” and amen!
Abraham was a precursor to Jesus! Abraham was the prologue, but Jesus is the main event! Abraham foreshadowed, but Jesus embodied!
Unlike the blind and hard-hearted people Jesus was talking to, Abraham knew God, and looked to Jesus. How much more should they have looked to Jesus, seeing as they had the story of Abraham and the prophets testifying to Jesus Christ!
All of the Bible points to Christ in some way or another. The OT is not a bit that we downplay now that Jesus has come. It all looks to Christ. He is the fulfillment of it all!
Our next Q&A Reveals...
Jesus is the I AM (v57-59)
Jesus is the I AM (v57-59)
The obvious question arising from such claims is, how can you presume to know this stuff Jesus? Abraham lived a long time ago...
“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”
Well, Jesus has only walked the earth as a man for a few decades, but, he has a bombshell to drop on them in reply.
“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
Wow. This is a heavy statement!
And once again it start with a “truly, truly”! This is hugely important!
Jesus is claiming to have existed from before Abraham was even born! Thousands of years before this conversation he was having at the temple.
Jesus was claiming some kind of divinity or immortality, to have existed all that time.
Creatures outside time who watch the rise and fall of civilizations is a relatively common trope in modern sci-fi, but long before we imagined Doctor Who Jesus was saying he was an immortal. He trumped their greatest forefather Abraham.
But, he is not only claiming to have existed from before the time of Abraham, he was claiming to be God himself!
We’ve had a bunch of hints already across the pages of John. And in fact the opening verses of John clearly say that Jesus was...
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
But believe it or not, even though this is quite obviously saying that Jesus was God, there are people who explain John 1:1 away. They says the grammar can be read a different way, famously the JWs don’t believe that Jesus is God.
But, here, in John 8, if you had any doubts about whether or not Jesus was God, they are put to rest here!
Jesus says
“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
He doesn’t say “before Abraham was born, I was”, this very clearly says “before Abraham was born, I am”. Jesus was, and is, and will be. He is the eternaly existing one.
In this moment, Jesus is taking on the divine name. The I Am. This is how God revealed himself to Moses!
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”
This is how God wan’t to be known: I am. And Jesus says that this description fits himself. They are one and the same.
Now, Exodus was in Hebrew, and John is written in Greek, so how do we know that Jesus meant to connect these two passages, and it wasn’t just a coincidence of grammar? Well, there is a Greek translation of the OT that we call the LXX, this was the “common bible” of Jesus day, and it is what the NT authors use when they quote the OT.
Jesus uses the same words here in John 8:58 - ego eimi, as the LXX uses in Exodus 3:14, ego eimi.
Jesus is God. He is the I AM.
This is wild stuff! Someone walking around in a human body is the God of Israel? The Eternally Existent one?
This is too much for Jesus hearers. They cannot receive this kind of information. They think that Jesus is being blasphemous! SO they take matters into their own hands!
At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
It was in Gods old Covenant law that they must put to death blesphemers, but, these people were not going to give Jesus a fair trial. They wanted to take justice into their own hands and take Jesus out. They were enraged!
But Jesus hour had not yet come. So he slips away. No one can cause God’s plan to go off course.
Application?
So What?
So What?
Jesus has the life giving word. Keep it and never die.
Even Abraham knew that God had power to bring life out of death. He looked forward to the coming of Christ as even he was a servant of Jesus, and looked to Jesus for salvation.
Jesus is God incarnate. he is the existent one. the I AM. From everlasting to everlasting!
Obey him, keep his word!
References:
Carson’s Pillar Commentary on John.
Hutcheson’s commentary on John
Hendrickson’s commentary on John
Sermons by Richard D. Philips,
Sproul, R. C., ed. The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version. Orlando, FL; Lake Mary, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2005.
Phillips, Richard D. John. Edited by Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani. 1st ed. Vol. 1 & 2 of Reformed Expository Commentary. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2014.