Who Am I?

He spoke those words while teaching in the temple area near the place where the offerings were put. Yet, no one seized him because his time had not yet come. Once more, Jesus said to them, "I'm going away and you will look for me, and you will die in your sins. Where I go, you cannot come." This made the Jews ask, "Will he kill himself?"

Is that what he says? "Will I go, you cannot come?" But he continued, "You are from below. I am from above.

You are of this world. I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins. If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins." "Who are you?"

they asked. "Just what I have been claiming all along," Jesus replied. "I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is reliable, and what I have heard from him, I tell the world." They did not understand that he was telling them about His Father.

So Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be, and that I do not do anything on my own, but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases Him." Even as He spoke, many put their faith in Him. To the Jews who had believed in Him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They answered Him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?" We read verse 31 together again. "To the Jews who had believed in Him, Jesus said, 'If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'" I've got a question for you this morning. We've read it in our passage. The Jews to which Jesus spoke and taught had a question for him: "Who are you?" And actually the little Jesus when he sat down and started to teach them was actually bringing each one of them to this point where we are this morning.

Where we should ask ourselves: who am I? And I'm convinced that this is a question we need to answer, especially taking into consideration what we're seeing in the news, what we've prayed to the Father about, the atrocities we see in the world around us. How I understand myself will surely direct me to think clearly, but also know how I am to live as a believer in a sinful world. So if I ask you, "Who am I?" one of you might say, "I've already thought about this question.

I know who I am." Another one might reply, "What a dumb question to ask me. Of course, everybody knows who they are." If you have an answer, I'm glad for you. But I need to bring it to you to ponder further.

What you believe about yourself, is that the truth? What you have made your answer, has that changed your life? For it to change your life, it must be the truth so that it can govern your life, and then in the end, bring it to live like the Lord Jesus wants you to live. That's where we should start this morning. To have an answer is one thing, but to have a truthful answer is a completely different thing.

In our passage, the Lord Jesus teaches. And He wants to bring His disciples and the Jews of the day to ask themselves this question. For them, it can also be a life-changing question if they really answer it truthfully. So let's go back to that question. Have you made your mind up?

The question that you have, is that your true identity? I'm sure each one of us will incorporate our name in that answer: "I am so and so." If you say "I'm so and so," does that mean that's who you are? We know about our God that we cannot encompass His name.

Therefore, He revealed Himself as the "I AM." But does your name say something of you? Is your name who you are? If you're still struggling with that and you haven't come to a clear answer, I would like to guide you along further with the following consideration. Take it into a religious perspective now.

Who am I as a believer? Surely if you find the answer there, then you can say this answer is basically the answer that I have to use in my day-to-day living. So without indicating, please don't put your hand up. Amongst the others that sit here, how do you think about yourself? Am I a sinner?

Is that the truth? Is that the answer that Lord Jesus wants you to live by? Especially when we're preparing for the holy communion next week. Am I a sinner? Is that your God-given identity?

Or is there an identity to us as Christians that is more wonderful to know, an identity that solidifies your relationship with God, that strengthens your faith, that makes you unwavering amidst this world with all these questions we see and the things we have to struggle with daily? Does it bring certainty of salvation?

I would like in our sermon to focus on three points out of our text. The first one: to know the truth. In the beginning of our chapter, verse two, we read, "Early in the morning, he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and he taught them." Lord Jesus came to die for our sins, but he also came to teach us how to think about ourselves correctly, to have an identity not just to fit into the earthly reality, but to fit into God's eternal reality.

The people in front of Jesus, like us, might have thought that they had an idea as to who they were. The scribes and the Pharisees would soon join Jesus, and they thought they knew who they were. So who were the other people? How would you classify the others, not the scribes and the Pharisees, but the ones that sat there before they came?

If you put that into a religious context, there's only one of two: either they're righteous or they're sinners. It begs the question, is that how Jesus looked at them? He was here this morning in flesh. How would he look at you?

What would he see? Surely, how He looks at us and how He sees us, that's who we are. Our text informs us that the Jews came to Jesus with one thing in mind, and it was not to be taught. They were setting a stage, a trap for Him. They wanted him to reply to a question so that they could have grounds to go to the Sanhedrin and say, "This is what he is teaching.

Don't let him teach anymore," or even worse, get enough grounds to kill him. It did not take long for this lesson to start. But unbeknown to them, in a true life act, what does the Lord Jesus do? He turns it around.

He makes it a lesson for them. He's going to teach them something about the truth. He sets the stage for them, and on His cues, the actors appear. First, He describes the Pharisees. The Jews took the first position of prominence like we read, we learn them out of Scripture.

We know who they are: the scribes and the Pharisees, the enforcers of God's law. Then the second character comes to the fore through their hand: the woman that has just been found guilty of adultery. Now, if you would broaden your scope for a moment and step away from the scene, you might just see something happening.

And it's important to see this because that's where we're going to fit in as to what's going to happen with these characters. If you stopped at the act and asked the scribes and the Pharisees to classify the people before you, what do you think would their answer be? The righteous or the sinners? If you'd ask them where does Jesus fit into this, what would they say?

Would they say he's our alma mater? He's like us, a teacher. Just think back as to what they have said of him. He's like them.

He's a sinner. He sits amongst them and he drinks and eats with them. No, He's not of us. But yet, how does our text begin?

It's almost mockingly: "Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery." Jesus knew what was in their hearts, and He even knew more. He knew what they were up to. Playing along with them, Jesus starts to set the real stage, and it's wonderful to see it: God's stage.

Unbeknown to them, He will be teaching them this lesson of truth. If we read the passage from this vantage point, something else becomes visible, and the essence of the dialogue Jesus is going to have with them becomes clear. The distinction between truth and the lie becomes as clear as daylight. That's the sort of truth we must apply here: the truth that sets two worlds apart.

Who I think I am and who God makes me to be. Hopefully you've brought these two together when I asked the question first time: "Who am I?" Who do you think you are, and who God made you to be?

Hopefully, they are the same. By the end of the sermon, it will be the same. That's the wonderful thing. That's what Jesus is teaching the people that are in front of him, through using two sets of characters.

While at their viewpoint they're busy leading him into a trap, there's no more secrets for everybody to hear: "She's an adulteress. You know who we are: we are from the law.

What are you going to do with us, upholding the law, and her that has broken the law?" Can you see the nuance coming to the fore? They've come to reveal the truth, but are they truthful themselves? Is that really what they are there for? Why have you come this morning?

What's in your heart that has brought you here? Whenever people came to be taught by Jesus, I'm sure somewhere in their hearts there was this expectation to hear the truth of who they are before Him, and before the Father. Have they come to be taught by the rabbi, the teacher, what their position is before God, and what the real penalty for transgression of God's law is? Jesus knows their deceitful hearts, and John reveals that to us in verse six.

"This they said to test Him, that they might have some charge to bring against him." Jesus doesn't answer them immediately. But He does something strange. We read in our text, He bends down and he starts writing in the ground. As to what He writes there, it's up for discussion.

Perhaps it's a moment of time He gives them to reflect on what they are busy with, to evaluate their own lies, and if needed, to repent. You can almost see it in their faces. They might be looking for something differently, eagerly awaiting Jesus writing down "guilty as charged." But we're not told what was written down. What we are told is the following, in verse seven.

Jesus dissects them with the truth: "Let him who is without sin amongst you be the first to throw a stone at her."

As soon as He said that, He bends down and He writes down again. What He wrote, we don't know. We can ask Him one day: "Lord Jesus, what did you write down there?" Were they just as eager to see what He writes the second time?

Now, masterfully, Jesus turned their attention to where it belongs. They have brought her here to be judged, found guilty, and to be sentenced. But now, indirectly though, the Lord Jesus brings them to the same moment and asks them: "Who are you? What are you here for?

So how did you come this morning? To which group do you belong?" The Jews and the people in the front of Jesus were not prepared for it. Perhaps you weren't prepared to be asked this this morning. Where do you find yourself?

Perhaps it's not the right time for you to be asked this question. That's the one off thing about the Lord Jesus. He normally asks the question totally at the wrong time in our lives. But it's a time to reflect about who and what you really are.

Are you a righteous one or a sinner? The scribes and the Pharisees had to acknowledge that they thought in themselves that they are righteous, but soon their hearts convicted them. We read in our passage: how do we see that? They don't say anything anymore. But one after the other, they turn around and they walk away.

From the oldest to the youngest, surely then, from the ones that have the most sin to the younger ones that have lesser sin. Because remember, the only one that could forgive them their sins at that moment was Jesus. And they decided not to ask him to forgive their sins. But they decided to take up their sins and walk away.

Under the law of God, the Ten Commandments, everyone at the feet of Jesus, everyone here, we are all sinners under the law of God, the same as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, all the Jews, all the ones sitting there in front of Jesus. Our fate is the same: to be found guilty and to receive the appropriate punishment for our sins, death.

Eternal death. Said the Lord Jesus, "Yes, without Jesus in our lives, we are doomed to live in darkness and die in the same darkness for eternity." Is that where we are this morning? Is that where you are this morning?

That's the truth. The Jews who brought the damsel in distress to Jesus to be judged were themselves under judgment. When they walked away, they walked away from the only one that could have changed their predicament. But due to their unforgiven sins, they, and their adultery were all dead in their sins without forgiveness for their sins, and our sins, we will surely die in these sins, like Jesus said twice.

That's the truth. But glory be to God that the truth doesn't stop there. Jesus doesn't just stop there. When they turn around and walk away, no, He goes on, and what does He do? He brings a message of truth that sets free.

That's our second point: truth that sets free. Looking at the charges leveled against the woman, we can surely say she has sinned and she is a sinner. And that would be the truth. Would you agree that it also means that that is her identity?

So if you sin, you're a sinner. Does that mean equally that that's my identity? So where does that put us? Is she to stay a sinner, or can something be done to her status?

Yes, but to really grasp the change that takes place, we need to see what happens next. Jesus stood up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you.

Go, and from now on, sin no more." What has just happened? Jesus does not judge. But He sent her off not to be killed but to go and live a new life, a decision she has to make.

Instead, He does come what He came for: for the forgiveness of sins, and He forgives her her sin. Jesus did not come into this world to condemn him yet. But to change lives. He says it in so many words in verse 12.

"Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'" Without going into much detail, Jesus describes what just happened to this woman. She's standing at a crossroads in her life, a chance to change her eternal existence, humanly speaking. To try and explain something what Jesus has just done to her.

I will use the following example. Say, for example, that at this moment someone has a heart attack and dies in our midst. For sure, all of us would be changed by that, be grasped by the severity of seeing someone dying in our midst.

We might be shocked, and we might even start to experience sorrow for the passing of a loved one. But now also say someone in the congregation stands up and walks over to that person and lays their hands on her or him and prays to the Father and asks that life returns to this dead, lifeless body. And it happens, and God grants it, and this person is resurrected in front of us. How would that affect us?

We haven't seen that happen before. For sure, we would be amazed. We would be touched, and we surely would rejoice. What a life-changing experience. And exactly that happened to this woman.

Although she wasn't physically dead, when Jesus said, "I forgive you your sins," it's the same as bringing somebody back from the dead into life. Because she had the opportunity. The Lord Jesus said, "That's what I'm going to do for you. But you have to react."

She has the opportunity to choose life. Jesus has forgiven her sins. He's told her that. But she still needs to do something. Perhaps I should interrupt myself.

No, I'm not going to say Jesus Christ plus something for our salvation. But I'm bringing you there where you need to be to say, "Yes, I do believe in the Lord Jesus." But just to say "I believe" is not a question of not being enough, but there's something that needs to follow. So Lord Jesus is teaching them what it means to accept Him and to live for Him, to believe in Him.

But what should normally follow after that? This woman has been brought to life-changing, but she needs to choose from here on forth: "Go forth and do not sin anymore." Jesus calls out to her and everyone there in front of Him. Yes, that includes you and me this morning.

"Come and follow me. I promise you, you will not again walk in darkness." These words remind me of the word Jesus spoke somewhere else in John 10, verses 10 to 11. "The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. Isn't that what we're seeing in the world outside there now at this time?

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep." So is there something or someone keeping you from following Jesus Christ? Perhaps sin is keeping you away.

Or perhaps you're not worthy, by your own thought, to follow Him. Is there a history of tainted sins in the past that is so big that He can't forgive you that? Is that keeping you away from following like He wants you to do? My fellow believers, when Jesus said He came to give life, that is what He has come to give you. If you decide to give your life to Him in everything, He will give and guide you to experience life in full.

That's His promise. Can you hold Him to His promise? He is the light. He brings hope and a new beginning. He can and will give you eternal life.

If you follow Him. I will say it again: if you follow Him. Yes, we need to believe in Him. But just as important, we need to follow Him. This was important for His close-knit disciples to hear, but also for the women, the scribes, and the Pharisees, you and me.

Therefore, Jesus puts out a warning. We read it in John 8:24. "I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins." So how did you come this morning? If you live in sin and keep on choosing a life of sin, you have come as one and you will stay as one: a sinner.

But if you have asked for the forgiveness of your sin, like we've read already out of John, 1 John 1, verses 8 to 9, I'll repeat it again. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." If you have made the decision to follow the Lord Jesus, to accept the new life He has given you, you can become someone else.

The person He wants you to be. And our third point, I would like to focus on that. What is my identity if I have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour and I've turned away from my sin? What has He done to me? What has He done for me?

Jesus sets free. So let's answer that question: what has Jesus Christ done for me? He has given you life, and part of this new life is a new identity. Let's jump back to the beginning.

When you said you gave an answer to the question "Who am I?" what was your answer? So who and what are you? Perhaps you walked into the building this morning thinking that you are a sinner. Do you want to stick with that thought?

Or do you want to take the Lord Jesus's take on that, His identity for you? Let's look at John 8, verses 31 to 32. "So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him. It's two groups:

the righteous and the sinners. And now we can say the believers and the non-believers. But for those who believed, He said, 'If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'" According to these words, the Lord Jesus has made us something, not sinners. But that's what we make ourselves.

So what has He made us? He has made us His disciples. In short, a disciple is someone who follows. In those days, if you were a disciple, you walked in the dust of the rabbi. Wherever he walked, you walked.

And the dust that he walked, those dusts fell on your feet. But as a disciple, you longed, and you followed because you wanted to become like him. We all know that the image of Christ has to take shape in our lives. That's what the Lord Jesus was calling out to her when He said, "Go out. Don't sin anymore.

Follow me and become like me. I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ, and I'm destined and called to be completely something different to the people outside there that don't want to follow Him or don't want to believe in Him. We can truly be His disciples if we abide in His word," He said. "So what does that mean?

What does it mean to abide? Before we get to that, it means we must first understand why it's so important for the Lord Jesus. We read that in John 8, verse 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.'" Why do I have to abide in His words?

Because His words are the words of the Father. So what Jesus tells us, He has heard from the Father. So your identity actually comes from the Father. So the Lord Jesus is telling you who the Father sees you as, who you are.

We need to hear this. We need to believe it, and we need to live it. In the following verses, Jesus blames the Jews for not listening to Him because they were listening to another father. We haven't read from where I stopped reading. If you go read that passage back at home, it's hard words.

When Jesus calls those Jews in front of Him children of Satan. Not "We children of Abraham, we are nobody's slaves." Now you listen to your father, Satan, Lucifer.

You're not listening to your heavenly Father. That's for sure. Then you would have accepted me. Time constraints keep me from elaborating on this, but what it boils down to is the following. In this world, you can make up and decide whatever you want to believe.

You can even decide as to what you believe about yourself. And most people will just say, "Yeah, okay, that's relative. You can decide what's truth and what's reality. I decide for myself what is truth and what is reality. That's your truth and your reality. I've got my own."

Unfortunately, there's only one place where you can get the truth about who you are and where you are heading if you are heading without Lord Jesus. The Word gave us His word. I'll say it again: the Word gave us His word that came from the Father.

So that we can truthfully know who we are and how we should follow Him accordingly. So what does it mean to abide in Jesus's words? To abide is to accept and to integrate what Jesus was teaching and what He wants us to believe and to live. The reason for that is simple.

They did not want to accept Him as the Messiah, and therefore they wouldn't accept what He was teaching. So it tells us what we should be doing. If we accept the Lord Jesus as Messiah, we should accept what He teaches as the truth, and we should apply that to our lives. Hebrews 10, verse 4, says the following: "For by a single offering, He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." Hear me clearly.

Go and test this in Scripture. If you live in sin and continuously do sin, you're a sinner. Someone who believes and professes Jesus Christ as the Son of God, their Lord and Saviour, and has asked for their sins to be forgiven, the truth is that their sins are forgiven, and they are cleansed by the blood of Christ. For by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

How wonderful is this truth? That which describes the Pharisees, and the Pharisees have sought and unrightly claimed for themselves. What did they say they were? Righteous, because they're the upholders of the law.

Lord Jesus has given that to you. You are righteous. You are holy. Not because you live without doing sin, but because He's made you that.

That's your identity that comes from the Father. That Jesus had to perfect through His death, by His obedience. KJ explained that to us last Sunday: what it means to be righteous, declared right before God without any blame. Wonderful.

So who am I? Not by my own doing, but by the saving grace of my Saviour, I have been forgiven my sins. And I have been made holy. I am not a sinner. I have been made righteous, and I am holy.

Perhaps I should just say that so that we bring it into context. So what happens if the Lord Jesus made you righteous and He makes you holy because you have accepted that He is the Messiah, the One that had to die for your sins? And you have come to Him and said, "Lord Jesus, I ask for your forgiveness," and He gives it to you.

And you become holy. But what if you sin again? Yeah, that's something you have to take back to the Father then and pray for forgiveness. You get reinstated. Therefore, 1 John speaks about us not doing sins anymore because we're bringing it to the Father and asking for forgiveness and being reinstated as being holy.

Is that all the Lord Jesus has done for me? John tells us more about our identity. We read that in John 1, verses 11 to 30. "He came to His own, and his own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.

Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." So being a child of God is not because you chose, because God has made you that. So I'm a child of God, not by my own doing, but by the will of God, my Father. Jesus teaches more on this topic in John 6, verses 37 to 40.

"All that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks at the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day." Did you know that you belong to the Father prior to Him creating this earth? Did you know that the Father has given you to the Son before He came

to die for your sins on the cross? Isn't that part of your identity? And it does not stop there: that you have eternal life, that you will be raised up on the last day. Go read John 6 for preparation for holy communion next Sunday.

Because the Lord Jesus said, "As sure as you eat the bread, as sure as you drink the wine, partake in my body and my blood, so sure I will raise you up on the last day." So how certain are you of your salvation? What proof can you give this morning that you are saved?

Lord Jesus gives us that certainty when we eat the bread and when we drink the wine. When He says, "Just as sure as you eat the bread, just as sure as you drink the wine, I will wake you up. I will wake you up. I will resurrect you, because we don't go into sleep. We go to the Lord Jesus when we die."

So what has the Lord Jesus done for you? He has set you free from being a slave of sin. You are no sinner. So what's my identity? And I'm going to read it out.

I am not a sinner. I'm a holy child of God who now and again sins. Big difference between being a sinner and being a holy child of God who now and again sins. But when you sin, you turn around and you go back and you say, "Father, through Jesus Christ, I ask forgiveness."

Because of my faith in Jesus Christ, I have been made righteous before God. I have been given eternal life, and I will be raised up on the last day. I now daily live as His disciple to become more like Him, to live like He wants me to live. Amen.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, Son of God, and Holy Spirit, thank You for Your truth that sets free. Thank You that we may believe every word that came from Your lips that was written down by Your disciples, by the apostles, by the Bible writers, through the leading, the power, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that we could this morning completely immerse ourself in Your truth. Thank You, Father.

Thank You, Lord Jesus and Holy Spirit, for what You have made us. We were sinners under Your law, Father, because we did transgress. We did do sin. But thank You, Lord Jesus.

By grace we could come in Your name, and we could ask for forgiveness, and we did receive it. Your word has said if we do come and we do pray, we ask You, You will give us, and You will forgive us. Thank You, Father, that we don't have to look at ourselves as being sinners anymore, but start with the wonderful eternal identity that we are Your children, that we are saved through Your Son's graceful redemptive death on the cross.

Yes, Father. There's a lot of things happening in our world, in our own lives, that we feel we don't have any control over. Things that horrify us, that we see on television. But even amongst that, thank You for this wonderful knowledge that focuses our faith, that makes us unwavering in these days.

Because we know You in control. You've shown that in our own lives: that You are in control, by giving us to Your Son. Thank You, Lord Jesus, that You have not lost anyone that the Father has given to You, that You will, on the last day, like You promised, and we will taste and see next Sunday.

That You will resurrect us. Thank You, Lord Jesus, that You've taken us out of the kingdom of darkness, that You've put us into the kingdom of light. That although our bodies will die, our spirits will live when they rejoin with You in heaven, that we will be there.

Until You, Father, sent Your Son to come back and to judge. When we realise, Lord Jesus, that being a disciple of You and being saved by grace is completely by grace, that we have done nothing and that we cannot do anything to deserve it.

Even now that we know it's by grace and we try to live like You, call us, Lord. We fall short. We do sin. Therefore, Holy Spirit, come, like Lord Jesus has sent that woman out.

"Do not go and live in sin." Help us. Strengthen us in this week. Give us the strength, the conviction. Let us speak and lift this truth.

To glorify You as triune God. We do this in the wonderful name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.