Good evening! It’s a real privilege to stand up here again tonight and I have to admit when I realised I’d be giving the final talk in the series I was a bit daunted, because what a fantastic year it has been looking at the I AM statements that Jesus made about himself in John’s gospel. We’ve had so many brilliant studies and I’ve been really blessed, as I’m sure you have, to learn more about Jesus through his own words.

So, I was feeling the pressure of how you end such an amazing series, and then I realised, phew it’s all about Jesus, and he’s the most amazing person ever so I can just talk about him and let him do the impressing. Pressure off.

Tonight we are looking at Jesus’s final ‘I Am’ statement, and it’s a biggie. Quite simply, it is ‘I am He.’ I am – who? Well, we will find out!

We’re going on a three-part journey tonight starting in the Old Testament and then looking at John 8 and John 18.

Now, if you remember, in our first session, Sharon spoke to us about how Jesus invited his disciples to ‘Come and see’ who he was and how he lived – and tonight we are being invited by Jesus to come and see who he really, truly, is.

I AM – EXODUS

Hopefully you were able to look at John 4 with your study buddy partners – it’s one of my favourite conversations that Jesus has, and I find it so incredible that the very first person that he truly reveals his identity to is a socially excluded woman from the ‘wrong’ race. Jesus literally breaks every barrier to speak to her and it is to her that he first says, I AM HE’.

Now, I wanted us to take a moment to look at this odd phrase, ‘I am He’, or, ‘I Am’, that Jesus uses to describe himself, because it would be good to get our heads around it before we delve into our two main passages tonight. To do this we’re going to need to take a quick step back in to the Old Testament to Exodus 3. Last year Hannah spoke to us about finding the gold thread of Jesus that runs through the Old Testament and there are few places we find it as clearly as here.

Moses has just been commanded by God to bring the Israelites out from under the captivity of Pharaoh and Moses is terrified and looking for excuses to get out of the task. Let’s read verses 13-14:

13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.[c] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

‘I AM who I AM’. What does this mean? Grammatically it makes no sense, the phraseology is odd – and intentionally so. If you met someone and asked who they were and they replied, ‘I am who I am’ – that would be weird, right – we usually have an individually appointed name given to us by our parents? So, what is God saying here – because this is his actual name?

Translated it means ego eimi, or Yahweh – the one who is. Not the one who was, or will be, but the one who is – the self-existent, eternal one. His name means that he is the only uncaused being in the whole of the universe. The one who was always there, is here right now, and will always be.

I can’t think of a more mind-blowing, incredible and yet utterly comforting and personal name for God. It’s really simple, and yet wonderfully profound – God’s name means that there hasn’t ever been a millisecond of time when he hasn’t been God and there won’t ever be a millisecond of time where he won’t continue to be God: our God. He is who he is and nothing and no one can ever change that.

BREAK OUT 1

Now, I know we’re just getting started but God’s name is going to be a key factor in tonight’s talk, so I wanted us just to split into small groups and discuss:

Why is it important that God has a name? How does God’s name help you to know Him better?

CHAPTER 8

So, we’ve looked at God’s name – ‘I AM’ – that he first revealed to Moses. And we know that Jesus revealed to the woman by the well that he was ‘I AM HE’ – the Messiah who had come to save the world.

Each of Jesus’s ‘I AM’ statements that we’ve looked at revealed that He was God and added then another dimension to that – for example, I am the Light of the World showed that he would be the one to bring us out of the darkness of our sin and I am the Resurrection and the Life told us that Jesus was the one through whom we would be given eternal life. Few of these statements were well received by their audience, so it will come as no surprise that this central ‘I AM’ statement, where he was very clearly claiming God’s name for himself, did not go down well at all. So, let’s take a look at this moment in John chapter 8 v 48-58:

48 The Jews answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”

49 “I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honour my Father and you dishonour me. 50 I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51 Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”

52 At this they exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”

54 Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. 55 Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.”

There are lots of nice links between the woman at the well passage and tonight’s passages, and you’ll notice that John 8 starts with the Pharisees calling Jesus a Samaritan, just as the woman by the well was a Samaritan.

They say, ‘Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan – and what’s worse, a demon-possessed Samaritan?’

As we looked at in John 4, the Samaritans were considered the lowest of the low by the Jews. To call Jesus a demon-possessed Samaritan was about the bitterest, lowest name they could call him. It was a slur against his mother (for the rumour was that Joseph was not his father and that he was therefore was illegitimate), a slur against his origin (that because he was so awful, his real father must have been a Samaritan, the worst of the worst), and finally it was a slur against his power (which they claimed was from demons and not from God). It’s ugly stuff.

It’s like when you’re in the playground at school and the big kids, the cool kids, take one glance at you and pick out all your weaknesses and flaws in an instant – all the things that will really hurt – and throw them back at you. I’m not sure who you were at school, but I was ‘ginger speccy-four-eyes’. Jesus here is ‘a demon-possessed Samaritan’. When the bullies threw their names at me, I cried and ran away. When they do it to Jesus, he steps forward, cool as a cucumber and replies,

‘I am not possessed by a demon. But I honour my father and you dishonour me. I am not seeking glory for myself, but there is one who seeks it, and He is the judge. Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.’

Wow. Hurt by their words? No. Thrown by their slanders? No.

‘I don’t need to win this argument’, Jesus says. ‘My father will win it and he will judge you for it. You don’t ever want to meet him as your judge so listen to my words and honour me, because I am here to save you.’

In chapter 4, if you remember, Jesus had sat and spoke to the Samaritan woman about the living water he offers that gives eternal life. She had been resistant, but then she opened her heart to Jesus. Now, this crowd is blaspheming him, throwing terrible slurs at him, and yet he still offers out the same beautiful invitation of eternal life, saying: ‘Whoever believes my word will never see death.’

Jesus of course doesn’t mean physical death here. He is saying that though his people die, yet they will live forever. In John 5 v 24, Jesus says ‘Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.’

I love the way John Piper puts it – he says: ‘There’s not a five-minute pause in the hospital. Believers of Jesus cannot die. Our bodies die but our souls do not. In death there will be not one broken millisecond of fellowship with Jesus. Eternal life never ends, it just gets perfected in the twinkling of an eye.’

So, this is what Jesus is offering: believe in him – believe he is the great I AM – and we are freed from death. But will the Pharisees listen – will we listen? Imagine meeting someone today who made this claim: if you obey my word, you will never die. It is startling. The Pharisees are starting to grasp just what Jesus is moving towards, and they don’t like it.

‘Now we know you are demon possessed’, they cry. ‘Abraham died, and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever believes your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?’

Ironically, this is the very question that Jesus wants them (and us) to ask and answer: Who is Jesus? What is his real name?

Once again, we have a nice link back to John 4. When the woman at the well was shocked at Jesus’s offer of living water, she said, ‘Are you greater than our father Jacob?’ Now, the Pharisees take it to a new level by asking, ‘Are you greater than Abraham?’

You see, these men are descendants of Abraham – Jewish pure-bloods through and through. Apart from Jesus, no one is mentioned more times in the Bible than Abraham. He’s a big deal, and the Pharisees are super proud of their decadency from him. Their understanding of what it means to be God’s people is based on their lineage, not their relationship with God – which is clearly shown here in their rejection of Jesus, his Son.

Accepting for a moment their claim that Abraham is their father, Jesus tells them, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.’ The audience is shocked by his apparent arrogance, if not insanity. Surely this man is mad? Abraham died centuries ago! How on earth could Abraham have seen Jesus?

Now we don’t know how or when Abraham saw Jesus – the Bible doesn’t tell us – but I love that Jesus says that Abraham rejoiced when he saw him. There was a time when Abraham had grave doubts in God’s promises. Once he laughed cynically and unbelievingly at God’s promise of a son in his old age. But God had delivered, and now the promise of a people of faith, as numerous as the stars in the sky, descended from him, is being fulfilled in the miracle of Jesus. It’s no wonder Abraham was so happy when he saw his Saviour.

But this is beyond the grasp of the Pharisees. No one can make such a claim about their founding father – it’s outrageous! So, they throw their final sneer at Jesus: ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?’ Jesus doesn’t miss a beat, replying: ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’

The words thrill me to my core. Grammatically, they make no sense! But if you’re like me, to our hearts, they make perfect sense. Before anything in this world existed, Jesus did. When everything on this earth has ended, Jesus will remain. He is unshakeable, he is eternal, he is I AM. It sends tingles down your spine, doesn’t it?

They say names have power and this one certainly does. Let us thank God if it is tingles of awe that we feel, because for the Pharisees it was shivers of hate.

Because they knew as well as we do – or better than – that his words came from Exodus 3 v 14, the passage we’ve just looked at, and it enraged them more than anything else could. This humble carpenter from Nazareth was declaring himself to be the God of the Old Testament: Yahweh. And to the Jews that was the ultimate blasphemy. And so, in line with Leviticus 25 where it says that stoning is the capital punishment for blasphemy, they picked up stones, to stone him.

This is a good reminder for us that religious privilege does not guarantee a right attitude to the things of God or salvation. Jesus here deals a death blow to the privilege the Pharisees held dear. They believed that as they were directly descended from Abraham, that by merit of his life, he passed salvation on to all those descended from him. They believed that everyone of that line was automatically accepted into heaven, but they were wrong.

We might not be descended from Abraham, but we might come from a long line of Christians or be comfortably settled into our church-going life, serving on every rota going. So, it’s a good reminder

from Jesus that it only faith in his name – the Great I AM – that can unlock the gates of heaven and let us in. It’s a good reminder to us to turn our focus back to him, and him alone, for his is the only name that can save. It’s the name that is above every other name – above Jacob, above Abraham, and even above the angels. And he says here that if we obey his word and believe in him, then we are his forever.

2nd BREAK OUT

The Pharisees ask Jesus: ‘Who are you?’ When he replies that he is God, they respond in unbelief and anger.

How do you respond to who Jesus says he is? How does belief in Jesus’ name – the Great I AM – shape your life today?

CHAPTER 18

Jesus had made it very clear to the woman at the well that he was the Saviour of the World, sent to redeem his people. And he had made it very clear to the Pharisees that he was God. She had accepted him; the Pharisees had not.

We are now coming to our final passage tonight; in fact the final passage of our whole series. It takes place during the last few hours of Jesus’s life before his crucifixion. And as we read it together, I’d like us to think about how Jesus conducts himself in this final stage of his ministry, because it is of the greatest importance.

All his previous I AM statements hinge on what happens now, as his behaviour here either validates or invalidates his life. Because you can make bold claims about yourself, but when the pressure comes, you either crumble or you stand firm. So, let’s find out what happens in John 18 v 1-9:

When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it.

2 Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. 3 So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.

4 Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”

5 “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.

“I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) 6 When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

7 Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?”

“Jesus of Nazareth,” they said.

8 Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” 9 This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”[a]

Throughout his gospel, John been asking us to behold our God (which, incidentally, is the title of our series!) – so let’s do that here and look at the details.

Jesus has just finished teaching his disciples in his famous upper room discourse, part of which is the ‘I am the Vine’ section that Hollie spoke to us on last month. Together, they leave the quiet fellowship of the upper room for Gethsemane, the beautiful garden to which they would routinely go to at the end of a busy day.

To get to Gethsemane, they would walk down from the city of Jerusalem, which stood on a hill, and pass through the Kidron valley. John is careful to set the scene for us chronologically and geographically, so that we might be under no mistake as to what is taking shape here. To an outsider it might seem like Jesus is being trapped by his enemies, but John paints a very different picture.

To cross the Kidron valley, Jesus would have to walk through a stream which ran down the centre of it. Into this stream ran the temple sacrificial system where the blood of the sacrifices was drained off. It was the time of Passover and over 2000 lambs would have been offered to atone for the sins of the people. Across this scarlet stream where the blood of the Passover lambs flowed, walks Jesus, the lamb who would take away the sins of the world, with his own blood about to be shed. It’s a striking image.

They walk from this valley up to the garden, and while the other gospel writers tell us it is called Gethsemane, John just calls it a garden, because he wants us to remember another garden where our forefather was tested and failed. The first Adam in the first garden messed up, as we would have done, and brought the curse of sin and death upon us. Since then, we have needed a Saviour – a Saviour, that Jesus revealed to the woman by the well, has now arrived – and now in this second garden, he is going to triumph.

John wants us to see that Jesus is in control even in the symbolism that surrounds him in his final hours. Jesus has chosen the place. This is his hour. Darkness closes in and he shines all the more brightly. Jesus is getting us ready to behold him as the great ‘I AM’.

So, Jesus has taken his stand in the garden, and now from across the valley, the disciples would have seen the waning lights of Jerusalem late in the night where Judas was meeting the cohort of soldiers and officials, carrying their swords and clubs. Jesus and his disciples would have watched the line of torches coming down from the holy city and heading for them across the valley. It would have been a terrifying sight for the disciples.

And so, in verse 3, here Judas comes: the disciple who was so dreadfully lost, who disappeared out into the darkness from the upper room, now becoming the guide. John doesn’t let us miss the irony here. And Judas doesn’t even show up bravely on his own. He must have considered it much safer to be at the head of a crowd than trailing at the back of the twelve disciples.

John tells us he was leading detachment of soldiers which sounds modest, but would actually have been anything between 300 and 1000 men. 1000 men with weapons! Imagine them coming towards you with their swords in that dark, remote garden, with just one man to protect you. I would have been cowering behind Jesus with my knees knocking.

Holding their lanterns and torches high, they begin to look for Jesus; they expected a struggle and are fully armed. John is keen again to highlight the irony that they have brought lanterns and torches to arrest the Light of the World; they’ve brought clubs and swords to attack the Prince of Peace.

‘Let’s hunt him down,’ you can almost hear them saying to one another, ‘Let’s ferret him out’. After all, no one gives themselves up to an army, or walks out to their death, do they? Jesus does.

‘Excuse me, are you looking for someone?’ he says in verse 4, walking boldly out into the torch light.

It must have been a bit unnerving, right? Isn’t he meant to be hiding, terrified of being caught? And yet he is confronting them? Verse four reminds us that Jesus knew all that was going to happen to him. He is the one in control here, not the army before him. I was reminded that previously when the crowds wanted to force a crown upon him, he disappeared. Now when they want to force a cross upon, him he steps out.

I think it’s fair to assume that it is not for his information that Jesus asks the question, ‘Who are you looking for?’ – he knows the answer, but he wants them to really think about it, just as with the Pharisees in chapter 8. Who is it that they want? Why have they really come? Have they really come to arrest the Son of God?

But out of their mouths they spit that they have come for ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, once again emphasizing the disreputable origin of his parenthood and denying his claims to godhood. Jesus replies calmly:

‘I am He.’

Three little words. One man before a thousand. And what happens with these three little words? He knocks each, and every one of them, on their backs.

Let us not underplay verse 6 in our minds. Jesus has just declared that he is the great I AM, the self-existent, living God, and an entire army of burly, experienced soldiers are sent crashing to the ground. Imagine the noise and the tremors beneath your feet as they fell.

There is a miracle here that cannot be rationalised away. These men didn’t just fall over in surprise. Sure, you can imagine that there was a majestic bearing to Jesus’ whole demeanour; a powerful tone to his voice; a look in his eye. But even that is insufficient to explain what happens. This is another miraculous sign that John gives us, telling us who Jesus really is and revealing his glory. With the very utterance of who he is, he cast them all to the ground by the power of his name.

Tim Keller says, ‘This is Jesus flexing himself a little bit. Before he gives himself up, lays his glory aside and goes to the cross, he shows who he really is and even just a glimpse is enough to knock an entire Roman legion flat.’

It reflects an important biblical teaching: that no one can stay on their feet in the presence of God. Whenever someone sees even just a glimpse of God in the Old Testament the glory of God knocks them flat, and they fear for their lives. Isaiah cries out, ‘Woe is me, for I am unclean!’ when he sees God. In Luke 5 when Peter realises who Jesus is, he says, ‘Go away from me Lord; I am a sinful man’. They knew that the glory of God was too much for them – just as it would be too much for us. Because the reality of God as sinful people is not warm and wonderful. It is traumatic. We cannot stand before his glory.

Alistair Begg commented that it was an act of great mercy that Jesus let these men fall on their backs and not down into hell. After all, they had come to kill the son of God! But these men are us, aren’t they? When we wish we didn’t have to be Christians because it’s not socially acceptable; when we don’t want to follow God’s commands anymore because they are costly; when we curse God inwardly and just want to go our own way. We need the same mercy that Jesus shows these men.

Ian Holmes reminded us recently in his sermon on Exodus 3 that we must not trivialise God. If we were to meet him without the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, we would die on the spot. If we do not fall down before him now, we will be forced to bow down before him on judgement day because in the presence of God, no one can keep their footing. So, there is in fact deep graciousness here when Jesus knocks these men over. With the utterance of his divine name, he gives a loving warning. ‘Look at who I am,’ he is saying. ‘Behold your God.’

I wonder how it was for Judas as he struggled back to his feet. Was this when he started to realise what he had done? Judas had thought this was his moment of glory. He has an army following and listening to him – he is the one in control at last, or so he thinks… Until Jesus knocks them flat.

But there’s a message of great encouragement for us here too. When you feel you are in the minority, hold fast. The disciples felt in the minority that night, but Jesus has more power in three little words than 1000 swords. The officials, chief priests and Pharisees came with torches, lanterns, and weapons. Nowadays those who say Christians are hateful and intolerant rule the media, and seem to have the loudest voice, but their reign and rule is short before the reign and rule of Jesus who even here, in the face of the most daunting and trying circumstances is calmly and unmistakably establishing his deity.

3rd BREAKOUT

If you had taken your stand with Jesus in the garden, how would you feel at this display of his power?

If this same power is for us, right now, how does that encourage you today?

So here we are at the final three verses of tonight’s passage. Jesus has shown his power. The crowd have stumbled back to their feet, but their target has not run away and strangely Jesus now repeats his initial question:

‘Who is it you want?’ (verse 7).

Why does he do this, I asked myself? They’ve already answered this question, and their reply is the same as before – they want Jesus. Jesus replies:

‘I have told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.’

Now if the previous verses send a shiver down my spine at the power of Jesus, these ones make me want to cry at his kindness. All the disciples are in mortal danger here. The protocol of the Roman soldiers was to arrest the followers and then they would never be heard of again. Jesus here is protecting his own. The mercy he has just shown his enemies in sparing their lives is now matched by the devotion he shows to his followers. Quite simply, he asks them twice who they want so they can show their concern is with the shepherd and not with his sheep.

This section reminds me greatly of John chapter 10, which by the grace of God, was the passage I was given to speak on last time. Jesus doesn’t abandon his flock here like the hired hand, or let the wolves attack them. Just like the loving shepherd we considered a few months ago who tirelessly cares for his flock, Jesus here fulfils his role to the full.

He has had no sleep. His face is marked by the drops of blood that he has just sweat out in horror of what he is about to go through for us. The finality of his Father’s voice is still ringing in his ears telling him, ‘This is my will’, walk in it – and yet Jesus is filled with concern and compassion for his disciples.

What makes it even more amazing is that Jesus doesn’t just know all that will be done to him by way of crucifixion and separation from God, but he knows all that his followers will do. He knows they will desert him, deny him and turn away from him. They are literally moments away from bolting to save themselves from the possibility that they might have to undergo the same suffering as their master.

If I were Jesus, I’d be tempted to say, ‘take them into custody, they’re a bunch of cowards’, and then I realise that I can’t condemn them for running, because I would probably have done the same. I know what it is to deny and forsake Jesus and flee. But Jesus says let them go; forgive them and take me.

John tells us the significance of this in v9: ‘This happened so that the words Jesus had spoken would be fulfilled: ‘I have not lost one of those you gave me.’’ Isn’t this the most amazing encouragement? That even at his most extreme moment when he is being betrayed, Jesus is thinking about his disciples; about his flock, that we are part of.

Because, as we looked at in John 10, it is not just physical protection that Jesus provides for his people. ‘If you are looking for me, then let them go,’ says Jesus in verse 8 – there is a substitution taking place here, foreshadowing that which will soon take place upon the cross. He stands forward now as his flock’s substitute and Saviour. The great I AM is going to the Cross to have all the punishment, the judgement, everything we deserve fall on him.

So, I found myself asking, what would it mean if we believed down to the bottom of our hearts that Jesus took our judgement day early so that on judgement day, we can stand with our sins forgiven? Because if we know that we can stand before God on judgement day and not lose our footing, this should mean we will not lose our footing now. If we name Jesus as our King, we stand on the side of the great I AM, forevermore, and nothing and no one can shake us. I need to get this into my head because it is life changing.

CONCLUSION

So here we are, at the end of our studies in John for this term.

Has anyone else fallen more in love with Jesus through them?

John says in chapter 20 verse 31, that his purpose in writing his gospel is that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing we might ‘have life in his name’. In His name, which is the great I AM, the everlasting God. The name which is above every other name, at which every knee will bow (or be knocked flat) and every tongue confess him Lord.

That Jesus is God – the I AM – is a big claim, and we’ve come time and time again to the claims of Jesus in this gospel. Do we accept them? And if so, what does that mean for our lives? I wanted to just quickly recap the claims we’ve heard Jesus make this year:

· In our very first session, Sharon spoke to us about how Jesus invited his disciples to come and see who he was and how he lived. A human, gentle invitation to witness with their own eyes who he really was, the lamb of God.

· Then he told his disciples that he was the Bread of Life, and to come and see how he would completely fulfil them.

· ‘Come and see that I am the light of the world,’ Jesus told the people, ‘Follow me and you will never walk in darkness.’

· ‘I am the good shepherd – come and see how I care for those I love’.

· ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ – come and see me raise Lazarus from death’.

· ‘I am the way, the truth and the life – come and see that I am the only way to live’.

· ‘I am the true vine – come and abide in me and see how your life will change’.

· And now, ‘I am He – I am the Great I AM – I am God incarnate here to save you. Come and see me in the garden, knocking flat an entire army with just the smallest glimpse of my power. Come and see how I love you. Come and see what I have done to win you back again. Come and see me on the cross’.

Can we see in these claims – really see – behold – Our God, who was and is and is to come?

Because the claims Jesus makes are staggering claims. They should shake the very core of our lives. If this man is our King, then we are free beyond measure, blessed beyond measure, secure forever. When life hits, we must repeat these claims: My Saviour is the light of the world, He is the truth, He is my good shepherd, He is the eternal God. This meek man standing there in the garden is the one who caused galaxies to explode into being, the immense Red Sea to part, epic cities to crumble into dust; he called down fire from heaven, and can raise dead, cold bodies back into warm, breathing life. If we say we trust Jesus – if we say we trust I AM – this is who we say we are trusting.

And the good news is that because of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, he is really, truly, completely here for us as our Saviour, who we will see face to face in all his glory in heaven. And we can thank God that that meeting will not be traumatic, as it was for the soldiers, and the Pharisees, but glorious and completely fulfilling.

I just want to finish with a passage from Revelation chapter 1 verses 17-18 when John sees Jesus for himself:

Rev 1 17-18

17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he (Jesus) placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and hell.’

Jesus himself tells us that we are not to be afraid of anything. As John Piper said: ‘In Jesus we have already entered life and passed out of death. We have moved around judgement and passed into life with God. It cannot be ended; it cannot be interrupted. So, what are you afraid of? The world needs the Christ, and the courage of Christians who know they will never die.’

Good evening! It’s a real privilege to stand up here again tonight and I have to admit when I realised I’d be giving the final talk in the series I was a bit daunted, because what a fantastic year it has been looking at the I AM statements that Jesus made about himself in John’s gospel. We’ve had so many brilliant studies and I’ve been really blessed, as I’m sure you have, to learn more about Jesus through his own words.

So, I was feeling the pressure of how you end such an amazing series, and then I realised, phew it’s all about Jesus, and he’s the most amazing person ever so I can just talk about him and let him do the impressing. Pressure off.

Tonight we are looking at Jesus’s final ‘I Am’ statement, and it’s a biggie. Quite simply, it is ‘I am He.’ I am – who? Well, we will find out!

We’re going on a three-part journey tonight starting in the Old Testament and then looking at John 8 and John 18.

Now, if you remember, in our first session, Sharon spoke to us about how Jesus invited his disciples to ‘Come and see’ who he was and how he lived – and tonight we are being invited by Jesus to come and see who he really, truly, is.

I AM – EXODUS

Hopefully you were able to look at John 4 with your study buddy partners – it’s one of my favourite conversations that Jesus has, and I find it so incredible that the very first person that he truly reveals his identity to is a socially excluded woman from the ‘wrong’ race. Jesus literally breaks every barrier to speak to her and it is to her that he first says, I AM HE’.

Now, I wanted us to take a moment to look at this odd phrase, ‘I am He’, or, ‘I Am’, that Jesus uses to describe himself, because it would be good to get our heads around it before we delve into our two main passages tonight. To do this we’re going to need to take a quick step back in to the Old Testament to Exodus 3. Last year Hannah spoke to us about finding the gold thread of Jesus that runs through the Old Testament and there are few places we find it as clearly as here.

Moses has just been commanded by God to bring the Israelites out from under the captivity of Pharaoh and Moses is terrified and looking for excuses to get out of the task. Let’s read verses 13-14:

13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.[c] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

‘I AM who I AM’. What does this mean? Grammatically it makes no sense, the phraseology is odd – and intentionally so. If you met someone and asked who they were and they replied, ‘I am who I am’ – that would be weird, right – we usually have an individually appointed name given to us by our parents? So, what is God saying here – because this is his actual name?

Translated it means ego eimi, or Yahweh – the one who is. Not the one who was, or will be, but the one who is – the self-existent, eternal one. His name means that he is the only uncaused being in the whole of the universe. The one who was always there, is here right now, and will always be.

I can’t think of a more mind-blowing, incredible and yet utterly comforting and personal name for God. It’s really simple, and yet wonderfully profound – God’s name means that there hasn’t ever been a millisecond of time when he hasn’t been God and there won’t ever be a millisecond of time where he won’t continue to be God: our God. He is who he is and nothing and no one can ever change that.

BREAK OUT 1

Now, I know we’re just getting started but God’s name is going to be a key factor in tonight’s talk, so I wanted us just to split into small groups and discuss:

Why is it important that God has a name? How does God’s name help you to know Him better?

CHAPTER 8

So, we’ve looked at God’s name – ‘I AM’ – that he first revealed to Moses. And we know that Jesus revealed to the woman by the well that he was ‘I AM HE’ – the Messiah who had come to save the world.

Each of Jesus’s ‘I AM’ statements that we’ve looked at revealed that He was God and added then another dimension to that – for example, I am the Light of the World showed that he would be the one to bring us out of the darkness of our sin and I am the Resurrection and the Life told us that Jesus was the one through whom we would be given eternal life. Few of these statements were well received by their audience, so it will come as no surprise that this central ‘I AM’ statement, where he was very clearly claiming God’s name for himself, did not go down well at all. So, let’s take a look at this moment in John chapter 8 v 48-58:

48 The Jews answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”

49 “I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honour my Father and you dishonour me. 50 I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51 Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”

52 At this they exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”

54 Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. 55 Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.”

There are lots of nice links between the woman at the well passage and tonight’s passages, and you’ll notice that John 8 starts with the Pharisees calling Jesus a Samaritan, just as the woman by the well was a Samaritan.

They say, ‘Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan – and what’s worse, a demon-possessed Samaritan?’

As we looked at in John 4, the Samaritans were considered the lowest of the low by the Jews. To call Jesus a demon-possessed Samaritan was about the bitterest, lowest name they could call him. It was a slur against his mother (for the rumour was that Joseph was not his father and that he was therefore was illegitimate), a slur against his origin (that because he was so awful, his real father must have been a Samaritan, the worst of the worst), and finally it was a slur against his power (which they claimed was from demons and not from God). It’s ugly stuff.

It’s like when you’re in the playground at school and the big kids, the cool kids, take one glance at you and pick out all your weaknesses and flaws in an instant – all the things that will really hurt – and throw them back at you. I’m not sure who you were at school, but I was ‘ginger speccy-four-eyes’. Jesus here is ‘a demon-possessed Samaritan’. When the bullies threw their names at me, I cried and ran away. When they do it to Jesus, he steps forward, cool as a cucumber and replies,

‘I am not possessed by a demon. But I honour my father and you dishonour me. I am not seeking glory for myself, but there is one who seeks it, and He is the judge. Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.’

Wow. Hurt by their words? No. Thrown by their slanders? No.

‘I don’t need to win this argument’, Jesus says. ‘My father will win it and he will judge you for it. You don’t ever want to meet him as your judge so listen to my words and honour me, because I am here to save you.’

In chapter 4, if you remember, Jesus had sat and spoke to the Samaritan woman about the living water he offers that gives eternal life. She had been resistant, but then she opened her heart to Jesus. Now, this crowd is blaspheming him, throwing terrible slurs at him, and yet he still offers out the same beautiful invitation of eternal life, saying: ‘Whoever believes my word will never see death.’

Jesus of course doesn’t mean physical death here. He is saying that though his people die, yet they will live forever. In John 5 v 24, Jesus says ‘Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.’

I love the way John Piper puts it – he says: ‘There’s not a five-minute pause in the hospital. Believers of Jesus cannot die. Our bodies die but our souls do not. In death there will be not one broken millisecond of fellowship with Jesus. Eternal life never ends, it just gets perfected in the twinkling of an eye.’

So, this is what Jesus is offering: believe in him – believe he is the great I AM – and we are freed from death. But will the Pharisees listen – will we listen? Imagine meeting someone today who made this claim: if you obey my word, you will never die. It is startling. The Pharisees are starting to grasp just what Jesus is moving towards, and they don’t like it.

‘Now we know you are demon possessed’, they cry. ‘Abraham died, and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever believes your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?’

Ironically, this is the very question that Jesus wants them (and us) to ask and answer: Who is Jesus? What is his real name?

Once again, we have a nice link back to John 4. When the woman at the well was shocked at Jesus’s offer of living water, she said, ‘Are you greater than our father Jacob?’ Now, the Pharisees take it to a new level by asking, ‘Are you greater than Abraham?’

You see, these men are descendants of Abraham – Jewish pure-bloods through and through. Apart from Jesus, no one is mentioned more times in the Bible than Abraham. He’s a big deal, and the Pharisees are super proud of their decadency from him. Their understanding of what it means to be God’s people is based on their lineage, not their relationship with God – which is clearly shown here in their rejection of Jesus, his Son.

Accepting for a moment their claim that Abraham is their father, Jesus tells them, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.’ The audience is shocked by his apparent arrogance, if not insanity. Surely this man is mad? Abraham died centuries ago! How on earth could Abraham have seen Jesus?

Now we don’t know how or when Abraham saw Jesus – the Bible doesn’t tell us – but I love that Jesus says that Abraham rejoiced when he saw him. There was a time when Abraham had grave doubts in God’s promises. Once he laughed cynically and unbelievingly at God’s promise of a son in his old age. But God had delivered, and now the promise of a people of faith, as numerous as the stars in the sky, descended from him, is being fulfilled in the miracle of Jesus. It’s no wonder Abraham was so happy when he saw his Saviour.

But this is beyond the grasp of the Pharisees. No one can make such a claim about their founding father – it’s outrageous! So, they throw their final sneer at Jesus: ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?’ Jesus doesn’t miss a beat, replying: ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’

The words thrill me to my core. Grammatically, they make no sense! But if you’re like me, to our hearts, they make perfect sense. Before anything in this world existed, Jesus did. When everything on this earth has ended, Jesus will remain. He is unshakeable, he is eternal, he is I AM. It sends tingles down your spine, doesn’t it?

They say names have power and this one certainly does. Let us thank God if it is tingles of awe that we feel, because for the Pharisees it was shivers of hate.

Because they knew as well as we do – or better than – that his words came from Exodus 3 v 14, the passage we’ve just looked at, and it enraged them more than anything else could. This humble carpenter from Nazareth was declaring himself to be the God of the Old Testament: Yahweh. And to the Jews that was the ultimate blasphemy. And so, in line with Leviticus 25 where it says that stoning is the capital punishment for blasphemy, they picked up stones, to stone him.

This is a good reminder for us that religious privilege does not guarantee a right attitude to the things of God or salvation. Jesus here deals a death blow to the privilege the Pharisees held dear. They believed that as they were directly descended from Abraham, that by merit of his life, he passed salvation on to all those descended from him. They believed that everyone of that line was automatically accepted into heaven, but they were wrong.

We might not be descended from Abraham, but we might come from a long line of Christians or be comfortably settled into our church-going life, serving on every rota going. So, it’s a good reminder

from Jesus that it only faith in his name – the Great I AM – that can unlock the gates of heaven and let us in. It’s a good reminder to us to turn our focus back to him, and him alone, for his is the only name that can save. It’s the name that is above every other name – above Jacob, above Abraham, and even above the angels. And he says here that if we obey his word and believe in him, then we are his forever.

2nd BREAK OUT

The Pharisees ask Jesus: ‘Who are you?’ When he replies that he is God, they respond in unbelief and anger.

How do you respond to who Jesus says he is? How does belief in Jesus’ name – the Great I AM – shape your life today?

CHAPTER 18

Jesus had made it very clear to the woman at the well that he was the Saviour of the World, sent to redeem his people. And he had made it very clear to the Pharisees that he was God. She had accepted him; the Pharisees had not.

We are now coming to our final passage tonight; in fact the final passage of our whole series. It takes place during the last few hours of Jesus’s life before his crucifixion. And as we read it together, I’d like us to think about how Jesus conducts himself in this final stage of his ministry, because it is of the greatest importance.

All his previous I AM statements hinge on what happens now, as his behaviour here either validates or invalidates his life. Because you can make bold claims about yourself, but when the pressure comes, you either crumble or you stand firm. So, let’s find out what happens in John 18 v 1-9:

When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it.

2 Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. 3 So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.

4 Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”

5 “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.

“I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) 6 When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

7 Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?”

“Jesus of Nazareth,” they said.

8 Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” 9 This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”[a]

Throughout his gospel, John been asking us to behold our God (which, incidentally, is the title of our series!) – so let’s do that here and look at the details.

Jesus has just finished teaching his disciples in his famous upper room discourse, part of which is the ‘I am the Vine’ section that Hollie spoke to us on last month. Together, they leave the quiet fellowship of the upper room for Gethsemane, the beautiful garden to which they would routinely go to at the end of a busy day.

To get to Gethsemane, they would walk down from the city of Jerusalem, which stood on a hill, and pass through the Kidron valley. John is careful to set the scene for us chronologically and geographically, so that we might be under no mistake as to what is taking shape here. To an outsider it might seem like Jesus is being trapped by his enemies, but John paints a very different picture.

To cross the Kidron valley, Jesus would have to walk through a stream which ran down the centre of it. Into this stream ran the temple sacrificial system where the blood of the sacrifices was drained off. It was the time of Passover and over 2000 lambs would have been offered to atone for the sins of the people. Across this scarlet stream where the blood of the Passover lambs flowed, walks Jesus, the lamb who would take away the sins of the world, with his own blood about to be shed. It’s a striking image.

They walk from this valley up to the garden, and while the other gospel writers tell us it is called Gethsemane, John just calls it a garden, because he wants us to remember another garden where our forefather was tested and failed. The first Adam in the first garden messed up, as we would have done, and brought the curse of sin and death upon us. Since then, we have needed a Saviour – a Saviour, that Jesus revealed to the woman by the well, has now arrived – and now in this second garden, he is going to triumph.

John wants us to see that Jesus is in control even in the symbolism that surrounds him in his final hours. Jesus has chosen the place. This is his hour. Darkness closes in and he shines all the more brightly. Jesus is getting us ready to behold him as the great ‘I AM’.

So, Jesus has taken his stand in the garden, and now from across the valley, the disciples would have seen the waning lights of Jerusalem late in the night where Judas was meeting the cohort of soldiers and officials, carrying their swords and clubs. Jesus and his disciples would have watched the line of torches coming down from the holy city and heading for them across the valley. It would have been a terrifying sight for the disciples.

And so, in verse 3, here Judas comes: the disciple who was so dreadfully lost, who disappeared out into the darkness from the upper room, now becoming the guide. John doesn’t let us miss the irony here. And Judas doesn’t even show up bravely on his own. He must have considered it much safer to be at the head of a crowd than trailing at the back of the twelve disciples.

John tells us he was leading detachment of soldiers which sounds modest, but would actually have been anything between 300 and 1000 men. 1000 men with weapons! Imagine them coming towards you with their swords in that dark, remote garden, with just one man to protect you. I would have been cowering behind Jesus with my knees knocking.

Holding their lanterns and torches high, they begin to look for Jesus; they expected a struggle and are fully armed. John is keen again to highlight the irony that they have brought lanterns and torches to arrest the Light of the World; they’ve brought clubs and swords to attack the Prince of Peace.

‘Let’s hunt him down,’ you can almost hear them saying to one another, ‘Let’s ferret him out’. After all, no one gives themselves up to an army, or walks out to their death, do they? Jesus does.

‘Excuse me, are you looking for someone?’ he says in verse 4, walking boldly out into the torch light.

It must have been a bit unnerving, right? Isn’t he meant to be hiding, terrified of being caught? And yet he is confronting them? Verse four reminds us that Jesus knew all that was going to happen to him. He is the one in control here, not the army before him. I was reminded that previously when the crowds wanted to force a crown upon him, he disappeared. Now when they want to force a cross upon, him he steps out.

I think it’s fair to assume that it is not for his information that Jesus asks the question, ‘Who are you looking for?’ – he knows the answer, but he wants them to really think about it, just as with the Pharisees in chapter 8. Who is it that they want? Why have they really come? Have they really come to arrest the Son of God?

But out of their mouths they spit that they have come for ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, once again emphasizing the disreputable origin of his parenthood and denying his claims to godhood. Jesus replies calmly:

‘I am He.’

Three little words. One man before a thousand. And what happens with these three little words? He knocks each, and every one of them, on their backs.

Let us not underplay verse 6 in our minds. Jesus has just declared that he is the great I AM, the self-existent, living God, and an entire army of burly, experienced soldiers are sent crashing to the ground. Imagine the noise and the tremors beneath your feet as they fell.

There is a miracle here that cannot be rationalised away. These men didn’t just fall over in surprise. Sure, you can imagine that there was a majestic bearing to Jesus’ whole demeanour; a powerful tone to his voice; a look in his eye. But even that is insufficient to explain what happens. This is another miraculous sign that John gives us, telling us who Jesus really is and revealing his glory. With the very utterance of who he is, he cast them all to the ground by the power of his name.

Tim Keller says, ‘This is Jesus flexing himself a little bit. Before he gives himself up, lays his glory aside and goes to the cross, he shows who he really is and even just a glimpse is enough to knock an entire Roman legion flat.’

It reflects an important biblical teaching: that no one can stay on their feet in the presence of God. Whenever someone sees even just a glimpse of God in the Old Testament the glory of God knocks them flat, and they fear for their lives. Isaiah cries out, ‘Woe is me, for I am unclean!’ when he sees God. In Luke 5 when Peter realises who Jesus is, he says, ‘Go away from me Lord; I am a sinful man’. They knew that the glory of God was too much for them – just as it would be too much for us. Because the reality of God as sinful people is not warm and wonderful. It is traumatic. We cannot stand before his glory.

Alistair Begg commented that it was an act of great mercy that Jesus let these men fall on their backs and not down into hell. After all, they had come to kill the son of God! But these men are us, aren’t they? When we wish we didn’t have to be Christians because it’s not socially acceptable; when we don’t want to follow God’s commands anymore because they are costly; when we curse God inwardly and just want to go our own way. We need the same mercy that Jesus shows these men.

Ian Holmes reminded us recently in his sermon on Exodus 3 that we must not trivialise God. If we were to meet him without the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, we would die on the spot. If we do not fall down before him now, we will be forced to bow down before him on judgement day because in the presence of God, no one can keep their footing. So, there is in fact deep graciousness here when Jesus knocks these men over. With the utterance of his divine name, he gives a loving warning. ‘Look at who I am,’ he is saying. ‘Behold your God.’

I wonder how it was for Judas as he struggled back to his feet. Was this when he started to realise what he had done? Judas had thought this was his moment of glory. He has an army following and listening to him – he is the one in control at last, or so he thinks… Until Jesus knocks them flat.

But there’s a message of great encouragement for us here too. When you feel you are in the minority, hold fast. The disciples felt in the minority that night, but Jesus has more power in three little words than 1000 swords. The officials, chief priests and Pharisees came with torches, lanterns, and weapons. Nowadays those who say Christians are hateful and intolerant rule the media, and seem to have the loudest voice, but their reign and rule is short before the reign and rule of Jesus who even here, in the face of the most daunting and trying circumstances is calmly and unmistakably establishing his deity.

3rd BREAKOUT

If you had taken your stand with Jesus in the garden, how would you feel at this display of his power?

If this same power is for us, right now, how does that encourage you today?

So here we are at the final three verses of tonight’s passage. Jesus has shown his power. The crowd have stumbled back to their feet, but their target has not run away and strangely Jesus now repeats his initial question:

‘Who is it you want?’ (verse 7).

Why does he do this, I asked myself? They’ve already answered this question, and their reply is the same as before – they want Jesus. Jesus replies:

‘I have told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.’

Now if the previous verses send a shiver down my spine at the power of Jesus, these ones make me want to cry at his kindness. All the disciples are in mortal danger here. The protocol of the Roman soldiers was to arrest the followers and then they would never be heard of again. Jesus here is protecting his own. The mercy he has just shown his enemies in sparing their lives is now matched by the devotion he shows to his followers. Quite simply, he asks them twice who they want so they can show their concern is with the shepherd and not with his sheep.

This section reminds me greatly of John chapter 10, which by the grace of God, was the passage I was given to speak on last time. Jesus doesn’t abandon his flock here like the hired hand, or let the wolves attack them. Just like the loving shepherd we considered a few months ago who tirelessly cares for his flock, Jesus here fulfils his role to the full.

He has had no sleep. His face is marked by the drops of blood that he has just sweat out in horror of what he is about to go through for us. The finality of his Father’s voice is still ringing in his ears telling him, ‘This is my will’, walk in it – and yet Jesus is filled with concern and compassion for his disciples.

What makes it even more amazing is that Jesus doesn’t just know all that will be done to him by way of crucifixion and separation from God, but he knows all that his followers will do. He knows they will desert him, deny him and turn away from him. They are literally moments away from bolting to save themselves from the possibility that they might have to undergo the same suffering as their master.

If I were Jesus, I’d be tempted to say, ‘take them into custody, they’re a bunch of cowards’, and then I realise that I can’t condemn them for running, because I would probably have done the same. I know what it is to deny and forsake Jesus and flee. But Jesus says let them go; forgive them and take me.

John tells us the significance of this in v9: ‘This happened so that the words Jesus had spoken would be fulfilled: ‘I have not lost one of those you gave me.’’ Isn’t this the most amazing encouragement? That even at his most extreme moment when he is being betrayed, Jesus is thinking about his disciples; about his flock, that we are part of.

Because, as we looked at in John 10, it is not just physical protection that Jesus provides for his people. ‘If you are looking for me, then let them go,’ says Jesus in verse 8 – there is a substitution taking place here, foreshadowing that which will soon take place upon the cross. He stands forward now as his flock’s substitute and Saviour. The great I AM is going to the Cross to have all the punishment, the judgement, everything we deserve fall on him.

So, I found myself asking, what would it mean if we believed down to the bottom of our hearts that Jesus took our judgement day early so that on judgement day, we can stand with our sins forgiven? Because if we know that we can stand before God on judgement day and not lose our footing, this should mean we will not lose our footing now. If we name Jesus as our King, we stand on the side of the great I AM, forevermore, and nothing and no one can shake us. I need to get this into my head because it is life changing.

CONCLUSION

So here we are, at the end of our studies in John for this term.

Has anyone else fallen more in love with Jesus through them?

John says in chapter 20 verse 31, that his purpose in writing his gospel is that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing we might ‘have life in his name’. In His name, which is the great I AM, the everlasting God. The name which is above every other name, at which every knee will bow (or be knocked flat) and every tongue confess him Lord.

That Jesus is God – the I AM – is a big claim, and we’ve come time and time again to the claims of Jesus in this gospel. Do we accept them? And if so, what does that mean for our lives? I wanted to just quickly recap the claims we’ve heard Jesus make this year:

· In our very first session, Sharon spoke to us about how Jesus invited his disciples to come and see who he was and how he lived. A human, gentle invitation to witness with their own eyes who he really was, the lamb of God.

· Then he told his disciples that he was the Bread of Life, and to come and see how he would completely fulfil them.

· ‘Come and see that I am the light of the world,’ Jesus told the people, ‘Follow me and you will never walk in darkness.’

· ‘I am the good shepherd – come and see how I care for those I love’.

· ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ – come and see me raise Lazarus from death’.

· ‘I am the way, the truth and the life – come and see that I am the only way to live’.

· ‘I am the true vine – come and abide in me and see how your life will change’.

· And now, ‘I am He – I am the Great I AM – I am God incarnate here to save you. Come and see me in the garden, knocking flat an entire army with just the smallest glimpse of my power. Come and see how I love you. Come and see what I have done to win you back again. Come and see me on the cross’.

Can we see in these claims – really see – behold – Our God, who was and is and is to come?

Because the claims Jesus makes are staggering claims. They should shake the very core of our lives. If this man is our King, then we are free beyond measure, blessed beyond measure, secure forever. When life hits, we must repeat these claims: My Saviour is the light of the world, He is the truth, He is my good shepherd, He is the eternal God. This meek man standing there in the garden is the one who caused galaxies to explode into being, the immense Red Sea to part, epic cities to crumble into dust; he called down fire from heaven, and can raise dead, cold bodies back into warm, breathing life. If we say we trust Jesus – if we say we trust I AM – this is who we say we are trusting.

And the good news is that because of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, he is really, truly, completely here for us as our Saviour, who we will see face to face in all his glory in heaven. And we can thank God that that meeting will not be traumatic, as it was for the soldiers, and the Pharisees, but glorious and completely fulfilling.

I just want to finish with a passage from Revelation chapter 1 verses 17-18 when John sees Jesus for himself:

Rev 1 17-18

17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he (Jesus) placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and hell.’

Jesus himself tells us that we are not to be afraid of anything. As John Piper said: ‘In Jesus we have already entered life and passed out of death. We have moved around judgement and passed into life with God. It cannot be ended; it cannot be interrupted. So, what are you afraid of? The world needs the Christ, and the courage of Christians who know they will never die.’

Fancy a run around in a vineyard? I can promise it’ll be a wild adventure! 

This month we’re going to run (or casually wander) up and down the rows, weaving in and out of the vines, but then stopping to focus right in on one vine in particular…! But mind the low hanging grapes! They’re nearly ripe and the sun’s (or Son’s?!) warmth means we can smell just start to smell the juice right through their tender skins.

Start with prayer

Maybe, like me, you’ve read these verses so many times, it’s like being in your own back garden?  So perhaps you might ask the Spirit to give you fresh eyes and a soft heart.

Maybe, you’ve struggled with some of these verses – you’ve got questions, concerns or even fear? So perhaps you might ask for the Spirit to calm your heart and show you the Father through this encounter with his Son.

Maybe this is new territory?

So perhaps you might ask the Spirit to do what he does best and help you know the love of God in these verses!

Now, let’s read John 15

To get the flow, read 1-27

Time to zero in

¹“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. ² He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. ³ You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. ⁴ Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

1. What do you make of Jesus’ statement, “I am the true grapevine”?
2. Do you have any experience gardening? What’s the difference between branches that you cut off and ones you prune? (Don’t worry if you don’t know this! Take a guess!)
3. Jesus says in verse 3 that those who know him are ‘already purified’ or ‘already clean’ because of the word that he has spoken; why is this?

⁵ “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. ⁷ But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! ⁸ When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.

• Verse 5 contains the well-quoted statement, “For apart from me you can do nothing.” If then, we came to saving faith through Jesus alone, how then do we go on to live each day?
• Take time to consider verse 6 – but look at it in the context of the surrounding verses. Then consider this: 
  • Is it possible to believe in Jesus but refuse to remain (abide) in Him? 
  • How can we remain (abide) in Jesus? (Hint: think back to Hanna’s talk on 11.27)

• Did you notice how many references to ‘remain’ (or abide, depending on your translation) are mentioned between V1-17? Do you think this is significant? (Why? Or, why not?)
• Dane Ortlund, in his book Deeper, makes the statement, “God in me. God does everything to save me and then, by his Holy Spirit, he unites me spiritually to his Son. The result is that, in our growth and holiness, like Edwards puts it, we are not merely passive in it, nor does God do some and we do the rest. But God does all and we do all. We are, in different respects, holy passive and holy active.” Dig right down deep into this rich soil! How can this be? And what does this look like in your everyday life-journey with the Trinity? (Hint! Zero in on verse 11! Is this your ‘everyday’ experience?)

John 14: 1-14: I am the way, the truth and the life

As I was reading and preparing this talk, I was reminded of Eddie’s saying that, whenever we attempt to teach or preach we should simply ‘give God the microphone.’ In other words, don’t try to say what isn’t in the text; let God’s words speak for themselves.

Our purpose in all of these studies is to get to know Jesus better, to see Him for who He is, and to understand Him better.

Our theme this evening is that ‘Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.’ A natural 3 point sermon!

Read the passage.

What is the context of our passage?

Jesus knows that He doesn’t have long left with His disciples, so He spends this precious time teaching them, encouraging them and preparing them for what is to come in the future.

We’re in the last few hours of Jesus’ earthly life. He’s having a final meal with his closest friends, although they didn’t know it was the final meal, which explains some of their behaviour in the upper room – arguing between themselves about who is the greatest, which we read of in Luke 22.

From the disciples’ point of view, the events of the last few days have been mind-blowing:

– Jesus coming into Jerusalem and being received like a pop star (John 12: 12-13).

– God the Father speaking from heaven in an audible voice that everyone heard (John 12: 28-29).

– And Jesus has been saying some very worrying things about dying.

And here they all are now, in an upstairs dining room that some random man who they’d bumped into in the city had already got ready for them, and the weirdness continues:

– Jesus, their rabbi and leader, has just done the job of the lowest servant and actually washed their feet.

– He’s also said that one of them will betray Him, and Judas has mysteriously disappeared.

– Jesus has again been talking about death – His broken body and His blood being poured out.

– And now Peter, one of his most loyal friends, has been told that he’s going to deny that very night he ever knew Jesus!

What on earth could Jesus be planning to say next; was He going to single another one of them out for some awful revelation?

The disciples are confused, worried and afraid.

Afraid because Jesus is a wanted man. More than once the leaders and the people have tried to kill Him. Which meant that they were targets too.

Let’s start at verse 1 and see what Jesus said:

V1. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

David Pawson, in a sermon on this passage, says that John 14 deals with one of the most common diseases known to man – heart trouble. How quickly the heart reflects the state of the mind and the state of the soul. It’s often caused by dread of the future, an uncertainty and fear of not knowing what is going to happen next. The disciples were afraid, they didn’t know what was going to happen.

The cure for this trouble is given in one word – believe. Verse 1 continues: “You believe in God, believe also in Me.”

Belief, faith, trust is the answer to this kind of heart trouble. Pawson says, worry and trust are incompatible – if you worry you cannot trust, if you trust you cannot worry.

But believe in what? Not just belief in God, many people believe in a god of some kind, even the Living God, but they still suffer this heart trouble. Belief in Jesus is what is needed. Trust Him, accept His word as true. He doesn’t tell us something if it isn’t true, He doesn’t leave us with false hopes, He doesn’t deceive us. Put your trust in someone who always told the truth.

Notice in these first 14 verses some key words: ‘Father’ and ‘I’ or ‘me’.

Whenever Jesus talks about his Father, He mentions Himself too. These words are linked together.

Look at these verses to see where they occur:

1: “You believe in God; believe also in Me.”

6: “No-one comes to the Father except through Me.”

7: “If you really know Me, you will know my Father as well”

10: “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.”

10: “It is the Father, living in Me.”

11: “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.”

12: “I am going to the Father.”

13: “I will do whatever you ask…so that the Father may be glorified.”

Jesus and His Father are so closely linked, they can’t be separated.

Jesus is saying ‘Trust us’. Trust Me, just as you trust God.

Here is Jesus, who was going to die within 24 hours, who also had a troubled heart, comforting his troubled disciples.

Verse 3: I am going to prepare a place for you. I will come back to get you.

Jesus isn’t the kind of person to say a thing if He didn’t mean it. Do we know Jesus well enough to know that for ourselves?

In verse 6 we have this wonderful statement from Jesus, our focus for this evening: “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

We know that the words ‘I am’ is the name of God – in Hebrew Yahweh. So this sentence is saying “God the way, God the truth, God the life.”

In your study buddy questions you looked briefly at Thomas and his journey of faith. Look at verse 5: Thomas was concerned with the where, the place called heaven. He was also concerned with the path, how to get there. Essentially he says to Jesus, “Where are you going and how do we get there?”

Thomas basically says ‘Lord, I don’t know how to get to heaven’, but Jesus said ‘Yes, you do. I am the way.’

Jesus is the way – the way to where?

Taking these verses at face value, hopefully it’s easy to understand what Jesus means when He talks about Himself being the way.

In verses 2-3 Jesus has been talking about heaven – His Father’s house. He was about to go there, and He said that He will come back for us. We know the way to that place: Jesus is the way to that place.

The Greek word used in verse 6 for ‘way’ is the common word for road or street. Jesus is saying, I am the road, the route, the path you must take to get to heaven. I am the space between where you are and God. Follow me and you will get to heaven.

The Jews were very familiar with this idea of the way in which you must walk to follow God. In Deut. 5: 32-33 God said to Moses, “Be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you.”

Isaiah 30: 21: “Your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’

But Jesus is not merely a roadmap to heaven, by which if we follow it closely we will arrive at our destination. Jesus is not merely our example of a good life to lead. If we gave someone the Bible and told them to obey its commands and they will go to heaven, we haven’t been entirely honest with them, because something more is needed.

In places the way is hard; there is pain and suffering along this way. There is sadness, rejection, discrimination, mocking, and maybe imprisonment along this way. When the road gets hard we will give up, if we are simply trying to follow the map. Perhaps you’ve been out walking in the mountains of Wales or Scotland, following your map. The day has started well, the walking is easy and the weather fine. But then the mist has come down, it’s started raining and the path is increasingly steep and dangerous. You just want to give up, go home and get warm. Your walk in the mountains is not worth the effort.

Likewise, on our Christian journey, if our hearts are not fully committed, when the road gets hard we will give up and turn around. Head knowledge of the way isn’t enough. What is needed is faith, trust in Jesus, a heart changed by Him and rooted deeply in Him.

We don’t look to Jesus as merely our map and signpost to heaven, but as our Saviour. He is the bridge between mankind and God, the only bridge.

This wouldn’t be a proper talk from me unless there was some grammar point to be made. So I want you to notice the word ‘the’ in our ‘I am’ saying this evening – which in grammar we call the definite article. The original Greek used this definite article.

Jesus didn’t say ‘I am a way, a life, a truth’ – using the indefinite article. He said, the way, the truth, the life.

Acts 4: 12 says, “Salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

Jesus is the way, the only way. No other way has been discovered in the last 2,000 years of receiving forgiveness of sins and a guarantee of heaven. Mankind may have developed, progressed and evolved almost in all kinds of ways, but the way to God hasn’t evolved, it hasn’t changed, it’s the same as it ever was.

“No-one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Without coming to Jesus there is no way of truly knowing God, of approaching Him, of being accepted by Him, or of spending eternity with Him. No way without Jesus.

God is most holy, in Him there is no darkness at all, no shadow, not even a hint of anything less than complete holiness and perfection. The only way in which sinners like you and me can come to Him and be reconciled to Him is through Jesus, by repenting of our sin and believing that Jesus died for us, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18).

In a very short while Jesus would be in the garden of Gethsemane, praying these words, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”

Jesus was asking if there was another way. But the answer to the question was no, there was no other way.

Breakout questions:

1. Do you remember the first time you realised that Jesus was the only way to God? Tell your group about it.

2. How would you answer someone who asserted that all roads lead to God, that all religions have equal value?

The truth

In preparing this message I was in danger of going down all kinds of rabbit holes in looking at truth and how it is defined these days.

The concept of truth has for thousands of years got people in all kinds of knots. Even Pontius Pilate, when he was questioning Jesus, asked somewhat sarcastically, “What is truth?”

These days, in our post-modern society, some people say that there is no such thing as absolute truth, but that truth is relative to a person’s point of view or situation. French author Gustave Flaubert said, “There is no truth, there is only perception.”

You’ve probably heard the phrase “my truth” or “your truth”. It seems to be a buzz word in the celebrity world.

Here are a couple of quotes:

“Face your fears; live your passions, be dedicated to your truth.” Billie Jean King

“What I know for sure is that you feel real joy in direct proportion to how connected you are to living your truth.” Oprah Winfrey

The danger with this is that it promotes the idea of there being no actual truth, that truth is relative, something personal and subjective, that truth is just my own perception of what is real and right, which might be different to yours.

We see this so much in society today, particularly with regard to ideas and opinions around gender, when a man can say he identifies as a woman, therefore he is a woman, and woe betide you if you dare to disagree.

We are beginning to reap what we sow. I read two reports this week. One in sport, where a transgender ‘woman’ competed against women in a swimming competition and came first, and there has, rightly, been a huge outcry and backlash against it.

Secondly, and more seriously, transgender ‘women’ offenders sent to female prisons where they have raped women inmates.

If you pursue this line of thinking about relative truth, the logical outcome is that there is no right or wrong, only what feels right or wrong at the time. And the result of this is chaos. If it feels right to me to keep on driving rather than wait at a red traffic light, the consequences could be disastrous. If society wants to live its truth, then we have no right to be shocked when people are murdered, children abused, property

stolen, invasions unchallenged, criminals not held accountable. There can be no crime, no police force, no justice system. Mankind can live as it chooses with no requirement for accountability to anyone for its actions.

Is this the kind of world you want to live in? Lord God, rescue us!

But relative truth extends into religion as well. People who don’t believe in absolute truth embrace the idea that all religions are equal and all roads lead to God. But that’s illogical. If your religion isn’t absolutely true, then it’s false and your faith is in vain.

Thank goodness there is such a thing as absolute truth.

Absolute truth is something that is true at all times and in all places. It is something that is true no matter what the circumstances. It is a fact that cannot be changed. To give you a simple example: there are no round squares: this is a fact that cannot be changed.

Human beings have been created with a conscience, that thing inside us that tells us when something is right or wrong, that innate understanding that there is something wrong with evil, pain, and injustice and something right with compassion, love and generosity.

We’ve also been created with a desire for purpose and meaning in life. That’s why we look for it in our relationships, employment, education, and we know what it feels like to be dissatisfied and frustrated when we don’t find it.

Where do these feelings come from? They come from God – these things are evidence of the Creator’s mark upon us. We’ve been designed like this, with a capacity to understand and know right from wrong, purpose from futility, the truth from a lie. The very first people who lived on earth demonstrated this when they hid from God after they’d disobeyed His only command to them – they knew.

Jesus said, “I am the truth.”

There are many people in our lives who could say, “I’ve taught you the truth.” Our parents taught us not to lie, or cheat or steal but they were imperfect teachers who couldn’t live up to their own teaching. Only one person in the whole of history can do that. Only one person can say, “I am the truth.”

Jesus embodies everything that is right, true, genuine, faithful, honest, sincere, just.

God is holy and that means it is impossible for Him to lie. When He speaks, he cannot and does not lie. He never distorts or misrepresents what He says or does. He never deceives. Lying in any shape or form is against His nature.

Therefore, all God’s words are true:

The writer of Psalm 33, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, affirms for us that, “The word of the Lord is right and true; He is faithful in all he does.”

Dr John Gill was a theologian who pastored New Park Street Chapel in south London for 51 years. This church later moved into bigger premises and was renamed The Metropolitan Tabernacle and you may have heard of its most famous minister – CH Spurgeon.

John Gill, in his commentary on John 14: 6 says, “Jesus is the sum and substance of all the truths of the Gospel; they are all full of Him and centre in Him and he is the truth of all the types and shadows, promises and prophecies of the Old Testament; they have all their accomplishment in him.”

The words ‘types’ and ‘shadows’ are theological words which simply mean a kind of illustration or sign of something that is to come later. It’s as if God is so excited by what He has planned that He drops us a hint about it! A type could be a person or thing, or an event.

Let me give you an example: in Numbers 21 we read of the people of Israel being bitten by snakes as a punishment for their unbelief. God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent on a pole that the people who were bitten could look up at and live. Jesus refers to this incident in John 3: 14 when He says, “just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” So the bronze serpent is a type of Christ, pointing to Jesus.

Breakout questions:

1. We praise God for all the people who have spoken truth into our lives. How much more important it is to listen to Jesus who is the source and foundation of truth. In what ways can you listen to Him and live in His truth?

2. Think about the following types and shadows found in the Old Testament – how do they point to Jesus?

The Passover lamb (Exodus 12: 21-23)

The manna the Israelites ate in the wilderness (see John 6: 30-33).

Jonah (see Matthew 12: 38-41)

Can you think of any other types and shadows?

Jesus is the Life

In this final section I want to concentrate on the last phrase in this ‘I am’ saying.

Life is one of the main focuses of John’s gospel, using this term twice as many times as any other NT book.

Let’s look at a few of those occurrences and build up a picture of what Jesus means when He says that He is the life. Turn with me to John 1: 3-4.

“Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life and that life was the light of men.”

Compare with Col. 1: 15: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth….all things were created by Him and for Him.”

It took me years to realise that Jesus was right there at creation. In the Genesis account we read of God and the Spirit of God. Because Jesus isn’t specifically named in that account, the penny didn’t drop for me for a long time!

But these verses in John and Colossians tell us that Jesus was right there at the beginning of all life, and not as a passive observer. He was fully involved in creation, because John tells us that without Him nothing could have been made. God gave the word and the world came into existence.

John 1: 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

Later in that chapter we read that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word is another name for Jesus – He was with God in the beginning and was God.

Jesus can claim to be the life because He was the agent of all creation, through Him all things were created.

But when Jesus said, “I am the life”, He surely meant more than just physical life. Listen to these verses:

John 3: 36: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.”

John 5: 25: “I tell you the truth, a time is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.”

John 10: 28: “I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.”

Life is more than about our physical bodies and the natural world in which we live. We are more than flesh and bones, we are spirit and soul too.

But the tragedy for every human being is that we are all born dead – spiritually dead because of sin. And our sin means that we are separated from God forever. Nothing we can do by ourselves will ever make our spirits alive, we are in a hopeless situation from birth.

But praise God that through Jesus we can be made spiritually alive.

Let me read John 5: 25 again: “I tell you the truth, a time is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.”

Jesus is referring to the spiritually dead. In our state of spiritual death we are unable to understand the things of God – our minds are dead to spiritual things – but through the work of the Spirit, we begin to hear the voice of God and understand what Jesus did on the cross for us. God enables us to believe it, and when we believe and put our faith in Jesus, we live! Our spirits are made alive!

Eph 2: 4-5 says, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”

Jesus is the life – the agent of physical life, the giver of eternal life. But we can go on. Jesus is the source of abundant life!

I talked earlier about our Christian journey sometimes being marked with pain, disappointment and suffering. While that can be true, it isn’t the whole story. The life He wants for us is not a “get-through-it-and-just-survive” quality of life. His desire is for us to experience abundant life. Our Christian journey can be, and should be, marked with joy and blessing too!

In John 10:10 Jesus says that He has come so that we may have life, and have it to the full.

What does that look like, life to the full?

Take 5 minutes in your group to discuss what you think this looks like.

Life to the full – for me, it means that as Christians our lives now have meaning, purpose and joy.

God lavishes His love on us.

He blesses us with every spiritual blessing.

He keeps all His promises to us.

He does immeasurably more for us than we can ask or imagine!

But before we start to have visions of wonderful homes, fancy cars, expensive holidays and a bulging bank account, we should pause and consider the Bible’s teaching on abundant life. God’s priorities for us have nothing to do with wealth, status and power, and everything to do with our relationship with Him.

Abundant life doesn’t refer to our physical and material lives. If it did Jesus would have been the wealthiest of men but we know that wasn’t true. Solomon had all the material blessings that you can possibly imagine and yet he found it all to be meaningless, as we read in Ecclesiastes. Wealth, power and position may be desirable but they can bring their own kind of trouble or worry to a person’s life. God may bless you with material things, good health, long life etc but they aren’t His main concern.

Jesus summed up what life to the full is in His prayer the night before He died. John 17: 3 says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.”

This is the secret to an abundant life: to know God more and more, to keep on growing in knowledge and wisdom and grace and all the fruits of the Spirit. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe.”

The more we strive to know God better, the more we will realise how utterly glorious and wonderful He is. As we meditate on Him and grow in our understanding of the hope and the life we have in Jesus, the more we will be blessed and strengthened to live for Him.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Let’s aim to make Him our way, our truth, our life.

The events in our passage take place just a few hours before Jesus went to the cross.  He and His disciples are having dinner together, as they’ve done many times before.  In their last few hours together Jesus is making the most of the opportunity to teach, help and comfort them.

Read John 14: 1-14

1. Verse 1: why did Jesus command His disciples not to let their hearts be troubled? Have a look at John 13, Matthew 26:17-29 and Luke 22: 14-38 to remind yourselves what had been said and done before Jesus spoke these words. Put yourself in the disciples’ place and describe how you would be feeling.

2. Jesus says that the way to keep our hearts from being troubled is to trust, believe in Him and in God.  One translation puts it this way: “You must not let yourselves be distressed—you must hold on to your faith in God and to your faith in me.” 

It is true to say that sometimes this is easier said than done.  Perhaps you are in a situation that is troubling you at the moment. 

• How are you keeping your heart from being troubled?  How do verses 2 and 3 help you? 
• What spiritual strategies have you developed that help you in this? 
• Share with your buddy the Bible verses that help you to hold onto your faith in these times. 

3. Jesus’ disciples were ordinary people, just like you and me. The disciple Thomas appears only a few times by name in the New Testament. He is sometimes unfairly given the nickname ‘Doubter’. Look at these passages:

John 11: 6-16                      John 14: 5                            John 20: 24-29

What can we learn about Thomas’ character and his journey of faith from these passages?  How does his faith grow?  Do you relate to Thomas in any way?

4. The other major world religions promote the way to heaven/paradise or spiritual perfection as being achieved through works – observing various rituals, meditation, fasting, and doing good works.

In contrast, Jesus says that He is the way.  He is the only path that leads to the living God and the only way by which our salvation is secured.  Look at these passages and identify the ways in which Jesus made our salvation possible:

2 Cor. 5: 21                   Isaiah 53: 4-5               Hebrews 9: 22             John 10: 17-18         1 Peter 1: 3

5. How many times does the word ‘Father’ appear in these verses? Is there any significance in the fact that Jesus mentions the Father so much?

These references speak of the intimacy and closeness that Jesus has with the Father.  Because of what Jesus has done on the cross He has opened up the way for us to call God the Father our father (Matt. 6: 9).  Consider the amazing privilege we have in being able to address the Almighty God in the same way that Jesus does and be treated as His children! (1 John 3: 1)

Prayer

Spend some time in prayer praising God for giving us a way to come to Him and for the privilege of calling Him Father.  Pray for each other in the troubles that you are currently facing.

What I’m sharing with you today is what the Lord has been teaching me as I’ve studied for this talk, and how He has been ministering to me as I have grappled with and continue to fight the biggest fear I have; the fear of death.  We have been looking at the I AM statements of Jesus as we’ve been going through the gospel of John, in order to help us ‘Behold our God’ as our series title suggests. When I signed up to preach on this particular I AM statement that Jesus made; I am the Resurrection and the Life, I had no idea that I would dredge up issues and baggage that would cause countless tears and a lot of mental wrestling.  But it has been GOOD and I am excited to share some of my journey with you as we look together at what Jesus meant when he said ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’.  If I had to give this talk a name, it would be ‘No fear in death; this is the power of Christ in me’.  That is what my heart has been learning through all my studying of the Bible for tonight; it might be simple but if you can take one thing away, I’d love it to be “I do not need to fear death because Jesus has the ultimate victory and has given me life!’.

Do you remember Reader’s Digest? Those mini magazines. There always seemed to be one lying around our house when I was a girl; I think I was a little addicted to the real-life stories of people who amazingly got out of difficult situations. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that if you sent off coupons from the back of those magazines for several months, you could get a glossy coffee-table style book and my parents must have done, because we owned a large Reader’s Digest Encyclopaedia of Human Diseases! What a lovely topic for a coffee-table book!  Pictures of skin diseases, growths and tumours.  It didn’t live on our coffee table to be fair, but behind the armchair on the bottom row of the bookshelf.  I was 7 or 8 when I crawled behind the armchair and found that book; it opened up an awful world of potential ailments that I could possibly have, when my mind had been innocent to those things before.  That was when the idea of illness and death first entered my little heart and I have been battling fear in that area of my life ever since.  Intrusive thoughts, fear of illness, constant battles with mental ‘what-if’s?’ and panic attacks.  Maybe you can remember when you first realised with clarity that you were a mortal being?  That there were things out of your control?  That one day those you love or you yourself would no longer be alive on this earth? 

I realise this is a pretty dark way to start a talk, but we can’t really look at John chapter 11 without talking about death!  I mean, one of the main characters is in the grave not long after the chapter begins!  Let’s start by reminding ourselves of the events surrounding Jesus’ famous I AM statement. 

Jesus has been in Jerusalem with his disciples, teaching and answering their questions.  In John chapter 10 where we were last month, we saw Jesus making some bold claims about himself; he would be the one to save his people (I am the gate) and the one who would ultimately voluntarily lay down his life for his own sheep as the Good Shepherd.  At the end of chapter 10 we see Jesus escape arrest and stoning; he was not in the Pharisees and religious leader’s good books for making these claims!  Jesus knows it is not yet his time to die, so he removes himself to a region beyond the river Jordan for a while.  While he is preaching there, a messenger comes from Bethany to let him know his friend is sick.  But this is not just any old acquaintance. 

Lazarus and his sisters were close friends of Jesus; they had opened their home to him and ministered to him, both physically and with their friendship.  The word that comes via the messenger from Mary and Martha confirms the bond they have; “the one you love is sick” in verse 3.  It is baffling to us as readers, and must have been to those who knew of this friendship, that Jesus lingered two more days before setting out for Bethany!  How is that logical? You love someone, and therefore you don’t come? Eh?  But Jesus is unruffled and unperturbed.  He knows that by the time that messenger has arrived, Lazarus is already dead.  It will take them two more days to get over to Bethany, and we know that Lazarus has been dead for four days by the time Jesus arrives.  Lazarus is not only-just-dead, he is decaying-dead!  But Jesus knows the Father’s plan.  His delay has an ultimate purpose; to allow Lazarus, his sisters, his own disciples and all those present to know forevermore that there IS resurrection of the dead. 

But poor Mary and Martha don’t know all this yet.  They have seen Jesus doing miracles, they’ve seen him heal the sick.  They know what he is able to do!  You can almost hear them rehearsing to one another as they care for their dying brother “where is Jesus? Why does he not come? If he was here, Lazarus could be healed!”.  But he doesn’t come, and their brother dies.  Let’s pick up the story from here in Scripture. 

Read John 11:17-27

In those days, due to the hot climate, a body would be buried immediately when someone died.  Lazarus was probably buried in a cave with a stone that sealed the entrance. Cultural traditions meant that a period of mourning began immediately; there was no space for private grieving as very public displays of mourning were typical and all the friends, family and community would gather to weep.  You could even hire professional mourners! Jesus arrived in Bethany and he and the disciples would have heard the wailing long before they got there.  Martha hears Jesus has finally come and rushes out to see him; typical Martha!  She tends to be known in Christian circles as the busy one who didn’t have time to sit and listen to Jesus; this passage has definitely helped me see Martha in a different light.  Still, here she is running out to see Jesus; I imagine her a little hot-headed and impetuous, wearing her heart on her sleeve.  She blurts out what everyone has been thinking; and what she says appears to be a mixture of complaint, disappointment, rebuke but also faith. In verse 21 “Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask”.  Amazing words at the end there!  In the midst of blinding grief, she still has faith.  We’ll come back to Jesus’ response to her outburst in a minute, but I find Martha here SO impressive and think her responses here should be her hallmark. Her faith is deep!  Before we plunge into the I AM statement, let’s break out into small groups or pairs to discuss this question…

BREAK OUT – In what ways can you relate to Martha here in how you approach Jesus with your struggles?  How does Jesus respond to us when we come to him like this?  Think of Scriptures that reveal his heart for us in difficult times. 

So my question to myself as I set out to unpack this particular I AM statement was why does Jesus say “I am the resurrection and the life?” I’m sure there are lots of answers but these are the three that have impacted me.

Firstly, Jesus is providing himself as a solution for our ultimate problem – death.  This is the obvious problem faced by Lazarus and his family; their loved one has died and has been in the grave for 4 days.  Ultimately it is the same problem we have too; we will ALL die one day.  We all have the same eventual outcome in this life! No-one escapes it, and no-one can put it off forever – no amount of anti-aging creams or healthy diets will put off the inevitable in the end.  Death is very final to humans; Mary and Martha felt that the death of Lazarus was an absolute boundary; their despair testified to that. 

But the problem we have as a human race goes deeper than that.  Yes, physical death is something that we find abhorrent and abnormal, and so we should because we were created at the beginning of time by an eternal God who placed a longing for eternity in our hearts!  However, the Bible tells us death is more than just the heart stopping beating; it is separation from God for all eternity. 

Think back to Genesis at the very beginning of the Bible.  God had spoken everything into being and the whole of creation was beautiful and perfect; God himself called his workmanship “good”.  Adam and Eve enjoyed all He had made and to top it all off, they had an intimate relationship with their Father and Creator.  We all know that it went wrong; the serpent, our enemy Satan, caused them to doubt God’s goodness and they disobeyed Him.  Death came into the world as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin; as soon as they’d sinned, an animal had to die to provide clothing to ‘cover up’ their nakedness.  In the curse spoken over them God said “you will return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).   We know from Romans 6 “the wages of sin is death”; sin deserves death and separation from God; it is the penalty we must pay.  So now we are talking about more than a physical death; this is a separation-from-God-forever death.  You see, physical death will separate us from the present world, but our souls will not cease to exist; they will be conscious.  The Bible says we will be judged according to what we know.  Decisions we make now in this life will affect our eternal destiny beyond our physical death, and yet we treat it so lightly.  This is scary stuff!

But wait!  The story doesn’t end there, thank the Lord.  Here comes the solution to our problem!  God promises to Adam and Eve that there will be one who will crush the serpent; someone will come who will ‘bridge the gap’ between His holy standards and us, His sin-stained children.  In saying “I am the resurrection and the life”, Jesus is suggesting he is the solution to the problem of ‘separation-from-God-forever death’.  You see, going back to our passage, when Jesus promises to Martha that her brother will “rise again” in verse 23, he is not just talking about Lazarus’ physical rising from the tomb that will happen minutes later.  He is also not, as she assumes, talking about Lazarus rising to eternal life at the end of time.  He is calling her, and all who were there, to look towards the most important event in his own life; the event that the whole of the Bible points to.  He is drawing their attention to the present!  Mary and Martha did not know yet what we know now; that Jesus would within a few weeks take on the sins of the world, the sins of every man and woman from the past, present and future by willingly laying down his own life as a perfect sacrifice.  WE ought to die as the penalty for our own sin, but Jesus took our sin upon himself when he died on the cross so that we can be presented as stainless before our Creator, our Father.  Jesus IS the serpent crusher!

Once again though, the story is still not complete.  Jesus did not stay dead.  He did not stay in the grave!  We know he proved what he said when he told Martha “I am the resurrection and the life”; because he did that very thing!  He triumphed over death by coming back to life.  This is what ‘resurrection’ literally means.  After three days in the grave, there were multiple eye-witnesses who testified to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them.  Those eye-witnesses were so sure of what they saw, that they wrote it all down, told everyone and even ended up dying themselves for their testimony.  We may not be eye witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, but through God’s word, and the Holy Spirit confirming within us, we experience the resurrection power of Jesus too!  Yes, we have that same power at work within us!  It is a mind-blowing thought!

But back to Martha.  She does not yet know any of this!  Jesus said to her “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Wow! What a mindset shift it must have been for Martha, and how she is put on the spot! “Do you believe this massive truth that I’ve just presented to you Martha? That I can fulfil and embody an idea like the future resurrection within my very person? And that resurrection power over death is not just something for the distant future but is available to you now?” I wonder if Martha hesitated or paused as she had to let all of this sink in.  I think I would have.  Martha’s answer nicely takes us to my next point.

Secondly, why does Jesus say he is the resurrection and the life?  He is revealing who he is as God’s Son, the Messiah.  I think Martha’s answer to Jesus putting her on the spot is just beautiful.  Even if her brain is bamboozled by what Jesus has just said (I know mine would have been), she affirms the truth that she knows and believes “Yes, Lord…I believe you are the Christ, (or Messiah) the Son of God, who was to come into the world”.  What a statement of faith!  Martha had it bang on here.  Even if her head was hurting from trying to understand how Jesus could possibly be the resurrection in the midst of her grief, she goes back to what she knows.  Jesus, in all he has said and done in the past few years, has proved himself to Martha to be the son of God.  She believes he is the one all the Jews had been hoping would come to save their people and the one who had been prophesied for hundreds of years; after all that is what Messiah means – the chosen or anointed one. 

You know, John had a real heart for revealing who Jesus was to his readers.  Take a look at the goal he had for himself in writing his gospel.  John 20: 31 says “But these (recorded miraculous signs) are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”.  That’s why John includes the prayer Jesus prays to his Father by the open tomb before he commands Lazarus to come out; “Father I thank you that you have heard me.  I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me”.  He is clearly saying ‘I have been sent by my Father’.  Yes!  He’s God’s Son!

Martha had it spot on because this claim Jesus was making could only be possible if he was God.  I listened to a great talk Tim Keller did at Oxford University’s CU as part of their outreach week on ‘Who is Jesus?’.  Tim used this very chapter to demonstrate how Jesus was both fully man and fully God.  Even in his different responses to the sisters; it is not random that Jesus reveals his humanity as he enters Mary’s grief and openly weeps with her but speaks the truth clearly and frankly with Martha, letting her know that only through him can true and lasting life be found.  He is showing his humanity and his deity.  In raising Lazarus from the dead, but ultimately in rising from the dead himself, Jesus demonstrated that all his previous claims to be God were credible.  Only God could have this power.  Sam Alberry says it nice and succinctly “the resurrection confirms who Jesus says he is; the Christ, the Saviour and the author of life.”

BREAKOUT – There are many people who have claimed to be God across the centuries.  In the light of the resurrection, how is Jesus different and how does that strengthen your faith in him?  

Thirdly, when Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life, this gives us hope for the future; the hope of eternal life.  The bodily resurrection of Jesus is totally unique.  Yes, Lazarus had been raised to life, but that was only in order for him to die once again.  No, Jesus physically died but three days later he came to life; this time never to die again!  As Moody puts it, Jesus ushers in a new era that we follow on from as his followers.  This is great news for us!  Let’s take a quick look at 1 Corinthians 15 to understand this idea better; I like to read it in the New Living translation so that I can get my head around it as it is pretty complicated, but there is a phenomenal truth in there!

Read 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 (NLT)

This passage is showing that just as death came into the world when Adam sinned, so new life comes through the resurrection of Jesus.  Now, if I’ve heard rumours about something, I like to have hard evidence to back up the rumour if I’m to then believe it; I’m sure you do too.  Here we have living proof that we will live eternally!  We know God created us with eternity set into our hearts.  He has also provided the Scriptures; eye-witness accounts of Jesus doing what he said he’d do!  Dying in our place, dying the death we deserved to die, but then stomping on death and triumphing over it on that resurrection Sunday!  In doing that, Jesus became the forerunner for us; he is the proof of our eventual resurrection to eternal life.  He’s done it first, we follow.  This does not mean we will never physically die, rather it means we will not face the spiritual death we spoke of before; the ‘separation-from-God-forever death’.  Instead, we will be with our Father forever.  That is what Jesus meant when he said to Martha “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (v25 and 26).  As John Piper said; so powerful, so complete is Jesus’ defeat of death that he speaks of it as if Christians no longer experience it!  I know I already knew this truth, but really meditating on it has brought me so much assurance!  Because of what Jesus has done, death becomes just a door, a gateway to something so much better than our limited minds can imagine.  An eternal inheritance beyond anything we could dream and unsurpassed joy forevermore in the presence of our Saviour! (Eph 1:11; Psalm 16:11)     

I don’t think we often dwell on the life that is to come, not as individuals or in our conversations with other believers or even as a church.  We are very taken up with the here-and-now.  And there isn’t anything wrong with ‘being present in the moment’ but we must be careful not to put our hope in the wrong place.  What does Jesus mean in saying he is the life?  Is that for now or for later?  Well, both!  John is very clear from the beginning of his book, that life is not merely the absence of death or just a state of existence.  Right back at the beginning of his book, where we started with Sharon, John spells out what life is: “In him (that is Jesus) was life, and that life was the light of mankind” (John 1:4).  This is what Jesus is offering when he says “I am the resurrection and the life”; life that is in God, enjoying His presence, his forgiveness, and his empowering to achieve His purposes for us.  This is the life Jesus says he gives us when he says in John 10:10 that he has come to give us “life to the full”.  Jesus himself is life, and if we are in him, we have that life now.

So, how do we live in response to all this?  How does Jesus saying ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’ impact us?  In studying for this, I have asked myself as Jesus asked Martha “do I believe this?”.  I know that in the past when I’ve been struggling with a panic attack or have my head full of worry that my latest physical symptom is actually a hidden cancer, I have found it very hard to grasp the resurrection power of Jesus or feel like I am living my life ‘to the full’.  I have felt like a failure in the belief-department!  But Martha has taught me so much.  When Jesus asks her the pointed question “do you believe this?” after he’s just told her he is the resurrection and the life, she doesn’t say “well, I know it but I’m not feeling it right now” or “yes, but, but, but…my beloved brother Lazarus is dead!”.  No, she responds in faith.  You see, believing is not an ‘act-of-the-will’ but a response. Martha’s response shows a fixed and settled faith, especially verse 27 where she says “I believe…”.  She is using the perfect tense, effectively saying “I have believed and, despite these circumstances, I continue to believe”.  She is such an example to me here.  Jesus presents the truth, she responds in faith.  We have the whole of Scripture revealing to us the power of Christ’s triumphant victory over death through his resurrection; we have a choice to respond.  It must be a pretty important point; Jesus mentions ‘believe’ 8 times in this chapter!  He really wants us to believe.  When we say “I believe” like Martha, we are not saying “I must believe, I must believe” or “I’m not believing hard enough”.  That is missing the point.  Hollie sent me a great article by Ron Frost about what it means to believe; he put it beautifully “to believe is a response… it is to be awakened, having the eyes of our hearts opened, rather than a task to do”.  And the Holy Spirit is the one who brings about this awakening in us.  He opens our eyes to see that Jesus is and should be central to our lives and everything we do, say and think.  And when we struggle, we can still rest completely in the knowledge that faith; that attitude of trust and confidence, is a gift given by God.  It is not in our own efforts!  What a relief.  In my struggling, it is totally okay to cry out like the father of the demon-possessed boy who said to Jesus “I DO believe! Help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) and Jesus poured out his love and compassion.   

A word of warning though; we must be careful that our belief is more than just acknowledgement.  Scripture tells us that even the devil and his demons believe Jesus is the Son of God; they acknowledge who he is.  It doesn’t help them!  No, the Holy Spirit helps us go further.  As our response to what Jesus has done for us in triumphing over death and giving us new life in him, we delight in him, embrace him and make him the treasure and Lord of our lives by surrendering completely to him.  This is truly what it means to respond to Jesus and believe.  Examine your response to his offer of eternal life today.  Have you responded?

BREAKOUT – How do you respond to Jesus? How does the truth about Jesus shape your life?

You know, our enemy the Devil has literally been flinging everything and the kitchen sink at me; he does not want the truth that Jesus is the resurrection and the life proclaimed publicly and he also wants me to stay stuck in my fear.  But knowing Jesus has fought the fight that I never could, and truly come out of the battle victorious has enabled me to face up to the fear of death.  There are some fantastic verses that have really encouraged me as I’ve studied for this evening.  The writer to the Hebrews said “Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying (and I want to add ‘rising to new life’ here) could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying” (Hebrews 2:14-15).  I have been one of those slaves!  But, thank you Lord for your victory, because I have been set free!!  Because of Jesus’ victory, we can have courage and hope and steadfast assurance in the face of death.  Now, I’m not saying that I have all this nailed now.  Even whilst writing this and since, I have felt the cold fingers of fear grip my insides.  But!  I am determined to fight.  What does our loving Father want for his children?  He wants us to talk to him, to ask him for help.  So we follow the pattern Jesus set for us in speaking to his Father like he did in garden of Gethsemane.  We ask Him to increase in us the desire to finally see Him in his glory.  We ask him to decrease the hold that the fear of death has on us due to the unbelief in our hearts.  And we ask Him to give us such faith and longing to be with Christ that we no longer wish to live as long as possible here, but only long enough to faithfully finish the course He has allotted to us.  So now I pray!  Every time I feel the fear, I speak truth.  You know, the famous verses “where O death is your victory? Where o death is your sting?” have a new meaning to me now.  Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, death has no victory and no power over us.  Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, death has lost its sting and for me that is the fear.  Praise the LORD!     

It’s a privilege to speak here tonight. Thank you to everyone who has put in hard work to set up the building and the Zoom. It’s so encouraging to see so many women who are up for it, who want to get to know Jesus more and are serious about their faith. It reminds me I’m not the only one!

Sometimes we can become isolated in our faith. Charles Spurgeon, the Victorian preacher, used the idea of a coal in the fire. As Christians we can be like coals, glowing and on fire for Jesus and spurring each other on. But when we are plucked from that warmth, we cool and cease to be light in the world.

These evenings are always, for me, a chance to get back in the fire with the other coals and they always spur me on, to get back into God’s Word, face the honest truth about my Spiritual walk and cry out to God in prayer.

So my prayer for you is that, similarly, this evening you can come closer, encourage each other and get in the fire of God’s Holy Spirit, ready to burn bright for him out there in the dark world.

==

We’re starting a new series of Bible studies today in the book of John. This is John’s account of the things that took place when Jesus walked on the earth 2000 years ago.

We are going to focus on the I Am statements – teaching where Jesus declares to his disciples and the whole world who he is. Jesus in his own words. And we’re going to get to know Jesus through these amazing statements of truth. Through the year, we will touch on some of the miracles as well, as the miracles Jesus does are also signposts to who he is – yet often those miracles are set right next to Jesus explaining who he is – telling us that the miracle is a demonstration of a particular thing that is so special about him.

===

Today: John 1.

The opening of John is incredibly famous and usually read at Christmas. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…” Surprisingly, John doesn’t open his Gospel by saying the name of Jesus. Instead he begins with a really long introduction about “the Word” and “true Light” which leads up to and culminates eventually in the verse 17 with “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

It felt to me, as I prepared this passage, that John is almost writing his Gospel for the sceptical people, the cynical ones, who need extra proof. He starts with something we can all agree on – “In the beginning, there was something…” and goes on to demonstrate how that something came to live among us and that something was actually JESUS.

In the prologue, if you studied it with your study buddy, you’ll have explored some of the fantastic truths about who Jesus is: the Word, God, the Maker, Light, Life, able to make us children of God, glorious, full of grace and truth. He is God the one and only. He makes God known.

And John goes on to write from verse 19, about how John the Baptist saw Jesus walking past and shouted out “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

Whether you have a Jewish background or not – those are awesome claims to make about someone.  Even if the bit about being “Lamb of God” and the “Passover” and so on, even if that goes over your head, “who takes away the sin of the world” is a phenomenal thing to say about someone.

And John is going to go on, throughout his Gospel, to give evidence to support that claim. To tell us about the signs and teachings and events that prove that Jesus is this Lamb of God, the Maker, the Light, the Word. Everything is written (John 20:31) “…so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

This is great. But. The sceptic in me, the cynic, doesn’t want to believe based on what someone else says. Is John trustworthy? Is he telling the truth? Like Thomas, who wouldn’t believe Jesus was alive again unless he stuck his hand in the wounds from Jesus’ crucifixion, I want to find out from the horse’s mouth.

And that’s why John’s Gospel is so great for the curious, the questioning and the doubting – because John presents the first-hand facts and allows us to investigate for ourselves: WHO IS THIS JESUS? Is he really all the things John claims that he is, in the first chapter?

Let’s hear Jesus speak for himself.

So this whole series is going to be Jesus in his own words. An invitation to BEHOLD, to look at Jesus and find that he is exactly who he says he is. And after 35 verses of preamble, of build-up, of glorious description of the Word made Flesh, introducing eye-witnesses who relate that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world… Finally we come to Jesus’ first words in the Gospel. Now at last we can hear Jesus’ words to us, revealing who he is.

• READ THE PASSAGE. John 1:35-51

BREAKOUT 1. Look at the words Jesus actually says. The words of Christ in red.
Quick reaction – Are these overwhelming or underwhelming to you?

In this passage, Jesus meets 5 people in four separate encounters, which are really two pairs:

1. Andrew and John
2. … and then Andrew brings Peter along
3. then Philip
4. … who in turn brings Nathanael along.

1. Andrew and John

Persons 1+2  = Andrew and John. vv 35-49

Look at what Jesus says. It’s quite something, isn’t it? Overwhelming? Underwhelming?

Andrew and John were following John the Baptist, hanging on his every word, desperate to be right with God, and John the Baptist points out to them this man, walking past: BEHOLD the Lamb of God.

Worth noting that this is the second day in a row John has said this. in verse 29, the day before this, John saw Jesus walking by and shouted out, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

The next day, he again points him out: “Look the Lamb of God!” And these two happened to be standing there, and heard him, and took the hint and they went to find out.

Jesus turns round to them and says, “What do you want?” or in the ESV and the Greek, What are you seeking?

This is such an invitation. After all we have heard so far about Jesus, the Word who was with God in the beginning, without whom nothing has been made that has been made… The one full of grace and truth… He asks them what they want. What are you seeking for?

John the Writer has not set up this encounter as a throwaway thing – he has been leading up to it for 37 verses. He is at pains to introduce us to Jesus. The fact is, that Jesus’ first words to those who would follow him are:

What do you want?

and then

Come and See.

As we read on, we will realise this is not a one-off invitation specific to Andrew and John. This is an invitation for all time to all people.

What do you want; what are you looking for?

Come and see.

And Jesus makes that invitation in the supreme confidence that, whatever it is, they will find it. Jesus asks us, also – What are you seeking? And he makes the invitation to us to Come and See, because he knows that he is it. In fact, John was originally writing in Ancient Greek and in his original language, this invitation is in the future tense: come and you will see.

• Looking for clarity in life?  You will see, I am the light of the world…
• Looking for safety? You will see, I am the good Shepherd…
• Looking for belonging? You will see, I am the true vine and you are the branches…
• Weary and looking for strength to go on? You will see, I am the bread of life…
• Looking for hope? You will see, I am the resurrection and the life…
• Looking for direction and moral wisdom? You will see, I am the way, the truth and the life…
• Looking for someone who can keep promises made centuries ago? You will see, I am he…

I could go on… but those are some of the passages the other ladies are going to speak about as we go through the year.

He invites us to Come and See. Look at it for yourself. That’s a bold thing to say – and supremely confident. Because Jesus knows that, if they come, they will see. They will not be disappointed. They will not be let down.

If you are feeling disillusioned, dispirited, tired, weary, confused… disappointed, even… in your faith, listen to Jesus’s invitation and take him up on his offer. He isn’t going to judge. He is giving an invitation. A chance to bring your questions and your scepticism and see if Jesus really is as good as he says he is.

***SPOILER ALERT** HE IS

I mean, admittedly, in the context of the passage, the “come and see” is pretty banal.

Andrew and John, with Jesus who is God made flesh standing there; Jesus asks them “What are you seeking?” and all they can say is… “Can we see your Air BnB?”

I’m being flippant.

What they really ask is – can we come and abide with you? Where can we go to be with you, Jesus? What sort of life are we signing up for if we go with you?

And Jesus gives an invitation that he gives to us all. Come. And. See.

Andrew was one of those two men who took Jesus up on that offer. He stayed with Jesus from late afternoon onwards, and then he went off to find his brother.

“He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ).” (verse 41)

Andrew is so convinced by what he has seen and heard while he was hanging out with Jesus, that he goes straight to his brother and says, “We have found the Messiah”. Which means Christ. Which means, the long promised King that God chose.

What a declaration!

Work backwards with me. Jesus said: “What are you seeking” and then after that, Andrew said, “We have found the Messiah.”

So what was Andrew seeking?

This is the first time that title is used in John’s Gospel. It’s a special moment.

— BUT! It’s yet another person’s opinion of who Jesus is, and not actually who Jesus himself said he was!! We want to find Jesus’ own words

So what happens next.

verse 42. “Andrew brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter)”

Jesus looks at Peter, and he knew. This is terrifying. I don’t want to butt into the I am the Light of the World talk later in the year, but when the sun is streaming through the windows into my kitchen, you can see every mark on the work surfaces, every fingerprint on the taps, all the dust in the air and the spiderwebs hanging off the ceiling. Jesus looked at Peter and he shined the light on him and he saw him… and he said…

You’re so impulsive you can’t shut up? You’re a terrible friend who will deny me three times? You’re going to die because you follow me?

NO, he says “You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter). Which means “Rock”.

Jesus looks at him and he identifies him as the man he will make him into. As David Turner points out, “Jesus has authority to identify us, to remake us.”

Now this could be terrifying. Imagine that. Meeting someone with the right to identify me, to remake me.

But Jesus is the one full of grace and truth, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world…. all the things we have been told about Jesus are true…

Because look! Behold! Here’s some proof, from what Jesus says. Here is not condemnation for being an idiot, or a rubbish friend, etc (which Peter totally is)  Instead Jesus directly addresses him as “Rock” . Not because he is, but because this is who Jesus will re-make him as. He sees the end from the beginning and has the power to make it come to pass.

Just like his confident “Come and you will see”, Jesus also confidently says, “You will be Peter”, knowing that it will be so, because he has the power to make Peter into the man he has called him to be.

Carson comments: “The focus is much less on what this name change means for Peter, than on the Jesus who knows people thoroughly (cf. vv43-51), and not only ‘sees into’ them (cf. vv47-48) but so calls them that he makes them what he calls them to be.”

Jesus’ words reveal that he has authority to identify us, to remake us… But remember who Jesus is – he is the one who is full of grace and truth. So yes, he knows our deepest thoughts, fears, achievements, and worries. But he is full of grace, gentle, forgiving, kind and, ultimately, good. So if anyone is going to identify and remake me – I think I would want Jesus to do that.

BREAKOUT 2. What is it about Jesus that reassures you that you are in safe hands?            If you’re not sure where to start, look back through John 1 for some of the special names given to Jesus: the Word of God, the Light that gives Life, the Lamb of God, full of grace and truth… and so on.

Jesus with Philip… Jesus with Nathanael

Look at John 1:43-51

Verse 43. Jesus meets Philip. This verse is really exciting. Throughout John 1, John the author has been giving lots of eye-witness reports about Jesus. One of the things he focusses on is the time – on the next day, on the next day, on the next day… It gives some idea of the pace in which the following around Jesus grew.

There was a lot of curiosity about Jesus. It started with some of John’s followers (Andrew and presumably John himself) and then Peter was brought to Jesus by his brother.

On the next day, something a little different happens: Jesus set out to go to Galilee and found Philip. Philip wasn’t even looking for Jesus but he heard the Lord’s direct call.

We don’t hear much more about what Philip did about that call – but in the next verse we hear that he has found someone else and is encouraging him, Nathanael, to come and see Jesus.

Whatever Philip heard and saw when he met Jesus, it convinced him that Jesus was the one “Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote”. Philip, like Andrew and John before him, was clearly looking for the one Moses and the prophets wrote about. He must have been studying his Old Testament and looking out for the rescuer God was going to send, the one who completes and fulfils the Law. What an amazing thing, that God opened his eyes and revealed that Jesus is that One, very impressive Person.

Philip continues – “We have found the one…Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph.”

It’s interesting that he introduces Jesus by Jesus’ human credentials: Where he’s from, who his father is. And that’s not very impressive.

This whole episode takes place where John is baptising people, in Bethany just next to the Jordan river in the south of the country. It’s very interesting that we’re told that Philip, Andrew and Peter were all from the town of Bethsaida (v44), and Jesus is setting out for Galilee.

You’re probably nodding wisely because you’ve heard of all these places lots of times. Let’s look at a map.

Bethany is in the south of the country; Galilee is the region in the North. Google maps says it will take me 26 hours to walk from Bethany to Nazareth; 29 hours to walk from Bethany to Bethsaida. So it’s a few day’s journey from the place where John is baptising back home. Nazareth and Bethsaida, however, where Jesus and Andrew, Peter and Philip are from, are only about 30 miles away.

Imagine Philip’s surprise and joy to find that this person who is the one the whole Old Testament points to, is actually a (relatively) local boy! He’s from Nazareth, in Galilee, near us!

It would be like travelling to London on foot to hear an amazing speaker, and meeting them walking back along the M4 and finding out that they’re from Gloucester!

Nathanael, however, thinks this is just too unlikely. Gloucester? Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?

Nathanael is a skeptic and a scholar. It seems like he and Philip have been studying Moses and the Prophets, looking for the signs of the one God promised… and in the Old Testament, there is no prophecy about Gloucester Nazareth.

Philip is not dismayed by Nathanael’s cynical response. Instead he just invites him – Come and See for yourself.

Jesus’ invitation becomes Philip’s invitation.

So often we wonder how we could persuade someone about something – how can I persuade you that the John Lewis chairs are better that the IKEA ones? I could show you the catalogue and the technical speculations, I could show you all the 5 star reviews, but the simplest thing to do is to invite you to Come and See. Come and sit on them. Come and make up your own mind.

Philip is so confident that Nathanael will be blown away by Jesus that he just invites him to come and see.

— I feel I have got sidetracked here. We’re supposed to be looking at the words of Christ. So. Here we go. verse 47. Jesus says “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

Just like before, with Peter, Jesus looked at him and saw straight through to who he truly was.

How do you know me, Nathanael replies.

Jesus wasn’t making a lucky guess. He was right – this man really is an Israelite with no trickery (There’s a little joke in here – Israel is the name given to Jacob, in the old testament. Jacob was a very tricksy and untruthful man, but after he wrestled with the Lord, physically, and was severely injured by the Lord, at the end God changed his name from “trickster” to “he wrestles with God”. So when Jesus says this to Nathanael, he’s making a little joke: “Here’s someone who wrestles with the truth about God and isn’t at all false, like Jacob was.”)

And we see that here – Nathanael wrestles with the truth about God. He didn’t instantly accept that Jesus was God’s long-promised king when Philip told him about it; he disagreed that such a person could come from Nazareth where the hillbillies live. And he even questioned Jesus’ assessment of him – “Yeah you say I really am an Israelite, but how do you know that?”

— I love this because this is the kind of reaction I have to what Jesus says in the Bible. “You say that, well prove it.” And I have so many questions and uncertainties about my faith. And I wonder – will God reject me if I don’t just blindly agree with it all?

Not at all. The invitation is to Come and See. Come and Find out.

And in fact, even though we might think Nathanael is being rude to question Jesus, the Lord has the grace and kindness to answer Nathanael.

We find that all the way through the Gospel, Jesus consistently makes the time to talk to skeptics and doubters, to discuss their fears and concerns, to reassure and console, to give them firm proof which annihilate their doubts.

Remember Martha, who couldn’t believe that Jesus could do anything to help her dead brother and ended up having a full-on theological debate with Jesus – then Jesus went on to prove it by raising Lazarus from the dead?

And Doubting Thomas who wouldn’t believe Jesus had come back to life unless he put his finger in the wounds from Jesus’ crucifixion? And then Jesus invited him to poke him and see it really was him who had died and is alive again?

— ALL of John’s Gospel is written so that we might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life in his name (John 20:31). And John is out there to tell us to come and see, come and see the proof – whether you are an atheist, a very religious person, grieving, celebrating, friendless, victim of others’ poor choices, if you are hungry, or in the dark about life. Jesus says Come and See. Come and put it to the test. Because Jesus knows he absolutely is the real thing and he does not disappoint. Bring your questions; bring your doubts. Jesus is ready to answer them.

Let’s see how Jesus answers Nathanael’s challenge; How do you know me?

verse 48: “I saw you while you were still under the fig-tree before Philip called you.’

Hmm.

This doesn’t sound impressive or convincing. Because on my first reading I thought, “Surely Jesus isn’t just saying he has really good eyesight?”

Jesus must be implying something more, because Nathanael’s response is “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel!”

And I don’t think anyone has gone to Specsavers and come out saying that.

The commentator Kruse points out that “Jewish scholars sat under Fig Trees to study the Law.” Israel is a hot country and, at that time, mostly agricultural. There is very little in the way of formal education – no College or Open University course to take up. Nathanael is doing what young men would do to study the scriptures. Jesus says, “I saw you studying God’s Word.” Jesus sees Nathanael and he knows Nathanael.

This now starts to make a bit more sense. And it clearly meant something to Nathanael. Much like with Peter, Jesus looks at Nathanael studying the Scriptures and sees right to his heart – truly a son of Israel. Not like Jacob the trickster at all. He sees the person he is going to make Nathanael into – pure and holy. And he calls him by this name.

Carson points out: “John’s chief point here is Jesus’ supernatural knowledge… not Nathanael’s activity.” So, although the Fig Tree thing may seem a bit obscure to us, it clearly makes complete sense to Nathanael and the penny drops: Jesus understands him far more deeply that he even understands himself. He goes from doubtful and skeptical to “Rabbi you are the son of God.”

BREAKOUT 3: What convinces you that Jesus is someone worth listening to?

OK and now we reach the climax of these 5 encounters. Jesus speaks for more than one sentence!!

Verses 50-51
Jesus said, ‘You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig-tree. You will see greater things than that.’ He then added, ‘Very truly I tell you, you will see “heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on” the Son of Man.’

Three amazing truths in this utterance.

1. YOU WILL SEE…
2. VERY TRULY I TELL YOU…
3. the thing about heaven open and angels

1. YOU WILL SEE

Jesus points out to Nathanael that he is believing on the basis of the thing about the Fig Tree. But then he invites him to stick with it, follow along with Jesus and makes the promise that HE WILL SEE better things, even more astonishing things… Once again, that amazing confidence Jesus has. That if we look closely at Jesus and stick close to him, he will deliver on everything he says he will do and everything he says that he is.

If you hadn’t noticed it by now, this promise of “you will see” is something I really want you to take away from this evening. When you doubt, when it just doesn’t compute, Look Again At Jesus, objectively and without prejudice, and you will see…

• VERY TRULY I TELL YOU

If you grew up with the King James version of the Bible, this is Verily Verily I say Unto Thee…  In John’s Gospel, Jesus says this 25 times to “emphasise [the] trustworthiness and importance” of what he is about to say. It means, Pay attention. This is Truth you can’t ignore. And here is the first thing he really wants us to listen to.

• HEAVEN OPENED AND THE ANGELS GOING UP AND DOWN ON THE SON OF MAN.

Basically, Jesus is saying, “I am the Son of Man.” He is saying, I am the one who is going to bring heaven and earth together when I die on the cross and rise again to new life.

— How did I get there?

Firstly, a very cool thing. In verse 50 he is speaking directly to Nathanael. “You will see greater things.” But now in verse 51, he opens up the promise to everyone: “you plural will see heaven opened…”

Seeing heaven opened is a poetic phrase for having a vision from God, having your eyes opened to unseen and divine things.

And what divine amazing thing does Jesus promise we will see…

“heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

This is a reference back to the story of Jacob once again. In a dream, Jacob saw angels going up and down on him by a ladder. When he woke up, he realized that this was the place where heaven and earth met, he was filled with the knowledge of God’s plans for him and for his children and his children’s children and that he would become the Father of an entire nation — Israel.

Now, Jacob’s ladder is a fantastic picture. But Jesus doesn’t even mention the ladder. He says instead that we will see the angels going up and down on the Son of Man. And that’s the focus. Not on Jacob, but himself. He, Jesus is the new Jacob, and we will see him as the person and place where God is revealed, the beginning of a whole nation – the Church. As Kruse says, “The greater things people were to see, then, would be the revelation of God in the life, ministry, death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus.”

Jesus promises that WE will see that HE IS the person that reveals God and is the first of a whole new nation, because of his death and resurrection.

And Jesus describes himself as the Son of Man.

= This is the real highlight of the whole passage. Here is Jesus in his own words.

I feel I have let you down this evening. I have not done what I set out to do, but instead done exactly what John the Writer does – given you a load of other people’s impressions of Jesus before actually showing you Jesus himself, in his own words. It’s a lot of build up, but it’s worth getting to. Jesus has been described as the Word, the Messiah, the son of God, Rabbi, the one Moses wrote about… but Jesus says of himself… I am the Son of Man.

Carson comments that Jesus used the title because it was not as loaded with political messianic baggage. “In the New Testament the title refers only to Jesus, and occurs almost always on his lips. In other words, he himself shapes its content… In the Fourth Gospel, the expression occurs 13 times and is most commonly associated with the themes of crucifixion and revelation, but also with eschatological authority.”

Jesus says “Son of Man” because it refers back to a passage in the Old Testament, Daniel 7 (verse 13), where Daniel had a vision of the end of the world and saw someone like a son of man, full of power and authority, being worshipped by everyone and having a kingdom that lasts forever. In that situation it means, someone like a human.

Jesus takes that phrase “someone like a human” and applies it to himself. Then he keeps on and on expanding on it. In the other three accounts of Jesus life, in Matthew Mark and Luke, ONLY Jesus uses this phrase and he uses it ONLY to describe himself, his power, what he has the right to do, what his death and resurrection mean. And in John’s Gospel we find the same thing. Son of Man is the way Jesus most often identifies himself.

The invitation was to “Come and See”… “Very truly I tell you, YOU WILL SEE… the Son of Man.” So what are we supposed to SEE about Jesus from his choice of phrase?

Other people call him rabbi, master, Lamb of God, even Son of God… But he introduces himself as “Son of Man”.

He is telling us that he is like a human. He is in appearance, human. And we know he was born of Mary. He has a strong link with us humans. He has come to experience with us, to suffer with us, to be the first human-esque creature to truly conquer death and sin.

He is telling us that he has authority to judge – he brings light which shines in the darkness. He sets the boundaries for what’s good and bad. He has the ultimate power at the end of time to judge each soul.

Here he also shows us that the Son of Man is the new Jacob. The new father of the new nation, the Church. The one on whom WE WILL SEE the angels going up and down. If we come and see, WE WILL SEE the place where God reveals himself and comes down among humans – and that is in Jesus.

Behold the Lamb of God – Behold the Son of Man.

This evening we’ve heard from Jesus in his own words. He meets 5 people and gets called all kind of impressive titles. But when we take up Jesus’ offer to Come and See, we will see amazing and more amazing things: that he really knows us, he knows what’s inside of us and what we will become, under his care. Jesus has authority to identify us, to remake us, as he did with Peter and Nathanael. Jesus is exactly who he says he is – the Son of Man.

If you need proof? Keep reading in John’s Gospel. The next thing he does in the next chapter is turn water into wine. A miracle which is a signpost to who he is.

After that he flexes his authority by chucking the salesmen out of the Temple.

And so on.

And so on.

Come and YOU WILL SEE

VERY TRULY I TELL YOU

I AM THE SON OF MAN

Let’s pray.