John 10:22-42: “Jesus
Completes His Public Ministry By Going To The
By
1.
INTRO:
1.1.
In our last study we looked at verses 35 of chapter 9 through verse 21 of chapter
10.
1.1.1. Jesus went and sought out the man whom He had healed
from a blindness from birth who had been excommunicated from the
1.1.2. Next, Jesus began to declare to those who are present
more about who He is in the essence of His person and mission.
1.1.3. Jesus declared that He is the door to salvation for
the sheep. This indicated that He is the
only way and means for a person to be saved.
1.1.4. Jesus declared also that He is the Good Shepherd. The word translated “good” indicated
something that was of good quality. This
spoke of the great care that Jesus takes of each of His sheep as a shepherd.
1.2.
In our
study today, we are going to look at verses 22-42 of chapter 10.
1.2.1. In this study we will complete what has been called
Jesus’ Public Ministry, which makes up the first half of His ministry. After chapter 10, Jesus disappears from
public life and begins His Private Ministry where He will concentrate on
ministering to individuals.
1.2.2. Jesus will go up to the Feast of Dedication at the
temple in Jerusalem and enter into yet another argument with the Jews after
they ask Him how long that He will keep them in suspense and not tell them
plainly who He is. Jesus explains to
them yet again that their problem in understanding who He is occurs because
they really do not want to know the truth about Him.
2.
VS
10:22 - “At that time the Feast of the Dedication took place at
2.1.
John introduces this section saying, “At that time,”
however this incident occurred some interval later than the previous section of
chapter 10. The Feast of Dedication was celebrated
in the later part of December, a couple of months after the Feast of
Tabernacles where Jesus cried out in chapter 7 inviting any who are thirsty to
come to Him and drink for he who believes in Him from his innermost belly shall
flow rivers of living water.
2.2.
Jesus is again in Jerusalem, however it seems somewhat
unlikely that He has spent the last two months in Jerusalem, since the
Pharisees were seeking to kill Him.
2.3.
The Greek
word for ‘Dedication’ used here is pronounced “engkaheeneeah.”
2.4.
This feast
is refered to by three different names:
Feast of Dedication, Feast Of Lights, and Hannukah. The Feast Of Lights or Hannukah is the name
the Jews have used for this feast since Bible times, and it is in many ways
like a Jewish Christmas and the Jews give each other gifts during this time.
2.5.
Four years before the Feast Of Dedication was
instituted, in 167 BC Antiocus Epiphanes was reported to have died, and at this
news the Jews had a public celebration.
However, he hadn’t died. Because
of their celebration, he became so angry at the Jews that he went to
2.6.
Harper’s Bible Dictionary has the following entry for
this Feast Of Dedication:
Dedication, Feast of, or
Hanukkah (hahn« uh-kuh), a Jewish festival celebrating the purification of the
It has
been suggested that the eight days of celebration copy Solomon’s consecration
of the
It was
apparently the relighting of the
2.7.
For eight days the Jews at this time would have their
festivities celebrating the Feast of the Dedication.
2.8.
Note that the
2.9.
It is significant to notice a rejected Messiah in this
story for we see in verse 23 that Jesus was not in the
3.
VS
10:23-24 - “it was winter, and Jesus was walking in
the portico of Solomon. The Jews
therefore gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, ‘How long will You keep
us in suspense? If you are the Christ,
tell us plainly’.” - As Jesus was
walking in Solomon’s porch during the feast some Jews gathered around Him and
asked Him if He was the Christ to tell them plainly
3.1.
John
writes here that ‘it was winter,’ and we mentioned that the Feast Of
Dedication occurred in December.
3.2.
On this occasion, the Jews gathered around Jesus and
demanded an answer to their question of whether or not Jesus was the prophesied
Messiah.
3.3.
To this point, Jesus had not openly declared that He
was in fact the Messiah, instead He spoke of Himself in somewhat generic or
vague terms such as, ‘the Son of man.’
Jesus had declared to at least two different individuals privately that
He was the Messiah, but in public He somewhat concealed His identity, yet
revealing aspects of Himself explainable only if He was the Messiah.
3.4.
We will see however that at this point in time that
the Jews (make that Jewish leaders) in asking this question of Jesus were not
all interested in the truth concerning Him.
They simply wanted Jesus to somehow incriminate Himself in such a way
that they could have Him arrested and turned over to the Romans. These leaders knew that Jesus’ popularity
among the common people in
4.
VS
10:25 - “Jesus answered them, ‘I told you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name,
these bear witness of Me’.” - Jesus
answers the question posed of Him by these Jews by telling them that He had
already told them what they were asking, plus His works bore witness of Him
4.1.
Jesus tells these Jews that in what He has already
told them, He has declared clearly who He was.
There could be no other explanation of His words than that He must be
the Messiah.
4.2.
Then, He declares that the works which He had
performed were a clear declaration that He was the Messiah. No man had ever performed anything like the
miraculous works Jesus performed, even the greatest Old Testament prophets.
5.
VS
10:26-27 - “‘But you do not believe, because you are
not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice,
and I know them, and they follow Me;’” - Jesus tells these Jews further that they do
not believe in Him because they are not His sheep since His sheep hear His
voice and follow Him
5.1.
Jesus tells these Jews that the reason that they do
not understand His teaching and believe in Him is because they are not His
sheep. This is not to say that they do
not have the free will to believe, but they are not the elect of God, and
therefore they are demonstrating that fact by not believing in Him. Jesus said in 3:16, “whosoever believes”
in Him shall be saved.
5.2.
Jesus says here that three things typify His
sheep. First, they hear His voice
when He speaks. Second, He knows them
personally and by name, as He said previously.
And thirdly, they are followers of Him.
5.3.
To review what we said in chapter 1:43:
5.3.1.
To be a
follower of Christ as this verse says these first disciples were, means first of all, to ‘let Him be Lord of all areas of our life’.
5.3.1.1.And do we
acknowledge that He is not Lord at all if He is not Lord of all? According to Matt. 7:21-23, only those who do
His will, will be saved in the end.
5.3.2.
Secondly, it means ‘to have committed ourselves to follow
wherever He may lead, to be willing to let Him take us wherever He wants for us
to go.’
5.3.3.
Thirdly, it
means to follow His example’ in all areas of our life?
5.3.3.1.If we have
committed ourselves to follow Jesus, this doesn’t mean that we shall be perfect,
it simply means that we have committed our lives in this way, and though we may
stumble. Though we may stumble for a
time in our Christian walk we shall always allow the Lord to realign us upon
the path that He wants for us.
5.3.4.
Fourth, to be a
follower of Jesus means to be ‘with Him.’
5.3.4.1.Are you
spending your time with Jesus daily as the early disciples who followed
Him? Unless you spend that quiet time
daily with Jesus where He speaks to you through His word and you speak to Him
through prayer, you will never grow spiritually and you shall also never really
be His followers.
5.3.4.2.We need to
make a vow to spend time with Jesus every single day of our lives! Then keep that vow... Previously, Jesus said that if one didn’t
abide in His word, he was not His disciple.
6.
VS
10:28-29 - “‘and I give eternal life to them, and
they shall never perish; and no one shall 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 the Father’s hand’.”
- Jesus promises here that He gives
eternal life to His sheep and that they will never perish, nor will anyone be
able to snatch them out of His hand
6.1.
To all those who are Christ’s sheep, He gives eternal
life, and He promises that they shall never perish along with the rest of this
wicked world that is perishing In John 3:16 we saw that this is a perishing
world, one which will spend eternity in Hell if not redeemed and saved by
Jesus. Whoever believes in Jesus for
salvation shall not perish but have eternal life.
6.2.
Likewise, no one will be able to snatch Christ’s sheep
out of Jesus’ hand because no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand, for
His Father is greater than all.
6.3.
Our souls can rest in the assurance of our salvation which
we have in Christ. There is assurance of
salvation to those who receive Christ as their Lord and savior and abide
in Him.
7.
VS
10:30 - “‘I and the Father are one’.
The Jews took up stones again to stone Him.” - Jesus tells these Jews that He and His Father
are one, and they pick up stones to stone Him
7.1.
Jesus was conscious of His own uniqueness, yet He also
knew that He was one with the Father.
The only explanation to use for unraveling this verse involves
understanding that Jesus was revealing some of the mystery of the nature of the
Trinity.
7.2.
God exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. All three are unique
personalities, and yet all three are one.
We cannot explain or even understand this truth completely, yet this is
the only explanation for many of the teachings of Christ, and of the Bible in
general.
7.3.
The
liberal theologians have taken Jesus’ statement about being one with the Father
and have tried to make it refer only to a oneness of will and purpose, since
they deny the deity of Christ, miracles in scripture, and the inspiration of
scripture. However, this stance is
easily disproven when we see here that the Jews understood exactly what Jesus
had said about Himself, and this is proven as we see that they pick up stones again
to stone Him for blasphemy.
7.4.
Isn’t it revealing that these Jews that are now
wanting to stone Him had just been asking Him to tell them the straight truth
about who He really was, whether or not He was the Christ. Not willing to accept the truth about who
Jesus was because they were already convinced in their minds about who He was,
they now want to stone Him when He reveals His deity to them.
8.
VS 10:32 - “Jesus
answered them, ‘I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?’” - Jesus asks the Jews which of the many good
works He had done from the Father was causing them to stone Him?
8.1.
Jesus asks these Jews to think of all of the wonderful
works which He had performed. All of
these works displayed the love, grace, and mercy of the Father. Plus, these works were capable of being
performed only by God Himself.
8.2.
Jesus’ works testified of Him, and they should have
been sufficient witness to everyone that though there was much that was
mysterious and hard to understand about Jesus, He none the less must be sent
from God, and His word believed.
9.
VS
10:33 - “The Jews answered Him, ‘For a good work we do not stone You, but for
blasphemy; and because You, being a man,
make Yourself out to be God’.”
- The Jews answer Jesus telling Him that
they are not stoning Him for good works but because He was blaspheming, making
Himself out to be God.
9.1.
The Jews were not willing to consider the works which
Jesus had done, all they could see was that He, being a man, was committing
blasphemy. Familiarity had bred contempt
with them.
10.
VS
10:34-36 - “Jesus answered them, ‘Has it not been
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’’?’”
- Jesus answered the Jews telling them
that if the scripture called them ‘gods’ then why would He be blaspheming by
calling Himself the ‘Son of God’.
10.1.
In these verses, Jesus quotes from Psalm 82:6, where
the Lord says of the judges who received and dispensed His words, that they
also took the name of deity. These who
received the word and interpreted and taught it, represented God to the people,
and therefore shared with Him His nature in some sort of way.
10.2.
A number of false teachers in our day have espoused the
belief that we as God’s people are all little gods. This teaching is usually packaged with what
is known as “faith teaching” and the teachers who teach this place us in
the place of God and make God to be our errand boy. By principles that they believe are in the
word of God they believe that God “has” to answer our prayers which we
pray because we have prayed for them in faith.
However, the scriptures teach us that we should pray for God’s will in
heaven to be done on the earth, not the
other way around. Making us as people
out to be little gods causes our pride to swell up when we should instead be
learning and expressing humility.
10.3.
In Psalm 82, the Lord does not say that all men are
gods, or that all His people are gods.
When faced with a scripture that seems to go against the flow of the
lake of truth about a doctrine of scripture, you must interpret the scripture
in line with the lake of truth.
10.4.
Jesus says here though something that is very
important: ‘the scripture cannot be
broken.’ Jesus taught consistently
that God’s word was infallible and inerrant, and that every prophetic verse
would be fulfilled. He said in Matt.
5:18, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one
tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Of His own words, Jesus said in Matt. 24:35,
“ Heaven
and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” In the last chapter of 2 Peter, Peter wrote
of Paul’s letters as being “scripture.”
The Word of God itself teaches consistently that it is inerrant and
infallible!
10.4.1.Because of the testimony of Jesus
concerning the Word of God, we have assurance in His promises, that they are
true. This assurance ought to be an ‘anchor
to our soul,’ always filling us with hope, and therefore the peace of God which surpasses comprehension! This is what Hebrews 6:19 says, “Which
hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which
entereth into that within the veil.”
10.5.
From this verse, Jesus argues that it makes sense that
the One whom the Father would send into the world might be called the ‘Son
of God.’ It is interesting to note
that Jesus never said in these verses here that He is the Son of God, instead
He had said that He was ‘one’ with God.
This oneness, was oneness as the eternal Son of God.
10.6.
We in the church ought not to listen to those who are
heretics in our day, and teach that we are all gods, and that we ought to
simply let our divine nature express itself!
This is a distortion of the truth, and many in our day are being led
astray!
10.6.1.Moses spoke to Pharoah in Ex. 8:10, “And he said, Be it according to thy word:
that thou mayest know that
there is none like unto the LORD our God.”
10.6.2.Likewise, God spoke to Pharaoh in Ex.
9:14, “For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and
upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all
the earth.”
10.6.3.Moses wrote the following in Deut.
4:34-39, “Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of
another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a
mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all
that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it was
shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else
beside him. Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might
instruct thee: and upon earth he shewed thee his great fire; and thou heardest
his words out of the midst of the fire. And because he loved thy fathers,
therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in his sight
with his mighty power out of Egypt; To drive out nations from before thee
greater and mightier than thou art,
to bring thee in, to give thee their land for
an inheritance, as it is this
day. Know therefore this
day, and consider it in thine heart,
that the LORD he is God in heaven
above, and upon the earth beneath: there
is none else.”
10.6.4.David said in 1 Chron. 17:20, “O LORD, there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee, according to all that we have
heard with our ears.”
10.6.5.David also wrote in Ps. 14:2-3, “The
LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any
that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not
one.”
10.6.6.Paul wrote that all his righteousness, “was as filthy rags.”
11.
VS
10:37-38 - “‘If I do not do the works of My Father,
do not believe Me; but if I do them,
though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and
understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father’.”
- Jesus tells the Jews present to
believe in Him because of His works so that they might understand that the
Father is in Him and He is in the Father
11.1.
Jesus challenges these Jews to consider whether or not
His works were indeed the works of the Father or not.
11.2.
If these works of Jesus do represent that which only
the Father could and would do, then He gives the challenge to believe in
Him. Otherwise, He tells them not to
believe in Him.
12.
VS
10:39-42 - “Therefore they were seeking again to
seize Him, and He eluded their grasp.
And He went away again beyond the
12.1.
The crowd no longer picked up stones to throw at Him,
yet this time they went to seize Him.
However, they were powerless to harm Him as they had been each time previously. No power in heaven or on earth could take
Jesus by force, He Himself would eventually lay His life down voluntarily.
12.2.
The rejected Messiah ends His public ministry. Jesus went to the place where John had
originally been baptizing, the place where He had begun His own ministry after
being baptized. At that place, many came
to Him and were saying that though John the Baptist had performed no miracles,
for such consisted his calling, yet everything he said about Jesus was indeed true.
12.3.
John the Baptist performed no miracles perhaps so that
there would be no confusion between he and Jesus in peoples’ minds.
12.4.
It says that in that place many came to believe in
Him.
13.
CONCLUSIONS:
13.1.
Be
encouraged that the scripture cannot be broken.
Every promise of God shall be fulfilled, every command of God upheld,
every prophesy fulfilled, every scriptural warning’s importance revealed. Have faith in the Lord.
13.2.
Trust in
Jesus because of His words or trust in Him because of His works, but trust in
Him. This gospel and all of the
scripture gives us so many witnesses that Jesus is who He says He is and rest
in the sum of this evidence.
13.3.
As a sheep
rest in the knowledge that you have a “good shepherd” who is constantly
watching over your life, protecting you, providing for you, and meeting your
needs.