The Testimony of Jesus
The Testimony of Jesus
John 8:12-30
Main Idea: Jesus declares His identity and intends for us to believe in and follow Him.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Who does Jesus Christ declare Himself to be, and what are the implications He intends for me?
I. Liar or Light? (8:12-20)
“At the close of the first Festival-day of the Feast they went down to the Court of the Women where they had made a great amendment. There were golden candlesticks there with four golden bowls on the top of them and four ladders to each candlestick, and four youths of the priestly stock and in their hands jars of oil holding a hundred and twenty logs which they poured into all the bowls. They made wicks from the worn out drawers and girdles of the priests and with them they set the candlesticks alight, and there was not a courtyard in Jerusalem that did not reflect the light of the Beth ha-She’ubah.”
~ Colin Kruse, TNTC John Commentary
“Light, it seems to me, is like time: I know what it is until someone asks me, at which point I have absolutely no idea.”
~ Andrew Wilson, God of All Things
“Darkness, by contrast, has no existence of its own. It is not a thing; it is the absence of a thing, which instantly vanishes on the arrival of light. Consider the darkest place you can imagine: in a cave several hundred feet underground, inside a chest of drawers, at the far end of a black slipper. Now imagine introducing the faintest possible light source: a glowworm, an ember, the screen of an old mobile phone. Which wins, the darkness or the light? To ask the question is to answer it. The deepest darkness is powerless against even the faintest light.”
~ Andrew Wilson, God of All Things
Who does Jesus Christ declare Himself to be, and what are the implications He intends for me? (Repeated before each point)
II. Lunatic or Lifted? (8:21-28)
“When Jesus refers to himself as “I am” without a predicate, he connects his personal identity with the covenantal identity of Yahweh. In Exodus 3, God identifies himself to Moses as the “I am,” which becomes the unique and personal name for God in his covenant with Israel and with David. And in Isaiah 40-48, the prophet uses God’s Covenantal name to make the point that, as the one true and living God, Yahweh is unique and incomparable by nature. The “I am” is in a category by himself as the eternally self-existent being who alone is sovereign, omniscient, and omnipotent in contrast to the idols and false gods. The Old Testament reserves “I am” for Yahweh; by definition, this name cannot apply to any mere man.”
~ Stephen Wellum, God The Son Incarnate
Who does Jesus Christ declare Himself to be, and what are the implications He intends for me?
III. The Lovely Lord (8:29-30)
The identity of the Son in relation to the Father:
Light of the World: Isa 49:6
Judge: John 8:16
Testimony: John 8:18
Mission: John 8:18
Identity: John 8:19
Home: John 8:23
Message: John 8:26
Son of Man: Daniel 7:13-14
Proximity: John 8:29
John 20:21: Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”
John 20:30-31: 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 you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Who does Jesus Christ declare Himself to be, and what are the implications He intends for me?