“I AM—IS—For You”
Saint John 8: 46-59
Judica: 7 April Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
Which one of you convicts The Lord of sin? Do you call Him a liar? Do you treat His words as untrue? Do you act as if His Holy Law can be disobeyed, ignored, or interpreted by you? No. He is good. You are not. He is sinless. You are sinners. You do not convict The Lord.
The Father does. The Trinity convicts The only-begotten Son of sin—every single one of your sins—the sin of the entire world from Adam till the last sinner’s sin at the very moment the trumpet blows!
Jesus calls Himself The Truth. Not “a” truth, but THE Truth. That is particularity. That is exclusivity. That is the “scandal” that unbelieving man stumbles over and is destroyed over. That is the Truth that even you struggle with in your fallen nature.
“Why do you not believe me?” Those are Jesus’ words to anyone that needs to hear them. They as “Law” convict the sinner who is a Christian and drives the trespasser to repentance. They mark and damn, absent conversion, those that, as Jesus continues on with “ye hear them not, because ye are not of God.”
When you are convinced/convicted of your sins you are slain dead. Then you are lifted from the grave by the pure Evangel of Christ crucified and slain in your place—convicted of your sin—in your place. Those that reject Him and His word lash out with self-justification and blasphemy. “You, you from Nazareth, you are a Samaritan, you have a devil.” This was the attack of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees, of The Sanhedrin. This is the attack of Islam and Judaism to this very day. Let it never be our attack when we are angry, apart from the word, and emmeshed in self-worship and ego inflation.
Christ is a Samaritan in that He is not comfortable, hypocritical, racist Jewry of 1st century Jerusalem. He clearly teaches all men are our neighbors. He taught that the ritually unclean Samaritans were also the lost sheep of Israel. That they, along with the Gentiles, would be brought by The Shepherd into the fold. But Christ did not work with or for the devil. Christ destroyed the dark works of Satan. Christ crushed the demon’s pin-head at the Tree.
You don’t pray enough. You don’t honor God’s Name as you should. You are not in The Word as you should be. Jesus is your Savior. He answers: “but I honour My Father…I seek not mine own glory.” Christ’s love for His Father is credited to you by His Grace. In faith you step into Jesus’ bloody footprints, His wounds of righteousness, and call God the First Person, your Father.
The unitarian heresies, then, and now, call believers of Christ and His teachings of the Father and The Paraclete, all sorts of blasphemous slanders. It’s the same with the agnostics, atheists, and large growing groups of druid and wiccan Americans. All of the devil’s cults are in reality one cult. Unbelief is the Satanic rejection of the Word, of The Scriptures, of The Christ of God. It is the way of death and hell. They of course say “Abraham is dead, and the prophets.” They of course mock and deride the “resurrection of the body.” Paul is correct, remember his discourse and preaching to the Athenian sophists at Mars Hill? The man without The Lord may be searching for transcendence, enlightenment, and deeper meaning, but without Christ will only find himself face down six-feet being eaten by maggots and worms on his way to the lake of fire.
Take heart. Look up. Behold His Body and Blood, alive, pulsing with energy, strength, and fortitude to faith. Hear His Words of total forgiveness and peace.
Abraham is alive. Abraham rejoiced to see The Lord’s day, for he saw the Ancient of Days, when he was carried like Lazarus to Christ’s bosom by the angels. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. Worry not how to argue and “defeat” all the “death-heads” and “death-eaters” who blather on about the finitude of existence and the “fables” which they say you blindly follow. They are blind and they follow blind guides. You are children of the light for you have been given to follow He Who is Light of Light.
No, Jesus was not yet “fifty years old.” Fifty could be arrived at by multiplying the five books of the Moses—the Law, by the Decalogue—the Ten Commandments. But the Law only kills. No. Your Redeemer was, as was thought by His followers, to be 33 years old when He gave all His sheep the Light to see and believe their sins have been forgiven and that the Kingdom of God is theirs! Three for the Holy Trinity. Three again, for both emphasis and for the second digit to show forth Jesus’ Two Natures. It was not just the perfect man who died on Calvary’s cross to give you eternity, but it was the Perfect God as well. God died so that you would live—and flourish.
Who is that you now hear? Pastor Watson? No, not really. You hear the good news of Saint John, which by the power of the Holy Ghost, is Jesus Himself telling you that because He IS “I AM” God almighty, you too are also everlasting, durative, continuing present tense “IS” disciples, world without end!
The stones were meant for Him that day. But that was not the fulfillment of the word, of His Word. No. He would be wounded for you transgressions not by rocks, but with whip, thorns, and iron spikes. He would suffer and die on a greater stone—the place of the skull. He would be interred, dead as a dead stone, in a cave sealed with a large stone. But… You know what we celebrate at the end of Lententide!
Jesus is “I AM.” Jesus rose from the dead. Abraham rejoices, now, without a body, soon, with you and all the resurrected, with glorified bodies. Your Savior “I AM” invites you to His feast this morning to taste the true, real, and bodily “I AM” in the “THIS IS.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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