Clough John Lesson 40

Freedom and Sanctification – John 8:20-47

So far we have seen in John chapters 7 and 8 the series of confrontations between Jesus Christ and the people of the temple. Christ has had to confront them with His character to the point of threatening the existence of His own life. You can’t read these chapters without getting a very definite sensation that the movement to crucify Christ is not far away. Already the antagonism to Jesus Christ and His apparently, from their point of view, absurd claims, is getting to the violent stage. So in verses 12-20 we found Christ answering His critics as to the basis for His claims.

Said He, in verse 14, “Though I am bearing record of Myself, my record… [tape goes blank]

[21 Then said Jesus again unto them, I go My way, and ye shall seek Me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. [22]Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come.”]

We see the irony, yes, Jesus is going to kill Himself. In verse 23, “And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above, [ye are of this world; I am not of this world]” in other words, you’re a man, you are trapped in the system, and your only hope is salvation from outside the system, that’s what wrong with transcendental meditation, that is what is wrong with all other Oriental type religions that are currently infiltrating the scene, all the Gurus an Bahiullahs and all the other prophets are also from within the system and from beneath; and this is what Jesus says, we don’t need a savior from inside the system. We need a savior from outside the system and only Jesus Christ claims to be God-man from outside the system.

Therefore in John 8:24, “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if” third class, maybe you will and maybe you won’t, “if you believe not that I am He,” here’s again John the Apostle’s favorite device of irony. Now if you just read that verse innocently and weren’t used to the way John’s using words, what would you think He’s asking the Jews at that point? Doesn’t it look like He’s asking them, if you don’t believe that I am the Christ, “you’re going to die in your sins.” Well, He was asking them that but the way He says it in the Greek is ego eimi, I AM, the word for God. And what He’s saying is unless you believe that I am Jehovah God you’re going to die in your sins. That’s the answer to every cult that denies the deity of Christ. Can a person be saved and deny the deity of Christ? That’s your answer, you’re going to die in your sins unless you’re able and full conscience, not by compulsion, not by group pressure, not by social prestige, not because your girlfriend or your boyfriend believes it but because you individually personally on your own, thinking through the situation have come to this conclusion, that Christ was who He claimed to be, that He was God Himself. And if you can’t, Jesus said, sorry, you’re going to die in your sins.

Now this really irritates the crowd even more so in John 8:25-29 there’s another response, and this time Jesus goes to the cross and the work of the doctrine of Christology; He’s getting into this particular are of who and what Christ is and He presents Himself as both Savior and judge. See, it goes back to a doctrine, the doctrine of judgment/salvation. Let’s look at this doctrine, we haven’t reviewed it in a while. The doctrine of judgment/salvation. You have three historic events that picture judgment/salvation. The first one, the flood with the ark of Noah. The second one is the Exodus and you just celebrated that here, with the elements; and the cross of Christ, you also celebrated that. So we just remembered tonight by participation in communion the doctrine of judgment/salvation. And what did that doctrine say? What were the points that we know for this doctrine? First, grace before judgment; God always is gracious, He is gracious to you, He is gracious to me, He is gracious to the human race. God does not judge without warning. Always, and this goes for what about those who haven’t heard, what about the hotten-tot and what about somebody else? Grace before judgment, God never will judge you for anything apart from a warning before He does it.

The second thing about the doctrine of judgment/salvation is that He had discrimination, perfect discrimination, 100% perfect, He does not judge by the statistical model. There are no accidents. It’s the second point in the doctrine of judgment/salvation that is going to make you very, very unpopular in some circles. The fact that the human race is not unified before God is a source of irritation, it is a source of offense like you cannot believe with some people. Why, they say, don’t you believe in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, that all men are unified? Don’t we want to all live together? Not forever. The Bible makes clear that there are two human races, living side by side and your members of one or the other at any given point.

And so the third point in the doctrine of judgment/salvation is there is one and only one way of salvation. In the ark of Noah, no one got in their outboard motor boat and putted around during the 40 day flood. They had to get inside the ark of they would die in their sins. No Egyptian went up and down the street on his motorbike while the angel of death was going over; if he did he’d die in his sins. He had to be inside a house that had blood on the door. And it didn’t matter whether you had blonde hair, black hair, brown hair, or gray hair or no hair. The point was were you or weren’t you in an area covered by the blood of God’s provision, that’s all. And it didn’t matter whether you flunked out of 3^rd grade, whether you’re an 8^th grade dropout or whether you’re a PhD dropout, it doesn’t make any difference. God is not looking at your IQ, He’s not looking how beautiful you are, how ugly you are, how unsociable you are or how sociable you are. He is looking for only thing; have you or have you not personally trusted in Christ, that’s the issue. And that’s why there is only one way, always has been, always will be.

And there’s only way to appropriate it and that is by faith. You cannot add to it, you cannot subtract from it. This is why when those elements were passed this evening you consumed them by drinking and by eating. Do you know why God designed it so you had to drink that, and why you had to eat that? Because everybody has a mouth and can do it. It’s not meritorious, it’s not dependent on your good works. Whether you’re a bad person or a good person isn’t the point; the point is you still have a mouth and you can still swallow and every man has the capacity to trust in Christ if he but wills. So therefore faith, faith is the only way of appropriating this gracious provision.

And finally, the fifth point of judgment/salvation is it applies to both man and the universe. The universe is considered to be under God’s wrath as much as men are. So that’s the doctrine of judgment/salvation and obviously it shows that Christ must be both Savior and judge.

Therefore we’re not surprised in John 8:25-29 to learn of Him as both. [25] “Then said they unto him, You, Who are You?” That’s the way it reads in the original language; we would say who the hell do you think you are! That’s exactly the way their attitude would be, don’t look so pious about it, that’s what you would say except some of you are too proud to say it. And when Christ made this claim this offended them so much; they caught the arrogance of this claim. By the time He finishes, and irritating this mob of people are going to be picking up rocks, that’s how irritated they are going to be over the Word of God. So they say “Who are You?” and it’s “You” repeated, “You, who do You think you are? And Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning.” And there very cleverly Jesus tells them two things at the same time; He tells them on the one hand I’m the same person that has always said, I’m not making any new claims this Succoth, this Feast of the Tabernacles that I’ve come into the temple with. I haven’t walked in here and invented this just today, I’ve been telling you this for 2 or 3 years. But then He also says something else, I am the one “from the beginning,” the eternal one, that’s who I am.

John 8:26, “I have many things to say and to judge of you: but He that sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of Him.” What He’s saying in verse 26 is the fact that you know, you people don’t realize it, but you’re irritating the Person who is going to one day judge you, and I have many things I could tell you about what I’m going to do when it’s My turn, but I’m not going to do that right now because I am following the Father’s plan and by the doctrine of judgment/salvation point one in that doctrine is grace before judgment. Today is the day of grace, not the day of judgment. And so therefore, though I have many things to say I’m going to follow what the Father has told me. But, verse 27, “They understood not that he spoke to them of the Father. [28] Then said Jesus unto them,” and this is the height of irony, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as my Father hath taught Me, I speak these things. [29] And he that sent Me is with Me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him.”

Now the word “lift up” is sort of a pun and to catch what He’s saying and to catch this case of God’s sense of humor, turn to Genesis 40. In Genesis 40:13 there’s a similar sort of pun made on this word “lift up.” I want you to see Jesus in His humanity was very quick witted, brilliant sense of humor. In Genesis 40 is that story about Joseph and the story about the butler and the baker in the jail and Joseph is interpreting their dreams. And he says in verse 13, “Within three days shall Pharaoh lift up your head, and restore thee unto thy place: and thou shall deliver Pharaoh’s cup into his hand, after the former manner when you were his butler.” And then in verse 19, “Yet within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head from off you, and you will hang on a tree; and the birds shall eat your flesh.” The same verb, “he will lift up your head.” In one sense it means to promote, and the other sense it means to promote you right to the grave. That’s exactly what Jesus is doing and that’s exactly how He uses the word here. “When you have lifted up,” He says in John 8, “When you have lifted up the Son of man,” you’re going to do two things, you’re going to promote Me, you people, you’re going to kill Me and you’re going to promote Me beyond the grave but little do you know that by promoting Me to the grave you’re promoting Me to My resurrection and to My ascent to be at the Father’s right hand. And so when you’ve promoted the Son to the grave, to kill Him, and then promoted Him to be at the Father’s right hand to be your Lord, then you’re going to know that I AM, ego eimi. You’re going to know then who I really am.

And this is spoken both to that generation and the coming generation of the Jewish people who now live in the nation of Israel. This hour, since 1948, Jewish people have been coming back to the land to a solidly identifiable political entity called Israel. And Jesus made the prediction before He left that land, before He went to be with the Father, I will not come again until you, the people that live on this land, the land of Israel, rise up and say “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.” When you say that, I’ll come back. And when the nation Israel is ready to confess Jesus as their Messiah… Thursday night the Consulate General of the nation Israel admit in the existence of a Messiah; they don’t have any problem with a Messiah complex, they just have a problem that Jesus happens to be that Messiah. But when they make the link that their long awaited Messiah, after all, was Jesus, then Jesus will come back and deliver that land, and the world. Of course the Church will have been raptured before that but generally speaking it’s humanity.

All right, so “then you shall know that I AM, that I do nothing of Myself,” so Jesus concludes that section of His discourse, and in John 8:30 turns away to a set of believers, people who appear by all intents and purposes to believe, but we’re in for some shocks tonight in this passage, there’s a very interesting doctrine taught here and one that will be discomforting to maybe some, who probably aren’t here tonight, unfortunately. That’s the way it always works out. [30] “As He spoke these words, many believed on Him.” Now this word, there’s no way of getting around it, this is the setting for everything that follows. Now scholar after scholar after scholar that has studied this passage just gets all bent out of shape by the implications of what’s going to happen here, but what this verse tells you is that every remark addressed that follows is addressed not to professing unbelievers but is addressed to professing believers, even that verse, “you are of your father, the devil.” That’s addressed to these people, these people who believed.

So “As He spoke these words, many believed on Him.” They heard Him scream across the court. Remember, “I am the light of the world; he that is thirsty let him come unto Me and drink,” that kind of thing. And then in verse 31, just to get the point across and to make it very clear that there should be no question in any of our minds that this is not addressed to professing unbelievers but to professing believers, “Then said Jesus to those Jews who had believed on Him,” perfect tense, “who had believed on Him,” notice what Jesus Christ says, “If” third class, “If you abide,” or “continue in my word, then are ye My disciples indeed.” Notice what it does not say and watch this very carefully; it does not say “If you abide in Me, in My Word you will be My disciples.” He says, “If you abide in Me you already are My disciples.” Now what’s my point?

Turn to Hebrews, there’s a verse there that says exactly the same thing but it’s a little bit clearer and I think you’ll be able to see it more clearly. Hebrews 3:14, it says, “We have become made partakers of Christ,” perfect tense, “if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.” Here’s the picture; the perfect tense is a point action in the past with results that continue into present time. And the argument is that you, back here, became a believer, if, present tense, you are continuing in the faith. It’s like someone goes forward at a crusade, or someone prays, or someone raises their hand or someone joins the church in faith, whatever the point is where they supposedly believe, Jesus would say okay, you’ve really become a Christian if you persist in the faith. Now it’s unmistakable that this is taught in Hebrews 3:14; it’s unmistakable that this is being taught in here in John 8; it’s the doctrine of perseverance. And what it says is that those people who are genuinely regenerated will persevere in their faith. And the flake-outs, the people who say they believe and do not, are going to show their hypocrisy eventually by leaving and departing from the Christian camp. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to hang themselves and splatter their bowels all over the bottom of the hill some place, but it does mean that they are going to be purged from the system.

John insists on teaching this, we cannot get around it, there’s no way to counter interpret these verses. That’s exactly what Jesus is saying. You people, and notice He says in verse 31 that they’ve already believed, look at this, this is a strong one. They have believed and still Jesus questions whether they’re believers which leads you to conclude, as you can only from this passage, that there is a false belief and a true belief, that it actually is possible for an unbeliever to believe for a time in the gospel of Jesus Christ, for there’s no other interpretation possible for this verse. Jesus turns to those Jews who have already believed and He says, “If you continue in My words, then you are My disciples.” And then future tense, [32] “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Now if this isn’t one that’s misapplied and ripped out of context. I’ve seen this verse all over the place. Harvard University has it plastered all over one of their buildings, “Know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Now in the first place, this was never addressed to the world at large. This was addressed, as verse 31 specifically tells you, it was addressed in context to believers, not unbelievers. Jesus is addressing believers who profess salvation, and He says you people, if you know the truth, you’re going to come to know the truth and “the truth shall make you free.”

Now what does freedom mean? All right, we come to another doctrine, let’s pause for a moment, gather our wind here, look at some words, doctrine, then we’ll go back to the text. Lets’ look at the concept of freedom in Scripture. What is the picture of freedom in God’s Word. Answer: the Exodus. Freedom is pictured for all time by the Exodus. The Exodus was a bloodless, from the sense of a human point of view, revolution. And no other society, no other nation has ever founded freedom like the Jewish people did at the day of the Exodus. Without an army, without guerillas, without armed insurrection the Jews accomplished what no other people did in the ancient world and that was to gain their freedom from Pharaoh of Egypt. No other people in 3,000 years of Egyptian history successfully revolted from Pharaoh. They were always crushed by Pharaoh and his almighty power, except one people, the Jewish people. And they did it without firing a shot, without firing an arrow, to be contemporary. They did it without an army, they did it by God’s deliverance. There’s your picture of freedom, God-given freedom.

What does God-given freedom consist of. Why does the Bible insist that it’s only God-given freedom that frees? Because we are creatures made inside God’s creation. You know when you buy a piece of equipment, whether it’s a washing machine, automobile, TV set, or any thing, that usually somewhere when you buy that piece of equipment is an operator’s instruction thing, a warranty, and this warranty is not valid if you don’t follow these instructions, and they give you things, how to maintain the thing, how to do this, how to do that and so on. It counts to read that sometimes. We had a coed here one day, the car was smoking and she was wondering why. I said did you ever try putting oil in it? Oh, you’re supposed to do that, I thought it came with oil. Yes, but it might pay to check it once in a while. The point is that you have to follow the operating instructions of you don’t have freedom And this is the picture of God’s freedom. Creatures are only free, we are only free when we follow the operating instructions for our bodies, for our minds, four souls. That’s when we’re free. A society of men are only free when they follow God’s law for society; when you bank, when you do economic things, you’re only free if you follow those economic instructions given in the wisdom corpus of the Bible. Many of you are not free economically, many of you are under a pile of and a mountain of debt and it hounds you day and night to be in debt and it bugs your soul and you’re not free. And daily you expend energy just worrying about your own indebtedness. All of that would be so unnecessary if you would just plan your life economically by the rules of Scripture. So you’re not free and you lose your freedom by violating God’s Word.

All right, said in a nutshell, what is the doctrine that applies to freedom. The doctrine is sanctification. So we have this area, the doctrine of sanctification or spiritual growth. Notice that freedom is progressive. Jesus said in verse 32, future, “You will know the truth,” future, as a disciple of Mine, and then you’ll become free. Not right away. When you first become a Christian He doesn’t make you free, according to Jesus. It’s only with added growth do you get freer and freer and freer and freer until you die and you go face to face with the Lord, receive a resurrection body eventually and then we’ll all be wholly free. A lot of us may have physical defects that limit us and keep us from enjoying freedom. Some of our men work over at the state schools, the boys and girls over there aren’t free because some of their brain equipment is malfunctioning. They’re not free, they’re not free to wholly subdue the earth because they’re deformed in their brain. So they can only be free eventually when they get their resurrection bodies. This is what Jesus means, it’s long progression.

The doctrine of sanctification has several points in it but one point that I want to remind you of, the means of sanctification. What are those means? Grace and law. The law tells you what to do, grace gives you the energy to do it. And you’ve got to have both, you can’t passively sit around and let grace do it all. The law is addressed to compel you to decide; are you or aren’t you; am I or am I not.

So the Lord Jesus tells these people who have believed that if they will continue in His Word they will become free. Now verse 33 and here you watch the soul of people who are deformed spiritually. Here are people who are so emotionalized against Bible doctrine, against the Word of God that they can’t take it. They’ve come forward, they’ve made their profession, and as frequently happens, you get these people in a Bible class and you don’t see them ever again because they never were turned in in the first place. This is what Jesus points out. Watch how He works with this crowd. This is a lesson in evangelism and evangelistic follow up. He has a group of people who profess to follow Him but there’s something about these people that catches Jesus’ attention. So He begins to lace into them. That’s not a nice thing to do to new converts—that’s what Jesus did! He was very Christ-like.

John 8:33 They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never,” perfect tense, “in bondage to any man: how do you say, You shall be made free?” This shows you how emotions blind normal people who have common sense. This goes back to our little chart of the soul and why, when you look at the soul in all its parts you have to understand that the mind, when a person goes on negative volition, the mind is under the control of the emotions, and people who have allowed their emotions to affect how they think come out with jackass statements like this one. Now at least two ways these people were in bondage right in front of their face. The first place was that ever since this whole dialogue started, what has John been telling you, about every 20 verses in this passage; they were afraid, afraid that the police would close in, afraid of the legalistic Pharisees, fear, fear, fear. Oh, they weren’t in bondage weren’t in bondage, were they? They were in bondage to fear to the Pharisees, that’s why they were whispering about Jesus. And they weren’t daring to talk out loud till He finally screamed the word out so loud that they all had to hear it. So they were in bondage to the legalistic Pharisees.

And then who else were these people, who said they were never in bondage, in bondage to? Rome; so here this crowd is, so emotionalized, and they professed, why, we just walked the aisle, we’ve believed and yet as new converts faced with follow up Bible doctrine they can’t take it. The first thing that Jesus does to these new converts is teach them a portion of the Word of God and they choke on it. And here’s what they’re saying: why, we’ve never been in bondage to any man. It shows you their emotions are blinding them to the obvious. And Jesus said, and He’s very nice at this point, He starts out being very polite in verse 34-35.

John 8:34, “Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin.” What He’s talking about, He says, is not political religious freedom right now, He’s going back to the basis of all servitude, slavery to sin patterns. Remember, this is addressed to new converts, He says you people have trusted Me, you say you have, you’ve trusted Me and therefore you have –R learned behavior patterns in your soul. All of us do when we first trust in Christ, you have areas of hang-up, you may be a naturally good person and that’s you’re hang-up, you think that you’re going to earn 500 brownie points each day because you’re naturally just such a scintillating person. Now God is not impressed with your personality or lack of it. God is only impressed on what you’re doing in way of obedience to His Word. And it takes time, you can’t become sanctified overnight.

What’s wrong with all this I became a Christian yesterday, today I’m giving my testimony and tomorrow I’m taking over the local Christian group. You can’t do that, it takes years to grow in the Christian faith. Some of the most marvelous men that we have in this congregation are men who have sat, very patiently, taking in the Word of God over a series years; now… now these men are beginning to move out in their business and other places. And they’re doing it solely as unto the Lord. Why? Because the Word of God was taken in habitually, quietly, no rededication or re-rededications were permitted, they simply trusted Christ and gradually, gradually we see the influence in their life. Don’t try to be a perfect Christian overnight. You can’t be physically an adult overnight and you’re not going to be spiritually overnight so just relax, just relax and let the Word of God have its affect. When you eat at the table you don’t say to the food, when you’re fifteen, Food, make me a 30 year old person all mature right now, come on food, I put you on feeling, feeling it, feeling it, feeling it, now go to work. Is that the way you handle yourself physically? Obviously not. And yet as ridiculous as that is that’s exactly what people do in religious circles. I’m going to go to this service and I’m going to dedicate my life to Christ and do this and do that and I’m going to emerge a mature Christian. That’s ridiculous; you don’t do it physically, how can you do it spiritually? You’ve got to learn to stop getting so up tight, relax, and allow the Word of God to have its effect on your soul over a period of years.

That’s what Christ is talking about here. He’s saying whoever is in the process, whoever is committing sin, that’s not just individual acts of sin, He’s talking about habitual performance of certain sin patterns, and all of us have our own set of sin patterns. You have yours and I have mine, and as I talk here you can guess what some of mine are and I can’t guess what some of yours are and I don’t want to know your private sin pattern; keep it all to yourself. You may share it with some of your loved ones intentionally or unintentionally, but the point remains that you have your problems and I have mine, and Jesus Christ says we’re slaves to these sin patterns until they’re dealt with and they can only be dealt with over a process of time.

So He says in John 8:35, “The slave doesn’t stay in the house forever, [And the servant abideth not in the house for ever]: but the Son abideth ever.” It’s a question of authority said Jesus. A slave can’t make himself free because he’s not owner of the property. I am the owner of the property and I, from outside of you , can make you free. You see, we are slaves because we’re in our bodies. We’re in the house. The Son owns the house, He owns our souls and therefore He has the authority to make changes in our life. We can’t do that; there’s no way you can sit there and reform yourself. And some of you are very discouraged because you’ve tried that before. You know there are certain weakness in your life and you’ve tried to deal with it and tried to deal with it and tried to deal with it and tried to deal with it, except trusting the Lord with it, and you’ve never dealt with it. This is what Christ is saying, the slave doesn’t abide in the house, he doesn’t have any power, he doesn’t have any authority but I do.

That’s why He says in John 8:36, “If,” third class condition, “the Son, therefore, shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. [37] I know,” He said, “that you are Abraham’s seed;” because that’s obviously what they said up above, “I know that you are Abraham’s seed; but you seek to kill Me, because My Word has no place in you.” Now look at that one. Here are new converts to the faith and Christ turns to them and says do you know what your problems is? You have no room in your soul for the Word of God, that’s your problem. In effect He’s just told them they’re fakes; the Word of God never had a place in your soul, I’m not impressed, said Jesus, because 3,000 people came down the aisle. That does not impress Him. What impresses Him is the long-term, long, big scale, big range growth that takes years to get. So He says “My Word,” the Word of God, Bible doctrine, “has no place in your soul.”

John 8:38, “I speak that which I have seen of My Father: and ye do that which ye have seen of your father.” Now here He gets a little feisty because right now, this is called heckling the hecklers, because right now He’s discovered something. See, He tested the converts; Jesus tested them in verses 31-32, all these people had come forward, all these people professed to be saved. And then Jesus said I know what I’m going to do to you people, you professed to be saved, let me take a little chunk of doctrine and drop it right down your throat and see what happens. So He discovered that they did not believe and so now He’s pointing out to them, and from this verse on through the rest of the discourse watch Jesus’ tactics. He drives a wedge between Himself and these people.

Now on the surface this seems cruel and you’re going to see Christ make some very cruel sounding statements in this passage. In fact, this is one of the cruelest portions of all four Gospels. Why does Jesus do this? His tactic is not to embrace; His tactic is to push away and separate. The reason for this is that to love these kinds of people truly you’ve got to help them or you’re not loving them. And the only way you can love this kind of a person is to expose them for what they are, to tell them in no uncertain terms what they are really doing to themselves and their situation, and the only way you can do this, and this always causes problems because you don’t naturally like to do this, but you have to at a certain point say friend, your whole philosophy is totally opposed to mine at every point. The Word of God is saying one thing and you’re saying the other. You know, you don’t even worship the same God I worship, we’re worshipping two different gods, two different truths with two different Bibles. You’ve got to push them apart before … [tape turns]

…He pries them apart, He actually deliberately drives new converts away from the faith, as a mechanism of loving them, getting them to see their need. And so now He begins. I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you, what you have seen with your Father. “I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you what you have seen with your father.” What He is saying here is that these people are demon influenced. Jesus Christ accepts the existence of demon powers underneath Satan and at this point He says you know why you have hardened your heart to the point where you can actually come forward and say you are new Christians and aren’t is because you are under the stranglehold of Satan. And I am going to try and drive you far enough away from Me so that you’ll see this difference. I think this tactic is very, very important to see. You see these little bumper stickers: Honk if you love Jesus; Smile, God loves you. What that is, it represents an embracing type tactic, it’s nice and sweet and it sounds sentimental, it sounds Christ-like, but it isn’t. There are some people that have got to be told no, God doesn’t like you, God hates you; God hates you because you’re a rebel against His Son and you’re going to go to hell until you change your mind, you’re going to die in your sins. That has to be made an issue or you’re not loving certain kinds of people. That is a strategy that evangelicals today, now just here in our own little club but all over the board are not following and this is why we are sucking people into the Christian camp that aren’t even regenerates, and we’re wondering what’s happened. We have one evangelistic crusade after another and nothing’s happening. Nothing’s happening because we’re using the wrong approach, we’re not using Jesus’ approach where He made the doctrine the hard line, if you couldn’t take doctrine, you weren’t a believer, period. What Jesus was doing, He was doing them a favor, He was getting them out of the way until they are really believers.

John 8:39, “They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father.” So they’re denying this, they kind of catch on that He’s attacking their parenthood. So, “Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. [40] But now ye seek to kill Me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.” At this point Jesus introduces something else; He insists that the reason for their antagonism is not because of His personality; He insists that the real reason for their antagonism is the fact that He’s told them truth, not how He told them the truth but He told them the truth, that’s what antagonized. That’s something that most people do not like to hear. Most people like to kind of say well, I don’t like that group of people because the girls walk in the church with slacks on, I’ve heard that one. That’s the issue, what the girls wear, the issue is whether they’re coming in for the interest of the Word of God or not, that’s the issue. So we have this kind of operation, well I don’t like that because of this and I don’t like Clough, that’s fine, I don’t like the deacons, I don’t like something else, I don’t like the paint, I don’t like the fluorescent lights, it’s always something. But you know Jesus answer is finally you just don’t like the truth and all the rest of this is just blowing smoke, that’s all it is, just blowing smoke because if you were interested enough in the truth the fluorescent lights, what the girls wear, wouldn’t bother you; you’d get over that because you’d be interested enough. Some of the most fascinating subjects I’ve ever studied both on campus and off campus have been done under people whom I personally despised, but I was interested enough in the subject matter to keep pursuing it. I didn’t let somebody’s personality bother me, I learned differential equations at MIT under a guy who was a convicted member of the communist party. He and another professor at MIT had gotten into this youth council and they were training communist workers to cause riots all over the city of Boston. Do you think I respected that man’s politics? I did not! But I respected his brilliance as a mathematician and I learned a lot from him; why? Because I was interested in it, that’s why and I put aside my personality differences to learn what I could from him because I was interested in the subject, not the man. And that’s what Jesus is saying here; it’s not Me and it’s not My personality, it’s not the way I wear my sandals, it’s not anything else, it’s because I have taught you the truth and you can’t stand the truth so you come up with all these little excuses, blowing smoke.

John 8:41, He divides them further and pushes them further away from Him, “You do the deeds of your father.” By now they begin to get the point, “Then said they to Him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” Do you know what they’re saying here? Fornication in the rabbinic theology of this time meant apostasy into idolatry, which was satanic. So they catch on that Jesus is calling them apostate, and they say “we’re not born of fornication,” we’re not apostate idolaters, we believe in one God, monotheists. The problem it it’s abstract monotheism, not concrete monotheism with a real God they worship daily.

John 8:42, “Jesus said unto them, If” and here’s one of those second class ifs, “If God were your Father, and He isn’t, “you would love Me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but He sent Me.” Now how do you swallow that one. Do you think Jesus could have just been a good man, walked out in the middle of thousands of people and said well, if you love God you’ll love Me. Does it make sense that a normal thinking individual would come out with these kinds of claims? This is why, either Jesus was who He claimed to be or He was a nut, insane; don’t let somebody say He’s just a good man. Get with that person later in private when you can talk to them and explain that He just can’t be a good man.

Then in John 8:43, “Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear My word.” You are too choked with your own emotions, too hung up with your own prejudice to even hear what I am saying, that’s what Jesus is saying. You supposed converts, you choke on the first piece of doctrine I give you. Do you know what that shows? You can’t even hear what I tell you, leave alone understand what I’m saying.

And now finally John 8:44, the very antithesis of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” How’s that one for follow-up. “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do,” and murder is the one that’s cited. Why murder? Satan conducts lots of things but why is it that murder is picked out. Because murder stems from hatred, a particular kind of sin. And Satan is called a murderer for two reasons.

One, we know this was on John’s mind because he mentions it in his epistle, 1 John 3, John goes in and it’s one of the only places in the Bible we know how Cain killed Abel; John tells us and he didn’t hit him over the head with a rock like is usually pictured in Sunday school books. Cain killed his brother, it says, by the Greek verb to slay, in 1 John 3, with a knife on the throat and what he did was that the two brothers, the sons of Adam were giving sacrifices to God. And so the way they sacrificed was to slit the throat of the lamb and let it bleed to death and this was the adumbration of Christ dying on the cross for their sins. So Cain sat there and looked at this and he said hmm, that’s a pretty good idea, slit the throat and they die, I think I’ll try that on my brother. And so he did and that’s how Abel died, he had his throat slit by a sacrificial knife. And who did it? Cain.

But why Cain kill his brother, the first murderer in history? Because he came out of an imperfect environment was he one of those culturally deprived individuals which our welfare programs have overlooked? Not at all. Cain murdered because Cain hated his brother. Why did Cain hate his brother? Because his brother was obeying the Word of God. And any person that obeys the Word causes animosity among those who disobey. And this explains why some of you in your business get this static all of a sudden; some person you’ve worked side by side with for years, you begin to trust the Lord and operate according to the Word and all of a sudden, gee, you wonder what happened. Well what happened is that they are operating in one direction and you’re operating in another and it’s finally come to a social collision. Be warned that this is going to happen and it’s happening here.

Satan is a murderer! Jesus picks this up because Satan hates righteousness in history, it undermines his cause and ultimately Satan was a murderer of the entire human race because he caused us all to die in Adam. Jesus says there’s no truth in him and when he speaks a lie he speaks out of his own nature. What does He mean by that? It’s the satanic nature to distort truth about God and His universe. So Jesus said expect it.

John 8:45, “Because I tell you the truth, you don’t believe me.” And then Jesus makes the most titanic claim that any religious leader in history has ever made. Confucius never made this claim; Buddha never made this claim. Bahiullah never made this claim. Mohammed never made this claim. Mary Baker Patterson Glover Eddy never made this claim, nor did Joseph Smith. What is the claim? Verse 46, “Which of you convicts me of sin.” Jesus threw down the gauntlet to His crowd. All right, He said, you disbelieve Me, I challenge every one of you, convict Me of one sin. Now could Jesus be who He claimed to be of if He wasn’t who He claimed to be could He be a good man and make this kind of statement? Not on your life. [“And if I say the truth, why do you not believe Me?”]

John 8:47, “He that is of God hears God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.” What is Jesus pointing out here? In all of this discourse that we’ve seen tonight, all the way from verse 12 on down to this point, and we’re going to stop at this point because we want to get into another story next time in verse 48, but what is the big theme, the movement of this text. It’s this: it shows you how dangerous it is to conclude that just because a person professes faith that they really are believers. Remember the Apostle John; he writes after the fact, he draws the incidents out of the life of Jesus as edifying pieces of information for the Church to use in our day by day evangelism and operation. John says I warn you because I was there that day in the temple and I watched how Jesus treated supposed believers, and you know, Jesus didn’t talk to them five minutes but their unbelief showed.

Now wouldn’t this be a neat way of having real Christian follow-up; if we could get every person who professes to trust in Christ and feed him a lump of doctrine to test, is he receptive or isn’t he? And if he isn’t we have every reason in the world to doubt that he trusted in the Messiah in the first place.

This passage also has another warning for us; the theme that has crept almost unnoticeably into the text as we’ve gone from verse to verse is Satan. How did that get started in the text? Because of the obvious deception of the people. These people actually thought they believed; that’s what it says in verse 31, these people had believed; they had been deceived into thinking they were really Christians. And they’re wrong and it shows by their response to doctrine. And it raises the question, why are men deceived this way? And the answer the Bible gives is because Satan and his demonic forces do it. And the ultimate warning is to each of us tonight, don’t be deceived as to your own state, spiritually, you can be.

Father, we thank You….