The Life of God in the Soul of Man - John - August 4th, 2024 (Sermon Transcript)

Has anybody ever heard the name Henry Scougal, or maybe Henry Scougal?

I'm not quite sure.

He was a Scottish theologian in the mid 1600s.

He was a professor and pastor, and he died at the ripe old age of 28.

But before he died, God had a special plan for his short life.

Before he died, he wrote a magnificent letter about what it means to really be a Christian.

At the time, in his world, he noticed a lot of fake Christianity in the people around him.

You might notice that the fake Christianity that he saw is the same stuff that we see in the world around us today.

When you look back and you read his work, you can see it's just the same old tricks, the same playbook that the devil has been running for century after century.

He points out three particular movements that he saw, that were just totally missing the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

For example, one of them, he noticed that some people were totally focused on theological correctness.

They acted like being a Christian was all about knowing and believing the right thing.

Just getting your doctrine exactly right, and that was the whole point.

Others said that Christianity was all about being a good person, all about doing the right things.

We call this moralism.

Like you just go to church and you give a little money and you be nice to people, and that's it, that's what it's all about.

And if you're lucky, you'll go to heaven when you die.

Then there was a third group that put all of the emphasis on emotion and experience.

So doctrine didn't really matter.

Obedience wasn't all that important.

It was all about feeling close to God and having some kind of supernatural experience.

We see a lot of that today as well.

Now the question that I was wondering about is, why do people get so easily confused?

And why is the Christian life so easily distorted?

We see this in his day.

We see this in our day.

We see it all around us.

People who are clearly missing the point.

Why does that happen?

I think part of the challenge is that all three of those things that I just mentioned are essential to a legitimate Christian life.

Correct doctrine is important.

In fact, correct doctrine is essential.

So is obedience.

And so is emotional connection with God.

But it's just so easy to overemphasize and distort and lose our way.

That's what Henry Scalgo was writing about.

So I want you to think for just a moment about your own tendencies to lose your way.

What are your tendencies?

What are your distortions?

I tend to overemphasize doctrine and theology.

At times, I've overemphasized emotion and experience.

And I'm learning slowly, but thankfully learning to navigate carefully and to watch out for that kind of stuff.

So think about it for just a moment.

What do you have to watch out for?

What are your inclinations to distortion when it comes to the Christian life?

And if those things aren't really the heartbeat of Christianity, what is?

If those things are necessary but not sufficient, what is the essential core truth of the Christian life?

According to Scalgold, true Christian living comes down to this, the life of God in the soul of man.

The life of God in the soul of man.

Good doctrine, obedience, and experience of God, they all flow from that first and foremost, the life of God in the soul of man.

And Jesus tells us how we can have that life in us.

Jesus tells us clearly and directly that he is God, and that by trusting him, we can have divine life in us.

Those are the headlines of our passage this morning.

We're looking at the last few verses of John chapter eight.

And there's this heated exchange between Jesus and the Jewish leaders.

It's been going on for a while now, and now we're coming to the end of the exchange.

And in the middle of it, they're sort of arguing and debating back and forth.

And in the middle of it, Jesus drops these huge bombs in the conversation.

He proclaims and promises the life of God in the soul of man.

Let's read it now.

Please stand for the reading of God's word.

I'll read the text for us.

John chapter eight, verses 48 through 59.

The Jews answered him, are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?

Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my father and you dishonor me.

Yet I do not seek my own glory.

There is one who seeks it and he is the judge.

Truly, truly I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

The Jews said to him, now we know that you have a demon.

Abraham died as did the prophets, yet you say, if anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.

Are you greater than our father Abraham who died?

And the prophets died.

Who do you make yourself out to be?

Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.

It is my father who glorifies me, of whom you say, he is our God.

But you have not known him.

I know him.

If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you.

But I do know him, and I keep his word.

Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.

He saw it and was glad.

So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham?

Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

So they picked up stones to throw at him.

But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated and join me as I pray for us.

Father, I pray that you would help us as we look at, as we study, as we think about your word this morning.

I know, God, that your words give life, that your words are food and nourishment for us.

And so Lord, I pray that you would nourish our souls this morning with your word.

Pray that you would help us to focus on it, to love it and enjoy it, to understand it, to apply it, and to draw close to you.

In the name of Jesus, amen.

Now, you might have noticed at the beginning of the passage that we're jumping in to the middle of this conversation.

Jesus is at the feast of tabernacles or the feast of booths, and he's been teaching the crowds.

Everybody's intrigued by Jesus, wondering who he is and what he's all about.

So he's been telling them with all these different analogies and metaphors.

But the Jewish leaders are offended by his teaching.

Some of the people embrace it, some of the people believe in him, but a lot of people are confused in the leadership.

The religious leaders, the political leaders are extremely angry because they think that they are really holy, and they think of themselves as being really righteous and good, and they think that they know all about God.

They've got it all figured out.

And Jesus is telling them none of that is true.

You're not good, you're not righteous, you're not holy, and you really don't know God.

So they're offended.

He's telling them the truth because he loves them, and sadly they hate him for it.

As you see in verse 48, they respond to all of that by calling him a Samaritan, which is a very offensive racial slur.

Samaritans at one point were united with the Jewish people, but they broke off and they went to live somewhere else and they had their own temple, and they started mixing with other ethnicities, and over the centuries had become extremely divided from their Jewish brothers and sisters and become very different, and there was deep animosity.

So they're calling him a Samaritan, and that's just about the worst thing that you could have called somebody.

And then, on top of that, they accuse him of being possessed by a demon.

In other words, you are evil and or out of your mind.

Think about that.

The most loving, truthful, wonderful, pure, good and righteous person who ever lived, just the embodiment of love and goodness, and the religious leaders of his day say, you are evil and or insane.

But Jesus doesn't back down.

He just continues to speak the truth.

And the truth is, verse 51, truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

He will never see death.

And the religious leaders really don't like that because they think that Jesus is being arrogant, that he's implying that he's greater than Abraham and the prophets.

You can see they come back with that retort, like, are you greater than Abraham?

He died.

Are you greater than the prophets?

They died, and so did everybody who kept their word.

So who does Jesus think he is?

Is he greater than Abraham?

And in effect, he says, yes.

Abraham was looking forward to my day, and he saw my day, and he was glad.

And now, beyond being offended, the religious leaders are also confused, because Abraham had died centuries ago, and here's Jesus standing before them, a relatively young man.

He's clearly not 1,000 years old.

So how could Abraham have seen his day?

Is Jesus immortal?

And then Jesus says, effectively, yes.

Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

And then in response, they pick up stones to stone him for blasphemy, because they recognize what he was saying.

Directly, clearly, with force and feeling, Jesus declared to them, I am God.

Now we're talking about the life of God in the soul of man.

The life of God in the soul of man.

So we have to recognize in light of that, Jesus is God.

When you have the life of God in your soul, that means you also have the life of Jesus in your soul.

He describes it in John 14, verse 23.

He tells his disciples, if anyone loves me, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

However, before we get into all that, I want to make sure that you understand Jesus' claim to divinity here.

He doesn't actually say the words, I am God.

Rather, he says, before Abraham was, I am.

And what we need to understand is that in their culture, in their language, to say, before Abraham was, I am was exactly the same thing as saying, I am God.

Think about it like this.

If Jesus was simply saying that he existed before Abraham, so that was the question, right?

That was the confusion that the Jewish leaders were having.

Abraham died long ago and you're not yet 50 years old.

How could he have seen your day?

Like, are you really a thousand years old, but you only look like you're 35?

That was part of the confusion.

And so Jesus could have responded by saying, before Abraham was, I was.

That would be a somewhat normal thing to say.

That would be grammatically correct.

And Jesus knew how to talk.

He knew the difference between I was and I am.

So he wasn't making a grammatical error.

He chose those exact words for a very specific reason.

He chose them because those words in the Greek are the name of God in the Old Testament.

We've seen this before in the Gospel of John, John 6, John 8, and it all stems back to Exodus chapter three.

Before Moses leads the people out of slavery in Egypt, he meets with God, and he asks God what his name is.

Moses realizes, I'm gonna be going to this people and saying, God told me to lead you out of slavery in Egypt, and they're gonna wonder, well, what God is this?

Who, which God?

What's his name?

And so he asks God in Exodus three, what's your name?

What should I say?

And God says, tell the people this, tell them, I am is my name.

I am has sent you.

That's the name of God that he applies to himself in the Old Testament.

In Exodus chapter three, Isaiah 40, repeatedly all the way, Isaiah 40 through chapter 55 of the Book of Isaiah, God repeatedly adopts the name I am for himself.

And then you get to the Gospel of John, and Jesus adopts the same name for himself.

John 635, when he says, I am the bread of life.

John 812, when he says, I am the light of the world.

And here most clearly in John 858, this one, sometimes scholars will doubt John 635 and John 812 whether those are actually examples of Jesus applying the divine name to himself.

Because when you read it saying, I am the light of the world, that's grammatically correct.

That's to say, I am the light of the world is a somewhat normal thing to say.

But to say before Abraham was, I am, there's something's going on there because that's grammatically incorrect.

That doesn't make any sense.

And so everybody is certain he was adopting the divine name for himself in John 8 58.

And one way we can be so certain is the Jews immediately pick up stones to stone him for blasphemy, for claiming to be God.

So his intention is 100% clear.

Jesus is claiming to be the eternal God of the Old Testament.

As Psalm 90 verse two says, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

God, God never will be or never was, God just is.

That's what's being communicated with that present tense.

It's not I was or I will be, it's I am.

He is eternally present because by nature, God is an eternal being, eternally alive.

He was alive before Abraham.

He was alive before Moses.

He was alive before Gandhi, before the ocean, before the stars, before the universe came into existence, before time began.

He is.

And he will always be.

From everlasting to everlasting, Jesus is God.

You see, he is the embodiment of eternal life.

Let me say that again.

He is the embodiment of eternal life.

And he offers to share that life with us.

Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

If you never see death, what does that mean?

It means, in a sense, that you're always alive, that you have eternal life.

Now, let's stop here for a moment and acknowledge the confusion.

John, the author of this Gospel, died.

John, the author of this Gospel, who was probably Jesus' closest friend while he was here on earth.

John, the author of this Gospel, who kept Jesus' word, he saw death, as in his heart stopped beating, his brain shut down, and his body decomposed into the dust.

So did Peter and James and the Apostle Paul and all of the Christians in the first century.

And so have many people that I know.

Christians, people who kept the word of Jesus.

I know Christians who have died.

You know Christians who have died.

So what does Jesus mean when he says that if we keep his word, we will never see death or taste death?

I think it means that you can die without tasting death.

Death, as everybody recognizes, is a tragedy.

Death is a bitter drink that nobody wants to taste.

But for the Christian, even though the body shuts down, even though the body dies, we don't have to taste death because through Jesus, through faith in Jesus, we can have eternal life, which means that we pass through death unscathed.

There are at least two monumental truths about this that you must keep in mind.

They're encouraging and hopeful, and they help us understand what it means to have eternal life in Jesus.

So let me kind of circle back and put the pieces of the puzzle together for us.

God is eternal, and we can have the life of God in our souls.

Which means we can have eternal life in our souls, in us.

And Jesus promises that to anybody who puts their faith in him, and yet people who put their faith in Jesus regularly die.

So what is eternal life?

If Jesus said that we wouldn't see death or taste death if we had his life in us, and yet Christians die, what is it?

What does it mean to have eternal life?

It means at least this, that when your body dies, even though your body will die, your soul will go immediately to be with Jesus.

That's what the Bible teaches in Second Corinthians chapter five, verses six through eight.

If you look carefully at those passages, Philippians chapter one, verses 22 through 24, two clear instances where the Apostle Paul implies the common phrase absent from the body, present with the Lord.

Absent from the body, present with the Lord.

So the moment that you die, your soul will go to be with Jesus.

That in part is what it means to have eternal life.

And we should also say that in the future, you will be reunited with a glorified version of the body that you currently have.

CS.

Lewis once said, you don't have a soul, you are a soul, you have a body.

And there's a lot of truth to that.

You don't have a soul, you are a soul, you have a body.

I think first and foremost, we are souls.

That's who we are.

But we also have bodies, and bodies are an important part of our identities.

So when we die, we don't go float off into the clouds in some spiritual world to live as spiritual beings forever.

We get our bodies back.

When you study the scriptures, you see that, like I said, eventually we will be reunited with these bodies, but they will be a glorified version of the bodies that we currently have.

They will be fit for eternity.

They will never get sick.

They will never wear out, and we will enjoy these bodies in eternity with Jesus forever.

The second truth about eternal life that we need to understand is that when your body dies, it won't be a tragedy.

It will be a victory, because you will pass through death unscathed.

Because your death won't be the end, it will just be the beginning of the life that you were always meant to live.

The Apostle Paul talks at length about this in First Corinthians chapter 15, and it culminates in this song of praise.

Death is swallowed up in victory.

Oh, death, where is your victory?

Oh, death, where is your sting?

It's gone.

Jesus defeated sin and death when he rose from the dead, and by being united to him by faith, we too can defeat sin and death.

We too can survive death just like he did.

And therefore, the sting of death is gone because the permanence of death is gone.

The bitterness of death is gone.

Through Jesus, we have eternal life, meaning death is not the end.

It's just a transition to something much greater.

That's the result of the life of God in the soul of man.

And there's a third monumental truth that is so important for us to understand and savor and put our hope in and rejoice in.

Eternal life is not something that you experience just when you die.

Eternal life, according to the Bible, is something that you start experiencing the moment that you put your faith in Jesus for salvation.

The moment that you recognize that you're a sinner and recognize that Jesus saved sinners and you turn your heart, your mind towards Jesus and you put your hope in him as your savior to save you from sin and death and condemnation, the moment you experience that, what the Bible calls faith in Jesus, you are granted eternal life.

And that immediately begins to have an impact on your life in the here and now.

It's not something that will just have an impact when your body finally dies.

It's something that has an impact immediately.

We know this in part because of verses like John 5 24.

John 5 24, Jesus said, Truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

Not he will have eternal life, but he has eternal life.

Jesus goes on to say he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

Has passed.

It's already done.

The moment you put your faith in Jesus, you have passed from death to life.

And that will be proven when your body passes away and you continue on to live with Jesus.

When you put all of this together, it has some really amazing implications.

For example, you don't have to be afraid of death anymore.

How many people live in fear of death?

How many people become obsessed with avoiding death?

How many people just try not to think about it, and when they do, they become terrified?

You don't have to live that way, because death is not a bitter drink that you taste.

It's a victory that you will experience in Christ, because you will pass through it unscathed into eternity with Jesus.

If you have the life of God in your soul, death is not the end for you.

It's just the beginning of the life that you were always meant to live.

And again, the life that you were always meant to live begins even the moment that you trust in Jesus.

Even the very moment that you trust in Jesus, you begin a new life.

Think about the contrast between the life that you had before Jesus and the life that you have post-Jesus.

Was there a difference?

Can anybody, looking back, I don't know if everybody in the room has trusted in Jesus for salvation, but if you have, then you can look back at your old life and see the difference.

You can remember what it was like.

For most people, I would argue for everybody whether they realize it or not, the life that they were living before Jesus was a dead end.

It lacked meaning and hope.

There was an emptiness in it that would never be filled, but when we come to Jesus, we experience a fullness that will never be taken away.

Prior to Jesus, an emptiness that will never be filled, but with Jesus, a fullness that will never be taken away.

He describes it like this in John 738.

He said, out of your heart will flow rivers of living water.

That's what we mean by eternal life.

That's what we mean by the life of God and the soul of man.

In abundant and overflowing, refreshing and life-giving, clear and pure, out of your heart will flow rivers of living water.

And the way to experience that, according to verse 51 of our passage, the way to experience that kind of life is by keeping the words of Jesus.

Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps the words of Jesus, he will experience eternal life.

Now, what does it mean to keep the words of Jesus?

Mostly, it just means to obey his commandments, to do what he says, to read his words and to follow them, to use them as your manual for life.

That's what it means to keep the words of Jesus, but it goes even deeper than that.

It means that you trust him with your whole heart, with your whole life.

It means that by grace, through faith, you receive the power to keep his words, to study his teachings, to treasure his wisdom, to immerse yourself in the way of Jesus.

A Christian should be a person who continuously studies the words of Jesus, who savers the words of Jesus, who immerses themselves in the teachings of Jesus, to think like he thought, to love like he loved, to try to do everything that he commanded his followers to do.

When you do that, you will have eternal life.

But there's a danger there.

The danger is that we'll think of it like something that we earn by our good behavior.

So, Jesus says that if you keep his words, you will never see death.

AKA, if you keep his words, you will have eternal life.

And we modern Western people think, okay, I'm gonna find his words and I'm gonna obey him, and if I do a good enough job, then he'll give me eternal life as like a reward.

As, you know, it's like a transaction.

We have this thoroughly transactional mindset where if I do this, then I get that in return.

And that's just not true.

Because what the Bible says is that you will never keep his word.

You will never successfully obey him.

You will never successfully follow the rules or keep the commandments.

If God does not save you first.

So salvation doesn't come after you keep the commandments.

It comes before.

In order to keep the commandments at all, God has to first raise you from spiritual death.

In order to keep the commandments at all, to have any success doing that whatsoever, God has to first, by grace, give you the gift of faith in Jesus, raise you from spiritual death, give you a new heart and a new mind.

And then, and only then, after you experience that new birth, that regeneration, will you be able to, by his continuous grace, start to obey the commandments.

In other words, you need a lot of work before you can even get started.

You're like a car, you buy a car, and it doesn't have any engine, any transmission, any tires, any seats, any electronics.

You need a lot, you need a full restoration before you can even drive the thing.

So we need to ban forever this idea that we can be really good and earn our way to eternal life.

We can't.

God must save us first.

And then we start keeping the words of Jesus.

And as we keep the words of Jesus, we confirm that we've already been saved.

And as we keep the words of Jesus, we experience this eternal life, this different quality of life in the here and now.

And of course, we're all gonna mess up.

Even then, even after God does all of that work, even after he gives us his Holy Spirit to help us and continuously gives us grace to keep the commandments, even then, we're still gonna mess up.

We're gonna fail to keep his commandments perfectly.

We're gonna sin, and it's going to inhibit and diminish our experience of this eternal life.

But take heart.

No matter how many times you mess up, Jesus is not going to give up on you.

He's not going to give up on you.

If you really belong to him, if you're really trusting in Jesus as your one and only hope for salvation, if you really have real biblical faith, he's not going to give up on you.

He's always going to give you another chance.

He's always going to draw you back in and fill you with life again.

That's the promise.

That's who he is.

That's the promise.

He will fill you with life, and he will keep refilling you with life until the day your body dies, and then he will fill you with life again for all of eternity.

That's eternal life.

That's the life of God and the soul of man.

Let's pray.

Jesus, we thank you for that life.

We know that you died so that we could live like that.

You gave up your life so that we could have eternal life.

Thank you, Jesus.

I pray that each one of us could experience eternal life starting today.

Or maybe for some of us, continuing today.

I pray, Jesus, that we could all live that kind of life.

It's so easy to get distracted, to get distorted, to diminish that life by our foolishness and our sin.

But Jesus, I pray that by your power and your grace, you would restore us and just draw us back in so that we could walk with you in eternal life.

We pray in your name.

Amen.