Then Jesus said to those Judeans who had believed him, “If you continue to follow my teaching, you are really my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”[1] “We are descendants of Abraham,” they replied, “and have never been anyone’s slaves![2] How can you say, ‘You will become free’?”
Jesus answered them, “I tell you the solemn truth, everyone who practices[3] sin is a slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the family forever, but the son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be really, truly free. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants.
“But you want to kill me, because my teaching makes no progress among/inside you. I am telling you the things I have seen while with the Father; as for you, you are following the advice of your Father!” They answered him, “Abraham is our father!”
Jesus replied, “If you are Abraham’s children, you would be doing the deeds of Abraham. But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth I heard from God. Abraham did not do this! You people are doing the deeds of your father.”
Then they said to Jesus, “We were not born as a result of immorality [physically][4]! We have only one Father, God himself [spiritually].”
Jesus replied, “You people are from your father the devil, and you want to do what your father desires. He was a murderer from the beginning,[5] and does not uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I am telling you the truth, you do not believe me.
Who among you can prove me guilty of any sin/falsehood? If I am telling you the truth, why don’t you believe me? The one who belongs to God listens and responds to God’s words. You don’t listen and respond, because you don’t belong to God...”
“The one who glorifies me is my Father, about whom you people say, ‘He is our God.’ Yet you do not recognize him, but I know him.[6] If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him, and I obey his teaching. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day, and he saw it and was glad.”[7]
Then the Judeans replied, “You are not yet fifty years old! Have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, before Abraham came into existence, I am![8]” Then they picked up stones to throw at him,[9] but Jesus hid himself and went out from the temple area.
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Let’s talk about family resemblances.
“ A new study suggests that the longer we are with someone, the more similarities in appearance grow. Researchers set out to investigate why couples often tend to resemble one another. They asked 11 male and 11 female participants to judge the age, attractiveness and personality traits of 160 real-life married couples. Photographs of husbands and wives were viewed separately, so the participants didn't know who was married to whom.
The test participants rated men and woman who were actual couples as looking alike and having similar personalities. Also, the longer the couples had been together, the greater the perceived similarities. The researchers speculate that the sharing of experiences might affect how couples look.”(Livescience.com)
Apparently whom we spend our time with matters. It changes us somehow: we smile at the same things, and get similar smile lines; we respond emotionally and spiritually, we eat the same. It is more than physical, but it somehow translates into a physical similarity. Who we are with and where we are shapes us in ways that become obvious to those around us.
If you have a job working outside vs. inside, your skin will show it.
If you grow up in a family that likes hunting and fishing vs. participating in the arts vs. gardening vs. reading and studying, you will have a different vocabulary, different skill set, different kinds of knowledge about the world.
We know whose ‘team children’ we are by the logos we wear J
The emotions you feel when seeing a nation’s flag are shaped profoundly by where and with whom you grew up.
Those are all practical. We know how it works. Proverbs 13:20 takes a bigger picture perspective:
“He who walks with the wise will be wise.”
Plenty of other Proverbs give the flip-side warning: people who walk with fools will be fools. The sharing of experiences and priorities, the sharing of an environment shapes us sometimes in obvious ways, and other times in more subtle ways, but it always shapes us. We read in Matthew 11 that at one point, when Jesus got tired of fielding all kinds of silly, incoherent criticisms about himself, he said,
“Wisdom is justified by her children (shown to be righteous by what it produces).”
We use the phrase “the apple doesn't fall far from the tree” to express a similar idea. Things begat similar things. Biologically, it is called the Law of Biogenesis. Wikiquotes explains it this way:
“A child grows up to be very similar to its parents in the way they act and in their physical abilities.”
Children of God will bear a family resemblance. It will be obvious. The shared experiences/priorities/influences effected who they were. The disciple apples don’t fall far from the Jesus tree. Let’s jump back a couple centuries earlier. To the Jewish people, the idea that it could be obvious when someone had spent time in the presence of God was not new.
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant (something pushed out, like rays or horns) because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.
But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face.
But whenever he entered the LORD's presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD. (Exodus 34:29 – 35)
For Moses, one of the results of truly being in the presence of God, of truly spending time with God, or really being in the presence of God, was that people noticed that he do not come away from that encounter in the same way he went in.
For the people around Moses, it was blinding. A sharing of experiences with God changed his physical appearance. When you were in the presence of God in that way in the Old Testament, your body was transformed. You looked different.
For Peter and John, it was not so physically overpowering, but was every bit as miraculous and obvious. “These men have been with Jesus.” For Peter and John, a sharing of experiences changed their character. When you were in the presence of God, in this case Jesus, your soul was changed. Your spirit was transformed. It was Jesus’ way of reminding us that there is a spiritual Law of Biogenesis at work in His Kingdom.
* * * * *
From Barna recently:
23% of young non-Christians and 22% of young Christians said "Christianity is changed from what it used to be" and "Christianity in today's society no longer looks like Jesus."
Now, Barna points out that sometimes people think this because they have a false view of Jesus, so their perspective is skewed. But often they have a pretty good idea of who Jesus was, and what He taught, and how He lived, and they have this expectation that if Jesus really changes peoples lives like his followers claim, they there ought to be a lot of people who are different than they were before. They know about apples, and they know about trees.
They keep looking around for people who have spent time with Jesus…and they are having trouble finding them.
This doesn’t mean the experiences we immerse ourselves in and the people we have surrounded ourselves with have not effected how we look and who we are. Surely our apple is close to the tree – buuuuut it’s just a different tree then we think. Maybe something is being justified by us; it’s just not Wisdom.
If you spend enough time around me, you will :
realize that I have spent time with Jim Gaffigan and Brian Reagan. “Say 8!” “The big yellow one is the sun!” “Well, I probably should say hello.”
see that I know my way around the grammar of English. Well, I was an English Ed major. I can use their, there, and they’re correctly.
know that I have read Tolkien and Lewis because I quote them and I’ll shout things like, “But that day is not today!” “And they call it a mine!”
You can read the footnotes to these sermons and see who and what molds me.
When you see me, you see where I’ve been and whom I know. That man has been with Buckeye fans. That man has heard way too many dad jokes. That man got a degree that certified him to say to hapless students, “I know you CAN go to the bathroom.”
I wonder how many times I have been somewhere, and the thought that crosses people’s minds is, “This man has been with Jesus.”
Does my wife say that? She knows I was an English major; she put me through college. She knows I like Brian Reagan, because we have spent time together watching You Tube clips. But does she know I have been with Jesus? Who would your spouse say you have been spending time with?
What do my kids say? They know I can coach basketball; I’ve spent a lot of time and energy doing that. They know I spend time with the NCAA football on Saturdays and Lebron James’ games during the winter. They know I have been with church people. Do they know I’ve been with Jesus? Who would your kids say you have been spending time with?
What do our friends say?
What do our teammates or classmates say?
Whom have we been with? Is it obvious? Whose children are we? When Jesus called out the crowd in this passage, he pinpointed what showed whose children they really were because of their denial of truth and propensity for violence. We will see this unfold as we continue to go through the gospels. I want to focus this morning on what it looks like when God is our Father. An exhaustive list is too much for a portion of one sermon. The following points came to mind. Feel free to expand on this list in Message+ or in your own private study of Scripture.
When God is our Father, we…
bear the Fruit of the Spirit: the apples of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control fall near the Jesus tree. (Galatians 5:22-23).
share Jesus’ reputation as a “friend of sinners” (Matthew 11:19;Luke 7:34). It’s funny: that label was intended as an insult. Turns out it wasn’t. There was something about Jesus that drew people far from God close to him.
bring the Great Physician’s healing to the sick around us (Luke 5:31-32). We bring a message of spiritual health and hope as we pray and work for the physical, mental, and emotional health of others. We are designed to be the spiritual first responders in a sin-sick world. Do the sin-sick experience us that way?
bring gospel hope to the poor, the broken-hearted, the prisoner, the blind, the oppressed (Luke 4:18; Mark 9:41). These are all things Jesus said about himself. The weary, the weak, those suffering under injustice: they need hope. We are intended to take it on behalf of Jesus.
speak truth and reject lies (see today’s passage). A passionate love of truth must characterize followers of Jesus. This isn’t just about issues of faith; it’s everything. A little yeast gets into the whole loaf. If we prove ourselves unreliable narrators in one area, it’s inevitable it will call into question our ability to know and speak truth in other areas. This is why we don’t spread rumors or unfounded conspiracies. This is why we triple check our news sources. This is why we refuse to live in news bubbles that only tell us one side of a story. This is why we take time to practice introspection and ask God to help us see ourselves as God sees us.
Integrate orthodoxy (right belief), orthopraxy (right actions) and orthopathy (right emotions).[10] We live what we say we believe, guided by righteous passions of our heart. And when any of these are out of sync, we pray that God does gospel work to bring us into alignment. We are not afraid to confront hypocrisy and compromise in ourselves and others (see the sermon on the Pharisees’ hypocrisy).
take time to “see” people (“When Jesus saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew 9:36) That word implies more than just ‘glanced.’ He SAW them. He understood them. He was attuned with them. Ambassadors for Jesus take the time to see and understand the crowds around us.
are in tune with God’s mission in the world: spread the gospel in word and deed – the “ministry of reconciliation” in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 that also looks after the needy (“orphans and widows”) in James 1:27. We take a cup of water and of Living Water. We take bread and the Bread of Life. We give practical hope and offer spiritual hope. We give someone a fish and teach them to fish in our role as Fishers of Men.
knock down cultural barriers that separate or divide God’s people (Ephesians 2:11-22) and created hierarchies of value that result in judgment or favoritism: ethnicity, wealth, sex, social status – these all show up in the New Testament as things the early church had to church has to address. What about who you vote for, vaccination status, how your kids are schooled, level of education… there are so many things that seek to divide our fellowship in Christ.
defend justice and mercy (Micah 6:8) God didn’t want his people to be slow to address injustice in their society. In fact, it was really important. Read all of the prophets if you have any questions about this. And yet all those texts are saturated with mercy. Judgment can stop a bad thing from happening, but it’s the kindness of God that leads people to genuine repentance (Romans 2:4).
do everything from a foundation of love (1 Corinthians 13). Love God, and love other as Jesus has loved you (John 13:34-35).
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[1] It was a maxim of the Jews, "That no man was free, but he who exercised himself in the meditation of the law." (Adam Clarke)
[2] False. “‘Never in bondage to any man’? Then what about Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Syria? Was there not a Roman garrison looking down from the castle into the very Temple courts where this boastful falsehood was uttered?” (MacLaren’s Expositions)
[3] “Continues to commit sin” is not a reference to an individual act of sin, but a pattern. (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges).
[4] Perhaps a dig at what they believed to be the circumstances of Jesus’ birth?
[5] This was the sentiment of the Jews. In Sohar Kadash, the wicked are called, "The children of the old serpent, who slew Adam and all his descendants." (Adam Clarke)
[6] “And ye have not recognized Him; but I know Him, the latter clause referring to His immediate essential knowledge of the Father.” (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges)
[7] “ “See Hebrews 11:13; "These all died in faith, not having received (obtained the fulfillment of) the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them," etc. Though Abraham was not permitted to live to see the times of the Messiah, yet he was permitted to have a prophetic view of him, and also of the design of his coming.” (Barne’s Notes on the Bible).
[8] See Exodus 3:14. “The idea expressed by the name is, as already explained, that of real, perfect, unconditioned, independent existence.” (Pulpit Commentary)
[9] “It appears that the Jews understood him as asserting his Godhead and, supposing him to be a blasphemer, they proceeded to stone him, according to the law. Leviticus 24:16.” (Adam Clarke)
[10] For more on each of these, see “Faith Is More than a Feeling, but Not Less.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/april/tish-harrison-warren-faith-orthodoxy-orthopathy-discipled.html