Now, God took upon Himself flesh. We know that from John 1:1 . . .
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” not ‘a’ god . . . ‘a’ god is not even in the Greek. I always want to say, ‘those stupid people’ but I’m not supposed to say that from the pulpit—those ‘stupid Jehovah’s false witnesses.’ But anyway, He was God! He is God! That’s what the Bible says, and in verse 2 it says, “The same was in the beginning with God,” and verse 3 says, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” And to cap it off, over in verse 14 it says, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” I mean, God took upon Himself flesh!
Now, Jesus was with the Father . . . In John 6:46 we read, “Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.” And in verse 62 is says, “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?” Wow! That’s a question for them to answer, because they are already saying that He is blasphemous. They are already saying that He has a devil. They are already saying ‘blah, blah, blah.’
What they are saying is that they do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. They do not believe that He is the Son of God. And He keeps reaffirming it to them. ‘What if you see Me go up?’ Now guess Who is going to go up? His ministry was only three and a half years. He goes to the garden, He is crucified, before that He is scourged. Everybody’s looking at Him, the pharisees are clapping and saying, ‘See, He’s just a man!’ And in three days and three nights—BOOM! –Up from the ground He arose. And the Bible specifically tells you in Corinthians that it was before 500 witnesses also that are alive unto this day (when Corinthians was written) meaning everybody, everybody that was alive that day can concur. He stayed around how many days? Forty days, doing infallible proofs.
You don’t think the news didn’t get out? Even though the propaganda machine at work, all the fake news was going on. It’s not really Him, He merely swooned, somebody kidnapped Him, somebody captured Him. I mean, He did infallible proofs. He wanted everybody to know. Nope! That’s Me! I mean, that’s an incredible thing. It would hold up in any court. Naturally the Devil and the skeptics and everything today try to refute it and they still can’t. They still can’t find the body. And the Book is still here. And God is still saving souls, and still delivering souls, and He is still building His church. Why? Because the gates of hell is not going to prevail against it.
You can put it down, when God puts His seal on something, it works—it happens.
And so we see that Jesus was with the Father. And also . . .
“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5).
Uh hum, before the world was!
“But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17).
In other words, the Father is working. I am working.
Remember Philip was with the Lord and said, “Man, You are all the time saying that You are doing the will of the Father. Everything You do is to please the Father. Show us the Father.” And what did Jesus say, “If you see Me, you see the Father.” Wow! I love that verse. What a thing that opens up to you and me, thinking about our prayer life, thinking about where Jesus is—sitting on the right hand of the Father—knowing that we are in the Son, knowing that when we pray to God the Father, He sees the Son there because that is who we are. That’s an amazing thing to me.
“I and my Father are one” (John 10:30).
“The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God” (John 10:33).
See, they got it. They got what He was saying. People today are reading the Scriptures and saying, ‘that’s not what it says.’ Those religious leaders got it! That’s why they wanted to stone Him because He is actually saying that He is God.
I think of that phrase, ‘I am!’ When we read that there in John 8:56-59, have you ever wondered what God’s name says about Him? If not, then you should, because His name says quite a lot about Him. In fact, you take another look at our verses today to see just how seriously the Jews took God’s name. When Jesus used it about Himself, the Jews picked up stones to kill Him. Flying into a religious, jealous rage. How dare Him be so blasphemous, because they believed in their heart that that was a divine name—that’s God’s name! How dare You claim that!
See, God’s name ‘I AM’ is important, but not just that we are passionate about His name being treated properly. What’s much more important about God’s name is that we understand what He reveals about Himself in it.
1. His name shows that He exists. Duh! It really settles that whole issue altogether—He is! Period. And there is nothing that anybody can do about it.
You cannot make God not exist. You can’t make Him go away! Why? HE IS! He’s not going away. And you in your little stinking mind you think you can get rid of Him, you think you can compartmentalize Him, you can do what you want—but you ain’t getting rid of Him. He’s in there. He’s in everything. There is no doorway that He cannot go through. No little locked room that we put in there. He’s there. He exists. You are sucking His air. What an amazing thing. He exists.
2. He’s self-contained. He isn’t dependent or indebted to anyone.
No one created Him so that He should answer to them. No one has given Him anything that He hasn’t first given to them, that He would owe anything to anybody. He has no need, in fact, He has everything that we need. I don’t know if you came across that with David and Solomon in the Temple. It’s amazing. It’s like, you are praying to God would give you something to help the work of God, help missions, and you are asking God to bless you. And you don’t know how, maybe you can see it coming, or whatever. So, you are trusting God to provide something for you, and you ask Him for it.
I’m thinking about David in the Old Testament. He so badly wanted to build God a house. And he’s praying and asking God, he’s telling Him what he wants to do. He’s going to get this much money from these tribes and they are going to do all the stuff.
And then it is like he pauses—and if you look at it—he says, “but I can’t get anything without You giving it to me first.”
What a conundrum, when you think about it. Here you are trying to show God how you love Him with your efforts. You want to give Him all this stuff—but on the other hand you are saying—but I can’t give it to You unless You gave it to me first.
Does that mean you stop praying? No. That means you start to understand Who God is and your heart gets to that place where you know He is going to provide for you, so you can provide for Him and His work. Why? He gets the glory. Not your physical hands and your great mind. He’s got to get the glory. And that’s how He gets it. David understood that, we just got to pick up on that. And He’s self-contained, what are you going to give Him?
These people that are working their way unto salvation, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
What kind of work can you do greater than the cross? There is no other way. He did the work—we do the believing. That’s the way it is. Anybody that adds to that—that is blasphemy. That’s what’s heresy. How in the world can you add to the cross? ‘Well, I’ll just do good and keep the commandments.’ NO YOU WON’T! You can’t keep the commandments. Just when you said that you were going to keep the commandments—you lied. And if you break one, you break them all, DUMMY!
Think about that. What can you add to Calvary? Nothing. NOT A THING!
You can’t add anything to God. You can glorify Him and make Him greater than anybody else around. You can do that, right? Because if there is only one God—that’s Him. The greater all of us are, which is a big zero with the ring rubbed out, right? But if we get behind the One, the One gets greater—in the minds of people. It doesn’t make Him greater than what He is already, but with people with whom we come into association with—by our witness—we are adding them zeros to that One. We are making our God greater amongst the people that we know. That’s what we are supposed to do—that’s our witness. He’s self-contained. He exists.
3. He doesn’t change. You know a lot of things change in our world, but God never does.
His love doesn’t waver when we do things we shouldn’t. His commitment to us doesn’t change depending on His mood.
He simply is Who He is, and He never changes. I mean, He may not find us faithful all the time, but He remains faithful. Right? I hope you know them verses.
4. He isn’t going anywhere. What’s good about that? Well, it means that we can trust Him.
Listen, don’t trust your stocks, your bank account, your job, your looks or your popularity. All of those things can go away over night, but nothing is going to move God.
5. His Name proves His sacrificial love.
Jesus shows us this when He says, ‘Hey, Guess what! (I’m paraphrasing) You know that God that you claim to serve? Well, I’m Him.’ That’s what He is saying to the Jews, right? ‘You know, the God you say you are serving? The God of Abraham? I’m Him!’
He said, “I AM the I AM!”
And what Jesus showed us about the I AM is that He is a God Who sacrificed His very life so that we could live. I mean, you can’t find bigger love than that! And you think about every day why we won’t call on His Name—even sometimes during the invitation in the church service. If you are already saved, good! During the day, during the week, how many times do you call on His name—give Him thanks for what He is doing in your life? How many times your knee goes down? Why? That’s humility, before a righteous and a holy God. And you are saying, “God—my goodness—I remember when I said Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. But Lord Jesus, in this flesh I ask You every day to be merciful—please be merciful to me—today!”
He’s a gracious, loving God—but you need to expect that mercy! You get mercy when you humble yourself. And not until. Think about that.
When a minister finished speaking at a medical school, a young cynic came forward to say, “I have just digested a cadaver, but in no place did I find a soul. How can you tell people a soul exists?” “Well,” the minister asked, “When you opened the brain, did you find a thought? When you opened the heart, did you find love? When you dissected the eyes, did you find vision?” The obvious answer was ‘no!’ and the young doctor got the point.
People run around and say there is not electricity. Stupid! Put your finger in the socket. Wet it first. I mean, you know? ‘Well, if God is God, can he create a rock big enough that He can not lift?’ Wow! That’s a good question! No, it ain’t. It’s stupid! It is so stupid. ‘Well, if He is a God, why did He let men put Him on the cross?’ What would you call Him if He wiped out everybody? A bully? He wanted to prove a point about how He loved us. He already knew He could take care of everybody.
If you remember, there was a multitude of angels that were ready to come down and fight for Him if He wanted them. But that wasn’t His time yet, remember He told Pilate. Now when He does come back, He’s coming back with them at the Second Advent. Amen. But us to ever argue with people over some of this stupid stuff, know this, they must be saved. They get the Holy Ghost and then they can discern what truth is. Right now, they are blinded by the god of this world.
As I take it your entire theory there rests on associating Jesus’ words with Exodus 3:14?
That cannot be done because God did not tell Moses that “I am” (hayah in Hebrew), he told Moses “I will be what I will be” (ehyeh vehyeh). So the association just isn’t there. Translators render it as “I am” because they are taught to in order to provide the hook for their fellow Trinitarians to hang the argument you make on.
By the way, They also mistranslate John 1:1 as well. The current theory is that the “theos’ in that passage is qualitative instead of a factual statement. So, the correct translation according to the theory would be “and the Word was godlike,” which they use the sort of sophistry Dr. Daniel Wallace uses, as quoted by Dr. Mounce, in his textbook on basic Biblical Greek ( pgs 28-29) to justify using the old debunked translation of “and the Word was God. The basic reasoning is circular arguing that the passage must be translated that way because Jesus is a person in the “Godhead” so he is God himself.
I am a student of the languages of the Bible and the languages of some of its earliest translations. The Coptic versions all render that passage the same way the Jehovah’s Witnesses version “the New World Translation” does as “the Word was a god,” so, the professors in the universities have started imposing the “qualitative theory” theory in their classes in an attempt to make the Coptic conform with trinitarianism. That is how powerful the theological establishment is.