“I AM”
John 8:48-59

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
First Sunday in Lent—March 1, 2020

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

This morning we are beginning a Lenten Sunday sermon series on the great “I AM” statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John.  These are some of the most familiar and beloved verses in the Bible:

“I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life”

“I AM the Door”

“I AM the Light of the World”

“I AM the Resurrection and the Life”

“I AM the True Vine”

“I AM the Bread of Life”

“I AM the Good Shepherd”

We begin this series with a selection from the Gospel of John that is printed under the sermon title in the bulletin, from a debate Jesus had with the religious authorities at the beginning of his ministry.  Jesus told them: “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”   “You are not yet fifty years old,” the Jews said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”  “I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was, I AM!”

The setting is the Temple courts at Jerusalem.  The two factions having this dispute are the Pharisees and Jesus himself.  What sparked the controversy was the miracles Jesus was doing.

Jesus later said, “The miracles I do in my Father’s name speak for me. . . It is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.  Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”

By this time Jesus was famous for performing many miracles, changing water into wine, feeding the 5,000, healing many.  The Old Testament had prophesied that when the Messiah came he would be recognized by the miracles he would perform, especially miracles of healing:  “The Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in his wings,” wrote Malachi.  “Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy,” Isaiah prophesied.

John reports that the common people understood this significance of Jesus’ miracles, and they are starting to ask the big question: “Could this be the Christ? . . .  Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.”  The chapter before our text reports, “Many in the crowd put their faith in him. They said, ‘When the Christ comes, will he do more miraculous signs than this man?’  The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering such things about him.”

Acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah presented two huge problems for the Pharisees.  First, there was the problem of sin.  The problem was, they didn’t think they had any. 

The Apostle John says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  The Pharisees were deceiving themselves.  Oh, they agreed that when the Messiah came he would chastise all THOSE people for THEIR sins.  But the Pharisees?  Everyone knew the main reason the Messiah was coming was to congratulate them on their superior holiness.  At least, that’s what the Pharisees said.

However, Jesus came proclaiming, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full dead men’s bones and of all kinds of filth. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” 

Boy, those Pharisees sure were awful, weren’t they?  Of course, Jesus isn’t just talking about them, back then.  He is also talking about you and me, right now.  For, we must confess that we are often modern-day Pharisees.  Hypocrites, who appear righteous on the outside, but inside are full of sin and filth and wickedness. 

Paul sums up in Romans the bad news of our sins: “There is no one righteousness, not even one . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But, in 1st Timothy Paul tells us the wonderful Good News: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

The Pharisees couldn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah because he was offering them something they didn’t think they needed: salvation, forgiveness, pardon for sin.  That is also what Jesus gives to you: salvation, forgiveness, pardon for all your sins.  As Paul says in Romans, “Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Your sins are all forgiven, you are at peace with God because of the life, death, and resurrection of your Lord Jesus Christ. 

The other reason the Pharisees would not acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah was jealousy.  More and more people were following him instead of them.  A few chapters later in John the Pharisees complain to each other, “Look how the whole world has gone after him!"

Jesus said his miracles were proof, proof he is the Messiah, the divine Son of God.  The Pharisees could not deny his miracles, there were too many, and too many witnesses.  So, in a move still common in politics today, instead of addressing the significance of his miracles, they try to discredit Jesus, and his miracles, by smearing him with what is called in debate an ad hominem attack: “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?"

The Samaritans and Hebrews were fanatic enemies, so this was a great insult and even an obscenity in their culture, questioning someone’s parentage by accusing them of being a “son of a Samaritan.”  In debate tactics, such an insult is called a “sledgehammer.”  It was supposed to get Jesus to just shut up.

However, he instead makes an even greater claim: “My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me.”  Jesus claims that God himself is his Father.  And then he states the logical corollary of this claim: There was never time when he was not, for he is eternal: “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

The Pharisees object, “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?”  And in response Jesus finally makes the most outrageous claim of all: “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was, I AM!”

It is hard for us in English to comprehend the enormity of that statement.  The New King James Version quoted in our bulletin tries to communicate the profound significance of this declaration by putting the words “I AM” in all capital letters.  This goes back to Exodus, when the Lord declares to Moses from the burning bush: “I AM WHO I AM. . .  say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’ . . .  This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.”

“I tell you the truth, before Abraham was, I AM!”  It is hard for us in English to comprehend the enormity of that statement, but the Pharisees understood immediately what Jesus meant.  He’s not just claiming to be a prophet of God; he’s not just claiming to be A son of God; he’s not just claiming to be god-like.  He is claiming to BE God; THE only divine Son of God.  He is claiming that he actually IS the God who spoke to Moses from the burning bush: Yahweh, Jehovah, “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven . . . and was made man.”  Paul puts it this way in Colossians: “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. . .  For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things . . . by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

“‘I tell you the truth, before Abraham was, I AM!’  At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.”  Being stoned to death was the ancient punishment for blasphemy.  That day they did not succeed, because it was only the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry and his time had not yet come.  But, eventually supposed blasphemy is what he would be tried for, crucified dead, and buried.  As they told Pontius Pilate, “He must die because he claimed to be the Son of God.”

But, the real blasphemy is not Jesus claiming to be the Son of God.  The real blasphemy is rejecting him as the Son of God, your Savior.  You’re familiar with John 3:16, but listen also to the verses which follow: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned.  But, whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God’s only-begotten Son.”

The famous author C. S. Lewis was not always a Christian.  He was at one time a committed atheist.  In a 1943 broadcast on the BBC, Lewis explained that it was Jesus’ extraordinary claims about himself which confronted Lewis and led to his conversion:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said . . . would either be a lunatic . . . or else he would be the Devil. . .  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. . .  it seems to me obvious that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend, and consequently . . . I have to accept the view that he was and is God.”

“I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”

“I AM the Door; whoever enters through me will be saved.”

“I AM the Light of the World; whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

“I AM the Resurrection and the Life; whoever believes in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live.”

“I AM the True Vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

“I AM the Bread of Life, life; whoever comes to me shall never hunger.”

“I AM the Good Shepherd; and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

Each time Jesus declares “I AM” it refers back to the declaration from the burning bush, “I AM WHO I AM. . . This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.”  Each time Jesus declares “I AM” it is also a declaration that he is not just like God, he IS God.  “Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven . . . and was made man”; in whom “all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form”; Yahweh, Jehovah, “I AM.”