So let me go ahead and get started.
So if you would turn with me to John 8. John 8. John 8 and I want to read. Let's read verses. Let's start
with 22 through 24 is what I want to read. Then said the Jews, will he kill
himself? Because he saith. Whither I go,
ye cannot come. And he said unto them, ye are
from beneath, I am from above. Ye are of this world, I am not
of this world. And this is where I want to concentrate
on. I said therefore unto you that
ye shall die in your sins, for if ye believe not that I am he,
ye shall die in your sins. Unbelief, as Walter has said
before, is not the absence of belief, but the positive or on
purpose of not believing God. That is actively engaged in unbelief. That is what all men and women
are involved in as they are born in Adam. We positively will not
and cannot believe God as we are born in Adam. Don't misunderstand
me. Every one of us in our unbelief
want it to be that way. This flesh always does resist
the Holy Ghost and it loves it to be this way. We in and of
ourselves as we are born in Adam cannot believe God because believing
God takes faith. And faith is not going to be
my subject this morning, but I do want to give this as a pretext
into what I'm going to talk about. But the scripture tells us that
without faith it is impossible to please God. By faith we believe
God. Scripture also tells us that
all men have not faith. We also read in James that some
men have faith, but that faith they have is a dead faith, and
it certainly is not the faith of God. It is not that faith
that would please God, because God is life itself, and faith
is of him, and he does not give anything that is dead. Faith
is the gift of God. If any man is to have faith that
pleases God, he must get it from God. And I don't mean he's gonna
go up to God's storehouse and get faith for himself. I mean
God must bestow it himself on an individual by his grace or
they will never have it. Grace, faith, and everything
else of God is a part of who God is and you will never take
from God what God must give. That includes salvation. You
will not have salvation unless God gives it. God must give salvation
and he will do so to whom he wills and only to whom he wills,
no matter what man says his will is. God has already performed
the works for salvation, of salvation. That is, those works needed to
save a people from their sins. But without God bestowing his
gifts on us, we will not be saved. We will not believe that he is,
that is, Jesus Christ, and we will die in our sins, if that
is the case with us, which is what our text says. Christ says
so right here in our text. So now, with that being said,
I want to look at the following things as it concerns this verse,
this one verse we've read in verse 24 of chapter 8. First
of all, I want to look at who is he talking to, what is dying
in your sins, and who is the I Am? Here in this text, he is speaking
specifically to the Jews. that when he was teaching in
the synagogue there, the Jews were gathered together, it says.
Christ is specifically speaking to those who do not believe and
those who cannot believe. He is telling them something
that is absolutely true, no matter what they thought about it and
no matter what you and I think about it. I might think of Jesus
Christ and what he says, what Jesus Christ says is true regardless
of what our thoughts are on the matter. We as we are born in
Adam will not, that is we do not have the ability to cause
ourselves to will to believe Jesus Christ. We do not have
a heart for it. Man's heart as he is born in
Adam is deceitful above all things. And I've used this a lot, but
this means it is deceitful above our will. So it will deceive
us into thinking we can do something that we cannot. It will deceive
us into thinking that we do believe God when we do not. It is also
desperately wicked. It is so wicked it cannot be
cured. The word there means incurable
in Jeremiah 17.9. So unless we are given a new
heart, we cannot believe and we will not believe because it
is the heart that makes us willing. It is also from the heart that
the mouth speaketh. So if you speak of that which
is not true of Jesus Christ, or if you confess that which
is not the Christ of the scripture, then you do not believe God.
It is with the new heart given by God, which he has promised
he would do, but it is with that the heart man believeth unto
righteousness. Man can deceive himself all he
wants into thinking he can will to love God and believe God.
But he is deceived if he does not believe the record God gave
of his son. But we are all born this same
way with this evil wicked heart. So in reality, he is talking
to everyone. Believing does not just sit on
its little stool of do nothing as Earl used to say. That faith
that I have already spoken of, given by God in that new heart,
believes Jesus Christ and it will also obey God. If God has
given you faith, that is the faith of Jesus Christ, you will
believe and you will love to hear his gospel. It is really
as simple as that. If you do not love his gospel
and you do not love his people, then you have, at best, a dead
faith. This dead faith being in that
old deceitful wicked heart. A lot of people say they believe
God. They say they believe the gospel,
but it is not the God nor the gospel spoken of in his word.
If man has any part in salvation at all, then it is a lie. So what does it mean to die in
your sins? First of all, what is sin? Sin
means an offense. It is a trespass. In other words,
sin is not simply not doing something that you should be doing. When
we think of the word trespass, at least in my mind, this comes
up. You see folks who have no trespassing
signs on their property. It says no trespassing. And if
someone trespasses, they are actively engaged in going onto
that person's property and committing a trespass. Also offense. And I cannot help but think of
it this way because I like sports, I guess. But on sports, when
you're on offense, you have the ball, so to speak. The ball's
in your court. And you're actively engaged in
trying to get it to the other team's side. Sin is the active engagement
of men born in Adam to trespass against God. This is the important
thing. We may sin against another human
being. We can and we do do this. But
even this is an offense against God because he says not to do
it. God says love your neighbor as
yourself. But we are also actively, we
are on offense, we trespass directly against God the creator. So if
we die in our sins, and that word in is the same word used
in 1 Peter 2, 24, where it says he bore our sins in his own body
on the tree. If we die in our sins, we are
completely engulfed with sin, and it's all we know, all we
are, and all we have. This means we die forever in
trespass against the sovereign God, and we must pay the penalty
which is death. Death being separation from God
for eternity. And that is a scary thought.
We read in John 3 that if you do not believe, you are condemned
already. John 3, 18. He that believeth
on him is not condemned. But he that believeth not is
condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name
of the only begotten Son of God. unbelief is sin. So we read this
and it specifically says that not believing, that is, the active
engagement of unbelief condemns you already. You are already
sentenced. That is, you will forever be
in darkness. What does it go on to say in
John 3 there, 19 and 20? It says, and this is the condemnation,
that light is coming to the world and men love darkness rather
than light because their deeds were evil. For everyone that
doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light,
lest his deeds should be reproved. You will be in darkness forever,
and darkness is separation from God, because God is light, and
light has no communion with darkness. So if unbelief condemns me, and
it does, what is it to believe Jesus Christ is the I Am? We know the scripture tells us
that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God
and the word was God. We also read that everything
was made by him. There is not anything made without
him. All things are made by him and
for him. So we know he is the creator
and the creator is the word. What he says is. We read in Exodus
3.14, and keep in mind, this is the Old Testament, and this
is what his word says before Christ came, Exodus 3.14. And God said unto Moses, I am
that I am. And he said, thus shalt thou
say unto the children of Israel, I am has sent me unto you. So God is the I am, the self-existent
one. God is the word, God is the creator. Who else is the I am? Genesis
17, one. And when Abram was 90 years old
and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am
the almighty God. Walk before me and be thou perfect. So God is the one who has all
might. He is the one Nebuchadnezzar
come to see as the one who doeth his will, both in heaven and
in the earth. And none can stay his hand or
say unto him, what doest thou? The I am is the sovereign God
of heaven and earth. That means what he thinks or
says is done. He is Lord over all and he rules
with a mighty hand. Exodus 6-2 says, and God spake
unto Moses and said unto him, I am the Lord. The one who is
Lord is also jealous. He is jealous of himself. He
will not have men worship any other god but him. You worship
man in any way, you are worshiping another god and you are likely
to be consumed. Deuteronomy 4.24, for the Lord
thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. Man is not
a God to be worshipped, neither is there anything else imagined
by man that is a God at all. God being the jealous God will
not share his glory with anyone or anything else. Isaiah 42.8
says, I am the Lord, that is my name, and my glory will I
not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. What
kind of God will you create in your imagination that will be
able to withstand this consuming fire? Isaiah 46, nine says, remember
the former things of old, for I am God and there is none else. I am God and there is none like
me. His ways are high above our ways. His thoughts are high above our
thoughts. There is none like unto Him anywhere. He does not change. I'm reading
these from the Old Testament for a reason. Because this is
who God said He is then, and this is who Jesus Christ says
He is. He said, I am. So when we read
God saying in the Old Testament, we are hearing Jesus Christ.
He does not change. Malachi 3.6 says, For I am the
Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are
not consumed. We know that Jesus Christ came
down to this earth born of a woman, born under the law. So he is
both God and man. Jesus Christ is all these things,
but that is not all. We also know from Scripture the
I am is the following. that seed that will bruise the
head of the serpent. He is the Passover. He is our
Sabbath. He is that rock. He is the water
that came from that rock. He is the manna that bred from
heaven. He is the kinsman redeemer. He
is the light of the world. He is the way, the truth, and
the life. That one of who it was said that
he shall save his people from their sin. And when he accomplished
this, he said, it is finished. Someone once said to Henry, I
believe it was something like this, I could have the words
wrong a little bit, but it said, is Christ enough? Henry responded
and said, he is if he's all you got. If you have anything else,
then you have too much. Christ is all and that is whether
we know it or not or whether we believe it or not. Isaiah
48, 12 says, hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called,
I am he, I am the first, I also am the last. This is said in
the sense that there is no in between. He is first all the
way to the last and none will get any glory apart from him.
The scripture in fact says we are his glory because what he
did for us. How does the scripture show him
that is Jesus Christ to us in his work on that tree? What he
did for those to whom he loved, we see it in the following. This
is the creator, this is the powerful, the sovereign of the heaven and
earth, that jealous God, that holy one, the self-existent one,
the great I am. And here's what we read in scripture
of him. Psalm 22, verses 6 through 14. But I am a worm, and no man,
a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that
see me laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip. They
shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver
him. Let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. But thou
art he that took me out of the womb. Thou didst make me hope
when I was upon my mother's breast. I was cast upon thee from the
womb. Thou art my God from my mother's
belly. Be not far from me, for trouble
is near me, for there is none to help. Many bulls have come
past me, strong bulls of Bashan have beset me around. They gaped
upon me with their mouths as a ravening and roaring lion.
I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels. But then we also read of this
great God, this I Am in Psalm 40. Sacrifice and offering thou
didst not desire, mine ears hast thou opened, burnt offering and
sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, lo, I come, in the
volume of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will,
O my God, yea, thy law was within my heart. I have preached righteousness
in the great congregation. Lo, I have not refrained my lips,
O Lord, thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness
within my heart. I have declared thy faithfulness
and thy salvation. I have not concealed thy lovingkindness
and thy truth from the great congregation. Withhold not thy
tender mercies from me, O Lord. Let thy loving kindness and thy
truth continually preserve me, for innumerable evils have come
past me about. Mine iniquities have taken hold
upon me so that I am not able to look up. They are more than
the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me. And one
more, Psalm 69, and this is the great I Am. Save me, O God, for
the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire where
there is no standing. I am come into deep waters where
the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying, my throat
is dried. Mine eyes fail while I wait for
my God. They that hate me without a cause
are more than the hairs of my head. They that would destroy
me being my enemies wrongfully are mighty. Then I restored that
which I took not away. Oh God, thou knowest my foolishness
and my sins are not hid from thee. This is what we might call putting
your money where your mouth is. And I don't mean to be flippant
by saying it this way. But God says and God does. This is the great I Am being
made a curse and sin for His people. That is love for a people
right there. He is almighty and powerful.
He is sovereign, but He is also that one that died being made
a curse and sin for me. Those who believe that Jesus
Christ is will be saved and will not see condemnation, but are
passed from death unto life in him. When he reveals himself
to us, we will say with Peter, from Matthew 16, 15 and 16, it
says, he saith unto them, but whom say ye that I am? And Simon
Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ, the son of the
living God. That one where the father says
to us, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. To
those whom he loves he says to us, Matthew 11, 29, take my yoke
upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart
and ye shall find rest unto your souls. You want to find rest
from your doing? Resting in what he has done to
satisfy the holy justice of God? This is the I am Jesus Christ
is speaking of in this passage. This is what he is saying to
them. This is the record God gave of his son. There is more
to it than what I have given you. I in no way gave you all
of who Jesus Christ is and what he's done, but it's as simple
as that. Most folks think today that believing
that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, died on the tree, was
buried, and rose again. You know, the Roman's road, they
basically call it. That road that leads to condemnation.
Let me be clear, believing all those things are certainly part
of who Jesus Christ is and what he has done, but those things
are just a speck of who Jesus Christ is. Men and women today
think they can believe a mantra like that and think because of
that, God will accept their person. If you do not see this one whose
person is the only one God will accept and that you must be found
in him so that you are not consumed by God Almighty, then you will
die in your sins. John 11, 25 says, Jesus said
unto her, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. You think that
you will hide all those evil thoughts from God? Not even talking
about the evil deeds you have done. You might think you have
hidden those from men, but you hide nothing from God, not even
your thoughts. In Revelations 2.23, we read
part of the verse, I am he which searches the reins and hearts,
and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
I don't want that, do you? Now remember the meaning of the
word sin. It is the active engagement of
a sinner to sin or that is trespass against the sovereign God from
heaven. Unbelief is sin. So if we do not believe that
Jesus Christ is, it is because we are actively engaged in not
believing him. In John 8, 12, Christ says, then
spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the
world. He that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. What is it
to follow Jesus Christ? It is to believe him. It is to
believe that he is that one spoken of throughout all scripture as
the great God, that God who was manifest in the flesh, who came
and did save his people from their sins. There is nothing
left for you to do for salvation. He has done it all. But you must
believe that he is that one or you will die in your sins. So
how do we do this? His power and right. He must
give it to us to do this or we will never do it on our own.
We cannot because we are dead. We are darkness itself by nature
and we love darkness by nature rather than light. So something
has to change to cause us to be able to first see the light,
since we are blind by nature. And then something must happen
so that we follow the light, that is, believe that he is.
Scripture tells us no one can come to Christ, that is, believe
that he is, unless the Father which sent him, that is, sent
Christ, draws the one to whom he has chosen in his Son. But
if the Father does draw them, they will see Christ and who
He is, and they will believe Him and follow Him. Otherwise,
no one will believe. So they will, in fact, have nothing
but unbelief, and they will die in their sins and have to suffer
death for eternity. So this causes me to want to
beg God to give to me, to do to me what is needed so that
I can believe Him. He has told us in his word that
it pleased him to save them by the foolishness of preaching.
So you in some way must hear the gospel or you will never
believe. The gospel, that simple message, or that message which
is singular, meaning there is one way of salvation, there is
one man to accomplish that salvation, and it all comes down to the
I am. This is that message which is
to some a stumbling block. Meaning they stumble over that
stone that was not put there of their own doing. And they
are trying to go about doing it in order to establish their
own righteousness, which is not the righteousness of God. Or
it is foolishness unto them. One man does all the work. This
is foolish unto them because they think it is their wisdom
that they know God. But in works they deny him. You
must confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that
God has raised him from the dead, the scripture tells us in Romans
10. So you and your inner being believe it is he that accomplished
salvation, and you will outwardly confess to that. This is not
simply believing that he arose again. It is that Jesus Christ,
having paid our sins, was raised again to justification of life,
and those in him have forever satisfied God in him. So we are now all at peace with
God if you were in Him. But how do we do this? We do
not just believe out of the blue. First, He will send a preacher
and the medium or the mode of that is not specified in Romans
10. If this just means God will only
use someone He has sent in person to tell you the truth, then we
should quit reading and quit writing. But whatever mode God
is pleased to send you the gospel, it will be from another sinner
who has proclaimed what God has done to them, a sinner, and they
will proclaim this to other sinners in some way. This preacher sent
by God will proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and him crucified.
He will proclaim the I am of scripture. The individual then
hearing that word will believe on him in their heart, and with
their mouth they will call upon his name. And it might sound
something like this, Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief. They
will identify with Jesus Christ and his people, and they will
join themselves together with God's people in his gospel. We
will come to say with the psalmist in Psalm 28 7, the Lord is my
strength and my shield. My heart trusted in him, and
I am helped. Therefore, my heart greatly rejoiceth,
and with my song I will praise him. I will give you this last
thing Christ goes on to say in John 8 verses 58. Jesus said
unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was,
I am. Do you believe that Jesus Christ
is? I pray you do. I pray I do. But this is sure, if you believe
not that I am, Christ says, you shall die in your sins. God help
me to believe him.