THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
"I Am”
Rev.
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prca.orgDear
radio friends,
In the last seven weeks we have
considered the “I Am” sayings of Jesus Christ as recorded in the gospel of
John. Jesus said: “I am the bread of life; I am the light of
the world; I am the door; I am the good shepherd; I am the resurrection and the
life; I am the way, the truth, that the life; I am the true vine.” Today we consider one more. Jesus said in
John 8:58, 59:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before
Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the
temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.”
This verse, and this saying of Jesus, is not usually considered
one of the “I ams” because there is no
predicate. I am…what? But really, this is the most important I am,
and the reason why Jesus could say He was all of those other things. He could say, “I am the bread of life, the
light of the world, the door, the good shepherd, etc.” because Jesus could say,
“I am.”
Jesus said this to the Jews twice as recorded in the gospel of John. Recall
John 18:6,
in the night
when the high priest had sent to arrest Him in the
This tells us exactly who Jesus is. It leaves no doubt. He is eternal God. He is very truly God, made in our flesh, and
thus the Savior.
What must be the response?
Not that of the Jews. For we read in
John 8
that when He identified Himself as eternal Son of God, they took up
stones to cast at Him. But our response
must be worship and joy and life. For
very God loved me and gave Himself for me upon the
cross.
Do you want to know who Jesus is? He is the I AM.
Whom do you make yourself to be was the question that led to
Jesus’ identification of Himself as the I AM. Who do you think you are? the Jews had asked Him in
John 8
in shocked amazement.
There had been a lengthy debate in
John 8,
begun when Jesus had
said, “I am the light of the world.”
Jesus had gone on to tell the unbelieving Jews that He had come from the
Father, that He represented God, and that He was the only One who could ever
make a person free from sin. All the
time the Jews had contradicted Him and sneered and said to Him, “Thou hast a devil,” until finally Jesus said in verse 51 of
John 8:
“If a man keep my saying, he shall never see
death.”
That made them bristle. “It’s what we said! You have a devil. Abraham, our father, is dead. You say, to keep
your sayings a man shall never die. Are
you then greater than our father Abraham?”
To which Jesus said: “Yes.”
John 8:56,
“Your father Abraham rejoiced to
see my day: and he saw it, and was
glad.”
Imagine what Jesus is saying to them. “Abraham pinned all of his hope on Me. Your spiritual
father, the one in whom you boast, placed all of his trust and hope in Me.” To which they
respond, almost with a sneer: “Thou art
not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? You talk as if you knew Abraham, as if you
were a personal acquaintance with Abraham, as if you were aware of all that was
in his soul. And we look upon you and
you’re not fifty years old yet.” Jesus
at that time was probably thirty-three years old. They say to Him, “Well, if you are not even
fifty; and Abraham lived two thousand years ago, and you talk as if you know
him and he knew you, just who do you think you are?”
And Jesus tells them:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you (that is, the Lord is introducing an
important statement of truth: truly,
truly, I say unto you), Before Abraham was, I am.” He meant, “Before Abraham existed, I existed. Before
Abraham became, that is, was born, I am.
Abraham has died two thousand years ago.
But I, who appear to you to be younger than fifty years old, existed
before Abraham existed. Before Abraham,
I am.”
Now the Lord is not using bad grammar. He knew grammar very well. Very intentionally He does not say, “Before
Abraham was, I was.” But He said,
“Before Abraham was, I am.” He
was giving His name. He was not giving
the present tense of the verb “to be.”
But He was giving His name: “This
is who I am, I AM the great I AM.”
The Pharisees understood exactly what he meant. That is why they took up stones to kill
Him. In mob justice, they were going to
fulfill the Old Testament law that said that they could stone anyone who
claimed to be God. Jesus said, “Before
Abraham became, had existence, I am. I
am Jehovah. I am the eternal God
standing before you in the flesh.”
Jesus, of course, was referring to something that they knew very well. In
Exodus 3:14,
one of their
favorite Old Testament passages, we read that God appeared to a humble, timid
Moses in the burning bush. Forty years
before that, Moses had been bursting with self-confidence and had killed an
Egyptian, ready to deliver God’s people from their bondage. But now, at 80 years, and after forty years
in a wilderness caring for sheep, Moses is stripped of his self-confidence. And he sees that he cannot deliver
Moses begins to give excuses.
“I can’t. I can’t speak. The people will not believe me when I come to
them and say that someone appeared to me in the wilderness and told me to lead
them out of their bondage. They will
ask, ‘Oh, who was that?’ What am I to say?”
And God said to Moses: “I
AM THAT I AM,” the Hebrew is Jehovah.
“And he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the
children of
Now, put that back into
John 8.
The Jews had asked, “Who are you?”
And Jesus replied, “I AM—Jehovah is My
name!” He took to Himself the
name of God, the name of all names that tells us that God is the eternal,
independent, sovereign, faithful One.
That God is God Himself.
How amazing when we look further. Jesus meant to say to the Jews (and they
understood Him), “Yes, I am a man of thirty-three years old. I am fully human. You see that I am fully human. I stand before you. But I am more. I am divine.
My divine nature is God. I am God
in the flesh. As to who
I am, I am the second person of the holy Trinity. I am God, the Son, living eternally with God
the Father and God the Holy Spirit. I am
God, blessed forever. Abraham became. He had a beginning. He was born.
God brought him into this human existence. He started.
There was a time when he wasn’t.
Then he lived, and then he died.
You want to know me? You may not
say that I had a beginning as to My person. Nor must you think that I shall ever have an
end.”
That is why John begins his gospel narrative the way he does in
John 1:1.
John, when he begins his
gospel narrative, is very different from Matthew and Luke and Mark in that he
gives no genealogy, no human origin of the Lord, no account of His
genealogy. But he begins by saying, “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God…. All things were made by him;…and the Word was made flesh.” John begins that way because John was in the audience that day in
John 8.
And the
burden of John is to tell us that Jesus is the “I AM,” in the flesh. He is the eternal Son, and, by a wonder of
God’s grace, now in our flesh as Savior.
He is very God of God. He is the
Word. He is the revelation of God. And now He abides with us in our flesh.
Do you want to know who Jesus Christ is? Now we go into that which is so deep that we
cannot fathom its depth even to all eternity.
He is God of God, second person of the Trinity, I AM THAT I AM, in human
flesh.
But Jesus means more. And
this is what we must understand and get into our souls. He means to tell us that from eternity He existed
as the Christ, the Savior. “Before
Abraham was, I am.” He is the One
appointed eternally as the Mediator, as the Savior. From eternity Christ was. That is, God’s Son eternally appeared as our
Savior.
We read in
Colossians 1:17, 18:
“And he (Jesus) is before all things, and by him all things
consist. And he is the head of the body,
the church.” This is the revelation that
Jesus makes. As God’s Son, second person
of the Trinity, always His place is the Mediator, as the One through whom God would
save us. Salvation is not an
afterthought of God. It was not
something He planned after He saw Adam plunge himself and us into our ruin of
sin. But from eternity to eternity He
says, “I AM.” And as the
I AM, He gives His Son, the second person in the flesh, to be Savior.
This is what is meant by the words in
Revelation 13:8:
“The Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world (from the creation of the world).” Or in
I Peter 1:19, 20:
We have
been redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot: who verily was
foreordained before the foundation of the world.” God has planned our salvation, every detail,
in His will and counsel. He said, “This
is My Son who shall reveal Me in the wonder of grace
to die for sinners upon the cross.”
And it means even more.
God’s Son eternally appears as the Mediator. I, the Lamb of God, I AM, always as God, God
the Son, I am the One appointed to save.
The cross of Jesus comes from the eternal heart of God.
Who is Jesus? Jesus is
eternal God, eternal God in flesh, who is Savior.
What does that mean? It
means, first of all, that nothing less than eternal God in the flesh could save, could redeem us from our sins. Jesus is the God-Man and only as such could
He bear away the awful, the infinite, weight of our sins. How can He be our Savior if He is not
God? How could He bear away sin if He
were not God in the flesh? Samson, an
Old Testament judge, pulled up out of the ground the gates of
At the cross of Jesus Christ we stand before the wonder of all
wonders—that the God who did not need me, before whom I could add nothing, and against whom I have grievously sinned,
nevertheless loved me and gave Himself for me.
This glorious truth is sure, that all my sins are carried away
and not one is left is to be punished upon me, because He who died in the flesh
was the eternal I AM. Shall we not, must
we not, praise Him, lost in the mystery that He who is everything loved us who
are nothing.
But consider further that you and I are then to worship
Him. You must worship Him as God or
perish. Jesus Christ is God. He, and He alone,
must be worshiped. All other religions
are to be rejected because they do not confess Jesus as Son of God. There can be no co-existence. There are many who will say that Jesus is a
great prophet, a great leader, a great teacher, a great example. No, Jesus is God! And therefore the only
Savior of men. If you do not
honor Him as God, you will perish.
Psalm 2:
“Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way.” Blessed are all they that put their trust in
Him. If you consider Jesus Christ to be
only a man, a good man, a great teacher, you are guilty of the most horrible
dishonor of God.
Jehovah, Jesus, sits enthroned in majesty most bright, appareled
in omnipotence, and girded round with might.
Bow down before Him. Serve and
obey Him. Trust Him and yield to Him
alone. Confess that He is the Son of
God. There is no middle ground. If we do not confess Him as God, the great I
AM, we stand guilty of infinite dishonor of God.
And consider, finally, that He is the way to the Father. He is the revelation of God’s mercy and of
God’s covenant to us. Eternity will not
be long enough. Jesus reveals God to
us. He said, “No man knoweth
the Father, save the Son; and he (that is, the Son) to whomsoever the Son will
reveal him.” Do you want to know about
God? No one has seen God at any time. The only Begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him
(John 1:18).
We see God in the face of Jesus Christ. We see in Him the eternal love of God to draw
us unto the Father. He does not do this,
of course, to all. The context makes
very plain that not all are brought to the Father by Him. The Jews tried to stone Him. His enemies today try to ignore Him. No, He is the One who brings God’s chosen,
God’s own, to the Father. And Jesus, the I AM, is all of our strength and all of our salvation.
Let us go back to Moses.
One day he was confident. Forty
years later he had no confidence. He
said to God, “Don’t ask me to do this. I
can’t. They will not believe me. I am not able to do this.” But God came and said, “Moses—weak, timid,
trembling Moses—look at Me. This is who
I am: I AM THAT I AM. I am the eternal God, the God of all glory,
the God of grace, the God of strength. I
AM hath sent you. I am your strength.”
God says that to us in His Son.
Jesus Christ, the great I AM, is our strength and our salvation. We say, “But I can’t. I am overcome with this grief. I can’t look up.” We say, concerning our sins: “They are too many. It can’t be true. Not if God knows my heart. How can it possibly be true that God could
forgive me, such a sinner?” We say concerning
the future: “I can’t face that. I cannot go on. I cannot deal with that in the future.” That is wrong. God says, “Look at Me. Look at the cross. See on the cross I AM THAT I AM, Jehovah, God
mighty in grace, in our flesh to bear away your sins. I have given Myself
for you so that there will never be a time when I will cast you away from
Me. I will always supply you with
strength and grace. For
I am the eternal, faithful God. I
change not.” Jesus changes not.
Therefore, let us bow in peace and in wonder that we have been
brought into the bosom of God through the eternal I AM.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank Thee for Thy precious Word and pray that it may
be written upon our hearts, that we may bow in wonder and be lost in praise
before Thy great and glorious Son, the Savior.
Amen.
Last modified: 4-Apr-2007