Sermon on God's Sovereignty (James White)

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Hey, everybody. I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. If you'll turn your Bibles with me, please, shockingly and amazingly to Matthew chapter 24.

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I just want to make sure everyone understands we do know that there are other verses and other chapters.

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But I'm a little confused personally because just last Lord's Day, Jeff came up to me before the service and said that they wanted to spend a little more time away.

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Would I be able to speak this afternoon? I said, yes.

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And I said, so the next section is in Matthew 24, shockingly, and now he knows that I'm leaving

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Tuesday. I have a debate Wednesday night with Shabir Ali at Georgia Tech and then Thursday night

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I fly to London and I'm speaking a number of times over the weekend, a quick hop up to Scotland and then back again.

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And so what does he do? He assigns me a verse that has three words in Greek in it.

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Three words. That's all there is to it. So good luck coming up with something out of three words in Greek.

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Well, actually there's a whole lot more to it than that. We're looking specifically at Matthew 24, 25.

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And honestly, most folks would not seek to develop a tremendous amount of material out of the simple statement, behold,

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I have told you beforehand or I have, you could say, I have warned you beforehand.

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The term, the only term that really has a tremendous amount of meaning outside of saying behold, take notice of this is the phrase to tell beforehand.

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And it is used a number of times in the New Testament and it can often simply refer to, remember when

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I said to you before, so if you're referring to conversations that took place beforehand, it can be used in a really non -theological sense.

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But most of the time it either has to do with a warning, I told you, and we've all heard that utilization from our mothers.

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I told you. Or you hear it from the wife, especially if you're a dad and you're doing the dad thing, which means you're roughhousing with the kids.

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And what does mom say from the other room? Somebody's gonna get hurt in there.

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And then about five minutes later, one of the kids is heard crying and you're going, just walk it off, walk it off.

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It's broken. Don't worry about it. Walk it off. And it's like, I told you that's a, yeah, that's a a proper utilization of the term.

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But it is also used specifically of speaking prophetically, prophetically.

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And here in the midst of what Jesus is saying concerning what is coming, you have

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Jesus's direct statement saying to his disciples, I've told you beforehand.

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Now, why would he say something like this? Well, from the beginning as we have been working through this section, one of the emphasis that Pastor Jeff has made in why we're spending as much time as we are, aside from the fact that obviously this is an incredibly disputed text.

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You can go into a Christian bookstore, if almost any exist any longer, but you can go online and look at the commentary section and you will find probably more perspectives expressed in the commentaries than there are actual commentaries.

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Which means you'll get a lot of people who will approach this text and say, well, yet it might be this and it might be that and it might be this over there and I'm really not sure.

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Or you get those who are absolutely dogmatic to the point of withdrawing fellowship if you don't agree with them on every single jot and tittle.

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And so if you don't see it exactly like they see it and if you don't have

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Hal Lindsey tattooed on your right arm or something like that, you are just simply going to be dismissed by these particular individuals.

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But we also know that very often this text is used to allege error on the part of Jesus.

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He got it wrong. He was trying to prophesy but he didn't get it right.

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And so the objection is that Jesus can't be who he claimed to be because of a certain understanding of what is to happen in light of this particular text.

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That's very interesting. Yesterday, I did a what

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I call a study ride and I'm trying to catch up but I've got a debate and so I was listening to a debate that my opponent that I'm debating at Georgia Tech did a few years ago on the very same topic.

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That's a good thing to do. Listen, read his notes before the debate begins. That's a good thing to do.

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But that takes a little while to do and so I rode out to Bartlett Lake and back and managed to avoid all of the cars on the way.

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A little 100 mile jaunt and after I got done listening to what I needed to for the debate,

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I started listening to a program that was recorded about a month and a half ago in London called

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On the Unbelievable Radio Broadcast with Justin Brierley. I've been on it a number of times and they had

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Peter Williams, the Christian scholar, with Bart Ehrman and they were talking about the reliability of the

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Gospels and I had wanted to get to it, need to review it on the dividing line. So on the way back from Bartlett, I started listening to that and I was really surprised.

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I checked it out this morning again to make sure that I had heard it accurately but I was really surprised because this issue came up in the conversation.

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And interestingly enough, it was Peter Williams saying now, you know, one of the objections that people raise is based on naturalism and a rejection of supernaturalism and so people will say that the

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Gospels had to be written at a later period of time because Jesus is talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and no one could do that.

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And Bart Ehrman chimes in. Bart Ehrman, if you don't know who he is, is an apostate. He was a professing

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Christian. He graduated from Moody Bible Institute. He then went to Wheaton College.

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Then from Wheaton College, he went to Princeton Seminary and I know, that's sort of almost a fundy thing to do, but it is very, very true.

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If you've ever been to Princeton, you can learn much more in the Princeton Cemetery than you can in the

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Princeton Seminary because Princeton Cemetery is where Warfield is and Edwards is and just reading the gravestones in that place is a theological education.

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Much better than you would get in the seminary today, sadly. But he lost his faith there at the

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Princeton Seminary and now calls himself an agnostic. You know, it's really hard to nail down exactly where he is, but he's probably the leading

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English -speaking critic of the New Testament today. He's an expert in textual critical issues.

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That's not what he's writing on today. Well, he chimes in, interestingly enough, and he says,

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I think Jesus talked about the destruction of Jerusalem. And you could tell both

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Justin and Peter are like, what? What did Jesus say? What? He says, yeah,

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I'm I think Jesus probably predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, but he placed it into the context not of what we have in Matthew 24 of specificity and prophecy, but yeah, he probably saw it coming and probably said something about it.

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Just sort of the vague type of, yeah, he probably I don't know. I'll give you that much.

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He probably saw that the political situation was such that eventually something bad was going to happen and it would probably involve the destruction of Jerusalem.

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Which is interesting because Ehrman places the Gospels back around 80, 70, 80, 90 area and one of the primary reasons why modern scholarship puts the

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Gospels that far down the road is because you can't have supernatural elements in it.

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And Matthew, Mark, Luke, all the Gospels have this kind of content and that was one of the primary reasons in the late 1800s when people started pushing the dates of the

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Gospels as far back as they were. So I did find it rather interesting when I heard that just yesterday that Ehrman said, yeah, he probably said something about this, but many other people would say no, no, no.

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He could not have possibly have seen this coming, especially with the detail that he gives in this section.

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And so why would we look specifically just at verse 25?

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Well, there is a worldview involved in understanding what

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Jesus says here. I've told you beforehand when this happens, remember that I told you these things.

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You and I, as long as we have been exposed to the

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Word of God and have purposely sought to bring our thinking captive to the

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Word of God to consider what Scripture teaches, you and I recognize that there is a meaningful ground for prophecy in God's world.

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Now, I don't think the majority of even our good friends in evangelicalism at times have thought through what that actually means.

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I thought about it. I didn't do it, especially because I got in trouble last time I did it. In fact,

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I was standing within two feet of Jeff the last time I got in trouble for doing this, but I showed, remember when

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I showed the graphic just briefly on my iPad from the great scroll of Isaiah in the debate up in Salt Lake City and a certain atheist tried to throw antifreeze at me.

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No, that's not what happened. I'm starting to lose the details, but you remember what happened. He was very upset that I used a illustration in my presentation.

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So I decided I just didn't want to have that happening again. I can just see that happening a second time.

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But if you think about the great Isaiah scroll that was discovered in Qumran, that was written at least a hundred years before Christ, maybe a little bit earlier than that, that gives us the words of the prophecy of Isaiah from 700 years.

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700 years before their fulfillment in the life of Christ. We have their words that describe events and say, this is what's going to happen.

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How can that take place? Now, it's really easy for us to just go, well, God knows the future and so we can write these things.

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Well, think with me for a moment. How does God know the future? How does

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God know the future? Well, he just looks down the corridors of time and he can see things.

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Well, okay, but when he created, did he know what the result of his creation was going to be?

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And if you say yes, did he know with specificity? And was it simply the fact that he just threw it out there and then looked and went, hey,

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I went at the end, praise me. That's the simple foreknowledge view of how

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God knows the future. And there's a lot of people who believe that. Because if God's knowledge of future events flows from the accomplishment of his purpose in all of creation, then that word sovereignty arises.

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Kingship, authority, power, that begins to then address the issue of the nature of the will of God and the will of man.

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Can you have multiple autonomous wills? Or is it correct as R .C.

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Sproul once said, God is free. I am free. When my freedom runs into God's freedom,

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I lose. This becomes the issue.

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And I submit to you that I know many a Christian today that's big into prophecy.

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Ever driven by a Seventh -day Adventist church? I think they have, every weekend they have a prophecy conference at Seventh -day

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Adventist churches. Every single time I go by, prophecy conference, prophecy conference.

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It's just, it's just constant. But I know Seventh -day Adventist theology.

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And they do not believe that God has sovereignty over his creation flowing from his decree.

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So I don't see how you put those two things together. And some of you may be aware of a great controversy that was taking place back at the beginning of this century.

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Man, back at the beginning of this century, can you believe we're already this far into it that we can say that?

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Back at the beginning of this century. But I did a debate with Dr.

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Sanders at Forum Theological Seminary in Florida on the subject of open theism.

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And the big controversy was the open theists were in the Evangelical Theological Society. There were people that said, this isn't

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Christian theology. We need to kick these people out. And other people said, yeah, but our statement of faith doesn't really address it, so we can't do it.

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And so on and so forth. The open theists recognize a problem.

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They recognize that if God really does know the future, then the future is a fixed reality.

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Because if God knows that I am going to get on an airplane at 10 o 'clock on Tuesday morning to fly to Atlanta, if he has that knowledge now, can

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I, by my free will, falsify his knowledge? No.

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So from their perspective, the idea that I would have an autonomous will to just decide, you know what?

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I don't want to do that debate. I'm not going to go. Well, that would falsify

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God's knowledge that I was getting on that plane, and therefore God doesn't have future knowledge.

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And so what the open theists say is no, God does not know what free creatures will do in the future.

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He knows what he's going to do in the future, and he knows what's going to happen, like, naturally in the sense of earthquakes and stuff like that, because he made the world.

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But he does not know what free creatures will do in the future. The result of this is open theists believe that when

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God created, he did not know you would ever exist. Because what are you?

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You're the result of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of free choices by free creatures.

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So, for example, when Christ dies, he can't die for you, because he doesn't know you will ever exist.

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So there's a huge impact on theology, all to protect the autonomous will of man, and fundamentally to remove the autonomous will of God.

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So there have been debates and all sorts of controversy down to the ages on this particular subject.

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But what I want to focus our attention on is what it means here. How could

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Jesus be a prophet in regards to what was going to happen in Jerusalem?

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I mean, think about it. There's still 40 years to come. There's 40 years between the crucifixion of Jesus and the fall of Jerusalem.

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Think of all the free will choices that were made during that period of time by people in Rome, Jerusalem.

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We happen to know that one of the key areas was Caesarea on the sea, not Caesarea Philippi. There's two different places.

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But Caesarea on the sea, we know that some of the Roman rulers that were there specifically did things that led to the rebellion and things like that.

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What if they had chosen not to do those things? What if enough decisions were made to where Jerusalem was never destroyed?

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What would the result be? What would we have to believe about Jesus? Everything would change.

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So if Jesus says this is what's going to happen, there is not going to be one stone left upon another.

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If that does not happen, then everything else he says is done away with.

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He's no longer a prophet. If you can't believe him on that, why can you believe him on anything else?

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So you see, it's always amazed me that there are many Christians who will have really strong beliefs in one area over here, and they've read books and everything else.

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But they don't seem to see that for all of this to be relevant, there are underlying theological truths that must be in place for you to have any concept of this at all.

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I have warned for decades that we cannot have chicken coop theology.

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Or maybe we don't do these things anymore, but in a lot of places of work you used to have the mailbox room where you have your little little square and stuff stuck in there.

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Maybe sometimes your paycheck was put in there or notices or things like that, a little notes for you, stuff like that.

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Or in the chicken coop where you've got a little places for the chicken to go. The idea is we cannot have something where we have our theology of God and theology of Jesus and the spirit and the

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Bible and last things and the church and the ordinances and prophecy and they're all kept separate from one another.

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We can't do that. One of the things when I teach seminary classes,

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I often say what my job is is to force you to think through your theology and bring all these areas together and ask yourself the question, am

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I being consistent? And when we seek to be consistent in all of our understanding of who

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God is, my friends, that is an act of worship.

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Did you hear me? Anybody still out there? Don't make me deal with those fundamentals. Hey, amen. Amen. You know that type of thing.

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I don't want to start doing that thing. You know, that one guy is constantly doing this and amen, you know, it's like get rid of the fleas, man.

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What's the problem? Good. I found somebody that's like that.

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All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Matt, you still with me? All right, good. I may see when

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I know where you're sitting you're in trouble because then I can just go, there you go. So it's an act of worship.

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You might say why? It's easy to say we're trying to think God's thoughts after him, but he has made us to think properly.

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When you think logically and accurately, you are seeking to be what

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God has made you to be and to reflect your place in his creation.

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And we are called to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so when we seek in our theology and in our belief to be consistent across the spectrum of God's revelation, this is a mechanism whereby we worship

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God. It's not just so we can fight with our friends on Facebook more effectively.

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And obviously the more consistent we are in our theology, then we are called to consistently apply that in our lives, in the entirety of our lives.

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And inconsistencies in theology have frequently led to fundamental problems in how we live out our lives.

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So there is actually a lot underneath those three Greek words.

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Behold, I have told you beforehand. Jesus is putting his authority on the line.

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And I would imagine those Christians that fled from Jerusalem when they saw the armies surrounding it, if you had asked them, do you have any question that Jesus Christ was the son of God, they would have said not the slightest.

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Not the slightest. Now let me show you something that to me is,

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I don't know, it is absolutely and I know some of you are already aware of this, but if you have not seen this before,

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I think you're going to want to see this. Turn with me to a parallel, not parallel in the sense of in the

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Olivet discourse, but to a parallel statement of Jesus in John chapter 13.

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John chapter 13. Now I've told the story before, but I want to make sure we're all on the same page.

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I remember very, very clearly when I was in college at Grand Canyon College and I was studying the deity of Christ.

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We had begun Alpha and Omega Ministries. Our first focus was dealing with Mormonism. Very quickly people started asking a lot of questions about Jehovah's Witnesses.

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Ended up getting into that area. It's a wide area. There's a lot of literature to be reading, so on and so forth.

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But also while I was, while that was happening, I came to understand the importance of the original languages.

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And so though I was a biology major, I added a Bible major, it was a double major, and then a

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Greek minor. And one night

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I had my first computer. It was a compact portable, which means it was the size of a singer sewing machine and the weight of one too.

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It was huge, but you could pick it up. So it was a portable. And the keyboard came off of it and there was your beautiful six inch green screen.

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And two floppy disks. Two. And there were 360k floppies too.

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So, oh, they were big. No hard drive. And I had that thing sitting there on this desk.

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My dear wife was already asleep. I had one of those flickering little desk lamps.

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And I was, I knew a man who had become a Jehovah's Witness. He had been witnessing two

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Jehovah's Witnesses and became one. Never a part of a church. Don't ever do that.

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That was the problem. And so I was responding to things this man was writing.

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And they were challenging. They were very challenging. I don't remember exactly the order in which this took place, but I think

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I was looking at John 13, 19 where Jesus says, from now on I am telling you before it comes to pass so that when it does take place, you might believe that I am.

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Now the two Greek words ego,

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I me I am. That's what I was, that's what I was disputing with this guy about because you've probably heard ego,

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I me before the I am sayings of Jesus in the gospel of John. There's also an I am saying of Jesus in Mark when

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Jesus is walking on the water. But you've probably heard of them before and you've probably heard it presented where people will go, see

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Jesus uses the phrase I am and God back at the burning bush. Moses says, who shall

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I say is sending? I am has sent you. See there. Jesus is claiming deity.

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Hold on. Be careful. Be careful. There are very, very sharp

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Jehovah's Witnesses out there. Very well prepared. You want to know how well prepared they can be?

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I was teaching systematic theology for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary years and years ago down in Tucson. And we used to, the dividing line used to be on the radio, believe it or not, back when we spent that kind of money.

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And so since the class is on a Saturday, I wasn't able to do it. I had to have people filling in for me.

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So I would get done with the class. I jumped in the, I had a truck back there and I could actually pick up the radio station.

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I'm driving up, driving through Tucson traffic, which is worse than Phoenix traffic, and trying to get to the freeway.

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And I hear that a Jehovah's Witness, a one that I know who he is, real sharp guy, has called into the program and is taking my guys on.

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So I had just gotten my first cell phone. They were a new thing. Really newfangled thing.

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And so I call in and I'm taking this guy on.

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And the reason I knew so is I had already encountered him. Remember, ready for this?

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On AOL. You've got mail.

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And in one of our encounters, he had asked me, he said, we were talking about John 20, 28, and John 20, 28,

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Thomas says, Hakurei Asumu, Kaihate Asumu, my Lord and my God. And when he says, my

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God, it's in the nominative. And so here is the question this Jehovah's Witness asked me.

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You want to know how prepared some of these people can be? He said, is there any other place in the New Testament where God is addressed using the nominative rather than the vocative case?

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Now I happened to know that there is. So before I could even type the reference out for him, he then added, that does not include a textual variant.

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He knew the same reference I knew. And he knew that there was a minor textual variant in the manuscripts about it.

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That's how prepared Jehovah's Witnesses can be. So when we say, don't go out there on your white horse, you know, and go try to save the

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Jehovah's Witnesses, because you can run into some extremely sharp people. I'm going to tell you, there have been encounters that I've had.

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I remember one very clearly. I was finishing up my second year of Greek, and I had an encounter with some

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Jehovah's Witnesses. The only reason that they were the ones walking out of the house and the person that was listening didn't stay with Jehovah's Witnesses and stayed with the church that I was a part of.

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The only reason was because I knew Greek and they didn't. That was the only reason. That's how sharp they were.

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That's how sharp they were. So be aware, be warned. And when we use a text like this, you might go, what?

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John 13, 19. I thought the I am saying was like in John 8, 58, right?

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Before Abraham was, I am. Well, we'll get to that in a moment.

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But here's the important point. What this friend of mine had argued was that if you go back to Exodus and the burning bush, and you look at the

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Greek translation of that material, not to the

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Hebrew, the Hebrew term is Anahu. The Greek translation is

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Egoimi. Egoimi. If you go back when when God says

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I am, tell them I am that I am. The phrase is Egoimi ha -on.

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I am the one being. I am the one who has being.

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And the emphasis is on ha -on, not Egoimi. I've seen entire study

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Bibles that at John 8, 58 will send you straight back Exodus chapter three.

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That's not how you do it. That's not how you do it. Well, what is going on here?

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Well, let me take you back to that night. My compact computer. I'm looking at John 13, 19 and I go

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I've seen this somewhere before. There's something about the language that was making me go you've seen this somewhere before.

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Now back then you didn't have we have I have more computer power on on Bible programs on this thing than we could dream you would ever ever have in that day.

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Believe you me. Accordance on iPhone is like unbelievable. I couldn't do searches and things like that.

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There was no Bible program. But I did have my Greek Septuagint. And so I start thumbing through it and I start looking.

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I'm going where have I seen this? Where have I seen this? And then all of a sudden I found it. All of a sudden

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I found it. Isaiah 43 10. Isaiah 43 10.

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Now before you turn there, how many of you in this audience have at least one portion of Isaiah 43 10 memorized?

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And why? Mormons. What's the end of the verse?

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Before me there is no God formed and there will be none after me. It cuts the eternal law of progression right down the middle.

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And I had quoted Isaiah 43 10 forever. But guess what?

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There's more to the verse than that. The verse starts off and it and you know we didn't necessarily memorize it because it wasn't really something you'd necessarily be using with a with a

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Mormon in a conversation. And it's sort of like okay. Yeah, you're my you're my servant. I've been chosen so that you may know and understand believe that I am he.

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Before me there is no God formed there shall be none after me. And lo and behold once I started looking at that in the

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Greek Septuagint translation, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament is done 250 to 200 years before the time of Christ.

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The vast majority of citations from the Old Testament in the

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New Testament are from the Greek Septuagint not from the Hebrew. It was the Bible of the early church. And so once I looked at Isaiah 43 10 all of a sudden

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I realized oh my goodness. Now I I had to be very quiet with my excitement because Kelly was already asleep.

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So I only had that flickering little light and that little green screen to share my great joy in discovering this.

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But when you look at the verbs and the forms of the words that are used there is no question that Jesus is purposefully drawing from Isaiah 43 10 in talking to the disciples on the night of his betrayal.

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He's talking about what Judas is going to do. Both of the contexts are in the context of prophecy.

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In Isaiah 43 10 this is what's going to happen. This is how I prove that I'm truly God. I know the future and I know the past and why it happened.

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The false gods can't do that. So in the context of future events

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God says I'm telling you before it happens that when it does happen you may know and believe and understand that ego

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I am. I am. And here Jesus to the disciples says that you may believe when it takes place that ego

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I me I am. Now you have to you would have to theorize that Jesus didn't know the scriptures to get around the fact that Jesus is plainly applying

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Isaiah 43 10 to himself on the night of his betrayal. So the very same context as Matthew 24 25 that is

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Jesus is giving knowledge of future events and he says

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I'm going to tell you about these things so when it happens you may know I am.

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So if those things don't happen, what does that say about Jesus? You say no one would ever say that.

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Want to make a bet? Go watch the debate that I did up in Denver, Colorado in I think it was 2014 somewhere around there with an open theist.

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I brought this up because his specific statement was Judas could have done otherwise.

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Judas could have done otherwise. Jesus could have been wrong. That's what open theism leads to.

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And of course my argument was therefore Jesus could have been wrong and therefore not the

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I am and really from their perspective there really isn't any way to get around that particular reality.

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Now you might say but you know didn't the blind man use ego

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I me of himself in in John 9 when he was once he'd been healed and people were saying that's not him and he goes yeah, it was me ego

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I me I am. He wasn't claiming to be God. No, he wasn't claiming to be God and ego

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I me can be used in a way that is not claiming deity, but let's briefly because I don't you know,

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I I'm always sensitive to the fact that I I have to get done at least five minutes earlier than Jeff does.

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So let's look at a couple of passages and you tell me if John is not specifically and purposely and if you if you miss a reference or something like that I gave

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Jeff a copy of the new edition of Forgotten Trinity there is an entire chapter on this particular subject in the

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Forgotten Trinity if you want to look at it But let's go ahead and look back at John chapter 8 But before 8 58

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Comes 8 24 In 8 24,

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Jesus is speaking to the Jews and he says I said to you That you will die in your sins for unless you believe interestingly enough

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The exact same form of the verb is found in John 13 19 for unless you believe that Ego, I me

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I am You will die in your sins There is something about Jesus and this phrase

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That he says is central to salvation itself unless you believe that I am you will die in your sins

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Now some people say well that means this means the messiah or something like that Well stay in the same chapter

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And go to the end of the chapter and this is the one we talked about before verse 58 And here the temperature is getting higher and higher in the conversation

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Abram has been brought up and Jesus has said in verse 56 that abram rejoiced

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Abraham our father rejoiced that he might see my day and he saw it and and was glad And therefore the jews say to him if you're not even 50 years old and you've seen abraham

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Jesus said to them Amen. Amen. Lego who mean?

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Before abraham was I am and the very next word is they took up The very next word therefore they took up stones that they might cast them upon him that is they might stone him

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They knew exactly what he was saying They knew exactly what he was saying Because when you go back, it's not just isaiah 43 there are a number of places in the prophecy of isaiah where Ego, I am he is used as a euphemism or a further description of yahweh himself

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Yahweh himself And if we had time we might be able to unpack john 8.

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When did abraham see? Jesus's day could it have been at that time in genesis 18 and 19?

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when jehovah Yahweh Went walking with abraham by the oaks of mamre

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And you have the discussion of sodom and gomorrah and then in genesis chapter 19 Yahweh in heaven rains fire and brimstone upon sodom and gomorrah

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Yahweh on earth. Sorry rains fire and brimstone upon sodom and gomorrah from yahweh in heaven How does that work?

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Well, once you have the new testament, you see how it works You see how it works.

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There's only one yahweh But he's tri -personal father son. Holy spirit. That's why we believe in the doctrine of the trinity.

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So you've john 8 24 Which I use often in speaking with muslims Because they believe jesus is a prophet

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But that's not enough from jesus's perspective even believing is the messiah is not enough from jesus's perspective

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John 8 58 We already saw john 13 19 In the context the very same context of prophecy of future events that we have in matthew 24 25

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But there is another place and interestingly enough Bart Ehrman Uses this as one of his arguments

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Because he recognizes That the gospel of john the intention of the gospel of john is to present jesus as a full

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On divine being period end of discussion now his argument is mark didn't do that John did therefore you have evolution.

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Therefore. It's all wrong. That's his argument but at least

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He is straightforward and I think he misses a bunch in mark and we'll have to discuss that at some point in time because there's

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A lot about the deity of christ in the gospel of mark, but the point is he recognizes John is obvious at this point

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He's being very obvious and here is one of those places where he is obvious. That is john chapter 18 beginning in verse 4 the soldiers are coming with lamps

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To arrest him And he asks them who are you seeking?

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And they answered him jesus the nazarene And jesus says to them

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Ego, I mean Now notice what john does he does not want us to miss this

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He belabors the point Because he says and he said to them ego.

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I me I am now judas the one betraying him was standing with them So the then when he said to them

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Ego, I mean, so he repeats it twice. He wants you to understand Exactly what jesus said when he said it and what happened as a result.

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So when he said Ego, I mean What happens the soldiers fall back upon the ground?

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They fall back upon the ground If you want to find out if you want to see when someone

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Just does not want to be subject to the word of god just does not want to believe what it has to say A unitarian and there's lots of them take them to this text and see what they say

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So tell me why did the soldiers fall back upon the ground? Well it was jesus's great purity

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That caused them to fall back upon the ground Yeah soldiers do that every day

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In fact, in fact There are special soldier rear bumper guards that they have because soldiers fell back upon the ground

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Every day when they run into people who are holy and and righteous and things It's just it's just a terrible thing that terrible problem that soldiers have

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It's so obvious They fall back upon the ground when jesus says ego.

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I mean I mean john is waving a big flag here and going look at who jesus is

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I I told you in john 1 1 And i'm going to tell you again in john 20 28 and i've given you a whole bunch of stuff in between But you need to see

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Who jesus is And so if an a particular author here john

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Is emphasizing to us Who jesus is to this phrase

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I am then each one of those texts builds

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Confidence that we are accurately understanding john's intention Now someone might say and this is a major argument

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I don't have time to unpack all of it right now, but just in case you run into it. Some are saying well, that's the problem here is

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Only john does it if jesus had actually said these things they'd be in matthew mark and luke too

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The main reason I mentioned that to you is I can guarantee you That I will hear that wednesday night at georgia tech

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From my muslim opponent. I can guarantee it. It's going to happen and you say well, how do you respond to something like that?

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a couple things First of all, I do think that you do find I think that statement of jesus in mark

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The walking on the water when he uses ego I mean right in the middle of a supernatural event is significant in this this this case

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But obviously john does have an intention and I and it does seem to me John is probably the last of the gospels to be written

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And I think he has a specific intention And a specific freedom to be able to talk about things that possibly matthew mark and luke

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Because they're writing much closer to the events did not have the freedom necessarily to address that john does this has this would have to do with the issue of the messiahship of jesus and The use of names and things like that and the persecution the church is experiencing

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There's a number of things we can get into but the point is yes John does have a different focus and he chooses other things to focus upon but that doesn't

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It does not follow that matthew mark and luke were unaware of these things

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They choose not to include these things For what purposes well, we'd have to climb back into their minds to be able to give final answers to all those questions

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But the fact is these all come from the first century And when we start finding christian writings after this time

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They believe everything From all of matthew mark luke and john

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They understand the entirety of that message So who is jesus

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He is the I am who can say I tell you beforehand so that when it does happen you may believe that I am

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He is the incarnate one He is the son of god entered into flesh

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And therefore when he speaks of the future He can speak of the future from the confidence

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Of who he is as the god who spoke in isaiah 43 who spoke in isaiah 41

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And specifically challenged to false gods. Tell us what's going to happen in the future and tell us what happened in the past And why it happened only god can give that challenge

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You simply cannot hold the christian revelation together if you do not

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Recognize that god is king over his creation If you try to elevate man to the point

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Of being the determiner Of what takes place in time? You are not going to be able to understand what's going on in the pages of your bible

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You're going to have to start picking and choosing what you're going to emphasize and what you're not going to emphasize That's a simple reality

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We must accept sola scriptura scripture alone

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But tota scriptura all of scripture And when you allow all of scripture to speak it is very very clear

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In what it communicates to us concerning god Jesus and his sovereignty over the events in time

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Jesus knew what was going to happen to jerusalem. It did not make him happy To think about the blood that was going to be shed

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But he also knew it was absolutely certain And it was absolutely necessary To the justice of god and the fulfillment of god's intentions and his purposes

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And that's why he could say Remember behold i've told you i've warned you

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And we can trust him We can trust him with what he said then And we can trust him when he says if you believe in me

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You'll have forgiveness of sins And eternal life. Let's pray together Our grace heavenly father.

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We thank you for your word. We thank you for Recording for us these words of our lord and savior preserving them for us down through the ages

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And lord as we consider The trustworthiness of jesus we know that that trustworthiness is based upon your sovereignty your kingship your godship

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You are god. We are not we are your creatures. We confess that And we thank you

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That even when we were rebels You by your spirit

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Drew us unto yourself Father as we consider these words, we ask that you would once again greatly increase our confidence

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In the gospel and in your word Lord the world Every single day it seeks to break down our faith.

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It seeks to conform us to its image May we expose ourselves to your word.

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May your spirit make that word to come alive within us Lord, we want to have the mind of christ

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And so lord, we thank you for this section of scripture We ask there be any amongst us that do not know jesus.

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They will see his glory You'll draw them to the gospel And to the very source of eternal life jesus christ himself.