Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Judica), March 22, 2026.
Jesus had a demon. That’s what the Jews claimed in our Gospel reading. This is our sermon text, John 8:46-59. The whole confrontation between Jesus and the Jews is about truth. Jesus said, “If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (John 8:46-47)
If you’ve ever wondered why people in your lives don’t want to repent of their sin, why they don’t want to listen to Jesus—be His disciple—even after you’ve worked hard to bring them the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if you’ve ever been frustrated by someone’s stubborn disbelief, well, Jesus just told you why so-and-so continues in unbelief. So-and-so is not of God. That’s the reason why he doesn’t hear the words of God, why they seem to fall on deaf ears.
“Whoever is of God hears the words of God.”
Abraham heard the words of God and listened. He had hope in God’s Word. He heard God’s Word, meaning he believed it to be true despite its alarming message. The near sacrifice of his son, Isaac, is not a figure of speech. The Old Testament reading we heard today is not a fairy tale. A real human being was told by God to sacrifice his son, the son promised by God to make him the father of many nations, and even though God’s Word seemed counterintuitive, Abraham listened to it faithfully. “Whoever is of God hears the words of God.”
Just above where we began our Gospel reading this morning, the Jews claimed that Abraham was their father (John 8:39). Jesus refutes their claim and tells them that their father is actually the devil. “If you were Abraham’s children,” He says, “you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did…. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.” (John 8:39-40, 43-44)
If you have your Bible with you, turn to Romans 4:18-25. St. Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write about Abraham so that we would understand what it is to have faith. What it is to hear God’s Word—to be Christian.
He writes, “In hope he [Abraham] believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ [He believed God’s Word.] He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was ‘counted to him as righteousness.’ But the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.’”
Genesis 15:6 is where Moses tells us about Abraham hearing God’s Word in faith. Paul writes about Abraham’s faith again in Galatians 3:5-9.
“Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’?Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”
Back to John 8 and the accusation that Jesus had a demon. “If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (John 8:46-47)
The Jews didn’t want to believe Jesus. They set their hearts against Him, and by so doing, they set their hearts against His Father. They showed that they didn’t have God the Holy Spirit within them, that they were not the children of Abraham, but just as Jesus said, that their father was actually the devil.
So, who had the demon?
Yeah, not Jesus. It’s the unrepentant sinner who doesn’t stand in the truth. It’s the unrepentant sinner who lies. His father is the father of lies: The devil.
What Jesus said was, and is, absolutely true: “If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” (John 8:51) Even though Abraham was long dead, Christ’s Word is true because Abraham’s spirit is alive with God and on the last day his body will be resurrected from the grave and reunited with his spirit to live forever with God in the new heavens and the new earth. It’s as Job faithfully declared long before Jesus’ incarnation: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (Job 19:25-27)
Christian, the same is true for you. For those of us who hear the Word of God, that is to say, who believe the Holy Scriptures, God’s Word recorded and preserved for our blessing, for us who believe that Jesus speaks the truth, who know that Jesus is the great I Am who is before Abraham, and that He was incarnate to live for us and be crucified for us on the Roman cross, which He did and was then resurrected by His father on the third day… for you and me who hear the message of His crucifixion and believe it because God is truth, well, friend, we will not see death. You will not see death.
It’s exactly as God said through the author of the book of Hebrews. “The blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, to purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” (Hebrews 9:14)
Jesus has cleaned your conscience, or to put it in John 8 terms, He has given you ears to hear the truth—the Gospel truth. The truth that Jesus is YHWH, the great I AM, that He is the Son of the heavenly Father, and in Him you are too. You hear His Word, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, you believe it. Praise be to God!
Seeing how I took us to our Epistle lesson so close to the end of this sermon, let’s end with the last verse of our Hebrews reading. It’s a verse that shouts down what the Jews said about Jesus. It declares the truth that Jesus most certainly did not have a demon. Quite the contrary. Because Jesus shed his blood to purify our consciences, the truth is that “he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called [by the Holy Spirit] may receive from the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.” (Heb. 9:15)
Christian, listen to Jesus. He is the Great High Priest of the good things that have come. These good things are salvation, forgiveness of sins, and life everlasting with Him. He’s given them to you through His Word, which you hear and believe, just like Abraham. May you always hear this Word. May you always believe the truth. After all, as Christ teaches, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God.” You are of God.
Amen, amen.
Tyrel Bramwell 
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