The I Am Sayings of Jesus as an Example of Exegesis and Hermeneutics

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00:34

And greetings, welcome to the dividing line. I was trying to unmute there. It says the host would like you to unmute. Well, okay, let me see if I can get to the button.

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It is a road trip dividing line. I've got the windows open because it is gray and dark, as was expected.

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Today was gonna be a big rainy day here in Golden, Colorado. I don't have any problem telling you where I am because you already know.

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I spoke at Redemption Hills Church with Jason Lyle on Friday and Saturday, preached there yesterday morning.

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I'll be preaching at South Boulder Bible Church on Sunday night, so everybody knows where I am, big deal.

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And so this is the RV life. As I was running back here through the raindrops with my laundry.

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Yes, I figured when it's raining it might be one of the best times to actually find an open washer and dryer because everybody else is, you know, hiding inside their units.

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Man, there are some fancy units around here. I took some pictures last year of some of the units that were around me and my dear pastor friend and prior who was sort of he was my initial mentor in things

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RV because he has a RV. He looked at some of his pictures said those are $700 ,000 to $1 ,000 ,000 units and when it's dark like this all the lights are on inside sort of and man, there are some fancy, fancy, dancy units around here.

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There really are. In case you're wondering, I've sort of figured out, honestly, we've got some important stuff to get to, get your

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Greek text out, get your Bible out when you get to it, but just real quick for the few of you that pray about where I am and for safety and travel and things like that.

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I've figured out, I've pretty much figured out if you take RVs, this is,

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I'm in a fifth wheel. I didn't even know what a fifth wheel was. 15 months ago, had no earthly idea, really didn't.

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But it's the kind that that attaches into the bed of a truck, not to the rear end of the truck.

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That's a pull behind if you have like a regular hitch, but if you've got the the hitch inside the bed of your truck, there's a lot of advantages of that.

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One of the key advantages is when people ask to use your truck to move on a Saturday, you can say

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I can't, I've got a hitch in the back of my truck. It really makes it worthless. Which is really a big advantage.

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But so this is the fifth wheel, and if you look at, oh wow, cool.

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I just got a note from Jeff. We had eight baptisms at church last night.

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So I'm saying yay. And if you divide them up between small, medium, and large,

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I have decided, I've got a fair amount of experience now, our little unit is in the bottom third of the medium category.

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So there are some little, little, little, little units. I mean like you can't stand up in it type unit.

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And then I'm literally, right out my window right now, I am looking at a full -size

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Greyhound bus size, 750, these days probably a million dollars.

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Easily, that unit. Fancy paint job, schnazzy, schnazzy, schnazzy. Yeah, so that's on the big end of the big size.

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So yeah, I've learned a lot over the past year or so. I've pulled this thing somewhere around 14 ,000 miles so far.

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I think I'll be right around there when I get home, around 15 ,000 when I get home on this trip.

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And then I've got 5 ,000 on the next trip when we go to G3 and stuff like that. So and to Conway to teach early church history and everything else.

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I doubt that you can hear it because this is a really good microphone and it it removes background noises, but it's starting to rain real nicely now.

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And I love that sound, but it can get pretty loud. So you may end up hearing a little pitter -patter, not so much pitter -patter, but and if the wind kicks up, right now the wind's dead as a doornail, but if the wind kicks up,

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I'll have to pop up and make sure that the thing outside is already retracted.

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And it's only out about a foot, so it doesn't really matter right now. But RV life, we're alive.

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I think back over a number of people involved in ministry that would never do this.

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Do their own laundry, all their own cooking, hook up sewer lines. Nope, nope, nope, not doing that.

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I'm doing that. But I'm loving it and getting the opportunity to be out doing this is wonderful.

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So I pray the Lord will continue to allow us to do it. I am live on the

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DL right now talking about you guys. So Jeff and Luke are texting me in our thing and obviously are not watching the program right now, which is fine.

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That's perfectly okay. It doesn't hurt that much. No, it doesn't hurt at all.

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I don't know how they can keep up with everything you've got to do. Like I said, I want you to grab your

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Bibles. If you are Greek literate, grab your Greek New Testament too. And if you're just trying to become

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Greek literate, this is the best way in the world to practice. Hearing it now, I'm sort of watching to see if Rich says anything in Signal that he can start hearing because it's getting loud.

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It's coming down really good now. So I'm watching. Not yet.

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Wow. That is amazing because it's pouring right now.

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And with these roofs the way they are, you hear it, which I love. In fact,

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I may fall asleep at any moment because it's really relaxing. It really honestly is.

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It's great. And it's been warm here in Denver.

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So this is pretty cool to have this happening. As I said, we tested this.

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It worked fine 45 minutes ago. But you know how that works.

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I want to make sure to be able to use my other monitor, which is right down here.

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What I want to do is I want to look at the

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I Am sayings of Jesus. And I want to walk through the method that we utilize to understand what

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John's testimony in the Gospel of John is to the

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Deity of Christ through the use of the phrase, I Am.

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Look at the context of each one. So we're going to look at the meaning of the phrase.

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We're going to look at its utilization by the author in a particular book. So we're looking at grammar.

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We're looking at history. So grammatical, historical interpretation. We want to know what

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John intended to communicate in the words he was writing.

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If you left a note for your family about how you wanted your memorial service conducted, you would want them to engage in grammatical, historical interpretation.

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Because you would want them to accurately understand what you wanted to communicate to them so that you could have things done the way that you wanted to have things done.

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But then, that's not the end.

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When you think of exegesis and hermeneutics, there's dozens and dozens and dozens of books written on this field.

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Old books, new books, lots and lots and lots of stuff.

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But honestly, I think one of the ways in which Christian scholarship has often failed the church is our goal should be for every minister, for every mature

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Christian, to possess the skills and the knowledge to accurately handle the

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Word of God. And to do so in multiple ways.

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To do so personally, individually, as a believer priest in Jesus Christ, as one indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit, as a husband or father, covenant head of a household, to teach those under your authority, as a member of the church, if you're an elder, as one of the elders in the church.

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And so it's not just, it is never ever and can never ever be just me and myself under a tree with my

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Bible. But if I'm under a tree with my Bible, I still should know what the

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Word of God says and should be able to know what the Word of God says. But I will also want and desire to know what others have thought, to avail myself of the wisdom of others.

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That's why, for example, I was going to make mention of this later on, but since it's there in the fevered brain, that's why

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I have in my accordance setup, and I have a few of the volumes, I don't have the whole set, in Hardback, the

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Ancient Christian Commentary Series, where you have the ability to turn to 1

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Corinthians chapter 2, and people have been kind enough to go through that very large amount of patristic literature.

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It's not just patristic, it sometimes comes up more in the fairly modern range, but you will find, actually

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I don't think that series does, but there is an app on my phone, my phone's over there, we're using it as actually as my internet connection right now, and unfortunately the name of the app is eluding me right now, but it's very similar to the

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Ancient Christian Commentary Series, and you can just look up a reference, and here will be all these comments and interpretations from voices of the past, and that's an excellent resource to have available to you, no question about it, but I don't start there, and in fact there are some fairly well -known individuals who in their teaching on sermon preparation will say that you need to start with the commentaries and then move to your own work.

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I firmly believe that if you're going to, if you want to be able to present the message of the text and say, thus sayeth the

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Lord, you start with the text. You start with the reading of the text.

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I have repeated my own Greek professor's comment many, many times, the single best commentary on the

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New Testament is the New Testament in Greek. That does not mean that knowing

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Greek answers all the questions. People come to me all the time, and they open up their

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Bible, and they say, what does the Greek here say, and I'll say the same thing the

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English says, and they're very disappointed by that. It's not some type of Gnostic magical thing that as long as you can read

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Greek that that means you know. But at the same time, on the other hand,

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I can testify to you that yesterday morning when I preached from, and it's a text that I've done this a number of different places because people really find it encouraging, but I preached from Mark chapter 14 beginning at verse 55.

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A few years ago, well maybe a decade or so ago,

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I developed a way of preaching that's very comfortable for me, and I really enjoy it.

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Basically what I do is I live translate. I don't have any English. I just have the

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Greek text or Hebrew text. I live translate the text trying to limit my commentary as I'm doing so to things that are specifically relevant to grammar, syntax, lexicography, things like that.

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Then I go back, walk back through the text, bring it all together, and then make application at the end.

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I've just found Christ's people to really enjoy getting into the text on that level.

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So I did that yesterday morning with Mark chapter 14, and specifically

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Jesus' citation of Psalm 1101 and Daniel 7 of Himself and what that means in regards to Jesus' own self -understanding of His deity and His authority and who

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He is as the Son of Man. The point being that if you really want that to have power behind it, that's where you start.

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You start with that, and then if you're doing verse -by -verse exposition, you're going to encounter really difficult texts.

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It's perfectly fine having encountered the text and working with the text yourself initially to then go to the commentaries.

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Very quickly you'll discover in the commentaries who really believes in the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the consistency of Scripture, and who doesn't.

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When you read liberal, quote -unquote progressive, which are actually regressive commentaries, you will see that they end up with a wide variety of possibilities as to what the text is referring to, but they can't come to a conclusion because they don't have, as a presupposition, the consistency of Scripture itself.

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So the more liberal it is, you know, sorts of interpretations.

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You can interpret Paul contradicting Paul and all as well, and that kind of thing.

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But you find out pretty quickly where the best commentaries are, and very frequently it's because you were missing some background information or because of your particular perspectives and what you're dealing with in your life, you may have brought a meaning to a term that isn't necessarily what you should find there, all that kind of stuff.

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That's a perfectly valid part of sermon preparation and hermeneutics and things like that.

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But never do I find myself looking at the writings of those who've gone before me and investing in them some kind of spiritual authority, and especially a spiritual authority based on the idea that, well, you know, this is the quote -unquote tradition of the church.

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Because what you'll discover, especially when you read the ancient

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Christian commentary series, is that there's a lot of inconsistency in how various people handled certain texts, and many after the early period did not have access to the original languages.

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Only Origen Jerome, basically, as far as major writers, knew both

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Greek and Hebrew. And then when those individuals write and then they get quoted by generation after generation after generation, things they missed become enshrined in this traditional interpretation.

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And that becomes very, very problematic. So having said all of that, there is a...

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we're going to try to make this work over here. And I'm going to share the screen.

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You've already seen more than enough of me for the entire program, to be honest with you. I'm not going to be overly concerned about popping back over and showing me when

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I'm talking and all the rest of that kind of stuff. The text is far more important and most of you just listen anyways.

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So we'll go with it from there. So as an illustration, and also as a way of encouraging you to follow these texts and to be prepared to present these texts,

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I want to utilize the I Am Sayings of Jesus in the

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Gospel of John. This will help you in dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarians, things like that.

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But then we will also be able to make broader, wider application that hopefully will be very useful to everybody.

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So hopefully it'll be something for everybody in the study. Now, when we're talking about the

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I Am Sayings of Jesus, we are looking at John 8 .24,

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John 8 .58, John 13 .19, and John 18 .5 -6. Now, there are other utilizations of this phrase right here.

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There it is. Ego Aimee. Ego Aimee. I am there in 8 .24.

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Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins, for unless you believe that,

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Ego Aimee, you will die in your sins, is what

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Jesus said to the Jews. Now, there are other places where Ego Aimee appears in the

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Gospel of John. The blind man of himself in John 9. And so what we have to understand is that the mere appearance of the phrase, separate from its context and application, does not warrant an immediate jump from a

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New Testament text back to Exodus 3 .14. And a lot of Christians, unfortunately, do exactly that.

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They'll look at John 8 .24, or normally John 8 .58, and they'll say,

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See? Jesus said, Before Abraham was, I am. This is the I Am of Exodus 3 .14.

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That makes Jesus God. Now, you are setting yourself up for pretty easy refutation when you present it in that way.

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There's no question whatsoever that John is purposely utilizing this language.

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And it is a testimony to the deity of Christ, but there are more steps to be taken to be able to establish that firmly and consistently and fairly.

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So be careful about that. So let's look at them. Let's make sure we understand each text and put them together as a whole.

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Then ask the question, What about other uses of Ego -I -Me, both in John and outside of John?

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And then make some application from there. So once again, in John 8, you have...

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Remember, John 8 follows John chapters 5 and 6. Of course it does. But you have this growing antipathy and animosity between Jesus and the

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Jewish leaders. And so in John chapter 5, my father's working, and I'm working, so now they want to kill him.

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He's making himself equal with God. You have the entire John chapter 5 discussion of the unity of the Father and the Son, the distinction of the divine persons, and yet the fact that they're doing different things in the economy of salvation, and yet there is your honor of the

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Son equals the honor of the Father, and the Son is acting in perfect harmony with the

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Father. And then in John chapter 6, the Father gives a specific people to the Son, so on and so forth.

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You get to John chapter 8, and it's divided into two parts. Verse 30 sort of divides it right down the middle.

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And in John chapter 8, remember, as far as the textual critical material goes,

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John chapter 8 begins at verse 12, after the pericope adultery. You have this relationship between the two halves of John chapter 8.

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Because in this first half, you have rather strong words, therefore

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I said you will die in your sins. And then there's a break, and the people who have heard

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Jesus' words, they go, what this man has to say is important.

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And there is an expression of belief. It's not present tense belief. It's not ongoing belief.

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And by the end of the chapter, the people who are impressed with what Jesus said are picking up stones to stone him.

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So there's a lot to be learned from that as well. But our focus is primarily on that phrase, egoaim.

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And you'll see here, for unless you believe, so there's there's pisteuo, for unless you believe, and then the object is hati egoaimi, believe that.

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What is it that they're supposed to believe? I am. Now most of your English translations will say

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I am he, but you'll notice that he is as it is here in the

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LSB, is in italics, and it is being provided.

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And if this was the only reference in John, then you could make a strong argument that egoaimi is simply a mechanism of strong self -identification.

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It is I myself. I am. But you'll notice this

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I am is the object of faith. And unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

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Now the Jews would have immediately understood that there's something very strange going on here.

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Because whether one dies in their sins or not is is being made dependent upon an acceptance of this idea that Jesus is the

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I am. And that's that's why immediately they've written the next verse.

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Well who are you? And the utilization of this this language, we're not going to jump back to it yet.

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I want to look at all of them together before we then dig into the next level, which is how did

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John utilize Old Testament texts and Old Testament phraseology?

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And the fact is John quotes from the

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Greek Septuagint. And that's vitally important because then we can go to the

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Greek Septuagint and we can look at that phrase and discover that it's the consistent translation of the

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Hebrew phrase on a who. And then we can start looking at utilization of that, how it's used, so on and so forth.

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But the first thing to notice in John 8 24 is Jesus makes that phrase the object of faith.

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Unless you believe that you will die in your sins.

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This is not an ancillary issue. This is a secondary issue. This is vitally important.

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Unless you believe that I am you will die in your sins. Okay so we stop annotating and at least

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I can see the number here. That's helpful. Watch out, I don't even need to do that. Let's just hope nobody gets any motion sickness from the fast moving.

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End of the same chapter. Therefore the Jews said to him, you're not yet 50 years old and you have seen

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Abraham. Jesus said to them, amen, amen, lego, who mean, truly truly

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I say to you, so before Abraham, oops my apologies, gotta remember to click that, go annotate screen, and we're gonna go with a different color here.

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We're just gonna make this really exciting. Uh before Abraham was,

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I am. For Abraham was, I am.

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And so this is the second time in one chapter, in one continuous narrative.

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Because obviously chapters added long after the originals are written. But in this case, um the the chapter divisions are pretty good.

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Because chapter nine begins a a new pericope, a new story. And so this is the same story in John chapter eight.

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Jesus has already said unless you believe that I am you will die in your sins. And now when they're saying look uh what are you claiming for yourself?

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You're not even yet 50 years old and you you have seen Abraham? And Jesus's answer is, lego,

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I mean, before Abraham was, I am. And note, therefore they took up stones in order that they might cast them at him.

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But Jesus hid himself, went out of the temple. So John five, they want to kill him.

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John eight, they pick up stones. They're gonna do the same thing in John chapter 10. After John chapter 11, resurrection of Lazarus, they get together.

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We gotta gotta get rid of this guy. So this is the escalating situation.

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But once again we have ego, I, me being used. And now remember what we said when we looked at verse 24.

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Look at verse 24, it's like if this was alone, if this was all we had, then you could make the argument that Jesus is a,

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I myself am, even though in verse 24 he makes it the object of faith, which is a little bit difficult to understand if it's just mere self -identification.

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But now he is contrasting the existence of Abraham in time.

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Where Abraham came into existence, where Abraham was, I am. And the

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Jews fully understand what it is he's saying. And Jesus's response is not, oh no, no, no, you don't understand, you're misunderstanding me.

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They understand that he is using this phraseology in a way that is drawn from their own scriptures.

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And we will look at those scriptures in just a moment. But they understand that he is using this phrase not as mere emphasized self -identification, but that it is a claim of existence, a very special existence on Jesus's part that results in their seeking to stone him.

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And for what reasons do you stone people? Well Jews don't stone angels, they stone adulterers, that's not what this is about.

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But they also stone those who commit blasphemy, who claim to be something that they're not, claim deity for themselves.

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And so here you have John 8 .58. Now I'm going to go to the fourth text that shows, oops,

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I hate when that happens, get that over there. Okay, that is one problem in having that right down at the bottom is the doc wants to come over here.

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Of the four, I'm going to skip over the third one, go to the last one because the third one is particularly amazing, in my opinion anyway.

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And I think you'll see that to be the case. So here Jesus is in the garden, verse four, so Jesus knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth and said to them, who do you seek?

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And they answered him, Jesus the Nazarene. He said to them,

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Ego Aimee. Now notice what John does here, it really seems to me that there is a purposeful action on John's part here.

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Annotate the screen, we'll go another color again just to keep you all guessing. So you have

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Ego Aimee right here, but then John stops the narrative.

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He wants to make sure you understand something. And Judas also who was betraying him, the betrayer of him, was standing with them.

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So when he said to them, Ego Aimee, so he repeats it twice, and he wants you to understand

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Judas is with, Judas the betrayer is with these soldiers who are coming to arrest

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Jesus. So when he said to them,

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Ego Aimee, they fell back upon the ground.

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They drew back and fell backwards upon the ground.

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It's fascinating to listen to Unitarians just stumble their way through passages like this.

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Why did the soldiers fall back upon the ground? Well, they had just never been in the presence of such moral purity.

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Yeah, that's going to make you fall back upon the ground. Okay, right. John wants us to see.

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So when he said to them, Ego Aimee, they fall on their, they're knocked backwards by the very use of the statement,

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Ego Aimee. That is really significant.

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That is really significant. You now have three, one, two, three, four places, four places actually, because it's used twice here.

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Four places where Ego Aimee is used by John, and in each one there is a different significant aspect provided by the context of the use of the term.

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Here it causes soldiers to fall back upon the ground. In verse 24 of chapter 8, it's the object of belief.

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If you don't believe it, you die in your sins. In 858, it is placed in the context of Abraham was, but I am.

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So I told you I was skipping one, and I was, and there is a reason for it.

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And the reason is primarily because this is a, this is one, and I know we've gone over this before,

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I apologize to those of you that could do all this in your sleep, but we always have new listeners, and it's important to remember all of this stuff.

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This is one you could read through over and over again and not necessarily catch it.

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It is in the betrayal of Jesus, and it's in the context of talking about Judas that Jesus says, from now on, verse 19,

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I am telling you, before it takes place, in order that you may believe, here is belief again, when it does happen, that I am.

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So in the context of prophetically revealing to his disciples, and remember, we're now in John chapter 13.

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It's always good to remember where you are in a book. And so when you,

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I mean, I think especially the major books in the New Testament, it would be thoroughly appropriate for all

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Christians, just as part of your desire to rightly handle the

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Word of God, to be fully aware of, you know, to memorize the outline of the

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Gospel of John. I think it's a tremendous blessing and a great thing.

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Do you know what each chapter of the Gospel of John is about? Do you know the major sections of the Gospel of John?

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Romans? Matthew? Those are good things. That's so much more important than stuff that we cram into our heads.

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And then the reason being, if you look at the Gospel of John, you know that after the resurrection of Lazarus, Jesus enters into private ministry to his disciples.

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So 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 becomes that private ministry to the disciples prior to his betrayal.

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That provides you with the context of John chapter 12, so that when Arminians misuse John chapter 12,

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I'd be lifted up, I'll draw them into myself. You know that's in the context of the Greeks having come seeking Jesus, and Jesus doesn't meet with them.

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Because the all man is Jews and Greeks, but it's after he's lifted up, that is, yet in the future with the crucifixion.

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So you're just aware of these things because you know where you are in the book and what's going on in the book. So when you look at John chapter 13, you know where you are.

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You know Passover and supper and Judas and betrayal and prophecy and so on and so forth.

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And so what you actually have, and I've told the story before, but again we have so many new listeners that I need to go back over it because it's fantastic.

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But when you see these words,

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I've told the story about how long ago, oops sorry about that,

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I didn't hit the share button, how long ago I was looking either at John 13 19 or I was looking at the

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Greek Septuagint at Isaiah 43 10. I don't remember which one was which. I think I was looking at John 13 19. And I said

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I've seen that phraseology before. I've seen the utilization of those terms.

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Where is it? And that's when I realized that when you go to Isaiah 43 10, and so I will do that here.

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Oh goodness, we're still in Daniel there, but I will have to blow this up because I realize

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Isaiah 43 10. And we'll try to get at least a little bit bigger, especially the

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Greek Septuagint. Here's a text that if you deal with Mormons at all, you know it really really well.

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You are my witnesses declares Yahweh, my servant whom I have chosen. She may know and believe me, understand that I am he.

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Before me there is no God formed, there will be none after me. Most of us have memorized those last two phrases, before me there was no

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God formed, there will be none after me. But it's what comes before that that's so vitally important.

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You are my witnesses declares Nahum Yahweh, and my servant whom

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I have chosen. Let's look over here. Huh, that you may know and believe, now there is a another term here used, understand, suneta.

44:18

But you take that out, and this is what Jesus has, this is what

44:23

Jesus says here in John 13 19. Now does

44:29

Jesus know the scriptures? Well yeah, obviously he does, he's the author there of as well.

44:37

But here is a self -conscious purposeful citation from the

44:44

Greek Old Testament on Jesus's part, identifying himself.

44:51

Who is speaking in Isaiah 43 10? Yahweh. And Isaiah 43 10,

44:58

Yahweh is demonstrating his supremacy over the false gods. Remember Isaiah 43 is right in the middle of Isaiah 40 through 48, the trial of the false gods.

45:07

And God is demonstrating there the unique aspects of what makes God, God.

45:13

And the idols can't do these things. And God says I know the future, I know the past. The idols don't.

45:20

The idols can't tell you why things happened in the past, they can't tell what's going to happen in the future. Here Yahweh is proving he's the true

45:25

God by speaking about what's coming in the future. And here Jesus is proving that he's

45:30

Yahweh by telling his disciples what's going to happen in the future. Pretty important stuff, pretty important stuff.

45:41

So once you have in one author these multiple uses of this phrase, and each one is significant.

45:55

You see, if I were to try to bend over backwards to look at Dr.

46:13

Carter's, Craig Carter's materials, he is very concerned about modern exegesis that would not allow you to have a high enough view of scripture to connect all these together in John.

46:31

And he's right. Go back, if you want clear evidence of this, historically, go back to, man

46:45

I don't remember the year, but in London I debated

46:50

Shabir Ali, and it was on whether Muhammad is prophesied in the

46:58

New Testament. And if you listen to Shabir's presentation, what you hear is him utilizing the worst of the worst to cut

47:12

John up into all sorts of contradictory parts. That's the only way you can do it, because if you just read

47:19

John as John exists today, the comforter in John 14, 15, and 16 is clearly the

47:25

Holy Spirit and not Muhammad. So he utilizes left, not just left -leaning, but super liberal

47:38

Christian interpretation to chop John up so that he can have a portion of John that he can apply to Muhammad, and then cut that off from the rest of John that would say, but that's a completely, that's not what

47:54

John intended, by saying, well we don't know what John intended because all we've got is John as it exists today, and it may have been edited, redacted, etc.,

48:01

etc. And so every time that the new confessionalists, or the new great traditionalists, or whatever else, speak about what motivates them, this is what they talk about.

48:20

And of course we've been talking about this for ages. I went to Fuller Theological Seminary for crying out loud, and I've said over and over again,

48:31

I know exactly now why I went to Fuller Theological Seminary. I know why now.

48:38

I know why I suffered through those classes, because I know how these people function.

48:44

I know how they work. I know how they argue these points. And so the first time I debated

48:49

Shabir Ali, I'm like, hey, I'm on home court here. I know the sources you're using, and I know where the holes are.

48:57

And he recognized that too, in the middle of the debate. So it's just always been a part of my understanding of why we interpret the scriptures the way we scriptures, is that you start with what the text is saying, but your understanding of whether this is a consistent text, whether we can, as a part of putting together the message of scripture as a we can function on the basis of John being consistent with John.

49:43

For many people, large numbers of people, majority, I hate to say it, but majority, a majority of people teaching in quote unquote

49:56

Christian higher education, you can't have that as a presupposition. But again, everybody who's listened to this program, and you know,

50:09

I met a lot of wonderful folks yesterday and the day before at the conference and things like that, and it just always surprised me how many people say, yeah,

50:17

I discovered you only two years ago. I've been listening for two years. And that's why

50:23

I have to repeat things, because I can simply say to you, you know,

50:31

Rich can testify, Algo can testify, all of our Algos around the world can testify, that I have said over and over and over again, the dividing line is whether you believe that the scriptures are consistent with themselves.

50:49

Because if you don't, then there can be no sufficiency, there can be no sola scriptura, there can be no

50:55

Christian theology, none. But if you look at scripture the way that Jesus did, if you allow

51:08

Jesus to be the example, then you can have

51:13

Christian theology, and you can be consistent. And so in this situation, you look at these separate texts, and you go,

51:30

John is communicating something, he wants us to understand his testimony to Jesus. These are all parts of that.

51:37

And therefore, you can look at 824, 858, 1319, 18526, as a whole in the context of the gospel of John, and they have a vitally important part in leading you up to John 20, 28, my

51:54

Lord and my God. It started with John 1, 1, in the beginning was the Word, the Word is with God, and the

51:59

Word was God. And John 12, 41, citation of Isaiah 6, applied

52:07

Isaiah, Yahweh to Jesus. You can put all these things together, and allow

52:15

John's testimony to be John's testimony. And again, as long as you're simply reacting against liberalism, that says, no, you can't do any of that, you have to chop all of this up, you have to be, you have to look at John 8, 24, and that's separate from John 8, 58, and that's separate from John 13, 19, that's separate from John 18, 5, through 6, and you can't bring them together, and you can't assume that there is authorial intent to communicate a consistent message to you.

52:49

And then if you want to get even more radical, we can then say, and we can appropriately put

53:01

John into the entire canon of the New Testament, and assume consistency there.

53:07

Oh, there, now we just, so much for you, you Bible -thumping independent fundamentalist

53:13

Baptist, that's how you're going to be viewed. Now, I would argue that that's what the sheep of Christ naturally do, because that's, that's what

53:25

Jesus did. But that is going to put you in a small minority. And so, once you get to that context, then, then you can rightfully ask the question, well, what about Mark's use of, you know, he has

53:43

Jesus say, I am, in his trial, and walking on the water, what about the blind man using

53:50

I am? Let's answer that one right now. Obviously, the use of ego, I, me, in John 9, in that context, there's nothing being communicated there about pre -existence before Abraham, object of faith of salvation, nobody falls over when he says it, no citation of the

54:11

Old Testament. The context is, people are saying, is this real? No, that's, not that guy. And the guy's going, yeah, it's me.

54:18

So, you have a clear context in which to utilize it and to see it. And so, there's consistency at that point.

54:27

Now, when you look at other uses of ego, I, me, on Jesus' part, outside of John, you have to be careful.

54:37

You have to be careful that you're, you're using equal weights and measures and standards.

54:47

But at the same time, it is interesting to me that in the

54:52

Gospel of Mark, which is assumed to have such a much lower Christology than John, that's baloney.

54:58

That's simplistic baloney. That's an example of a scholarly tradition that's just repeated over and over again, and everybody just believes it, rather than actually looking at Mark and going, what are you talking about?

55:15

So, it is interesting that in walking in the water, and in, when

55:23

Jesus, in, I forget where it is, I don't have it right in front of me right now, but Mark 14, 60 -ish, somewhere around there.

55:33

When Jesus is about to quote Psalm 110, 1 of Himself, and tie it in with Daniel 7, which results in the, in the high priest tearing his tunics and saying, you've heard the blasphemy, and they condemn it as being worthy of death.

55:49

That's where He uses, when, when the high priest says, are you the

55:55

Christos, the Son of the Blessed One? Jesus' response is, ego,

56:01

I, me. Now again, if that was alone, you could simply say, strong self -identification.

56:08

But when it's followed immediately by the quotation of Psalm 110 and Daniel, I think you could make an argument, a canonical argument, that it has that level of significance.

56:25

I probably would not utilize that in a debate, but maybe in a sermon, because I can see another argument for it.

56:41

But when you're looking at the whole counsel of God, which in a debate, you can't assume that the other person is going to be accepting the whole counsel of God.

56:52

I think for the people of God, yeah, I think there probably is that connection. But again, one of the things

56:58

I want to emphasize, as an apologist, what you are going to present, what

57:05

I'm going to present in the context of debate, I have to be able to defend on the same, with the same consistent basis, as what

57:13

I'm challenging the other person to do in regards to their own scriptures. That's something that most people just don't understand why that's relevant and why that's important.

57:29

But it is. It's vitally important. It's vitally relevant. So, grammatical -historical interpretation leads us to recognize the content of each one of these passages in John.

57:50

And when that is done within the context, not of a great tradition, but within the context of believing the scriptures to be consistent with themselves.

58:03

Because the fact of the matter is, if you go to each one of these texts in that ancient

58:10

Christian commentary, you're not going to find a consistency. You're just not. There are some people that saw it, some people that didn't.

58:23

If you are utilizing Latin and not Greek, you don't have access to Greek Septuagint.

58:33

How many of these significant things would you miss? And if you get a

58:40

Latin speaking commentator whose perspectives become extremely important in the traditional interpretation of the church, but they don't have access to that information, it could be lost, it could be missed.

59:03

So that's why I mentioned Thomas Aquinas when he looks at this text.

59:11

John 13, 19, doesn't even see it. Does not make the connection, doesn't see the parallel to the utilization of language from the

59:19

Greek Septuagint. He's not dealing with the Greek Septuagint. He's dealing with the Latin Vulgate. So the strong position is to recognize the consistency of scripture as a whole, its inspiration, and to draw these connections directly from the text of scripture.

59:45

And when you see men in the ancient world doing the same thing, great!

59:58

Wonderful! I was putting together the syllabus. Sorry, I haven't gotten it done yet. I'll get it done tonight. But I was putting the syllabus together for an early church history class.

01:00:08

And one of the options for the students is to find specific works by early church writers and write a review of a particular work, like On the

01:00:24

Incarnation by Athanasius, or something from Tertullian, or something along those lines.

01:00:31

Allow the students to have the freedom to find someone in the early church that really resonates with them and dig more deeply into something that they had to say.

01:00:41

But when I read Against the Arians, or On the Incarnation from Athanasius, there was a tremendous benefit, encouragement, edification, from seeing

01:00:59

Athanasius going to the same texts that I go to against Unitarians, against Arians.

01:01:08

And that was 1700 years ago. Now, that is a gift from God.

01:01:24

And if you want to call that tradition, I simply respond by saying, the problem is that in scripture, tradition is normally negative.

01:01:39

When it is used positively, it is only used positively of that which by the

01:01:45

Spirit is given to the church and is recorded for us in scripture. So to utilize it outside of those categories, inevitably, inevitably leads to confusion.

01:02:02

It leads to confusion. So that's why, one of the reasons that I would strongly recommend against such utilization.

01:02:11

But while the strawman, or I was going to use Ultraman at one point today, because this is

01:02:21

Ultraman doing a face palm. So I'm not lighting him up, but it's sort of a face palm thing.

01:02:28

It works as well. Sort of like Picard, you know, doing the same thing, but I have to use Ultraman because I've only got so much stuff in here.

01:02:36

And I just want to keep reminding Chris that when he gives me things,

01:02:42

I take care of them. And when I give him things, he mocks them and sticks them in closets.

01:02:49

But anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah. When we finally put all this together, when

01:03:03

I listen to Athanasius, there is a benefit, encouragement, from recognition of the fact that the faith was once for all delivered to the saints.

01:03:27

And I am looking forward to meeting Athanasius. Do I agree with everything that Athanasius ever said?

01:03:36

And one of the developments of maturity for all

01:03:42

Christians is to come to recognize that there's going to be a lot of people in heaven that don't look like us and had different beliefs on various issues.

01:03:55

But I am so thankful for his faithfulness. And it just seems to me that true

01:04:06

Christian maturity involves us coming to the point of being able to recognize the good that the

01:04:17

Spirit of God brought in believers before us. And then our ability to look over what we would consider to be error that they may never have even been challenged on or didn't have the information to even recognize that it was.

01:04:38

And also the recognition that someday, hundreds of years from now, if we even think that far down the road, and there's really only one eschatological position that encourages us to think that far down the road, hundreds of years from now, man,

01:04:54

I'm going to need the same grace that I want to show to Athanasius or Tertullian or Irenaeus.

01:05:04

I'm going to need that same grace myself because there will be places where I was blind, didn't see it.

01:05:16

And so one of the straw men, that's where I was going before, one of the straw men, is people saying that those of us that are standing against this new confessionalism, that we are against creeds and confessions and church history and you shouldn't read early church fathers and all the rest is utter foolishness, and it is utter foolishness, has nothing to do with not reading these things.

01:05:48

It is where you place these things as far as emphasis and authority is concerned.

01:05:59

And so when I see people saying that there is a process in church history that concluded with Thomas and brought about the final pure definition of the

01:06:13

Trinity, 1200 years, I am deeply concerned about that kind of perspective because I know where it inevitably leads.

01:06:25

And it makes it difficult to understand how we have a once -for -all to the saints faith in the first place.

01:06:32

It confuses the fact that there is a sufficient, full, necessary revelation in scripture only with the fact that the church then must take that revelation and must take it out to the world and answer the questions of the world that the gospel will of necessity bring about.

01:07:04

Who is Jesus? Why is he king of kings and lord of lords? How could he die for our sins? What's the relationship of father, son, and spirit?

01:07:14

And I will say that in the current controversy, once again, one thing has been proven to be very, very true, and that is

01:07:22

Protestants and Catholics in general only think in a western context and never even consider the rest of the world, and especially the

01:07:38

East, not just Eastern Orthodoxy, but East of East. And the questions that are asked in those contexts, and it just seems a lot of people are very comfortable with the idea that we should just go with what's been developed within Latin -speaking nations over the past couple hundred years as if that's the ultimate standard when there's a whole rest of the world out there.

01:08:13

I certainly have seen more and more how narrow -minded we are, all of us, in not taking into consideration a wider perspective at that point, which would be a greater tradition, by the way, if we were to use that type of language.

01:08:34

So hopefully by looking at these texts and seeing how we tie them together and recognizing that we have to be consistent,

01:08:46

I hope you saw, you can't just quote these texts and jump back to Exodus 3 .14. You have to recognize that that use of egoimi is primarily found in Isaiah.

01:08:57

And in fact, by the way, when you look at Exodus 3 .14, in the Greek Septuagint there, it's egoimi ha 'on,

01:09:03

I am the one existing, and the emphasis is on ha 'on, not egoimi.

01:09:10

The real significant Old Testament connection to Johannine usage is in the

01:09:19

Greek Septuagint, in Isaiah, a couple of references in the Minor Prophets, but primarily in Isaiah, especially when you see the quotation from Isaiah 43 .10,

01:09:30

John 13 .19. All of that is only relevant if you believe that Scripture is, as Jesus viewed it,

01:09:41

God speaking. And so that's where, again, my problem with Dr.

01:09:47

Carter is, from his perspective, you're either Bultmann, Schleiermacher, and you're a liberal and you reject all that stuff, or you do pre -modern exegesis and you're stuck with the scholastics and the stuff that we've seen there, and you don't do grammatical historical interpretation with full faith in the inspiration of the entirety of Scripture and the fact that God is building

01:10:18

His church. And so it's not a matter of throwing Nicaea out, or throwing Chalcedon out, or all the rest of that stuff, but again, it's a matter of where your emphasis is to be placed.

01:10:30

What is the authority? Nicaea does not make the I Am sayings of Jesus teach what they teach.

01:10:39

The I Am sayings of Jesus are a part of the necessary foundation of Nicaea.

01:10:46

Once you invert those sources of authority, you're dead in the water. You're dead in the water.

01:10:53

Follower is to it. Follower is to it. So anyways, hopefully that was useful to you all.

01:10:59

It's still dribbling just a little bit. There's people walking their dogs and stuff like that. Those of us from Arizona find it strange that anyone goes out while there's still precipitation falling from the sky because it's sort of scary.

01:11:11

But people from other places and of course, I've been to Scotland and if you didn't go out when it was raining in Scotland, you would never go out.

01:11:19

You would vegetate in your house forever. But it was sort of fun to do the program, hearing the stuff like that.

01:11:29

I'm really hoping we'll around nine, ten o 'clock tonight, nine o 'clock, we will have some more rain and I will sleep so wonderfully.

01:11:42

It's great. Let me see here. Talk about tomorrow. I will send instructions out to the app in the morning.

01:11:51

You're getting the inside scoop here, kids. We are so fancy and professional.

01:12:00

I'm in a good mood today. I'm in a good mood. I dragged this tired old body out of bed this and I went up to Echo Lake.

01:12:11

I got another Mount Evans shirt because again, I'm just so bummed they're closing that place. It's just that the people are so nice.

01:12:20

I bought all my grandkids Mount Evans shirts today. Kids, if you're watching, I've got some new ones for you.

01:12:27

I don't know if they're going to fit. Trying to figure out sizes for grandkids is sort of funny.

01:12:34

But anyway, I went up there and I did three hours. I climbed 3 ,340 feet between 9 ,800 feet above sea level and 11 ,100 feet above sea level.

01:12:46

All high altitude stuff. Garmin says I am now acclimated to 8 ,700 feet above sea level.

01:12:53

Hopefully, come Saturday, I will not die. That's been my goal for a few months now.

01:13:00

Don't die on August 20th. That's the important part. But anyways, tomorrow

01:13:06

I've got to go up to Evergreen in the morning and then in the evening.

01:13:13

So in between those two places, somewhere probably around normal time, probably around two o 'clock

01:13:21

Arizona time. So what is that? Five Eastern time. Watch the app and what we're going to do is we're going to seek to do an open phone episode.

01:13:37

I think Rich is right. I know we've done it the old -fashioned way when I've been on the road, but we're going to open

01:13:46

Zoom. Okay, so it's going to be Zoom calls. Rich, didn't you do a video on how to do this or was it a blog thing?

01:14:02

Yes, okay. So there's a video somewhere. Is it in our feed someplace?

01:14:08

It's on YouTube. So there's a video on the Alpha Omega channel on YouTube that Rich did on how to use

01:14:17

Zoom to call in. Really high quality. It really, really is. The challenge is going to be

01:14:23

I'm going to be on Zoom too. So we'll see how that works.

01:14:31

Let's just put it this way. We'll find out early on if it doesn't and we'll be scrambling.

01:14:41

We will be fine here now. Back to the Han Solo default response.

01:14:48

So we're going to do some open phones. We've been talking about a lot of stuff. I'll throw this out for the fun of it.

01:14:56

You know what I would like to hear from someone?

01:15:01

I'm not limiting the calls to this or anything like that. I'm just simply saying, I have said for months now, could someone please direct me to someplace where you have an apostolic truth, it's a biblical truth, and the best, clearest explication of this apostolic truth is found in the words of Thomas Aquinas.

01:15:38

Because I can't think of one. Thomas Aquinas said many true things, but because he was a scholastic, he generally said it in a way that is not overly helpful today.

01:15:58

And I've said over and over again, well, last week some folks were trying to go, yeah, you have said you should never read

01:16:05

Thomas Aquinas. I never said don't read Thomas Aquinas. Somebody said, well, you liked someone's tweet who said something like that.

01:16:12

I was like, oh, good grief. And that's when I said, I'm just not even going to respond to those people.

01:16:19

You just don't have enough honesty to even bother to try. When I'm sitting here on this program reading

01:16:25

Thomas Aquinas to you, and then you can be so pigheaded as to try to accuse me of that,

01:16:32

I have no respect for you, and I'm not going to even waste my time. Just mark and move on.

01:16:37

Just, wow, really? But I haven't gotten any responses from anybody.

01:16:47

I would rather read five pages of John Calvin than 500 pages of Thomas Aquinas. I will be more edified in those five pages.

01:16:57

Same thing with Athanasius. I mean, the epistle to Diognetus.

01:17:03

I mean, there's just any one of Ignatius' epistles. So maybe someone would like to call in and say,

01:17:14

I think we owe this to Thomas. Maybe that would be useful.

01:17:25

But anyways, so instructions will be on the app, and the video is on the

01:17:32

YouTube channel if you want to call in tomorrow. We always get really good callers and really good questions, and it goes really, really fast.

01:17:40

But it will be interesting to try to do it on the road. And it will probably not be raining, but who knows?

01:17:47

It might be. Could be fun. All right. Thanks for watching the program today. Hopefully it all worked out fairly well for everybody.

01:17:54

Thank you, Rich, for making it possible. And Lord Willen, we will see you tomorrow again on The Dividing Line.