“I
Am”
Grace to you and peace from
God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Once again Jesus
finds Himself at odds with the Jews. They take their bloodline connection to
the patriarch Abraham very seriously. The problem they have with the words our
Lord speaks to them is not His claim to be eternal. After all, only a lunatic
would claim to be older than Abraham, their famous ancestor who had lived
centuries before them. They could dismiss that. And if Jesus was only
referencing how old He was, He probably would have said something like, “Before
Abraham was, I was.” But the words that Jesus uses, confess something so full
of the Gospel that the Jews pick up stones to kill Him for saying it.
When Moses was
standing before the burning bush in Exodus, he asked the name of God. And God
said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And
He said, “Thus you shall say to the
children of Israel,
‘I AM has sent me to you.’” So when Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I AM,”
He is not only claiming to be older than Abraham; He is also claiming to be the
Lord God Himself! When Jesus says, “I AM,”
it means that He is the God that walked in the cool of the day in the Garden of
Eden. It means that He is the God who spoke from the burning bush. It means
that He is the God who brought the children of Israel
out of the bondage in Egypt.
He is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is the God
of the Old Testament. And the power of that identity, and what that says about
Jesus, is enough to drive the Jews into a rage.
When Judas and the
detachment of troops came to seize Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane,
Jesus asked them whom they were seeking. The Scriptures say: “They answered Him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus said to
them, ‘I am.’ And Judas, who betrayed Him, also stood with them. Now when He
said to them, ‘I am,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.” When they
came to seize Him, He identified Himself as God, and they fell to the ground. That’s
what we sinners do before God in His glory: we fall!
Adam and Eve reacted
the same way in the Garden, once they had fallen into sin. They knew that they
no longer were worthy to be in the presence of the One True God. They heard God
walking in the Garden, and they hid themselves. That’s the way we sinners
operate. Sin does not like to be seen, and sinners do not like to have
attention drawn to their sin. When we do something sinful, we do our best to
make sure no one is around. And when we think we’re in trouble, we find a
hiding spot. Think of how people in the Bible react when an angel appears to
them. They fall on their faces in fear. The angels must comfort them: “Fear
not.” Only then can they give their message. The power of God and His glory
overwhelm the sinner. Either we cower in repentant fear, or we strike out in
unrepentant anger.
But just as the
angels comforted those who are brought to their knees by the reflected glory of
God; just as the Lord comforted Adam and Eve with the comfort of the promise of
the Savior; in the same way our Lord lifts us from our fear with the
forgiveness of sins. This is our Lord Jesus, the great I AM, who led the
children of Israel
from captivity to the Promised Land, from the shadow of death to the fullness
of life. And He is the One whose day Abraham was glad to see—and whose day this
is. And so He cares for you by bringing you to this day. For this is the Lord’s
Day, where He gives Himself to you. This is the day you taste Life so that you
might never see death, but only the fullness of Life in God. This is the day He
feeds you with His Body and Blood, so that you will stand before Him one day,
face to face, in your renewed and glorified flesh. In the name of the Father
and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace which passes all understanding will keep your
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.
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