Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

Is God your Father? What you do shows who your father is. Jesus told the Pharisees that if they were children of God they would show love toward Jesus. Instead, they wanted to kill Him. That showed that they were not God’s children, for God the Father loves Jesus. Rather, the devil is the one who is a liar and murderer. Because they wanted to kill Jesus, it revealed that they were children of Satan.

 

The devil was a liar and a murderer from the beginning. He lied to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and got them to eat from the one tree that God had commanded them not to eat from (Genesis 3). By doing so, Satan brought death to Adam and Eve and to all of their descendants. It became immediately apparent in Adam and Eve’s sons. Cain rose up and killed his brother Abel (Genesis 4).

 

In contrast, everything that God did recorded in those first chapters of Genesis was out of love for mankind. He created them with special acts of attention and devotion, forming the man from the dust of the earth, and the woman from a rib taken from the man. He brought the two of them together to be the perfect match for one another. He planted a garden for them to live in and to tend. He gave them dominion over all the creatures of the earth. He even walked them in the garden in the evenings (Genesis 2).

 

This did not change even when Adam and Eve abandoned God’s loving word and followed the desires of the devil. There were undesirable results. The man and the woman came to know the guilt and shame of sin. The eternal function of their bodies began to deteriorate and death became inevitable for them. These were the results of following the desires of the devil.

 

Still, God clothed their nakedness and He promised that from their offspring, from the seed of the woman, would come one to defeat the old evil foe and set right all that he done to them, and that they had brought upon themselves through listening to his lies and following his desires (Genesis 3:15).

 

Jesus is that seed of the woman that God the Father promised to send. All who are children of God, who hear His Word of truth, rejoice in the sending of Jesus. The Jews who opposed Jesus revealed by what they did that they were not children of God. They did not rejoice to hear the truth of God from the lips of Jesus. They were not glad for the coming of the Word of God made flesh (John 1:14).

 

Jesus’ preaching was all about how the word of God given to the Jews in the Old Testament came to fulfillment in His coming. When He healed a paralytic (John 5) and gave sight to a man blind from birth by making mud from the dust of the earth to anoint his eyes (John 9), He taught that He was the God who created man from the dust of the ground and animated him by breathing into him the breath of life.

 

Jesus spoke the truth about the Passover lamb whose blood saved the children of Israel when the Destroyer went through Egypt to kill the firstborn. It was fulfilled in Himself as the Lamb of God (John 1:29). He spoke to them of how God leading the Israelites by a pillar of fire out of Egypt revealed His own coming as the Light of the World, and that whoever follows Him does not walk in darkness (John 8:12). He told them how God brought forth water from the rock to keep the Israelites alive in the desert, was showing how He Himself was the source of rivers of living water giving eternal life (John 7:38).

 

After feeding the immense crowd with five loaves and two fish, as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel, he taught them that the manna the children of Israel ate in the wilderness pointed to Himself as “the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh” (John 6:51). He told them how the presence of God with His people in the tabernacle and the temple was fulfilled in God’s presence with them in the Person of Jesus (John 2:20). And that when Moses put a bronze serpent on a pole so that those who looked at it would be saved from death, so Jesus would be lifted up “that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

 

The children of God hear God’s Word as truth and they love Jesus who is the Word of God sent in the flesh to accomplish the will of the heavenly Father, the redemption and salvation of all who have fallen to the lies and desires of the devil. Because the Jews who opposed Jesus (always remember that not all of them did), would not believe the truth of God that He spoke and they wanted to murder him, they showed that they were still children of the devil.

 

You have to admit that the things Jesus said were tough to swallow. There before them stood a man who claimed to be the divine Son of God, to have the power to grant everlasting life, to actually be the God who was active in Creation, and the Redemption of the Israelite nation from slavery to Egypt. We like the things that Jesus taught because they are amazing and wonderful and they show His triumph over the Jews who thought that they were so smart and holy. We like the fact that Jesus came to win the day over them for those of us who are not so smart and holy.

 

But do we love Jesus for the truth of all that He spoke? He told the Jews who opposed Him that they were children of the devil because their will was to do what the devil desired (John 8:44). Is it ever your will to do what the devil desires? Do you ever want to lie instead of being entirely truthful? Do you especially want to lie about your sins?--deny doing them, or deny that they are sins at all, or that they really matter, that they are the desires of the devil?

 

Yes, there are times when we don’t want to listen to the words of Jesus, specifically when He points out our sins, and says that we cannot save ourselves; that because of our sins we are so far gone that we are children of the devil. At those times we want to silence Jesus, too. We want to do away with Him so that we won’t have to hear Him speak God’s Word anymore. We join those opposing Jews in demanding of Jesus, “who do You make Yourself out to be” (John 8:53)? Are you greater than our own sense of right and wrong?

 

Jesus answer to them was to point again to His work revealed in the Old Testament as the one who conquers Satan and the death that he brought into the world. They asked Jesus if He thought He was greater than Abraham and the prophets who died, because He claimed to have the gift of everlasting life. Jesus answered them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).

 

Again, Jesus was teaching that everything that God did recorded in the Old Testament was done by Jesus Himself. When Abraham rejoiced at the good news that he and Sarah would have a son from their own elderly bodies, who would give them offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky and in whom all nations of the earth would be blessed, it wasn’t just words about the coming of Jesus. Jesus was there speaking those words to Abraham. Jesus was present in the three visitors that came to bring this news to Abraham (Genesis 18:1-10). Abraham rejoiced in this news that he would see the day the one promised to him and Sarah and to Adam and Eve, and to all nations, would come.

 

But in our Old Testament reading for today (Genesis 22:1-14), Abraham’s faith in that promised good and glad news was sorely tested. God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah. For three days they made their way, Abraham thinking that Isaac was as good as dead, yet hoping that God would provide for Himself a lamb for the burnt offering (v. 8). It was not until Isaac was tied up and placed on the altar with his father Abraham raising the knife to slaughter his son, that Jesus appeared. The angel stopped Abraham’s hand and Abraham turned to see a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. He saw the ram and was glad. He saw there was a substitute for the death of his son. He saw Jesus.

 

And to underscore the point for the Jews, Jesus said to them, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). Abraham was. Jesus always is. He is the I AM that brought that children of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 3). He is the One by whom all things were made. He is the One who promised that the head of the serpent would be crushed (Genesis 3:15) and He is the One who crushed it by His death on the cross for the sins of the world.

 

Jesus is the One who rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and who sends out the Holy Spirit by whom children of all nations become the children of God. Abraham saw all of this as it was promised, as it was foreshadowed in the substitution for his son, and as it happened on the cross of Mount Calvary. He rejoiced on the day of Jesus’ resurrection and rejoices now as people hear the Word of God and become His children, and descendants of Abraham by faith.

 

God is not God of the dead, but of the living. Abraham lives to see this day of the Lord, because all that Jesus said is true. He tells the truth and “whoever is of God hears the words of God” (John 8:47), just like Abraham. And he will live forever, just like Abraham.

 

Jesus said, “If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death” (John 8:52). Anyone—that includes you. Just like Abraham, if you hold to the words of Jesus you will have everlasting life. You will rejoice to see His day, and will see it and be glad. Do not be afraid of His words when He points out to you that you have sinned, that you have lied, that you have done the desires of the devil. Hold all the more to the words that He speaks which reveal that He has come to rescue you from the devils clutches, that He has come to be your substitute, and the one to lead you out of slavery in sin and death and into the promised paradise of everlasting life.

 

The Jews did not want to hear any more of these precious words of Jesus, and they picked up stones to stone Him to death, as the devil desired. But Jesus was hidden from them (John 8:59) and He went out of their temple where they confessed the lie that Jesus was not God present to save them. And the presence of God in the person of Jesus left the temple and made His way to the cross to fulfill all that is written of Him in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, and to bring about that great day of salvation in which all the children of God rejoice.