SERMON: Challenging Christ’s Deity (John 10:31–42)
Challenging Christ’s Deity (John 10:31–42)
Series: “John: Life in Christ’s Name” Text: John 10:31–42
By: Shaun Marksbury Date: December
3, 2023
Venue: Living Water Baptist Church Occasion: AM Service
I.
Introduction
As we enter the Advent season, we begin to see many Christmas decorations. One of the traditional decorations, of course, to see amongst Christians is the nativity scene. It’s a reminder to us of the birth of our Savior and a testimony to the lost world of the true meaning of the holiday.
Yet, we sometimes wonder how accurate our displays are, for
we must make assumptions. One of the
greatest, of course, is what the baby looked like. We understand that Mary and Joseph were
Jewish, and that Jesus was born to the tribe of Judah, yet we’ve seen many
images which reflect more of a European ancestry. Those were not intentional misinterpretations
— many people in the Renaissance painted what they saw in their immediate
vicinity, and they used their neighbors as models. Still, the effects of that are still present
today, with many nativities depicting a blond-haired, blue-eyed newborn in the
manger.
I’m not saying you should throw away any nativity scenes you
have which don’t depict Christ as ethnically Jewish. That is, unless you are tempted to imagine
the image before you as you pray — in that case, the problem is idolatry. Images can become a hinderance to us at
times, so we must keep the proper perspective.
Of course, we don’t need paintings and statues to throw off
our thinking, for our hearts may craft idols without hands. The Jewish leadership at the time of Christ
had a mental image of what the Messiah would be. As such, they rejected Jesus because He
didn’t align with what they imagined.
Because of their wrong thinking, they could not accept any
messianic claim from Jesus, including the claim that He is the Son of God. As such, we see them again challenge Him in a
lethal manner this morning. What does He
do? In this passage, we’ll see Jesus answer
their challenge in a three-fold way.
We’ll then see Jesus apply His control.
Finally, we’ll see Him attract many converts. Let’s consider the first of these.
II.
Jesus Answers to Their Challenge (vv. 31–38)
The Jews picked up
stones again to stone Him.
In this opening verse, we see the trial before our
Lord. Just as they did back in John 8:59,
they again pick up stones with the intent of ending His life. In fact, the state of the verb suggests that
they may have brought the stones in “from a distance.”[1] As one commentary notes, it
is as if they “were preparing things for his execution without any judicial
process.”[2] Jesus may have silently allowed them a chance
to gather their stones before responding.
Why do they do this?
As we see in v. 33, they say He made Himself out to be God. This is the same reason they’ve had for
wanting to murder Him since John 5:18 — because He “was calling God His own
Father, making Himself equal with God.”
Why did Jesus’s words warrant such an action?
On the surface, their argument has merit. According to Leviticus 24:16, blasphemy
(irreverence toward God) was a capital offense.
A mere man claiming to be God would depreciate the glory of God in the
minds of those who believe him. Yet,
Jesus is no mere man.
There were other problems with their action. As the Jewish leadership confesses in John
18:31, the Roman government disallowed them from conducting capital
punishment. This was usually through
crucifixion, a much more horrendous death than stoning (which may have involved
large stones, rendering the convicted unconscious and providing a swifter death
by comparison). Yet, the Romans did not
have perfect control over the region, and there were periodic mob killings.[3] One commentary calls this “lynch law,”[4]
which accounts the later stoning of Stephen in Acts 7 as well as the attacks
against Christ in the Gospels.
Surprisingly, Jesus seems to give them time. He doesn’t flee because He is in complete
control. He instead answers their
challenge to His claim of deity. First, Jesus
calls them to question their actions.
Second, Jesus calls them to consider their Law. Third, Jesus calls them to consider His
works. Let’s consider the first of
these.
A.
First, Jesus calls them to question their
actions (vv. 32–33)
Jesus
answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them
are you stoning Me?” 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.”
We see Jesus answering them with a question stating a clear
fact. He has been doing good works,
specifically, the good works of the Father.
Since the confrontation in John 8, they understand now that He has been
speaking of God when He tells them of the Father. So, He’s not just asking them a question;
He’s telling them to consider how incongruous, how ludicrous it is that God’s
people would stone someone for doing God’s work.
They will not accept this view, though. When they reply, though, it’s interesting
that they don’t say anything about Him doing God’s work. That’s a glaring omission, because they were
debating whether His works were indeed the work of God.
Yet, they do seem to concede, at least for the moment, that
He’s performed good works. They were, of
course, upset that He had healed on the Sabbath. Still, they could not deny that the healing
of diseases, restoration of sight and mobility, and the casting out of demons
were all beneficial acts to the recipients.
One wonders why they wouldn’t take that extra step and consider His to
be the good works of the Father Himself!
Their charge was that of blasphemy. As one commentary notes, “Jesus did not walk
around Palestine saying ‘I am God,’ but His interpretation of the Sabbath and
His words about His union with the Father revealed His claim of oneness in
nature with God.”[5] The leaders knew what Jesus was claiming, and
Jesus never refuted this notion — which one might expect in an act of
self-preservation. Jesus was indeed
claiming to be divine, and they would not accept this nor His claims to be the
Messiah.
Yet, if He is performing the works of the Father, then the
conclusion should be clear. Before He
gets there, though, Jesus takes them to an interesting text of Scripture. He wants them to consider what God has
already revealed, which is where we turn next.
B.
Second, Jesus calls them to consider their Law
(vv. 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’?”
The religious leaders thought Jesus to be merely a man
making Himself God. Interestingly, Jesus
doesn’t directly deny this. Sadly, some
try to twist the meaning of His response in these verses to be a subtle denial. That’s not only a misreading, but it doesn’t
fit the tension in the moment. If Jesus
were not claiming to be God, He would certainly seek to clear up such a
supposed misunderstanding under the threat of stoning! Jesus instead engages in an argument crafted
on logic that only the religious elite could understand.
I say that because, first, Jesus references a very difficult
portion of Scripture. Scripture is
certainly the place we should go when we have theological disagreements. Yet, some questions require more thought, and
Jesus often challenged the thinking of the religious elite of His day because
they can take harder questions.
He calls their attention to Psalm 82. (He calls it “Law” in v. 34, but He’s using
the term in the generic sense that all of God’s Word is Law — cf. John 12:34;
15:25.) In this psalm, we see God taking
a stand in an assembly. The New
American Standard Version there translates that God “judges in the midst of
the rulers,” but the Hebrew is elohim, “gods.” So, this has led to a variety of
interpretations, including human rulers, angels, demons, false gods, or even
the people of Israel themselves.
Whoever is being addressed in this psalm, it’s clear that
the Lord is condemning their actions.
They have engaged in unjust judgments, injustice, oppression, and other
acts. They not only had the power to do
this, they have the power even now to correct it. The Lord says in v. 6, “I said, ‘You are gods
(elohim), and all of you are sons of the Most High.’ ” Yet, He warns in the next verse, “Nevertheless
you will die like men and fall like any
one of the princes.” That seems to
support the option that these are human beings who have been called forth by
God as His children. If they are people
with power to correct the wrongs happening around them, then they are rulers
who need to know that they are there by God’s decree and can be removed with
the same. That makes this a mocking psalm, referencing human rulers as “gods” in
an ironic sense.
Jesus’s interpretation in this verse seems to support that
reading. The recipients of God’s Word
needed to hear the warnings of His Law and correct their ways. The rabbis debated the meaning of the psalm,
but the understanding that these could be their own rulers was there.
This means that God called human beings “gods” and “sons of
the Most High.” If God is perfect, He
cannot engage in blasphemy. If God calls
human rulers elohim, then it must not be blasphemous to have certain
individuals referred to as gods.
This is not an argument for anyone to appropriate a divine
designation, however. If a mentally ill
person claims to be God, that doesn’t make it true. Jesus is not supporting falsehoods, nor is He
saying it’s okay for a mere person to self-declare godhood like a Shirley
MacLaine or Deepak Chopra. Jesus is,
instead, creating a concrete logical syllogism.
A syllogism is where someone takes two or more individual
statements, places them together like puzzle pieces, and then uses them
together to show a greater picture. If
the individual statements are true and can be shown to be connected, then the
greater picture should also be true. In
this case, Jesus says that 1) Scripture calls lesser beings “gods” and 2) Jesus
is sent by the Father with greater works.
The conclusion, then, is that Jesus has a much better reason for being
called “the Son of God” than the human rulers.
He’s arguing from the lesser to the greater. They are the ones to whom the word of God
came (v. 35), while He is the one the Father sanctified and sent into the world
(v. 36). He has power over death, laying
down and even taking up His own life again, and granting to others eternal
life, all qualities of God. If it’s not
wrong to call them the sons of God, then it certainly isn’t wrong to call such
a one as He God’s Son.
It’s again interesting that He refers to this as a citation
from “your Law.” The Law is for the
lawless, and He is righteous. If they
reject Him and His Word, then Psalm 82:7 applies to them: “Nevertheless you
will die like men.”
Jesus is right to call them to reconsider their actions and
their Scripture. They have no basis to
judge Him as blaspheming. That is
underscored with this final point:
C.
Third, Jesus calls them to consider His works
(vv. 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, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in
the Father.
There is nothing emotional in what Jesus’s arguments
ask. He doesn’t ask them to pray and see
if they experience a burning in their bosoms concerning His character. He doesn’t tell them to take a leap of faith
into the dark, providing no evidence of His claims. He doesn’t brush their questions aside and
ask them to give Him a thirty-day money-back trial. He, instead, gives them facts and expects
them to arrive at reasonable conclusions.
And now, He tells them to consider His works. In a sense, He started this back in v. 32 — “I
showed you many good works from the Father;” also calling them to consider His
works. When they initially accosted Him,
as we noted last week in v. 25, He said His works in His Father’s name testify
of Him. Now, He says it differently — “If
I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me.” That is a reasonable standard to employ.
All must come to believe if they are to be saved. So, Jesus even gives them some breathing room
in what He says next. They may not like
what He looks like as the Messiah, and thus they reject all His related
claims. Yet, if they set that aside for
a moment and just consider His works, they should be able to determine His true
identity on that basis alone.
Belief isn’t without content. He wants them to know the truth
concerning Him. The translation here
renders His words, “so that you may know and understand.” The King James Version, based on the
few manuscripts the translators had available to them, renders this “know and
believe,” and belief is the ultimate goal, as the first half of this verse
says. Yet, the best reading of the text
is, as the footnote reads here, “know and
continue knowing.”[6] The
knowledge of Jesus’s identity is a knowledge that should be present and that continues
filling all who know it.
What should we know about Jesus? As He said in v. 30, we should believe that
He “and the Father are one.” As He says
here, the Father is in Him and He is in the Father. To His disciples, He later says: “Do you not
believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on
My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the
Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. … In that
day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (John
14:10–11, 20). He then prays along these
lines in John 17:21, 23. We are to
believe that Jesus is one in mission and in essence with the Father.
As we continue to draw together all the texts related to
this topic, a picture of the Trinity emerges, but that will have to be a topic
for another day. Unfortunately, the
Jewish leadership doesn’t accept this line of argumentation any more than they
did before. They’ve already decided what
to believe about Him, meaning that they are closed minded to any other
perspective. They had their paper-thin
justification from God’s Word for their actions, so they decide to move forward
with their murderous intent. Yet, this
gives Jesus another opportunity to prove just who He is, as we see next.
III.
Second, Jesus Applies His Control (vv. 39–40)
Therefore they
were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp. And He went away again beyond the Jordan to
the place where John was first baptizing, and He was staying there.
In all of Jesus’s argumentation, all they heard were
continued affirmations that He was making divine claims. Because they were already decided against
Him, they then seek to arrest and execute Him.
It’s almost as though there’s a skip in the record here, and the needle
skipped back to their previous error. As
one commentator notes, “Daring sinners will throw stones at heaven, though they
return upon their own heads; and will strengthen themselves against the
Almighty, though none ever hardened themselves against him and prospered.”[7] They are just as unsuccessful as before.
Of course, this is further evidence as to who Jesus is. He allows them to gather their stones. One imagines that this gave them time to
surround Him as they conversed with Him.
They were commited to this murderous action, but when the moment finally
came, Jesus simply left their midst. He
“eluded their grasp.” It’s impossible to
read this and not see supernatural intervention.
So, Jesus went to where it all began, and we read that He
was remaining there. If they wanted Him,
they could pursue Him, but they did not.
He continued His teaching ministry until He and the Father deemed it
time for Him to sacrifice Himself, and these mere men could do nothing about
it. That brings us to our final point.
IV.
Third, Jesus Attracts Many Converts (vv. 41–42)
Many came to Him
and were saying, “While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about
this man was true.” Many believed in Him
there.
The very evidence He called others to see is seen by
many. It’s become a popular bumper
sticker for the season, but it’s no less true — wise men still seek Him. These recognize His works and understand that
He is even greater than John the Baptist.
They therefore believed.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that they were necessarily more
intelligent than their unbelieving Jewish leaders. They simply came because they responded to
the drawing of Christ without pretense. They
came as children, with open hands, and they received.
This is the vindication of Christ’s ministry. He didn’t need to be believed by the elite of
His day to be successful. Scripture —
the Word He inspired — already predicted that He would be despised and
rejected. Yet, as He will say in John
12:32, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” He has already begun that drawing process
here.
V.
Conclusion
He continues that drawing process today. I don’t know what picture of Christ you had
in your mind. Perhaps you thought of Him
as a good man, or maybe you thought of Him as a vagabond with eccentric
ideas. Yet, just like our nativities
aren’t always quite right, you don’t have the full picture of Christ.
He is the Messiah, and that means He is also divine. He had to be so to come and save us from our
sins. I hope you will study that
evidence and come to know Him so you can trust in Him for the salvation of your
soul. This is the Jesus we celebrate at
Christmas, so don’t repeat the mistake of the elite who reject Him and die in
their sins — humble yourself and bow before the one born King of the Jews.
[1] A. T. Robertson, Word
Pictures in the New Testament, (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1933), Jn
10:31.
[2] Matthew Henry, Matthew
Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume,
(Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 1986.
[3] Gerald L. Borchert, John 1–11, The New American Commentary, (Nashville: Broadman &
Holman Publishers, 1996), 25A:342.
[4] D. A. Carson, The
Gospel according to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary, (Leicester,
England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 395–396.
[5] Edwin A. Blum, The
Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, 1985, 2, 312.
[6] New American
Standard Bible: 1995 Update, (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995).
[7] Henry, 1986.