So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” 22
So the Jews said, “Will he kill himself, since he says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?” 23
He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24
I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” 25
So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been telling you from the beginning. 26
I have much to say about you and much to judge, but he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.” 27
They did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the Father. 28
So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. 29
And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things thatare pleasing to him.” 30
As he was saying these things, many believed in him.
Every year or so Newsweek, Time, and certain television shows will do a special on “Who was Jesus?” If you read the stories or listen to the reports it becomes clear
that the folks writing and speaking have no idea how to answer their own question. The sad part is that then they ask the experts, which they invariable do, the religious folks with lots of degrees and letters behind their names, those who have supposedly
studied Jesus and they, much like the Pharisees that Jesus is dealing with in this text, they don’t know who He is either.
But it happened in Jesus’ day as well. Jesus even asked his disciples at one point, who do people say I am. There were all kinds of answers. Some said one of the prophets,
others said that Jesus was John the Baptist come back from the dead or even Elijah. No one could deny that Jesus was doing amazing things. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, even the enemies of Jesus never denied that Jesus was doing miracles, they never
accused him of trying to fool people with tricks. They also knew that his teaching was captivating and completely unique.
So, he was a great teacher, he was a miracle worker, but there is no way they would believe that He was who He said He was, God, in the flesh. Jesus in verse 14 makes
it clear, they had no idea where Jesus came from or where he was going. In verse 16 He says He stands with the Father, in fact, He is from the Father. In verse 19, He is clear that to know Him is to know the Father.
But what I would like us to see this morning is that Jesus’ teaching here contains some of the most solemn and difficult parts of the Lord’s words in all the book
of John. We have it again here as we did in chapter 7 and in chapter 5 and, in a different form, in chapter 6, summarized for us in v. 21:
“I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.” And, Jesus emphasizes this by repeating it in v. 24: “I
told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be – or, as the NIV margin has it, if you do not believe that I am he – you will indeed die in your sins.”
Here in the most unmistakable and emphatic way the Lord sets before us the great issue of His life and His teaching for human beings, the point of His being here,
and it is simply this: Life or death in the world to come. That’s it. Eternity is real, it sits like either a weight of wrath or blessedness unimaginable, but make no mistake about it, eternity is before us all. Every man and every woman, although having a
beginning will have no end, because death is not the end of existence for anyone, it is merely a condition of existence.
C.S. Lewis in his book the Weight of Glory reminded us:
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – they are mortal, and their life is to ours as the
life of a gnat. But it is immortals that we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” [The Weight of Glory]
It is everywhere the great burden of the Lord’s teaching, isn’t this what Jesus is saying and what the Apostles after Him will be saying: Eternity looms over us all
and if one does not believe in Jesus, if they do not give themselves fully to Jesus and follow Him, they will be lost in a woeful eternity. And then He drives the point home by saying that “they will look for him but will not find him, because they cannot
go where he will be.”
The clear implication of these verses is that without faith in Christ one must die in his sins. You have to remember that Jesus could see, as no man ever before or
after, the consequence of life in this world. He could see eternal life or death resting on a man or a woman as he or she stood before Him. He could see, He knew what waited for those who rejected Him, for those who chose death, instead of life. Why do you
think Jesus sat looking over Jerusalem weeping…wondering aloud, why Jerusalem did not recognize the day of their visitation? He knew…He knew what rejection of Him meant.
Now, you and I know that this dreadful truth – that multitudes of men and women will die in their sins because they do not embrace the Lord Jesus as their Savior from
sin – is a most unwelcome truth in our day. It has always been unwelcome, to be sure, but it is unwelcome to an unusual degree in our time and for a number of reasons. People today don’t think about life and death as in times past. We live longer than folks
did 100 years ago so we put off thinking about it. When we read about those Christians in the 17th and 18th centuries we discover quickly how they prepared for death, all of life talking about it, talking about eternity making sure that
they prepared for what to them were the two great events in the world: The weekly Lord’s Day, where eternity came into view and the day of their dying, when eternity becomes a reality. They were not morbid about it at all, they just prepared themselves and
their children for the inevitable, that they would die and they would see God.
Even Christian people today don’t do this and think our Christian forefathers were odd…but really, who is the fool; he who prepares for what is inevitable, or he who
ignores it? We have become very comfortable keeping death and its consequences at arm’s length and resent the suggestion that we are wrong to do so!
As you know our media, our entire culture has demonized the very ideas of divine wrath and of the necessity of faith in Christ. Some just make fun of it, others get
almost violent at the suggestion of such, they think that our faith is barbaric, discriminatory, and intolerant. Jesus Christ today is an exclusivist and absolutist in a relativist world. He does not fit in. What we have read Jesus say in our text this morning,
to the opinion shapers of our time and culture, is heresy pure and simple.
And then there is the fact that we are just too comfortable and being the seekers of pleasure that we are, living for the NOW, the immediate laugh, or good time and
so, the world to come just seems so far away and not pressing…so we live for the day. Add to all of this, the fact that it is not the liberals who are trying to erase the idea of eternity as hanging over the heads of everyone, it is the self-professing evangelicals
who are doing this!
Jesus says, eternity is for everyone, but it is not happy for everyone. As one author put it so well, there are only three possibilities when one dies: You either
enter happiness, enter punishment, or enter oblivion and simply cease to exist. Jesus, in the Gospels, repeatedly warns us in every conceivable way not to be so superficial and worldly in our judgment, not to be so sentimental and un-serious about what is
the most catastrophically serious question looming over human life.
A friend of mine once quipped that we only get to die once, so we want to make sure we do it well. But are we? Do we? My guess is that we think about it and contemplate
it far too little, far less seriously than it deserves. Jesus is not saying in verse 28 that all the Jews will believe on Him as a result of his death on the cross. He IS saying that the cross will be the ultimate revelation of the identity of Jesus and many
will believe as a result of it. And those who do not believe will someday be condemned for their failure to recognize the one they “lifted up” on the cross.
Prayer: Father, I know that You have conquered death and that for those in Christ death has lost its sting, help me to believe this! Help me to live in that victory
and to overcome fear. I confess that I too often find myself seeking the world’s pleasures and forget that they lead to death and separation from You. Give me grace this day to live in faith, hope and rest, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Hymn: When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
