Dispute Over Who Jesus Is | John 8:21-59

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

What do you do with a passage like that? It’s one of those passages where there’s almost no narrative. There is incredible amounts of dialogue. It goes back and forth from one to the other, and now hopefully the goal is this together. We get to draw out of it what God might be saying to us and land hopefully smoothly.

This table is called communion, is called the mass in some places. The term I love for today though is Eucharist. It means gratitude. Thanks. We come to a table called Thanksgiving and we get to practice Thanksgiving together to get to the heart of this passage. I’m gonna move fairly quick.

We’re gonna glide over some verses. We’re gonna try and cover the whole thing and get a broad understanding of it. And so I’d like us to begin with a question. Have you ever been in a conversation? And being completely misunderstood. Yes. Many of you in the room are married, so of course you know what it is to be completely misunderstood.

That’s the beauty of marriage, right? But I’m not talking about the institution that is marriage right now. I’m talking about perhaps in a conversation with someone who speaks a different language, you may be trying to operate in your basic beginner level, Spanish or French or German, or whatever language you try to pick up, and you’re trying to communicate in a way that makes sense.

During a former point of my life, I used to travel a lot during the year. I’d go to different parts of Europe, mainly drop into different countries, and I’d always be staggered. At the art of communication. I remember dropping into one French supermarket and trying to communicate in French and quickly realizing I was saying things that didn’t fit the supermarket realm of conversation to this person.

I, I just didn’t simply have the right vocab to communicate. She offered me four other language, is that she could communicate imperfectly and I offered her. English having spent most of my life just speaking English louder in foreign countries, I was really quite staggered when this didn’t work apparently.

We are as Americans as a group, only 20% of us speak more than one language fluently, and that’s primarily made up by people who have a different language than England. English is their first language. Some people say that the reason for the special relationship between Britain and America is that we’re no more multilingual than you are.

We both rely on that speaking English, louder premise. Another time traveling. I ended up in Barcelona, or as you’re told to say it once you’ve been there, Barcelona. I was there with a group of guys. There were four of us and we were dropping in to visit one of the groups we were planning on doing some missionary work with on the plane.

Two of my friends said we, we’ve arranged the sleeping arrangements and there’s two places that we’re gonna stay. One is with the missionary couple that we want to support. They speak fluent Spanish and fluent English, and then the other one is in the drug rehab center where there’s a group of guys who speak no English whatsoever.

They both spoke Spanish and decided they would go and stay with a missionary who spoke English, and my friend and I, who had no Spanish whatsoever, were put into this drug rehab with about 10 guys in a room. The guy kindly gave me one phrase that would save me constantly when I was amongst people that didn’t speak English.

Dunes Banio, where is the bathroom? This passage today I think is about miscommunication. It’s actually, I think, the most frustrated I can remember seeing Jesus with what he’s trying to me communicate and the apparent inability of the people he’s talking to understand. We’re at this point in John’s Gospel, chapter eight is this beginning of a new move movement up until chapter eight, and Jesus has gone from Jerusalem up to Galilee and back again and back to Jerusalem, Galilee.

He’s moved back and forth between the two. Generally, he’s been more accepted in Galilee than he has in Jerusalem. But now the rest of the book, the action stays steady. He won’t leave the Jerusalem area until after his death and resurrection. It’s all firmly located here. And what we see is opposition after opposition.

And so here we go. Chapter eight verse 21. Once more. Jesus said to them, I’m going away and you will look for me and you will die in your sins. Where I go, you cannot go. Some of this is language that Jesus has used before. Just recently in chapter seven, he said, I am with you only for a short time, and then I’m going to the one who sent me.

You’ll look for me, but you will not find me and where I am, you cannot come. But this language is different. He’s now at his most pointed, most direct. It’s now no longer just about him coming and then leaving. It’s now about who they are as people. You, he says will die in their sin, particularly direct language.

The next verse seems like a non-sequitur to us. It doesn’t make sense but when you follow the track I think it does. This made the Jews ask, will he kill himself? Is that why he says, where I go? You cannot come. Back in chapter seven, there was beginnings of the rumblings that Jesus was unacceptable to the religious leaders of his day.

There was this decided opposition that started to point towards his eventual death. If we go back, I think it’s chapter seven verse one, after these things, Jesus walked in Galilee for, he did not want to walk in Judea because the Jews saw to kill him. Now the Jews Feast of the Tabernacle was that hand.

This language starts to amp up in chapter eight and chapter nine and chapter 10. As the opposition gets more and more decided the suggestion here from the Jews and John uses the Jews as a group term, usually of people that are opposed to Jesus. The suggestion here is maybe he’ll just take matters into his own hands.

There was a strong history amongst the Romans, amongst the Greeks, and amongst the Jewish people of committing suicide. If your life was in danger, it was a noble way out, and they start to question maybe that is what Jesus is going to do. That’s why they can’t follow him. But Jesus is clearly thinking about something else as he continues in 23 verse 24.

You are from below. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world. The Jewish world saw the universe as split up into two parts. Today we have this perspective of a universe that’s almost infinite. Seems to go on forever, but for them it was very much a two tier system. There was the earth represented by the Shire backend, the best that we have to offer.

And then there was the heavens, there was the earth, and then there was the heavens. That’s why you have passages like Psalm 66. This is what the Lord said, heaven is my throne, the earth is my footstool. The blue, which was sometimes considered to be water, the firmament was the thing that divided the two.

There was the earthly spaces. And then there were the heavenly spaces About this time, this other idea starts to creep in which the was that there was potentially a third space. In the Old Testament, there’s very little language about hell, but there’s a language about a place called Shol, the place of the dead in Jesus’ time.

Language around something called hell starts to develop further. But for the most part, for a long time, this two tier worldview had continued. God is in the heavens, mankind, the devil, who will get to in a moment, a character that identifying Christians go one way or another. One. I’ve met Christians that see the devil around every single corner.

And then I’ve met others that say because I can’t believe in red suits and pointy horns and long tails. And then I can’t believe in any kind of a position to guard in the world. And somewhere the answer’s in the middle. But humans and the devil were in this space. This is the language Jesus is using.

When he says, I’m from above and you are from below, he’s starting to reveal to them that he comes from a different background altogether. This is why the communication is challenged. He speaks a different language. I told you he continues that you would die in your sins if you do not believe that I am.

He indeed you would die in your sins. Again, pointed language, but what’s the heartbeat of what Jesus, he’s saying. He’s saying there’s no one else coming. He’s starting to unpack that what he’s part of his mission is a rescue plan, and if they don’t receive him, there’s no one else to come. He is the mission it reminds me a little bit of an old story about a man who sat on his roof in the midst of a flood.

The story goes, the apocryphal story admittedly, goes that in the midst of that, he begins to pray and says, God, would you please rescue me from the potential fate I’m facing? And as he prays, he waits. A short time later, a man in a rowing boat comes past and says, do you want me to rescue you?

And the man says no, it’s okay. I prayed. God’s gonna save me, and so the man leaves. And a short time later, a man in a speedboat. Comes past stops and says, Hey, do you want me to rescue you? And the man says, no, it’s okay. God has got it covered. And finally, a helicopter comes past and drops a ladder and says, Hey, climb on.

We’re here to save you. And the man says no, don’t worry. I prayed. God has it covered. A short time later, the water covers his house and he dies and goes to meet God in heaven and says, I can’t believe that you wouldn’t answer my prayer for rescue. And God says I sent you two boats and a helicopter.

What more could you possibly need? The point being, Jesus’ mission does not look like they expect it to look. That’s their great struggle. They don’t see Jesus and see rescue. They see Jesus and see something else altogether. Their response demonstrates some of their confusion. Who are you?

They asked this question after what we’ve read in John and what we understand seems a little ignorant, but I sympathize with them a lot. I think we sit in this incredible vantage point, right? Many of us grew up around stories of Jesus. Many of you heard those stories from grandparents, perhaps from parents.

Perhaps you picked those stories up later in life. But you heard about Jesus with 2000 years of church history. You heard about Jesus in a very different way to the way that they experienced him. Th this was the first picture I was given of Jesus long flowing hair, a very English expression, blue eyes, which seems unlikely.

If you’d have asked me to draw Jesus up until the age of about 12 or 13, I think this is pretty close to where I would’ve landed. I was presented with this stylized version of Jesus, but these guys experienced him in the flesh. They saw him as he was, as he is described by the prophet Isaiah, not having any particular beauty.

Saw him with dirty feet, saw him exhausted at the end of a day. They experienced him in a completely different way, and so perhaps we should be less surprised that they didn’t see the son of God and saw just a carpenter. Jesus replies, and this is where I start to sense this frustration that I began with just what I’ve been telling you from the beginning.

Jesus replied, he’s had this consistent message over and over again. This is who I am. I am the light shining in the darkness. I am the one who has come from God to rescue you. He seems frustrated that these questions in this moment still exist. I have much to say in judgment of you. He says. But he sent me is trustworthy and what I have heard from him, I tell the world, I tell the world.

They did not understand that he was telling them about his father. So Jesus said, when you have lifted up the son of man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but speak just what the Father has taught to me. Jesus is using this cryptic language that he uses repeatedly in John’s gospel from now on onwards.

He uses this term lifted up in Greek, is this word hypo setti? It means exalted. Lifted up from the ground. Quite literally raised up. But Jesus uses it in this other way to speak of his death, his crucifixion. He says, when that time finally comes, you’ll realize I am the one that came to rescue you, cryptic language.

The one who sent me is the one who is with me. He has not left me alone for, I always do what pleases him. Even as he spoke, many believed in him. We get to this point in the text where it seems like a success story. Seems like everything’s turning out exactly as we might hope it would. Jesus has shared who he is and the response is that many believed in him.

The conversation appears to have reached a positive conclusion. Jesus shares who he is. People believe in him. It’s a good story. And then Jesus begins to explain what true discipleship looks like and the tenor of the conversation changes. What’s what happens when he starts to move into this true discipleship conversation?

To the Jews who had believed him. Jesus said, if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples, then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free to us. Many of us have heard that passage before. Seems like an incredible promise to hear the truth and to be set free by it, but not to this group.

Look how they respond to what Jesus says. We are Abraham’s descendants. You have never been slaves to anybody. How can you say that we shall be set free? It’s such an interesting response from multiple levels. The first being if you know their history, it’s just profoundly absurd. This is a group of people that have been slaves multiple times in their background.

They were in Egypt as slaves. They came out of Egypt and had a kingdom for a while, and then both kingdoms went into slavery. These are people that have constantly experienced slavery, even as they speak. Their town is full of Romans from which they have no real freedom, and yet they look at Jesus and say.

How can you say we will be free? We’ve never been slaves to anyone. It’s an absurd response, but Jesus to it, incredibly doesn’t respond to it in the way that we might expect. He’s clearly not talking about physical slavery as important as that might be in other circumstances. He’s talking about spiritual slavery.

He kinda moves the conversation in a direction that begins to go towards. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been a slave physically or not been a slave physically, but you are a slave spiritually. Very truly. I tell you, anyone who sins is a slave to sin, and we probably know enough now. And to know how true that statement is.

We know enough about how dopamine works in a body, so as we chase more and more experiences, we get used to those experiences and they never quite give us what they used to give us. We continue looking for new ways to find dopamine hits, and eventually we get we just simply run out of options. Way before we discovered that kind of information.

Jesus says, when you live a lifestyle that’s the opposite of the way God intended you to live. It’s just as real as physical slavery. Jesus teaches this. This I think is his, and this is in your notes so you can fill in the gaps if you’re a gap filling person. All his listeners are slaves to sin and he can give real.

Freedom. That’s what Jesus is offering, real freedom. They have a response as we might expect, but actually there’s this middle part that fascinates me Before we get to that response, I’ve seen these parts before. I’ve understood before that he’s talking about slavery to see, and I’ve understood before that he’s talking about being set free.

But note this part in the middle, it’s gonna be important later. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. And Jesus is offering freedom. Yes, but he says that freedom is tied to sonship now. Now forgive the gender specific language. For a moment, it matters because in this world, only a son could inherit something from his family.

And Jesus says, not only can I set you free. But I can make you part of a family. I can invite you into something that you’ve never been part of before. Following Jesus, he starts to suggest is this following Jesus always leads you home. Always leads you home. Even to those that have had no home, even as the Psalm say in another place, the lonely God sets them into families.

He leads out prisoners with singing. Jesus isn’t just talking about freedom. He’s talking about a family. He’s talking about how you’re invited into something, into God’s family in a beautiful way. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. He says, yet you are looking for a way to kill me because you have no room for my word.

I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you heard from your father. And of course they have another response. First, they were not slaves and now they want him to know. Abraham is our father. He’s the one that we base everything on. Every hope comes from the fact that this man who lived 2000 years before is their ancestor, their father.

Jesus says, you are slaves to sin. I can set you free. And then this is what they think about what he said His listeners believe. That they are already free and they are free because of their lineage, their background, my grandma was a big believer in family trees. One of her nephews had traced our family tree back to 957 ad.

Yeah, that’s, if you take off the 1 17 76 and then you take off the one and then you go back further that’s what we’re talking about here. Just to catch you up on dating systems. In case you thought they always had four numbers in them, didn’t she traced this family history or he traced family history all the way back?

Her, she discovered that our family used to own castles, that they used to be tied to all sorts of great families, to kingship all these different things, and she believed it deeply. When she was getting close to that time, she was about to pass away. She would start to tell me about all these possessions that were worth, incredible amounts of money.

She made me go with her to Antiques Roadshow and things like that, and we’d present these little trinkets that were theoretically worth thousands of dollars, and we’d sit and have the joy of watching as people say that’s maybe worth $20, or something like that. The history was actually real. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Somewhere some first son of a first son of a first son of a first son is experiencing something like that. Life perhaps, but not our family. We look very different now. And so claiming that lineage would be a weird and strange flex. Maybe another example helps. This is Karen Vogel. It’s a specifically grainy photo ’cause it’s the only one that exists of this lady who is 4793rd in line to the British throne.

Only 4,792 people need to die for her to be welcomed into the monarchy. And yet in reality, it means nothing. And Jesus says in the same way, this Abraham story that they tell means nothing. This is how he phrases it. If you were Abraham’s children said Jesus, you would do what Abraham did. So you don’t act like Abraham.

You don’t look like Abraham. You are wildly different from those people that make up your history. You are not Abraham’s children. You are slaves to sin as it is. You are looking for a way to kill me, A man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own Father.

Jesus says this, you might be Abraham’s descendants, you aren’t Abraham’s children, and none of that influences how you are seen by God. Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t add up. Again, they have a response, which we’re coming to expect now, right? This is the third time they’ve pushed back on Jesus teaching. We are not illegitimate children.

They protested. The only father we have is God himself, and this is where Jesus really takes the gloves off. This is where he really lays down. If God were your Father, you would love me for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own. God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you’re unable to hear what I say.

You belong to your father, the devil. You want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth. There is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet, because I tell you the truth, you do not believe him.

He goes one step further. First he says, you are not. You may be Abraham’s descendants, but you’re not his children. Now he says, you might be Abraham’s descendants, but your father is the devil. This is Jesus at his most cutting, most incisive. Can any of you prove me of a guilt, a guilty of a sin? He said, if I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?

Whoever belongs to God. Here’s what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God. And this is their final word to him, aren’t you? Aren’t we right in saying you are a Samaritan and demon possessed? That’s where we have to pause. That’s where we have time for. There is more of the conversation.

We’ll get to that in the podcast. If you wanna tune in on Thursday, it’s available or through the week where Aaron and I get to go a little deeper into the sermons, but that’s what we have time for here. I’ll read the rest really quick so you have a sense of the story. I’m not possessed by a demon, but I honor my father and you dishon me.

I’m not seeking glory for myself, but there is one who seeks it and he’s the judge. Very truly. I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death at this. They exclaim. Now we know that you are demon possessed. Abraham died. So did the prophets. Yet you say 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? Jesus replied, if I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My father, whom you claim is 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.

Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad you were not yet 50 years old. They said, had you have seen Abraham? Very truly, I tell you, Abraham answered before Abraham was Abraham was born. I am. Jesus says The reason he’s able to do all of these things, the reason he’s able to give the gift of freedom is because he belongs out of time.

He comes as the son of God and gives freedom to all, and that for them is the final. Nailing the coffin at this. They picked up stones to stone him. But Jesus hi himself slipping away from the temple grounds. So a question that hopefully brings it back to where we began, what does this mean for us?

It’s a dialogue between Jesus and a group of religious leaders. Probably a couple of thousand years ago, many of us in the room would describe ourselves as not being like them. But as people that have chosen to follow Jesus for ourselves, the warnings exist for those that don’t follow Jesus, that is something that He gives, and those are his words, not mine.

But what does the passage mean for those of us that have chosen to follow Jesus? How does freedom enter into our story? What does it mean for Jesus to set us free? Over the years, there’s been all sorts of ideas and what freedom means. Freedom from sin. Some writers have considered that following Jesus means that you should completely be free from sin forever.

Others have questioned that as just not realistic, just not when many, what many of us experience. How about free from death? It’s another idea that gets connected. To this passage. Let’s just push into that for a second. ’cause I think when I read this, it makes me wonder about how I experience freedom and whether I experience it as I should.

Paul, a writer after Jesus’ time, one of the first great commentators on the life of Jesus said, it is for freedom that Christ is set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke. Of slavery. What does freedom in Christ mean to you? Remember, Jesus ties it to an idea. He says that to become free to become a son or daughter of God, to be part of the family makes me think of this other narrative that Jesus shares in Luke’s gospel.

Story about two sons. One who’s the good son who stays home. The faithful son, at least the other who leaves home and goes into a life of wild partying, spends all of the money his father has given him as an inheritance. After that time, poverty hits the land that he’s in. He has nowhere to go but to take a job.

Feeding pigs for one of the local people. He has nothing to eat. His life is hopeless and he decides to go home. He decides to go back to his father, hoping that his father will receive him as a servant. When he arrives home, his father welcomes him, not as a servant, but as a son. We go back to that idea that a journey with Jesus is a journey home.

It’s what it is to be invited back in to a family. Do you resonate with that story? Because I do at times and always intellectually, but at times I wonder emotionally, and these are the words of the brilliant writer, Henry Nowan, who expresses some thoughts on this subject. This is what he says. Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I’m returning demands an explanation.

I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I’m not yet fully sure of. While walking home. I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there. As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how it is full, how full it is of guilt about the past, and worries about the future.

I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I’m not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, grace is always greater, still clinging to my sense of worthlessness. I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son. How do you receive the message Jesus gives?

Do you believe that the guard of the universe welcomes you in with open arms, seeks passionately for you that there is no hide and seek with this God? If anything, we are the ones that often hide. Is that how you hear it or do you hear it like Henry heard it and how? At times, at least in my past, I’ve heard it too as a story that I know to be true.

But it’s hard to experience to be true. Do you still have a list of things from your past that you feel like God may one day pull out and show to the world? Do you still have questions about how good you are at following Jesus? Do you maybe find yourself saying things like I hope I don’t meet Jesus too soon because I’d like to be get better at following him before I do.

Those things point to a freedom that’s there that hasn’t been experienced yet. We’re not rejecting that freedom like Jesus first hear us, but maybe we don’t always embrace it fully. That’s what he’s inviting us to do. I think of the quote from Sure Shack redemption. As I say this, these war are funny. He says, speaking of prison first you hate them.

Then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you get to depend on them. That’s what institutionalized means. Talks about how sometimes freedom isn’t as easy to embrace as we think this is. An elephant goes without saying, I know the greatest of animals in my opinion, but it has a story about it. When you take an elephant as a baby, you put a chain on it and keep it in one spot it will never leave.

Thinks it belongs where it was chained and thinks it has no longer has the power to leave that spot. Friends, we were made for freedom. We’re made to experience what it is to be beloved sons and daughters of God regardless of what the journey looks like right now. We’re journeying to a place called home.

Here’s some thoughts that I gathered as we move to communion. This is what I think real freedom requires. I think it requires knowing that you will once a captive, knowing that just like Jesus first listeners, you were a slave to sin, knowing that you weren’t part of the family, you were an outsider. And then I think it requires knowing.

That you are now free. But then there’s one more little piece that I think is central to this idea. You need to know who set you free. You need to know that you are free, not ’cause of anything you’ve done, not because of any special gift that’s in you, a work ethic that’s extraordinary, a family history, a birthright, none of those things.

You are simply free because who The sunsets free is free indeed. That’s what I want us to hold onto as we come to this table. This table called gratitude. This God came to this earth from heaven to earth and said, you are free. Free from guilt, free from legalism, free from all those things that might hold you and bind you.

And that’s what we celebrate here. Would you stand with me as the worship team come back? We’re gonna begin to prepare our hearts. Those of you that call yourselves followers of Jesus, anyone who follows Jesus is invited to this table. Maybe for you. That’s the first time you can begin that journey with Him home today

in a book called Corinthians. Paul’s letter to the church of current. He says this, what I first received, I share with you that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus gathered with his disciples taking the bread. He passed it to each of them, said, this is my body. It’s broken for you. Now. He took the cup, said, this is my blood shed for the sins.

Of the world. As long as you gather together, do this in remembrance of me. We leave a world of busy lives. Some of us might say it’s easy during the week to forget the God who loves us. Sometimes it’s easy. Forget to forget what he’s done of. This is a place of remembering, a place where we gather. And remember that we are free.

Jesus, as we gather at your table, help those words to sink deep into our souls. You are free. Who? The sun sets free. Free indeed. We sang them. Help us to believe them. Deep in that core,

we have a tradition. Here we come. We take the bread, we take the cup. We go back to our seeds, take the bread. When you’re ready, I’ll come back and we’ll take the cup together. Come when you’re ready, friends.