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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the Gospel of John. We are going to be this morning in John chapter 8 and verse 58, John 8, 58. We began last week with a two-part series on the subject of the hypostatic union.
Now, as you may remember, I pointed out that the doctrine of the hypostatic union is the central reason for our celebrations at Christmas time. We celebrate because of the birth of Jesus Christ. But why is the birth of Jesus Christ something worth celebrating?
Well, we know that there was a genetic miracle at the birth of Christ because He was virgin born. And we celebrate that miracle because it is, in fact, a miracle and something worth celebrating. But yet, there is more to it than that.
We celebrate the miracle of the fact that Jesus was more than just a mere man. Jesus Christ is, according to the Bible, the eternal Son of God, who came to the earth as a man to save men from their sins, to save people from their sins.
And therein lies the great controversy of Christianity. The Word, God the Son, became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld the glory of God in human form. God visited His own creation through the man Christ Jesus.
And that is the miracle of Christmas. And it is a miracle which is rejected by many. As I mentioned last week, if you speak to a Muslim and you say to a Muslim, Merry Christmas, to them that is a great offense.
It is idolatry. To them it is horrible. As I said last week, the one Muslim teacher said it is worse than fornication. It is worse than even killing someone because it is rank idolatry. But yet, that is what the Bible teaches about Christ.
And Muslims aren't the only ones who deny the personage of Jesus Christ and who He was. He is rejected by the Orthodox Jews. He is rejected by the Jehovah Witnesses. He is rejected by all those who hold to a staunch Unitarianism.
He is rejected as to who He truly is in the Bible by many. Yet, though controversial, the divinity of Jesus Christ is a truth which is so clearly taught in Scripture that whole sections of Scripture would have to be retranslated or flat out denied for a person to reject it.
It is clearly articulated in the first few verses of the Gospel of John, wherein John says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word is Jesus. He said, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And then in verse 14 of that same chapter he said,. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. This is who Christ is.
He is the Word made flesh. And there's no way to understand that without an orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. That's why I'm so convinced that the Trinity is the truth. Because there's no way to understand it without understanding that God is one in essence, and three in persons.
That's why we can claim, and we are monotheists, we believe God is one. But we are not Unitarians. Because we believe within the oneness of God, it is shared by the three persons. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
So coinciding with the truth of understanding the Trinity is also understanding the hypostatic union. Understanding how Christ is both God and man. The Trinity says that God is one in essence, and three in persons.
The hypostatic union says that Jesus is one person with two natures. He is fully God, and fully man. We don't say 100 God and 100 man because you can't break God into percentages. And we don't use percentage points to make up God.
We say fully and completely divine, and yet at the same time fully and completely human. And that is the great paradox, but yet the great truth of Christianity. That Christ is in fact the God-man. Last week we focused on His human nature.
We demonstrated how some people did not believe during the time of the apostles that Jesus was fully human. They believed that He was some sort of apparition, some sort of phantom, some sort of angelic being, but that He wasn't really human.
And John, in his first epistle, the first letter of John, he writes that unless you can confess that Christ has come in the flesh, then you are of the spirit of antichrist. If you don't believe that Christ was flesh, that He was a man, then you are not orthodox, you are not Christian.
Very clearly, he was very confident in this confirmation. That believing in the manhood of Christ is necessary to be right doctrinally. But yet at the same time, while we have this great testimony to His humanity, we also have a testimony to His divinity from His own words.
And this morning I want to study Christ's expression of His own divine person. So let's stand together and read John 8 and verse 58. Jesus is completing a conversation He is having with the Pharisees.
And in verse 58, Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I. Our Father and our God, we thank You for the Word. We thank You for this opportunity to study it together. I pray that during this time, You would keep me from error and that You would open the hearts of Your people to the truth and that through it we would all be edified and Lord, You would be glorified.
Move on us as Your Word is preached and teach us through the power of Your Holy Spirit, we pray. In Jesus' name, Amen. I've spent many hours over the years listening to debates. And I don't mean radio debates like Sean Hannity gets into where he'll yell at somebody and somebody will yell at him, but actually moderated debates where people sit down and I'm not knocking Hannity, I'm just saying that's not debate.
That's arguments and conversations. Moderated debate is something that's very valuable because it allows for both sides to express the perspective and then have interaction with one another in a very civil way.
And I think it's a very important thing that we do as human beings. And over the years, I've heard a lot of people who have debated the subject of the divinity of Christ, the fact that Christ, is Christ really God?
Is He really divine? One of the major arguments that I have heard, and it comes from everywhere, I mean, whether it's the Islamic person or whether it's Jehovah's Witness or anybody who denies the divinity of Christ, the one thing that is often brought out during the debate is they will say this, they'll say, well, nowhere in the Bible does Jesus say, I am God.
And that's true. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus stand up and say, ladies and gentlemen, God. No, He doesn't do that. He doesn't express Himself like that. You will not find anywhere where Jesus makes that pronouncement about Himself.
And I believe it is rightfully so. Because even as Christians, rarely, actually, I'll say for me specifically, because I know there are some Christians who say this, but as Christians, rarely do I use the phrase, Jesus is God, without some type of qualification.
And so they say, why would you need to qualify? Well, I find that those people who say, Jesus is God, tend to fall into an improper doctrinal category called modalism or sabellianism. And that is the idea that God was the Father in the Old Testament.
He was Jesus during the Gospels, and He's the Holy Spirit now. And He's in different modes. That's the term modalism. That's an inappropriate view of God. It's as if God is this way this time, and that way that time, and now He's different.
That's wrong. And that's why I think people who tend to, well, Jesus is God, is just to say that there's no distinctions to be made within the Trinity. But yet the Bible is very clear, there are distinctions made in the Trinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, who share one essence, but are three distinct persons.
And the Trinity does not teach that Jesus is the Father. Neither does it teach that Jesus is the Holy Spirit. The Bible teaches, the Trinity doctrine, which is found in the Bible, teaches that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God.
Eternally begotten of the Father. That's the term which comes from ancient Christian literature. Eternally begotten of God. As long as God has been, Christ has been. And since God has been forever, Christ has been forever.
But yet Christ comes from the Father, in the sense that the Father and the Son and the Spirit share this one essence. So having said that, I believe it is understandable why Christ did not come out on the stage of humanity and say, ladies and gentlemen, I am God.
Because I think had He done that, had He said that in those words, such a term would have been confusing to His hearers and would not have expressed the truth of His nature in its fullest and most complete sense.
Because it's not giving the proper distinctions within the Holy Trinity. Yet though Jesus does not come out and say the words, I am God, He does use language of Himself, which clearly demonstrates His divinity and equality with the Father.
Which is why the doctrine of the Trinity says, God is one in essence and three in persons, and three persons are co-equal and co-eternal. That is the historical Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Co-equality and co-eternality.
So, we come to John 8. And I think this is the greatest personal expression of Jesus' own belief in His own divinity. And here's the thing you've got to remember. I think it was C .S. Lewis who said it, and I could be wrong, but one of the great writers of the last century said, Jesus said a lot of grand things, and you've either got to believe that He was a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.
Because either He was lying, or He was crazy, or He was the Lord. You've got to come down on one of those, because He said some things about Himself that were just outright claims of divinity. So either He wasn't telling the truth, or He believed it and it wasn't true, which would make Him mentally unstable, or He is in fact who He said He was.
And thus we ask, who did He say He was? Well, this text in John 8 tells us who Christ believed Himself to be. In John 8, Jesus is engaging with the Pharisees, the great religious leaders of His day, in regard to their challenges of His teachings.
Jesus is arguing that what He is claiming is true, because God is His witness. He makes the point that in Jewish law, you only need two witnesses. He says, I'm a witness. God is my witness. That's my two witnesses.
And that was Jesus' argument about who He was and that His teachings were true. And the Pharisees then began a debate about His pedigree. They began to make the point that they had Abraham as their father.
And Jesus says to them, He said, well, if Abraham was your father, you would believe in Me. But because you do not believe, you're actually of your father the devil. It says that in verse 44. Pretty strong words.
I hear today, Christians should never say anything hurtful ever. They should never say... If the truth hurts, and the truth sometimes does hurt, Jesus just said they're of their father the devil. That would not be politically correct today.
That would be very offensive to tell somebody their father is the devil, but Jesus finally tells them that those who reject His word are not of God. Verse 47. And then we're going to pick up at verse 48 and we're going to start reading line by line.
Is this the context of where we are in verse 48? The Jews answer him, Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? Now remember, the Jews did not like the Samaritans. The Samaritans were a leftover result of the great divide that had happened when the people of Israel had been taken into Babylonian captivity.
As a result, some of them that did not go back intermarried with other nations and created sort of a half-Jew, half-Gentile, half-breed of people and they were called Samaritans. And thus, they were not really welcomed by either side.
And you had the Samaritan people and the Jews did not like them. So in that sense, when they're saying, Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? They're attacking Jesus' pedigree and His theology.
They're essentially saying He's not really a Jew and they're also saying that He's a heretic. You have a demon. Jesus answered them. Verse 49. I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father and you dishonor me.
Yet I do not seek my own glory. There is One who seeks it and He is the Judge. Again, Jesus proclaims His true pedigree. See, here's the thing. Jesus wasn't concerned necessarily about being a Jew, even though He was.
His true pedigree was heavenly. He said, My parentage is much greater than just being a Jew. The power of this claim is so often missed on us as Christians. We're so accustomed to calling God Father. I mean, we've been doing it since we were kids.
Our Father, who art in heaven. Calling God Father, not that big a deal to us. Not as big a deal as it should be, because it's so common. What we must remember, that's a radical departure from Old Testament teaching.
In the Old Testament, God is not referred to as Father in the relational sense. God is referred to as the Father on a couple of occasions in the creationary sense, that He is the Father of all mankind, that He created everything.
But the relationship Father to Child was something that was radical in the teachings of Christ. That we could become children of God and call Him Abba, or Daddy, to have that interrelationship with God that was so beautiful, was a radical and new thing.
And yet, Christ, this is my Father in heaven. And He is my witness. This, to the ears of the Jew, would have been heresy. A strange and unorthodox thing. Then in verse 51, He says, Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word, he will never see death.
Now, this isn't the claim that we're going to address today. We're going to look at verse 58. But that in itself is a pretty fantastic claim. He says, if anyone keeps My word, he will not see death. That is an amazing claim of who Jesus is.
He's saying, My words have life. Remember what He said to the woman at the well? About the water? If you drink from the water which I give to you, you will never thirst again. He says, give me some of this water.
What is the water? The water where His words of life, His truth Himself, He is the water of life. He is the bread of life. And that's the expression He's making here. He says, My words are the truth, and if you keep My word, you will not see death.
And of course, the Jews, to them, this is outlandish. Now, He's called God His Father, and now He has said that His very words are expressions of truth and life that can keep you from death. And in verse 52, they just can't stand it.
The Jews said to Him, and now we know that you have a demon. We weren't certain before, but now we know it. And they go on to make their logical point. Abraham died as did the prophets, yet you say, if anyone keeps My word, he will never taste death.
Are you greater than our father Abraham who died and the prophets died? Who do you make yourself out to be? Are you greater than Abraham? Uh-huh. I mean, He didn't say uh-huh, but yes, He is. Are you greater than the prophets?
Yes, He is. Jesus is making the point clear. And they were not missing it. They're not missing what Jesus said. Are you greater? Yes, I am. They weren't missing it. They were rejecting it. But it was hitting them right in the face what He was saying.
No doubt. In verse 54, Jesus answered, If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing. It is My Father who glorifies Me. Remember, I'm going to stop there for a second. Remember last week we read the Carmen Christi?
Where it says that Jesus emptied Himself and became a servant, took on Himself the form of man so that He could come and die on a cross for us. Philippians chapter 2. I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what it says.
This again, He's emptied Himself of His glory and God is glorifying Him. He says, I'm not glorifying Myself. My glory is nothing. God is glorifying Me. The Father is glorifying His Son. Of whom you say He is our God.
Verse 55, But you have not known Him. I know Him. If I were to say that I do not know Him, I would be a liar like you. By the way, He just called Him a liar. Straight up. He said, If I said I didn't know God, I would be a liar like you.
But I do know Him and I keep His Word. Jesus is basically decrying the claims of these people to be followers of God. They're claiming to be the religious elite. And Jesus says, No, you're not. You don't even know God.
You're liars. You know, the same declaration could be made against many today who consider themselves to be very religious but have no true faith in the living God. They claim a faith. They claim to have all this belief in God, but yet, they don't really know Him.
They're very religious and a lot of people are very religious and don't know Christ. And at this point, Jesus makes a startling claim. Verse 56. Because they're touting Abraham as their father, so Jesus just flat out looks at them and says, Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day.
He saw it and was glad. That is an amazing statement. It's an amazing claim. He just said that Abraham rejoiced that he would see his day and that he did see it. Now, that takes a little bit of interpretation to kind of understand what he meant by that.
Because if you notice, he's using the past tense. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad. Those past tense things. So what is he talking about there? Well, some people believe that Abraham actually had a vision of the future coming of Christ which included the miracles that Christ would perform and of course the salvation miracle and that that vision is not recorded for us in Scripture, but Christ is referring to it here when He says He saw My day.
He rejoiced that He would see it and He did see it. And some people believe that. That's not recorded in Scripture for us. We can't say yes or no whether or not he saw a vision of Christ. But others believe that when Abraham saw the ram in the thicket, remember when he was supposed to plunge the knife into his son Isaac and he sees the ram and he says, Yahweh Yirah.
Some people say Jehovah Jireh. That's a Germanic way of saying it. But God has provided the lamb and He replaces His Son with the lamb and the ram becomes the sacrifice rather than His Son. And of course, that's the picture of Christ as the substitute for our sins where I deserve to be put on a cross for my sins.
Christ goes on the cross as my substitute the same way that ram was laid on the altar and Isaac was taken off. I'm Isaac and Christ is the ram. And some people say, well, that's how Abraham saw Christ.
He saw Him in a type, a prefiguration of the ministry of Christ. And certainly that's possible. We also know that Abraham met Christ. The Bible says Abraham ate with the Lord under the oaks of Mamre. It was right before the situation happened with Sodom and Gomorrah.
It was the Lord and two angels. And we believe that was what is called a Christophany or a pre-Bethlehem experience of Christ or a pre-incarnate visitation of the Lord Jesus Christ. So there he saw Him and it certainly could be that Christ explained to him the truth of His day.
What we do know is this. While it could be any of these things or it could be a combination of these things, we know that Abraham knew that a Messiah was coming and his faith was in that Messiah from the very beginning because the New Testament tells us that Abraham believed the Gospel.
And you say, well, when did Abraham hear the Gospel? Genesis 12. The Bible says that Abraham was given a promise from God that through your seed, all the nations of the world would be blessed. And the Apostle Paul makes a point later.
He didn't say seeds plural. The Apostle Paul makes a point. He didn't say seeds plural. He said seed. One seed. Christ. Christ is the seed of Abraham. He is the promise of God that Abraham was given that through Him, all the world would be blessed.
So we know Abraham knew the truth of Christ. Whether he knew it in prefigurations and types or whether he knew it straight directly from having met Christ there under the oaks of Bambury, he knew! Thus Christ could say with all confidence, He rejoiced to see my day and He saw it.
Then in verse 57, the Jews asked that very, well, I would say somewhat sensible question. So the Jews said to him, you are yet 50 years old and have you seen Abraham? Well, that's logical. Abraham was 2 ,000 years prior to this.
And he said, you're not even 50 years old! And you're saying you've seen Abraham. And that's when we get to verse 58. The powerful verse. The verse of verses. Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.
Now, from a purely linguistic standpoint, this phrase is incorrect. If Jesus is simply saying that He existed before Abraham, He would not have said it in this way. He would have said, before Abraham was, I was.
Because that's the proper... If that's all He's saying is I existed before Abraham, He said, before Abraham was, I was. But He doesn't say that. He says, before Abraham was, I am. And in doing so, He drew so much hatred from the Jews that they absolutely wanted to see Him die at that very moment.
Look at verse 59. So they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. They were in a murderous rage. Why? Why would this statement above everything... He's already called them liars.
He's already called them out about their false religiosity and their fake fidelity to Abraham. What is it that He's done that has caused them to pick up the stones? It's the short statement, before Abraham was, I am.
You see, Jesus in saying that used a unique title of divinity for Himself. Turn with me to Exodus 3. Look with me at verse 13. Exodus 3 and verse 13. It says in verse 13, Then Moses said to God... By the way, this is the point at which Moses is seeing the burning bush.
And he's conversating with God in the bush. It says in verse 13, Then Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent Me to you, and they ask Me, What is His name?
What shall I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. And He said, Say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent Me to you. God defines Himself. He names Himself, I am. Some people do not understand why God would call Himself, I am.
But the answer is relatively simple. By calling Himself, I am, He is describing His own uniqueness. Because God Himself is the only being in the universe who is self-existing. He is the only utterly independent being in all of the universe.
He is the uncaused, first cause of all things, and His existence requires no qualifiers. Consider yourself for a moment. If we say, I am, or in other words, I exist, we immediately have to qualify that statement.
You have to say, I am because I have the right amount of oxygen. I am because there is an ozone layer which keeps out harmful rays from coming in and killing me. I am because the earth produces water for me to drink and food for me to eat.
I am because I have the proper amount of heat to cold ratio for my body to keep me in a very specific temperature setting. I am because of many different things that are required to keep me going. I exist under a list of qualifiers.
But when God says, I am, He stops. I am, period. No qualifier. End of discussion. I am is a unique title of God and it is expressed in His uniqueness. Only He can say, I am. This is why what Jesus said was so offensive.
Because He said before Abraham was, He claimed the title of divinity for Himself. Making His personal claim incontrovertible. They knew what He was saying. That's why they picked up the stones. And those who say Jesus never came out and expressed His own divinity simply do not understand the Word of God enough to see that what Christ has done here is express His divinity in the clearest and most profound way possible by accepting in Himself the divine name of God.
The title, I. Some have great trouble with the divinity of Christ. They have many questions about the divinity of Christ. Well, if Jesus was God, why did He pray? Well, because He wasn't an atheist. I mean, is that simple enough?
Who did He pray to? He prayed to the Father. Again, a proper understanding of Christian doctrine answers the questions that plague our minds. If He was God, why did He hunger? Because He was fully man and fully God and men get hungry.
Of which I have no doubt. Why did He express limited knowledge? Because the Bible says He took on flesh. That He did take on certain limitations in His flesh because it said He grew in wisdom and knowledge.
You know, Mark Lowry said something funny about Christ as a man. He said, you know, there's a reality where He is God, but He's also man. They still had to change His diapers as a baby. He still had to learn how to do things as a child.
And His mother still had to be His mother as He grew into adulthood. But the reality is He was fully God and fully divine as the Apostle Paul says in Colossians 2 .9, for in Him, the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.
One of the best ways to express it I know. In Him, the fullness of divinity dwells in bodily form. There is no contradiction in the nature of Christ. He's fully human. He's fully divine. And when we celebrate this week, when we celebrate throughout the year, we celebrate the coming of the God-man in whom be glory forever.
Amen. So this week, as we celebrate Christmas, we have something to ponder. We have something to go over in our minds. We have something to celebrate. We have something to share with the world. And that is the person of our Savior Jesus Christ.
The baby in the manger was no mere man. He was the God-man. He was the eternal Son of God, wrapped in flesh, given to the world as the Savior. He lays claim to both humanity and divinity. And in His divinity, He represents God to us.
And in His humanity, He represents us to God. And in doing so, He becomes to the world the only perfect Savior. And I leave you these words. Do you know Him? Do you know Him as Savior? For that was the reason He came.
He came as the Savior for our sins. I encourage you to look in your heart and ask yourself, do I know Him as my perfect Savior? Father, we thank You for this opportunity to examine Your Word. We thank You for this opportunity to be reminded again of the truth of who Christ is in His humanity and His divinity.
And I pray now as we continue our worship service together that You would move on us in our time of communion to have our hearts opened and to be reminded of what communion is and remembering the fact that He was flesh and He was blood and that that blood was poured out on behalf of our sins and that through that blood, we can be washed clean.
We thank You and we praise You. We give You glory, honor, and power in Jesus' name, Amen.