John 8:39-47

00:00:00:28 – 00:00:34:01
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us. Back into it. And the Gospel of John, chapter eight, verse 39. Just a reminder here. Jesus is having an ongoing conversation slash debate and soon to be maybe even conflict with, with others. And so we’re in a, a section here where John portrays a kind of heated exchange.

00:00:34:06 – 00:01:00:16
Clint Loveall
At least, maybe not heated, but Jesus is saying increasingly difficult and and probably offensive things, and we will get another layer into that today as we start reading in verse 39. Then we’ll come back and try to unpack some of it. They answered him, Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them, If Abraham, if you were Abraham’s children, you’d be doing what Abraham did.

00:01:00:21 – 00:01:25:05
Clint Loveall
But now you’re trying to kill me. A man who’s told you the truth that I heard from God. That is not what Abraham did. You are indeed doing what your father does. They said to him, we’re not illegitimate children. We have one father, God himself. Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God, and now I am here.

00:01:25:10 – 00:01:47:17
Clint Loveall
I did not come on my own, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father. The devil. And you choose to do your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there’s no truth in him.

00:01:47:22 – 00:02:10:34
Clint Loveall
When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature. For he’s a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the word of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.

00:02:10:39 – 00:02:49:03
Clint Loveall
So if you were with us yesterday, Or if you go back and listen to yesterday, that this Michael is a pretty significant step up in the rhetoric, Jesus really dials it up here as he confronts these people who are challenging him. Now, if it sounds harsh on Jesus part, keep in mind that I think John has told us no fewer than three times, possibly four already, that they are looking for a way to kill Jesus and in one, in one instance, attempted to kill Jesus.

00:02:49:08 – 00:03:28:40
Clint Loveall
So Jesus is not the only one here involved in a serious, conflict. The people are angry and bitterly unhappy with Jesus. And so, in the midst of this, Jesus confronts them with this idea of why they don’t believe and essentially says they don’t believe because they’re not from God. Now, you want to be careful here, because the Gospel of John also allows for the possibility of belief, believing, as we’ve made a case in this book, is one of the fundamental themes.

00:03:28:55 – 00:03:59:06
Clint Loveall
So it’s not that they can’t believe. I don’t think that’s the point here. It’s that in choosing not to, they betray themselves as not interested in truth, but instead interested in untruth. In what? In lies in in in what isn’t of God. And that, according to Jesus, convicts them even as they try to convict him of sin.

00:03:59:11 – 00:04:05:33
Clint Loveall
And, yeah, Michael, I think we really, we really kind of ratchet up the language here.

00:04:05:38 – 00:04:30:10
Michael Gewecke
We are hitting very close to home here, because what we’re doing in the text is seeing how the crowd is really moving to the next level of this argument with Jesus. And it gets really, really close to home. Right at the beginning. They say, you know, Abraham is our father. This is identity stuff. This is who we claim as the source is the center as the beginning.

00:04:30:10 – 00:04:54:43
Michael Gewecke
You know that this is right at the core of who they are. And then Jesus just really firing you. The heart of it says, if you’re Abraham’s children, then you would be doing what Abraham did. And here you are. You’re trying to kill the one that God has sent you in. John’s telling you the story, Clint. Jesus is the one who fulfills the covenant.

00:04:54:43 – 00:05:33:15
Michael Gewecke
Jesus is the one. The word with God, even at the very beginning, but also the one who was promised to fulfill God’s faithfulness to Abraham and all of his descendants. So now that Jesus is walking on the earth and the people who claim Abraham as their father as the source of their identity, they say people are standing convicted in Jesus’s argument because they don’t see the one who truly does come from God, who fulfills the covenantal promise to Abraham and that would be bad enough.

00:05:33:19 – 00:05:57:49
Michael Gewecke
The turn that comes here when they say, hey, listen, we’re not illegitimate children. We’ve had this over and over and over again in John, right? We’re not this is not new to us. This idea that they take him literally, they respond literally. And then Jesus moves on to the next and far more deep and impactful interpretation of what is said when he comes down here in verse 44.

00:05:57:54 – 00:06:19:37
Michael Gewecke
It’s going to land hard. The reason why they don’t understand it, the reason they can’t accept his word. You are from your father, not Abraham, who they’re claiming, but the devil and Clint. That’s the moment when the air gets sucked out of the room. If you’ve been at a party or a meal and a person, you know, things were going relatively well.

00:06:19:37 – 00:06:43:12
Michael Gewecke
Maybe there were some bumps in the conversation. But then the person says that thing, and suddenly the entire room is deathly uncomfortably silent. That’s exactly what happens the moment that Jesus says that, because not only is he calling the people illegitimate in the sense that they were arguing, they were talking about, you know, from where do we come now?

00:06:43:12 – 00:07:09:43
Michael Gewecke
Jesus is making the spiritual point that they are actually coming from the the devil himself, but evil itself, evil incarnate, that’s told in, you know, the Genesis text, this serpent who deceives that this clan is without question an offensive statement to everyone there in the room. Now the question is, can you see in the offense truth or can you not?

00:07:09:43 – 00:07:16:28
Michael Gewecke
And I think we can tease that out. But the way that John tells this, Jesus goes right for the center.

00:07:16:33 – 00:07:50:44
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And and again, this is not a this is not a teaching story. This is a full out conflict story. And what if Jesus language sounds harsh? It is. But how do we get there? We get there with people accusing him of deceit, who claimed that because they are Jewish, because they are in the lineage of Abraham, they are God’s people, or that they are godly, perhaps even.

00:07:50:49 – 00:08:22:00
Clint Loveall
And Jesus is telling them no, that their lineage does not define their faithfulness, that what they believe and what they see to be true is ultimately the measure of whether they’re paying attention to God or not. It’s not all the laws, it’s not the rituals, it’s not the procedures. It’s their faith and their ability to discern what God wants of them and what God wants of them is to come to his chosen one, his Messiah.

00:08:22:04 – 00:08:51:23
Clint Loveall
And so now Jesus says, you, you are from your father, the devil. A he was murderous. You’re trying to murder me and be, he believes, lies. In other words, he he spreads lies. He doesn’t stand for the truth. And you’re accusing me of not being the Christ, which means that you don’t know the truth. And so, Yes, this is very conflictual language.

00:08:51:25 – 00:09:22:12
Clint Loveall
This is very harsh for Jesus to say that, you know, John, does that sometimes. Jesus is very blunt in this gospel, though there’s parts of that in all the Gospels. And then he says, you know, you do not believe in me, which is because you don’t hear the word of God. The reason you do not hear the Word of God is that you are not from God.

00:09:22:17 – 00:09:55:10
Clint Loveall
You’ve separated yourself from God by refusing to believe and by your actions that are not in keeping with what God wants. And therefore, if you’ve separated yourself from God, when what do we call God consistently through this gospel? The father, then your father is of the world. Your father is a of something other than God. And and for Jesus that falls under this, this title, the devil, the one who is opposed to what God is doing.

00:09:55:10 – 00:10:08:13
Clint Loveall
So, that’s not to minimize the pointed ness of it. It is very, very blunt. I mean, it is sharp, but understand what Jesus means when he uses the language, I think.

00:10:08:27 – 00:10:36:28
Michael Gewecke
I think, don’t you think, Clint, that some of the context is helpful here in remembering that the Pharisees really represent, one very popular strain. But there are several strains of Judaism at this time that are very much calling the people to a new kind of sustained and intentional practice of the the Jewish faith. There’s a kind of renewal happening that’s not incredibly old.

00:10:36:33 – 00:11:22:03
Michael Gewecke
It stretches some ways back, but this is just a moment where there’s a lot of people turning back to the Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Jacob, Isaac stories and finding in them a real inspiration for living out the faith. So this idea that the Pharisees specifically, and the Jews, as John describes them throughout this book, are calling Jesus to the mat to really get in with him and engage with him on these these topics is in some way, I think, actually, in a charitable sense, people really caring about the faith, people really wanting to lean in and to take Jesus seriously.

00:11:22:03 – 00:11:48:13
Michael Gewecke
On the flip side of that equation, when their imaginations are restrained by the way that they read the Bible historically, I think when we come to a text like this one that ends in verse 47 with, whoever’s from God hears the words of God, and we remember that this book began with the word capital W of God.

00:11:48:18 – 00:12:27:07
Michael Gewecke
I think we would be very remiss to not understand that there’s a lot of plays happening here between knowing the Scripture, knowing the words in lowercase w, and then recognizing and seeing the word capital w. And I think they’re really challenging. And we’re going to see this even more tomorrow if we continue on. In verse four, the eight is going to be that the more and more that you’re exposed to the the lower case w the words of Scripture in John, it actually may raise the likelihood of your inability to see and recognize the capital W word.

00:12:27:07 – 00:12:48:19
Michael Gewecke
And I think that’s one of the things that makes this book so fascinating is because we would take that for granted while knowing the Scripture is going to be a help in discerning the Messiah, so would of everyone who was listening to Jesus, and then see how this conversation tracks it. It becomes hostile because the revelation is not what they expect.

00:12:48:19 – 00:12:51:21
Michael Gewecke
And there’s an interesting intersection there.

00:12:51:25 – 00:13:15:40
Clint Loveall
I don’t want to steal tomorrow’s thunder, but I think it’s helpful maybe to mention today. We’ll get back to it again tomorrow. If you go to the next verse and you mentioned it, Michael, verse 48, hear the Jews answer him. Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? So it’s interesting to hear where they take Jesus’s criticism.

00:13:15:45 – 00:13:41:39
Clint Loveall
Jesus says, you stand apart from God, therefore you’re doing the work of the devil who is a liar and a murderer, which are the things you’re trying to do. You don’t have the Word of God because you don’t listen to me. I came from God and the reaction is twofold you have the wrong lineage. In other words, aren’t we right in saying you’re a Samaritan?

00:13:41:43 – 00:14:21:02
Clint Loveall
So they question Jesus’s parentage? And then aren’t we right in saying you have a demon? So in other words, not only are you not one of us, you’re not speaking for God, which is essentially the highest blasphemy that you can level against Jesus. And in fairness, Jesus has leveled it against them. But rather than rather than ask about the word, rather than ask about God, rather than pursue anything that Jesus has perhaps uncovered in their hypocrisy, they say instead, well, you must be this and this.

00:14:21:07 – 00:14:48:45
Clint Loveall
And, I think that makes a very interesting bridge. Again, we will cover some of that tomorrow. But I do think, I think it’s helpful to see ultimately where this goes to, to understand, both. Why why Jesus is perhaps being so outspoken and harsh and and secondly, how difficult it is for the people to hear what he’s saying.

00:14:48:50 – 00:15:19:04
Michael Gewecke
I think I’m going to save, this for tomorrow’s conversation. So I’ll only speak around this, but I, I think that there’s two senses in which this is really important. And the first is it really helps us understand how natively complex and conflictual the early church’s experience of the faith really was at you, I think, struggle as a 21st century American, I know I do, to put yourself in the context of those earliest Christians.

00:15:19:04 – 00:15:43:58
Michael Gewecke
They have no churches to call their own. They have no real clergy to call their own. That right. There they are. They are a young group of people responding to the revelation of Christ. They’re trying to figure it out every day to to teach each other to to listen in to other conversations and to get a new letter that, for us becomes a book in the New Testament.

00:15:43:58 – 00:16:05:27
Michael Gewecke
But for them, you know, hey, we just got this from the church in Ephesus or from the church in Philippi. I there’s so much in flux. And I think a text like this would have been a reminder to them from Jesus’s own teaching, that that there is conflict in the revelation, there’s misunderstanding that happens, and it requires real wisdom.

00:16:05:27 – 00:16:31:10
Michael Gewecke
It requires real humility to hear Jesus for who he actually is and for what he has to say. I think there’s a kind of really humanizing note in that there’s also a very modern kind of practical value, which we’ll get to tomorrow, I think, because it’s easy for us to get an imagination for who Jesus was and then to say, well, this is who Jesus was.

00:16:31:10 – 00:16:53:48
Michael Gewecke
And then we never sort of live into the complexity of being a human, saying these things to people who he might have been able to name in that crowd. And Clint, that this kind of discourse shows us that Jesus is making an extreme claim about who he is and about the right way to understand his relationship to God.

00:16:53:52 – 00:17:16:10
Michael Gewecke
Whether or not he’s right is left to our faith and time and all these other forces. But make no mistake about it, and we’ll get to this tomorrow. Jesus is not being coy. He’s not. He’s not pulling punches. Jesus is going to lay out in the book of John, this is who I am. And you either get it and see it, or you don’t.

00:17:16:15 – 00:17:18:05
Michael Gewecke
And that’s the end of that story.

00:17:18:19 – 00:17:44:40
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And if we could do maybe just a little bit of like, extra biblical kind of history, we’ve said this before, but it’s worth remembering, John is thought to have been the last gospel written, or the latest of the Gospels, and that means it would reflect a time with probably the most conflict between those early Christians and the Jews.

00:17:44:45 – 00:18:22:06
Clint Loveall
And John is often noted for the level of animosity between Jesus and those who oppose him. And that makes sense, right? Because if if John’s gospel is later, and it comes from a time where that animosity undergirds those relationships, it only makes sense that we would see that in the text. So keep in mind that these Christians of this era are living under the reality of Jewish people, calling them heretics and calling them blasphemers and kicking them out of synagogues.

00:18:22:06 – 00:18:41:28
Clint Loveall
And this, this conflict that we see in the pages of the Scripture are also happening in the communities of the faith. And so, they would have resonated, I think, with these words, because in many ways they were living them.

00:18:41:33 – 00:19:03:41
Michael Gewecke
Scripture has a way of reflecting the time and context in people who are giving us the text. And that is natural, because when your experience saying something, the teachings of Jesus that are going to rise to the top most quickly are the ones that are speaking to your context, right? There’s this whole body of things that Jesus said in a history tradition being passed down in this time.

00:19:03:41 – 00:19:23:04
Michael Gewecke
And so it’s the same thing in your life in one season, a story or a song is going to resonate, and then the next season it’s not going to is it still important? It’s just not the first thing that comes to the top. And and that’s how it works in the scriptures. And I it’s just helpful to have that background when you’re reading a book like John.

00:19:23:04 – 00:19:38:04
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it’s it’s a very oversimplified answer. But if one was to ask why is it that John’s gospel seems more pointed in those areas, a reasonable explanation is because that’s where the church of John’s day was at.

00:19:38:04 – 00:19:38:39
Michael Gewecke
Yeah.

00:19:38:43 – 00:19:39:18
Clint Loveall
So.

00:19:39:23 – 00:19:56:00
Michael Gewecke
Well, hey, thanks for being with us. We’ve already alluded there’s more to come tomorrow. I hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to be part of that conversation when it comes out tomorrow. I certainly hope if you found this particular study helpful, you, subscribe. You’ll like it. You’ll join us in the comments and whatever’s most helpful for you. We’re glad to have spent this time with you.

00:19:56:09 – 00:19:56:55
Michael Gewecke
We’ll see you tomorrow.

00:19:56:56 – 00:19:57:14
Clint Loveall
Bye.