The Son of God (John 10:22–42) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:01 We have been going through the gospel according to St. John for over a year now, and we will continue that study this morning. As we look at the text in John chapter 10, beginning at verse 31, reading through verse 42, I would ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God. And then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me? The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy. because you, being a man, make yourself God.

0:59 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, you are gods? If He called them gods to whom the word of God comes and the Scriptures cannot be broken, do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, you are blaspheming? Because I said, I am the Son of God. If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I do, though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in Him." And therefore they sought again to seize him, but he escaped out of their hand. And he went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was baptizing at first, and there he stayed.

1:51 And many came to him and said, John performed no sign, but all the things that John spoke about this man were true, and many believed in him there. He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let them hear it." You may be seated. Let's pray. Again, our Father, as we give our attention to Your Word, we pray that unlike those who listened to the teaching of Christ that is recorded here, that we may respond with joy, with thanksgiving, and with faith. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Last week we looked at the beginning of chapter 10 and I briefly read to you the words at verse 22 about this by-play between Jesus and the Pharisees, and I would like to go back and visit that briefly before I look at the concluding text here of chapter 10.

3:02 Again, verse 22 situates this interaction between Jesus and the authorities during the time of the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem. And we've noticed throughout the book of John how John is careful from time to time to tell us the occasion when certain things took place and how often these encounters in Jerusalem took place during the traditional feast days of the Jews, like the Passover or the tabernacles and the harvest and so on. But where in the Old Testament do you find the Feast of Dedication? Well, you don't, because this feast arose during the intertestamental period celebrating the victory of the Maccabees over the enemies of the Jewish people. And it became known as the Feast of Dedication and then later the Feast of Lights, in which is celebrated to this day in the Jewish community by the name of Hanukkah during the same period that we celebrate Christmas.

4:14 But in any case, it was winter in Jerusalem, and the Jews were gathered to celebrate their deliverance that they had achieved under Judas Maccabeus. And we're told that Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch, and the Jews surrounded him and said to him, how long do you keep us in doubt? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. An interesting charge to Jesus. When I read that, I cannot help but immediately think of a similar circumstance that happened in the sixteenth century in Germany at the Diet of Worms. I'm sure you all were snapped back to that same moment by reading this text, right? When Martin Luther was on trial for his life before the princes of the church and Charles the fifth of the Holy Roman Empire.

5:11 And there at the Diet, there was a table in the middle of the hall in which all of the books of Luther were stacked up, and his interrogator demanded that he recant, and to say the words, revoco, I recant of his heretical writings. And Luther responded by saying, which writings? I've written many, many things here. Surely you're not indicating that everything that I've written is heretical. And He wanted them to specify exactly which of His works was the bad one, which is what Jesus says here in this discussion, for what works do you want to stone Me about being specific with your charges? Well, when Luther tried to dialogue at that point, Eck said to him, please answer non canutum, that is, without horns, no games, be direct, don't be evasive, don't fill our ears with studied ambiguities.

6:27 I'm reminded of the other magisterial reformer, John Calvin, who in his institutes when he wrote on the doctrine of the Trinity made reference to those in church history who hide behind the studied ambiguity, which he said is the fortress of all heretics, where people are intentionally fuzzy and unclear in their statements so that they can dodge any consequences that might come their way. Calvin, in his benign fashion, said this was the way of slippery snakes. That's the way they do things. And that's the implied hint that is made here about Jesus. Hey, no more evasions, no studied ambiguities. Speak to us non-carnutum, without horns, tell us plainly. Are you the Christ?

7:27 Are you the Messiah? Now, ladies and gentlemen, Jesus was not a slippery snake, and Jesus was not being evasive to escape personal consequences. But throughout His entire public ministry, He was very, very careful about using the term Messiah to describe His role. Privately, to the woman at the well, to His disciples, He would reveal that. But when the public would try to make Him the Messiah or greet Him and acclaim Him as the Messiah, He would resist, and there was good reason for that. They didn't have a clue what it meant to be the Messiah. And Jesus understood that the office of Messiah was merged in the Old Testament with the office of the servant of the Lord of whom Isaiah writes in the latter part of his book, that one who is called the suffering servant of Israel. But the popular view of the Messiah was that He would come as a warrior and drive the hated Romans out of the land.

8:54 They had no room in their popular expectancy of a Messiah who would suffer and who would die. And so Jesus was very guarded about the use of that title, particularly now as the cross is looming in front of Him. And so let's listen to how He handles it. He said, if you're the Christ, tell us plainly. He said, I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me, but you do not believe. because you are not of My sheep. As I said to you, My sheep hear My voice. I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand. I and My Father are one.

10:00 Now here, Jesus declares a unity between Himself and the Father, a text that has been ripped from its context time and again in church history. We think back to Arius in the fourth century where he used this verse, I and the Father are one, to interpret it in this way, that yes, Jesus was one with the Father only in the sense that they agreed on the same mission. They thought alike. They embraced the same ethic. But, said Arius, Jesus was not God. He did not share in the being of God or in the essence of God, only in the agenda of God. And so we can't read in this text said Arius and later Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons who interpret it the same way.

11:04 We can't refer in this text to the statement, I and the Father are one, as an expression of deity for Jesus. But we must be reminded that any time we interpret the Scriptures, we have to interpret the text in context. And in context means two things. It means in the first place in the immediate context, and secondly, in the broader context of the whole book, or even more so, the context of the whole Bible. Now we know that since the very first chapter of John's gospel, John has been laboring the point of the deity of Christ, the one who was in the beginning with God and who was God. And now, if we look at the immediate context of this, notice what Jesus says about His sheep in verse 28, I give them eternal life.

12:04 No creature has the power or the authority to give anything or anyone eternal life. And yet here Jesus claims the power and the authority to give to His people everlasting life. He's claiming here unmistakably without horns divine authority and divine power. And He goes on to say, and they will never perish. And not only that, neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. Many Christians wrestle all the time with the question, can you lose your salvation? Do we have eternal security? Can we really say, once in grace, always in grace?

13:00 We respond by saying, if you have it, you never lose it. If you lose it, you never had it. Because that's exactly what the New Testament teaches, and the reason why we believe in the perseverance of the saints and the security of every believer is not because we have an exaggerated or inflated view of our ability to persevere in the Christian life. If it were left to us… We would all fall and we would all perish, even after coming to faith in the first place. But I've heard a very simple illustration used to describe the biblical concept. It's the story of a strong father walking with his three-year-old son by a dangerous railroad track.

13:55 And there are two ways that the father can protect the son. The father can reach out his hand and say to the little boy, now listen, son, hold on tightly to my hand, because if you let go, you could fall onto the tracks and get killed. That's one way the father could protect the son by offering him the hand and telling the son to hold on to the hand. Or. The father could say, son, give me your hand. And he takes a hold of the boy's hand. And the father holds on to the son, not the son holding on to the father. Which is the safer method? Jesus says, no one can snatch them out of My hand. We are secure not in ourselves, but because of the One in whose hands we are held.

15:02 Jesus said, every one of My sheep is going to have eternal life. They will never perish, and I'm going to see to it. I'm giving them eternal life, and nobody's going to snatch them out of My hand." Tremendous text. And he says, my Father who has given them to me is greater than all, no one is able to snatch them out of His hand. After all, these were my Father's, He gave them to me, now they're mine, that I won't let go of them, and neither will my Father. So between us, their future is guaranteed. Then he said, I and the Father are one. Now the Jews take up stones again to stone Him, and they said, which of these works do stone Me for?" And they say, we're not stoning you for the good works. I mean, we picked up the stones before because you healed the guy on the Sabbath day and you did things that you shouldn't have been doing on the Sabbath day. Yeah, we did pick up stones on those occasions.

15:57 But now it's not a matter of what you've done, it's what you're saying that we can't tolerate. Now notice, there wasn't an Arian in the crowd. There wasn't a Jehovah Witness in the crowd, and there wasn't a Mormon in the crowd. Every one of the contemporaries of Jesus understood exactly what Jesus was saying about Himself. He was claiming deity, and His contemporaries understood that. We're stoning you for blasphemy, because you being a man, make yourself God." Boy, is that funny. I mean, it really is funny. The beginning of the Gospel of John, we read, the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The eternal second person of the Trinity, who from all eternity was very God of very God, became man.

17:08 That is, He took upon Himself a human nature. So the reality of what had actually transpired is the very opposite of what the enemies of Jesus are protesting. Here is where God had made Himself man. And now they're accusing Jesus of being a man who makes himself God. They just got it backwards. Now, notice how Jesus replies to this. It almost again sounds evasive. But He said to them, is it not written in your law, I said you are gods? If He called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, you are blaspheming because I said I am the Son of God?

18:01 And let me just stop there for a sec. It could sound like Jesus is arguing from a Jewish technical loophole here. He said, you're accusing me of blasphemy because I call myself God. Aren't you familiar with the Scriptures in the Old Testament where human beings are called God or at least there's some obscurity about that text whether the text refers to judges in Israel, or to angels through whom the law was mediated, or even to the whole nation of Israel who is called the Son of God. In all probability, it was a reference to the judges who sat at the gate and they ruled over the people, and they were supposed to rule according to the authority of God, and And so, in popular nomenclature, they were called gods with a little g.

18:57 And so Jesus is appealing to historical precedent. In the Old Testament, human beings were called gods, and nobody picked up stones to kill them for blasphemy. Why are you ready to stone Me? Now Jesus is not saying, and here's what you have to be careful, He's not saying, just like they called mere mortals in the Old Testament gods, so I'm also a mere mortal, so it's okay for me to call myself the Son of God. Not the way the argument is going. This is one of those lesser to the greater arguments. Basically what our Lord was saying to His adversaries was this, if it was okay in Old Testament times for people who were mere mortals to be called gods, how much more legitimate is it for one who is God incarnate to be called God?" Notice what he says again here about his own identity.

20:04 Do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? I am the one that from all eternity in the covenant of redemption, the Father set apart for this task of coming to the world to save my sheep. Do you think it's blasphemy, which is a sin against holiness, do you think it's blasphemy for God to sanctify me. If God's the one who gave me this holy mission and this holy task, if God's the one who sent me into the world to perform the works that I've done before your very eyes, then what Jesus is saying is, who are the blasphemers?

20:58 to pick up a stone to execute the one whom God has ordained from all eternity to be the Savior of the world, to be the incarnate Son of God, and to accuse Him of blasphemy is the worst of all kind of blasphemy. Now, of course, if God didn't sanctify His Son, if God didn't send His Son into the world, and some local Jew stood up and said, I'm the Son of God, I give everybody eternal life, and all of that, without any evidence of healing people the way He did, then of course He would be worthy of blasphemy. But you see, there was nothing in the thinking of His adversaries to even allow for the possibility of the incarnation of God. You know, beloved, in our day, the great stumbling block to the pagan is the resurrection. But in the first century, the great stumbling block to the enemies of the Christian faith was the incarnation, the idea that God would take upon Himself a human nature in the person of His Son.

22:28 That was the scandal to the first century mind. And those people who fought it and attacked it and denied it were not His sheep. They were the wolves that would destroy the sheep and the shepherd together. Notice He also said earlier, the Scripture cannot be broken. I'm often asked the question why I have such a high view of sacred Scripture, and I say it's very simple. It's not rocket science. It's not complicated. If the Bible is only basically reliable, if it's not even inspired, if it's not any of those things, if it's just a decent record from history, which if it isn't, we have no basis for Christianity at all, if it's basically unreliable, I said if you just give it the smallest kind of reliability and go through it with a fine-tooth comb and even get rid of all the passages that you think were not historical and just keep the ones that are undisputed among the critics, the one thing you'll find in that little piece of Scripture that's left is that there's a universal testimony that Jesus of Nazareth taught that the Bible is more than generally reliable.

23:49 Now, if there's enough evidence to come to the conclusion that Jesus was a prophet, never mind the Son of God, never mind the second person of the Trinity, if you just get enough information to be convinced and persuaded that He was a prophet, then what do you do with His prophetic teaching about the nature of the Scripture? He tells us that Scripture is much more than just basically reliable. It can't be broken! I've heard it said that the days of Billy Graham-style evangelism are over. No longer can a minister stand up in a pulpit and hold up this book and say, the Bible says. because we're too sophisticated for that. Because somewhere along the line we believe that something that we've done has somehow smashed the authority of Scripture into smithereens. And if that's the case, then Jesus was hopelessly wrong, and hopelessly wrong doesn't even qualify to be a prophet, not to mention the Son of God.

24:52 He says the Scripture cannot be broken. Can't be done. If I don't do the works of my Father, don't believe Me. But if I do, and you don't believe what I say, then believe the works that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me and I in Him. Let me just close with a footnote, a little parenthesis. Keep this text in mind for later, where in this discussion when Jesus talks about oneness, I and the Father are one, because later on in His high priestly prayer, you will see Jesus praying for His disciples that they may be one even as He and the Father are one. And 999 people out of 1,000 take that to mean organizational unity, doctrinal unity, and all the rest, where if Jesus is speaking in the same manner in the high priestly prayer that He's speaking here about the Father, that's not what He meant at all.

26:06 And if you and I never agree on certain doctrines, if you and I are both Christians, then I am in Christ and you are in Christ. And Christ is in me and Christ is in you. So we don't have to have an ecumenical meeting to be one in Christ. I have to tell you that the day Jesus prayed that prayer, it was fulfilled in terms of what He was saying. But we'll come back to that if we ever get to the 17th chapter. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, how grateful we are that You have given to us Your only begotten Son, that by believing in Him we would not perish but have everlasting life, a life that cannot end, a life that cannot be taken away from us.

27:13 We thank You that our destinies are in His hands.