John 11:25-44,

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved[a] in his spirit and greatly troubled. 34 And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?”

38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” 44 The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

The year 1912 gave us two unforgettable things: the sinking of the Titanic and the invention of Oreo cookie — one was a tragedy, one a triumph, and we’re still fascinated by both today.

But something else important that happened in 1912 that we probably don’t think about much was the publication of an essay by the theologian B. B. Warfield. The essay is entitled, “The Emotional Life of our Lord” — and it’s about the various emotions we see Jesus express in the Gospels.

What makes the essay so amazing is that there had never really been a study like this before, and Warfield wrote it during the heyday of theological liberalism. When a lot of modern scholars were denying the deity of Christ, Warfield affirmed the deity of Christ and wrote this essay to defend the humanity of Christ.

And the reason this essay is relevant to our passage today is that Warfield gives a lot of attention to John 11 — because of the emotions we just read about in verses 33–38!

Now throughout each of the four Gospels we see the emotional life of Jesus, but there’s no other place where we see such strong emotions compounded in one scene. Warfield writes, “What John does [here in Chapter 11] is uncover to us the heart of Jesus as he wins for us our salvation.” 

And I think that’s right. Remember John was there! He saw this happen. And led by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he has written this to uncover the heart of Jesus for us, which means it’s worthy of our focus this morning. There are two questions we should ask: 

1. What do we learn here about Jesus’s heart? 

2. What difference does it make in our lives?

The goal of the sermon is to answer those two questions: I want to show you something amazing about the heart of Jesus, and then I wanna talk about why it matters.

Those are the two parts, and Part One can be titled “Uncovering the Heart of Jesus.”

We’re gonna pick up here in verse 28, and my goal is for us to build, in our minds, the right image of Jesus in this scene.

Last week we saw the dialogue between Jesus and Martha, and this week it’s between Jesus and Mary.

After Martha’s faith confession of Jesus in verse 27, she goes back to their home in Bethany to get Mary. And I want you to try to imagine this…

Remember this is just four days after the death of Lazarus, and so it’s a crowded house of friends and family grieving with them. Martha walks into the full house and somehow in private she tells Mary that Jesus wants to see her. She most likely whispered this to Mary, because people are all around her. She said, “Mary, the Teacher is here and he’s calling for you.”

And Mary, right away, jumps up and goes to meet Jesus, and everybody is there, seeing her do this, and they assume she must be going to the tomb. So they leave the house and follow her.

So picture Mary walking to meet Jesus, and there’s this entourage of grieving people following behind her. She gets to Jesus in verse 32, and she falls down at Jesus’s feet and she says, 

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 

Where have we heard that before? This is the same thing Martha said in verse 21.

And again, I don’t think this is a rebuke. Mary is just stating a fact, and she does it here bowed down at Jesus’s feet — which is not a posture of disrespect — this is homage. She’s broken before her teacher. She’s been following him, learning from him, trusting him, and she’s honest with him.

And it’s important we get this scene right in our minds because before John tells us how Jesus responds, he tells us what Jesus sees. We need to see it too.

Verse 33 starts by saying that Jesus saw Mary weeping, down at this feet, and he saw this crowd of friends and family around her also weeping. And that word for “weeping” means wailing. This is audible, expressive grief. There’s no ‘balled fists mad’ at Jesus here. It’s heartache. 

Now look what John says Jesus did …

And this is one we need to see. I want to make sure everybody’s with me. Find verse 33 — Chapter 11, verse 33.

After Jesus sees this heartache around him, Verse 33,

“…he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.”

Now that word “deeply moved” — that’s how the English Standard Version and the New International Version translates it. But if you have the ESV, you might notice there’s a little footnote marker, and the footnote says that this word could also be translated “indignant.” Or to be outraged. 

That’s because in nearly every other place this word is used, that’s what it means. Outside the New Testament this Greek word is used to refer to the snorting of horses, and when it’s applied to humans it means expressing anger. 

This is where I think cartoons could actually help us.

In old-school cartoons — like the Looney Tunes — it was really clear when the characters would get angry. Their faces would turn red and steam would blow out of their nostrils. That’s anger.

And the point is that the audience not miss the emotion!

That’s the point here in the use of this word.

The New Living Translation actually nails it. They translate it “a deep anger welled up within him.” That’s what the word means. Now why does it matter? 

Well, the word is repeated in verse 38. Look down at verse 38:

“Then Jesus, deeply moved again [deeply angry again], [he] came to the tomb.”

So that’s twice in this scene that John tells us this. Which means he really doesn’t want us to miss it. Jesus is angry here. He’s indignant. He’s furious. 

But hold on a minute: before we import our own meaning of anger, we need to see more in this story. 

We know that whatever kind of anger Jesus has here, it’s perfectly compatible with his holiness. Jesus never sinned, so this must be a holy anger. 

And there are three more words John uses here that fill in the picture. We have to see all of this together if we’re going to have the right image.

Notice back in verse 33, John tells us that Jesus was “deeply moved/angry in his spirit and greatly troubled.”

Jesus being angry “in his spirit” means that he’s under control — he’s not flying off the handle. He’s restrained.

But at the same time his emotion is visible. Because notice that word in verse 33, “deeply troubled.” That word literally means to shake. B. B. Warfield describes it as “raging in himself … His inwardly restrained fury produced a profound agitation of his whole being …” 

Can you picture that?

I know we all have ideas of what Jesus might have looked like (there’s a few windows around here that could help our imaginations) — But whatever your imagination of Jesus is, it should be able to include everything the Bible says about him, and here we read that Jesus is so enraged that he’s shaking. 

It’s like he’s about to explode, and says “Where have you laid him?” 

And then, verse 35, “Jesus wept.”

Now who would have expected that?! He’s raging in himself, and tears spill out.

And when you see tears — when there’s weeping — what does that mean? 

Even young children know what this means. This is part of early childhood development — teachers show children pictures of faces and have them match different emotions to each face. 

And when the teacher asks, “Which one is sad?”, the kids always point to the face with tears. Because tears means sorrow. Weeping means sadness. And in this story, Jesus is sad. That’s what overflowed for everyone to see. 

Jesus is fuming with fury and he grieves with tears. Fury and grief — anger with sadness — that’s the right image of Jesus here. That’s what John is showing us.

But why is Jesus responding this way? It has to do with what he encounters. 

First, and most obvious, he is surrounded by grief. He loved Mary and Martha, and Mary and Martha are both grieving; their friends and family with them are grieving, and so, at the most basic level, when Jesus weeps here, he’s joining his friends in their grief.

The people Jesus loves are sad, and he meets them in their sadness. He’s with them. This is true sympathy. Jesus is a good friend. But the anger part — what is that about? This is where we have to look at what’s behind the grief.

In this story, what has caused the grief?

Death.

Warfield writes,

The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions enraged Jesus because it brought poignantly home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness, its “violent tyranny” … In Mary’s grief, he contemplates the misery of the whole human race and burns with rage against the oppressor of men…

It is death that is the object of his wrath, and behind death him who has the power of death and whom he has come into the world to destroy. Tears of sympathy may fill his eyes, but his soul is held by rage…

Anger and sadness. Sadness and anger. 

It’s really important to see what happens next. What does Jesus do with these emotions?

He doesn’t sit there on his hands. But he’s in motion. He’s going somewhere with this. And, at some level, this is expected. Check out verses 36–37. This is how the friends and family respond. They see Jesus’s emotion and think, “Wow, he really loved Lazarus!” And then some said, verse 37:

“Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?”

That’s actually a smart question. It’s the logical next question after you realize that Jesus really loved the man who died. It’s clear that Jesus loved Lazarus, and we know Jesus can heal, so why didn’t Jesus just heal him?

I hope you see this is a form of the same question we talked about a month ago in our sermon “An Everyday Theology of Suffering.”

The big question we talked about is: How can God be all-powerful and all-good, and suffering still exist?

Remember that question? That’s the big question. And that’s the same thing going on here at a practical level: Jesus is powerful (he can heal), Jesus is good (he loved Lazarus). So … why is Lazarus dead in a tomb and Jesus upset about it?

It’s a fair question, and look, I think we’re all just trying to figure it out. And maybe we think Jesus doesn’t really have the kind of power we hoped he has — and if we think that, this next part is for us … Because Jesus, again, is in motion. He’s going somewhere. Verse 38:

“Then Jesus, deeply angry again, came to the tomb.”

Get the image right in your mind. Jesus is walking up to this tomb furious. He’s angry. He’s sad. And he’s zealous.

Warfield on this part quotes Calvin. I’ll read Calvin to you. He says:

Christ does not come to the tomb as an idle spectator, but like a champion who prepares for a battle, and therefore we need not wonder that he again groans, for the violent tyranny of death, which he had to conquer, is placed before his eyes.

Do you see it? Jesus approaches the tomb enraged because he is about to face our greatest enemy. And what does he do?

He says, “Move the stone.” 

Martha says, “There’s gonna be an odor.”

Jesus says, “I’m here to show you the glory of God.”

And then he looks up to his Father in heaven and says, verse 41,

“Father, I thank you that you have heard me …”

See, apparently Jesus has already been praying (and like Martha said in verse 22, whatever Jesus asks from God, God gives it to him). John wants us to know the Father and Son are in this together. 

Verse 43: 

“When Jesus had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice …”

That word for “cried out” is the same word used later when the crowd will cry out “Crucify him! Crucify him!” The word means to shout. And John also adds “with a loud voice.”

You gotta picture this. Jesus is not making a mild suggestion here. This is a loud shout from a heart enraged. He’s shouting it loudly in defiance of death.

“Lazarus, come out.”

Verse 44,

“And the man who died came out …”

See, they don’t even call him ‘Lazarus’ anymore — they call him “the man who died” — because he did die, but now he’s alive. And Jesus says,

“Unbind him, and let him go.” 

Those words are significant. It means that Jesus, the resurrection and the life, has set the dead man free. Just like Jesus will set us free — not free from the end of our physical lives in this world, but absolutely free from death.

Jesus, see, is zealous to save! He’s zealous to display the glory of God and accomplish our everlasting good, which are one in the same.

In this story, John uncovers the heart of Jesus for us.

B. B. Warfield writes,

Not in cold unconcern but in flaming wrath against the foe, Jesus smites in our behalf. He has not only saved us from the evils that oppress us; he has felt for and with us in our oppression, and under the impulse of these feelings has wrought out our redemption.

Anger against our enemy. Sadness in our grief. Zeal for our salvation.

This is the heart of Jesus. What a Savior!

Now, Part Two: What difference does this make in our lives?

I’d like to close with an application. And there’s a hundred things we could say! A hundred things we could takeaway. But for now, I’m just gonna focus on one: 

In discovering Jesus’s heart, we discover the kind of hearts we are called to have as his people.

We can’t be content to only admire him, but we must follow him as our example — especially in our witness. Because Jesus shows us what a holy heart looks like toward a fallen world.

We see it in the mingling of his anger and sadness — anger toward the ultimate enemy, and sadness for those who suffer. Indignation for the father of lies, sorrow for those captive to lies.

I think the best name for this posture is what we might call brokenhearted boldness. (That’s a Piper phrase.) Brokenhearted boldness.

And we get the boldness part. That is so vital in our day. It’s the courage to call evil evil. To hold our ground on moral clarity. To pray imprecatory psalms against the workers of Satan. And we do it with confidence, in Luther’s words:

The prince of darkness grim, 

We tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure,

For lo! His doom is sure;

One little word shall fell him.

We mock the devil! We mock death! This is boldness!

But it’s brokenhearted. 

Because at the same time that we resolve never to compromise truth, we weep for the world that’s lost it. Together with the firmness of our conviction, we have the tenderness of compassion. We’re brokenhearted, because Hell is real, and we know people who will go there. And we don’t want them to. Brokenhearted boldness.

And honestly, it’s easier to recognize it than to describe it, so I’ll tell you a true story…

Just recently I was having lunch with one of our members, a college student.  And he was telling me about a class he’s in right now, and the professor is off the rails. The professor says there are at least 12 different genders, he openly mocks God in the classroom. And this student is disgusted by it. He told me he’s spoken up in class, he’s tried to dialogue with other students. He said, 

“But my classmates are so influenced by this professor. … They’re just eating it up. They’re all choosing a path of lies.”

And as he said this, his eyes filled with tears, his voice began to crack; he had to stop talking and look away … And I thought: “That’s it.”

That’s brokenhearted boldness.

That’s the heart of Jesus showing up in his people.

It’s not a witness of swagger. It’s not brash or belligerent, not snide or snarky, not cruel or crude, but it’s embracing truth with tears — a supreme love for God and a sincere love for people.

It’s a miracle, church, to have hearts like that! And would that God work this miracle in us! 

We want to be more like Jesus as we point to him and what he’s done. 

That’s what brings us to the Table.

Before we can ever imagine being like Jesus, we have to first be saved by Jesus. And that’s what we celebrate here.

The heart of Christ is an example we can follow, but the cross of Christ is the unrepeatable accomplishment of our salvation — and we can only receive it.

Christian, you know you can only receive it, so would you receive it afresh this morning? If you trust in Jesus, I invite to rest anew in this grace to you, and surrender yourself anew to his transforming work in your life.

John 11:5-27,

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” 9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10 But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” 11 After saying these things, he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.” 12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” 13 Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, 15 and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16 So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

17 Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. 20 So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

You just heard some of the most amazing words that Jesus of Nazareth ever spoke. And I can pretty much guarantee that between the reality of what he says here and the everyday experience of our lives, it can feel like there’s a Grand Canyon of difference. Between the life we truly have in Christ and the ‘Christian life’ we lead, there’s a gap.

And look, I believe that Jesus, by the power of his Spirit, wants us to close that gap. That’s what we’re here for. 

And the way we close that gap — the way we begin to live the life Jesus means for us to live — is not necessarily by starting some new things, but it’s by stopping a few things. We’re gonna see these in our passage today, and I can’t wait to show you, but first let’s pray again:

Father, by your Spirit and his power, speak to us in your word, we ask. In Jesus’s name, amen.

So, how do we close the gap? How do we live the life Jesus means for us to live? 

We stop three things …

We’re gonna focus most of our attention starting in verse 17, but we know from last week that Lazarus has been sick. Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha, and Jesus loved all three of these siblings, verse 5 tells us. They were Jesus’s friends.

And they’ve lived in a town called Bethany, just two miles outside of Jerusalem. And after Lazarus dies, Jesus says to his disciples Let’s go there.

Verse 19 says Martha and Mary were both in their house in Bethany, surrounded by “many of the Jews” who were grieving with them. And this is not too different from our culture of funerals today. We’re a lot of miles and years away from this scene, but even today after the death of someone we also make an opportunity for friends and neighbors to offer condolences. That’s what’s going on here. 

So imagine it’s a crowded house, and there’s an array of hot dishes in the kitchen, people everywhere.

And somehow, during this time, Martha found out that Jesus was on the way. So she left the house and all the people, and she went to meet him, verse 21, and the first thing she says to Jesus when she sees him is:

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died…”

Now, some readers take this as a rebuke, as if she’s saying “You should have been here, Jesus! Now you’re too late!” 

But I’m not so sure about that. Mary says the exact same thing as Martha in verse 32. So are both sisters rebuking Jesus? Or are both sisters grieving and stating the obvious?

I don’t think this is accusation, I think it’s ache.

Their pain is framing reality. Because they both know Jesus has healing power — they’ve seen it firsthand — and so they know he could have healed their brother when he was sick. But now he’s not sick, he’s dead.

And Martha adds in verse 22,

“But even now, [Jesus], I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

She’s saying, basically,You could’ve healed Lazarus when he was sick if you were here (but you weren’t). You’re here now, though, and maybe there’s still hope.

See, Martha is a pragmatic optimist. I like her. She gets that Jesus has a special relationship with God, and that when Jesus asks things, God does it. 

So she’s thinking there might be something here. Verse 22 is not a statement of bold faith, but it’s more like Martha leaving the door open. It’s a shot in the dark.

At this point, up to verse 22, Martha is underselling Jesus. Yes, he can heal; yes, he has special access to God; and maybe he can raise the dead … but she doesn’t realize that he is the very Author of life itself, standing in front of her. 

He is not a healer who prays to God, he is the God who heals. He is the one who has final authority over life and death.

He doesn’t merely pull some strings with Ultimate Reality but he is Ultimate Reality in human flesh, and he’s bigger and better than anything she could imagine. He can do whatever he wants!

And the fact is, if we don’t understand this about Jesus, we think too little of him.

And that’s a lot of us, a lot of times. If we’re honest, we undersell Jesus. And the surest sign that we’ve been underselling Jesus is when we discover those areas in our lives where we’ve been leaving him out. 

That was Martha. She had a “Jesus Is Able” category and an “I Doubt It” category.

Healing my sick brother was in the “Able” category, but raising my dead brother today was in the “Doubt” category. 

We have those categories, too. 

There are some things in your life you think Jesus is able to handle, and there are some things you think he can’t. And the question for us is: What are those things? …

What did you once put in the “Jesus Is Able” category that now you put in the “I Doubt It” category? … and why?

You know, one of the great things about kids is how literal they take things. Innocently, wonderfully literal. I remember one morning, years ago when my oldest was a toddler and getting grown enough to dress herself, she was in her room and all of a sudden she started yelling, “Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me!” 

So I ran to her door and found her all tangled up in a sweater she was putting on — she had put her head through the arm and was stuck. She needed help. See, I had told her before that Jesus can always help us; she was in a moment when she needed help; she asked Jesus to help. 

Doesn’t that make sense? … Jesus helps; I need help; I ask Jesus for help.

We agree that makes sense, so why don’t we do it? About everything? 

Why have we taken it upon ourselves to relegate Jesus to what he can and cannot do?

That has to stop. In whatever area of your life you might be saying to Jesus, “Yeah, I doubt it” this is where you lay it down.

Whatever it is: if it’s relationships, finances, sickness of any kind, work, sports, family, getting stuck in your sweater, don’t make asking Jesus for help the last resort.

Make it the first thing you do. Make it as natural as breathing — “Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me!”

One day we’re gonna truly learn that everything in existence belongs in the “Jesus Is Able” category, and to think anything less is underselling him. So by the power of the Holy Spirit, let’s stop doing that.

Now in verses 21–22, Martha says what she says to Jesus, and Jesus says back to her in verse 23, “Your brother will rise again.”

And to that, Martha says, verse 24,

“I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

And this is standard Jewish teaching. Martha is a devout Jewish woman, and she has a solid Old Testament faith. In the Book of Job, Chapter 19, verse 26, Job says, 

“And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.” 

Job models Old Testament faith in a future bodily resurrection, and Martha believed that. She believed that for Lazarus. 

But then look what Jesus says in verse 25. And this is one we all gotta see. The most important sentence in the story. Everybody if you can, find verse 25. Chapter 11, verse 25.

Verse 25:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

And right away, before Jesus says anything else, we gotta think: This sounds like a big deal. 

This is the fifth time Jesus has used an “I AM” statement in this Gospel. And he’s not only claiming to be God here, but he says something about himself that I don’t think we’d expect God to say. It’s that he doesn’t merely cause resurrection or give life, but it’s who he is. Jesus is the resurrection, Jesus is the life — and he explains what he means by each of those in what he says right after. We’re gonna look closer at both …

First, about being the resurrection, Jesus explains:

“Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” 

And again, remember this is standard Jewish teaching. The resurrection means after you die, you will live again, in a new body — Jesus says, “Though he die, yet shall he live.” 

But what makes this so amazing, so different, is that Jesus says this future resurrection is determined by him … and I admit words fail me here. We have to stretch our minds. 

Imagine: the future resurrection — this ancient hope Martha believed — it has its source, its beginning and end, its meaning, in Jesus, this real man who’s talking to her. 

The resurrection is so bound up in Jesus that he can say I am the resurrection.

And he’s the life. About being the life, Jesus explains:

“Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

And when he says “lives” here he doesn’t mean just being alive, but he’s talking about truly living — this is living with the eternal life Jesus came to give us. This is living by faith in him. They’re one in the same. Truly living is believing in Jesus, and when we live that life, we will never die. That life just keeps going. It’s as secure as Jesus is, because he is the life.

Now notice what Jesus does here: he takes these two concepts of resurrection and life and he intertwines them for maximum relevance today. 

See, the resurrection is something we would typically locate in the future, but in Jesus it has invaded present reality. And the life, which is present reality, in Jesus it stretches into the future. 

So future resurrection steps back into now, and life now steps forward into the future, and it’s all centered on Jesus. 

What that means this morning is that by faith in Jesus, Christian — in Christ, in this moment, you possess eternal life that will never end, but it only gets better with time. 

Can you imagine that? Sitting where you are right now, in Christ that life is in you, of you, true of you.

One of the things we do often in our Community Group, before we start discussion, we do an ice-breaker question. Usually it’s a fun question to warm people up a little. And one question, you’ve probably heard this one before is, If you could have any superpower what would it be?

And we might think of flight or lightening speed or the ability to download a whole book into your brain by just touching it. All pretty cool. 

But how about having a kind of life that is irrevocable and invincible? 

You have a kind of life you cannot lose and that will never end — it just deepens as long as eternity lasts.  

Look, to be a Christian is to have this superpower. It does not mean we’re fully immortal — our present bodies can be injured, our skin’s not bullet-proof, physical life can die here — but we do have life in us that will never die.

And at the very least, at the practical level, this means we need to stop settling for a normal life.

Would your life be normal if you could fly?

Would your life be normal if you could run to Florida in two minutes?

Should your life be normal if you knew you’d never die?

Christians, where’d our courage go? Why are we so afraid of risk? 

Now I’m not saying we should all go bungee jumping and sky-diving … I’m talking about radical Christian sacrifice — which means doing things now that only make sense if heaven is your home. I’m talking about living in such a way that demands a gospel explanation.

And look, I realize that I’m talking to a mixed room.

Some of you have tons of energy and you’re ready to take the world, some of you can barely take another day. You’re exhausted. You’re tryin’ to raise eight kids under the age of 12 (and if that’s you, I’ve been there). 

And often when we’re under pressure, when we feel overwhelmed, we can slip into a scarcity mindset. We start to hunker down and assume that what we most need is more self-care. We get inward and protective. And look, that’s normal. It’s normal.

But Christian, we’ve got something better than normal. 

And often the best thing we can do when we’re having a hard time is to think about somebody else.

I don’t want to embarrass anybody, but I could tell you three stories right now of people in our church who are going through real suffering and they’ve chosen in their valley to see other people and to step out in love. Their cup feels empty and they’re still choosing to pour.

Who does that kind of thing? 

People who have a superpower. 

People who have Jesus, who is the resurrection and the life. 

Hey, if we wanna live the life Jesus means for us to live, we gotta stop settling for normal. 

Notice the end of verse 26. After Jesus says these amazing words, he asks:

“Do you believe this?”

One thing I love about this question is that it shows us that Jesus, in this moment, he isn’t thinking about Lazarus or his disciples who are with him, but he’s thinking about Martha. He’s looking at Martha and he cares about her heart. It’s a singular “you.” He’s saying, Martha, do you believe what I’m telling you?

This is a question that we should hear Jesus asking us. Like today.

This is a crowded room, there’s a lot of people in here, but Jesus would speak to you the same way he speaks to Martha. He cares about your heart. He wants your faith. He would ask, Do you believe?

Now before we look at how Martha responds, remember that Jesus’s simple question here is important to this entire Gospel. Hold your place here and turn to Chapter 20, verse 30. This is a little parenthetical comment from John where he tells us the purpose of this Gospel. John Chapter 20, verses 30–31. John writes: 

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that [purpose statement] you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

See how John combines again life and believing! We have eternal life by believing in Jesus. But notice especially the content of our belief. What exactly does John want us to believe? He says it here: the purpose is that we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. 

Now turn back to Chapter 11. Look at Martha’s reply to Jesus in verse 27. Jesus asks her in verse 26,

“Do you believe this? 

Verse 27:

She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that [you are the Christ, the Son of God], who is coming into the world.”

Martha’s confession of faith is exactly John’s purpose in writing this Gospel. Martha is a model for the kind of faith that John wants all of us to have. 

Because embedded in the fact that Jesus is the Christ, that he is the Son of God, comes all the other excellencies of who he is. Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, is the shorthand way of saying that Jesus is everything the Bible says he is. 

Notice that Martha adds in verse 27 that Jesus is the one “who is coming into the world.” What is significant about her saying that? 

Calvin says Martha adds that line to “strengthen her faith by the predictions of the prophets.” And I think that’s right. When Martha says this, she is making the connection that Jesus is the One the prophets foretold. He’s the fulfillment of Old Testament hope. 

So look what’s happened in this conversation! Martha has gone from Old Testament faith to born-again Christian. This is a conversion. She has done what Jesus says to Thomas in Chapter 20, verse 27:

“Stop disbelieving, but believe.”

Martha has done that, and we should do the same. And I mean this for all of us. If you’re here today and you’re not yet a Christian, I hope the invitation is clear. Jesus is asking you if you believe in who he says he is, and it’s a Yes or No — and either answer takes energy. It takes energy to disbelieve. There’s no neutrality. Either you’re with Jesus or you’re not. 

So if you’re here today and you have a kind of gray, vague faith in Jesus (kinda like an Old Testament faith), this is the moment for you to step into the vivid color of this confession. Believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. 

And for the Christians in the room, Cities Church, remember that disbelief can still lurk in our hearts. It’s part of indwelling sin and life in this world, even in our walk with Jesus there can be areas in our lives that are plagued by disbelief. Back to that “I Doubt It” category. I don’t think Jesus is done with us here. He wants us to close that gap between who he truly is for us and our everyday experience. Christian, would you ask him to do that? Ask him to help you lay down whatever you gotta lay down.

Stop underselling Jesus. 

Stop settling for a normal life. 

Stop disbelieving, but believe. 

That’s what brings us to the Table.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God — what a Savior! That’s what we remember at this Table. We remember that the life we have in Jesus came through his death for us. 

Bearing shame and scoffing rude
In my place condemned He stood
Sealed my pardon with His blood

Hallelujah, what a Savior

If you trust in Jesus this morning, if he died in your place, if you believe he is the resurrection and the life, we invite you to eat and drink with us and give him thanks. 

John 11:1-7,

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”

With John 10 behind us, we enter now into a new phase of Jesus’ ministry. Phase one opened with John the Baptist baptizing in the wilderness east of the Jordan. That was back in chapter one. Nine chapters later — following a variety of Jesus’ miracles and Jesus’ teachings, crowds coming and crowds going, Pharisees questioning and Pharisees condemning — we ended up back in the very same place it all began. John 10:40,

“Jesus went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first.” 

So, phase one has come full circle. Jesus’ public ministry has all about concluded. And at this point, life actually looks pretty good for Jesus. John 10:41 says of Jesus, having returned to this region of the Jordan,

“And many came to him [so, he’s got the crowds]. And many said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true [he’s got public testimony]. And many believed in him there [he’s got ministry success].”

Sounds pretty good, right? Jesus is at last away from the tension and death-threats he’d been experiencing in Jerusalem. He’s not having to walk mile-after-mile from town-to-town like he did in Galilee. He’s east of the Jordan. He’s got his disciples all round him. He’s got the crowds coming to him and believing him. Life, right now, looks pretty good for Jesus. 

Then, like a fly in the ointment, John 11 begins,

“Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.”

Hmm, now what might that mean for Jesus? What might that news of one, relatively unimportant person’s illness, mean for Jesus — especially in light of crowd-sized, relatively comfortable success? 

In this morning’s text, we’re going to see Jesus’ response to this one, relatively unimportant person’s illness. It’s a response that’s going to give us a window into three truths about the heart and character of Jesus:

1. Jesus personally loves his people.

2. Jesus prizes his Father’s glory.

3. Jesus pursues our very best.

Let’s pray ….

Jesus personally loves his people. Let’s begin at John 11:1.

“Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. [and then there’s little this parenthesis…] It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.”

Now, this is foreshadowing. We’ve not read about this event just yet, but we will see it in chapter 12. For now, John’s just flagging it — saying, “Hey, keep your eye on this family; make note of the connection here: Lazarus, Mary, Martha — they’re siblings. Siblings who are going to have some significant interaction with Jesus in the next few days.”

So, imagine it with me, Mary and Martha are in their home. Their brother Lazarus gets sick. And sickness is a dangerous thing in the ancient world. Not many options for medicine or doctors. Then, the sickness worsens. Things are beginning to look bad. The sisters think: Let’s send for Jesus. Verse 3:

“So the sisters sent to him, saying, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’” 

Again, remember where Jesus was at this time. This message concerning Lazarus gets delivered to Jesus at a time when he’s living in relative security. In it comes — the message that Lazarus of Bethany is ill. 

And, you just gotta think, I mean — “Lazarus, I’m sorry, but the timing’s just not great right now. Your location, a bit too close for comfort to Jerusalem. And you’re just one person compared to the many who are coming my way.”

And, look, let’s get real, I mean: how many people had Jesus’ interacted with throughout his three years of public ministry? We know he fed the 4,000. We know he fed the 5,000. We know, at times, he had crowds so large he had to get into a boat so as to not be trampled by them. Even now, he’s got waves of people coming toward him. You think he even remembers Lazarus? You think he really has capacity — with all the other things he’s doing and all the other people he’s caring for — to show concern for this one single, relatively unimportant individual?

Well, the sisters sure seem to think so. Just look how they describe their brother to Jesus. The message is not, “Lord, he whom you appreciate; he whom you might remember; nor is it even he who loves you. The message from the sisters is, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

Now, why is it that these sisters believe Jesus loves their brother? Well, I imagine Jesus told them he did. And Jesus showed them he did. That his previous posture toward Lazarus had not been one of cold, detached indifference. Like, when Jesus had been around Lazarus, he had not been checking his watch, or rolling his eyes, or day-dreaming about all the other places he’d rather be. No, no, no, Jesus loved Lazarus and it showed. The sisters knew, Jesus loves our brother. 

And this, is stunning. Earlier in John — 3:16 — we read that God loves the world. It’s an amazing truth, yes? It’s also a broad truth — gloriously broad, but broad nonetheless. After all, you’ve gotta zoom out quite a bit to see the whole world, right? And when you zoom out, what happens to you? What happens to the individual? They fade into the crowd. That is, when humans who are merely humans look at the world. 

But see, here is where God is different. Here is where Jesus, the Son of God, is different. Jesus has capacity, boundless capacity, to love the world and love individuals within the world. It is not an either/or for Jesus. “Either, I’m a big, distant God. Or, I’m a small, personally involved God.” No, no, no — God loves the world, and God loves his people — collectively, and individually. Calls them by name, counts the number of hairs upon their heads, knows the exact number of days he’s given them. 

Jesus did not love Lazarus generally. Jesus knew Lazarus: Knew what he looked like, knew what he sounded like, knew — even as we’ll see in a moment — the details concerning Lazarus’ sickness and where it was headed. Jesus knew Lazarus — and his sisters by the way (see that in verse 5) — he knew them personally, and loved them personally. 

How would you, this morning, describe Jesus’ love for you? Do you believe Jesus knows what you look like? What you sound like? What difficulties and sorrows have befallen you? Do you believe that if you, like Lazarus, were to get sick. Get hurt. Need help, and send for Jesus — Do you think Jesus would need a reminder of who you were? Need to jog his memory: “now how exactly is it again that I know this person?” Do you think he’d not be the first to pause the messenger: “wait, wait, wait — I don’t need you to describe who she is. I don’t need you to tell me who he is. I love that man. I love that woman. And I have since before the foundation of the world.” Look, Jesus’ just got done telling us:

John 10:14,

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own.”

John 10:27,

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them.” 

Jesus, my brothers and sisters, personally loves his people. That’s the first truth about Jesus: Jesus personally loves his people. 

Verse 4:

“But when Jesus heard it [that is, heard that Lazarus was sick] he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’”

Now, we’ve got to ask: what, exactly, is Jesus getting at here. He says, “This illness does not lead to death.” But, I mean, doesn’t it? Lazarus does, in fact, end up dying, right? I mean, he’ll be four days in the tomb by the time Jesus finally arrives in Bethany. Four days without a heart beating. Four days without lungs breathing. Four days without any activity in the brain. He dies. 

And so, when Jesus says, “This illness does not lead to death.” What’s he mean? I think there’s layers of meaning here, but at the top, is purpose. That is, the purpose of the illness is not death. Yes, his illness will lead to his death, but its purpose is “for the glory of God.”

And now, we’ve seen something like this before in John already. Just two chapters earlier, John 9, the disciples ask Jesus concerning the blind man, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered in terms of purpose: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

There’s purpose to the suffering. Purpose to the plight. That blind man was not blind for nothing. Lazarus is not sick for nothing. The purpose of God is to display the glory of God through the blindness and the illness. So, that’s shared ground between John 9 and John 11. 

Now, what’s relatively new here, not only in John 11 but the book of John as a whole, is the complementary dynamic between the Father’s glory and the Son’s. And, you gotta see this with me. This is an amazing claim being made here by Jesus in verse 4. So, look there with me. Verse 4: Jesus does not just say: “It is for the glory of God.” But, “It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 

The Son is clearly after the Father’s glory, yes? And, the way that glory is revealed to the world is through him, through the Son. They are respective, in other words, function in tandem. Jesus magnifies the Father through his obedience to him. The Father magnifies Jesus through his honoring of him. Jesus goes to the cross, it glorifies the Father. The Father raises him from the grave to restore honor to the Son. The Father and the Son’s relationship is one of mutual glorification.

Now, remember, all of this is under the banner of “Jesus prizes his Father’s glory.” Point one: Jesus personally loves his people. Point two: Jesus prizes his Father’s Glory. And the fact that the second point follows the first is so important, so helpful, especially in our particular cultural moment. 

For we live in an age where it is common not just for the world, but for churches, ministries, writers of worship lyrics, to tout a view of Jesus that suggests we are supreme in his mind. We rank highest in his sight. We (and I want to say this as graciously as I can) are almost like God to him. The message is that he needs us, he’s incomplete without us, he is unhappy unless we’re with him — it’s like we’re god to Jesus.

Now, look, church, Jesus loves us. Point one — he loves you personally. But he does not worship you or me. Jesus loves us, but he does not need us. Jesus loves us, and he’s for us, but he’s not only for us, as if we are the only thing in all of life that matters to Jesus. 

Listen, Jesus prizes his Father’s glory, and does so supremely. His highest allegiance is not to us, but to his Father. And that is really, really good news, because if that were not true of Jesus, then he’d be a sinner in need of a Savior just like you and me. Jesus prizes his Father’s glory, and, he loves us personally.

So, Jesus personally loves his people. And Jesus prizes his Father’s glory. Finally: Jesus pursues our very best.

Verse 5:

“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”

Read that again. When he heard that Lazarus was ill — he’d become aware of the need, aware of Lazarus’ suffering, aware of the sisters’ anxiety concerning their brother, and then, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

It’s a contradiction, isn’t it? Seems it should either read, “Since Jesus hadn’t yet heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer.” Or, “When he heard that Lazarus was ill, he decided not to stay two days longer, but to race on over to Bethany instead.” But, as it is, the text reads: So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”  What do we make of this? What’s Jesus after? Well, that’s precisely the point. What Jesus is after is our very best. 

See it with me. Watch how this thing unfolds. Verse 7:

Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again. The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?

Simple question, right? Jesus, you mean to go right back to where there’s a mob seeking to kill you? It’s a simple question. But watch Jesus’ answer. Verse 9:

“Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.” 

Who’s the subject of that answer? Jesus had been the subject of the disciples’ question, right? “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” Who’s the subject of Jesus’ answer? Who is it that’s walking in the day, seeing the light of the world (not being, but seeing the light of the world), and thereby not stumbling? 

It’s not Jesus. Jesus is the light of the world. Who is it that’s seeing the light of the world? It’s the disciples. Jesus’ answer is about them. Jesus is after what’s best for them. And he knows they’re frightened by the mob in Judea. Frightened by the danger awaiting them there. And so, he’s telling them, “So long as you follow me there, keep me, the light of the world, in front of you, you’re not going to stumble.” 

He’s saying, “stay with me. You’ve got nothing to fear so long as you stay with me.” And now here’s the warning. Verse 10:

“But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”

This is the alternative for the disciples. Rather than love the light, and follow Jesus into Judea, they could love the world instead. They could remain in the comfort and safety offered them east of the Jordan. But since Jesus would then be gone, so too would the light. And there, cloaked in darkness, that’s when their stumbling would occur. 

Those are the two options on the table: Light with Jesus as they head into danger. Or comfort without Jesus as they stumble in the dark. And Thomas is the first to get it. Verse 16, skip down there with me for a moment. Verse 16:

“So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’”

Thomas gets it. He gets it. “Brothers, it is better, better to go with Jesus to our deaths than live here in the dark. Let us go with him, lest we stumble.”

Jesus is after our best, brothers and sisters. Not our convenience, not our safety, but our best. And he’s willing to delay the miracle, willing to allow Lazarus to die, willing to have sorrow fill the hearts of Mary and Martha. He’s willing to bring his disciples away from comfort east of the Jordan. He’s willing to lead them right on into the danger of Judea.

He’s willing to do all this because he does not simply want what’s good for Mary, Martha, and his disciples. But he wants what’s very best. And what’s very best is awaiting them in Judea — waiting for them at the tomb of Lazarus. Verse 14:

“Then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.” 

Jesus could have gone to Lazarus sooner. Had he, he would have kept Lazarus from dying. Would’ve healed him. Would’ve restored him back to full health. And, oh, how glad that would have made the disciples. How relieved that would have made Lazarus’ sisters. But it would have been a gladness and relief with a cost. Their reception of that good gift from Jesus would’ve meant their missing out on the greatest gift. And Jesus would not have that. 

Jesus aims to give us what’s not merely good, but best — the gift of faith in him.

“…for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.” 

What if suffering was a necessary ingredient for you to maintain your faith in Jesus? Discomfort? Loss and pain? What if, in order to keep you, Jesus needed to delay his help, let the bad news come, allow the tears to fall, and the sorrow to descend, and even stay for days?

Could you trust in such a moment:

• “Jesus is after my best?”

• “Jesus is giving me what I most need?”

• “Jesus is taking care of me?”

How do we hold onto our trust in Jesus when he’s yet to stop the sorrow?

We follow him.

We follow him from the Jordan, to Bethany, to Judea, to Jerusalem, and up the hill of Golgotha to see him there hanging suffering there for you and for me. Can we trust the man upon the cross? Can we trust the man with scars in his hands? Can we trust the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. Jesus died to give us his very best. 

Now, what leads us to the table this morning, is that death which Jesus willingly went toward, that he might purchase for you and for me a seat at his table. Forgiven by him, washed pure by his blood, restored to fellowship — this table is a foretaste of our future — sitting down at the table of fellowship with Jesus forever.

John 10:22-42,

At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— 36 do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” 39 Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

40 He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. 41 And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” 42 And many believed in him there.

I want you to think, for a moment, about someone in your life who rejects Jesus. Why do they reject Jesus? 

I really want you to try and answer that question. What is it about him that drives them away?

Maybe the Christians they know have disappointed or even hurt them. Maybe they had a bad church experience somewhere along the way. Or they’re sinning in a relationship, and aren’t willing to stop. Or they had a child who came out as a homosexual, and they couldn’t accept what the Bible says about homosexuality. Or they look at all the suffering in the world — wars and poverty and cancer — and can’t conceive how there could be a God. Maybe they can’t stomach hell — eternal conscious torment.

I think that question is what our passage is about this morning: Why would anyone hate and reject Jesus? . . . And why would anyone love and follow him?

As we’ve been walking through this Gospel, there are really only three responses to him. Some think he’s crazy. They seem to kind of pity him. We saw this two weeks ago, in the first half of chapter 10, verse 19:

“There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, ‘He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?’”

In other words, “This guy’s clearly nuts. Did you hear who he thinks he is? Why would you give him the time of day? Why listen to him?”

Others hate Jesus, and they do everything to stop him. They’re not content to stop listening, dismiss, and ignore him. They want to kill him. They actually try to beat him to death with rocks. That’s how angry and afraid they are. We’ll see this kind of hatred again in our passage this morning, but this isn’t the first time. Again and again, they tried to arrest him, silence him, and kill him. 

Some think he’s crazy. Others hate and attack him. A few leave and risk everything to have him. They weren’t just saying, “Yeah, you know what, I think he’s right about that. No, they were saying he’s worth losing everything.” I think about the man born blind in chapter 9. Jesus spits on the ground, makes some mud, rubs the man’s eyes — and he can see! The Pharisees are angry that he’d open someone’s eyes on the Sabbath (can’t do that), so they confront the man’s parents. Even his own parents are so afraid to be associated with Jesus, they say, “Go ask our son. He’s of age. He will speak for himself.” That’s how dangerous all of this was. The son they bore and raised and guided around his whole life because he couldn’t see — he can see, and they can see that he can see — and they don’t want to talk about it! So the Pharisees confront the son and ask him what happened. He tells them. And they say, “You were born in utter sin,” and they cast him out. That wasn’t like, you need to leave the room now. That was “You’re cut off from everything now.” You’re not welcome anymore — your identity, your relationships, your livelihood, you’re finished. Some think he’s crazy. Others hate and attack him. A few leave and risk everything to have him. I really might lose everything to follow this man — but if I have him, it’ll be worth it.

I’ll add a fourth response here that I don’t see anywhere in the Gospel but I see everywhere today: Many in our day hear Jesus and just scroll right by — no hatred, no confusion, no love, just cool disinterest. They don’t care enough to be curious or offended. They treat him like a guy would treat an ad for skin care, or like a girl would skip a YouTube video about how to fix the drive belt on a dryer. What do they hear when they meet Jesus? They hear “cottage cheese,” “real estate tax,” “math homework.” That’s how they feel about Jesus — the Son of God. I almost wish they hated him, at least then they’d be taking him seriously. 

Jews in the first century didn’t have this fourth option. They couldn’t scroll by this man. His works were too great to ignore:

• He turned water to wine.

• He healed an invalid.

• He healed the man blind from birth.

• He healed the official’s son from afar.

• He fed 5,000 people with one man’s leftovers.

• He walked on the sea.

• We’re about to see him raise the dead in the next chapter.

No, Jews at that time knew he was either the Messiah or an imposter. He was either everything they had ever wanted, for hundreds and thousands of years — or he threatened everything about them. They didn’t have a fourth option, and I want you to hear this morning: We don’t either. We might think we do, but we really don’t. His life and teaching demand a response: either pity, hostility, or worship. Those are still the options. Either he was a mentally ill babbler, or he was a lying egomaniac who’s ruined millions of lives, or he was the very Son of God. 

And some of us might say, “Well, of course, he’s the Son of God” here on Sunday morning, but then we treat him like a skincare product the rest of the week. What do you see when you meet Jesus? And why do you see what you see while so many hate what they see?

That’s the main question this text is addressing: Why do so many hate Jesus when he finally comes?

We begin in verse 22:

At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. . . .”

The question might sound sincere: “Oh Jesus, are you the Christ we’ve been waiting for — Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace? Just tell us, so we can follow you.” But it’s not sincere. It’s sinister. They’re trying to trap him. They want him to say something they can kill him for — “say it plainly, Jesus.”

Why don’t the Jews believe him? Why do his own people try everything to kill Jesus? This problem is raised in the very first verses of the Gospel, John 1:11:

“He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”

Why did so many not believe? Why do you not believe (if you don’t believe)? That’s the question at the heart of our text this morning. And before I get to Jesus’s answer in our passage, we’ve already gotten two answers in the book of John. Why does anyone reject and hate Jesus?

First, they don’t believe because they love their sin. This is John 3:19–20:

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

Why did people hate and reject Jesus? Because they secretly loved darkness. They loved their sin, so they hid their sin, and stayed in bed with their sin. And Jesus went around exposing people’s sin, and telling them they must repent, so they tried to kill him. Their secret sin kept them from seeing the Messiah who would save them from their sin. But they didn’t want to be saved from their sin. They didn’t want to go to hell, and they didn’t want their sin to be exposed in front of others, but they didn’t want to leave that sin behind either. They didn’t love Jesus because they loved their sin, and no one can serve two masters. If that’s you, you can’t serve two masters.

Second, they don’t believe because they live to please man. They live for the approval and applause of other people. This is John 5:43–44:

“I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

Why did people hate and reject Jesus? Because they lived for the glory and praise of man. They cared too much what other people thought about them, and they knew what it would cost them socially to get in the boat with Jesus. The reputation and approval they’d worked so hard to earn would be gone. And that vanity, that me-worship blinded them to Jesus. They loved the mirror, and so they could never love the Messiah. “How could you believe?” he says.

Jesus gives a third reason now, though, and it’s the most blunt of the three. Again, they ask, verse 24,

“How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

Jesus answered them, verse 25,

“I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because . . .”

Because what? Here’s the third reason why so many hated and rejected him. Why do the people you love not believe in Jesus?

“…you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.”

You do not believe in me, because you are not mine. 

Whoa, what does that mean? He goes on, verse 27:

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

You do not believe in me, because the Father has not given you to me. It must be given to you.

At the earliest, deepest, most decisive root, our belief in God is not a work we achieve, but a gift we receive.

The Father gifts us to the Son, and in handing us to the Son, he gifts life and faith to us by the Spirit. Why does anyone who believes in Jesus believe in Jesus? Because the Father has given us to the Son. We’ve been born again. We saw this in John 3:6-8, remember:

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

You believe because you were born again, and you had as much control over your second birth as you had over your first. God chose you and gave you new birth. From beginning to end, you are a child of sovereign grace.

“But” — Jesus says to the angry mob — “my Father hasn’t given you to me, and so you are not among my sheep, and that’s why you don’t believe.” You hate me because the Father you claim to know and worship hasn’t chosen you. He hasn’t given you sheep ears yet. And so while others hear my voice and it sounds like the Hallelujah chorus, you hear nails on a chalkboard. The Father has sent his own Son into the world, so that anyone who believes in him might not perish but have eternal live, and yet in your ears, that Word of heaven sounds like hell.

And what do they do? “The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.” They prove who they are. They prove they’re not his sheep.

A brief aside here on the next few verses, the most confusing part of this passage. When they pick up stones, Jesus says,

“I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 

The Jews answer back, verse 33,

“It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

And then Jesus does this strange thing. He quotes Psalm 82: 

“Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came — and Scripture cannot be broken — do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

What’s he doing? It’s difficult to really say, and I won’t get into all the possible interpretations. Good scholars I trust, though, get to the end of their sophisticated theological and exegetical explanations, and basically say, “He was buying time.” He’s about to be murdered, the rocks are about to fly, and so he buys a little more time. 

The argument — “The Scriptures sometimes call humans ‘gods,’ so why would you stone me for saying I’m the Son of God?” — the argument certainly doesn’t prove that he’s God or the Son of God. And it doesn’t really solve the problem of blasphemy either, because Jesus is saying he’s more than whatever humans Psalm 82 is talking about. No, I think he’s buying a little time in an incredibly heated, volatile moment, by saying in a roundabout way, “You don’t understand your own Scriptures, and that’s very obvious because of how you’re treating me.”

Now why would he buy time? He’s already said, verse 18,

“No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.”

So why stall with a Psalm 82 riddle? It’s not for his safety; he doesn’t need tricks or riddles. No, he buys a little more time for them. What does he say next? 

Verse 37:

“If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Even if you can’t bring yourself to believe my words, believe my works. Do you hear his patience with them? They’re holding rocks, arms raised, and he’s still pleading with them to repent and believe. Hear my voice! Hear my voice! And if you can’t hear my voice, then look at what the works are saying: that the Father has anointed and sent me.

“Believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Believe the works for now, so that you might finally hear and believe me. And what do they do in the face of all his patience? Verse 39:

“Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.”

They hated, rejected, and attacked him. They treated the Son like a wolf. Why? Because they loved their sin, because they only cared what others think, and because they’re not one of his chosen sheep. The Father has not made them his sheep, not yet anyway.

Why did Jesus take this approach with them?

“You do not believe because my Father hasn’t chosen you and given you to me.”

You won’t find this in an “Evangelism for Beginners” book, right? You’re picking up stones because my Father isn’t your Father, and you’re not my sheep. 

No, we talk about election with Christians — this is how you were saved. Why would he go there with really hostile, lost people?

Because he wanted to make it clear to a group of violently proud men that the Son of God came to save the humble and oppose the proud.

This kind of talking draws the humble and infuriates the proud. Even in this room, some of you are bristling inside. There’s too many Americans in here for someone not to. I don’t like that! I make my own choices. I make the decisions around here. I come to my own conclusions. This God won’t save proud people, people who want credit for their saving. He won’t save someone who comes to him holding up their intelligence, their decision, their good works. No, from beginning to end, he does the saving and he gets the glory. 

This Savior is calling sheep — and this crowd doesn’t want to be sheep. He’s calling children — and they don’t want to become like children. He chooses the sheep, he predestines the sheep, he justifies the sheep, he calls the sheep, he gives new birth to the sheep, and one day he will glorify the sheep — and no one can take them out of his hand. Verse 29 again:

“My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”

That makes Jesus a refuge for the humble and a terror to the proud. He’s calling sheep who are happy to be chosen sheep, born again and saved by grace — and they don’t want to be sheep. So are you okay being a sheep? Can you love a God who calls and saves like that?

You might think, “Well, if no one believes unless the Father chooses, then what can I do? I guess I’ll just have to head home and wait for a call.” No, he’s calling right now. If you want to come this morning, you can hear his voice. He’s given you a gift. If there’s any impulse in you to come, then come! 

This is the invitation, John 6:35–37:

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” 

Do you hear him this morning? Are you drawn to this Jesus? Are you ready to come out of the darkness, and to finally leave your sin behind, and to stop living for what others think about you? Do you want to come, somewhere deep inside of you? He won’t cast you out. If you come in humble faith — I’m a sheep, and I’m so happy to be your sheep — he will never, ever turn you away. And no one will be able to snatch you from his hand. 

I want you to be like the sheep in verses 40–42. I love where this chapter ends. The Jews sought to arrest him and he escapes, and now verse 40:

He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. 41 And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” 42 And many believed in him there.

He went across the Jordan, and he lifted up his voice, and the stones stopped flying and the sheep came running.

The sheep heard his voice. They heard him then, and they still hear him now. Oh that God would do this in the Cities today, in New Brighton, in Burnsville, in Woodbury. He was calling along the Jordan, and now he’s calling here along the Mississippi. Many came to him and believed in him there, and we pray that many, many would hear his voice and come to him here. I’m so jealous that our legacy in these Cities would be John’s legacy in that town of Bethany:

“Everything those people said about this man was true.”

As we come to the Table now, I want to end back in verse 33. When they pick up the stones, Jesus said to them,

“What work are you stoning me for?”

The Jews answer,

“It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

And in all their blindness and hatred, they’re almost right. It’s beautiful when Jesus’s enemies preach the gospel for him, isn’t it? We hate you and we’re going to kill you “because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Almost.

No, this is not a man who made himself God, but this is a God who has made himself man — for us. Remember the very first verses of this Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”

That’s why he could say, “I and the Father are one.”

“And that Word became flesh and dwelt among the sheep, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Have you seen his glory? Have you heard his voice? Have you tasted and seen that he is good? Have you believed in his great name? 

Then we’d invite you to eat and drink with us. If you’re not yet a believer in Jesus, we’d ask you to let the bread and the cup pass. But let today be the day you put down your stones, put down your pride, join the sheep, and experience abundant life with us.

Mark 3:7-35,

Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea 8 and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. 9 And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, 10 for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. 11 And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.

13 And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. 14 And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach 15 and have authority to cast out demons. 16 He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); 17 James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); 18 Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, 19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”

22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” 23 And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.

28 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

[Full manuscript forthcoming.]

John 10:7-18,

So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

I wonder what comes to your mind when you hear the phrase “abundant life.”

David Livingstone (1813–1873) was a Scottish Christian and physician and pioneer missionary, who sailed for Africa in 1840. He spent 16 years in the African wild and returned to London as a hero in late 1856. He had spent the prime of his life encountering physical difficulties and spiritual darkness. And soon he would go back for more.

While on furlough, Livingstone spoke to students at Cambridge and explained why he left the comforts of England to serve as a missionary. It had not been easy, and he acknowledged the costs: anxiety, sickness, suffering, frequent danger. He spoke of “foregoing the common conveniences and charities of this life.” But, very memorably, he insisted that this was no sacrifice, but a privilege: “I never made a sacrifice.”

The gain of godly sacrifice so outweighed the pains that, in hindsight, it did not feel sacrificial. The sacrifices were real, but the privilege, and joys, far greater.

Livingstone embraced the hard life in Africa not just because he found life in Jesus, but because he had found abundant life in Jesus. He wasn’t just saved; he was satisfied. He found life to the full. Not minimal life but over-the-top life, more-than-enough life — life spilling over in such joy that he would risk great pains to bring others that great joy.

For Livingstone, abundant life didn’t mean a comfortable, easy life. It meant he had enough in Jesus, more than enough, to embrace difficulty and discomfort.

We come this morning to John 10, and this amazing declaration of Jesus to us in verse 10:

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

I want you to hear Jesus speaking that to you this morning:

“I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.”

Not just life. Jesus says “have life and have it abundantly.” What is he adding when he adds “abundance”? Why not stop at life. Why say abundant life? That’s our focus this morning.

As many of you know, I greatly appreciate Don Carson, and named a son after him, and want to give you this preliminary word from him about this abundant life offered to us in John 10. Talking about the image of the shepherd and the sheep, he says that “abundant life” means 

contented, flourishing sheep, not terrorized by [thieves]; outside the narrative world, it means that the life Jesus’ true disciples enjoy is not to be construed as more time to fill (merely ‘everlasting’ life), but life at its scarcely imagined best, life to be lived. (Gospel According to John, 385)

That is the life Jesus is offering you this morning. Not just more time to fill. Not just getting out of hell. Not just being unstained from the world and watching clean videos or NFL or keeping up with the news. You are invited into “life at its scarcely imagined best.” You are offered “life to be lived,” life worth living.

Let me be clear: the main point of this passage is the greatness of Jesus. 

He is the good shepherd. He enters by the God-appointed door (and doesn’t climb in another way, like the Pharisees). He calls his sheep by name, and they hear his voice, and follow him. He leads them out into a life of abundance. And he is the one who genuinely cares for his sheep and willingly lays down his life for them.

The main point is the greatness of Jesus.

And, get this, the abundant life of the sheep demonstrates the greatness of the shepherd. When the sheep thrive, their shepherd looks great. The shepherd gets the glory in the flourishing, abundant life of his sheep. 

Jesus is glorified in the satisfaction of his people — and that not apart from him, but in him, conscious of him, recognizing him.

Ultimately, we’re talking about people here, not sheep. Happy sheep, full of green grass, beside still waters, don’t look up and say, “Isn’t my shepherd great?” But Christians aren’t animals. We’re not actually sheep. We’re meant to consciously enjoy our shepherd, through his care for us, and say out loud, “Isn’t he great?”

So, we want to know and experience this “abundant life” that shows the greatness of Jesus. How might Jesus’s very words in John 10 help us with what this abundant life is, and is not?

I see at least five aspects of this abundant life that Jesus offers us.

The story of our quest for abundance began in a lavish, abundant garden, but quickly came the reality of sin. In a world of yes, our first parents sinned against God’s one no and plunged us all into sin and its curse and its misery. We all are born into sin, and we all sin. Ecclesiastes 7:20,

“Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.”

Everyone in this room has sinned, and sins. And that’s the gravest danger in every life in this room: your own sin, my own sin. The biggest threat is not what others have done or might do to us. And not even what Satan himself might do to us. The greatest threat is our own sin, which separates us from a holy God, and deserves his righteous wrath. We have to get this first to be able to move forward in the story of abundance.

So, we begin with the Shepherd’s rescue. Verse 11, Jesus says,

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

Why would he lay down his life? Because the sheep, his people, deserve to die. We have sinned against him. We deserve eternal separation from him, and eternal condemnation from him. Except that, again in verse 15, “I lay down my life for the sheep.”

And that he “lays it down” means that he does it willingly. Intentionally. Purposefully. Jesus wasn’t the victim of a first-century accident. Nor was Jesus’s life merely “taken from him.” We often grieve the tragic “taking of life,” and we should. And there’s a sense in which Jesus was killed unjustly. These same Pharisees he confronts in John 9 and 10 increasingly want to get rid of him and soon will conspire with the Jerusalem elite. In one sense Jesus’s life would be taken by sinners.

Yet in another, more fundamental sense, no one would take it from him. Look at verses 17–18:

“I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.”

Who can talk like this? Anyone can choose to lay down their life, but who — who but God himself in human flesh — has authority to take it up again? Oh the greatness of Jesus.

The reason Jesus’s perfect, sinless life can be effective for the rescuing of his sinful, hell-deserving people is that he lays down his life willingly, on purpose, and he takes it up again.

And so, first, the abundant life is a rescued life. Jesus died to rescue us from our own sin. From our sin nature. From past sins. And he is continuing to rescue us from the misery of indwelling sin.

That leads us to a second aspect.

Forgiveness gets the penalty of sin out of the way that the rescue might lead to a real, personal, life-giving relationship with the Shepherd. To be related and relate to him as persons. To know him and be personally known by him. To love him, and be loved by him, who calls his own by name.

Church, this is stunning. This is the heart of the real life, the abundant life. This is the single most important thing to say about “abundant life.” Number 1 was just life. We are sinners; we deserve death. Jesus lays down his own life that our sins might be covered, that we might be forgiven, that we might have life, eternal life, and not misery, forever.

But then, to that life, Jesus adds these precious words: “and have it abundantly.” Now we get to the very heart and bottom of this passage: verses 14-15, which is the most important statement in the passage. Look at verses 14-15. Jesus says,

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father . . . .”

Did you get that? Let’s start with verse 15 and work backwards. Jesus says, The Father knows me, and I know the Father. Amazing. The eternal divine life of the Godhead (talk about abundant!) — Father knowing and loving his Son, and Son knowing and loving his Father.

Then see that “just as” at the beginning of verse 15? Jesus makes a claim about an experience of “mutual knowledge” in verse 14 and then he compares it to the “mutual knowledge” between him and his divine Father. And he compares them by saying “just as.” He doesn’t say “contrary to” or “unlike.” He doesn’t contrast these relationships but says “just as.” He compares them positively. He says they are alike:

“Just as my Father knows me and I know my Father, so I know my own [people] and my own know me.”

Church, this is the heart of the abundant life. The abundant life is not food and drink and splendid clothes and fancy cars and mansions of glory, and endless hours on devices. What makes this life abundant is knowing and enjoying the Shepherd, and being known and enjoyed by him.

Which is why the voice of Jesus is so prominent in John 10. Voice is the medium of relationship. Did you notice how many times his voice in mentioned? 

• Verse 3: the sheep hear his voice

• Verse 3: he calls his own sheep by name (how personal!)

• Verse 4: the sheep follow him, for they know his voice

• Verse 16: other sheep too will listen to his voice

Have you ever reflected on how important voices are to relationships? How well could you get to know someone without words? You can see what’s on the outside. They can gesture and use facial expressions to try to communicate. But words reveal with clarity what’s on the inside. The voice and its words are the primary medium of relationship.

And this morning Jesus himself, risen, reigning, glorified, alive, is speaking to us through his words in John 10, saying, in essence, Where are you trying to find life? Your human soul was not only made to live but to live abundantly — lavishly, richly, contentedly, fully. Where are you going for life? Come to me.

So, the full-to-overflowing life, the life worth living, life at its scarcely best imagined, abundant life at its height and at its bottom is: Jesus knows his own and his own know him — just as the Father knows him and he knows the Father.

The point is this: Come to the Good Shepherd and keep coming. Hear his voice in his word. Enjoy the privilege of prayer. Follow him. The abundant life is life in and with the Good Shepherd. But it is not life with him only. There’s a third aspect here.

Life in Jesus expands to include others. It is full to overflowing, and spills over to draw others in. First, other sheep who are fellow believers. The abundant life is not a solitary life. It is a life in relationship with others who have found abundant life in Jesus.

And it expands to include “other sheep” not yet in the fold. Verse 16 starts with such an important “and”:

“And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

Now we need to clarify a few things about this image of the sheepfold and the gate and the shepherd coming and calling to his sheep. 

Picture a large, fenced-in, fold, shared by multiple families. The sheep are kept safe in the fold; a gatekeeper guards the one gate, so no one can access the sheep except the owners. When a rightful shepherd comes, he opens the gate, and the shepherd comes in and lifts up his voice. His own sheep know his voice and come to him, and he leads them out to green grass and live the abundant life of sheep, and come back in for safety.

But remember, Jesus is here confronting the Pharisees. The sheepfold is the Jewish people. Jesus comes, and lifts up his voice, and his sheep, not the whole pen, but just his sheep follow his voice, and the rest remain.

Then in verse 16, Jesus introduces “other sheep that are not of this fold.” That is, not Jews. The Son of God has come; he has entered the fold through the gate as a rightful owner and shepherd. He has lifted up his voice and his sheep are coming to him, not all the Jews, but those who are his. And Jesus says he has “other sheep” not of this Jewish fold: Gentiles.

So, there is not only a narrowing when the good shepherd comes, but also an expanding. He keeps calling to Jews, and he calls to Gentiles. And as many “other sheep” as are his, he brings. And the one shepherd makes “one flock” of his Jewish and Gentile sheep.

So, the abundant life is not just me and the shepherd, but it is expansive.

If anything in us balks at that, we need to know this: Jesus is the kind of shepherd in whom joy increases as other sheep join. Resist the scarcity mindset that would say, If more come, that means I get less of Jesus. It’s the opposite. The more that truly come, the more who are truly changed and made holy, the more we see of Jesus, the more we enjoy him, the more he's glorified, the more we’re amazed at him, the more we praise him.

The reason I began this sermon with David Livingstone is verse 16 brought him to mind. It appears on his gravestone, in the voice of the Shepherd: “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring.”

So, the abundant life is a rescued life, a relational life, an expansive life, and fourth, it’s embattled.

Embattle means opposed. Challenged. As Jesus calls out his “one flock” from among Jews and Gentiles, his people are drawn out from others, and various tensions and divisions are inevitable. We see it right here in the very context where Jesus is teaching:

9:40: “Some of the Pharisees near him . . .”

10:19: “There was again a division among the Jews because of these words . . .” 

So, tension up front with the Pharisees; division among Jews at the end, right on cue. And Jesus mentions robbers and thieves and wolves — that is, opponents and threats. For now, abundant life does not mean an unopposed life. Abundant life is not an easy life, comfortable life. Yes, it is truly abundant life already, in knowing Jesus, but also it is not yet in its fullness, with every enemy defeated and every tear wiped away.

There are costs to be counted in this abundant life. Divisions and tensions come. Don’t be surprised by them. They will come. We don’t need to provoke them unnecessarily. Make Jesus the issue, not your own immaturity. And when divisions come because of him, be careful about how quickly you rush to smooth over tensions. Often unbelievers need the relational tension and felt sense of division to ponder the real issues in life. Don’t give in too quick just to keep the artificial peace. Let it sit, and pray. And be ready for them to come around and receive them humbly; be the kind of person in humility that people can expect will receive them back humbly.

Life now in Jesus is already abundant, but not yet fully so. Greater abundance is coming. Ephesians 2:7: “in the coming ages [God will] show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” But this life in him even now is abundant enough to be enough in sorrows and pain and suffering.

So, abundant life is rescued, relational, expansive, embattled, and finally secure.

Abundant life is kept by the good shepherd. He guards his sheep. He keeps us. He keeps us secure, even in the tensions and divisions and many sufferings and sorrows. His ultimate protection is a vital part of what it means to have a good shepherd. Verses 12-13:

“He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.”

But not Jesus. He cares. He says, “I am the good shepherd.” When he laid down his life, he didn’t stay dead. If the shepherd’s dead, the sheep are goners. But Jesus took up his life again. And he always lives to intercede for us and keep us. His resurrection life is invincible, and he sits in victory on heaven’s throne, knowing and protecting (from ultimate harm) every sheep who is his own.

Which brings us once more to his Father. What does Jesus mean in verse 17 when he says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again”? Is Jesus saying that he earns the love of his Father by laying down his life for us? The point is more subtle.

What does a loving father do when his son accomplishes something great? He is overjoyed. He rejoices abundantly. He delights in his son. He loves his son. He’s always loved his son, and he feels a special surge of love for his son when he achieves something great.

Do you know what is the greatest single achievement in the history of the world? It’s this good shepherd laying down his life for his sheep, and taking up his life again in victory, in conquest, in triumph over sin and death and Satan.

Which brings us to the Table.

We worked through Hebrews in 2023, and we finished with that great shepherd doxology in Hebrews 13:20-21. Listen for the connection to John 10:

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Here the shepherd is great — did you catch that? And the reason he is great, says Hebrews, is “the blood of the eternal covenant.” Jesus shed the redeeming blood. Remember this is about the greatness of Jesus. He did not die by accident. He was no mere victim. No one took his life from him. He laid it down of his own accord. And he took it up again. And so at this Table we remember his greatness.

John 9:1-5,

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Well today is little unique because last year when we built out the preaching schedule, we decided to devote two weeks to this one story in John Chapter 9 … and the reason was because, in God’s providence, we understood this chapter addresses one of the most relevant topics in the human experience — which is: the reality of suffering in this world. 

And I’ve thought we should have a sermon just on that topic, and so that’s my plan today. Now, I’m calling this a “sermon” loosely. I want to warn you (and ask for your graciousness) because today might feel more like a theology lecture than a sermon. This is a heavy topic, and I want to say some things very precisely.

We’re talking about one of the biggest questions we could ever ask. It goes like this: 

How can God be all-powerful and all-good, and suffering still exist?

Maybe you’ve thought a lot about this, or maybe it’s never crossed your mind. 

Maybe you’ve almost given up faith because of this question, or maybe it was the topic of your PhD dissertation — we are a mixed group, I get that — but with God’s help, I hope to speak to all of us this morning, and my goal is to help us build an everyday theology of suffering.

And that “everyday” part is important. I mean practical and useful. I don’t want us to just think biblically about this, but I want us to put these truths to work where we live — I want us to endure hardships because of these truths; I want to comfort the hurting because of these truths; I want us to lead whole lives before and unto God because of these truths.

So God-willing, with John 9 as our foundation, I want to show you three things we do when we’re confronted with human suffering … 

This starts in verse 1. John tells us very simply:

“As he [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.”

And we might not think much about that, but in verse 2 the disciples ask Jesus about this man, which must mean that they saw Jesus see the man — Jesus seeing the man must have been enough of a thing that the disciples asked Jesus about him.

Does that make sense? This is not something that the disciples do with everyone. They’ve been in some pretty big crowds with Jesus; they’ve seen a lot of people; they can’t ask Jesus about every person they encounter, but for some reason they ask Jesus about this man. 

And the best explanation for why is that Jesus must have looked at this man in a way that made the disciples notice.

Try to imagine the scene … Jesus and his disciples are just walking by — they’re around a lot of people — but here was a blind man, a beggar (verse 8 says), a regular in that area.

A lot of people had seen him before because he would sit there and beg, something he had probably done his whole adult life at least, since he had been blind from birth. And his parents don’t come off as especially supportive in verse 21 (I guess they figured if he was old enough to answer questions on his own, he could also make a living on his own).

We don’t know all the details, but we know Jesus could see him, and we know the disciples saw Jesus see him, and in verse 2, they asked Jesus a question that is full of assumptions. I want you to see this.

Look at verse 2: 

And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

There’s a lot behind this question: I count at least four assumptions:

1. They assume there’s a spiritual connection to physical maladies.

2. They assume that connection has something to do with sin.

3. They assume that connection could be identified in an answer.

4. They assume Jesus is the person who knows the answer.

There’s a lot going on here in this one question, but there’s actually one key assumption that’s foundational to these four. It’s that the disciples assumed blindness to be a form of human suffering. 

They considered blindness to be a malady, a disorder, an affliction. 

And when they saw Jesus see the blindness they understood that Jesus thinks the same way about it as they do. There’s an agreement between Jesus and the disciples that blindness is not the way it’s supposed to be.

Which means: they encountered Evil and recognized it for what it is.

And heads up: I’ve just said “evil” (instead of suffering) — and let me explain: 

Evil is the broadest categorical way to talk about what’s wrong with the world.

I know we often use the word “evil” to talk about things that are really bad, but I’m using Evil as a noun. It’s a reality … as in: Evil is the antonym of Good (like there’s Good and Evil). This is capital-E Evil.

And when Evil is committed it’s called Guilt; when Evil is endured it’s called Suffering.

So Suffering comes under Evil — it’s an experience that results because of Evil — but for this message, we’re going to focus on Evil as the main problem; Evil is the real issue. 

And everything wrong with the world comes back to it. Evil is behind everything from wicked acts like first-degree murder to a physical disability like blindness to an elbow injury in a volleyball game.

And even broader than that — Evil is anything in God’s good creational order that gets distorted. J. I. Packer says evil includes “all facts, physical and moral, that prompt the [accurate] feeling, ‘This ought not to be.’”

Have you ever seen or heard of something that made you feel that? . . .

To bring it more down to where we live. One theologian explains:

…[E]vil is ‘some thing’ that occurs in experience and ought not to. It has occurred, but it is not what you would expect, and spontaneously and whole-heartedly we say “No!” to it … No! is the cry of human beings in the face of [evil].

Have you ever seen or heard of something that made you just say “No!”? … 

No! … No! No!

I remember being 14 years old and finding out that my younger cousin had died in an ATV accident, and that’s what came out, just No! … 

I tried to count last week how many times I’ve had that response to things, and it’s been too many. You can’t count them. None of us can.

“No!” is the visceral human response to Evil — we’ve all said it, and we must never stop staying it. Never.

As long we we’re in this world of sin, we must continue to protest the reality of evil. That’s what the No means. 

It means evil does not belong here. 

It is not the way it ought to be.

God made this world and said it was Good, and Evil is not Good — so we hate it. Psalm 97, 10:

“O you who love the Lord, hate evil!” 

Romans 12:9,

“Hate what is evil.”

That’s a protest.

Our protest varies in intensity with the magnitude of the evil, but the protest must always be there, which starts with recognizing evil when you see it. 

That’s what Jesus does here (and the disciples). They recognize that blindness is a disorder, a deprivation of Good. It ought not to be. It’s an Evil.

They recognize that, and we must do the same. An everyday theology of suffering starts with recognizing the evil in this world.

This is the next step. After we recognize Evil, that something ought not to be, pretty soon we seek some kind of explanation.

The disciples are doing that here in verse 2. That’s the question:

“Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

This is a smart question. I know a lot of times we like to roll our eyes about the disciples, but these guys were not dummies. They are trying to build their own theology of suffering.

Under the existence of Evil, they think there has to be some reason for this Suffering, and they assume it’s because of somebody’s Guilt. We think the same way. 

Some of us probably have a hard time even using the word “evil” because when we think “Evil” we immediately think of Guilt. We think that to classify something as Evil means that somebody must have done something, somebody has to be Guilty, somebody should be blamed. We think this way all the time. Who’s fault is it?

That’s what the disciples are trying to figure out. It’s an honest question. It’s a question that means they’re wrestling, and what fascinates me here is that they’re not wrong to wrestle. 

Jesus does not rebuke them for asking. It’s what you do when you’re confronted with Evil. Right beside the No is Why? … and we’ve all said that too.

And it’s not a simple Why? It takes the form of three different directions: we ask “Why?” looking out, looking in, and looking up. 

This is the question: Why is evil in the world?

Another title for this question is the “theoretical problem of the origin of evil.”

I know that sounds academic, but it’s really not. I remember when my oldest son was in fifth grade, he had a friend who had some serious health problems, and he called me in his room one night to talk, because he had been laying in his bed wondering “Dad, where did bad things come from?”

And you say, It’s because of sin — go to bed.

But he says, No, but where did sin come from?

You say, The devil — goodnight, son.

But no no, where did the devil come from? … Why was it even possible for Lucifer to rebel against God if everything God made is good? … And if freedom is good, created by a good God, how can it lead to anything evil?

And eventually, you say: I don’t know. I don’t understand. 

That’s what we say looking out.

This is the question: Why has this evil happened here?

It could be referring to evil you’ve experienced, or maybe someone close to you. It could be evil you’ve heard about. Practical evil. This is the question: Why this, here, now? 

I said that on Monday night. My daughter was playing her heart out in a volleyball game, going for a ball she crashed into the wall, Boom! — displaced fracture in her elbow, ligaments messed up, needs surgery, done for the season.

And you know what she said to me? She said, “Why, Dad? Why?”

And I was asking the same thing, so you say: I don’t know. I don’t understand. 

That’s what we say looking in.

This is the question: What will God do?

And this is the true tension in asking “Why?” and it proves to us that we’re not really seeking answers, but we’re making a complaint. This is biblical lament. That’s what the wrestling is.

It’s the struggle to hold together these three truths:

1. The sheer evil of Evil

2. The pure goodness of God

3. The sovereign power of God

If you could imagine it, the three truths form a capital “T.” 

The sheer evil of Evil is here on one side. The pure goodness of God is here on the other side. And the sovereign power of God is the stem in the middle.

It’s hard for us to hold these three truths together and not dilute any of them. 

That’s usually what happens in our human attempts to find a rational explanation for Why?

There are some who detract from the power of God and basically make him out to be well-meaning but weak. 

Others go to the other extreme and stress God’s power at the expense of his goodness — they basically make him an accomplice with evil.

Others might take such a long view, thinking that the end justifies the means, that they downplay the evil of Evil — they assume that in the long-run we’ll be able to look back and say, “See, it wasn’t that bad.”

But that’s not true! These are all distortions! Each way of thinking here defies the testimony of Scripture. 

God’s word is clear: God is sovereign in power — totally, radically, absolutely.

God is pure in goodness — totally, radically, absolutely.

Evil remains evil — totally, radically, absolutely.

And so, holding these together, we’re just left to look up and say: God, what are you doing?

This is the question we see all throughout the Psalms that goes: 

“How long, O Lord? How long?” 

How long do we gotta live in this tension? 

Live with these questions? … live without answers? … How long?

This is the wrestling with the Why?

Theologian Henri Blocher says it like this:

Scripture teaches us that we shall not find, at least in this life, the rational solution that so many have sought after. It does not give us an answer … We do not understand the why of evil. … Evil is not there to be understood   …(101, 103)

We eventually look out and say I don’t know where it came from. 

We look in and say I don’t know why it happened here. 

We look up and say How long, O Lord?

This brings us to the third point. Remember, we are trying to build an everyday theology of suffering. We recognize the evil of this world … We wrestle with the Why? … And finally …

Look at verse 3: 

Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Notice that Jesus doesn’t rebuke the disciples asking why, but he also doesn’t indulge it.

Instead, he redirects their attention from where the evil came from to what God is doing through it — this man’s blindness is “so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Jesus steers us away from speculation about origin, and he calls us to faith in the present.

Don’t concern yourself with the cause, but understand the purpose. God has allowed this evil in order that in this man God’s works are displayed. 

Here we learn what the rest of Scripture testifies:

God overcomes evil to use it as a stage to display his glory and serve our everlasting joy.

And we seldom see this right away! It’s not obvious! We can’t really trace the details, but we can trust that God is accomplishing this purpose over Evil by his power and goodness. 

This doesn’t explain Evil, but evil is not there to be understood, it’s there to be conquered. And God has conquered it. That is the wonder of the cross.

At the cross, the sinless Son of God was slain!

Has there ever been a moment that so unmasked the sheer evil of Evil?

At the cross, Jesus was slain according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God!

Has there ever been a moment that so revealed God’s sovereign power? 

At the cross, Jesus saved us and gave us the right to be called the children of God!

Has there ever been a moment that so demonstrated God’s pure goodness? 

The cross was that literal “T” — and it doesn’t just hold together these three truths but it proves them all definitely.

And this is the foundation of our hope — if God has brought about the greatest good ever imaginable from the worst Evil ever conceived, it means he will accomplish good in your suffering, in any suffering. 

This is who God is — he doesn’t give us answers, he gives us himself, he gives us his victory. And so we can trust him. 

That’s where we land with our everyday theology of suffering. 

This is not just about thinking rightly, but we live this out. Anytime we’re confronted with Evil, whenever we encounter suffering, whether in our lives or in the world…

First, we recognize the evil — it’s right to say NO!

Second, we wrestle with Why? — How long, O Lord?

Third, we trust God — it is true, church, that he does work all things together for good … and when we can’t trace his hand, we trust his heart.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

We come to this Table to remember the death of Jesus for us, and to remember all that he has accomplished for us through the cross. 

That even what the enemy means for Evil, God ultimately turns it for our Good. 

And this is our hope.

So if you’re here this morning and you trust in Jesus Christ, I invite you to eat and drink, resting in the cross.

John 9:1-6,

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud…”

When we describe a person as polarizing, what do we typically mean? Well, we mean that that person is someone who tends to cause heightened responses in others just about everywhere they go. In other words, were you to follow around a polarizing person throughout their day, you would find in their wake: wave after wave of people who either really, really liked having that person around, or really, really didn’t.

Typically, we call a person polarizing because of something that’s bad within them. Maybe they use foul language. Maybe they lie or cheat. Maybe they treat other people unjustly. It’s the darkness within them, that has the polarizing effect. 

Well, when it comes to Jesus, I think it’s safe to say that he is a polarizing person. In fact, I’d dare to say he is the most polarizing person in the history of the world. But unlike so many others, the reason Jesus is polarizing is not because of inward darkness, but light.

Jesus is not just good, but so good, and so holy, and so just that when he comes around, he exposes our darkness. He reveals that we’re really not as good as we thought. When he does, some turn, and come to the light, and others flee.

In this morning’s passage, we’re going to see Jesus’ polarizing effect in full force. And we’ll see it in the form of peoples’ responses to three claims about Jesus:

1. Jesus Does the Work of God

2. Jesus Is Sent From God

3. Jesus Himself Is God 

Let’s pray, and ask God to help us once more ….

So, three polarizing claims about Jesus: Jesus does the work of God, Jesus is sent from God, and Jesus himself is God. We’ll begin with that first one.

Verse 1,

“As he [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.”

A man who’d likely been sitting out on the roadside, hands held out, all day long, hoping to feel the cold, weighted touch of a coin being dropped into his hand. 

Verse 8 tells us that this man was a beggar. And the reason he was a beggar was not because he wanted to be. It’s not like he grew up dreaming that one day this would be his life — sitting on the side of a road, day after day, as the people of his community passed him by.

But, the fact is, he’d been born blind. Light, for whatever reason, had just never reached his eyes. And because of that, there was no job that he could hold. No service that he could offer. He was doomed to a life of begging — looking out for help from a world he had never once seen. 

And who knows how many people might have passed him by that day prior to Jesus and his disciples. How many people, just like Jesus’ disciples, asking the question: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 

But when Jesus and his disciples came by that day, something unique happened. To the question of why he’d been born blind, came an answer that, for once, didn’t cite sin as the reason for his blindness. Rather, verse 3:

“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” 

Works of God, in me? Think of it. All this man has ever known is blindness — a kind of blindness thought to be the mark of God’s curse over him. Suddenly, he hears: God has a purpose. God has a design. “You mean to tell me I’ve been made this way to show something good and wonderful about God?” Jesus says, “Yes, and I’m here to make it happen.” 

Which brings us to our first claim: Jesus does the work of God.

Verse 4, Jesus says to his disciples,

“We must work the works of him who sent me…”

We must do it. For,

“…night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

You hear what Jesus is saying? I’m the light. And I’m here. But I won’t always be. Therefore, the time to work is now.

So Jesus spits on the dirt, mashes it into mud, and spreads it upon the man’s eyes. Far from improving his vision, at this point, if anything, Jesus has made his vision worse. He’s covered over his already blind eyes. But, he doesn’t leave the man that way. He tells him, “Go, wash.” And the man does. Verse 7:

“So he went and washed and came back seeing.”

The man could finally see! He could see! Light, colors, shapes, faces — can you imagine seeing all these things for the very first time in your life!? It’s a miracle! And Jesus did it. Because Jesus does the work of God. 

He calls us to as well. Verse 4 reads,

“We must work the works of him who sent me.”

What works of God might God be calling you to? What kind word, what helping hand, what giving up of your time might you be able to walk in and say, we’re doing it. We’re doing the works of God that he has called us to, as a church. Ephesians 2:10,

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Now from here, the formerly blind man is going to get shuffled around a bit. First he’ll go before his neighbors, then the Pharisees, then his parents. And the reason he’s going to get shuffled around is not mainly because his eyes were opened. See it with me in verse 13. Following a back-and-forth with the neighbors, we read, in verse 13:

“They [the man’s neighbors] brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.”

And now, we’ve got to ask ourselves, why did they do this? What prompted them, on the heels of such a miracle, to not say, “Let’s bring you to the mountains and show you the sunrise. Let’s bring you to the riverbank so you can watch the water shine. Let’s bring you into the city to show you architecture and design.”

But, instead, let’s bring you to the Pharisees.

What prompted that instinct in them? What made them to think, “hmm, the Pharisees ought to see this”?

We find out in the very next verse. Verse 14:

“Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.”

We’ve seen this before, haven’t we? Back in chapter 5, we had another healing miracle with incredibly close parallels to this one. And there, the problem was that Jesus had worked the miracle on the Sabbath. That had angered the Pharisees then. And not because Jesus had broken one of God’s Laws. He hadn’t. But because he had broken one of theirs.

Now a few chapters later, here we are again. It’s the Sabbath. And thanks to the events of chapter 5, the neighbors now know how the Pharisees feel about healing on the Sabbath. And so when Jesus gives sight to this blind man, the neighbors think, “we ought to bring this now seeing man to the Pharisees to find out if this was okay.”

Follow along with me at verse 14:

“Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, ‘He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.’”

Now, it’s unclear exactly what the problem was. It seems though that it could have had to do with the mud. After all, John clearly wants us to know about the fact that Jesus made mud. He records that detail twice in verse 6, then again in verse 11, again in verse 14, and again in verse 15.

And the Pharisees did have a law concerning the making of a dough, or mud, on the Sabbath. Might seem strange, but think about it: both dough and mud can be associated with work — Dough for baking, Mud or mortar for building. So Jesus may well have made this mud on the Sabbath for that very purpose — to show that the Pharisees laws were not God’s.

Well regardless of the reason, the fact is: Jesus gave sight to a blind man on the Sabbath and the Pharisees didn’t like it. Enter, our second claim: Jesus is sent from God. 

It’ll begin with the Pharisees claim to the contrary. See it with me in verse 16, some of the Pharisees said,

“This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”

That’s their assessment of him. Jesus is not from God, if he was, he’d obey our laws.

But as we read in John 1:1,

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”

And as Jesus says in John 3:13,

“No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven.”

Descended from God.

John 5:24, Jesus says,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.”

John 7:29 Jesus claims,

“I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me.”

John 8:42,

“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.”

And then, of course, from our text this morning, John 9:4,

“We must work the works of him who sent me.”

Jesus is from God. The Pharisees take Jesus’ work on the Sabbath to be a proof he’s not. But what John has been laboring to show us throughout his gospel is that it is because Jesus is from God that he does the works of God, even on the Sabbath. Just as Jesus said back in 5:17,

“My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

Jesus is from God. He’s sent from God to do the works of God. But the Pharisees can’t see that. And the reason they can’t is because they are spiritually blind. 

What about the formerly blind man? His physical blindness has been healed, but has his spiritual blindness been healed as well?

There’s certainly been a progression. First time he’s asked about his healing, he seems to know little about Jesus. He simply calls him a man. Verse 11:

“The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes.”

Then in verse 17, in response to the Pharisees, he calls Jesus not just a man but a prophet. Someone who speaks the words of God and does the works of God. It’s quite a statement to make in the presence of these learned, powerful elite who clearly think otherwise. And yet, it’s not yet a claim to Jesus’ divinity. Something more is needed.

Well, the next group of people to be called in are the man’s own parents who confirm to the Pharisees, “Yes,” verse 20,

“We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes.”

Does that strike you as just a bit odd? Someone has rescued their son from a lifetime of blindness. And yet they don’t know who it was? Like, they just didn’t think to ask, “Hey, by the way, son, who’d you say it was who healed you?” No, but instead, they tell the Pharisees, verse 21:

“Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”

You know what they’re doing in this moment? They are lying. And they are lying because they care more about their own public perception than their son. See it with me. Verse 22. John is abundantly clear:

“(His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.”

You see it? His parents knew it was Jesus who had healed their son. And they also knew that if they told the Pharisees that, and even suggested that could mean Jesus was the Christ, they’d be kicked out of the Synagogue — exiled from their community and way of life. So, they lied. And they sicced the dogs on their son instead.

“Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”

And we might add, speak for himself, by himself. For by now, this man has been sold out by his neighbors, sold out by his parents, and turned over to the Pharisees who have their teeth bared.

Verse 24:

“So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, ‘Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.’ The man refuses to agree with them. 'He answered, ‘Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’”

Verse 26, the Pharisees fire back, asking him the same exact question they’ve already asked him:

“What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 

And now, have you ever been on hold with customer service before? Maybe you’ve called a company about a faulty product, or a project that just wasn’t done right. And every time you got through to someone, they just kept asking you the same question, “Sir, could you tell us the reason for your call?” You tell them, then they just transfer you to the next guy.

It gets tiring having to answer the same question over-and-over, right? Well, by this time, the man has already given his answer to his neighbors and to these Pharisees. And so, he responds in verse 27, how we’d expect:

“I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” 

And this is where things get interesting, because Moses is going to get referenced. And, listen, you just know that any time Moses gets mentioned in the New Testament, things are about to get interesting.

Here’s what they say — Verse 28:

“And they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.’”

And then, the incredible irony:

“We know that God has spoken to Moses.”

And they’re right. It’s true. God had spoken to Moses. And do you know who God had spoken to Moses about? Jesus — the very one they’re trying to kill. And Jesus had already told them that, back 5:46,

“If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.”

Spiritual blindness is a terrifying thing, is it not? 

The Pharisees have called Jesus a sinner. They’ve put terror in the hearts of those around them. They’ve claimed to follow Moses and yet disclaimed the very one he wrote about. 

Spiritual blindness is terrifying. At least with physical blindness you know your condition. These Pharisees are blind to the reality of God in the world, and they don’t even realize it. In fact, they think they can see better than all the others. And when the formerly blind man calls them on this, they think he’s the one with the problem, verse 34:

“You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?”

They are intending to kill Jesus, and yet they say the man in front of him — he’s the sinner. And to top it all off, verse 34, they cast the man out of the synagogue.

See this man with me now. Quite a day it has been for him, yes? Just that morning, like every other morning of his life, he’d woken up blind. 

Blind he’d eaten his breakfast. Blind he’d been led to the roadside. Blind he’d sat begging. 

Now he sees. But the cost of his seeing has involved his neighbors, his parents, and the Pharisees all essentially disowning him — sending him away with the words, “You were born in utter sin” ringing in his ears. Now, he stands, alone. Eyes open, but alone.

Has his life improved? Have things gotten better for him? Sure, he can now see, but all he sees is exile. He’s on his own. Rejected. Discarded. Cast out. The man is alone. But Jesus does not leave him there. Jesus hears what has happened, and goes after him. Others have sent him away, but Jesus goes out to find him. To speak to him. To give him one of the greatest gifts in all the world — spiritual sight.

Verse 35:

“Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’”

The man responds, verse 36:

“And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”

Jesus answers:

“You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.”

And the man who had been born blind can suddenly see with spiritual sight. Verse 38,

“He said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him.”

And he worshiped him because Jesus is God. That’s our third and final claim — Jesus is God. 

Here’s a Jewish man that was raised up on Moses, the Ten Commandments, and the Hebrew Scriptures. A man who knows God is one, Yahweh is his name. But then he drops to his knees to worship a man named Jesus.

In Revelation 19, the same thing happened to one of the angels. When it did, the angel shouted out: “You must not do that!” 

In Acts 14, the residents of Lystra begin bowing down in worship of Paul and Barnabas. When they do, Paul and Barnabas tear their robes and cry: “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you.”

But when Jesus is worshiped, he doesn’t protest. He receives.

Jesus receives worship because Jesus is God. Jesus does the work of God. Jesus was sent from God. And, Jesus is God.

Jesus is a polarizing figure, yes? Just as he’ll say near the close of this section, verse 39,

“For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

So there really are two choices: spiritual sight or spiritual blindness. Spiritual light or spiritual darkness. Fist shaking at Jesus or knees bowing before him. 

And so I want to invite you today if you are here this morning, and you want to see. See that Jesus is more than just a man. More than just a prophet. But God himself. Ask him.

Jesus, come find me too.

Come help me see you are the Son of Man. 

If you don’t, you will remain in darkness. Guilt for your sin, just as Jesus says in verse 41, will remain. Don’t live in the dark. Don’t stay in your guilt. Ask Jesus to help you see, and he will. He will.

If you are here today and like this man can say, I was spiritually blind and now I see: Realize that just as Jesus found this man in his rejection, his isolation, his loneliness, so has he come and found you as well. You see because he gave you eyes to see.

Brothers and sisters, never take that sight for granted. It is one of the greatest gifts you could ever receive. Should you lose all and yet still have spiritual sight, you still have all. Treasure your spiritual sight and use it to see and enjoy Jesus every day.

Now, what brings us to the table this morning is both the reminder of Jesus’ spilled blood and broken body, as well as the promise that one day we will eat a far greater meal with him in Heaven. There, we will finally see him, face-to-face. 

Because that’s what this table represents, I gladly invite those who are trusting in Jesus’ death on their behalf, to take and eat this meal with us. 

If you’ve not put your trust in Jesus, we ask that you’d let the elements pass for now, and instead take this moment to ask Jesus,

Help me to see.

John 8:48-59,

The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” 49 Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. 50 Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51 Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” 52 The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” 54 Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ 55 But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” 57 So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

Jesus said in Chapter 8, verse 29:

“I always do the things that are pleasing to the [the Father.]” 

We saw that two weeks ago, but I can’t stop thinking about it, because it’s such an amazing claim. “I always do the things that please the Father.” Always!? 

This would mean that anytime Jesus does something, that thing he does delights the heart of God. 

God sees what Jesus does, whatever it is, and he says, “Yep! That’s it. ‘Atta boy! That’s what I’m talking about!” 

God is happy in what Jesus does — that’s what it means for God to be pleased.

And why would this matter for us? 

Well, it’s because we want to know how to please God. 

This goes for the most seasoned Christians and anyone who has the smallest measure of faith … if you just believe that God exists, you want to please him. 

It would be insanity if you don’t. 

I remember years ago I heard someone say that one of the silliest things in the world is people who believe that God is real but then only give him 2% of their lives. 

Think about this: You would believe that there is a sovereign Creator over the entire universe, a God who made you and everything else, and he wants you to know he exists but then he’s okay with you ignoring him 98% of the time!? … 

A god like that is a figment of the American imagination.

The true God made us for himself, and he made the chief goal of our existence to magnify his glory (which includes pleasing him). I think we all know this deep down, even if we’ve suppressed this reality or distracted ourselves from it. We all want to please God, and since Jesus always pleased God, we can learn from him. 

That’s how we’re going to approach our passage this morning. We’re gonna look closely at what Jesus says, but the aim is to pay attention to what he does, to how he pleases God. 

I want to show you three ways Jesus pleases the Father.

It’s gonna take a minute for us to get here, because I need to set the scene, so hang with me. Verses 48–59 is the fourth and final dialogue in Chapter 8, and it’s another back-and-forth between Jesus and the Jewish leaders. 

And this one is like a tennis match. Very clean: they ask three questions, Jesus gives three answers. We see their first question in verse 48, which is really an accusation. Look what they said, verse 48: 

The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”

Now, for us, that’s probably an odd thing to say. So two questions:

1. What’s the connection between Samaritans and demon-possession?

2. Why would they say this?

The link between the Samaritans and demon-possession goes back to the Old Testament. It’s part of their Jewish history. There were twelve tribes of Israel, but the ten tribes to the north rebelled and broke off and became their own thing, and they committed apostasy. 

We know from the Old Testament, they even sacrificed their children to demons. And this idolatrous, apostatized people eventually intermarried with non-Israelites and became known as the Samaritans. 

Jewish people believed that the Samaritans were maybe in cahoots with demons, but they for sure knew that they were not the people of God.

So for them to say that Jesus is a Samaritan and has a demon is not only to accuse him of being outside the people of God, but they’re saying he’s an enemy of God. He’s a heretic. He’s an imposter. He belongs on the other side — on the other side of their people (with Samaritans), and on the other side of God (with Satan).

Now, why would the Jewish leaders say this?

Remember this is their response to what Jesus says in the previous verses, verses 42–47, and the main idea of what Jesus told them was that they are not really of Abraham, and that the devil was their father.

The candor of Jesus is incredible. 

He told them, basically: you are not truly of the people of God, and you are not of God.

So track with me here. Basically, after they hear Jesus say this, what they do in verse 48 amounts to them saying: Nah uh, you are!

That’s what they say!

They accuse Jesus of being essentially what he told them they were.

He can’t really be one of us! He can’t really be of God! 

A little side-note here: Their response is so common for fallen people in a fallen world. The easiest thing for a group to do when they get critiqued from within is to say that the critic is actually for the other side, that he’s not really one of them. This is so typical. Jesus isn’t shocked by it, but look what he does…

Jesus says in verse 49, my paraphrase: Yeah, no. I don’t have a demon. In fact, on the contrary, I honor my Father, and you dishonor me.

There’s contrast here between Jesus and the Jews, and it’s a big deal. Jesus says the opposite of honoring the Father is dishonoring the Son.

That means that when you dishonor the Son you dishonor the Father. 

That’s what this crowd is doing, and Jesus could keep going — He could explain in detail why that’s the case … He could tell this crowd what we already know about Jesus from Chapter 1 — that he is the Word from the beginning, the Word that was with God, the Word that was God — the Word that has been made flesh and is dwelling among us, standing in front of them. 

He could say, “Demon-possessed Samaritan, huh, I’ll show you! Boom!” — and he just shines in radiant glory, a million angels start singing, and they fall down before him.

But Jesus doesn’t do that. He holds back. It’s like he tells them the bare minimum. Like an understatement. 

No, I don’t have a demon. Yes, I know God. If I were to say I didn’t know God I’d be a liar. 

He holds back and verse 50 is why. He says:

“I do not seek my own glory; there is one who seeks it, and he is the Judge.”

Jesus doesn’t have to defend his glory because he knows the Father will. 

That is radical security.

And we see this most vividly in Jesus when he’s on the cross, but it’s true all throughout his ministry. He consistently subjected himself to people thinking the absolute worst about him.

Here they call him a demon-possessed Samaritan!

What’s the worst thing someone could call you? That’s what they’re doing to Jesus, but he doesn’t defend himself like he could, instead, he just defers to the Father. 

The Father will glorify Jesus. The Father seeks the Son’s glory. And it’s not just that the Father seeks the Son’s glory, but it’s also better this way.

Deferred glory compounds. 

Jesus will not be cheated. He will get all the glory he deserves, and he has perfect trust that the Father will do him right. That is radical security.

Jesus possess radical security and it pleases God. 

Here’s the second thing Jesus does …

Look at verse 51. Jesus says,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

And the Jews say that’s just more confirmation for them. Look at their response in verse 52: 

The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?”

And I don’t know if you caught their logic. It’s not super clear at first. Their issue is in the promise Jesus makes: “If anyone keeps my word, he will never see/taste death.” Jesus said that in verse 51, they repeat it in verse 52.

Notice, when Jesus makes this promise, there are two parties in view: there’s the One who speaks the word (Jesus), and the one who keeps the word (and thus doesn’t die).

So, there’s a word-speaker and a word-keeper. 

And it’s clear that Jesus is the word-speaker (it’s his word that we’re to keep; it’s his word that gives life). Which means, when Jesus says this in verse 51, he is making the parallel between himself and God. That make sense?

But notice their issue is that Jesus must be saying he’s better than Abraham and the prophets.

To paraphrase their logic, they’re saying: How can Jesus offer the promise of eternal life when Abraham and the prophets, who are superior to Jesus, died? 

If Abraham and the prophets kept God’s word and died, how can Jesus say that if we keep his word we won’t die — because he’s not better than Abraham and the prophets.

So they hear Jesus putting himself in the place of God, but they’re disturbed that he claims to be greater than Abraham and the prophets.

Then they say: Jesus, who do you think you are?

And again, Jesus holds back. He doesn’t glorify himself because the Father will glorify him. But notice what he says, second sentence of verse 54: 

“It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him.”

This is important. 

This crowd who dishonors Jesus claims the God who glorifies Jesus to be their God. Which means something’s not right. Both can’t be true!

Either Jesus is not who he claims to be, or God is not really their God. 

And Jesus doesn’t leave us to wonder. 

He says, verse 55:

“You have not known him. I know him.”

Jesus says: I’m the one who’s in. Y’all are the ones who are out. Y’all are not who you think you are. Y’all have a false allegiance. 

What a devastating discovery, if they’re paying attention!

Jesus is exposing their false allegiance to God on the basis of what they do with him. That’s still the case today. You’re allegiance to God is measured by your devotion to Jesus.

And I don’t just mean devotion to Jesus theologically, but personally, daily. So often, in our day, people will commandeer Jesus for their cause, but they don’t really know him. They don’t really walk with him. 

And this is a danger, I think, especially for us who rightly emphasize the importance of solid theology and Christian worldview.

I remember in college, as I was learning and being discipled in Christian worldview and ethics — basically all the life implications of the truth of God — it occurred to me that I could construct a pretty solid theology [head] and not really be moved by Jesus [heart]. 

I could have all my ducks in a row for how Jesus changes the world, but care very little for how Jesus changes me. 

It’s an allegiance question. Who am I really for? What am I really about?

And if it’s not Jesus, the best-case scenario for you is that Jesus expose that. That is his mercy to us. His kindness. And, Jesus exposing our false allegiances pleases God. 

That brings us to the third and final point. 

Everything in this dialogue has been building to verse 58. 

The Jewish leaders are disturbed that Jesus would claim that he is greater than Abraham and the prophets. So Jesus tells them, verse 56:

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

This is another way that Jesus is highlighting the irony of this whole thing: You say you’re of Abraham, and you dishonor me, when actually Abraham was really happy about me.

Jesus knew that would get their attention. It’s a masterclass set up. They come back in verse 57:

“You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”

Y’all know the phrase “drop the mic”?

Yeah, that image was invented for this verse. They say, Jesus, you’re not even 50 years old and you act like you’ve seen Abraham.

Jesus said to them,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” 

That is I AM as in: Jesus is claiming to be the I AM. 

Not just greater than Abraham, but he made Abraham. 

Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham (which makes Abraham happy); and Jesus is the one who spoke the life of Abraham into existence.

Jesus is the word made flesh. He is God incarnate, which means he has the right and the power to give eternal life, which takes us back to his promise in verse 51.

The crowd in his dialogue is so distracted by what Jesus says that they miss what Jesus is actually doing. I don’t want us to miss it.

In verse 51, he issues a wonderful invitation:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

Yes, for Jesus to say this, he is claiming to be who he says he is in verse 58. He is God. He is the Creator, the Giver, and Keeper of life — and not just life here, but life everlasting. Life that conquers death. 

What Jesus does here is instructive to us in two ways…

First, if you’re here and you’re not a Christian, this is an invitation from Jesus to you. Real, true, everlasting life can be yours if you just keep Jesus’s word, abide in his word — it’s another way to say trust him. Believe in him. You do that by saying to Jesus, simply from the heart: 

Jesus, I choose you and your way.

I’m done with my way. 

I put my faith in you.

And the second, for those of us who have put our faith in Jesus, he’s forgiven our sins and we’re following him, what Jesus is doing in this passage (what Jesus is always doing) is pleasing to God. That includes this wonderful invitation.

We should learn from Jesus. 

In our witness, as we’re engaging with neighbors and co-workers, let’s make the heart of our speech not getting our stance across, but issuing an invitation.

We’ve been in a culture war for years and it’s only getting worse. I do believe it’s a battle between good and evil, and I do believe we need moral clarity. 

So speak truth, stand firm — never lie — and at the same time, tell people what Jesus says, that if you just keep his word you will never die. If you believe in Jesus Christ you will have everlasting life.

And sometimes this will cause outrage (like it does here in verse 59), and sometimes it will cause intrigue.

God will take care of the outcomes, we just want to live how Jesus lived. 

We want to please God.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

As disciples of Jesus, we learn from him. We want to follow him and be like him, but we come to this Table each week not to learn, but to rest. 

We rest in his grace to us poured out on the cross where he died to save us. We take this bread and this cup to remember that. And so if you’re here and you trust in Jesus, if you’ve put your faith in him, we invite you to eat and drink with us and give him thanks.

John 8:31-47,

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”

34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. 38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”

39 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, 40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41 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.” 42 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. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

In recent days, many of us have heard stories of the senselessness of evil. Not just faraway in Charlotte and Colorado and Utah, but right here in our own Twin Cities.

Our family spent much of our summer with four dear Annunciation families on our sons’ baseball team. All of them had kids in the room where the gunman opened fire. One little girl, a friend of our daughters, was shot three times. And all our Annunciation friends know well the students who died and others who were injured. 

What’s been so unsettling is the sheer senseless evil of shooting up a room of children. It is profoundly wicked, like the devil himself, to go after children.

Sensible people understandably look for motives and rationale. But it’s not always so easy. Someone read aloud to me some of the gunman’s words, and I don’t know what to say but senseless. Irrational. Sheer evil — that would open fire on children, and be so deeply deceived as to pretend in writing the day before to be a good person.

We might wonder if such an evil person is possessed by the devil. The better answer, I think, is to say that such a person, like the devil himself, has become deeply enslaved to his own evil and indwelling sin. The deep anti-God and anti-Christ impulse in the devil himself is the same anti-God and anti-Christ impulse in all sinners, but for God’s common and saving grace. It’s called sin. Left unchecked, it will devolve into senseless anti-God evil and the ultimate slavery.

Which relates to our passage this morning. As the back and forth escalates, let’s go first to where the dialogue ends up in verses 44–47. Jesus says,

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. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.

Last week Jonathan said, Wait till you hear what Jesus says next week. He was talking about verse 44: “You are of your father the devil.” And then the end of verse 47: “The reason why you do not hear [my words] is that you are not of God.”

So, that’s where this is going, but look where it begins. Verse 30: “As [Jesus] was saying these things (verses 12–29), many believed in him.”

Verse 31: “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him . . .”

Jesus is talking to believers — at least people who have believed thus far. They’ve started to believe, but the question before us this morning is whether they will keep on believing as Jesus keeps speaking. Many of them have fickle faith. We’ve seen Jesus confront groups like this already in 2:23–25 and chapter 6. 

Isn’t Jesus’s instinct with a crowd amazing? A crowd gathers, and Jesus doesn’t think, Hmm, this is a thrill. I better not mess it up. How can I lower the bar so that every stays and even more come? 

Rather, Jesus’s instinct seems to be, There’s a crowd; they can’t all be real. I need to raise the bar. Whittle down the crowd; narrow it down to genuine believers, to true disciples. Jesus doesn’t cater to those with fickle faith; he challenges them. If they stay fickle, they’ll spoil the movement, not help it. But if you challenge their faith, some will go, but some will stay — remain, hang on, hold fast, and be true disciples.

So, let me pause at this point to ask: What would this be for you? For Jesus’s audience, it’s their Jewishness. They are sons of Abraham, which they retreat to twice in verses 33 and 39. Very few in this room are counting this cost: if I believe and keep believing in Jesus, then my life of faith and faith-community as I’ve known it will be upturned. Or is it?

Social appeal is powerful; community pressure is real. That might be the challenge for you this morning. Your people are secular to the core. Or Muslim. Or Buddhist. Or just unbelieving American conservatives or progressives. Or professing Christians who are fickle in their faith. Whatever level of interest in or openness to Jesus you have this morning, what group tempts you to not believe and stay with Jesus? (So many today are slaves of their own conception of others’ opinions, whether adopting it or reacting to it; either way you’re a slave to your own sense of what’s mainstream, what the majority thinks, where the trends or counter-trends seem to be going.)

And the main point for us this morning in John 8 is that those who are “of God” stay with Jesus. They bear with his word, and no matter how uncomfortable, his words find place in them, and he bears fruit through them.

The main claim in this passage is verses 31–32, then the rest fleshes this out or defends this leading claim. Look there:

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Jesus makes the claim, then they go back and forth about it. And in verse 47, we find that, at bottom, to stay with Jesus shows one is “of God” or not. So, that’s how I’d like to frame it for us this morning, very personally. I take it that this room is filled with people who have believed in Jesus, but the emphasis this morning is on staying, remaining, abiding, holding fast. 

And for those who haven’t yet believed, you get an inside look into what Christian belief is. It is not a past belief or a momentary belief that makes you a Christian, but an abiding belief, a belief that remains, a belief that holds fast to Jesus, a belief that persists and endures and perseveres the ups and downs of this life and keeps believing in him — stays with him.

So, here’s how we’ll ask the question, to get at the three parts of the text: How do I know if I’m “of God” or not? Or how do I know if my belief is real and will endure?

The realities of this text fall neatly into two columns: “of God” and “not of God.” That’s the bottom-line reality, and this is what we’ll spend the next few minutes filling out. So, here are three questions to confirm you are “of God.”

Oh we love this word “freedom.”

Verse 32,

“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

But the question to ask is, Free from what, and free for what? We get a piece of it in verses 31–34:

If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” 34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”

Jesus offers freedom, and they hear in that offer that he’s implying they are presently enslaved. They take offense at this, and retreat to their ethnic status: “we’re offspring of Abraham; we’ve never been enslaved.” Which, of course is ridiculous. Ever heard of Egypt? How about the Philistines? And Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. There’s hardly any power in the ancient world that Abraham’s offspring weren’t enslaved to at some point. But it’s a senseless diversion. Irrational. And Jesus doesn’t take the bait by arguing about it. He brings it back to the point: “everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”

Freedom from sin is the freedom from that Jesus is offering.

But what about freedom for? Freedom from sin. But free for what? Now, verses 38–41:

I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” 39 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, 40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41 You are doing the works your father did.”

Doing matters. Last week, Jonathan talked about not having a do-have-be mentality, but be-have-do. And he didn’t say no doing. He said get the doing in the right place. And this first question is about the doing. The unbelieving show they do not have faith and they do not belong to God by what they do. And so too, those of God, who have faith in Jesus, get free from sin which is freedom to do good for others. This is the right place for good works. Your life matters. What you do matters. And freedom from sin doesn’t mean you just sit around and watch clean videos, but that in freedom you love others and seek to do them good.

But don’t miss the greatness of Jesus in this. He is the one who sets free for real, free from sin, free to actually do good, to love others, to get past self and see others’ needs and take initiative and expend effort and experience the joy and reward of doing someone else in need some genuine good, in the name of Jesus. And now we’ll see in verse 36, that it is not only sons who are free but “the Son” who sets them free. Which leads to our second question.

Now, we come to the main focus on abiding or staying with Jesus. It’s one thing to believe in a moment or believe in the past or believe initially in Jesus with fickle faith. But it’s another thing to keep believing, to abide, to remain with him, stay with him when challenges come — for Jesus’s words to “find place in you.” 

Jesus first mentions “abiding” or “remaining” in verse 31, but then he comes back to precisely this in verse 35, and it’s easy to miss because the word changes in our English. Verse 31 has abide. Verse 35 has remain. But it’s the same word in the original. Look at verses 35–37:

The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.

Jesus speaks to room full of people who “have believed” so far. And he says, if you don’t remain with me, stay with me, you’re a slave. Slaves come into a household for a time, but don’t stay. They’re not really part of the family. They’re temporary members of the household. Eventually the slaves leave, but the sons stay. They abide. Sons remain.

The word to us is this: if you stay with Jesus, if his word “finds place in you,” if you remain by faith in the house with him, you show yourself to be sons, true disciples. And those who seem to believe but do not stay reveal their ongoing slavery to sin.

Over the years, we’ve sung together “He will hold me fast.” One of the most unnerving things in our life together as a church has been those who have sung with us and slowly walked away. And we ask, Did he not hold them fast? Will he hold me fast?

Based on John 8, and the book of 1 John, and Hebrews, and elsewhere in the Bible, here’s how I sing “He Will Hold Me Fast.” As I stay with Jesus, as I hold him fast, he holds me fast. And it’s not that my holding fast causes him to hold me fast. It’s the other way around. His holding me fast is manifest, in part, through my ongoing holding him fast. From my finite, limited, human perspective, I don’t know for certain that I’ll always hold him fast. If I give myself to sin and its slavery and do not hold fast to Jesus, it will be revealed that I wasn’t “of him,” and he wasn’t holding me fast. But right now, as I sing this song, I hold him fast, and as I sing, I resolve afresh and pledge anew to keep holding him fast — and as I hold him fast in faith I see and show that he is holding me fast.

And there is something more we can say here about those who stay with Jesus and remain in him and have his word “find place” in them. This is one of the most shocking things Jesus says to these Jews. Not only does he call them to believe in him and abide in that belief, but he says in verse 42:

“If God were your Father, you would love me.”

Love me, he says! Perhaps the one question that would clarify that your faith is not fickle, but that you truly are his disciple, is this: Do you love him?

Which leads to our third and final question.

In these three questions, we’ve worked from the outside in, or from the top to the bottom: from doing good, to staying with him, and now back to where it all begins: believing in Jesus, hearing his words with faith. Believing his words that he came from God, and shares in the divine identity, even as he stands before us as fully human. And not just believing some of what he says about himself, as we find it convenient and socially acceptable. But believing all of what Jesus says about himself even and especially when it’s at odds with whatever social group appeals to us most. Let’s finish with verses 42–43:

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. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

When Jesus says that he “came not of my own accord” (literally, “not from myself I have come”), he speaks as man who is no mere man. Jesus is no mere human, putting himself forward, saying, Hear me, believe me, love me, stay with him, do others good in my name. No, this man “came not of his own accord” but is God the Son sent by God the Father. (For Jesus’s various “not my own” claims in the Gospel of John, see also 5:30, 43; 6:38; 7:28; 8:50; 12:49; 14:10). 

To hear Jesus and believe Jesus is to hear the one sent by God to speak for God and who is God himself (as we saw in verses 24 and 28, and will see next week in verse 58).

To hear the word of Jesus is to hear the word of God. To believe what Jesus says about himself, and everything else, is to believe what God says about Jesus and everything else.

So, in this sermon, we’ve worked backwards, in a sense. We started with true freedom, then came back to staying with Jesus, then came to the bottom and center: how you hear Jesus’s voice.

Now we’ve worked through the chart, and I’ll fill it in:

And if you’re really struggling with the question, Am I of God or not? I have good news for you: if you are genuinely asking and genuinely concerned, that’s a first indicator you’re of God. Those who are not of God don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it. Thank God you’re concerned, and lean into Jesus. 

At the end of the day, the question for you, and for everyone in this room is, What do you do with Jesus? What do you think of him? Do you believe him? Do you love him? Do you fully intend to stay with him? How you respond to Jesus is the test, is the indicator, of whether you’re “of God” or “not of God.” There’s no way around Jesus to figure out if you’re of God or not apart from how you orient on Jesus.

So, here’s my prayer for you and for us as a church: that we (those “who have believed” till now) would keep hearing Jesus even (and especially!) when it’s uncomfortable and we don’t like it at first (because we think other people in our lives won’t like it), and so love him and stay with him (through life’s trials), and so enjoy freedom from sin to do others good.

This is the Table of those set free, and being increasingly set free, by the Son, from sin and for enjoying him and for expressing that love for him in doing good for others. This is a Table of true freedom. It celebrates his victory over death, our liberation from sin by his offering of himself for us at the cross, and our tasting and seeing that he is good.

True freedom is from sin and its misery. True freedom stays in Jesus’s word and loves him, which overflows into the freedom to love and do good for others.