For us, on our way to Texas,
we never heard any prayers. Do you remember those, Trish
Tramper, Sander? Okay, all right. Okay, let's
begin our worship service this morning with hymn number 268,
Alfero, Foundation of the Saints of the Lord. One more can he say, and to you
he hath said, For you who for refuge to Jesus
have fled, Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed, For
I am thy God, I will still give thee aid. Outstripped of the
air, The end calls me to stand, Upheld by my gracious omnipotent
hand. Wading through the deep waters,
I call thee to go, The rivers of woe, shall not be overflowed
for I will be with thee thy troubles and bliss and sanctify to thee
thy deepest distress when through fiery trials to consume and my
goal The stone that on Jesus that
knee for repose, I will not, I will not desert to His foes. That stone, though all hell should
endeavor to shake, After Scripture reading and prayer, we'll sing
hymn number 127, out of Hallelujah, what I sing. You have your Bibles,
turn with me to John chapter 8. Our Lord is speaking to a group
of Pharisees and other Jews whose confidence it was that they were
Abraham's seed and had the election of a nation. It says in verse
36, the Son therefore shall make you free. You shall be free. He has just said to them, ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. He
says, I know that you are Abraham's seed, but you seek to kill me
because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I
have seen with my father, and you do that which you have seen
with your father. They answered him and said, Abraham
is our father. Jesus said, if you were Abraham's
seed, you were Abraham's children, You do the works of Abraham,
and now you seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the
truth, which I have heard of God. This did not Abraham. You do the deeds of your father.
They said unto them, We are not born of fornication. We have
one father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God
were your father, you would love me. For I proceed forth and came
from God, and neither came out of myself, but he sent me. Why
do you not understand my speech? Even because you cannot hear
my word. Ye are of your father the devil, the lusts of your
father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning
and abode not of the truth, because there's no truth in him. He that
speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own. When he speaketh a lie,
he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.
And because I tell you the truth, you believe me not. Which of
you commit the greatest sin? If I say the truth, why do you
not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's
words, ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
Then answered the Jews and said, Say we not well that thou art
a Samaritan and hast the devil? Jesus answered, I have not a
devil, but I honor my Father, and ye do dishonor me. And I
seek not mine own glory, which there is one that seeketh and
judges. Verily I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall
never see death. Then said the Jews unto him,
now we know that thou hast to devil Abraham as dead of the
prophets. And thou sayest, if a man keep
my saying, he shall never taste death? Art thou greater than
our father Abraham, which is dead, and the prophets are dead?
Whom makest thou thyself? Jesus said, if I honor myself,
my honor is nothing. It is my father that honoreth
me, of whom you say that he is your God. Yet ye have not known
him, but I know him. If I should say I know him not,
I shall be a liar like unto you. But I know him, and keep his
say. Your father Abraham rejoiced
to see my day, and saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews
of him, they are not yet fifty years old. And I said, I've seen
Abraham. Jesus said, I do. Verily, verily,
I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am. Let us pray. Our Father, we are thankful that
your word tells the truth, and is the truth, and does set us
free. We are thankful, Father. that
we can look at the words of our Lord Jesus Christ and know that
he did not take any quarter, spare any enemy in the gospel,
but told men the truth to their face. We thank you for his boldness,
his power, and yet he was full of compassion for those who were
lost, hungry, poor in spirit, in bondage, But these who are
in bondage, even now that he speaks to, love their bondage. They love their change. And when
he speaks of being free, they cannot begin to comprehend what
he's talking about. We praise you, Father. The Bible
is true about us. our weakness, our frailty, our
sin, our depravity. And it's true about our Savior,
who overcame all these things by dying in our womb instead,
purchasing our salvation. And we became His purchased possession
by His blood. Pray for those who are sick,
those who are trapped. Pray for Hannah, if she hears
this call. Pray for Clara, if she's awake, she'll watch over
her, standing in three seats in the church home. Pray for
the others who requested prayer. We ask Lord Church of Christ
for help for them. I'll notice these cases, every one of them,
but nothing is hidden from thee. We ask, Lord, that you might
heal and bring back to a good measure of health and cause eyes
and hearts to be fixed upon Jesus Christ. For as our days grow
short and our time here goes shorter than it's ever been before.
More and more we see our utter need for our Savior. Help us
now to worship you this day in spirit and in truth. We pray
in Christ's name, amen. Number 127, Hallelujah. I want to sing. What a name for the Son of God
who came! Ruined sinners to be free! Hallelujah! What a Savior! Buried shamans promptly brewed
in my place! With His blood, hallelujah, what
a Savior! Guilty, blind, and helpless,
we stand as one! Oh, Adonai, can it be? Alleluia, what a Saviour! He who did our hearts need to
die, in His pain, His cross, His cry! hallelujah what a hallelujah hallelujah Let's pray. Father, again, we
come in the name of Jesus Christ, our majestic and glorious Savior,
who indeed sits at thy right hand, having purged thy sins.
We rejoice in our sovereign Lord, because the work he came to do
he finished. Indeed, he ransomed all of us,
all of Israel, and we reside with him even now in the world.
We don't understand these things, but you have spoken them in your
word and thus given us faith to believe them and rejoice in
them. As we are privileged to render unto thee that which you've
given us for the preaching of the gospel here and other places,
let us do so with joy and thanksgiving. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you. We draw your attention to John
chapter 8, verse 58. Jesus said it invariably, truly,
truly, I say to you before Abraham was, I am. To those who know God by his
sovereign grace, this name by which our Lord reveals himself
is precious. There is no possible explanation
of the title. Plato called God ends, E-N-S,
which simply means the being. The being. A friend of mine,
Larry Simpson, called him the eternal isness. The concise structure of that
those words I am as a name is a wonder because to begin to
understand it is to realize that you and your relationship could
not be without it. He is whatever being is. We are called human beings and
that suggests intellect, vitality, motility, more than existence
for things exist that are not beings we are human beings when
we die we are called corpses or cadavers we're not called
beings jesus christ said whatever being
is and whoever is being is being because That name, and this is about
as far as human intellect can go, means more than existence, but existence
itself. Whatever existence is, whatever
being is. And of which you and I are just
a tiny part. The Lord said, I am. He was declared
in Colossians chapter one, that by him all things, consist, exist,
or be. The grassroots meaning that may
be applied to this statement linguistically is, I am, and
you're not, because that's what he was saying to these men. I am God, you're not God, and
you don't even believe in God. context in which we find our
Lord making this declaration of the Shabbat is astounding.
As any found in all of scripture, He's declaring to a gathered
group of Jews, of whom many are Pharisees, that He is God in
human flesh. The Pharisees accused the Lord
of being a boaster and a braggart in verse 13. Also accused Him
of having a devil. Which our Lord says, the Father
bears witness of me. And we know where, in the face
of two witnesses, anything is established according to the
law of God. And what follows is a conversation, a dialogue
between Christ and those religious, austere, personally righteous
men that ends up with Christ declaring that their religion,
their life of piety, their supposed sacred commitment, is actually
of the devil. Now when we think of people possessed
by the devil, we think of them as being out somewhere in the
woods dancing around in robes or sacrificing beasts. They erected
a so-called statue of the devil in Penn Station in Pennsylvania
and he's got horns and he looks like a goat and he's got a forked
tail and he's carrying a trident and he's quite an ugly creature.
But our Lord said to these, the finest of religion, that religion
can produce, He says, your father is the devil. My father is God,
and your father is the devil. I think it's interesting to know
that though the conversation begins in verse 12, gets increasingly
heated, it is when Christ tells these men that they are in bondage, and not free, that the religious
dialogue becomes a blazing diatribe. It is so today. Religious men
will put up with just about anything. They will argue and debate almost
any topic, but when the truth of their bondage and absence
of freedom is declared, they're ready for a fistfight. You don't
believe me? Just tell someone sometime, you're
just in bondage. You're just in bondage. They
don't want to hear that. The thrust of the words of our text
is that Jesus Christ carried both his deity and his eternality. I am. He said these words to
that mob that came to arrest him in John chapter 18. He simply
said, I am, and they fell away backwards. The power of these
words, these cut, these words, I am cut to the marrow because
they were confronted, these Pharisees with a statement that if true,
it was curtains for their religion. Since their religion was their
life, though mostly just nominally according to verses 1 through
11 of this chapter, without it they would lose the body politic
and control over men and thus they sought to kill the Lord
Jesus Christ, the very one who told them the truth. Wasn't it Paul who said, do you
hate me because I tell you the truth in Galatians? In our studies
of numbers years ago, we saw that the gospel is so against
unbelief that those who speak the truth are targets of stones.
Those spies that came back and told the people that they could
go possess that land, the two spies, Caleb and the other one,
told them the truth. They said, we don't want to stone
you. We know there are giants over there. We're not going to
that land. We're not going to that land. They called them liars
and warned us to stone them. It's always that way with Acts.
When Stephen told the truth in Acts chapter 8, I believe it
is. No, it's not 8. Acts chapter
2. When he told the truth, they
wanted to stone him. They did stone him for telling
men the truth. Our Lord's words concerning who
he is, or rather who he is, cause these religious and moral icons
to reveal that they had homicidal hearts. They were murderers in
their hearts. The first murder was about what? How God received
sinners? By blood or by the works of human
hands? How did he receive sinners? Abel
was received because he offered up a blood sacrifice at the east
of Eden. Cain was rejected because he
offered up the works of his hands, though I'm sure they were the
best he could do. How did that end up? Cain killed Abel. took a stone and crushed his
skull. The same murderous heart is in
the heart of these Pharisees and the issue is exactly the
same. Our Lord is telling them that their religion and everything
they do is of the devil. And what he's telling them is
the truth that sets men free. It sets men free. If what Christ
said was true, these men were lost and without hope in this
world, and that's what they heard, and that's what we hear today.
This is precisely what false religion hears when the gospel
is declared. I can't tell you how many times I've told people
the truth, said that one, not being mean, not used as a bludgeon
over the head, said, this is what the gospel says. This is
what the Lord says, this is what the Bible teaches. And they'll
look at me. because they've been in religion
since they were kids, just like I was, and some things in Southern
Baptist churches. They walked down an aisle when
they were 12 years old, and they started into puberty and started
feeling hormonal things and started feeling guilty about stuff. They
went down an aisle and confessed their sins, and people told them
they were saved. And they're counting on that.
I have friends and relatives who are counting on that experience.
They won't let it go. And when you tell them the truth,
You don't never say to them, you're not saved. I've never
said that to anybody. I won't say it to anybody, because I
don't know. That's God's business. But you tell them the truth,
they say, you're saying I'm not saved. That's what these fellows
were saying. You're saying we're not saved.
You're saying we're not God's people. Why? Because he told them the truth.
I am is the name that God revealed to Moses in reference to himself
as the one who was about to deliver Israel from the bond of Egypt.
Remember that was the context in which that was written. Moses
went out there on the mountain and saw that bush burning that
was not consumed with fire and he walked up to it and that bush
spoke to him and said I'm calling you to go deliver Israel from
Egypt and will be the one that delivers Israel from Egypt. And
he said, well, who shall I tell? Tell them sent me to do this
great thing. He says, you tell them I am that
I am hath sent you. So the context in which I am
is used in Moses' time and used here is the same context. Deliverance
from bondage. Deliverance from bondage. I am. And this suddenly applies
to these men. Who are you and who is your father?
They ask of our Lord. We have Abraham for our father. We can trace our religion back
to the father of the faithful. We have never been in bondage.
Oh, yes you have. several years after Abraham received
the vision in Acts chapter 14 or chapter 13 when the Lord said,
I'm going to make a great nation out of you, but they're going
into bondage for 430 years. We've never been in bondage.
It was to Abraham that the Lord told them they were going into
bondage and stay there for 430 years and then be delivered by
his great power. They said, we've never been in
bondage. Our Lord said, Abraham rejoiced to see my day and was
glad. They were glad that Christ was
not 50 years old, which may be an indication of what kind of
life it was. Truly, we're just saying, a man of sorrow. What
a name. He was probably in his late 20s
or early 30s at this time. I think the minister started
at 30, went through two times. He's 33. So he's probably in
his 30s, but he looked 50, so I guess he's living a hard life.
So a man now had not a place to lay his head in Scripture,
see. He's tempted in all points like we are yet without seeing
he suffered everything we've ever suffered. And he might succor
those who are suffering. So they said, you're not 50 years
old. How can Abraham have been dead
for centuries? Speak of him, they thought. Our
Lord said before Abraham was. I am. I am. This statement immediately and
summarily settles some things. First of all, religious heritage
that can be traced to a human being that died and is dead. dust and done is of no eternal
consequence whatsoever. Abraham is dead. They even said
it twice in this context. Abraham who is dead they said.
Abraham as he's declared in the matter of natural images forever
was. That's how they'll speak of us
when we die. They won't speak of us as is. Which is third person singular. I am, being, they won't speak
of us as he is, they'll say he was. He was a great guy. He was my friend, he was. What? Not anymore, no. That can never
be said, Christ. I am. being. Now it is said of him that he
was, is, and is to come. Now what were they talking about?
They were talking about his death, murder, and resurrection. He was. He walked this earth for 33 years.
He died and was buried, and now he is sitting at the right hand
of the Father, and he is to come to receive his people unto himself,
to gather all his ransom that we've just seen. Religion that traces its heritage
to the eternal son of God is eternal value because it is based
upon Him who is. He is eternity, enfolding history,
time, and all that it entails. Secondly, all humanity is a was,
and Christ is the is. He is the great I am. My Lord
said, I am the way, the truth, And the life said, I am the door. He said, I am the vine. I am
the great shepherd. I am the good shepherd. And that
never changed who I will be. It never changed who I was. It's
always I am. Not only positive declarations
of His person, there are likewise negative declarations of anyone
else's persons. No one else may apply this name
to himself. It is taken. It is the Lord's
name. I am the same yesterday, today, and
forever. These words from the child of
God are words of real and present comfort. We don't know whether we have
a future or not in this natural realm. I'm sure those people
the other night in summer, whatever, Kentucky, were thinking about
what they were going to do the next day when God sent a great
whirlwind through those two communities. 19 people didn't see the next
day. We don't know what's going to happen to us. We have no idea. But we can rest assured of this,
we're going to be a wall of it. We're going to be a wall of it. But if you're in Jesus Christ,
that does not apply to you spiritually. You're not these things that
are real and present. Comfortment is not contingent
upon anything that has to do with works or religious heritage
or any time or time or circumstance that have anything to do with
those things. These words are about the unchanging, the immutable. I am the Lord, I change not,
therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. I am, he changes
not. These words inspire language
such as Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Christ is,
I am, and whatever and whoever he is to the believer he is now
and forevermore. How precious this is. Is He your
Savior? Then before the world began and
after the world ends and everything in between, He is your Savior. I am, He said. Can that be altered? Can that
be changed? In no way. He is. I am. I am the Lord. I change
not. This puts everything for the
believer in the present, and that's what we really have. I
have to worry about that. I think about my past, and sometimes
I grieve, and I'm ashamed and embarrassed about my past, but
it's done, and there's nothing I can do about that. I can't
change anything that happened yesterday. And I don't know about
tomorrow. What do I have right now? Living in the present, as psychologists
would say today. Believers in the present. A believer does not live in the
past or dream of the future because he's in Christ and all that stuff
is now. That's what the wise man said in Ecclesiastes chapter
3. Most wonderful statement. In
verse 15 he says, that which hath been And that which is to be has already
been, and God will require that which is to pass. The believer is in Christ. He
was in Christ, or is in Christ before the world was. He is in
Christ now, and he is in Christ when the world will be made anew.
As the believer is in the substitute before the world began, according
to Revelation 13a, he was the lamb slain from the foundation
of the world, and that speaks of those written in the book
of life. He is the substitute in heavenly places. You're with
the substitute in Christ now. You're made to sit in heavenly
places in Jesus Christ, according to Ephesians chapter 2. The believer
does not fear judgment, because as Christ is, so is he in the
world, according to 1 John chapter 4. Do not expect the world of
religion to accept this, much less understand it or embrace
it. The believer only has a slight glimpse of this reality. Nevertheless,
the believer knows down where he lives and understands things
that cannot be naturally known or explained that his joyous
state will never be the same because he's in Christ. Christ
is I Am. The believer knows that he's
been delivered from the bondage of sin by the great I Am. He
that dwelt in the bush has delivered him. The believer is free because
the truth has made him so. Christ said, I am the truth.
I am the way. Look at those three glorious
things, the way, the truth, and the life. And know that they
are always being and forever now. That's what I love about this
book. It does talk about the future, and it does reveal the
past, but it never tells us to go there. We have what we have now. We
will have an eternity. We will not have a better life,
as far as eternal life goes, in eternity. We just won't have
this old natural life. It'll be gone for good, and we'll
be able to worship God as we ought to be worshiped, and sing
as we ought to sing. Think as we ought to think. Never
have a bad thought cross our mind. And we'll always be right
now. Because Christ said, I am. He
didn't say, I will be. He said, I am. Put this to the test in your
thinking. Hold up death, life, joy, peace, salvation, every
situation and circumstance. When all is said and done, it
will still be now, because Christ is dynamic. This description, this name of
our Lord, brings all things to the proper place and perspective. Think about it. Rest in it. Jesus Christ said, before Abraham
was, before you was, before our lives. He is. I am. And in that great chapter 11
of Hebrews, it said, he that comes to God must believe what?
That he is. Third person singular, I am.
And the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. This is
what we have. We're in Christ. the being, therefore
we are being in Him. Father, bless us to understand,
pray Christ's name. Okay, I wasn't. I'm here. I'm sorry to see you. I guess you did. Tell me where
I can get you. I'll hold up. Where else would
they expect me?