John 8:48-59
The Wrong Response to Jesus
My brother-in-law is a police officer in Marion County Indiana. Last year he was telling us something funny that happened in his training. Everyone who goes into the academy has to be sprayed in the eyes with the same kind of mace they will carry on them, and, they have to be tazered by the same kind of tazer gun they will carry.
Well if you’ve never seen someone get tased, youtube it later because it’s hilarious. They get 2 guys to hold you and each guy grabs one of your arms. Then someone shoots you in the back with the taser gun and pumps something like 50,000 volts of electricity through your body for about 3 or4 seconds while you fall like a sack of potatoes to the ground (which is why you need the 2 guys holding you).
Well, after watching everyone else get zapped, my brother-in-law’s time came. However, when they shot him the tazer didn’t stick into his skin like it is supposed to. So, he didn’t get much of a jolt at all. Then he said those fatal words, “That wasn’t so bad”. That was the wrong reaction in this situation. They did it again and did it right and dropped that rookie like a sack of potatoes.
As we finish chapter 8 today, we see Jesus Christ is speaking to a crowd of Jews who make the wrong response to Him. The kind of response to Jesus someone makes is a matter of eternal life and eternal death. Every person’s eternal destiny hinges on their response to the person of Jesus Christ.
Throughout His preaching He keeps pointing out that there is a wrong way to respond to Him, and, there is a right way to respond to Him. This is what John wants you to see as he wrote this gospel: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” Believing in God’s Son is the right response to God’s Son. Rejecting Him is the wrong response.
Unfortunately, believing was not the response from the Jews that Jesus was facing in the temple courts that day. In these final verses of chapter 8 we see 4 Wrong Responses to Jesus Christ; 4 wrong reactions from these Jews. Do not make these your final response to God’s Son.
Slander His Character (v48-50)
The first wrong response to Jesus is to Slander His Character. Notice verses 48-50, “The Jews answered Him, ‘Aren’t we right in saying htat you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?’ ‘I am not possessed by a demon,’ said Jesus, ‘but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge.’”
This is the 4th time in these two chapters that they have insulted Jesus. They’ve accused Him of having a demon in chapter 7. They ridiculed Him by sarcastically saying He was going to commit suicide in chapter 8. They mocked His mother as we saw last week. And this week they call Him a Samaritan.
They called Him a Samaritan. The best way to start a fight with a Jew would be to call him a Samaritan. Samaritans were a mixed race, they weren’t purely Jewish. They had intermarried with foreigners long ago and were not pure Jews like the Jews of Judea. Also, when the Jews came back from Babylonian captivity the Samaritans offered to help rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. But the Jews told them to get lost and refused their help. There has been a bitter hatred and rivalry between these two groups ever since. The worst way to insult a Jew was to call him a Samaritan. So, they called Jesus a Samaritan.
But, there was more to this slanderous name calling than just insults. Samaritans were considered heretics. Their religion was looked at as a perversion of the true religion of the Jews. So in calling Jesus a Samaritan they were accusing Him of speaking heresy. They considered His teachings so absurd that they thought He was a lunatic. That’s why they say He’s demon-possessed; they thought He was raving mad.
The Jews thought that by dishonoring Jesus they were honoring God. Jesus told His disciples in John 16:2, “…a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or Me.” They dishonored the Father by killing His Son, and, they will dishonor the Son by killing His disciples.
You have to see that this is very personal for every one of us. Jesus didn’t come to get glory for Himself. The Bible says He left His glory behind to come and be shamed in this world. He willingly chose to be despised and rejected and mocked and ridiculed. This is the kind of treatment He came for. Isaiah 53 said, “He was despised and rejected by men, we esteemed Him not.” Psalm 22 is a Messianic Psalm about Jesus. It says, “I am scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me and hurl their insults and shake their heads.”
Listen: He suffered unjust shame before men so that you and I don’t have to suffer just shame before God. The shame that is rightfully ours He took on Himself. They were ashamed of Him and heaped upon Him insults after insults and disgrace after disgrace. He identified with sinners. He didn’t sin, but, He came in our likeness in the flesh. He identified with our shame by taking our sin and our shame upon Himself. This is very personal to us.
It’s personal to Him as well. It’s very personal to Jesus Christ that we would identify with Him. Are you willing to suffer insults for His sake? Will you suffer shame from the world while you glorify Christ?
Think of it this way: a person can be shamed because of sin or because of Christ. We deserved shame because of sin, but, Christ has taken that shame away. We no longer deserve it. Now, although we will not suffer shame because of sin, we will face shame because of Christ. The world hates Him, and dishonors Him, and therefore dishonors the Father. Christ honored the Father by remaining faithful to Him. And, when we stand in Christ and identify ourselves with Him and the world hates us for it He is glorified. Jesus Christ is not glorified when an unbelieving world likes Him. Jesus Christ is glorified when an unbelieving world hates Him. And Jesus Christ is glorified when you are hated by an unbelieving world for standing in Him.
Jesus deserves glory. They disgraced Him. They slandered His character. That’s the wrong response to Jesus Christ.
Scoff at His Claims (v51-52)
The 2nd Wrong Response to Jesus Christ is to Scoff at His Claims. Notice verses 51 and 52, “’I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.’ At this the Jews exclaimed, ‘Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death.’”
Jesus claimed that He can save you from death. The Jews here think He’s talking about physical death, but, He’s not. They thought Jesus was making Himself out to be greater than Abraham and the prophets because they all died. But Jesus wasn’t talking about physical death. If He were He would have saved Himself from the cross, and, the NT wouldn’t teach that suffering and even martyrdom for Christ’s sake are glorious things. But it does!
Jesus is talking about a different death. He came to save people from the death that comes after death. This death is spiritual death; it is the ultimate, final, and eternal destination for all who have rejected Jesus Christ. It is ultimate and final separation from God for ever. Revelation describes it as the lake of burning fire. Jesus described it as a place of never ending anguish and torment where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is a terrible place and it is a real place. The road of unbelief leads here. And it is here that Jesus came to rescue us from.
And they didn’t believe Him. They scoffed at Him. People still scoff at Jesus. It is the wrong response to Jesus Christ.
Consider Him Second-Rate (v53-55)
The 3rd wrong response to Jesus is to Consider Him Second-Rate. Notice verses 53, “’Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?’
The real question is not who does Jesus think He is – He knows. The real question is who do they think He is? To them, Jesus wasn’t any greater than the great men of their past. He was second-rate to men like Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel and many more. These are all amazing men but they are men who pointed to Christ, and were inferior to Him. There is no comparing them to Jesus. There is no one who is or ever will be His equal in all of human history because Jesus was no mere human.
Notice that in the face of His enemies Jesus continually entrusted Himself to His Father. Verse 54 says, Jesus replied, ‘If I glorify myself my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me.” The Father will glorify Him at His resurrection. In John 12:23 Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Jesus was about to be crucified and that meant He was going to be resurrected and return to His glory in Heaven. Jesus says in chapter 17 verse 5, “And now Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” The Father did that by raising Him up in power by the Spirit of holiness in order to declare Him as the Son of God (Rom 1:4).
Here’s the point: The Father considers Jesus first-rate, not second-rate. He is second to none; all are second to Him. If this is how God considers Jesus Christ how ought we?
Look at verse 55: 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 keep His word.’” Jesus knows the Father. And the Father will only be known through Jesus Christ. A man can’t have any true knowledge of God until He knows the One who knows God.
Isn’t that reassuring? That the One whom we have joined with is the One who knows the Father and the Father knows Him. The One whom the Father accepts is the One who accepts us. And if we are accepted by Him, then we know that we are accepted by the Father too. We come to the Father in the name of His Son whom He loves.
The Father will not allow any man to come to Him in any other name. Every other name is second-rate to Jesus Christ.
Sneer at His Coming (v56)
The 4th wrong response to Jesus is to Sneer at His Coming. Notice verses 56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”
Abraham saw Jesus’ day. We don’t know if Abraham received any prophetic visions from God, the Scriptures don’t say so. But God made a covenant with Abraham and told Him that through his Seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. There was One that was coming who would be Abraham’s descendent and He would be the One through whom all nations would be blessed. Abraham believed this, and by faith He saw this One coming who would be His seed.
But there were in Abraham’s life pictures of this coming One also. Isaac was a promised son to Abraham. Jesus is the promised Son of God. Isaac was Abraham’s one and only son. Jesus is God’s one and only Son. Abraham offered Isaac on the altar to God. Jesus was offered to God on the cross. Jesus came back from the dead. Hebrews says Isaac figuratively came back from the dead.
All that Abraham was promised is in Jesus Christ. He did not live to see Jesus come, but, by faith he saw the coming day of Jesus.
The Bible says that today we also live by faith. We see by faith that day when our sins were put on Jesus Christ. We see by faith that day when Jesus comes back for us. We live by faith – that is, we live with the sureness of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see. We do not fix our eyes on the things that are seen, which are temporal. But, instead, we fix the eye of our faith on things that are unseen, the things that are eternal. This is what the ancients were commended for.
Conclusion (v57-59)
“’You are not yet fifty years old,’ the Jews said to him, ‘and you have seen Abraham!’ ‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus said, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’ At this they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.”
This passage, as in the whole Gospel for that matter is the continued portrait of Jesus Christ’s true identity. There are 7 great I AM statements that Jesus makes in this Gospel. I am the 1) Living Water, 2) Bread of Life, 3) Light of the world, 4) Gate, 5) Shepherd, 6) True Vine, 7) Resurrection and the Life. He keeps declaring who He is by stating I am, I am, I am, I am. And each time He says “I am” He gives us a unique aspect of Himself as Savior.
But, the greatest of these I am statements came in this passage today. Jesus declared to the Jews that He is the I Am. There was no descriptive metaphor to follow. He simply stated that before Abraham was born, I AM!
I AM is the name of God. This is the name that God gave Himself in the OT. This name reflects God’s total self-sufficiency; He is the Source of all life and does not derive it His life from any other. It also reflects His eternality - from eternity past to eternity future He has always and continuously existed. He did not come into existence – ever. He has always been in existence.
The phrase “before Abraham was born” means “before Abraham came into being”. There was a time when Abraham was not. But Jesus is contrasting Himself with Abraham to show He is superior to Abraham in that He has always been in existence. That is only true of God and that is why Jesus is superior everyone else.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you Jesus didn’t declare to be God. That Jesus is the eternal God is the first thing John tells us in His Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Jews knew Jesus declared to be equal with God in John 5:18, “For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but, He was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”
My faith is in the I am. My eternal destiny is in the hands of the One who is eternal. I don’t trust in Prophets. I don’t trust in Abraham. I don’t trust in any man. My faith is in the God-Man Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the I AM.
“At this they picked up stones to stone him.” Jesus was destined for death. But, He was destined for death according to what the Father had planned for Him. He was not going to die at this time but 6 months from now. He was not going to die by the hands of these men, but, by the hands of the chief priests and Pharisees and the Romans. He was not going to die in this way – that is from stoning; He must die by crucifixion. His hour had not yet come. So He slips away again.
It is to their advantage and to the whole human race’s advantage that Jesus wasn’t stoned right then and there. Jesus was destined to die on a cross. This was the Father’s will. The Father’s will was to crush Him on the cross for humanity’s sake. The just for the unjust; the holy for the unholy; the righteous for the unrighteous; the sinless One for sinners; the Son of God for the enemies of God; His life for your life. God’s will was to save your life by killing the life of His own Son.
God made this to be Jesus’ destiny in order to change your destiny. Hebrews 9 says that every man is destined to die once and then face judgment. The question is will you die twice. Physical death is first, and, then spiritual death second. Someone once said that “you can either be born twice and die once, or, you can be born once and die twice.” The way to be born again is to make the right response to Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” The right response is to believe in Him.
The Wrong Response to Jesus
My brother-in-law is a police officer in Marion County Indiana. Last year he was telling us something funny that happened in his training. Everyone who goes into the academy has to be sprayed in the eyes with the same kind of mace they will carry on them, and, they have to be tazered by the same kind of tazer gun they will carry.
Well if you’ve never seen someone get tased, youtube it later because it’s hilarious. They get 2 guys to hold you and each guy grabs one of your arms. Then someone shoots you in the back with the taser gun and pumps something like 50,000 volts of electricity through your body for about 3 or4 seconds while you fall like a sack of potatoes to the ground (which is why you need the 2 guys holding you).
Well, after watching everyone else get zapped, my brother-in-law’s time came. However, when they shot him the tazer didn’t stick into his skin like it is supposed to. So, he didn’t get much of a jolt at all. Then he said those fatal words, “That wasn’t so bad”. That was the wrong reaction in this situation. They did it again and did it right and dropped that rookie like a sack of potatoes.
As we finish chapter 8 today, we see Jesus Christ is speaking to a crowd of Jews who make the wrong response to Him. The kind of response to Jesus someone makes is a matter of eternal life and eternal death. Every person’s eternal destiny hinges on their response to the person of Jesus Christ.
Throughout His preaching He keeps pointing out that there is a wrong way to respond to Him, and, there is a right way to respond to Him. This is what John wants you to see as he wrote this gospel: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” Believing in God’s Son is the right response to God’s Son. Rejecting Him is the wrong response.
Unfortunately, believing was not the response from the Jews that Jesus was facing in the temple courts that day. In these final verses of chapter 8 we see 4 Wrong Responses to Jesus Christ; 4 wrong reactions from these Jews. Do not make these your final response to God’s Son.
Slander His Character (v48-50)
The first wrong response to Jesus is to Slander His Character. Notice verses 48-50, “The Jews answered Him, ‘Aren’t we right in saying htat you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?’ ‘I am not possessed by a demon,’ said Jesus, ‘but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge.’”
This is the 4th time in these two chapters that they have insulted Jesus. They’ve accused Him of having a demon in chapter 7. They ridiculed Him by sarcastically saying He was going to commit suicide in chapter 8. They mocked His mother as we saw last week. And this week they call Him a Samaritan.
They called Him a Samaritan. The best way to start a fight with a Jew would be to call him a Samaritan. Samaritans were a mixed race, they weren’t purely Jewish. They had intermarried with foreigners long ago and were not pure Jews like the Jews of Judea. Also, when the Jews came back from Babylonian captivity the Samaritans offered to help rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. But the Jews told them to get lost and refused their help. There has been a bitter hatred and rivalry between these two groups ever since. The worst way to insult a Jew was to call him a Samaritan. So, they called Jesus a Samaritan.
But, there was more to this slanderous name calling than just insults. Samaritans were considered heretics. Their religion was looked at as a perversion of the true religion of the Jews. So in calling Jesus a Samaritan they were accusing Him of speaking heresy. They considered His teachings so absurd that they thought He was a lunatic. That’s why they say He’s demon-possessed; they thought He was raving mad.
The Jews thought that by dishonoring Jesus they were honoring God. Jesus told His disciples in John 16:2, “…a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or Me.” They dishonored the Father by killing His Son, and, they will dishonor the Son by killing His disciples.
You have to see that this is very personal for every one of us. Jesus didn’t come to get glory for Himself. The Bible says He left His glory behind to come and be shamed in this world. He willingly chose to be despised and rejected and mocked and ridiculed. This is the kind of treatment He came for. Isaiah 53 said, “He was despised and rejected by men, we esteemed Him not.” Psalm 22 is a Messianic Psalm about Jesus. It says, “I am scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me and hurl their insults and shake their heads.”
Listen: He suffered unjust shame before men so that you and I don’t have to suffer just shame before God. The shame that is rightfully ours He took on Himself. They were ashamed of Him and heaped upon Him insults after insults and disgrace after disgrace. He identified with sinners. He didn’t sin, but, He came in our likeness in the flesh. He identified with our shame by taking our sin and our shame upon Himself. This is very personal to us.
It’s personal to Him as well. It’s very personal to Jesus Christ that we would identify with Him. Are you willing to suffer insults for His sake? Will you suffer shame from the world while you glorify Christ?
Think of it this way: a person can be shamed because of sin or because of Christ. We deserved shame because of sin, but, Christ has taken that shame away. We no longer deserve it. Now, although we will not suffer shame because of sin, we will face shame because of Christ. The world hates Him, and dishonors Him, and therefore dishonors the Father. Christ honored the Father by remaining faithful to Him. And, when we stand in Christ and identify ourselves with Him and the world hates us for it He is glorified. Jesus Christ is not glorified when an unbelieving world likes Him. Jesus Christ is glorified when an unbelieving world hates Him. And Jesus Christ is glorified when you are hated by an unbelieving world for standing in Him.
Jesus deserves glory. They disgraced Him. They slandered His character. That’s the wrong response to Jesus Christ.
Scoff at His Claims (v51-52)
The 2nd Wrong Response to Jesus Christ is to Scoff at His Claims. Notice verses 51 and 52, “’I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.’ At this the Jews exclaimed, ‘Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death.’”
Jesus claimed that He can save you from death. The Jews here think He’s talking about physical death, but, He’s not. They thought Jesus was making Himself out to be greater than Abraham and the prophets because they all died. But Jesus wasn’t talking about physical death. If He were He would have saved Himself from the cross, and, the NT wouldn’t teach that suffering and even martyrdom for Christ’s sake are glorious things. But it does!
Jesus is talking about a different death. He came to save people from the death that comes after death. This death is spiritual death; it is the ultimate, final, and eternal destination for all who have rejected Jesus Christ. It is ultimate and final separation from God for ever. Revelation describes it as the lake of burning fire. Jesus described it as a place of never ending anguish and torment where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is a terrible place and it is a real place. The road of unbelief leads here. And it is here that Jesus came to rescue us from.
And they didn’t believe Him. They scoffed at Him. People still scoff at Jesus. It is the wrong response to Jesus Christ.
Consider Him Second-Rate (v53-55)
The 3rd wrong response to Jesus is to Consider Him Second-Rate. Notice verses 53, “’Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?’
The real question is not who does Jesus think He is – He knows. The real question is who do they think He is? To them, Jesus wasn’t any greater than the great men of their past. He was second-rate to men like Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel and many more. These are all amazing men but they are men who pointed to Christ, and were inferior to Him. There is no comparing them to Jesus. There is no one who is or ever will be His equal in all of human history because Jesus was no mere human.
Notice that in the face of His enemies Jesus continually entrusted Himself to His Father. Verse 54 says, Jesus replied, ‘If I glorify myself my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me.” The Father will glorify Him at His resurrection. In John 12:23 Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Jesus was about to be crucified and that meant He was going to be resurrected and return to His glory in Heaven. Jesus says in chapter 17 verse 5, “And now Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” The Father did that by raising Him up in power by the Spirit of holiness in order to declare Him as the Son of God (Rom 1:4).
Here’s the point: The Father considers Jesus first-rate, not second-rate. He is second to none; all are second to Him. If this is how God considers Jesus Christ how ought we?
Look at verse 55: 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 keep His word.’” Jesus knows the Father. And the Father will only be known through Jesus Christ. A man can’t have any true knowledge of God until He knows the One who knows God.
Isn’t that reassuring? That the One whom we have joined with is the One who knows the Father and the Father knows Him. The One whom the Father accepts is the One who accepts us. And if we are accepted by Him, then we know that we are accepted by the Father too. We come to the Father in the name of His Son whom He loves.
The Father will not allow any man to come to Him in any other name. Every other name is second-rate to Jesus Christ.
Sneer at His Coming (v56)
The 4th wrong response to Jesus is to Sneer at His Coming. Notice verses 56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”
Abraham saw Jesus’ day. We don’t know if Abraham received any prophetic visions from God, the Scriptures don’t say so. But God made a covenant with Abraham and told Him that through his Seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. There was One that was coming who would be Abraham’s descendent and He would be the One through whom all nations would be blessed. Abraham believed this, and by faith He saw this One coming who would be His seed.
But there were in Abraham’s life pictures of this coming One also. Isaac was a promised son to Abraham. Jesus is the promised Son of God. Isaac was Abraham’s one and only son. Jesus is God’s one and only Son. Abraham offered Isaac on the altar to God. Jesus was offered to God on the cross. Jesus came back from the dead. Hebrews says Isaac figuratively came back from the dead.
All that Abraham was promised is in Jesus Christ. He did not live to see Jesus come, but, by faith he saw the coming day of Jesus.
The Bible says that today we also live by faith. We see by faith that day when our sins were put on Jesus Christ. We see by faith that day when Jesus comes back for us. We live by faith – that is, we live with the sureness of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see. We do not fix our eyes on the things that are seen, which are temporal. But, instead, we fix the eye of our faith on things that are unseen, the things that are eternal. This is what the ancients were commended for.
Conclusion (v57-59)
“’You are not yet fifty years old,’ the Jews said to him, ‘and you have seen Abraham!’ ‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus said, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’ At this they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.”
This passage, as in the whole Gospel for that matter is the continued portrait of Jesus Christ’s true identity. There are 7 great I AM statements that Jesus makes in this Gospel. I am the 1) Living Water, 2) Bread of Life, 3) Light of the world, 4) Gate, 5) Shepherd, 6) True Vine, 7) Resurrection and the Life. He keeps declaring who He is by stating I am, I am, I am, I am. And each time He says “I am” He gives us a unique aspect of Himself as Savior.
But, the greatest of these I am statements came in this passage today. Jesus declared to the Jews that He is the I Am. There was no descriptive metaphor to follow. He simply stated that before Abraham was born, I AM!
I AM is the name of God. This is the name that God gave Himself in the OT. This name reflects God’s total self-sufficiency; He is the Source of all life and does not derive it His life from any other. It also reflects His eternality - from eternity past to eternity future He has always and continuously existed. He did not come into existence – ever. He has always been in existence.
The phrase “before Abraham was born” means “before Abraham came into being”. There was a time when Abraham was not. But Jesus is contrasting Himself with Abraham to show He is superior to Abraham in that He has always been in existence. That is only true of God and that is why Jesus is superior everyone else.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you Jesus didn’t declare to be God. That Jesus is the eternal God is the first thing John tells us in His Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Jews knew Jesus declared to be equal with God in John 5:18, “For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but, He was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”
My faith is in the I am. My eternal destiny is in the hands of the One who is eternal. I don’t trust in Prophets. I don’t trust in Abraham. I don’t trust in any man. My faith is in the God-Man Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the I AM.
“At this they picked up stones to stone him.” Jesus was destined for death. But, He was destined for death according to what the Father had planned for Him. He was not going to die at this time but 6 months from now. He was not going to die by the hands of these men, but, by the hands of the chief priests and Pharisees and the Romans. He was not going to die in this way – that is from stoning; He must die by crucifixion. His hour had not yet come. So He slips away again.
It is to their advantage and to the whole human race’s advantage that Jesus wasn’t stoned right then and there. Jesus was destined to die on a cross. This was the Father’s will. The Father’s will was to crush Him on the cross for humanity’s sake. The just for the unjust; the holy for the unholy; the righteous for the unrighteous; the sinless One for sinners; the Son of God for the enemies of God; His life for your life. God’s will was to save your life by killing the life of His own Son.
God made this to be Jesus’ destiny in order to change your destiny. Hebrews 9 says that every man is destined to die once and then face judgment. The question is will you die twice. Physical death is first, and, then spiritual death second. Someone once said that “you can either be born twice and die once, or, you can be born once and die twice.” The way to be born again is to make the right response to Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” The right response is to believe in Him.
Comments
Post a Comment