“You Are Like Your Father”
[John 8:39-47]
March 6, 2016 Second Reformed Church
Who is your spiritual father?
Not, who is your biological father? Not, what minister do you like the best? Not, what theologian do you most agree with? Not, what person do you most try to be like?
Rather, which of the two spiritual fathers
of all of humanity is your spiritual father?
Which one of these beings are you most like?
Does your life and words and actions
reflect that you are the child of the devil?
Or do they reflect that you are the child of God?
And let’s dismiss an Americanism right
away: it is often said that we believe
in the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God. We do not – Christians do not. We believe that god is the Creator of every
single human being, but God is not the Father of every human being. No, God is only the Father of those who have
been reconciled with Him through the Word of His Son, Jesus, and the work of
the Holy Spirit in transforming those who believe in Jesus salvifically.
As Paul explained: “For all who are led by
the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of
slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as
sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:14-15, ESV).
God is the Father of all those who believe
savingly in Jesus and His Gospel; God is not the Father of all of humanity.
Last week, we saw Jesus explain that there
is a difference between being a slave and being a son. Jesus was speaking to a group of people who
had believed in Him – a mixed group – some who believed savingly, and some who
believed something about Him, but did not believe with their hearts.
We saw:
Slaves to sin are spiritually dead people
who pursue sin and deny the Truth of Jesus to the point to wanting to kill it –
if not Him – and then anyone and anything that stands for Him and His
Truth. Yet, they do not realize they are
spiritually dead.
Sons are all those who have been
freed from spiritual slavery by Jesus.
They believe in Jesus savingly – with their hearts as well as their
minds, and seek to obey Him. They have
been adopted into the family of God by God.
Slaves cannot call God, “Father,”
the devil is their father. Sons (and daughters)
call God, “Father,” because God has adopted them as His children.
The Jews who did not believe
savingly understood enough to argue back that they were not slaves:
“They answered him, ‘Abraham is our
father.’”
They may have thought back to the
heritage that God promised to the descendants of Abraham:
“Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go
from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I
will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and
make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who
bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families
of the earth shall be blessed.’
“So Abram went, as the LORD had told
him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed
from Haran” (Genesis 12:1-4, ESV).
The text says that the descendants
of Abraham would be blessed and would bless every family and people of the
earth. But, are the descendants of Abraham
simply the biological descendants of Abraham?
Abraham would be the biological
father of Isaac, and Isaac of Jacob, who was called Israel, and Paul explained
that this is not simply a matter of biology:
“But it is not as though the word of
God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and
not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through
Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of
the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are
counted as offspring” (Romans 9:6-8, ESV).
In other words, your biology does
not guarantee that you are a son of Abraham or a son of God.
At this point, Jesus explained the
difference between the sons of the devil and the sons of Abraham.
First, Jesus explained that the
spiritual children of Abraham do the works of Abraham.
“Jesus said to them, ‘If you were
Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek
to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not
what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did’”
Abraham’s spiritual children would do the
works Abraham did. What were they?
As we just heard a moment ago, God came to
Abraham, promised to bless his descendants and curse his enemies, and God told
Abraham all the families of the world would be blessed through him, and he was
to go to another land.
What did Abraham do?
Abraham recognized the Word of God. He was a believer in the Word of God and
versed in the Word of God, so when God spoke to him, he could recognize it and
know that it was really God speaking to him.
Do we recognize the Word of God? God is not in the habit of speaking audibly
any more, but He has given us His Word.
If we were to hear a selection of quotes from the Word of God and from
the debates of both parties, would we be able to recognize which is the Word of
God?
The only way we will recognize the Word of
God is if we regularly spend time in the Word of God. In order to know what is from God and what is
from someone else – even the devil – we need to know the Word of God – we need
to be reading the Word of God.
Abraham also obeyed the Word of God. Abraham recognized that God had spoken to him
– he received and believed it – and he obeyed.
The fruit of his belief was that he obeyed. He went forth with the mission to be the
blessing to the peoples of the world, and he left everything he knew and went
where God sent him.
Are we so quick to obey the Word of
God? If God tells us that we are to do
this or to not do that, is our response, “yes, Lord,” or do we seek a way out
of obeying? Surely, one outgrowth of the
blessing of all peoples is to be found in the command to love our neighbor as
ourselves. Do we really the seek the
best – always – for our neighbors? Do we
always do everything we can to make their lives better – especially with
regards to their hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
Jesus told these Jews that they were not
the sons of Abraham – they had not received the Word of God – they had not done
what God had told them to do. In fact,
Jesus came preaching the Word of God – the Truth of God – the Truth that God
told Him to speak – and their response was not Abraham’s response to such
things – no, they sought to kill Him.
The true spiritual descendants of Abraham would not seek to kill the One
Who brought the Truth of the Word of God to them, but the children of the devil
would.
The children of the devil deny the Word of
God and twist the Word of God and dilute the Word of God – they do everything
but acknowledge that it is the divine Word of God – infallible, inerrant, and
everything we need to know about how to live and how to be right with God.
They say it’s wrong, it’s cultural, it one
of many ways, it’s part of the truth, but they will not say, “Amen, I am your
humble servant, and I will obey.”
These Jews respond in a way similar to
some of the presidential candidates have spoken recently:
“They said to him, ‘We were not born of
sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.’”
What were they saying?
“Yeah, well, we know who our biological
father and mother are. We are not
illegitimate. But You – everyone knows
that Joseph is not Your real father. Who
knows who Your real father is, You ‘illegitimate one’ [insert the “b-word”
here].”
They result to the lowest and childish accusations:
“Yeah, well, You were born out of wed-lock.
Joseph is not Your biological father.
You know what that makes You.”
And then to cap the irony, they say that
God was their Father – God was their spiritual Father. They said that they were legitimate heirs and
obedient followers of God, their Father
Second, Jesus told them only those who
love Him – in a saving way – have God as their Father.
“Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your
Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my
own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because
you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your
will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and
does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he
speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But
because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. ‘”
If God was their Father, they would love
the Word of God, they would love the Truth of god, they would love Jesus, the
Son of God, because He came from God and was now in their presence. Jesus was with God, and is God, and was sent
by God to do the will of God the Father as the Incarnate Son. How could they say that God was their Father,
when they hated God Who was there in the flesh, speaking the Word of God to
them?
That’s similar to saying that you like
pizza, but you hate bread, tomato sauce, and cheese. (Of course, the Trinity is a singular Being,
and we can’t perfectly compare Them with anything else, but, the Father is God
and the Son is God, so, if you hate the Son, you hate God! If you say you like pizza, but hate what
makes a pizza a pizza, you hate pizza!)
The god that they believed was their
father was not God, the Father of Jesus, the Son of God. They hated Jesus, so the god they considered
their father was someone else – in fact, he is the devil.
If God was their Father, they would have
believed the Word of God that was brought by Jesus and Who is Jesus – they
would have understood that Jesus is the Way of Salvation that God promised to
provide. But they didn’t understand –
and the reason they couldn’t understand is that they couldn’t bear His Word.
It was as though whenever Jesus spoke the
Word of God, they covered their ears and cried out, “Stop saying such
things!” The Truth of God the Father was
not what they believed. It was not what
they wanted to be true. So they refused
to receive it.
What this exposed was their father was the
devil. And we only have two
options: we are either slaves of the
devil – his children, or we are children of God the Father. Now, remember, we have said before, we don’t
know anyone’s heart or what God might do in a person, so we do not have the
right to condemn someone as a child of the devil – someone may come to faith up
until the last moment of life.
But Jesus, being God, could judge them to
be children of the devil, and He explained why it was obvious that their father
was the devil and not God:
They followed the devil in two major
desires:
They wanted to kill Jesus, and their father,
the devil, is a murderer from the beginning.
We see this as the devil came to Cain to
incite him to kill his brother, Abel, because God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and
did not accept Cain’s. We read:
“The LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you
angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?
And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you,
but you must rule over it’” (Genesis 4:6-7, ESV).
God told Cain he had no excuse for being
upset that God rejected his offering, and if Cain continued down the path he
was going, sin and its consequences – even the rejection of God to be a son of
the devil – was set before him. And we
know what happened: Cain killed Abel,
God cursed Cain and sent him away, and Cain followed after the devil.
People who persist in denying the Truth of
God will seek to kill anyone who proclaims the Truth – look at the persecutions
in the New Testament. Look at the
history of the Church. We live in an
unusual place in the United States. The Church
is enduring tribulation unlike any that has ever been known before Jesus which
will not end until He returns.
Jesus told His disciples, “I have said all
these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the
synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering
service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the
Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes
you may remember that I told them to you” (John 16:1-4a, ESV).
Jesus said not to be surprised if someone
kills you for believing in Him. If no
one wants to kill you for believing in Jesus, why not? Are we truly believers? We are
not called to be annoying for Christ, but we are called to tell others the
Gospel as part of our love of neighbor. Do we tell other people about the
Gospel? In whatever way God has gifted
us, let us tell others – before we’re murdered.
Also, we see that they lived a life of
lies – they said the word of the devil was the Word of God. But, that was only natural for the children
of the devil, because the devil is a liar from the beginning. Do we remember?
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any
other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.
“He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually
say, “You shall not eat of any tree in the garden”?’ And the woman said to the
serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, “You
shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden,
neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You
will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be
opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw
that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and
that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and
ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then
the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they
sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” (Genesis 3:1-7, ESV).
Satan twisted God’s Word before Adam and
Eve, and then when they took the bait, he told them that God was a liar and
reeled them in. The devil is the father
of lies.
“God wouldn’t want you to be
uncomfortable. God wouldn’t want you to
suffer. God wouldn’t want you to be
poor.”
The devil is a liar – and it is the devil
as the father of lies that we in American have found more enticing that going
out with the Gospel to suffer. We eat up
these TV – and other – preachers that tell us that God wants us to have our
best life now. No! God sent His Son so we would have our best
life with Him in His Kingdom. In this
world, we are walking through a veil of tears, struggling against the temptation
to sin, struggling to turn against our sin nature and follow after the new
desire that God has put in our hearts to take the way of escape and follow our
God and Father.
Jesus told them that the reason they don’t
believe Him – the reason that they are children of the devil – is that Jesus is
speaking the truth, and they hate the truth, and, therefore, they hate God.
Jesus ends this section with these words:
“Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not
believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not
hear them is that you are not of God.”
Jesus drew a line in the sand and
asked them what sin He committed. What
in everything He had said and done contradicted the Law of God? If they hated Him with reason, what was the
reason? How had He sinned against God in
what He has said and done?
So, we see that Jesus draws a
distinction among all people in this morning’s text:
Anyone who hates God’s Word and the
Gospel of Jesus Christ – anyone who says it is not true – such in a child of
the devil.
Those who confess Jesus as Lord and
Savior, who believe the Gospel and the Word of God and strive to do all that
God has commanded – such is a child of God.
Which are you?
Let us pray:
God of all truth, our Father, all we
who believe in Jesus for salvation, thank You for bringing us to faith and for
making the Way for us to be reconciled to You, Stir up the Spirit within
us. Cause the fire of the Spirit to burn
hot in us that we have to tell us the Gospel that You sent into the world
through Your Son, our Savior. Keep us
from being able to let an opportunity to tell someone the Gospel to pass. Grow us in You, transform us into the Image
of Your Son, and be pleased to show Yourself God in this church and throughout Creation. For it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
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