“Who is God?”
John 8:48-59
6/3/07
Who is God? Not a question that can be
answered in a 15 minute sermon - at least, not in such a way where we
could have said everything there is to say about God in such a short
period of time. After all, God is infinite and eternal, and we
will be spending all of eternity in heaven learning about God. As
the Apostle John writes at the end of his Gospel account about Jesus,
“There are also many other things that Jesus did. Were
every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could
not contain the books that would be written.” Much less,
then, does this little sermon pretend to give you all there is to know
about God. Even God doesn’t give you everything there is to
know about Him. But what He has given us is written in the pages
of the Bible. That is what He wants us to know about Him for the
time being, and it’s all that we need to know for our salvation.
So, in looking for an answer to this question,
“Who is God?” we must turn to those writings where God has
revealed Himself to us - the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.
When we do that, we find that these written words point us to the Word
enfleshed, Jesus Christ. The good news about the answer to this
question, “Who is God?” is that God took it upon Himself to
give us the answer even before we asked the question. With other
religions the burden of finding the answer to this question is laid
upon you. God is hidden somewhere, and you must go looking for
Him. And people look in all kinds of places where they believe
they might find Him: in nature, in their dreams, in visions, in
personal experiences, emotions, revelations, in themselves. And
it’s true that God has left His imprint upon His creation, so
that in looking at all that He’s made we can learn some things
about God, but not which God He is or what kind of God He is or what
His attitude might be towards us. But the really good news is
that God has not left us in doubt about these questions.
He’s answered them all in the Scriptures and His Son, Jesus
Christ. In Jesus, God took on human flesh, so that instead of you
having to wander about aimlessly looking for Him, He comes to you and
says, “Here I am!” And such is what He says to a
group of unbelieving Jews in today’s Gospel text:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I Am.”
For the answer to our question of “Who is
God?” then, we turn to the Bible which points us to our Savior,
Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, and by listening to His words and
looking at what He does, we learn who God is. Looking at
today’s words we learn who God is by some of the names of God
that Jesus gives us here. One of those names is “I
Am.” Jesus calls Himself by this Name. In doing this
He makes it clear that He is the God who has been revealing Himself
among His people all along throughout their history by way of His words
and His works on their behalf. By calling Himself by this Name
Jesus reveals that He is the very same God who gave the promise to
Abraham that in his Seed all the nations of the earth would be
blessed. He is the same God who appeared to Moses on Mt. Sinai,
who redeemed the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt, who
brought them through the Red Sea on dry ground, who gave them water
from a Rock and manna in the wilderness, who delivered His testament to
them at Mt. Sinai, and who brought them into the promised land.
In doing all these things for His people, God was
revealing who He was as “I Am.” If anyone wondered
who this God “I Am” was, all one had to do was look at how
God was doing His Name for His people. He saved them, He redeemed
them, He cared for them, He fed them, He sustained them, He lead them,
He gave them His Word, He forgave their sins, He dwelt among them, He
sanctified them. All of this and much more is what it means that
God is “I Am.” If an Israelite were to have been
asked the question, then, who God is, he could have in a nutshell
answered, “He is the One who created me, redeemed me, and
sanctifies me.” With Jesus applying that Name to Himself,
we see God again revealing Himself and doing His Name for us, but now
finally and most perfectly in the flesh of His Son. Here we see
God doing the same things He was doing for His people in the O.T., but
the saving He does is the saving from our slavery to sin, death, hell,
and the devil. And He does this with the sacrifice of His
Son’s body on the cross and His bodily resurrection from the
dead. He forgives us our sins, and He dwells with us, too, in
making our own bodies His temple. He also feeds us on the manna
of the body and blood of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper, as He leads
us in our exodus from this present evil age to the promised land of
heaven. In the meantime, He also sanctifies us, setting us apart
as holy to Himself. And so, by giving Himself the Name “I
Am” Jesus gives us the answer to our question, “Who is
God?” Look at Jesus and what He says and does, and
you’ll know.
But “I Am” is not the only Name given us
here. The Name “Jesus” itself is given to us.
This Name means “God is salvation.” In the Gospel
according to St. Matthew the angel Gabriel tells Joseph to name the
child to be born of Mary “Jesus,” because “He will
save His people from their sins.” And as you read through
the Gospel about Jesus, you see how Jesus does this Name for you,
too: He saves you by giving Himself into death for you.
With His blood He pays for your sins and lets God’s wrath fall
upon Him instead of you. You are saved now from your sins by
God’s words of forgiveness spoken to you for the sake of
Christ’s sacrifice. But with His resurrection from the
dead, Jesus assures you of your salvation to come at your own
resurrection from the dead, when sin, death, mourning, crying and pain
will be done away with for good. A new creation will be ushered
in and there will be a restoration of paradise. At that point
Jesus will have fulfilled the doing of His Name for you.
So, “Who is God?” He is Jesus, and
Jesus is the “I Am” of the O.T. But this is Holy
Trinity Sunday, and we learn from another Name given in this text that
God is not just Jesus; He is also the Father, who is also the “I
Am” of the O.T. This is often very difficult for
confirmands to grasp, that God is one God and yet three persons at the
same time. And really, who can understand this? But whether
we understand it or not is not the issue; we simply confess that this
is so, because this is who God tells us He is in His Word. He is
most clearly revealed in Jesus. And Jesus points us to His
Father. Jesus talked a lot about the Father. He said that
the very words and works that He was given to say and do were the words
and works that the Father sent Him to say and do. On the night
when He instituted His Holy Supper, Philip asked Jesus if He might show
them the Father. But the response Jesus gave him was that to see
Jesus was to see the Father. The author of the book of Hebrews
writes this way about Jesus as well, saying, “He is the radiance
of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature...”
Jesus and the Father are one, but Jesus is not the Father, nor is the
Father Jesus. In order to know who the Father is, however, you
must know the Son, because no one comes to the Father except by the
Son. And it is only in Jesus, through His words and deeds, that
we learn what kind of heavenly Father we have. We learn that He
loves us infinitely, to the point where He doesn’t even spare His
own Son, but gives Him into death for us, so that we might not perish,
but have eternal life. He is gracious and merciful towards us in
Jesus, not giving us what we do deserve, but giving us what we
don’t deserve. In giving His Son for you, the Father does
His Name for you: He sons you to Himself, so that now, baptized
into Christ, you are sons with Jesus and heirs of eternal life.
Even now, in Jesus the Father has seated you with Christ in the
heavenly realms, and when He sends Jesus back for you, you will be
taken to live with Him, His Son, and the Holy Spirit in His heavenly
kingdom forever.
But in reading this text for today’s Trinity
Sunday celebration, we notice that there is no mention of the Holy
Spirit. And that is because, as we learned last week, the Holy
Spirit doesn’t seek to draw attention to Himself, but to
Christ. The Holy Spirit is the “I Am” of the O.T.,
too. He along with the Father and the Son are the one true
God. But the Holy Spirit does His Name for you by delivering
Jesus, His words, and His works to you. He makes you holy by
giving you Christ’s holiness through His Word, the forgiveness of
your sins, your Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Through
God’s Word and Sacraments, the Holy Spirit leads you to Jesus;
Jesus, then, leads you to the Father. And so, even though the
Holy Spirit is not mentioned here, He is present and active through
these words of His, doing just what Jesus said He would do.
So, God has revealed Himself to us as Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, the same “I Am” who revealed Himself to
the people of Israel. We learn this from His Word written for us
in the pages of the Bible. There we are directed to the Word
enfleshed, Jesus Christ, the God-Man, who most clearly reveals to us
who God is. From Him we learn that God is not only our creator,
but also our redeemer, who purchased us for Himself with the blood of
His Son shed on the cross, and that He is also our sanctifier, who
makes us holy as He forgives our sins, clothes us with Christ, and
works to bring death to our sinful nature. This God has done His
Name for us.
Our natural response to this God is to want to kill
Him, just as the Jews here tried to do with stones and later succeeded
with a cross. Because we are sinners from birth, we are enemies
of God by nature. Far from seeking God, we actually want to run
away from Him and set up other gods in His place. But God has had
mercy upon us, His fallen creatures, running after us, humbling Himself
to take on human flesh in order to die on a cross and to rise again
from the dead, so that we might not be separated from Him for all
eternity. Now, having been caught by His love, you know Him and
are known by Him in Jesus. This God is your God. He has
done His Name for you, put His Name on you, and claimed you for His
own. You have been purchased with the blood of Jesus and given
the Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance to
come. With Abraham, then, let us rejoice and be glad that it has
been given to us by God to see the Lord’s day, both this day as
He comes to us in His Word and His Supper and also the Last Day when He
will come again to raise us from the dead and take us to be with
Himself forever in glory. Amen.