Turn in your Bibles to John chapter 15. Unlike the previous sermons in this series, it's going to be more of a topical sermon, but we will be beginning at John 15, verses 1 through 8. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away and every branch that bears fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You're already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. By this is my father is glorified that you bear much fruit. So you will be my disciples. Amen. Father, we thank you for this, your word. We thank you for all of your scriptures and that you have promised to be a God to us and to our children after us. and that if you are for us, who can be against us? And so as we study your word, I pray that our hearts would truly be caught up in faith and praise and encouragement, and that we would continue to worship you with the meditations of our hearts. In Christ's name we pray this, amen. Well, the passage we just read indicates that Christ is sufficient for all of our needs, and that is a cool concept all on its own. But the passage also indicates that Jesus makes what the world would consider a rather audacious claim, without me you can do nothing. Now, we're going to look at that verse a little bit later on in the sermon, but that's not the only exclusive claim that Jesus makes. And over the past three weeks we've been looking at the five solas of the Reformation, or if you want English instead of Latin, the five alones of the Reformation. And we've looked, first of all, at sola scriptura, or scripture alone, sola gratia, or grace alone, and sola fide, or faith alone. Now, in our pluralistic country, those phrases are not too well received. But this phrase, solus Christus, or Christ alone, is just as controversial. And you'd think that in a pluralistic society, they would just kind of leave you alone and let you believe anything that you want to believe. I mean, that's what pluralism is about, right? It's about being kind to one another and having tolerance and love. But Christ says this in Matthew 12, verse 30, he who is not with me, is against me. At first it may not seem that way, but it is guaranteed. This means that all pluralism is against Christ, and Christ is against all pluralism, and certainly the Father wants every square inch of planet Earth to be put under Christ's feet. 1 Corinthians 15 says he must remain at the right hand of the Father until all enemies are put under his feet. The Father is not, he doesn't shine too well to pluralism. He wants all for Jesus, all for Jesus, all my ransomed being, my powers, everything I have and own needs to be completely sold out for Christ. But I think you have seen in recent years that pluralism has the capability of bringing persecution against Christians even here in America. It can be very, very intolerant. And the sad thing about it is that when our society rejects the claims of Christ upon it, it is really rejecting the very thing, the very philosophy that brings the maximum liberty to all men, whether believers or unbelievers. And it's a strange thing. but they're going to be experiencing less and less liberty as they throw off the bonds of Christ. And I think you've seen the escalation of intolerance more and more as well. Homosexuals in the name of tolerance are intolerant, absolutely intolerant of the Bible's exclusive definition of marriage, and they've started persecuting Christians who believe in that exclusive definition of marriage. And you might think, why do they care? Why don't they just leave us alone? Pluralism cannot just leave you alone. Pluralism is inherently against all exclusivity. Christianity and pluralism are mutually exclusive systems. And just as some examples, the head of a large corporation recently was fired from his job. Why? Because on his own time, with his own money, A couple years before, he had donated to a pro-marriage cause in California, an initiative that was there. When they found out about it, wow, it was history. You have seen bakers and florists who have been forced by courts to perform their services for homosexual weddings. In Denmark, pastors can be jailed, and this is a fairly recent thing as well, but they can be jailed if they refuse to perform a wedding ceremony for a homosexual couple. They can't even say, you know, I'm busy, let me refer you to another pastor. They cannot do that. That pluralistic society is persecuting the non-pluralists who are in their midst. And what is true of the GLBT movement is true in other areas of pluralistic society. For example, in America here, OBGYNs have been fired for refusing to perform an abortion. You'd think that they would let you opt out, but no, the opposite is true. Dr. Vicki Duncan was told by her medical insurance company that they were going to drop her medical malpractice insurance if she refused to provide artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. She was not allowed to opt out on that. There was another doctor, Dr. Jeffrey Keenan, who has recently faced a very long and humiliating ethics investigation when charges were brought against him when he refused to perform an abortion. He encouraged the couple to go elsewhere. He said, I really can't do this, but let me refer you to somebody else. Well, no, they brought a complaint against him. And even though he was exonerated, in the end, after a long, grueling investigation, he is still continuing to receive persecution. And I think you know the same stories. You've heard them. There are hundreds and hundreds of examples where the humanistic pluralism of today's USA has a rigid intolerance for dissent from its viewpoint, which automatically excludes the five solas of the Reformation. They cannot coexist. It is impossible for them to coexist for very long. Well, the same is true of the doctrine of Solus Christus. In John 1, verse 3, It says of Jesus, all things came into being by him, and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. And I want you to notice again the word nothing. He makes an exclusive claim to being the creator of all things, the only creator, it's solus Christus, it is Christ alone, nothing just happened. Well, if you've got a Christian biology professor who happens to believe that exclusive claim from the Bible, there are many universities in the states, he will be automatically fired. The most recent example that I read about last week was Mark Armitage, who is a very, very good scholar, very well published, good researcher. And anyway, at the California State University Northridge, he was fired because he published the findings of soft tissue in the triceratops horn that they had uncovered. And when it was published in a peer review journal, he was fired because evolutionists know that there cannot be any soft tissue after millions of years. And so rather than looking at the objective evidence that's been studied and presented, he just got fired. John 14, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Now you would think, the way pluralists talk, that they would say, oh, that's a nice viewpoint for you, that's okay, but I have a different viewpoint. And if they said that, I'd be quite fine with that, because we don't believe in forcing our viewpoints on anybody. Because God's the only one who can change a heart, we believe in the free market of ideas where people, you have the truth out there and God will open the eyes when they need to be opened up. But not the pluralist. He insists that you abandon your rigid exclusivity and you embrace pluralism or you will not be tolerated. Rome was exactly the same way. Did you know that it had freedom of religion, so-called? It was actually a toleration of any religion in the world so long as that religion would do two things. First thing, it had to acknowledge Caesar to be Lord over that religion. In other words, it was the state over the church. And the second thing that they had to do is they had to agree that they were not the only way. If they're part of a big pantheon of religions, that's okay. Rome was the definition of pluralism. And yet, we have seen in pluralistic dominated cultures that eventually it leads to the persecution of Christianity. It is not the safety net that Christian pluralists had hoped for. And even the nicest of pluralists at least insist that it's outrageous for Christians to make any exclusive claim with regard to their religion. At a minimum, they think it's really not polite to be talking about those things in the public sphere. Let me give you a quote on this. Feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruther put it this way, the idea that Christianity or even the biblical faiths have a monopoly on religious truth is an outrageous and absurd religious chauvinism and the implication is that it should not be tolerated. Now at the popular level, Oprah Winfrey said, there are millions of ways to be a human being and many paths to what you call God. There couldn't possibly be just one way. Well, Jesus begs to differ, and he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me. And just as the church's very survival and its welfare hangs on whether they embrace the first three solas, And it really is critical. The church has been abandoning these solas altogether. But just as our survival and welfare depends on those first three solas, it depends on faith in Christ alone. At the time of the Reformation, much of the debate about the Solus Christus related to salvation. How do we get saved? Do we need any other mediators besides Jesus, like Mary and the saints, or is it Christ alone? Are the merits of Christ alone? Are His good works sufficient for our salvation, or do we need to supplement them with the saints or others? And it wasn't just the Romanists that they were having to deal with, but the Enlightenment as well. Is Jesus the only way that people can be saved? There were some people who were saying, you know, look how good Plato and Aristotle were. Surely people can be saved apart apart from Christ. And so I debated this past week, back and forth, how I'm going to do this. Do I focus on where the Reformation was largely focusing? And I thought, well, the last two solas are so tied up on these salvation issues with Solus Christus. I thought, let me just expand on this a little bit and show how Solus Christus goes way beyond salvation. It certainly includes it, and we'll touch on that. But I'm going to be looking at this gospel's I am statements. John uses the phrase I am 23 times in this Gospel and commentators point out that in the Gospel of John it's a very unusual phrase because every time Jesus uses it, the Jews try to kill him. What is there about this phrase that would make the Jews want to kill him? It's just a very innocuous term. In the Greek, it's ego eimi. And in the English, it's I am. Okay, so what? What's the difference on that phrase? But you need to realize that Jesus spoke Hebrew and Aramaic, and the ego eimi is translating a phrase in the Hebrew that automatically, when Jesus is using it, makes Jesus to be divine. And I want you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 3. And before we dig into these, I want us to see the background on this, Exodus chapter 3. And let's read verses 13 through 15. Then Moses said to God, indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me, what is his name, what shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you. Moreover, God said to Moses, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, the Lord, and that's all capital letters in the New King James. Anytime you got all capital letters, Lord, it's Yahweh. OK, so he's saying Yahweh, 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 this is my memorial to all generations. So he says, my name is I Am, my name is Yahweh. And actually, the two are so closely related because I Am is simply the verbal form of the name Yahweh. It's exactly the same root of the Hebrew. And the Old Testament used the phrase, I am of Yahweh, in exactly the same way that the gospel uses it of Jesus, which makes sense, since it was ordinarily God the Son who was speaking and dealing with Israel in the Old Testament. So what the Old Testament did is it was showing that Yahweh was the self-existent God who was all-sufficient for their every need. When Abraham was afraid, God said, I am your shield, which is another way of saying Yahweh, your shield. When Abraham left all to follow the Lord, God encouraged him by saying, I am your exceedingly great reward. When Israel doubted that God could give them the victory, God said through Isaiah, I am the first and I am the last. Beside me, there is no God. In other words, don't worry about it. I'm God. I'm Yahweh. I'm the I am. I can take care of all of your needs. When Moses tried to get out of his job, he was very, very timid. And he said, I can't even speak very well. And he complained, God told Moses to say to Israel, I am has sent me to you. And we'll develop that a little bit. But I Am spoke of the eternally self-existent God who needed nothing. In fact, it's impossible for God to be selfish because He has no needs. Instead, He's constantly overflowing to the other members of the Trinity. God the Father loving and giving to the Son and to the Spirit and vice versa. And He's constantly overflowing in His generosity to us. When Moses complained of that stuttering that I mentioned, God responded and said, who has made the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Is it not I, Yahweh? Now, therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say. So he's telling Moses, I want you to put your confidence in me, not in yourself. I know you've got disabilities. I put them there. And you can trust me to come through on your behalf. And so that phrase, I am, is a wonderful phrase. When you're in bondage to sin, God says, trust me, I am your redeemer. When you are sinking under the waves of sorrow and grief, God says, hey, I'm your rock. I'm the joy of your salvation. Why are you looking to other cisterns than to me? Look to me. Every need you have, God can overflow, as Paul words it, exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. Amen? He is a God who provides lovingly for us. So he's sufficient, he's more than sufficient for all of our needs, and without him we can do nothing. And so one of the things you see in the Gospel of John, which we're going to turn to now, is that all of the I am statements presuppose Solus Christus and all of the Solus Christus passages presuppose the total sufficiency of Jesus. Now this means that when the Jews rejected Jesus, they took up stones to stone him, they were rejecting the I am and they were embracing the I am not. They were rejecting the power of God and they were embracing an empty form. that did not have any power whatsoever in it. And even though you would never be tempted probably to stone Jesus, you just as surely reject his claim to be the great I am when you think he is not sufficient for my particular problems. Somebody else's problems, Phil Kaiser's problem, yeah, he's sufficient for that, but not my problems. But we need to recognize we are rejecting the very promises of a God who cannot lie, when we think that way. His claim is, I am sufficient for your every need. And when you try to supplement Jesus with your flesh, or with the expertise of the world, or when you doubt His promises that He will sustain you, and when you say, I can't do this, I can't do all things through Christ who strengthens me, you're rejecting Solus Christus. There are many, many substitutes for Christ that Christians feel that they need. Now let me tell you a true story that I think I told you about 10 years ago or so, but the brothers that I'm going to talk about come from the Collier family. A very, very wealthy family in New York, and back in 1909, the parents got a divorce, and they were about 20 years old at the time, and they decided to go live with their mom, Susie, in the mansion on 128th Street and Fifth Avenue, which if you know, New York is in the really bad section of town. Now back in 1909, it was already starting to go downhill and become a little bit more crime-ridden. And so the two brothers retreated into isolation. They eventually began boarding the house up, setting booby traps all over the house to ward off the would-be intruders who were coming to steal their treasure. Now their treasure was just junk that they had piled up in the house. But there was one time when the police showed up at their doorstep because they had failed to pay their monthly mortgage. So they just wrote a check for the rest of it. They had BOKU money, all the money they needed. They wrote off the rest of the mortgage so that nobody would bother them anymore, and from that time on, hardly anybody ever met them. They failed to pay their utilities, eventually had the water and the gas shut off, and they had, as I said, plenty of money, but they'd never used it. On March 21, 1947, the police received an anonymous tip that it seemed like somebody may have died in that house, so the police came, they tried to when nobody responded at the door, tried to break in the front door, it was so solidly wedged in, as much as they tried, they couldn't get through, so they went up onto the top story of the building to try to get in through a top window, because the bottom ones were all filled with junk as well, and that one was all filled up with junk, so they started hauling stuff out, lowering it by rope down to the ground, and it was things like two old umbrellas tied together with a rope, and bundles of magazines, Bits of machinery and all kinds of stuff that they were lowering out when they got enough out they stepped in and As soon as they came in they found Homer Collier's corpse on a bed Clutching a 27 year old copy of the Jewish Morning Journal, even though he had been blind for years. He's holding this Journal in his hands, okay now the police were especially shocked to see the piles and piles of junk that were absolutely worthless that was everywhere and They had been collecting things like machinery, auto parts, boxes, appliances, folding chairs, musical instruments, rags. Nobody knows why they were collecting rags, but there are rags everywhere. Bundles of newspapers. Front door was completely blocked by the junk, and so they just started excavating the best they could. They worked around the clock for three weeks, and they finally uncovered Langley Collier's body. Apparently, he had been crawling through a hole to bring food to his brother, and a booby trap that he had set went off, and all of this junk collapsed onto him. They eventually removed more than 140 tons of garbage out of that home. Now, here is the weird thing. Enormously wealthy, they had had an incredible inheritance, but they neglected it because they treasured their garbage. And I think it's a parable of the lives of some Christians. If we are indeed blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, why, why on earth do we neglect it? Why do we not take access of the things that we have in the heavenlies? Why is it that we treasure the garbage that is around us? Well, these IMs hopefully will show why we should not do that. First pile of junk that the spiritual colliers collect in their house are authorities that are not the Word of God. We have Christians that claim revelation that goes beyond the Bible and contradicts the Bible. For example, people claim, yeah, the Lord led me. I had a pastor tell me this. The Lord led me to divorce my wife. And I said, but God would never contradict his word. And the Bible clearly says, this is not what you are to do in terms of divorce. And he said, well, it may not be the perfect will of God, but God has led me to do this. They're appealing to an authority But it is not the authority of Jesus. We have worldly authorities in the areas of psychology, sociology, civics, and others that contradict Jesus, and yet Christians will go along without authority rather than with the word of God. I've run across many Christians who flat out say the Bible does not speak to politics. It is not sufficient to give us any guidance in politics. We need to go to natural law for that. But the great I Am throughout this gospel claims to have given us everything we need as an authority in every area of our lives. Because I dealt with this three Sundays ago, the Sola Scriptura. I'm only going to look at one verse just so you can get a little bit of a hint of it. Take a look at John chapter 4, John chapter 4 and verses 25 through 26. Now this is the woman at the well speaking. You all know the story very well. But take a look at verse 25. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Now, the Greek says, ego eimi. is the one speaking to you. The I am is the one speaking to you. So he's claiming not only to be the coming Messiah who would speak all things, but to be the I am who gave the entire Old Testament. And because I've dealt with this at such a great length under the first Sola, living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, I'm not going to amplify this too much. But John chapter one says that Jesus, you know, the son of God is the word, right? Pre-incarnate, after the incarnation, He is the Word, He is the communication of the Father. But the Gospel also indicates that there is nothing that the Father does or says that the Son does not also do or say. And it says He received all things from the Father and in turn gave all things to the Holy Spirit. And so He fully represents the Father. And as the great I am, he has always been the only authoritative revelation of the Father. Now this means that even though the Son of God used prophets in the Old and the New Testaments to write the scripture, they're just a mouthpiece for Jesus, right? For the Son of God, for the Word. As Jesus told the apostles, the words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works. The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father who sent me. In John 17, Jesus tells the Father, for I have given them the words which you have given me, and they have received them." Now, if 100% of the Father's authority is channeled into the kingdom through the Lord Jesus Christ, that means we don't get some of the Father's authority through Jesus and some through some other source, okay? When it comes to the authority of Scripture, which is the first Sola, The book of John is quite clear that Jesus speaks the whole will of the Father to the church through the whole Bible, or as the passage in John 4 words it, Jesus tells us all things. So I won't get into it in too much detail, but sola scriptura necessitates Solus Christus, and Solus Christus necessitates Solus Scripturae. They are logically so intertwined you cannot separate them. And in the first sermon, we looked in depth on how the Bible does indeed provide the foundations for ethics and civics and mathematics and science and linguistics and art and even music. And most evangelicals are completely oblivious to the fact that the Bible speaks so much to every area of life. So that's the first implication of Jesus being the I Am. Solus Christus necessitates Solus Scriptura. Now I'm going to try to book through the rest of these as quickly as I can, but take a look at chapter 6 and verse 20 for the second I Am. And actually, let's back up. Let's start reading at verse 18. The disciples are in this storm. They're alone in the boat. It says, then the sea arose, because a great wind was blowing. So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat, and they were afraid. But he said to them, it is I, or literally, I am, a go, a me, do not be afraid. Then they willingly received him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going. Now only Yahweh could do that. Only the I Am could do that, and Jesus continues to have the power to bring storms into your life and then to calm those storms. He has the ability to frustrate your rowing, where you're a work and your tail off, you're not getting anywhere. And then, as you come to Him, to miraculously bless your rowing, where you're instantly over at the shore. Okay, He has the ability to continue to do this. But it's only when we recognize Jesus as being in that storm that we have the kind of joy that the disciples had in verse 21. It says, then they willingly received him into the boat. Now this passage doesn't say the storm was calmed at that point. There was another miracle where that happened. So it may very well have been that they were still in the storm, but it was a recognition of Him that brought them joy. Now, I couldn't find the source, but I remember my father telling me a story of some Christians in the early centuries of Christianity. who were being given the opportunity to recant their faith. All their clothes had been taken off. They were put out onto the ice. It was bitterly cold. And they said as soon as they recanted their faith, they could come in and get their clothing. Well, the Christians were out there prepared to die, singing praises to God and clinging together. And at one point, one of the younger Christians just couldn't handle it anymore and he came off the ice, which was the sign he wanted his clothes back, he was willing to renounce his faith. And one of the soldiers who had been standing waiting to see if they would recant said, you fool, didn't you see the angels all around you? And that soldier took off his own clothing. He went out onto the ice to die with those other Christians because he saw something this young man had failed to see. He saw something that stirred a hunger deep within him and it caused him to be willing to die, lay down his life so that he could have that something. Okay? When you are on the ice or you are in the storm, it's so easy to momentarily trade in Jesus for some clothing. It's so easy to trade in eternal warmth for the comfort of temporary warmth. And if we do that, we are being blind like that young man. We're being blind and foolish like those Collier brothers. So where do we go in the storms of life? Do we cling to Jesus or do we cling to earthly securities and comforts, which really amount to just the junk that's in the Collier mansion? We have a bank account in Christ Jesus that is far, far, far more glorious. And the doctrine of Solus Christus calls us to trust in Him. We tend not to do that. We tend to frantically, anytime we get in trouble, we frantically cling to something else. He calls us to trust in Him. The third I am is repeated four times in the same chapter. I am the bread of life. And you can see that phrase in verses thirty-five, forty-one, forty-eight, and fifty-one. Now let me start with the context because in verses one through five he had just finished feeding the the crowds there with the five loaves and the two fish there, 5,000 people. I mean, everybody was impressed. Who wouldn't be impressed when he's able to feed their stomachs? But that's as far as they are able to see. And if that's as far as we're able to see, we are not fully appreciating Solus Christus. Look at verses 14 through 15. When those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, said, this is truly the prophet who was to come into the world. Therefore, when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he departed again to a mountain by himself alone. I want you to get that phrase, they came to take him by force. There's no submission there, they have their own agenda. They wanted to use Jesus. He's going to be their new entitlement program. And so this passage here indicates that, yes, even though Jesus is sufficient for all of our needs, we should never treat him as a celestial vending machine, okay? No, he is a master. Now, he's a kind master. He's a wonderful master who takes care of his slaves. In fact, he takes care of us so well that he loves us. He elevates us to the status of sons and daughters, but he is still the master. And so in this passage, Jesus in effect told the disciples, okay, Homer and Langley, I want you to leave the collier home. I want you to leave all that junk behind. I want you to take seriously the incredible inheritance I've given to you in your bank. I want you to start investing this. I want you to start spreading the kingdom through this. Yes, I can take care of you physically, but that's not all there is to life. Christ has taught his disciples a lesson through this, but I want you to notice the crowds, they miss it. Verses 26 through 27. Most assuredly I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled. And when he mentions they didn't do it because of the signs, signs are supposed to point to something, right? If you see a sign of Omaha, if you just park there by the sign, you know, you're never gonna get to our house. Signs point to something. They were supposed to go in the direction that they point, and they were not doing this. They were not going to the Christ to whom the signs pointed. Verse 27, do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because the Father has set his seal on him. In effect, Jesus is saying, look, I'm not going to play your games, I'm not gonna fit into your little political agenda. Their agenda was to reduce the vastness of Solus Christus into a kind of a savior who could make them comfortable. That's not what Christ is about. That's not what he's about. It's an incredibly truncated version of Solus Christus. When they discovered that he intended to transform them, to change them, to have them labor for him and to extend his kingdom, yeah, he wasn't so fun anymore. Okay, because they were looking at it from a totally different perspective. Verse 61 says they murmured. Verse 66 says, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. And there are a lot of disciples who do the same thing today. They want to be fed physical bread, they want a comfortable Christianity, but they don't want to labor for Christ. They want to use Jesus, but they don't want him. They don't want to submit to him. And Christ turns the tables and he says, look guys, I am the I am. I am Yahweh God. I'm not just here at your beck and call. In fact, I'm commanding you to leave your miserable collier home and step out in obedience to me. And when you do that, you're going to find all of the nourishment, all of the care, all of the provision that you need. But it's going to be on Christ's terms, not theirs. So here's the question we need to ask ourselves. Is Christ our all-sufficiency? Are you trying to fill that empty void that you feel in your chest with entertainment and addictions and food and companionship? The book of Ecclesiastes tells us we can have everything that the world longs for and still be miserable and empty and have a vain life. With Christ, we can enjoy those same things that are in creation and enjoy them actually to the max. And yet he is the one who has the right to take from us and to give from us. And Paul said he had learned how to suffer hunger and how to be filled. It was not the food that drove him. It was the Savior who provided that food. Now the fourth I am is given in chapter 8. chapter 8 where he calls himself the light of the world. And this is a wonderful story of the woman caught in adultery who was forgiven of her sin. And the context for his statement, I am the light of the world, was that he had just finished convicting these Pharisees of their sin and of their hypocrisy. He had just finished convicting the woman of her sin. And His light is sufficient to expose sin. I've seen the Holy Spirit, the Spirit sent from Christ, open up people's eyes to their sins in ways I, as a counselor, absolutely could not. But take a look at verse 9. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one. So there's one reaction that can happen to Christ the light. They get convicted of the light, and where do they go? They leave it. They abandon the source of that conviction, Christ. The other reaction is to acknowledge your sin like this woman had, rather than leaving the light, coming to it. Look at verses 10 through 12. When Jesus had raised himself up and saw no one but the woman, he said to her, woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you? She said, no one, Lord. And Jesus said to her, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. And here's the irony. We only lose the condemnation and the curse of the law when we come to the light by faith and allow that light to fully expose all of our sins. It's humbling, but James says it is well worthwhile because God humbles the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. Anyway, verse 12, then Jesus spoke to them again saying, I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. So creatures of light, they love the light. Creatures of darkness, they hate the light, they avoid the light. Collier brothers turned off the utilities, they tried to avoid prying eyes, they thought they were safe in their boarded up house, but they were miserable, they were blind, and they were wretched. Wherever Christ shines in the world, he is sufficient to do one of two things. He drives away the darkness, like those hypocrites who were driven away, or he draws people, to himself and he brings them comfort and healing. And Christ is shining in this congregation and if you are darkness, if you're like the Pharisees, you'll be pushed further and further away until finally the light really doesn't have any impact upon you whatsoever. You'll be like Homer, blind and in bed, pretending to read the magazine, pretending to be a Christian, but utterly devoid of the Holy Spirit. And those are the only two ways we can go when the light shines in our lives. We go forward into the light, we go backwards. And I urge you to submit to Christ as this woman did, every time Christ convicts you of sin. And heed his words when he says, go and sin no more. The fifth I am is in verse 18. I am the one who bears witness of myself and the Father who sent me bears witness of me. Now why the need for that statement? Well, it was because they were insisting that Jesus, if they're going to believe him, had to have human credentials. That's verse 13. Then in verse 19, they accuse him of being illegitimate. Where is your father? That's an Eastern way of saying you have no father. Okay, you're illegitimate. Verse 25, who are you? Now they claim credentials for themselves. In verse 33, they answered, we are Abraham's descendants and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say you will be made free? And then Jesus says in the next verse, no, you're not free. You are in bondage. You're slaves to sin. They claimed more credentials for themselves in verse 39. And Jesus says, your credentials are meaningless given the character of your walk. And then finally, again, they imply Jesus was illegitimate in verse 41. We are not born of fornication. We have one father, God. Jesus proceeds to say, no, you're fathers of Satan. So the whole context is a war of credentials. They're presenting their credentials. Jesus is presenting his own. And if you look at verses 13 through 18, you'll see, I think it's summed up very nicely. The Pharisees therefore said to him, you bear witness of yourself. Your witness is not true. Jesus answered and said to them, even if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from and where I am going. You judge according to the flesh. I judge no one. And yet if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent me. It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. If I am one who bears witness of myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness of me." And Jesus, by using that phrase, a go, a me, is saying that there can be no higher credential than being the self-existent, self-authenticating I Am. You see, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, by very definition, they can't have anybody over them that will credential them, right? That's impossible. And so they are their own two or three witnesses. Now this means that Jesus can't submit to their credentialing process without completely reversing what the roles should be. The I am can never be credentialed by man. The Trinity is self-credentialing. Okay, so that's the theology. What difference should it make in our lives? Well, it means that when the Bible comes under attack, you can't fall into the trap of trying to prove that the Bible is true through science or history or personal experiences because that automatically puts them as a higher authority than the Word of God is. In John 17, Jesus said to the Father, thy word is truth. He did not say thy word is true, and we shouldn't say, oh yeah, God's word is true, I can prove it, because that immediately puts our mind as the judge of its truth or its falsity. No, he says, thy word is truth, which means that it is the standard by which all truth claims are judged. The Bible is the credential that judges everything else. So when the world won't believe Genesis 1, unless you bring scientific proof, you need to respond, hey, God does not need authentication. If you don't want to believe it, you're going to suffer the repercussions. But He does not need your authentication. It's the scientist who has a finite mind and makes mistakes, not God. It is science that is constantly changing, not God's testimony. God was there when the world was created. The scientist was not there. God is omniscient, not the scientist. And so the moment we Try to prove the scripture by the independent reasoning of man. We have automatically made God Lower than man's mind. Can you see that? So solus Christus as we can't do that Christ is Self-authenticating in his witness and his word is the judge of truth not vice versa Now here's what Cornelius van Til said on the subject Christianity does not thus need to take shelter under the roof of known facts. It rather offers itself as a roof to facts if they would be known. Christianity does not need to take shelter under the roof of a scientific method independent of itself. It rather offers itself as a roof to methods that would be scientific. The point is that the facts of experience must actually be interpreted in terms of Scripture if they are to be intelligible at all. To argue by presupposition is to indicate what are the epistemological and metaphysical principles that underlie and control one's method. Now, Martin Luther put it into much easier to understand language, so let me quote from him. He said, Scripture is in itself most certain, most easily understood, most plain, is its own interpreter, approving, judging, and illuminating all the statements of all men. Therefore, nothing except for the divine words are to be the first principles for Christians. All human words are conclusions drawn from them and must be brought back to them and approved by them. So we start with Jesus. And we believe his word by faith, and as we interpret the world, it all comes to make sense, okay? It makes sense out of the world. And so this has a profound impact on even what kind of apologetics that we use. So I think you can see, Solus Christus goes way beyond salvation. Now this next point shows that it definitely does deal with salvation. Sixth, he's the only hope of salvation. Verse 24, chapter eight, verse 24. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins For if you do not believe that I am he and literally there's no he there in the New King James You'll see it's an italics. It says that I am You will die in your sins. Now people are always trying to add something to their hope of salvation Okay Jesus plus works Jesus plus faithful church attendance Jesus plus mysticism you name it there's all kinds of things people add and But it says of a remnant of verse 30, as he spoke these words, many believed in him, not in him plus something else, in him. And the remainder of the crowd, they trusted in their own good works or in their relationship, blood relationship to Abraham or in their status, and they took offense that Jesus was making an exclusive claim to salvation. But Acts 4.12 says, nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. So we must put our faith in Christ. All else will let us down and disappoint us. Now I'm not gonna expand on that because we've dealt with it to some degree in the last two solos, but if you take a look at chapter eight, verse 58, this is the seventh iam, Jesus said to them, most assuredly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. Before Abraham was, ego, a me. That doesn't seem like good grammar that you realize I am is a name, right? It's a description of who Christ's character is. And the Hebrew that this ego, a me would have translated would have been exactly the same Hebrew as we read earlier from Exodus. He is claiming to be Yahweh, the self-existent God. So in verse 59 it says, Then they took up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. Now, if they're coming at him to throw stones, and he's passing right through the midst of them, what in the world is going on there? You know, they're hostile. They're trying to kill him. He's walking right through the midst of them. Well, if he's the I Am, he's not only a self-existent one, he's the one in whom they live and move and have their being. And they can't even see. In fact, in the passage in Exodus that I quoted from earlier, it says, who has made man's mouth, or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, the blind, have not I, Yahweh? God can keep bureaucrats and other persecutors from seeing his believers until it's their time to go or their time to be in prison, but He is the I Am who controls all circumstances even in the lives of unbelievers, which means God does not need us. He doesn't need our praise. He doesn't need our efforts. He doesn't need anything. And to think that God needs us or Jesus needs us somehow is foolish as to think that New York City needed the Colliers and their garbage in that house. Now God does delight in using us. He doesn't need us, but He delights in using us, and the service we do for Him is meaningful. But let's skip ahead. Chapter 10, verses 7 and 9, He calls Himself the door of the sheepfold. Not just any door, the door who is the I Am. the door of the sheep. Now shepherds used to lie. I don't know, I should have probably put a picture in your bulletins of some of the old corrals that they had made of stone. But there was a door there and the shepherd would sleep at that door so that anybody who tried to access the sheep had to go over the shepherd. He would know about it. And in the spiritual realm, nobody, not even Satan, can access us without Christ's permission and no one can come into the corral. No sheep can come into the corral. apart from him, so it's really an interesting phrase there. There are no other doors to heaven. He is the only way in. The current expression faith-based programs is actually a denial of Christ's exclusive claims, and I don't think we really should use that phrase. There's only one true faith, there's only one true way, and Christ claims to be it. I am the door means solus Christus when it comes to salvation. And he makes no apologies to Oprah Winfrey. The ninth I am is I am the Good Shepherd. Now in the Old Testament, in Psalm 23, it's Jehovah, it's Yahweh who is the Good Shepherd. So when Jesus takes that phrase, that title to himself in chapter 10, let's see, it's verses 11 and 14, I am the Good Shepherd, what happens is some people believe in him and others are so offended they say that he must have a demon. And in case they don't get the connection well enough, Jesus clarifies exactly what he means in verse 30. I and my father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. But those are the only two options. You receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, or you accuse him of blasphemy. But here's the application. Who do we go to for shepherding? Earlier on, Langley had been asked why he collected tons and tons of newspapers and his reply was that Homer had become blind and once he was cured, he would need to catch up on all of the news. Talk about a disconnect with reality. Well, Langley had a recipe. This was a sure cure for Homer's blindness. It consisted of a steady diet of 100 oranges per week black bread, and peanut butter. That's all Homer ate for years. And he would keep propping this one magazine or another in his hands and say, can you read yet? You know, okay, you're gonna get cured here. And he would keep feeding them, Homer, these oranges and peanut butter. And yet how many in our day and age have substituted the oranges of humanistic psychology and the peanut butter of the self-esteem movement, have propped up a magazine in people's lap and said, be healed, you know, so to speak. No, we've got to look to the Lord Jesus Christ in all of our goals for shepherding, all of our methods, all of our foundations. We are faithless under shepherds if we substitute anything for Jesus. Chapter 11, verse 25, he claims to have the power of life and death. I am the resurrection and the life. Now this shows that Jesus, His relationship to us does not just stop at the end of our lives here on earth. No, at the end of history He's going to raise us and actually throughout the rest of eternity we are going to be living in Christ. There's never going to be a time when we can exist apart from Christ. He is our all in all for the rest of time and the sooner we begin to learn that and start acting as if that is true, the sooner we can enter into that incredible joy that God delights us to have. In chapter 13, another I am. In this chapter, he claims to be the substitute that we looked at last week. Remember, we saw an imputation, what it is. Our sins are imputed to Jesus, and he suffered in our place. His righteousness is imputed to us. And there are a lot of people who are denying imputation, but it's absolutely critical to understand. So there is imputation. There is a substitution that takes place. In this passage here, he gives a kind of a preliminary of that substitution. He steps in when the betrayers are coming after all of the disciples, he says, I am. I have told you that I am. Therefore, if you seek me, let these go their way. So right there, he's acting as a substitute for his disciples. And if you keep reading in the gospel, you'll see that's really the heart of the message, is that Jesus was our substitute. And I love the story of Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. When God made his covenant with Abraham, he had Abraham cut animals up, put them on the altar, And that's the way covenants were made back then. For example, in Jeremiah chapter 34, there was a city that was making covenant with God, and the way they did it, they chopped a calf in half, and they had one piece of the calf over here, another piece of the calf over here, and the whole city's going through between these two pieces of calf, of cow, and they're making a pledge to the covenant. Now, why would they do that? In effect, what they are saying is, If I break this covenant, may I be cut off just like this calf was cut off. I mean, it's amazing symbolism. Now here's the cool thing about Genesis chapter 15. Instead of making Abraham walk through the pieces of that animal, God the Son, in a theophany, makes himself as a burning furnace, and that burning furnace walks between the pieces of that animal. So God is saying, may I be cut off if I break this covenant. And he was, in the person of Jesus Christ. This is the amazing thing about the Gospel. God became our substitute. And there can be only one substitute. Langley tried to protect Homer by making booby traps all over the house. And apparently on his last day, as he's crawling through these tunnels that he has made, he set off one of the booby traps and everything collapsed on top of him, suffocating him. And he, he left his, um, Langley, you know, died and he left his brother to starve to death. And so his protection destroyed them both. In total contrast, Christ's substitution to die in our place completely paid for our sins. His resurrection conquered death. And this is the heart of the message that we looked at last week. So hopefully you can see all of these solos are really very tightly connected.