"Three Tests of Sonship" (Nettleton) | John 8:39-47

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Please stand for a reading from John chapter 8, verses 39 to 47.

John 8:39–47

They answered him, Abraham is our father.

Jesus said to them, If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did.

But now you seek to kill me.

A man who has told you that the truth that I heard from God.

This is not what Abraham did.

You are doing the works your father did.

They said to him, We were not born of sexual immorality.

We have one father, even God.

Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me.

For I came from God and I am here.

I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.

Why do you not understand what I say?

It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.

Which one of you convicts me of sin?

If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?

Whoever is of God hears the words of God.

The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Well, good morning.

My name is Will Nettleton.

I'm one of the pastors here.

So if you're visiting with us or you're new, uh we'd love to meet you afterwards.

We're glad that you're here with us this morning as we're continuing our study in the Gospel of John.

It's something of a trope that you find in books and TV and movies.

I think as I describe it, you'll be probably an example will come to mind for you.

A spoiled rich kid who finds themselves in trouble, and rather than humbling themselves and trying to make amends, trying to own their mistakes, they bow up and play their only trump card.

Do you know who my father is?

Do you know who my father is?

The one that came to mind most easily for me, which will probably make sense given my age and the generation that I am of, is Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter stories.

He is constantly threatening to pull in his wealthy, well-connected father who will not be pleased when he hears about whatever it is that's going on.

Our passage is picking up in the middle of a conversation where Jesus is trying to offer true and lasting freedom.

And you need that freedom.

And in effect, his audience can't hear him.

And what they say in response to him is, Do you know who our father is?

Do you know who my father is?

And in our passage this morning, what we're going to see is that Jesus turns that around on them.

He actually says, Do you?

Is it who you think it is?

That's what's going on.

He gives them three tests of sonship, three spiritual paternity tests, if you will, and they're that for us too this morning.

You can see the outline there in your bulletin.

They're going to argue with Jesus that Abraham is our father.

And Jesus is going to give them a test of works that's going to reveal, no, he's actually not.

Because they don't do what Abraham did.

And we'll spend some time thinking about that this morning.

Then they argue with him that God is their father.

And Jesus gives them another test.

Okay, if that were true, then you would love what he loves.

And they reveal that they do not.

They don't love what God loves because they don't love Jesus.

In fact, they're trying to kill him.

And then finally, Jesus reveals who their true father is, and he gives them a test of hearing to confirm it.

We finally get down to a hard word from Jesus to them.

Your father is actually the devil.

And we know that because you can't hear the truth that I speak to you.

You can't discredit me.

He says, Who here convicts me of sin?

So he puts it to them.

He says, What proof do you have that I'm not telling you the truth?

And they don't have any.

And so the takeaway ought to be, okay, Jesus says, I'm telling you the truth.

Why don't you believe me?

And the reason is because they're not of God.

They can't hear him.

Or perhaps better said, they won't.

They've hardened their hearts to where they can't.

And so we'll look at those three tests this morning: the test of works, the test of love, and the test of hearing.

And we'll try to apply those questions to ourselves as well.

Are we doing the things that Abraham did?

And we'll define that.

Do we love the things that God loves, primarily Jesus?

Do we love him?

Do we love him?

And then finally, can we hear him?

Can his words get through to us this morning?

So that's how we'll try and navigate the text before we set out to do that.

Let me pause and pray, and we'll ask God to bless our time and his word together.

Let's pray.

Lord, you're able to do miraculous, incredible surgery with this word to cut us and wound us that you might heal us.

And so, great physician, we ask that you would do that this morning.

I pray the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing in your side, our rock and our redeemer.

It's in Jesus' name that I pray.

Amen.

Well, let's look first at that test of work.

So I mentioned in last week's passage, we finished with Jesus comparing and contrasting his relationship with the Heavenly Father and the crowd's relationship with their Father, but the part that he's left unsaid up to this point is exactly who their father is.

And so they try to fill that in.

They answer by trying to tell Jesus who they believe that that is.

Look back at verse 39 with me.

They answered him, Abraham is our father.

And Jesus said to them, If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did.

So they tell him, Abraham's our father, and Jesus says, Let's test that.

Now obviously they're Jews, and so technically by lineage, they are correct.

Abraham is their father.

But Jesus is telling them that there is something that matters more than lineage in this conversation.

And it is likeness.

It's not just lineage, it is likeness.

Children bear the family resemblance, and he tells them, You don't look like Abraham.

You don't look like Abraham.

Look back at the end of verse 39 there, and then we'll read down through 41 as Jesus carries out this test.

He says, If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works that Abraham did.

But now you seek to kill me.

A man who's told you the truth that I heard from God.

This is not what Abraham did.

You're doing the works your father did.

So why do they not bear the family resemblance to Abraham?

Jesus tells them, you don't do what he did.

And so the critical question for us is what's he talking about?

What work is Jesus talking about that Abraham did that his audience is not doing or has not done?

And to get this, we need to take a slight detour through the rest of the Bible.

So hang with me for a second.

If you have a Bible with you this morning, I'm going to encourage you to get that out, hold it open.

We're going to flip around a little bit this morning.

Because to understand what Jesus is getting at, we need to bring in some of this other context.

So three different times in the New Testament, twice in Paul's letters, once in James, one particular act of Abraham from Genesis 15 gets referenced.

So as Jesus says, the works of Abraham, this is something that echoes throughout the rest of the New Testament.

Paul and James are both going to spend a lot of time talking about it.

And what they end up citing is this choice that Abraham makes in Genesis 15.

The context of it is from a few chapters earlier.

God has made promises to Abram in Genesis 12 and 13 that he's going to make him into a great nation.

His name's going to be great.

His offspring are going to be as numerous as the dust of the earth.

The healing for the nations is going to come through Abram and his family.

And there's only one problem.

And it seems like he actually cannot have any children.

And so God keeps repeating this promise to Abraham.

He does it again in Genesis 15.

And we have this critical moment in that chapter where Abraham finally gets put out with God.

He finally gets tired of hearing that promise echoed over and over.

He says, Lord, you've said that, but there's no children.

Eliezer, the guy who runs my house, he's going to get everything that I have.

You keep saying you're going to make me into a great nation.

You haven't even made me into a father of one.

I don't have any.

And God brings Abram outside and he tells him to look up at the night sky.

And he tells him to try and count the stars.

And then God repeats the promise.

Abram, that is how numerous your offspring are going to be.

Okay, now put yourself in Abram's shoes right there.

God has said this kind of thing to you before.

And it hasn't happened.

You're faced with a choice.

When you look at your circumstances, I am old.

My wife is old.

In our way of understanding this, this is not possible.

It can't happen.

So if you're Abram and God repeats this promise again to you, you have a choice.

You can say, I'm just sick and tired of hearing that.

I'm tired of holding out hope.

You keep saying it, but it never happens.

But that's not what Abram does.

Genesis 15, 6 tells us Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted it to Abram as righteousness.

And Paul and James are going to zero in on that moment when Abraham chooses to believe as one of great significance.

Paul spends almost the entirety of Romans chapter 4 talking about it.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

And I think it really helps us understand what Jesus is getting at in our passage in John when he's talking about the works that Abraham did.

Because when we hear this language of works, our minds go primarily to behavior.

And it's not that that's not in play, but it needs to go when we think about Abraham.

Our minds need to go not to behavior first, but to belief.

Let me show you what I mean.

If you have your Bible, flip it over to Romans chapter 4.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

In this chapter, Paul is talking about justification by faith, that language that theologians use to talk about how are we made right with God?

We're sinners, we're at odds with him.

How is that gap overcome?

And Paul, as he's talking about that, uses the example of Abraham.

Here's how it works.

Listen to this from Romans 4, 18 through 25.

In hope, he, that is Abram, believed against hope.

I think that's one of the, just one of the best lines in all the Bible, by the way.

He hoped against hope.

You ever been there?

I think every Christian has.

He hoped against hope that he should become the father of many nations.

As he had been told, so shall your offspring be.

He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead.

As good as dead since he was almost a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.

No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God.

But he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness.

And then Paul goes on here, he connects it to us.

But the words that was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.

It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Alright, so we need to connect a few dots here.

Why was Abraham's faith counted to him as righteousness?

Because he was convinced that God could do and would do what he had promised.

And Paul lands that by applying the same reality to us.

In the same way that Abraham's belief is counted to him as righteousness, it will also be counted to us who believe in God who raised Jesus from the dead.

If we believe that Jesus was delivered up for our sins, if we believe that God raised him from the dead for our justification, then that is the way that we are saved as well.

So what's the work of Abraham?

It's belief.

It's faith.

God made a promise to Abraham and he trusted it.

And Paul says we're doing the same thing when we believe that Jesus went to the cross and that he rose again from the dead.

That's the work.

Believe.

Now, to be sure, there are lots of works that come after that.

We're saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.

As I mentioned, it's not just Paul that makes a big deal out of Abraham's belief.

James does too.

But if you've read the book of James, you know it can, as he talks about Abraham, it can almost sound like he's saying the exact opposite of what Paul has been saying.

If you got your Bible open, flip over to James chapter 2.

James 2 · chapter mention

And we'll read verses 20 through 24.

Listen to this and see if you can compare and contrast this with Romans 4.

Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

You see, that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works.

And the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

There's that language again.

And he was called a friend of God.

You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

Okay, so we can hear that and we can be forgiven for thinking that James just contradicted what Paul said about Abraham a minute ago.

I thought Abraham was justified by faith, by belief, not behavior.

But now James is saying it's his behavior, his works, specifically offering up Isaac.

What do we do with that?

And our Roman Catholic friends will often point to this verse when they hear us talking about being saved by grace through faith alone.

And they'll say, what about James?

He just said you're not saved by faith alone.

James and Paul are using this justification language from a slightly different angle, from slightly different perspectives.

They are addressing different questions.

Paul is addressing a foundation question.

He's saying, on what grounds are we made right with God?

Is it based on our works or is it based on faith?

And his clear answer is faith.

But James is answering a different question.

He says, okay, so once you've done that, once you've believed, how do you behave?

What does a life of faith look like?

After someone has believed, how does their faith flesh itself out?

And his clear answer is that it flows into good works.

Faith that does not bear the fruit of following Jesus and living as he calls us to live is not saving faith.

Or to repeat what I said earlier, we're saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.

Which is why James makes the point.

Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness.

But then what do we see in Abram's story?

We see this one two steps forward, one step back, growing pattern of obedience, imperfect to be sure.

But growing nevertheless, culminating in what he does in Genesis 22, when he finally does have a son, when God has fulfilled the promise to him, and then God asks him to put his son, that one and only son, on an altar to see what's Abram gonna do now.

Now that I've given him the thing that he wants the most in this world, can he still trust me or not?

And Abram trusts.

His faith fleshes itself out in a trust of God.

Okay, detour finished.

Let's come back to our passage in the Gospel of John.

The crowd that Jesus is talking to says, Abraham's our father.

And Jesus says, No, you don't do the works that he did.

You don't bear the family resemblance.

Do we start to have a sense of what Jesus is saying?

We talked about belief and behavior.

I think he's speaking to both.

You don't believe like Abraham did, you don't behave like Abraham did.

And the main way we see that is because you don't listen to Jesus.

In fact, they're trying to kill him, the very one who's trying to tell them the truth.

This is the test of works.

It's about belief.

Do you trust God?

Do you believe in him, as Paul said, who raised from the dead our Lord Jesus?

Do you believe he went to the cross for your sins?

Do you believe that he was raised that you might be right with God?

It's about belief, but it's also about behavior.

If you would say yes to those questions about belief, yes, I believe that Jesus died for my sins.

Yes, I believe that God raised him from the dead.

Is your life bearing that out?

Not perfectly.

But is there, are you growing more and more into the image of Jesus?

Are you bearing the family resemblance more and more?

And Jesus tells his audience that for them the answer is no.

And that brings us to a second paternity test that he gives them.

There's the test of works, but there's also the test of love.

After telling them that they're not children of Abraham, he makes reference to their true father in verse 41.

Let's look at that exchange together in verses 41 and 42.

Jesus says, You're doing the works your father did.

They said to him, We were not born of sexual immorality.

We have one father, even God.

Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me.

For I came from God, and I am here.

I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.

So they say Abraham's our father, and Jesus says, No, he's not.

And so they take him to mean that they're illegitimate children.

You have a different father than you think you do.

And they say, That's not true.

God is our father.

And Jesus said, okay, let's go with that one for a minute.

He gives them another test.

And he's a test of love.

He says, You don't love what God loves.

He's saying what he's been saying throughout the Gospel of John.

I am the Son of God.

I've come from Him.

I know Him.

I only do what He wants me to do.

And so if you know Him and you love Him, you would love what He loves.

I think we kind of get this intuitively.

There's something natural to children loving what it is that their parents love.

Think about for you, how many things in your life that you love are actually things that your parents loved first and introduced you to?

Could be your college team, it could be your hobbies, could be the music that you love.

Nobody discovers Steely Dan on their own.

You have to be introduced by a dad.

That's the rule.

Right?

What do you love that you only know about because of your parents?

My dad was the biggest nerd that I know.

You can keep your apples not falling far from the tree comments to yourself.

He loved sci fi and fantasy stories, Star Wars, Star Trek.

If there are stars in it, we are into it.

That is the family business.

I still Cannot hear John Williams' Star Wars score without getting a little teary.

Many of you know my dad passed away a few years ago and went to be with Jesus, and I hear that music and I see those words scrolling up.

Half the reason I learned how to read as a kid was so that I could keep up with the Star Wars thing as it was going up there.

Reminds me of my dad.

I love it because he loved it.

Jesus is telling the crowd, if God were your father, you would love me because he loves me.

Remember what Jesus, what the Father's voice from heaven said at Jesus' baptism.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.

I have a picture in my office of me holding my firstborn son, Cooper, on the day that he was born, and I love looking at that picture because it reminds me of a moment I had with all three of my children on the day that they were born.

Parents, those of you who have children, do you remember that?

Do you remember that first moment when you get to hold them?

It is such a surreal moment.

I mean, they have been cleaning this baby.

There's beepers going off everywhere.

It's a chaotic moment.

And then all of a sudden, they're swaddled up in one of those blankets, and the nurses finally leave you alone for a second, and you get to hold them.

And all those cliches about kids being your heart walking around outside your chest are true, but they don't even begin to capture the fullness of that moment.

The love that you feel.

Okay, so we're sinners.

We are not perfect.

And we love our children like that.

How much more does the heavenly father love his only begotten son?

That is the next test here.

How do you know if God is your father?

Well, do you love what he loves?

Do you love the Son?

Do you love Jesus?

Now, if you're sitting there going, I don't know.

I would like to, I want to, I try to.

I don't even know how to stir that up within myself.

Where do I start?

John actually has a lot to say about that, about the love of God in our response to it in his first letter, his epistle.

We used it as a part of our assurance of pardoning grace this morning in your bulletin.

It's from 1 John chapter 4.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love.

Not that we've loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son.

And then he summarizes his whole point really simply in verse 19 of 1 John 4.

We love because God first loved us.

Our love for God is always a responsive love.

It is always us saying, I love you too.

To him saying to us, I love you first.

So I asked you, do you love what the Father loves in reference to Jesus?

But do you know who else the Father loves?

He loves you.

How do we know that?

Because he gave the beloved Son for you.

And the beloved Son gave his life for you.

I was reading one of uh Dr.

Kapik's books recently, and he pointed out Saint Augustine in his work on the Trinity notes the threefold nature of love.

There's the lover, the beloved, and the love itself.

And that that fits quite nicely onto our doctrine of the Trinity.

When we talk about the God who is love, we could also phrase it as the Father is the lover, the Son is the beloved, and the Spirit is the love that flows between them.

And that love is lavished on us.

John 3 16, John's already said it to us.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.

And for the joy that was set before him, the Son endured the cross.

Tim Keller pointed this out in a sermon I heard years ago, and I've never gotten over it.

What was the joy that was set before Jesus as he went to the cross?

What's the one thing he didn't have before he gets to the cross?

It's us.

It's you, it's me.

The joy that stands on the other side is, of course, the fulfillment of his mission.

Back to heaven with the Father, all of those things, yes.

But it's also you, all the redeemed.

And now he's poured out his Holy Spirit on us.

The love that exists between the Father and the Son lives in us.

How can we not love this God?

This God who is love, who gives love, who pours out love on us.

Do you love him?

Do you love what he loves?

Do you love the Son?

Can you hear that this morning?

Can it sink in?

Because that's the final test this morning, the test of hearing in verses 43 through 47.

So Jesus has said, Abraham's not your father, you don't do what he did.

You don't believe like he did, you don't behave like he did.

He said, God is not your father either because you don't love what he loves.

And now he finally makes clear who their real father is.

He says it's the devil.

Why can he say that?

And Jesus says it's because they're believing the devil's lies over his truth.

If you know the story of the scriptures, from the very beginning of the Bible, there's been an enemy of God's people, of God and his people.

In Genesis, he manifests as the serpent who twists God's word.

If you remember in Genesis 3, when he shows up, the first question he asks Eve is, Did God really say you can't eat of any tree in the garden?

And if you've read the first two chapters, you know that's not what God said.

God said, Eat of every tree, except for one.

But the serpent's brilliant is sowing that seed of doubt.

What's with that one tree?

Why can't you have that one?

Why is he holding out on you?

And as we go through Genesis 3, his exaggeration works because even as Eve answers his question and corrects him, we can eat of the trees.

She shows that she's already started to believe his lies because she says, God said we can't eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither can we touch it.

Which is not what God had said.

He had never said anything about touching it.

Eve added that in.

Why did she do that?

What's happening?

Because the serpent's lies had begun to shape her imagination.

God had said, delight yourself in any tree you want except for that one.

And instead of hearing that as a generous, abundant offer with one limit that came from a good God who loved her, Eve began to hear it as the harsh rules of a stingy God who was holding out on her.

Transformed for her into don't you touch my precious tree.

And the devil started with that lie, and he has been lying ever since.

Jesus looks at the crowd and he says, Come and abide in my word, and you'll know the truth and you'll be set free.

But they've been abiding in somebody else's word.

Their imagination has been shaped by the lies of the evil one.

And they are enslaved to sin.

And so they won't hear Jesus.

They can't bear to hear him, is what verse 43 says.

And in verse 47, he gives us the reason: whoever is of God hears the word of God.

The reason why you do not hear them is you're not of God.

It's a hard word from Jesus.

Is it possible this morning if you're looking and saying, I'm not sure I believe, not sure I behave, I'm not sure I love, and I'm not sure I want to.

I'm not sure any of this is true.

Can you hear the hard word that Jesus is trying to say to us this morning, that he is the truth?

Can you hear him?

Is it possible that he is right and you are wrong?

Is it possible the reason that we're that we can't hear is just because we won't.

We've stopped up our ears.

Can his word get through to you this morning?

I'll close with this.

I reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy this spring.

Nerd, remember we talked about that.

There's a moment in the second novel, The Two Towers, where Thaedon, the king of Rohan, seems to be under the spell.

And he's got this evil advisor named Worm Tongue.

The name kind of gives it away.

And he's been whispering lies to him.

And Thaedon has gotten to the point where he is hunched over on his throne.

He never leaves the darkness.

He only listens to this evil advisor.

And everyone is desperate to try and help him.

And Gandalf the wizard and all the other heroes of the story come to see him because they want to join forces.

But the evil advisor is still telling him lies.

He says, Don't listen to them.

We're alone.

They can't help us.

They're just here to take advantage of us.

And it's fascinating the way that Gandalf pierces through the lies in that moment.

Listen to what Tolkien writes here.

This is Gandalf talking.

He says, Now, Theodon, son of Thingel, will you hearken to me?

Do you ask for help?

He lifted his staff and pointed to a high window.

There the darkness seemed to clear, and through the open and through the opening could be seen high and far a patch of shining sky.

Not all is dark.

Take courage, Lord of the Mark, for better help you will not find.

No counsel have I to give to those that despair.

Yet counsel I could give and words I could speak to you.

Will you hear them?

They are not for all ears.

I bid you to come out before your doors and look abroad.

Too long have you sat in shadows and trusted to twisted tales and crooked promptings.

He has this moment where the king is sitting listening to lies in the darkness, and Gandalf points him to the light.

And he says, I have more to say to you, can you hear it?

That's what Jesus says to us this morning.

As we sit often in the darkness, listening to the lies of one who wants to betray us, he points us to the light of himself, and he says, I have more to say to you.

Can you hear it?

If I can finish with this this morning, who's your father?

What do you believe?

What do you love?

And can you hear him?

Amen.

Let me close us in prayer.

Father, I pray you would open our ears to hear you this morning.

Pray for those of us who are believing, but like that centurion are saying to you, help our unbelief.

Would you do that this morning?

As we hope against hope, like Abraham did, clinging to your promises, would you remind us again of your great love and affection for us?

Would you help us not to run first our behavior, but to believe, to trust in you, that you are the one who redeems us, you are the one who makes us right, that Jesus died for our sins and rose for our justification, that we might be right with the God who is love and who loves us.

I pray for those who do not yet believe this morning, Lord.

Would you help them to hear that you have even more to say to them that all is not dark?

That there is light and life in you, Jesus.

I pray all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.