Sermon Tone Analysis

In today’s passage we find ourselves with a series of contrasting statements:

I am going you cannot come

I am from above you are from below

I am not of this world, you are of the world

I am without sin, you will die in sin

I am of God the Father you are of your god, the devil

All of these are points of separation between Him and His hearers.

And they are not possible to overcome until they recognise Him for who He is and yet...

We can start to hear the frustration of Jesus when they again ask: Who are you? in verse 25.

And Jesus response was, in the Greek, why am I speaking to you.

Why am I even trying?

I have told you and told you but you just will not hear nor listen.

You will die in your sin.

This singular use of the word sin is none other than the sin of unbelief which encompasses all their other sin.

The root of everything else they do stems from the very fact they have not put their faith in the One from above.

Jesus time and time again makes it clear that He is the I AM, the eternal One who was and is and is to come.

There was no mistaking what He said as at the end we find that they want to stone Him from blasphemy.

We started with Pharisees trying to get Jesus to throw stones or suggest that this happens at the woman caught in adultery to break Roman law then they themselves wanted to commit murder and break the law themselves by killing Jesus by taking up those very same stones.

The stark hypocrisy is for all to see.

Darkness had filled their hearts and they refused the Light of the World.

This is the same gospel that starts out by saying:

Never was a truer saying than the people with whom Jesus is speaking.

The contrast and difference and separation is clear.

It is no wonder that Kirkegaard separated from his fiancee by saying “I cannot marry you.

You are an eternity too young.”.

You see, Kirkegaard was a citizen of Heaven, his bride to be only a citizen of earth.

He was of above, she of below.

As Christians we have been

We read in our readings recently:

There were there some who believed, though to what extent does not seem yet to salvation for they not yet truly put their trust in Him nor understood their need of salvation.

So, to the Pharisees He said that you will know that I AM when you lift up the Son of Man.

We know that this is the cross.

The cross is the central and most important element of Christian Theology.

Without the cross, without the suffering of Jesus, without the sacrifice we would not be able to know God.

It is the work of God through the cross at Calvary that opened the way for us to be reconciled again to Him.

It is the cross that paid the ultimate price for our sin.

The Psalm from two weeks ago foresaw that day where we can enter into the suffering of Jesus:

The sword of the Roman pierced His heart.

He had poured out His life for us.

It seems incredible that something that happened about 2000 years ago in a little area known by the Romans as Palestine of a Man around 34 or 36 dying by capital punishment should wreak such upheaval in the history of the world in the lives of the many millions who have individually come to the cross for peace with God.

There was and is no peace with God without the cross.

Jesus was prophesying what the Pharisees would get the Romans to do on their behalf though crucifixion.

And by so doing would prove that He is the I AM.

How?

For one, He foretold it and

secondly, death will not keep Him down.

He is the eternal One.

He rose from the dead proving His victory over sin, over the grave, over death and over hell and over His enemies.

If these people would put their trust in Him then they too could be saved.

For the Truth will set them free.

What is the Truth but Jesus Himself.

He tells us that we are slaves to sin if we sin.

Who here can say that they do not sin?

Not one of us.

But Jesus sets us free from the power of sin and its guilt.

The choice has been put forth to the Pharisees and it is the same choice put forward before us.

Do the claims of Jesus stack up?

Was He sinless as He claimed?

Was He sent by God to us below?

And are we now sons of God or of Satan?

Is the resurrection a fact of history?

Jesus said you will die in your sins.

He is trying to awaken the Pharisees and us to the cliff edge that we are all on.

What happens when we get to the end of our lives?

Will we be separated from God?

Thomas Paine, a man born in the UK but was one of the founding fathers of the United States of America.

It was his leaflet called: ‘Common Sense’ that first advocated and caused the War of Independence.

He was also very anti-Christian and put humanist notion above God and published another leaflet that had enormous influence.

On the day Paine died, these were his final words.

I would give worlds, if I had them, that The Age of Reason had not been published.

O Lord, help me!

Christ, help me!

O God what have I done to suffer so much?

But there is no God!

But if there should be, what will become of me hereafter?

Stay with me, for God’s sake!

Send even a child to stay with me, for it is hell to be alone.

If ever the devil had an agent, I have been that one.1

The final words of Thomas Paine—separated from God, desolate

Yet, contrast this with Isaac Watts, one of our great hymn writers, whose words on the day he died could not have been more different:

It is a great mercy that I have no manner of fear or dread of death.

I could, if God please, lay my head back and die without terror this afternoon.

And that afternoon he passed into glory.

Wow!

It was as if he had foretold his own death.

Maybe it were a prayer.

We need not be in terror when we come to the moment of death.

It is surely something that will happen to all of us barring Jesus’ coming beforehand.

Are we ready or will we die in our sin?

I have met many who wanted to put off the day of salvation hoping, as it were, to have a deathbed conversion.

But the problem is that we become more cynical and more corrupt as we grow older.

Jesus was trying to awaken them to their plight but could not break through their unbelief.

Jesus did not give up but, as always, when someone hears the Gospel, the choice is set before them and either they draw nearer to salvation or further away.

He warned them that they die in sin and that before Almighty God who is holy holy holy.

Salvation was not available to them, as they thought, on account of their nationality but each person has to come to faith in Christ for themselves.

Many people I have met think that they are Christians because they were Christened or because they were born in the UK.

I think the latter is no more an issue due to our multiculturalism and multi-faith society.

The fallacy is clear that you could be born into a Muslim family in the UK, plainly it is obvious you have not been born a Christian though we are in such a holy land as the UK(!).

But some of the same things are said, even by, dare I say it, some here.

I go to Church.