Clough John Lesson 45

Jesus Being God Made Himself Man – John 10:19-42

All men are born spiritually dead; you were born spiritually dead, I was born spiritually dead. All religious leaders were born spiritually dead. There is no such thing as a member of the human race since Adam and Eve who was born normally apart from one person and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. Ever other member of the human race was born without any operating assets to hold before God. Therefore, if man is to live he must secure by grace these assets.

Turn back to Ezekiel 34 to review the categories that were in the minds of the people of Jesus’ day. Jesus assumed that people would be familiar with certain symbols; the symbol of the shepherd, and the symbol of the shepherd occurs in many places in God’s Word but the chief passage is Ezekiel 34. And in verse 2 it’s very clear that the shepherd illustration is a shepherd-king, the shepherd is the political leader of the nation, the religious leader of the nation. All leaders of the nation, they are the shepherds. And God chews them out in the 34^th chapter. So Ezekiel 34:8 he says, “As I live, saith the Lord God, surely, because my flock became a prey … because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock, [9] Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD. [10] Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock, neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more….” God utters words of judgment against the shepherd rulers of his people.

And then He says in verse 11, and here is one of the things that the people had not closely grasped in Jesus day and therefore Jesus pauses in the middle of this discourse, when He is challenged, to bring this point up. In verse 11 it is Yahweh who is the shepherd. Notice, For thus saith the Lord God: behold, I will both search My sheep, and I will seek them out.” Not is not a human shepherd there in verse 11, that is a divine shepherd in verse 11. There’s the claim for deity for the great shepherd. Notice he says in verse 12, “As a shepherd seeks out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep…, so I am going to seek out my sheep….” Yahweh, God is the shepherd. “And I,” he says in verse 13, “I will bring them out from the peoples, I will gather them from the countries….” Verse 16, “I will seek that which was lost,” terms that Jesus said on more than at least one occasion in his ministry, “I seek those who are lost.” Now he says finally in verse 23, “I will set upon shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even My servant, David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. [24] And I, the LORD, will be their God, and My servant, David, a prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken it.”

Now the question is, this passage seems to leave two dangling principles. On the one hand Jehovah is doing the shepherding; yet on the other hand in verse 23 it appears that David is doing the shepherding. One is God; one is man. Then who is the shepherd? Is the shepherd a human shepherd or is the shepherd God Himself. That’s the question that Jesus is now about to answer.

John 10:19; after the discourse in which He claimed to be the good shepherd who gave His life for His sheep, identifying Him deliberately with the shepherd symbol but not pulling together those two themes of Ezekiel, the divine shepherd and the human shepherd themes, Jesus hasn’t pulled them together yet. He has just simply said, “I am,” singular, “the good shepherd,” and I give My life for My sheep. That’s the only statement He has made.

Now in John 10:19 as a result of those sayings, “There was a division among the Jews for these sayings.” There is controversy; John loves to point out that controversy attended Jesus’ ministry. Notice back in John 9:16, when the blind man was healed and there was the controversy over the discussion, what does He say. “Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because He doesn’t keep the Sabbath days. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them.” Turn to John 7:43, after Jesus Christ made His famous announcement about the water during the Feast of Tabernacles, in the middle of that great ceremony when the high priest would be pouring the water on the altar, Christ dared to get up and scream across that court, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink,” in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles. That’s the setting for that particular argument, thus in verse 43 John again describes the people as being divided. “So there was a division among the people because of Him.” So over and over again in this gospel the theme that John pounds home is that every time Jesus puts forward His claims there is a division among the people. The division is caused by the Word of God.

Now this is something that is one of the signals that the Holy Spirit is working with us, not division over these non-essentials, not division over trivial things, but division over major basic issues. And I say we don’t see enough of that in our present system. We are going to see more of it, the caldron is heating up as Christians finally awake to the fact that the Word of God must have its claim in every area. And so today as we, the body of Christ, begin to seriously apply the Word of God we can expect the schizma that is mentioned here, the division because of our claim. In the field of education people are going to yell and scream that the Word of God can’t be the criteria in education, it must be something that is neutral that all parties can agree upon. It is unfair for the bigoted fundamentalists to insist that the Word of God is the ultimate authority in the field of education, that it, not man, defines truth. And so there’s going to come a division if we do our job, and if we make our voices heard in an articulate and intelligent way, expect the division. The division is going to be a division, not over a trivial item but a very profound one: what is the final authority and by what standard do you judge, the standard of finite man or the standard of the revealing infinite personal God.

We see the area in the area of politics, as believers seek to ask the candidates where do you stand on this issue, where do you stand on that issue, we see some candidates respond in anger and hostility before even being asked the questions. As one man said, this is an affront to the entire political system that you people dare ask these kinds of questions. So obviously the long predicted division is about to occur and we can rejoice that men are offended over these kinds of issues, rejoice and give thanks because this is a sign of the working of the Holy Spirit. And where we see the claims of the Word of God over into the biological and geological sciences we see a rising tide of opposition, hurriedly trying to cover up the issue, pretend that these are false issues, but in every way trying to get legal positions, trying to create a barrier to encircle the creationists and this is good and we can rejoice in the division.

So when John talks about the division, remember John addresses us as well as just simply describing what happened in the days of Jesus Christ. John was written for the Church; for 19 centuries Christians have learned from this Gospel and John is simply, when he records these schisms that develop, is saying look Christian, the schism was there when your leader was there, the schism was there when your Lord taught the Word and the schisms will always be when the Word of God is taught correctly intelligently and in articulate fashion. This has to happen, expect it, just fortify yourselves, prepare for the division and relish in it. So in John 10:19 there was this division, because Jesus claimed to be the great shepherd. It was obviously being taken as a Messianic claim; the people didn’t lose the symbol, they knew enough of Ezekiel 34 to pick out what He was saying; after all, these people weren’t stupid, they studied the Bible hour after hour and they may have misunderstood the grand scheme behind Scripture but they knew the symbols of Scripture, and they knew, Christ didn’t have to go into all the details, they knew very well what He was saying and it angered them that He had the audacity to make these claims and so in verse 20-21 the schism is outlined.

John 10:20, “And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye Him? [21] Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?” And so John leaves us at the end of this discourse with a schism, and these people are taking a logical position in the schism, one that McDowell points out very well in Evidence That Demands a Verdict, and he points out there’s a tri-lemma about Jesus Christ, there are only three positions that a thinking individual can take, that Jesus Christ was a liar, that Jesus Christ was a lunatic, that Jesus Christ was the Lord. You must take one of those three positions and notice what one you cannot take; you cannot take that Jesus was a good man, not a man who said the kind of things that Jesus said; if you’re trying to say that Jesus Christ is a good man you’ve made up your own little Jesus in your own little mind. But that little Jesus that you’ve made up in your little mind doesn’t correspond to the real historic Jesus. The real historic Jesus only allows these three opinions of Himself and here the people are taking the position that he is a lunatic.

“And many of them said, He has a demon,” He’s mad, He’s crazy, why bother with Him. So they turned. But then there are those in verse 21 for whom the facts of history play a more important role than speculations of history. But he said, “the words of him that has a devil,” and “a devil opening the eyes of the blind,” two things, they noticed Jesus words and they noticed His works and they fitted into the categories of the Old Testament. These people knew what a demon should do because they knew the categories of Scriptural revelation of the Old Testament that told them what a demon should do, and taking the Old Testament as their standard, and matching it to the words and works of Jesus, they said they fit, your conclusion is wrong. And so like all arguments and controversies, the longer the argument, the longer the controversy the further apart the sides become and if you logically take the position of verse 21 you’re going to conclude that Jesus is the Lord. And in so concluding you’re going to drive your opponent to deny the Old Testament as a standard of measurement for the Messiah, for you cannot consistently hold that He was a lunatic, if prior to that you have admitted your faith in the Old Testament. So if you refuse to accept Christ then the people are going to have to logically rework the entire Old Testament.

So John leaves us there and he picks up the scene in Solomon’s porch. Just another look at that porch so we can appreciate the scene that John is about to create for us. [He shows slides] This area was called Solomon’s porch; it was called Solomon’s porch because the people apparently falsely believed that this was the place that has been left over from the first temple. And so Jesus walks along here, he’s underneath that portico and not out in the main courtyard for a reason that John also mentions here and it becomes a vital point in the setting of John. Remember John is a very efficient writer and he does not waste words. And so when he sets the scene of verse 22, really a time lapse has occurred between verse 21 and 22, a time lapse probably of some two months, but nevertheless, though there is a time lapse there is no lapse as far as the argument is concerned.

So we find in John 10:22, “And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.” What is the feast of the dedication? You know that particular ceremony as Hanukkah, it is what the Jewish people celebrate at the time the Christians celebrate Christmas; it occurs in December, Hanukah, the feast of lights. Why is it called the feast of lights? What is Hanukkah? Well, John, if he wants us to understand what he said he is going to give us three things here. He talks us that “Jesus walks in Solomon’s porch,” he tells us that it is winter, and he tells us that this is Hanukkah. Those three factors become important for now the exchange that takes place.

What is the feast of Hanukkah or the feast of lights? It commemorates in 164 BC when the temple area was cleaned out of the debris left over by Antiochus Epiphanies, I read a quotation from the book of 1 Maccabees, when they cleaned the altar after it had been defiled by the offering of swine, and when this cleansing occurred the lights were brought in and forever after that Jewish families across the world remember the cleansing of the temple. What’s the significance of Hanukkah, besides just remembering the cleansing of the temple? Political freedom. The thing was that that was the last time the Jewish people ever remember being politically delivered and here they now live under their Roman overlords; Rome calls the shots, no longer the Jews, they’ve been conquered, they’re suppressed and they live under their Roman overlords. So naturally when Hanukkah comes up the people’s minds would think back to oh, when can we have our freedom back; when can it be like in those glorious days of the Maccabees, when can we have our temple cleansed, as it were, when can we have our political freedom and operate as Jews once again without kissing the feet of Rome every time we turn around. When can we have political freedom? That’s the mentality that leads and sets up the conversation that Jesus Christ is about to have.

Notice John’s not that “it was winter.” Why does John say “it was winter.” If you’ll notice in John’s text he brings in little notices like this to set the mood. Remember, when was it that Nicodemus came to Jesus? John tells us in a short, very crisp note, it was night. Night, the gloom, the darkness upon the religious authorities in Jerusalem and out of the darkness comes only one man, that’s all, of the high religious leadership of the nation only one, Nicodemus showed up, and he did at night, under the cloak of the hush-hush, the secrecy, the oppressiveness of the apostate Pharisaical and Sadducaical movements. When is the other time that John in his Gospel mentions something like this? The last supper; when Jesus hands the sop to Judas and the notice that John has is that Judas goes out and it was night. John brings these notices in to set the mood for the theology that is about to happen, for the doctrine that’s is about to be taught. And so here, “it was winter.” Winter, the time of storms and chaos, the time when it would be raining, the time when men would seek shelter under the colonnade of Solomon’s porch.

See, that’s why the notice about winter is in verse 22, and immediately after that, that’s why Jesus was walking in Solomon’s porch. [23 “And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch.”] The men aren’t out in the great open courtyard, it’s windy, it’s cool, it’s probably rainy, showering as it is in Jerusalem in the winter. So during the winter season, the winter, the season, the gloom, the chaos and the storminess is a beautiful fine setting for spiritually what’s happening. The city is in chaos, there’s division because of Jesus Christ. In this feast of Hanukkah the people are thinking oh for political freedom, for political freedom, but they no more can think of freedom than in the middle of their own temple. There’s this chaos, division, Jew against Jew, there’s no national unity. How can we have freedom when there’s no national unity? This man Jesus stands as an obstacle to our deliverance and to our freedom because He’s divided the people when we need unity. And this is why now in verse 24 they ask the question which really isn’t well translated at all in the King James. It’s really a statement that nobody, to be truthful, really knows what it means, though recent research seems to have indicated some neat parallels so we can figure out what it means. [24, “Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.”]

Here’s what it says, everybody knows what it says, we don’t know what it means? John 10:24, “Why do you lift up our souls?” or “our lives” as we would translate it. That’s literally what the Greek reads. Now the question is, we know that’s what the Greek says but so what; what does it mean that’s the question. Now obviously if you’re translating something like this the only place you can find out what something means is in the context. And the last part of verse 24 says, “If you be the Christ, then tell us plainly.” So it suggests something about the fact that they don’t think Jesus made His claims clear enough. So this is why the King James translators translated that expression, “How long do you make us to doubt?” you hold us in suspense. But recently there has come to light, strangely through modern Greek, the fact that in modern Greek this expression occurs in context where it means to jeopardize your lives and this fits far better with the context and for the following verses. These people are afraid, it is Jesus that jeopardizes their lives before the Roman overlords. For example, in John 11:48 you see that this theme is not so far off as one might think. While the Pharisees are taking council, the theme of the jeopardy of the nation because of Christ and His divisions comes up for discussions. “If we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him; and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and our nation.” So they fear political reprisals if they can’t get this gloomy chaotic situation under control. Remember the fortress of Antonia looked down into that place and who was looking down from the fortress of Antonia but the Roman sentries.

So while Jesus walks along the colonnade in full sight of the division and the hassles of the Roman sentries, pacing up and down in the tower of Antonia, and the people look from the Roman sentries to Christ, back to the Roman sentries, back to Christ. And over here they see a crowd, they’re arguing, who does this Christ think He is? What’s He saying? He’s saying this; no, He’s saying this. And up there the Romans are watching, that’s the picture, the chaos and the gloom with the threat of intervention by the Roman overlords into this chaotic situation. There’s some evidence from extra-Scriptural sources that the Romans are quite concerned for years before 66 AD, they were walking on eggs, so to speak, about this whole Palestine situation; it wasn’t just the U.S. and Russia that had a Middle East problem. The Romans had a Middle East problem for many generations. So the way I’m going to carry this on and the way I’m going to follow it in the text is I’m interpreting John 11:24 and this expression to mean how long do You hold our lives in jeopardy, how long is the division caused by Your claims going to threaten Roman intervention.

And then the asked, “…If You be the Christ, then come out in public and say so [tell us plainly],” because then we can follow You in triumph over the Roman overlords or we can plot and scheme with them and have them come in and rescue and get You out of here. That’s what they want, they want Christ to declare Himself.

But now in John 10:25 and following Christ cannot declare Himself for one very simple reason, a reason that goes back to Ezekiel 34 and those two parallel themes: is the shepherd God or is the shepherd human? They are sloppy in their thinking and so it appears that Jesus dodges the question. And He does; Jesus does dodge the question, He backs up and He plays with them until He can get through to their minds what kind of a Messiah He claims to be. He wants to make the issue not whether He is any Messiah of any stripe or any kind but He wants to make the issue, I am the Messiah of only one kind, the divine human Messiah, the God-man in one person, that is the Messiah and that is the claim I make for Myself. If people are to reject Him they must reject Him because of that, not because He just claimed be another political leader.

So John 10:25, His response is a little elliptic, “Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not,” many times He has hinted at this but because they have not believed their eyes are blind. And so He said, “I told you, and you believed not: the works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of Me.” The works have declared His creation power. Remember the healing of the blind man? What was the significance we said of the fact that instead of saying to the blind man “be healed,” Jesus spit in the dirt and kneaded His spit into the dirt and picked the dirt up off the street, the clay, and then anointed. It’s a picture of the creation of man from the earth in Genesis 2. And therefore what Jesus is declaring before them, I am the Creator, I’ve told you and I’ve given you work after work after work after work and you people, because you reject the Word of God, you reject all the categories in the Old Testament, of course you can’t understand My claims.

Then He goes one step further in John 10:26, He brings in a doctrine, the doctrine of election. And this is the doctrine that He uses to ease them into an understanding of Himself. He’s going to make a claim in verse 30 that often times people misunderstand, “I and My Father are One.” For this they began to stone Him. But He’s going to lead into that, not by directly asserting His deity. He’s going to lead into it by the doctrine of election. Now let’s go back to our divine viewpoint framework and review the doctrine of election. The way we have taught in these events is that the doctrine of election is to be linked with the call of Abraham. There’s the historic picture of what election is like. There are five points in the doctrine of election that ought to be understood.

The first one is that election depends upon the divine viewpoint foundation; that is, election does not make sense unless you believe and hold as truth the Genesis view of the origin of the universe. If you do not share that and you’re off into some theistic evolutionary scheme then forget trying to understand election, you can’t do it. What you’re going to do is you’re going to reinterpret election in your own categories and that’s dishonest to Scripture. So if you don’t buy Genesis just tune out while we go through the doctrine of election. Election rests upon a literal Genesis; it rests upon a literal Genesis not only because of creation but because of the fall. Election has to be understood on that foundation, creation and fall. Why? Because causation… causation, God causing things to happen in history, is by means of the Creator/creature link, not by means of creature/creature links. And every time we fail to understand election it’s because we try to visualize God’s causation in creature/creature terms instead of Creator/creature terms. The link is this way, not that way and if you try to think of election in terms of a chemical reaction, scientific cause/effect you’re wrong, because that’s a creature/creature reaction, not a Creator/ creature reaction.

Then to consider election you have to also think of the world as depraved; God elects out of a mass of fallen humanity. That’s the first point in the doctrine of election, summed up in Isaiah 55:8-9.

The second point in the doctrine of election is that it’s God’s basic eternal promise. You see, God could make all the promises He wanted to in history, He could say I promise you this, I promise you that, I promise something else, but if we have no assurance that we are the recipients of the promise, then it does not good, does it? If I tell you that God will bless you and do this to you if you conform to His standards and so on, the next question you have is: do I conform to His standards? In other words, do all these promises apply to me, and if I’m not one who is called by God then the promises never apply to me; they never apply to me because from the very point of my basic being I’m a rebel against God and His holy sacred cause, and God does not bless and fulfill promises to rebels. So the second point in the doctrine of election is that it’s the basic promise behind all the other promises.

The third point in the doctrine of election is that it is 100% certain. The application of the doctrine of election is quite clear here, Jesus doesn’t err, He knows exactly what He’s doing. Why bring up the doctrine of election? Because as John said, it’s winter and it’s chaos and people have got their eyes on the chaos, they’ve got their eyes on those sentries walking back and forth in the top of the tower of Antonia; they’ve got their eyes on the almighty power of Rome and they fear, they’re on their knees before Rome, we’d better not do this because Rome might get mad, we’d better not do this because somebody else might get mad. Just like the United States citizens, we’d better watch out because the Russians might get mad at us, as if Brezhnev has sovereignty. No communist clown on the face of this earth comes close to having any kind of sovereignty and yet Americans by the carload are acting as though sovereignty has become an acquired attribute of the communist movement. That is devil worship, demon worship according to Satan the attributes of God and according to the movement affiliated with Satan the attributes of God. And so the third point in the doctrine of election is that God’s will, God’s election is 100% certain and therefore Jesus says to these people, I place My confidence in God’s election, not those soldiers on the tower of Antonia. God, Yahweh, is sovereign, not Caesar.

The fourth point in the doctrine of election is that it is the totally free choice of God, Romans 9:7-9. A good verse on the second point that it’s God’s basic eternal promise is Luke 10:20; a verse on the third point is Isaiah 43:12-13; and a verse on the fourth point is Romans 9:7-9. God freely chooses, without consulting anyone else. He did not consult you, He did not consult me, and He did not consult any Roman Caesar as to how He was going to design history. And Jesus reminds the people, and by bringing up this whole election He causes the people to remember who has the final say about the design of history.

And finally, the fifth point in the doctrine of election, for balance, is that election can never be seen in history apart from true historic response to the Word of God. There’s no such thing as election operating without response to the Word of God. You cannot divorce the two; Genesis 18:19, Abraham was obedient and he was elect and the two go together. There’s no such thing as this fictionary elect person who doesn’t respond to the Word. The two go together; one looks at it from eternity, the other looks at it from the point of time but they both fit together.

Now it’s the doctrine of election that Jesus now uses against His opponents to bring them to a recognition of Himself. It sounds like going all around Robin Hood’s barn to get in but Jesus has to do this; these people are ready to kill Him and so He has to be truthful but He has to be semi-elusive. He has to make them think because you have a mob here; mobs don’t think. People who are geared up emotionally can’t think. That’s what’s wrong with all this charismatic bologna that goes on, hollering and whooping and rolling down aisles and carrying on, no one can think about God. It’s an insult to Jesus Christ to act like this. If Jesus Christ had ear muffs He must wear them everything there is something like that going on. No one can love God apart from pausing to look, concentrate, and think; it’s impossible. So therefore we have election, one of the most difficult doctrines and Jesus holds it right up before the unbeliever. In seminary they always tell you, don’t ever bring election up in areas of evangelism. Isn’t it strange that Jesus brought it up about 50% of the time; evidently He didn’t go to seminary to find out how it ought to be done.

Now in John 10:26 He says, “But you believe not, because ye are not of My sheep,” how stinging of Him to say that. What had these people, how had these people believed Ezekiel 34, the great shepherd discourse. Why, they thought, the shepherd is Yahweh, the shepherd is either Yahweh or David but surely the sheep equal the nation Israel. Jesus says huh-un, the sheep are only the elect few within the nation Israel. There are some Israelites that are headed for hell and there are some that are headed for heaven and these are the sheep Jesus said are mine. Just because you have the physical genes of Abraham does not mean that you’re within Abraham’s covenant in its ultimate eternal sense. So He reminds them of that, you don’t believe and you’re not going to believe; you’re just simply not My sheep. And this is very harsh, what He’s saying ere and this indicates a coldness that begins to set in Jesus presentation of Himself. Up to now, as in all the Gospels, Jesus has pled with the people, He has pled with them to come and consider His claims, and now as these people in frustration gather around Him He slams the door shut in their face, you don’t believe and you’re not going to believe, you’re not My sheep. In essence He tells them to get lost. It sounds cruel, but then He goes on. “…as I said unto you,” referring back to the discourse before verse 22, “as I said unto you, [27] My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me,” and He argues that I am calling out the remnant of Israel, those who respond to Me, they’re here, they understand My claims and those of you who want to precipitate a controversy between Me and Rome, you’re none of My sheep.

Then in John 10:28 He begins to transition, ever so subtly, so subtly in fact that you don’t notice what He’s done. Many Christians have read verse 28 and they say verse 28 teaches eternal security, how wonderful, I’ll memorize that verse and move on. That’s right, verse 28 does teach eternal security but in the context it teaches a lot more than eternal security. Let’s watch how Jesus sort of fakes them out in the way He slides into this thing. “And I give unto them,” not unto all men, “I give unto My own sheep eternal life; and they,” in contrast to you, “they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” Now there’s an ominous ring to what He says. As always with John in his Gospel he has words that can mean four different things and they all are true. What is shortly going to happen to these people who reject Christ? Within a generation they’ll all be dead because in the very city, the very temple they’ll be closed in by the armies of Titus and be destroyed. And what is Jesus saying here? My sheep will never be destroyed; the implication is you are about to be destroyed. So yes, verse 28 surely does teach eternal security but it teaches more than just that; it teaches the damnation upon those who are not Jesus’ sheep, and they shall be plucked, but My sheep will never be plucked from My hand. And in 70 AD, during a lapse in the siege of the city of Jerusalem the Hebrew Christians got together and marched out the east wall, marched across to Perea and left, leaving the unbelieving Jews. And the reason the Hebrew Christians did that was because of Jesus’ warnings. And so all the Hebrew Christians were saved and none were condemned by that siege.

Now in John 10:29 he goes a little bit further, ever so gently, ever so step by step in such a methodical way, first starting with what they know, the doctrine of election, and then moving over to the essence of God, “My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand.” Now the translation here is a little sticky. Literally the way it reads is: “That which My Father has given Me is greater than all,” this “which” is neuter in the Greek, it is not masculine, it does not therefore refer to the Father, “That which the Father gives,” understood, “is greater than all.” Now that’s very interesting? Who’s He talking about? Not the Father, He’s talking about His sheep, and in the context of verse 28 what has He just been saying? My sheep are never going to perish. Remember the theme of Ezekiel 34, the false shepherds ruin the flock, I am the true shepherd and My flock remains; you people who are not in My flock beware, you are about to perish. And “That which My Father has given Me is greater than all,” in other words, greater than all what? All other flocks. You see, He says to the people, He was shortly to be removed from history, “My people will remain,” and Israel will be known, not by the unbelieving Jews, it will be known across the face of the earth as the Christians who give the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant to the nations; they are “greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand.”

Now when He comes down to verse 29 if someone didn’t catch what was said in verse 28, at the end of verse 28, they surely got it now. When He says, “no one shall pluck them out of My Father’s hand, that is the hand of sovereignty in history, the hand that is responsible for all design in history. Every historic incident in history is in the hand of the Father and Jesus says no one shall pluck it out of My Father’s hand. Translated again: “My Father’s sovereignty,” that’s what He means. Now before He said that, what had He said of Himself in verse 28, “No one shall pluck them out of My hand,” My sovereignty, and when, then, He concludes and ties verse 28 to verse 29 at the point of verse 30, “I and my Father are one,” His hand and My hand are one hand, we are Sovereign He says. And there is His mighty claim to His essence, through the backdoor, He doesn’t deliberately and directly state it but He says that He, as the divine shepherd, fulfilling the promise of Ezekiel 34, I will hold the flock, I bring the flock, My sovereignty is what choose it.

Now verse 30 came up in church history under the debate of Christology in Augustine’s day and Augustine was known for one little remark He made about verse 30. Now keep in mind that Augustine’s remark about verse 30 is a derivative remark, it is not one that can be directly made because of various technicalities, but it’s a legitimate remark about the Trinity. Here’s what Augustine said. He said: “‘I and My Father are,’ plural, and that denotes the plurality of personality in the Trinity. But one is neuter, it is not masculine, it is neuter and can’t refer to the unity of personality in the Trinity, but must therefore refer to the unity of essence.” And so very carefully Augustine constructed a defense of the Trinity; the verb “are” implies the plurality of persons, “I and My Father.” As Augustine said, that saves us from Sabellianism, in which the personalities of the Trinity are just masks for the One God. But then it said “One,” and that is neuter, and it can’t refer to personality or personal qualities but must refer to essence. And therefore, said Augustine, “My Father and the Son,” the Father and the Son have the same shared essence; you have the Trinity, three in person and one in essence taught in an implicit way in verse 30. But now in the context, that’s how Augustine applied it and it’s a legitimate application if you understand how it derives from verse 30; it isn’t directly taught in verse 30. Verse 30 in context is teaching only one thing, the Father and the Son share sovereignty over the flock. That’s what it teaches. Now from that obviously you can infer the Trinity, or at least two persons of the Trinity, but in context it refers to the attribute of sovereignty.

Now John 10:31, [“Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.”] His enemies obviously see the point. And please notice that throughout the Gospel narratives the crime against Jesus is not that He undid the Law, necessarily, the great crime and the great charge against Jesus is a charge of blasphemy. It is made by monotheistic people who are highly sensitive to any divine claims. So lest some person knock on your door with Kingdom literature and tell you that this passage does not refer to Jesus’ deity, that in face He is about to deny the deity, be on your guard because you’re going to be taken for a little ride in the next few verses if you don’t equip yourselves. For you will quote verse 30 in all of your glorious triumph, see, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is God. And these clever little workers prepared with a few proof texts will respond to you, oh, but why don’t you read the context, they will say to you, because in verse 32-34 Jesus promptly denies that He has ever said that He is God. So now here’s a little passage of Scripture it would be best for you to equip yourself against this little response that you can get.

John 10:32, “Jesus answered them, Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone Me? [33] The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, make Yourself God. [34] Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? [35] If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; [36] Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?”

See, these people argue, doesn’t this clearly teach that Jesus backs up? Doesn’t this qualify verse 30, doesn’t this say that indeed He never claimed to be God or if He did He was just using the word in the same way it was used in the Old Testament? Now you can be taken off guard if you haven’t prepared yourself by going through this text. Now let’s go through it carefully and see the logic of the argument.

Jesus argues in verse 32 for a specific point of revelation. He’s involved in a controversy and He wants to get them back to the standard of reference. He is trying to do anything He can in the conversation to get the people back to what is the standard of truth? The standard of truth is the Old Testament. So He says what of these works, the good works, good by reference to the standard of Scripture. Verse 33, they open up with a claim that because He is a man and He makes Himself God, therefore He blasphemes. Now John always writes with great irony. You notice how many times, how time and time again he always puts into the mouth of critics sort of trip up words where the critics trip themselves and refute their own position. Well, here He’s done it again. Here the critics and all their zeal to crush Christ on the scene just walk right into it.

Is Jesus a man who makes Himself God or is He a God who has made Himself man? See, it’s precisely opposite, and John apparently… I’m not saying that these people literally didn’t say it, I’m just John of all the Gospel writers is the one that points this out. These critics, in all their pompous intelligence are exactly 180 degrees wrong. Jesus was God who became man; you remember that when you deal with people, particularly Jewish people who insist that Jesus is a blasphemer and they think He’s a blasphemer because they think of Him first as a man who then becomes God and that’s not the way Jesus is ever presented in Scripture. Jesus is presented as God who becomes man and if that’s the case, can God claim to be Himself? You see, if you’re off on your origin of Jesus you’re going to be off on this blasphemy problem, so that’s just a little footnote I the overall argument. John 10:33 is the mirror image of the truth.

Now the argument that we must fortify ourselves in verses 34-35 and 36. “Jesus answered them and said, Is it not written in your law, I said, You are gods?” Now that’s a quotation of Psalm 82:6 which we will turn to. We must go back to this Psalm, see its context, understand in what sense people are called gods. Psalm 82 is a psalm of Asaph. Psalm 82 is a kingly psalm, a psalm that is devoted to the civil authorities whereas Psalm 84 is devoted to the ecclesiastical authorities. And in Psalm 82 the reference is to the politicians the judges of the villages, and ultimately by principle the king. “God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods.” Yes, the word “gods” is used. [2] “How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? [3] Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy. [4] Deliver the poor and needy; rid them out of the hand of the wicked. [5] They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are out of course. [6] I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High. [7] But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. [8] Arise, O God, judge the earth.”

Who are the gods of verse 6? The same ones as the gods of verse 1 and who are the gods of verse 1? The people who are doing the acts of verse 2-4, and who are the people that are dong the acts of verse, 2, 3 and 4? The civil authorities. So it very clearly refers to the civil authorities as gods. Why? What function do the civil authorities perform temporarily in history that God ultimately performs? Judgment. And therefore, the fourth divine institution, which is the state, because it performs one function, judgment, then those who perform that judgment are called gods. It’s a very unusual use of the word “gods” but it definitely is used of people. All right, Jesus uses this.

Now turn back and see how He uses it. Verse 35-36, “If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came,” and then in parenthesis, “(and the scripture cannot be broken),” this is a little slam, by the way. Jesus, of course, like us, believes in inerrant Scripture but you know who He’s slamming here? The Pharisees. Now they were the ones that said “The Scriptures cannot be broken, the Scriptures cannot be broken.” And you can just see a smirk pass on Jesus’ face as He begins to tell this people, “and the Scriptures cannot be broken.” And then He goes, it’s sarcasm, [36] “Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” Verse 36 hides the answer to Jehovah’s Witnesses and everyone else who try to use this passage to refute verse 30. You use verse 30, they come here and they get you off the track but they fail to see a little point in the argument, which is fatal to their position.

In Psalm 82 who was it that was called gods? It was the highest authorities in the country equal gods? Psalm 82 calls gods the highest authorities in the country, there’s no higher authority, the ultimate authorities in the country are gods. Now what Jesus does is use the argument from the lesser to the greater and He is arguing that if you call mere civil authorities gods, why do you object if I am called God. Now if Jesus uses an argument from the lesser to the greater, and the lesser are the highest authorities in human society, what then does that make Jesus? It obviously makes Him higher than the highest of human authorities. So far from teaching that this is a denial of His deity, it doesn’t do that at all. It’s a very sneaky way of referring to those two parallel lines in Ezekiel 34, the divine human shepherd in one person. Jesus says I am higher than the highest of creatures when He says this, if you call the highest of men gods, why do you object if I am called God. He has just implied by that argument from the lesser to the greater that He is not a creature, hasn’t He. If He’s argued that the highest authorities, who are people, He is above them, what is He then? He’s obviously not part of the human race in the normal sense. Now it’s true, this is not a claim for bare deity because He’s claiming two things; deity and humanity in one person. What did Ezekiel 34 do? Yahweh is the shepherd and David is the shepherd. God-man together. Jesus is trying to say look, when you hear Me say that I am the Messiah, understand something; I am claiming to be the divine human Messiah, not just a little political leader that’s going to cause a riot and bring the Roman troops down. When I assert My claim, friends, you won’t have to worry about the Roman troops, they’ll have to worry about Me but we won’t have to worry about them.

And so when He says in verse 36, “…him, who the Father has sanctified and sent into the world” it implies His preexistence. It implies His superiority to every human authority. It does not unambiguously teach deity of Christ, but neither does verse 30; it is a phrase, clothed expression to teach the deity of Christ, carefully, trying to get people who disbelieve think. Not be like one lady who I met in the Jehovah Witness circle one time that said well, if God’s a Trinity I don’t see why He makes it so difficult to understand. And I said well, don’t you think, Madam, that God might be a difficult subject to understand? These people want God in a little box that you carry around in a suitcase so you can understand Him, here He is, all of His parts, look at Him. That’s not God; God is difficult to understand.

John 10:37-38, Jesus is quite willing to challenge the people to the logical consequences. If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. [38] But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works,” that is, interpret them in the light of the Old Testament, “that ye may know, and keep on knowing,” the word “believe” is ginosko again, “that you may know and keep on knowing for sure, that the Father is in Me, and I in Him. [39] Therefore they were seeking again to take Him: but he escaped out of their hand,” now John in his irony slips another one to us. When you see the word “hand” there, what does that remind you of? They slipped…He slipped out of their hand; does that remind you of something that happened here? Of course, because it’s an utter contrast to Jesus and His hand, the sheep never slip out of His but here these fools, the fools that dare to challenge His authority, He slips right out of their hand. Whose hand, then, is more authority? Whose hand is more sovereign, the mob on that wintry, gloomy, chaotic day with all their chaos or the sovereign Lord. So He leaves them and he leaves Jerusalem for the last time before He finally comes back for the death and resurrection.

John 10:40 “And went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John at first baptized; and there He was staying. [41] And many resorted unto Him, and said, John did no miracle: but all things that John spoke of this man were true. [42] And many believed on Him there.” And from that place, that you saw in the palace with all the gold, with all the silver, with all the power where does Jesus go at the end of His ministry just prior to His death? Here’s where He goes. Out back to the north end of the Dead Sea. [He shows slides] There’s the north end of the Dead Sea, John the Baptist baptized over across Jordan, there’s the Jordan River and there’s the area beyond Jordan. It’s not a very inviting place physically, you wouldn’t think too many people would bother to come out to that place, and yet Jesus found the same phenomenon that John the Baptist found. People would come, 50, 60, 100 miles out to this God-forsaken place to meet God, because in fact, you see, God hadn’t forsaken this place; man had forsaken God, and this is another irony of John. Remember when I treated John the Baptist’s ministry in the first pages of John’s Gospel, I said that John as an old man wrote this Gospel from Ephesus and what was going on in Ephesus? There was a rising cult of John the Baptist worshippers who thought that John, not Jesus, was the Messiah and began to gravitate around John the Baptist and that’s why when John sets forth his Gospel he’s very careful to say that John was not the Christ, John bore witness to the Christ, John decreased but increased. Now John comes up once more in the Gospel and you see the same theme. In verse 41 John makes us remember what the people thought of him, “John did no miracle,” John is an inferior to Christ. He is a loyal man but he is not the Christ. The things that John spoke of this man were true but John himself did no miracle.

Now we have a complete circle; Jesus began His ministry in this area, the wilderness. Where does Jesus finish His ministry? The wilderness. When Jesus begins His ministry who is it that’s receptive to Him? The masses that are willing to come out all the way to that place for the Word of God. And in the final analysis, when He went through Samaria, who was it that believed Him? The lowly Samaritans. This place is called Perea in the ancient political way; it was a place that people despised those people that lived across the other side of Jordan. You talk about living on the other side of the tracks, it was living on the other side of the Jordan, same thing. Despicable people! Funny though, the despicable people were the ones who believed. Jesus could walk into the temple, that’s the contrast that John leaves us with before we come to those final hours of Christ’s life because now from John 11 forward it’s a capsule summary, it’s very quick, things happen and we lead right into the crucifixion of Christ. Here John leaves us with a great division, the division between the individual believers out in the countryside and the people who were sitting there in the temple and were feisty with Messiah on a face to face basis. Christ never spoke to the masses out in Perea on the other side of Jordan the way He had to speak to the people in the temple. It goes back to these Psalms.

So we’re going to conclude by looking briefly at the trilogy of Psalm 22, 23 and 24. Maybe your appetite has been whetted to recall this area, so many people are familiar with Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me to lie down in green pastures,” but have you ever tied that together. There are three Psalms, Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” That’s a picture of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 23 is a picture of the second phase of the Christian life, sanctification, the flock and the shepherd and what the shepherd does for the flock. And Psalm 24 how does it begin? “The earth is Jehovah’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they who dwell therein.” Verse 7, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. [8] Who is the King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.” [10] “Who is the King of glory? The LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory.” What is that? The Second Advent of Jesus Christ. So you have the three phases of our salvation, the death and resurrection. We identify with that at the point we become Christians. Psalm 23, the ministry of the shepherd to his sheep, which is sanctification. Psalm 24, the culmination of the program in the King of Kings when He comes to reign. There’s the portrait in three Psalms of the great shepherd. That was what He gave these people and that’s the shepherd they rejected. The issue was now clear and next time we’ll begin the final lead in to Christ’s crucifixion. The nation has rejected the shepherd.