"Then You Will Know" (Hitchings) | John 8:21-30

The following resources are from lmpc.org and we're delighted to provide it freely to all.

If you feel needed to give towards the ministry of Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church, we welcome you to do so at lmpc.org.

A reading from John chapter 8, verses 21 to 30.

John 8:21–30

So he said to them again, I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin.

Where I am going, you cannot come.

So the Jews said, Will he kill himself?

Since he says, Where I am going, you cannot come.

He said to them, You are from below, I am from above.

You are of this world, I am not of this world.

I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.

So they said to him, Who are you?

Jesus said to them, Just what I've been telling you from the beginning.

I have much to say about you and much to judge.

But he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I've heard from him.

But they did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the Father.

So Jesus said to them, When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you'll know that I am he, and that I know nothing of my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.

And he who sent me is with me.

He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.

As he was saying these things, many believed in him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Please be seated.

Well, good morning to you all.

My name is Frank Hitchings.

I'm one of the pastors here on staff.

And I do want to extend a warm welcome.

We're glad you're here this morning.

It feels a little different this morning.

300 plus of us are at family camp, of our church families at family camp this weekend.

So if you're feeling like where is everybody, that's part of the answer right there.

Um I want to, before we pray, I want to just remind you every week, uh Jennifer Thompson puts together this document called Beyond the Pulpit Resources for Continued Study.

Uh it is a wonderful help to go much deeper into the passage than we have time to go into on a given morning.

So I want to encourage you, you can use it as a small group or as a family or just for individual devotions throughout the week.

It's right there on the website, and it is a wonderful resource.

Now, before we pray, I want to read you that quote that I've read you before, that John Newton quote about the value, the importance, the gift of Scripture, and then we'll pray.

This is what Newton said.

He said, if you wander from Scripture in pursuit either of present peace or future hope, your search will always end in disappointment.

For Scripture is the fountain of living waters, and if you forsake it and give preference to broken cisterns of your own devising, they will fail you when you most need them.

Rejoice, therefore, that such a treasure is put in your hand, but rejoice with trembling.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for the great men and women of the faith who've gone before us.

We thank you for John Newton and his warning about wandering from your word, Lord.

We don't want that to mark our lives.

We want to be a people who draw near, who cherish your word, who rejoice in it.

We want to be a people who are shaped by it as your spirit applies it to our hearts.

And so, Lord, that's what we ask for right now, that your spirit would be at work in our hearts.

You have worked in our hearts and in the hearts of your people for generation upon generation.

And we ask that you would do it again this day, that through the miracle of your grace we might live lives that bring you glory.

We pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, Dwight Moody, D.L.

Moody, that's a name that many of you know.

You may listen to Moody Radio.

You may have heard of Moody Bible College.

Dwight Moody was a powerful and influential 19th-century American pastor and evangelist and publisher and preacher.

He was once visiting a friend, a pastor friend in Scotland in a little village called Imouth.

It's just southeast of Edinburgh, when a huge storm swept in from the North Sea on this little coastal fishing village.

And several years later he gives this account of that experience.

He says, a friend of mine who was a minister at Imouth had a great many of the fishermen of the village in his congregation.

It had been very stormy weather, and the fishermen had been detained in the harbor for over a week.

One day, however, the sun shone out in the clear blue sky, and it seemed as if the storm had passed away, and all the boats started out for the fishing grounds.

Forty-one boats left the harbor that day during what turned out to be a deceptive break in the weather.

Before they started out, the harbor master hoisted the storm signal flag and warned them of the coming tempest.

He begged them not to go.

But they disregarded his warning, and away they went.

They saw no sign of the coming storm.

And in a few hours, however, the storm swept down on that coast, and very few of those fishermen returned.

There were five or six men in each boat.

Remember, there's forty-one boats.

Five or six men in each boat, and nearly all were lost in that dreadful gale.

In the church of which my friend was a pastor, I believe there were only three male members left.

Those men were ushered into eternity because they did not give heed to the warning.

And then he closed with this.

He said, I lift up that storm signal flag now and warn you to escape from the coming judgment.

And then he went on to preach his sermon.

Moody used this real world disaster as a powerful metaphor.

A powerful metator, urging his listeners to heed the spiritual warnings of Jesus and seek salvation before it was too late.

And in a similar way, in our passage this morning, that's what Jesus is doing.

He's issuing a solemn warning about the eternal consequences, the eternal danger that the people are feeling or are facing as they reject Him, as they continue to reject Him.

So let's look at our outline in the bulletin and spend a few minutes and look at these three points this morning.

The first of which is this let's see the solemn imperative.

Unbelief in Jesus as the I am leads to dying in sin.

Look at verse 21 through 24.

So Jesus said to them again, and that's important, he's been saying this over and over, he says it again, I'm going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin.

Where I am going, you cannot come.

So the Jews said, Will he kill himself?

Since he says, Where I'm going you cannot come?

And he said to them, You are from below, I am from above.

You are of this world, I am not of this world.

I told you that you would die in your sins, unless you believe that I am he.

You will die in your sins.

All through John, especially through John 8, we've seen it.

Jesus has been setting forth this idea of separation.

If you remember last week, verse 12 last week, Jesus said this, or John writes this.

He says, Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

What was he saying?

He was saying that people are going to live in one of two ways.

You're either going to walk in darkness or you'll walk in the light, and he is the light.

There's a separation there.

And here it's as if he's saying this.

He's saying, You've been following me all around Jerusalem throughout the Feast of the Tabernacles, and you take issue with everything I do and everything I say.

You have soundly rejected me, but a time will come when you will seek me and it'll be too late.

And the religious authorities, the foolish religious authorities who thought themselves so wise, they're still so confused.

They say, Where will he go?

Will he kill himself?

It seems like an odd question they're asking, but they believed that if you took your own life, you would go to a certain place in hell.

There's no redemption for you.

And they're like, you know, we're going to go to heaven.

If he takes his life, if that's how this ends, then we'll never see him again.

Where will he go that we can't go?

But Jesus is saying this.

He's saying, separation is coming.

Eternal separation is coming.

He's saying, soon I'm going to return to my Father, and you cannot come to the Father because you've not believed in me.

And he's saying also, you don't understand this.

You don't understand any of this because you're of this world, and I am not.

I'm from above.

I'm from heaven.

I come from my Father.

But it's worse than that.

He says at the end of verse 21, he says, and you will die in your sin.

To die in your sin.

That means to perish under God's wrath.

To bear the just punishment that our sin deserves.

But notice he says, you will die in your sin.

It's singular.

It's not plural.

Later in verse 24, it's plural twice.

But here it's singular.

And that's because he's talking about a specific sin.

He's referring to the sin of unbelief.

Unbelief in Jesus.

Unbelief that he's sent from the Father.

Unbelief that he is the God man, unbelief that he is I am.

Look at verse 24.

He said, I told you that you would die in your sins.

Here it's plural.

For unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.

The plural, what he's doing there, he's saying, Here, all the sins that flow in life after the sin of unbelief, you'll die in those sins.

All the sins that follow the sin of unbelief.

He's saying, you'll be held accountable to God for those.

And he's saying this to his listeners: you must believe in my divine identity.

That's what he's saying.

Spiritual life requires union with Jesus.

Union with Jesus, the eternal God incarnate.

It's very urgent.

And it's an imperative.

Unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.

When the Israelites, or when the Jews, when they heard that I am He, when they heard that, they would have thought of Exodus.

Exodus chapter 3.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

The uh, not to go too far into this, but the Greek word here that's used for I am, I am he is ego a me.

And in the in the Septuagint, which is the Greek version, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, that word is also used when God calls Moses to go and rescue the people, the Israelites, from slavery in Egypt.

Do you remember, if you remember that account, God says, I want you to go do this, and Moses says, Well, who am I to say sent me?

And this was God's answer.

He says, I am who I am.

This is what you're to say to the Israelites.

I am has sent me to you.

Moses was to reveal that the eternal God, who had existed through all eternity, had sent him to rescue them.

Here's the point.

What we think of Jesus is of ultimate importance.

James Boyce wrote this.

He said, We can think Jesus is the greatest of all teachers and is sinless.

We can dwell upon his perfection.

We can believe that he is brave and kind and honest, that he is compassionate and truthful.

We can idolize him, we can pray to him, but that is not enough.

And he's right.

What's missing?

We have to abandon any hope, any pretense that we can gain God's favor by our works.

We have to acknowledge our sin and repent of our sin.

We have to put our trust in Jesus alone, the God man who took on flesh, that people like us can be saved.

In the mid-1900s, there was an American chemist, a famous American chemist named Gordon Alice.

And he did extensive research on insulin.

In fact, he's credited with pioneering the development of insulin for the treatment of diabetes, but fascinatingly, he actually died of diabetes at 62 years old.

His closest friends, the ones who knew him the best, they came to one of two conclusions.

Either he didn't know he had the disease, or he purposely neglected to use the remedy.

Think of the irony of that.

The man who knew more about the treatment and cure of diabetes, the man who knew more than anybody else on the planet, died of that same disease.

In a similar way, we can know a whole lot about God.

We can know much about Jesus.

We can devote hours to studying about Him.

We can know the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation.

We can know the great confessions and catechisms of the faith.

We can be steeped in reformed theology.

But that's not enough.

Unless there's a firm belief that involves receiving the cure for our situation, receiving Jesus.

His death, his resurrection, his righteousness, receiving what the scriptures call his propitiation, where he pays for the sin that we should have paid for.

He turns away the wrath of God for people like us.

He takes it on himself.

Unless we have that firm belief we placed our trust there, we're in the same boat here.

We'll die in our sins.

It's a very solemn imperative.

It's a strong warning that saving faith requires belief in him as the God man.

And in unbelief, no matter how much we might respect him as a great teacher or whatever, unbelief leads to dying in our sins.

So there's the first question, really, that's before us from the text this morning.

Have we come to accept Jesus as the God man?

The one who took on flesh and went to the cross for us?

Have we put our hope in Him alone, accepted His righteousness as ours by faith?

Or are we still hoping, still comparing ourselves to others and saying, I'm still a pretty good person.

Hopefully, my good deeds will outweigh my bad deeds.

It's a solemn imperative.

Unbelief in Jesus as the I am leads to dying in our sin.

But then secondly, secondly, I want you to see the answered question.

Jesus is the Father's sent one.

Verse 25 through 27.

So they said to him, Who are you?

Jesus said to them, Just what I've been telling you from the beginning.

I have much to say about you and much to judge, but he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.

They did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the Father.

We don't have a lot of time to spend in these verses, but I want to look at them briefly and I'll make sure we don't miss their response.

Their response to this solemn imperative, this strong warning, their response once again is to question him.

Here he's saying, unless you believe, you will die in your sin.

And their response is this question, who are you?

And you think about that question, like there's different ways to read that.

There's strong reason to believe this is not really, who are you?

But it's more of who are you?

Who do you think you are?

They're in effect saying, you're a nobody.

You don't even have any formal rabbinical training.

You're a nobody.

We've rejected everything you've ever said about yourself.

And Jesus' answer, his reanswer to the scorn that they're expressing in their question, that they would scorn that warning.

His response is, he basically says, I'm exactly who I've been telling you I am all along.

I am the Father's sent one, sent by my Father to declare to the world what I've heard directly from him.

And they missed it.

He's saying, My message is entirely derived from the Father who sent me.

The Father who is true and trustworthy has given me a message to share, not just with you being the Jews, but to share with the world.

But you've rejected the Father's message, and you've rejected the Father's messenger.

Just like the Jews did with the prophets.

And the passage ends, John ends those sections or that section with, he says, They did not understand that he was speaking to them about the Father.

Like as learned as they were, they were still clueless and confused.

We're all clueless and confused until the Spirit opens our eyes and ears to its truths.

The solemn imperative, the answered question, and thirdly, and finally, the clear confirmation, Jesus' exaltation proves he is the I am sent from the Father.

Look at the last section, 28 through 30.

So Jesus said to them, When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak just as the Father taught me.

And he who sent me is with me.

He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.

As he was saying these things, many believed in him.

These verses are so deep, so rich.

And John, as he often does, he writes with double meaning here.

We read the words lifted up, and we immediately think, well, he's talking about the cross.

Jesus is going to be lifted up on the cross, and that's absolutely correct.

And he says, notice he says this, when you have lifted up the Son of Man.

He doesn't say when the Son of Man has been lifted up.

He says, when you have lifted up the Son of Man.

It was their doing.

They wanted him crucified.

It was their doing, but listen to what Peter says.

If you're taking notes, this is a sermon at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

This is verse 22 to 24.

Listen to what Peter says.

He says, Fellow Israelites, listen to this.

Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by you or by God to you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did among you through him as you yourselves know.

This man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and his foreknowledge.

And you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to a cross.

But God raised him up from the dead because it was impossible for death to Keep its hold on him.

So, yes, John means they will lift up Jesus on the cross, but even that, even the cross was part of God's plan of salvation for people like us.

But he has even more for us here.

The Greek word he uses is translated to lift up or to raise aloft, but it's also used figuratively to mean to exalt.

John uses it both ways in his gospel, pointing us not just to the death of Jesus on the cross, but also to the exaltation of Jesus, to the glorification of Jesus.

This is what he says in John 3, verse 14 and 15.

John 3:14

Jesus is comparing his crucifixion that's just around the corner.

He's comparing it to Moses when Moses made the bronze snake and put it on the pole.

You remember?

So the Israelites, when they were in the wilderness that had been bitten by the snake, they could look upon this bronze snake and be healed.

And Jesus says this, using the same words.

He says, Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

He's saying, just as the Israelites had to look up at that bronze serpent to be healed from the snake bites, so people will look in faith to me on the cross to be healed from their sin, to be given the gift of eternal life.

Thereby indicating the cross as the first step in that glorification becomes a proof of Christ's teachings.

I think he's spot on.

John means it both ways.

He's lifted up on the cross to die.

He's lifted up, he's exalted through his death and resurrection.

He's exalted as the Lamb of God who takes on the sin of the world, that people like us might be reconciled and have eternal life.

I love what happens.

John 8 is a long chapter, by the way.

We had a couple more weeks before we get toward the end of it, but in John 8, verse 58 and 59, listen to what Jesus says then.

John 8:58

He says to the same crowd, he says, Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus walked out of the temple.

They knew exactly what he was claiming, and they wanted no part of it.

They did not believe it.

It's important that you put it all together and understand what he's saying.

He's saying, My exaltation will prove that I am the God man, sent from the Father so that sinners can be saved.

And after my death and resurrection and ascension, there'll be no longer anyone living in really ignorance of who he is.

The question won't be, do you know who Jesus is or who he claims to be?

The question will be instead, are you willing to forsake your vain attempts at self-righteousness, at self-justification before a holy and perfect God?

Are you willing to forsake that and confess our sin and need for his mercy and put our trust in him alone?

And I love how this section ends.

As he was saying these things, many believed in him.

Even among all the unbelief, amongst the stubborn and scornful unbelief, Christ's proclamation of his identity results in the salvation of not just a few, but of many.

Lifting up, the lifting up of Jesus on the cross.

Yes, theologians say it's part of his humiliation.

From his leaving the glories of heaven and taking on flesh to living a life here on this earth under the law.

The cross was part of his humiliation, but it's also the first step towards his exaltation.

And it was part of God's plan all along.

It proves that Jesus is the great I am, sent from the Father, the one through whom people like us can have the life that truly is life, he says.

Let me attempt to tie it together with a quick illustration.

Many of you have probably been to London or heard of a place in London called Charing Cross.

Charing Cross.

Charing Cross is a junction in central London where six major routes all come together.

For 200 years, Charing Cross has been recognized as the what they call the notional centre of London.

It's not the geographical center, but it's the theoretical center of London where these six major routes all come together.

It's the point from which all distances from London are measured.

And it said that you can find your way anywhere in London if you're at Charing Cross.

Well, the story's told of a little British boy who was lost.

He was lost in London, and a Bobby, y'all know what a Bobby is?

A Bobby is a British policeman.

A Bobby found him sitting on the curb crying uncontrollably.

And the Bobby came to him and sat down next to him and kind of held him and finally got him calmed down.

And then he asked him, Are you okay now?

Can I take you home now?

And the little boy, I love his reply.

He said, Oh no, no, sir, that's not necessary.

Just take me to the cross.

I'll find my way home.

That's a story of chairing cross.

But it's our story too.

Take me to the cross, and I'll find my way home.

When we orient, how do I say it?

When we orient our whole lives around Jesus and his cross, we'll increasingly see who Jesus is and understand more deeply all that he's done for us.

And we too will find our way home.

Let's pray.

Father, we do, as Newton said, we do rejoice in the gift of your word.

We rejoice that we'll have this time, this fall, in John's gospel.

Lord, it challenges us over and over again to consider who Jesus really is.

It challenges us to see what He's done for sinners like us, that we can be reconciled to you.

It challenges us to fully accept that we can't save ourselves, that we need the Spirit's intervention, we need the Spirit's ongoing work in our hearts.

And we first of all, Lord, would ask that if there are any in our midst this morning who haven't come to a saving knowledge of Jesus yet, that this would be the day when you change their hearts just as you changed ours.

And we ask that you would press these great truths that we've studied deep into our hearts, that, Lord, we might be overwhelmed afresh with all that you've done for us and all that you have done in us and all that you have promised to do.

We ask, most of all, Lord, that you would evoke from our hearts worship and thanksgiving that flows from our lives, not just on Sunday mornings when we're here in this place, but throughout our week.

Lord, wherever you take us in our homes, our schools, our communities, our relationships, our workplaces.

We ask all of this in Christ's precious and saving name alone.

Amen.