Text: John 8:46-59
In
the name of Jesus: Amen.
What
were the religious leaders to do with Jesus?
They had had a sharp disagreement between themselves and Jesus and Jesus
was not willing to back down at all. You
see, Jesus had confronted them and was holding them accountable for being
enemies of the truth. As you can about
imagine, they did not like this too much.
Now,
like a Mexican standoff, Jesus and the religious leaders came into irreconcilable
tension. They locked horns; they
collided. They could neither proceed nor
retreat without there being a conflict and without there being blood on the
streets.
But
what was the reason for this great tension and standoff? The reason for the disagreement was simply this:
Jesus proclaimed to the people that His doctrine – His teaching – was from God
and that He was the Light of the world.
Christ also went on to say that only through Him people were forgiven of
sin and kept from death. He had been
preaching this message for a number of days and many people began to follow
Him.
However,
as you can about imagine, the religious leaders could not agree with Jesus,
because ‘they’ claimed to represent the truth, not Christ. They said that Jesus’ doctrines came from the
Devil. They believed that ‘they’ were in
the right and that Jesus was in the wrong.
Simply stated, the town wasn’t big enough for both of them, for the
religious leaders wanted to be the top dog.
While
it would be convenient for us to attempt to smooth this whole conflict over by
saying, “Jesus and the religious leaders are both right and we should all just get
along and love each other…” I am afraid that this does not do justice to this
morning’s Gospel reading from John.
Furthermore, why does this surprise us that there is a conflict between
the religious leaders and Jesus? My
friends, we should not be surprised when the teachings of Jesus, the Son of
God, conflict with the teachings of mankind.
Yes, whenever we humans base our understanding of the Christian faith
off of something that is not Christ’s Holy Word, well then… we are going to be
in conflict with Jesus, as we should.
Whether
we realize it or not, we all have opinions that are shaped and formed from
various persons, books, ideas, and institutions. Some of these ideas are true and good, while
others are false and bad. However, we
typically do not realize our false and bad ideas; that is to say, we do not
realize our errors until we come into a sharp disagreement with an opposing
point of view.
As
in the case of the religious leaders, when they were confronted by Jesus’
teaching they were challenged in a way that unsettled the very foundation of
their lives. It rocked their world. It knocked them off of their center of
gravity. Indeed, there are few greater
fears in life than a loss of sense and order and meaning in our lives.[1]
Dear
friends, when we are confronted by Jesus’ Word – whether we are simply reading
the scriptures or in a Bible study or here in church – we should learn and
expect to be unsettled and challenged.
That is natural and good. With
that said though, we are more comfortable getting defensive like the religious
leaders in our Gospel reading. Like
them, we resist Jesus’ teaching when Jesus’ Word attempts to undo us. Therefore, we are easily tempted into arguing
and rationalizing Jesus’ teachings away or we try to compartmentalize them by
putting them in our religious box off to the side, where they do not interfere
with our incorrect beliefs.
There
is more though. If we cannot keep Jesus’
teaching from interrogating and exposing our false and misguided beliefs, well
then... we will lash out in anger by avoiding the Bible, avoiding church, and
avoiding that preacher-man. On the other
hand, if we cannot avoid Jesus’ teaching and we wish to maintain our false
beliefs, there is another option though; we will go to the nuclear option. We will attack Jesus’ teaching – Jesus’ Word
– as well as Jesus’ messengers. Like the
religious leaders who picked up rocks to stone Jesus in order to eliminate the
uncomfortable tension and eliminate the uncomfortable notion that they might be
wrong, we do the same when our anger lashes out and tries to eliminate the Word
of God that so often confronts us.
Why
did the religious leaders want to stone Jesus?
Why do we get defensive with the Word of God? The answer: we want to be free from being
challenged and free to believe what we want.
We do not like conflict and we do not like disapproval, especially from
God. We want God to be on our side,
while simultaneously having our incorrect opinions affirmed and
celebrated.
Unfortunately,
we see this being played out not only in the North American Church, but in our
secular sphere as well. The religious
life of individuals is being suppressed.
Christians are being told that they can worship and read their Bibles in
their church and in their homes, but they better not dare bring them out into
the public sphere. Why is this the
case? The world does not want to be
confronted; the world does not want to be convicted of sins. Furthermore, even though the world demands
that everyone be tolerant, it really does not want tolerance, but rather it wants
everyone to celebrate its ideologies.
Tragically, in our culture, speaking the truth in love will not be met
with relief and gratitude, but with anger and rocks in hands.
Dear
friends, this is nothing new. When Cain
was confronted in the book of Genesis about his erring sacrifice, he killed his
brother Abel. When the people of Judah
were confronted by the High Priest Zechariah for their sins, the people
conspired and stoned him to death. When
Stephen confronted the stiff-necked people who had closed ears in the book of
Acts, they became enraged, ground their teeth, and rushed at him with rocks. And in our text today, when Jesus unsettled
the religious leaders, they called Him a demon and then picked up rocks to
stone Him.
With
all this said, what is really at the heart of today’s Gospel reading is the
Third Commandment. We are being shown
that we should not despise the preaching and teaching of the Word with closed
ears or rocks in our hands, but rather, we should hold it sacred and gladly
hear and learn it. But what does this
mean? It means that hearing the Word
will indeed make us uncomfortable. It
means that Jesus’ Word will challenge our behaviors, feelings, ideas, and
values. The Lord has power in His Word
and that Word shapes and forms us – often times different than the going trends
of culture. The Word – the teaching and
breath of Jesus - is sometimes painful for us to hear, but make no mistake, it
is also good. You see, we are constantly
brought to a conviction of our sin from the Word. We are shown where we have erred. We are shown where we have believed the lies
of the world, the evil one, and our sinful flesh. We are shown that “one who refuses to hear
God’s Word is not of God but of the devil.”[2]
You
though; you, who have ears, here this. You
are not of the Devil. Yes, you Baptized
Saints belong to the Lord. The Word of
God is for you. Therefore, repent of
your attempts to protect yourself from God’s Word. Repent of your willingness to trust the
messages of the world, the flesh, and the devil, rather than the Word of God. Repent of your apathy towards the Word.
You,
my friends, are of God, not of the Devil.
You are people of Jesus’ Word, not the vain and empty slogans of the
world. Your hands were not meant for
rocks but for receiving the body and the blood of Christ, the body and blood in
which you lay upon your tongues. You have been given ears to hear, thus, hear
the Word of God; accept the rebukes from Jesus’ Word when sin has been
committed and most important of all, hear
the Gospel. Yes, hear the Gospel,
which is for you. Yes, listen to this,
“The Word of Christ is a medicine against eternal death, which is hell. . . . Every soul was conceived and born dead
in sin. But in this Word of the Gospel,
Christ is united with you. So you are no
longer dead, but alive. You are already
raised from death in Christ. This is the
first resurrection.”[3] You have life in Christ; eternal death has no
power over you. You are forgiven. You are beloved. You are baptized.
Yes,
receive the Word that is for you! “You
have the Word of Christ, and that cannot fail to overcome death for you. For it is the Word of the great ‘I Am.’ Death could not conquer Him, so it cannot conquer
you.”[4]
Furthermore,
if the enemies of Jesus’ Word pick up stones against you, you shall not
fear. The Lord knows how to hide and
rescue His own. He covers you with His
protection in evil times. He hides you
secretly in His safety. Just as no one
was able to harm Christ before the designated time of His crucifixion, so also
no one is able to harm you in any way, before the appointed time of your
departure from this life in the veil of tears.[5]
Blessed
Baptized Saints, the Word of God is for you.
You are captive to the Word, the Word that keeps you from eternal death. You are forgiven; salvation is yours; you
have life in Jesus, because He bled, died, rose…because He says it is so.
In
the name of Jesus: Amen.
[1] Paul G. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People
Change (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing
Group, 2008), 85.
[2] Martin Luther, The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther: Judica Sunday – Fifth Sunday in
Lent Sermon (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company, 2000), 357.
[3] Andrew Eckert, “Sermon based of
Johann Gerhard thoughts on John 8:46-59,” LCMS Sermons, http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=2679
(accessed March 11, 2016).
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
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