I.
Two lies.
A refutation. A warning of judgment.
A promise to those who obey.
A leading question. (To which they already know the answer.)
Another leading question answered by an unbelievable revelation.
One that will get Him killed.
This is the tense outline of today’s reading from John 8, from the traditional lectionary, for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. We are two weeks out from commemorating Jesus’ crucifixion on Good Friday. On some calendars, this is still called Passion Sunday, and there is a lot of passion in this reading.
II.
Fundamentally, this dispute is about who Jesus is. So, let’s take a closer look.
Jesus asks the crowd:
“Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?”
Jesus has been teaching in the temple courts in Jerusalem during the Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles.
Many Jews believe what He is saying and think He is the Messiah. They are inclined to believe in Jesus because of the miracles He performs.
They said:
“When the Messiah comes, will he perform more signs than this man?”1
Others have their doubts.
“How can the Messiah come from Galilee?” they ask. “Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?”2
Like the Samaritan woman at the well, those who believe, believe solely on the merits of Jesus’ own testimony — His own words — about who He is.
Those who doubt appeal to certain scriptural tests, criteria that must be fulfilled before they believe.
Incidentally, both Luke and Matthew’s Gospels, when they are written years later, will go to great lengths to satisfy these doubters with biographical details to prove that Jesus is the Messiah.
What sets John’s Gospel apart is that John belongs firmly to the first group, those who believe in the self-attesting Christ, the Jesus who says who He is.
In other words, there is no “search for God,” no such thing as “Man’s quest for meaning.”
Rather, God seeks us, finds us, and tells us who He is.
III.
Jesus’ argument goes something like this: “I haven’t committed a crime, and what I am saying about Myself is no crime at all, so long as it is true.”
In other words, it would certainly be a crime if Jesus were lying. He would be guilty of blasphemy and bearing false witness.
So, who is Jesus?
The Jews He is arguing with accuse Him of being a Samaritan.
Why accuse Jesus of being a Samaritan?
Well, because the Jews thought the Samaritans were apostates and corrupters of the Law, which is exactly what many thought Jesus was doing, deceiving the people.3
But there was probably more to it.
Rumors were swirling about Jesus.4 One such rumor was that Jesus was Mary’s illegitimate son. Perhaps He was the son of a Roman soldier. Now, they are accusing Him of being the son of a Samaritan.
They are also saying He is possessed by a demon.
In Matthew’s Gospel we read that after Jesus heals a demon-possessed man the Pharisees accuse Jesus of being Beelzebul, the prince of demons.
They said:
“It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”5
Their thinking is that Jesus is using sorcery to fight sorcery, witchcraft to fight witchcraft, evil to fight evil.
Yet Jesus is obviously good.
Jesus replies to the second accusation bluntly by saying, “I am not possessed by a demon.”
He then uses the taunt about him being an illegitimate son to claim the highest legitimacy of all. He claims God as His Father.
“I honor my Father and you dishonor me.”
In other words, “I seek to do God’s will in this world, and yet you call me a Samaritan, a law-breaker, a liar. On what grounds? I am not lying about where I came from, therefore, I must be telling the truth.”
IV.
It’s worth pausing here and noting that the debate about Jesus’ parentage is not just a cheap shot or mudslinging.
It really gets to the heart of why these two groups are fighting.
Earlier in John 8, a few verses before our reading today, Jesus makes His own accusation about the parentage of His detractors.
He says:
“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.”6
We began Lent with the story of mankind’s fall from grace.
In Genesis we read how the human race is divided into two lines, the line of the serpent and the line of the woman:
“And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”7
Here, in John 8, on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the enmity between the two branches of the human race is on full display.
It will culminate on the cross.
The serpent and his children successfully strike the Son of the woman.
He will die, but He will not see death.
Instead, He will crush the devil’s head and destroy death on Easter Day.
V.
Jesus says:
“Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
These are hard words to hear, although the fact that you can hear them is actually good news.
Again and again, particularly when He is giving us His instructions in parables, Jesus says,
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”8
There are examples in the Old Testament as well. Perhaps Jesus even had Deuteronomy 29:4 in mind as He argued with His unbelieving accusers:
“But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear.”9
The point that Jesus is making is that the ungodly, the children of the serpent, simply cannot see or hear anything that God has to show or say to them.
Yet those to whom God has given eyes to see and ears to hear can see and hear God calling to them over the course of thousands of years.
Jesus says to His accusers:
“Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”
His accusers, being very literal minded, reply:
“You are not yet fifty years [the age of wisdom] old… and you have seen Abraham!”
Then Jesus replies with the words that will get Him killed:
“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
The reference to the burning bush in Exodus 3:14 cannot be missed. When Moses asks the burning bush who shall he say has sent him, God replies:
“I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
Jesus is saying that He is God. This is either blasphemy or the truth. Going back to verse 46, Jesus asks:
“Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?”
They cannot convict Jesus because Jesus is not lying. He is not a son of the lying serpent, but the Son of the woman.
The same one who says who He is from the burning bush is the same one who says who He is to the Jews 2,000 years ago, and is still saying who He is to us today.
We believe in God because God tells us who He is. That is our proof.
But this is proof that the serpent and his children can never accept because they demand God prove Himself by the criteria that they set for Him.
And because they determine their own criteria they will never see or hear God.
To use a simple illustration, if you try to tune into an FM station on the AM band, you will never find it.
But it need not be that way for you.
Even though Jesus has very hard words for those He is arguing with, He knows there are those in the crowd who believe in Him, who hear Him and see Him for who He is.
To them, He speaks wonderful words, remarkable words, words you and I should cherish and repeat to ourselves every day. He says:
“Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”
His accusers immediately respond saying:
“Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death.”
But Jesus did not say “taste death.” He said, “see death.”
(Once again, we see that the children of the devil change God’s words.)
Tasting death is a sensory reference. It refers to the bitterness of death. And what would make death taste bitter?
Sin. Regret. Unfulfilled longing.
Dying without any hope. Dying in such a way that robs our loved ones of any hope for our souls. Death by suicide. Death without confession. Death without professing faith in Jesus.
You taste death’s bitterness when you have to put someone in the ground knowing they never heard His words, or, hearing them that they never obeyed.
How we live and how we die will either fill those we leave behind with dread for our fate or fill them with hope for our future and theirs.
Jesus will not let sin, regret, longing, or despair anywhere near His followers.
They will never have to face or see these things again.
This is what Jesus means when He says, “whoever obeys my word will never see death.”
Our mortal bodies die. That we know for sure. That is why they are mortal. Even Jesus’ mortal body had to die.
But He did not see death.
Psalm 60:10 says:
“For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.”
Sin and lies corrupt the truth. They leave us full of regret and rob us of hope.
But if we confess our sins and return to the truth God will rescue our souls from hell and our bodies from corruption. Amen.
Preached on March 26, 2023 at St. Peter’s Lithgow, Millbrook, New York.
Lent 5
Ex. 3:13-22; Heb. 9:11-15; John 8:46-59