Well, good evening, everyone. Good to see you all again today. The passage tonight we'll be looking at is following the passage that we looked at this morning. That is John chapter 8, verses 48 to 59. Again, I'm using the ESV Bible. John 8, 48 to 59, hear the word of God. The Jews answered him, are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? Jesus answered, 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. 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? 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. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham. Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. And I also want to add Hebrews chapter one, verses one and two to this passage. Again, hear the word of God. At many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. shall we pray. Again, Lord, we thank you for your holy word before us, and we thank you for the opportunity, once again, to look into it this evening. And we ask you, Lord, to give wisdom to us as we hear your word preached, that we would receive the things that you desire for each and every one of us to receive from it, and that we would grow accordingly in your grace. And we pray this all in Jesus' name, amen. Many years ago, I preached at a church a few days before Christmas. And the pastor was a very nice fellow, but before I preached there, when he said, you're going to be preaching three days before Christmas. And he says, I need to warn you of something. He says, my congregation are, for the most part, very hostile to what they call papist holidays like Christmas and Easter. He said, if you preach on the Incarnation that close to Christmas, they might take you out in the parking lot and lynch you. So I figured I better take that advice to heart. And I chose to preach a sermon that dodged the issue of the Incarnation so much that I felt that I kind of took the whole life out of the passage. Afterwards, I was a bit discouraged after I preached it. And I mean, preachers, we tend to be hard on ourselves sometimes. So I might have been unfair to myself. It might not have been that bad. I don't know. I really can't make that judgment. But the reason I felt that way was because in my efforts to avoid talking about the incarnation, I felt that I avoided talking about the entire message that I should be preaching. You see, I've believed for a long time long before that, that preaching should be centered on Jesus Christ, who he is, why he came, what he did, and what the benefits of that are. In other words, Christ and him crucified. And I felt that I really didn't present that when I preached that sermon. And a few years ago, I read this from the book by Sinclair Ferguson, which I really enjoyed and encourage everyone to read that if you want a good modern to be classic book, The Whole Christ. Dr. Ferguson says this in there. He says, is it obvious to me and of engrossing concern that the chief focus, the dominant note of the sermons I preach or hear is Jesus Christ and him crucified? Or is the dominant emphasis focused somewhere else, perhaps on how to overcome sin, or how to live the Christian life, or the benefits to be received from the gospel? I printed this out and taped it above my desk at home so that when I'm working on a sermon, it's there to remind me that this is what I desire to do. I don't maybe always succeed the way I should, but I desire that my sermons be focused on Christ and him crucified, You see, I think Christ and Him crucified is the whole message that we should be hearing. Other people have different philosophies, I understand. But I believe my philosophy of preaching is that Christ and Him crucified is the center of everything that you preach and everything else should come out of that. That should be at the core of a gospel sermon. It doesn't mean that every sermon I preach is an invitation to come to Christ, although that often seems to come about. But the idea is I'm trying to make sermons that truly center on Christ, and not just Christ as a teacher, but who he is and what he did. So that includes the Incarnation. If I'm preaching on the fact that he died on the cross, He had to have come in the first place. He wasn't just a regular guy like the rest of us. So the incarnation has to at least in some way be implied in that, or at least I'm hoping that people can infer it in there, even if I don't come right out and say it. And so when I preach a message like the one tonight, a few days after Christmas, I don't want people to think that this is some promotion of papist holidays. It's because I believe that this message, this passage we're looking at as all passages should center on this. Look, we had enchiladas at lunch today. They were delicious. Whoever cooked them, thank you. I think this is the whole enchilada, the whole message from his incarnation to his ultimate ascension and coming back someday. So that's my That's not an apology, that's just my approach to how I do things when I preach, and I hope that you understand that. In this passage, we're gonna see Jesus comes to earth as one of us because the only way he could do what he needed to do was to come to earth as one of us. Because the only way we could be saved was if God himself, none of us, we read Hebrews 1, the first few verses, none of us could do, no human being born of the normal means, born of Adam and Eve, none of us could do what Jesus needed to do to save us. Only God himself could do it. Only God could be the Messiah. And so that therefore when he makes promises which we see in this passage such as particularly the promise of eternal life. He's giving the promises that God the Father gave all the way through the Old Testament and therefore you and I can count on that. He came to do this job that nobody else could do and his promises are ones that we can count on and trust. So let's take a look again at the passage. and see what plays out here. First of all, as we saw this morning, he's talking to these Jewish leaders who do not like him, and they're getting angrier and angrier at him, even though they seem to sort of believe something when he spoke earlier. They realize they don't like him at all, and they're hating him more as they talk to him. As he said in the last verse of the last passage, the reason you do not hear them, the words of God, is because you are not of God. And he's telling them, he's told them, as we saw this morning, they are children of the devil. The devil's their father. And that's where he's continuing here. Well, again, they're angry from what he's saying. Nobody likes to be called a child of the devil. Unless you're a devil worshipper, maybe. But most people don't like that. So they were very hostile about what he said. And so their response shows something that the unbelieving world shows, too. Christ and they show to us his followers and that is that they reject him with great hostility. This verse, 48, it says, the Jews answered him, are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? They give a two-pronged attack on him here. First of all, they're saying, aren't you a Samaritan? Well, they probably know that's nonsense. Jesus came down from Nazareth but he was not a Samaritan but A Samaritan was to them like the scum of the earth. Samaritans were considered half-breeds, as you recall from studies of the Old Testament. The northern tribes, the ten tribes of the northern Israel, were attacked by the Assyrians and taken into captivity at one point. And during that time, many of the Israelite people intermarried with people from different parts of the world, Assyrian people and so on. They weren't supposed to do that. God didn't want them to marry outside of their own kind unless they brought them in to become part of Israel. But these people didn't do that. So they were looked upon as scum by the Jewish people. They were lowlifes in their opinion. So to call Jesus a Samaritan was really a real put down. And it's funny because Jesus himself didn't seem to have that attitude necessarily toward Samaritans. Remember, matter of fact, you only have to look back a few chapters when Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman at the well. This is a woman of very questionable morals, has been married a number of times and she was living with a man. And besides that, men didn't typically talk to women in public in those days. And here he is sitting there talking, this Samaritan woman at the well in Samaria, and he's being nice to her. And his disciples are puzzled by that. And in telling her, in talking to her, he actually explained who he was. He told her that you're talking to the Messiah, basically. And when he told her all the things about her life, she's like, wow, he knows my whole story. And she went back to her village, brought the people up, and a bunch of them, including her, believed him. believed who he was and trusted him. So he was willing to share the gospel with Samaritan peoples. He wasn't going to completely ignore them. The Samaritans, as I said, they were looked down upon and there's the story that Jesus tells about the good Samaritans. So again, he could see that there could be good in a Samaritan, that they were not unredeemable. The good Samaritan saw the man who'd been robbed and left for dead on the road and what did he do? He cleaned him up, took him to the local inn and took care of him, paid for whatever he needed and said, when I come back I'll pay anything else. Jesus said the Samaritan was good because he recognized who his neighbor was. And the priest and the Pharisee that had come along completely ignored the man. These so-called religious people ignored the poor man. So they're putting Jesus down as a Samaritan and they're also saying, don't you have a demon? Again, in that time of history, anybody who seemed crazy, they figured they were probably demon-possessed, and they may be on some occasions, and that's true today. Somebody may be demon-possessed. It's not that people no longer can be demon-possessed, but generally speaking, if we see somebody today who has delusions, we usually assume they're mentally ill of some sort. Well, to them, they're just basically saying, you're talking crazy, so you must be possessed by a demon. There's no other explanation why somebody would say the things you're saying. You talk to God, he's your father. You do everything he says. You've got this great relationship with him. You're calling us sons of the devil. You obviously have a demon. And of course, that's the kind of thing you and I get from the world ourselves. You know, it's funny. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say anything bad about Jesus today. Think about that. They usually say nice things. They may be wrong things, but they're nice things. They say, he was a good man. He was a great teacher. He was a great moral example to follow. We follow his teachings. And they don't follow his teachings, but they say, we follow his teachings. Such things as he might even be an evolutionary jump in humanity. He might be where we're all going to be in a few thousand years. They'll say good things about him. But you and me, they don't say good things about. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, they will say bad things about you. And they'll say things like, well, you know, Jesus never said anything that was wrong about homosexuality. Jesus never said anything was wrong about people living together outside of marriage. Jesus never said anything about abortion, so on. It's like, Yes, he did. You see, they're thinking that the four Gospels we have are everything Jesus said, apparently. And if it's not in there, then Jesus never said it. We don't have it all recorded. Jesus said a lot of things that are not recorded in the Gospels. And even so, on top of that, Jesus said, when he was here, that he upholds the entire word of God. He says not one jot or tittle will be changed until it's fulfilled, and he claims himself to be the one who fulfills it. So he stands behind everything God the Father said, all through the history of the world and through the writing of the scriptures, all the 39 books before he came to earth, he stands behind. He says, this is what I believe, this is God's word and I uphold God's word. Again, you're treated with hostility because, as he tells us elsewhere, they hate you because they hate me. They may coat it with sugar, but they truly hate Jesus because of who he is. And that's because of who they are, children of the devil. So, Jesus responds, and he points out, they're saying you're making a big thing out of yourself, you're trying to make yourself important. He responds by saying, First of all, I do not have a demon. He doesn't even mention the Samaritan thing. I think he feels that's not even worth bringing up. I do not have a demon, but I honor my father and you dishonor me. I stand here claiming my father as God and standing behind everything, he says, and you have the nerve to dishonor me, to put me down. Say I'm demon possessed. Say I'm a Samaritan. You dishonor me, yet I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. And then down in verse 54, he says, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my father who glorifies me. What's he saying? He's saying, God, he says, I didn't come here to glorify myself. He says, I came here to represent God, and he glorifies me. And he will ultimately glorify Jesus whenever he raises him from the dead, takes him up to his right hand where he reigns as king of kings and lord of lords. He's saying, God honors me because I'm his son. I don't have to make a big thing out of myself. Earlier, when Jesus, before the Feast of Tabernacles, that's where he's at now, the Feast of Tabernacles. Before that, his brothers, his natural earthly brothers, who were not believers, told him how he should go up to Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles and make a big entrance there. In other words, to glorify himself. They're saying if you want to be somebody, they figured he thinks he's the messiah, he does some pretty neat parlor tricks, so he had to go up there and make himself known to everybody that here I am, I'm this messiah, I'm here to lead you out of the control of the Roman Empire. and make Israel great again. Excuse me. But at any rate, that's what they wanted him to do. And he said, no, my time hasn't come. You guys go, my time's not come. And he did go up later. He went up when God the Father had him go, because that's when he does everything, when God the Father shows him to go. And so he goes up, and that's when he starts teaching in the temple, and that's when all this stuff happens. And he's talking to these Jewish people who don't like him. But the timing is so important because he's not there to promote himself. He's there for God to promote. He's there for God to glorify. We also need to remember that in our own situation as people in God's body, the church. We don't need to show off and be important. We don't need to be fighting for our legacy and so on. If God wants to glorify you in some way, that's his business. We're simply his servants. And we need to practice humility that way and recognize that that's what God has called us to do. He's the one that does the glorifying. We're not here to show a big show, like some of the TV preachers with the pompadour hairdos, not that there's anything wrong with a pompadour hairdo, it's just the showy style, you know, I'm a big-time guy, and knocking people over with their hands and so on. So we don't need to do that. All we need to do is be humble servants. When we get over there, if we've done what he's called us to do, he's gonna say, well done, my good and faithful servant. And that's what we should be looking for. Jesus understood that. Remember, Jesus is who we're following. So he sets the example for his people. So, onward. If you're trusting Jesus at his word, you will not taste death. Now that's quite a statement to make. Again, looking in verses 51 and following. Truly, truly, that's the third time today we've heard Jesus say that. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. Anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. The Jews said to him, now we know that you have a demon. Now we know you're nuts. We listen to you, all we have to do is listen to you and keep your word, and we're not gonna die. This is crazy. You have a demon for sure. Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets, they all died. Who do you make yourself out to be? And who do you think you are? You've got a lot of nerve to say these things, to say that you can actually defeat death. So what's he saying? If you're trusting him, you won't taste death. Now, what exactly does that mean? Obviously, we're gonna die. Every one of us, unless the Lord returns first, everyone in this room and everyone watching us is gonna die. We all know that. And Jesus is not saying you're not gonna physically die. He's saying you will ultimately be raised from the dead, but more importantly, you will be raised spiritually first, and then you will be raised from the dead. The idea of not facing death, obviously, we know that everyone died. I've heard preachers say that death is a natural part of life, and it's not. I've never heard an RP preacher say that by the way. Death is not a natural part of life. God didn't create us to die. We weren't supposed to die. We're supposed to live forever. But when Adam and Eve sinned, he told them in Genesis 2.17, he says, if you eat of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die. And the actual phrasing is something along the lines of, in dying, you will die. He's saying there's two aspects to the death, in other words. In other words, they will die spiritually because they disobeyed God and broke ties with God. And that'll bring on ultimate physical death. They didn't die right away. He was merciful to them and let them live for a number of years after that and have children. But they still were already spiritually dead. They faced that separation from the gracious presence of God by sinning against him and by by not believing him and trusting him. So, yes, we'll all face natural death someday. But somewhere along the way, he's gonna come back, and when he does, we will be raised with him. And the second death will not be anything we need to worry about, because we've already been raised spiritually. As far as God's concerned, you can read it in the first chapters of Ephesians, where he has seated you in the heavenly places already. That's where you are, in God's sight. That's where he has his people now. Because you've been already spiritually raised, you can't die spiritually again because you've now been raised from the dead spiritually. And that promise means that you will be physically raised. The bodies that we all have here, falling apart though they may be, will be raised someday in perfection. And we will all have perfect bodies like he has, in absolute perfection, like him. You can indeed trust him. If you're trusting him at his word and he's saying that he is the means of salvation, you have no reason to fear physical death because spiritual death has been defeated and likewise physical death has been defeated. He defeated it when he rose from the grave. He demonstrated that God had accepted his sacrifice and that therefore death had been defeated. and therefore it is defeated for you and me as well as we put our faith in him. And then he goes on here to tell us about Abraham, how Abraham knew Jesus and he trusted Jesus. That's a strange, strange statement that he makes, but he goes on looking in verses 54 again. Again, 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 I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. He's really tough on these people. He says, but I do know him and I keep his word. And then this verse, your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. Abraham saw Jesus, he's saying. Now that's something that might strike you as a little odd. Back in the Old Testament, there were a number of occasions where there are physical appearances of a man, angel, who looks like a man. coming and being referred to usually as the angel of God or the angel of Lord, that is. Sometimes the angel of God, sometimes the word, sometimes just the Lord, but there's a physical appearance. That physical appearance is what we call a Christophany. It's a pre-manifestation of Christ before he actually was born of the Virgin Mary. He came and looked like one of us, but he wasn't actually one of us, but he manifested himself as if he were human. And Abraham, amongst others, had experiences where he saw the angel of the Lord appearing to him. And that's part of what Jesus is saying here. Back in Genesis 12, 7, It says the angel of the Lord appeared to Abraham and promised the land and also promised that he would have an offspring. He was promising about, of course, Isaac. Then in Genesis 15, It refers to him as the word appearing. The word of the Lord came in a vision. This was the one with the smoking fire pot where Abraham split the animals in half and the smoking fire pot went between them. But the angel appeared to him. And also, again, this was showing God's covenant with him. And it was also a promise, again, that he would have a son and that his offspring would be like the sand like the stars in the heavens. Then in Genesis 17 verses 1 to 14, the Lord, here it just says the Lord, but again it's an appearance. He came and gave the covenant of circumcision with Abraham. Once again, he promised that he would have a son and his son's name would be Isaac. And of course, after sometime Isaac was born. And then in Genesis 18 verses 1 and following, it said he appeared to Abraham in the Oaks of Mamre to tell him about the baby that was going to come in a year. Now he put a specific time period on it. And the latter part of that, 18 through 21, he tells Abraham that because of what he's going to do to Sodom and Gomorrah, he believes in Abraham being such a special person for him being the person who's going to father his people that he should know what he's going to do. So he told Abraham that he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. So these are appearances that Abraham saw, and that's why Jesus can say, he saw my day and was rejoicing in it. But more than that, it's just the idea that God spoke to Abraham about the day that would come when Abraham's descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the heavens and the sand on the seashore, that Abraham, he was telling him, that Abraham's seed would be a blessing to all the nations, that all the nations that were separated from God at the Tower of Babel would be brought back and they would have the opportunity to be children of God, not just children of Abraham, but the descendants of Abraham. He's promising that. Abraham rejoiced at knowing that, that someday his seed would be responsible. Of course, that seed is ultimately Jesus, who would be responsible for restoring the people to God, all the nations. So Abraham rejoiced in this. As Jesus says here, well, then these people, they Again, they're saying, now wait, now this is more craziness you're saying. Versus continuing on in the passage, he says, your father Abraham rejoiced in my day. He saw it and was glad, but they said to him, you are not 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham? Now, some of the commentators will say, Jesus looked pretty worn out. He was probably about 32 at the time, and they say they must have thought he looked a bit older than that. So they thought he was probably maybe pushing 50 because, well, you know, he was in a world full of sin and evil that he had to tolerate in a way that none of us could understand. So he definitely was beaten up by the world. Maybe he really looked like he could be nearly 50 or not. That's really not important because the important thing was he most certainly wasn't 2,000 years old. Ever seen Mel Brooks, the 2,000-year-old man? He wasn't 2,000 years old. Nobody's lived that long. Methuselah didn't live that long. So they're saying this is more nonsense. You're telling us you saw Abraham. And then Jesus tells them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. And this statement is very important. People will sometimes say, Jesus never said he was God. This statement here is where Jesus is very much, very clearly saying he's God. These people knew it. That's why they picked up the stones to throw at him. They wanted to kill him. He was a real full-fledged blasphemer at this point by claiming to be God himself. Now, how does that go? Well, he says, before Abraham was, I am. There are a number of occasions in the Gospel of John where he, there are seven of them, where he says, I am. Seven of them beside this one. And these ones where he claims I am such and such. For instance, John 6, 35, he says, I am the bread of life. And John 8, 12, he says, I am the light of the world. In John 10, seven through nine, he says he's the door of the sheep. And then in John 10, 11, and 14, he refers to himself as I am the good shepherd. 11, 25 of John, he says, I am the resurrection and the life. John 14, six, he says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. Finally, 15, one through five, he says, I am the true vine. Now again, he's saying I am, but there's something important about what he says there. In the original Greek, that expression, I am, that he uses in all those seven cases, and that he uses here in the one we're looking at, it is the words ego eimi. We get the word ego from that I. And basically, ego eimi is basically saying, I am who I am. I am that I am. It sounds like a redundancy. And nobody else would say something like that. When he's saying it, he is clearly defining himself as God. He's showing these people that doubt him that he is actually the I Am. When Moses was tending his father-in-law's sheep and he saw this bush that was on fire and it wasn't burning, it wasn't burning up, he went over it. Over to it, and in Exodus chapter three, it tells us that the angel of the Lord was in that bush. Again, who did I say the angel of the Lord is? It's a pre-incarnation of Jesus. The angel of the Lord spoke to him. He said, he told him to go tell the people, the Hebrew people, to follow him and come out of Egypt. And Moses is like, why should they listen to me? And he says, who should I tell them sent me? What does he say? He says, tell them I am sent you. Tell them that the I am Yahweh said to go. That's who he said he is, Yahweh, which is where we get the word Jehovah. When you see in the Old Testament, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that's the tetragrammaton as it's called. That means you're seeing the name Jehovah, the I am that I am person. And when he made that statement to Moses, Moses realized that it was God. Notice how it doesn't say that I was before Abraham. He says, I am. God is the self-existent one. God doesn't have a beginning or end. He created time. for the universe's sake, and this is something that we really can't understand. I know that I can't understand this. I can't comprehend the idea that God existed before the creation of the world because that seems to imply time. I can't get that. But God always is. He has no past, present, or future. God is. He is the I am. And so when Jesus is talking here, and he uses that expression, now, When God says that to Moses, when he says that to Moses, that's in the ancient Hebrew. But the Septuagint version of the Bible that was used by the Jewish people at the time of Christ, that was kind of like their daily Bible, like maybe your New King James or one of those, that was the one they used regularly rather than the Hebrew Bible. That Bible, the Greek Septuagint, when it interprets that verse, which is Exodus 3.14, it interprets it, ego eimi. So they are very clearly understanding Yahweh and Ego eimi mean the same thing. And that's why these people want to kill Jesus, because he's making claims to being God. They picked up stones. Now, they didn't even have, as I've mentioned earlier, I believe, they didn't even have the right, according to the Romans, to capital punishment. They weren't allowed to put somebody to death. even for blasphemy. And not only that, they were supposed to take people outside, not just outside the temple, but outside the city. They were going to stone them right there in the temple. And not only that, they were supposed to put him on trial. There was no trial here. They wanted to kill him right off the bat. That's how furious they were in what he said. That's how much they realized that he was making this claim. So if anybody tells you that Jesus never said he was God, he most certainly said he was God in this passage. He's very clearly stating it. So with that in mind. As we think about this whole passage, when he says that he is, I am, and he points back to, back in verse 55, where he says, I keep his word, referring to the word of God, the word of the father, then back in his, in 51 where he says, anyone who keeps my word, what he's saying is, the word I keep is God's word. The word I keep is the Father's word. The Father promised salvation. We sang about salvation earlier in Psalm 69. We're going to sing about the promises of God for resurrection in a little bit in Psalm 16. God promises His people will be raised from the dead just as Jesus was raised from the dead. We'll sing that. These promises, when Jesus makes the promises, he's making the promises that God had already made in all 39 books before and all the rest of the scripture. Abraham believed him and Abraham didn't have anything near what we have now. There was nothing written yet when Abraham spoke with him. We have the whole revelation of God for us. The promises of God are the same. The Old Testament God was not a different God than the New Testament God, as some people try to say. It's all the same God. Three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And Jesus, when he makes the promises of eternal life, you can trust him because he's speaking for the Father as God himself. Shall we pray? Heavenly Father, we thank you that Jesus, your Son, came to earth to do something that nobody else could do. No angel could do it. None of us sinners could do it. There was no means possible. that salvation could be obtained. He had to come. He had to be born like one of us, but without sin. And he had to live that perfect sin-free life to be an acceptable sacrifice. to you to be able to satisfy your desire, your need to be propitiated. And so Lord, we thank you that he did that so that now you can look upon us who put our faith in his word, who keep his word, who keep your word. We can look upon him in faith and know that we have eternal life. It can't be taken from us. It is eternal life. It began at the moment we believed. Help us to be trusting him, trusting him at his word, because he is truly God, your son. We pray this all in his name, in Jesus' name, amen.