Bible Text: St John 8:42–59 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
Our Gospel lesson plunges us into a debate that has lasted two chapters between Jesus and the Jewish leaders. There in the Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus has repeatedly told them they are seeking to kill Him. And they’ve repeatedly said, you’re crazy, no one’s trying to kill You. And then at the end, they try to kill Him. How’s that for vindication? Of course, they don’t kill Him. Jesus hid Himself, or as the Greek says rather mysteriously, “He was hidden,” and went out of the temple. And the point there is that He, Jesus, sets the time for His own death. And the manner, the way He’s going to die – He actually tells them earlier in this chapter, that when they’ve lifted Him up (on the cross), they’ll know who He is. Because Jesus’ death is not going to be a miscarriage of justice. It’s not going to be simply people getting mad at Him and throwing rocks at Him and killing Him. It’s going to be, and it was, and it is, Jesus purposefully going to face divine Justice for us all, including the people who were trying to kill Him. That’s what we’re going to sing to end this service: But the deepest stroke that pierced Him was the stroke that Justice gave. What does that mean? Justice, that demands sinners get their due, that God punish us for what we’ve done and been, that’s the Justice that puts Jesus on the cross. It wasn’t the Jews in the end, or Pilate, or even your sins, that put Him on the cross – it was God, it was the Father who sent His Son, and He placed your sin on Him, you didn’t put your sins on Jesus, obviously, God did, and He put Him on that cross and He poured out on Him the punishment you deserved. He did it all. Justice requires us sinners to pay. God who is Just, who is Justice itself, requires us to pay. And Jesus, who is God, the eternal Son, Jesus said, I will pay. I will take their place. I’ll suffer it all, and I’ll die. This is all God’s doing and it’s marvelous in our sight.
So when you see that the Jewish leaders try to kill Him, and they don’t, you should take comfort from it. They can’t kill Him. But He has the power to lay down His life and He has the power to take it back again. And He does it. By the end of the Gospel of John, it’s Jesus who’s telling Judas to go betray Him, “What you are going to do, do it quickly,” Jesus says. And it’s Jesus who tells the guards in Gethsemane, “I AM he,” arrest me, take me. It’s Jesus who says to Pilate, “You could have no power over me whatsoever unless it were given to you by God.” Jesus is in complete control. And that means He’s in complete control now.
Now ironically, it’s precisely because Jesus is in control, is God, and says so, that the Jewish leaders pick up stones to throw at Him. Jesus says, I’m God: “Before Abraham was, I AM.” That’s not a grammatical error, it’s Jesus saying He is the I AM – that’s the name of God, the name God gave to Moses in the burning bush, “I AM WHO I AM.”
Now if you’re going to throw stones at someone who claims to be God, you’d better be sure first that He isn’t. You’d think that God wouldn’t take it kindly. That He’d blow them out of that Temple. But He doesn’t. No, instead He goes and dies for them on the cross. That’s the character of your God.
And that’s exactly what Jesus is arguing with the Jews about. They’re mad at Him way before He out and says, “I’m God.” They’re mad at Him because He says He gives life. “Whoever believes in Me will never see death.” And He says that not only about you and me and the Jews he’s arguing with, He says it about Abraham. Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it, and was glad.
And this, more than anything, is what made those Jewish leaders so angry. If Abraham needed Jesus, then everyone does. It’s all wrapped up in Abraham.
My dad once took an IQ test, he had to for a twin study the U of Minnesota was conducting on my twin brothers, and in that IQ test, there was only one bible question, and Dad, who’s a pastor, got it wrong. The question was, “What is Genesis about?” And Dad answered, “Abraham.” And that’s the wrong answer for the IQ test, because the IQ test wanted, “The beginning of the world,” that’s what Genesis means, “beginning,” and of course you get that for one and a half chapters in Genesis. But if you read Genesis, you’ll see Dad was right – it’s about Abraham. It’s about God choosing Abraham, calling Him out of the pagan world, where they’re living in total ignorance and immorality and sacrificing their children to their false gods, God calls Abraham out of that by pure grace and gives him a promise. That promise was, “In your Seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”
And the debate between Jesus and the Jewish leaders is really on that promise. How is God going to give life? How is He going to bless all nations? The Jewish religion, as it is today, is basically what the Pharisees believed in Jesus’ time. They believe/d that because they descended from Abraham, they’re Abraham’s children, and the promise made to Abraham applied to them, they’re blessed, so long as they do a decent job obeying God.
And Abraham was the great example of this for them. Of obedience. And nowhere do you see Abraham’s obedience more clearly than in God’s command to him to sacrifice his son Isaac. For the Jews, this was the perfect example – Abraham, their father, obeys, and if you obey like Abraham, you’ll stay Abraham’s children and God’s children. You don’t need any more saving, don’t need Jesus, just be like your father Abraham.
But it turns out, and this is what Jesus tells them, to be like Abraham is to believe in Jesus, because He is the promised Seed, who wins life and salvation for sinners, like Abraham. Abraham didn’t simply obey some arbitrary command of God. That’s not the point of the story, and if it were, it would be a really horrible story, God telling Abraham to murder his kid and Abraham saying, OK.
When I’m up at the lake and I’m in the water and my boy, who doesn’t know how to swim, is on the dock, and I say, “Jump,” my boy might jump, he might obey, he might conquer his fear and do it. Why? Because he trusts my character? He knows Dad won’t let him drown? I suppose. But more than that, it’s because I don’t just tell him to jump. I promise him I’m going to catch him. And he trusts that I will. Because I love him. That’s what he holds on to when he makes his leap of faith into the water. It’s the promise of a loving father.
And that’s what Abraham did. He did obey. But he obeyed because He believed in the promise of His loving Father, that He would send His only Son, the Son whom He loved, into human flesh to redeem poor sinners from sin and death. And God promised that He would send His Son through Abraham’s son, Isaac. And God could not lie. Abraham obeyed, because he knew God would keep His promise and that Isaac would not see death. Abraham is not the father of obedience to the law, he’s the father of faith in Jesus. The writer to the Hebrews says it this way, “By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your Seed be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.”
Abraham believed in Jesus. When he saw Isaac alive, and he sacrificed a ram in his place, he saw Jesus’ day and He was glad. He saw before him in stark reality what God would do. Instead of Isaac, the Ram. Instead of us sinners, Jesus, the Lamb of God.
Jesus offended the Jewish leaders because He spoke the truth. And that truth still offends, Jews and Gentiles, anyone who won’t admit the truth. And that truth is simply that we need Him. If we want eternal life, if we want to be children of God, we need Him, the true Son. It doesn’t matter who you came from, what your lineage is, what obedience you think you’ve given to God, you’re a sinner. And what Jesus said to those Jews long ago He says to you, unless you believe that I AM, you will die in your sins. Jesus’ words to the Jews tell us what we were by nature. He said to them, “You are children of the devil.” That’s the harsh reality they would not hear, that without Jesus they were slaves to sin, and bound for eternal separation from God. To be a Christian is to hear that, to confess it, and with it all our sins, and to trust in Jesus to give us the life we need.
Jesus makes us God’s children. Jesus is our treasure. He is life from the dead. He is our inheritance of heaven and our status before God. If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed. And He does. He loves you. He won’t let sin or death separate you from Him. He bore it all to the cross, He paid with divine suffering what Justice demanded. And He gives you everything He is and won for you, freely. Because He loves you. “Whoever keeps my word, will never see death.” Ever. Jesus already died your death. He already rose. All the sins that separated you from God He already bore away. It’s finished. You won’t taste death, it won’t harm you, you’ve seen His day, far more clearly than Abraham ever did, you’ve tasted the goodness of your Savior in His body and blood. You see Him crucified for you.