John 10:22-42 • I Am the Son of God
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Would you look in your bibles with me this morning at John chapter 10, John chapter 10, verse 22 to the end of the chapter.
Verse 22, "At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem.
It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon.
So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, 'How long will you keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.'
Jesus answered them, 'I told you, and you do not believe.
The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will 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.
I and the Father are one.'
The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.
Jesus answered them, 'I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?'
The Jews answered him, 'It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.'
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 came, and Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?
If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.'
Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.
He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained.
And many came to him.
And they said, 'John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.'
And many believed in him there."
Let's pray together.
>>> Heavenly Father, we remember that the very purpose of this gospel from John is that we would believe.
And here You stretch us, for Your Son claims of Himself in this passage to be the Son of God, to be divine among us.
And the world, and at times our own hearts, struggle to receive that.
But Jesus said here that His sheep hear His voice.
We would pray that in that work of Your Spirit by which You remove the voice of human and insert the work of Your Son, by the Spirit, that You would now be present and powerful and working, that the voice of Jesus would be in this place by Your Holy Spirit applying Christ's word to our hearts.
This we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
I hear what I want to hear.
That sentence was said to Kathy and me by a man whose wife had just expressed some opinion to Kathy and to me.
She was a woman in a former church of ours who was known for strong opinions and the willingness to express them.
And she had just expressed her opinion about the music in our worship service that day and with some vehemence had let us know that it didn't quite meet her standards and how we needed to improve.
Now, the reason that we were both listening to that was that Kathy was the music director of our church.
And I stood beside her for moral support.
Standing beside the woman talking was her husband.
And as she was expressing her strong opinion, he was kind of looking blankly across the foyer, not really acknowledging anything, including what she was saying.
And so she finally concluded her statement by saying, "And we just have to do better in this church."
And she looked at her husband and she said, "Isn't that right?"
And he just continued to stare blankly across the foyer.
[Laughter]
And now with new cause for anger, she looked at us and said, "He doesn't hear anything anymore."
And she huffed away.
And that's when he looked at us with a little wink and he said, "I hear what I want to hear."
[Laughter]
It is, after all, possible to hear and not really listen, isn't it?
And that's what Jesus is talking about in this passage.
He is talking about what it means for people who are religious who are even in the church to hear what He is saying, to have the words, to have the cognition of the claims, but not have it sink into their hearts, not have reality to them.
And as Jesus is expressing this understanding of what it means to hear and not really listen, it begins to be a challenge, because He is explaining to the Pharisees and to us what would it mean to hear but not really hear at all.
What it would mean to hear is to believe what He says.
And He makes it more than clear it's possible to hear and not believe at all.
Verses 26 and 27, I suppose, are the nexus, the hub of the passage if you see the point being made.
Jesus, speaking to the Pharisees, says, "You do not believe, because you are not part of my flock.
My sheep hear my voice."
If you really heard, I mean, really heard, then you would believe.
But what does Jesus think that His sheep actually hear and believe?
It's the thing that the Pharisees are hearing and denying.
You have only to see the subject if you back up a little bit to verse 24.
"The Jews gathered around him and said to him, 'How long will you keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.'"
And Jesus responds, "'I told you.'"
Now, if you're just kind of being honest in the gospel of John, you will have to say, "Well, I'm not exactly sure how that is."
I mean, there is no record in the book of John that Jesus has said to the Pharisees, "I am the Christ."
He did say it to the woman at the well.
Remember?
She said, "We know that Messiah, when He comes, is going to explain everything to us."
And what did Jesus say?
He said, "I who speak to you," what?
Am He.
So He's at least making the claim to a Samaritan woman kind of outside Jewish quarters.
But now Jesus says to the Pharisees, to the leaders of the Jews, "I told you."
Well, how did He tell them?
I suppose we could back up into the preceding chapter just a little bit and go to that interchange between Jesus and the man born blind.
We did this a few weeks ago, so I'll just remind you.
At the end of that account of Jesus healing a man born blind, the man doesn't really, because he's been blind, recognize who Jesus is or even know who's healed him.
So later, as Jesus is in the temple, He finds the man.
Jesus says to the man, "Do you know who healed you?"
And the interchange goes on.
Jesus says, "Do you believe in the Son of Man, that is the Messiah, who is to come according to the book of Daniel?"
And the man born blind says, "Well, who is He?"
And Jesus said, "The one speaking to you."
Now, the Pharisees aren't around.
But if you'll look at verse 40 of chapter 9, we do get this little vignette.
Verse 40 of chapter 9, "Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things."
It's not a direct statement to them, but they overhear the conversation where He is claiming to be, to the man born blind, the one Messiah promised by Daniel centuries before.
But it may not be the focus of Jesus to say that they're supposed to have only overheard his status.
Actually, if you consider the words of verse 25, Jesus says, "I told you, you do not believe the works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me."
How has Jesus told them?
By the works that He has been doing.
Preceding chapter: He healed a man born blind, the archetypal measure of what it would mean to be the Messiah.
Remember?
No other apostle does this particular miracle.
When the Old Testament prophets prophesied the coming of Jesus, they said, "The Messiah will do lots of things," but the one thing they all said over and over again as He would give sight to the blind.
He would overturn the darkness.
Jesus, whom John declared at the beginning of this book to be the light of the world, is the only one in the New Testament scriptures who gives sight to the blind, the archetypal mark of the Messiah.
It's not the only thing that Jesus has done, the works that are bearing witness of Him.
You remember that other things He has done is He has distributed the bread to the five thousand.
Again, like manna in the wilderness, He is the one who has power to do that.
He has healed the lame.
He has healed the sick.
He has turned water into wine.
Whether or not they were witnesses at every moment, they have certainly heard these things, and Jesus is saying, "You have the testimony of the works."
But even more than that, you have the word signs of Jesus, not explicit statements but the dots that if anybody were willing they can connect.
You want to see those word signs as Jesus is giving indication of who He is?
Verse 30 is clear here.
"I and the Father are one."
Jesus has used this kind of commentary before.
When He healed the man lame, it was on the Sabbath day.
You may remember.
And He was accused at that point, saying, "You shouldn't be working on the Sabbath."
And Jesus makes an amazing statement: "My Father has been working till now, and now I'm working."
And at that time, the Jews sought to kill Him, because, they said, "By making God your Father, you make yourself God."
That's really the point.
If Jesus is going to be the Messiah, if He's going to claim to be the Son of God, He's actually giving Himself divine status.
It's what Martha is going to say in the next chapter when Jesus goes to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the grave.
And when Jesus speaks to Martha, He says, "Do you believe who I am?"
And she says, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God."
To be the Christ, to be the Son of God, is to be divine.
And now as these Jews hear Jesus say, "I and the Father are one," as He has claimed earlier the Father to be His, the heavenly Father to be His Father, they now recognize they have to do something about this.
"You, though a man, claim You are divine," and for that reason, they start to do something.
Do you remember what it was?
They reach down, and they start to stone Him.
Now, Jesus does something that if you just kind of visualize the account is a little bit humerous.
He says, "Why are you going to stone me?
For which of the works that I did are you going to stone me?"
They says, "We're not stoning You because of the works but because of Your words.
By saying that God is Your Father, that You and God the Father are one, You blaspheme; You, a mere man, make Yourself out to be God."
And then Jesus does something that's a, you know, kind of strikes us as odd.
He said, "No, no, no, now wait a second.
Doesn't your law, your own Bible of the Old Testament, say that you are all gods?"
Now, what Jesus is actually doing is He's quoting Psalm 82.
Now, Psalm 82 identifies in Old Testament Israel those who were the judges, the court officials, as having the formal title of gods.
Now, that strikes us as very strange.
But it's not so strange.
We've got kind of a modern parallel.
Imagine if you were in an English courtroom.
K, now, to do this right, you have to think in an old black and white movie, okay?
And think of an English courtroom and the person who is the judge.
Now, think of them, alright?
Long wig, powdered white.
And when the attorney or the prisoner in the dock addresses the judge, what does he call them?
He says, "Now, my lord."
He addresses the judge as lord.
We even understand that in a modern kind, doesn't believe he's divine, but that's his title.
And so Jesus, as they say, "You claim to be God," well, "Doesn't your own bible say that there are people who are gods?"
And what happens is the Jews who are picking up stones go, "Well, actually, that's right.
It does say that."
And in that moment of hesitation, do you remember what happens?
Jesus escapes.
He just disappears.
It's kind of like that moment, you know, the time of year we're in, you know.
You've just watched "It's a Wonderful Life" for the two hundred and fourteenth time, right?
[Laughter]
Right?
And you remember that moment, you know, that Burt the policeman has Clarence the angel on the ground and he's trying to put handcuffs on him, right?
And just as he's trying to put handcuffs on him, suddenly Clarence disappears.
And Burt goes, "Where'd he go?
Where'd he go?"
Well, they're getting ready to stone Jesus.
They're hesitating for a moment.
He said, "Wait, doesn't your word talk about other people being gods?"
They go, "Wait, it does."
And then suddenly He's gone.
And you kind of go, "Well, that's funny.
He's just gone."
I mean, that's kind of the evidence that He is divine.
But if you get lost in the humor, you don't really see the point.
Here's the point: Jesus made distract His enemies, but He never retracts His statement, "I am the Son of God."
That statement that He is the Son of God is not just what troubles these people: It troubles people in all the ages.
And, of course, it's hard to receive.
And the reason it's hard to receive, the very things that Jesus is saying in verses 26 and 27.
"You do not believe because You are not part of My flock.
My sheep hear My voice."
And who are those sheep?
Verse 29, "My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all."
The people who actually hear and believe are those who have been given to Jesus by the Father.
Those who actually hear this very difficult saying that God is Man among us, that this Jesus is divine, the ones who receive that word and it penetrates their being are those who have been given to Jesus by the Father, as though there's got to be a supernatural act of some sort by which the ears of our hearts are opened to actually believe who Jesus is and what He is saying.
And, of course, that is the very point: that Jesus is here sweetly acknowledging that any of those who would truly understand who He is have been given a tremendous gift by the Father.
They have had their hearts opened.
And while we may struggle to know what that means, and I think maybe the people who struggle the most are those who have been in the church a long time, who were taught by their parents or grandparents what it means and they just kind of grew up thinking the things of the faith.
But that's so different from people who were going a different path in life, who the things of the church just seemed silly for so long, and then suddenly by a work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, they begin really to hear and to believe what they never believed before.
One of the people that I kind of pay attention to and watch is Travis Reed; he's a Christian media artist and producer.
And he talks about this work of God in his life, so supernatural and so sweet at the same time.
He records the history of his life this way.
"At age thirteen, I was baptized by my first stepfather.
I believed that having my stepfather baptize me might make him stick around a while.
But three days after he raised me out of the font, my stepfather beat up my mom and ran off, and we never saw him again.
The well-meaning people in the churches that my mom and I cycled through over the years did not mention my unusual like circumstances like having four different stepfathers in four years.
So I constinued--, continued searching for a father who would stay around.
One year, I went to a U2 concert, yakked out on coke and tequila.
And the last song of the night was '40.'
'I waited patiently for the Lord; He inclined and heard my cry.'
I had no idea that the words were from Psalm 40.
But out of nowhere, a wind of grace blew over me.
The voices carried me toward the arms of God.
I was emersed in a universal love I had never known.
The moment was profound.
'I waited patiently for the Lord; He inclined and heard my cry.'
I didn't know exactly what that meant.
The majority of what I'd heard in the church hadn't stuck all those years.
But I remembered the psalms from which Psalm 40 came.
It was in the middle of the Bible.
And so I began to read the words and devoured them, as if they were the lyrics on the liner notes of a Johnny Cash album.
They were deep and rich, and they had street cred.
I started to think: Man, this might be true.
The next morning, I was listening to U2 song 'Hawkmoon 269.'
'Like a desert needs rain, like a town needs a name, I need your love.'
I pulled the car over and started weeping.
I did not just hear that song: I felt it with my being.
It called me to strength.
It gave me hope."
It's the very dynamic we're talking about where Jesus says, "When the Spirit is at work, that our ears are open, our hearts receptive, the things that no longer made sense, no, previously made sense now do make sense."
He is the Son of God.
And He came for me, and He gave Himself for me.
And the things that just seemed to be silly for those church people over there somewhere, now begin to say, "I need to know that."
That this, this One would come for me; though He deserved heaven, He would come for me that He loves me that way.
And that cognition that is the work of the Holy Spirit is what Jesus is saying has not worked in those who are rejecting Him in this very moment in this passage.
They are not hearing Him, but it's necessary that they hear.
It's necessary that they believe.
What are they actually supposed to believe?
That He is the Son of God, that He is the Son of Man prophesied in Daniel 7 who now comes as the Son of Man; the God Man made the gift to us for eternal life.
But if that's the case, that means He's divine.
That though He came in human appearance, that He would actually have divine history and characteristics, that He would be the Son of God, in fact.
And that truth is where all the division is.
C. S. Lewis in his book "God in the Dock" talks about it.
He says, "This very truth that Jesus is the Son of God is what begins to separate religions, including our own.
The fact that Jesus is the Son of God," he says, "there is no parallel in other religions.
If you had gone to Buddha and you had asked him, 'Are you the Son of Braham?' he would have said, 'My son, you are still in the veil of allusion.'
If you had gone to Socrates and asked, 'Are you Zeus?' he would have laughed at you.
If you have gone to Mohammad and asked, 'Are you Allah?' he would have rent his clothes.
To claim that Jesus is God made flesh who will give eternal life to those who believe in Him is the separation point, because it means that God is doing something in our behalf that we could not do for ourselves.
It is that distinguishing mark of Christianity, not that we are climbing up to God, not that we have to reach some state of consciousness or perform some great miracle, but God by pure gift would open our hearts to the reception of the truth of who Jesus is and what He has done for us.
And, by the way, that does not just separate religions: It ruins them.
Including what many people call Christianity.
Christianity is ruined by the message that God simply makes Himself available out of sheer grace and gift to those that are His sheep.
Think of it.
Sociologically, what is religion?
I mean, if you go to a sociology textbook and you say, "What is religion?" it is mastery of knowledge, practices or a state of consciousness that enables the human to be divine.
But in contrast to this notion of mastery, of consciousness or practices or beliefs, is Jesus' repeated statement here of the nature of the gift that is ours by the Father's mercy.
Three gifts are described here.
I mean, it's kind of a wonderful expression of the nature of grace as a triple gift.
The first gift is in verse 28 mentioned.
Jesus, speaking of His sheep, says, "I give them eternal life."
Now, in our culture today, when you hear the words "eternal life," you just think about kind of duration of life, a long, long, long, long, long, long life.
But that's not what a Jew would think about.
If a Jew in Christ's time were to hear the phrase "eternal life," a Jew is thinking about the beginning and entry of the kingdom of God where the rule of a sovereign God would take over the affairs of humanity in this world, so much so that this rule of God, this kingdom upon which God's people would enter in eternal life, would be so dominated by the presence and the power of God that tears would go away; that injustice would be righted; that all the horrors and the harms of this world would be gone.
In fact, the thing you would have would be an intimate relationship with the eternal God of the universe.
That's what eternal life meant.
That's why Jesus, when He talks here about what it means to have His sheep hear them, goes on to say, remember verse 27?
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them."
You know the Bible.
A lot of you in this church know that.
Where biblical knowledge is about a relationship, an intimate relationship, so that ultimately in John 17:3 when Jesus is describing explicitly what eternal life is, He said, "And this is eternal life, that they, My people, might know Me and the Father who sent Me," that there would be eternal and intimate relationship with God, and that would be such a dominant effect upon life and consciousness and heart that it will expel all other things: pain, tears and difficulty go away.
And, in fact, there is renewed and eternal life in the power of the kingdom of God.
And Jesus is saying that is His to give.
And the first great mark of grace is that Jesus gives.
It isn't that you earn, master anything.
I give eternal life to My sheep.
But curiously, there's another gift that's described right here in the same context.
It's verse 29.
Jesus says, "My Father, who has given them," that is the sheep, "to me, is greater than all."
There's another gift.
It's not just that the sheep are given the message: It's that the sheep themselves are given.
That, for reasons that are inexplicable, that you can't quite make sense of: that the God of the universe gives you and me, broken, sinful, sometimes ignorant, sometimes fooli--, He gives us as a gift to Jesus.
And, you know, sometimes we tease one another: You just think you're God's gift to the world.
Well, next time somebody says, "No, I don't actually; I just think that I'm God's gift to Jesus."
[Laughter]
Which is true.
Now, Jesus is God's precious, eternal Son.
God's only going to give Him the very best gifts.
If God is giving you to Jesus, what is that saying about you?
That God, knowing all the worst about you, all your weakness and sin and difficulty, counts you precious and says, "I'm going to make you the gift to Jesus."
It's a remarkable statement of who we are.
And, still, it's not the last of the gifts of grace that are here.
The last gift of grace that is here is in verse 36.
Remember, the Jews now who were upset are beginning to get ready to stone Jesus.
And Jesus responds in verse 36, "Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?"
Now the hard words we just kind of zip past.
Are you saying that the one who is consecrated and sent by God you're now going to stone?
What does it mean to be consecrated?
Set aside for a holy purpose.
And sent by God into the world.
What is Jesus saying in that real crisp statement?
But that I, though the Son of God, have been sent by Father God for a holy purpose and because we're in John 10, the Good Shepherd passage, we know exactly what that is.
Remember, He's already told us.
The Good Shepherd does what for His sheep?
He lays down His life for the sheep.
He was consecrated for a holy purpose: to give His life for the sheep.
But Jesus didn't end there when He described Himself as the Good Shepherd.
He said, "If I lay down My life, I have the authority to" do what?
To take it up again.
Because I am the Son of God, I come consecrated to give Himself in sacrifice for you but also to rise the victor over your sin, to show that the penalty is paid, the price has been taken care of.
And the great single pledge of God that now we're okay, now we are right, is that God takes away the curse of sin and Jesus rises and all who believe in Him.
That that is the great promise that Jesus has been given to us: Eternal life has been given to us by Jesus.
And we have been given to Jesus by the Father.
But ultimately the great treasure is that Jesus says He gives Himself to us.
We are treasured by Him in ways that are just almost unfathomable, because here He was, the Son of God, now man, and He is claiming that everything is made right between God and man because He takes care of it.
And if you'll just allow yourself to be merciful for a little bit, you'll see why that was so hard for the Jews to receive.
You're just like us.
How dare you claim to be divine?
You see, that's the point: that He would be King of heaven and yet come to be like us in human flesh, in poverty and ruin, in order to pay the price for our sin.
It's the great statement of the gift He was willing to make.
In the 1990's, Joan Osborne made a bit of a stir with the lyrics to a song, "What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus?
How would you respond to Him then?"
If that sounds sacrilegious, I want to remind you of the words of Isaiah 53: "He had no form or majesty that we should look at him.
He had no beauty that we should desire him."
"Just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus."
And, yet, because He had had heaven at His disposal and was willing to give of Himself for that purpose, He made Himself a gift in our behalf.
No wonder the religious rulers struggled to hear it, I mean, to really hear it and to believe.
Because what is Jesus saying must be believed?
He is saying, "You must believe that I am the Son of God."
I mean, as long as He didn't cross that line, right, as long as He said, "I heal people and I have wise sayings and I call people to new faithfulness," you know, they couldn't touch Him.
That was okay.
But when He said, "The Father and I are one; I am the Son of God," now they got Him.
But you see, it's the old line of separation.
It's the line of separation in every generation.
You have friends, I have friends, who say, "Listen, I can accept that Jesus is a good moral teacher.
I mean, I can accept that He's a good example."
I mean, you know, even Muslims believe that Jesus is a great prophet.
Where's the line of division?
He says He's divine.
Now, that's going too far.
But, you know, you can't do that.
I mean, you just can't logically say He's a great prophet, He's a great example, and still say that this scripture means what it says.
C. S. Lewis in "Mere Christianity," and I just commend that to you if you're struggling with matters of faith and Christianity, where he just kind of asks the hard questions as a former agnostic atheist who came to faith but could remember the questions he used to ask.
And so one of the things that he says is, "People often say about Jesus, 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'
But a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said, would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic on the level of a man who says he's a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell.
You must make a choice.
You can shut Him up as a fool who's a lunatic: He thought He was God, though He wasn't.
Or you can kill Him as a demon liar: He claimed to be God even though He knew He wasn't.
Or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord.
Those are only the three options.
He and His Word is claiming to be Lord.
Either He is a lunatic or He is a liar and not a good moral teacher in either case.
Or He is who He said He was."
Now, guys, whether you're in junior high or in grad school or a grandma, you can remember that.
For the people who say, "I don't want to make a decision about Jesus Christ because, you know, I think He was a good guy and you can believe that, but I just can't accept He's divine," you say, listen, you can't go there.
He is not a good guy.
I'll tell you that firmly.
He is not just a good man.
He cannot be, because He claimed to be the Son of God.
He's either lying or He's a lunatic or He is who He says He is.
So let's say He's either Lord or one of the other two, but please don't just settle in to say He's just a good man, cause He cannot be that according to what the Scriptures make as claims.
Why do we have to actually believe that He is Lord?
I mean, what difference does it make?
Why not just settle in and kind of say, well, we just kind of accept Him as a good man who's misquoted in some way?
The reason is, if He is not who He says He is, He cannot do as He says He will do.
There's a consequence to His not being divine.
He cannot do as He says.
What does He say He came to do?
Why must He be divine?
Verse 36 again: The Father consecrated and sent him into the world.
He came to save.
If He cannot do what He says, if He's got no word in eternity, if He has no spiritual power, then he cannot do what we believe He must do.
And that is to save us from hell, from the consequences and the darkness of our sin.
If that's where we're bound, I need someone who can save me from that.
I need to be saved from myself and the consequences of my sin.
And if He's not divine, He cannot do that.
I need Him to be divine, because I need Him to save.
I, like some of you, were on the Chris--, not on Christmas, on New Year's Eve watching the Times' Square shows.
And one of the groups that played was Fray.
And some of you in the room will know Fray is not a Christian group in terms of singing Christian songs.
But the young men who are in Fray are Christians.
And the song that kind of put Fray on the map is "How to Save a Life."
And as I watched Fray singing that on New Year's Eve, I remembered the circumstance that some of you will know as the lead singer wrote the lyrics, having tried to work with an addicted and suicidal teen who was rejecting his care.
And Fray sang, "Where did I go wrong?
I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness.
And I would have stayed up with you all night if I had known how to save a life."
It's beyond our humanity.
We ultimately run into situations and people and we don't know how to save, not only other people, ourselves.
And that's why we need the one who says, "I am the Son of God with power to save."
I need the one who is mighty to save, because He is the Son of God with divine credentials.
He came to do that.
And I don't just need that to kind of come into the kingdom; I need to know that He is divine every day of my life, so that I recognize that when I fail and when I fall He is the keeper.
He's the one who keeps holding me when I can't hold onto Him.
It's the wonderful message of this text repeated twice.
Verse 28, Jesus said, "Not only do I give My sheep eternal life," verse 28, "They will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand."
Verse 29, "My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all; no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand."
It's a great image.
You know, I think in my mind of the parents holding a little child between them and swinging them, you know.
And it's the parents' strength that holds the child.
But the image in scripture of the one who is holding us, the ones who are holding us, are God the Father and God the Son, holding us and saying, "No one can snatch you out of My hand.
Why?
Because I'm divine.
Because I have the power of God and the power of God is greater than all things."
And He holds you, too.
And that awareness is what gives us so much confidence that when we go through the bumps and the brokenness of our lives we don't lose heart and we don't lose faith.
Charles Spurgeon, the great reformed Baptist preacher, said it so well long ago.
He said, "Those who are on the ship of Christ may fall on the deck many times, but we do not fall off the deck."
Why?
Because Christ holds us and He is divine.
I thought of the importance of that when I got a letter just a few days ago from my brother who's in prison.
And I've related to you at various times how the Lord brought him to faith through the hard consequences of his life heading toward prison.
And he wrote on his latest letter just these words: "I got a nice Christmas card from someone.
It said, 'From one Christmas to another, it's nice to know some things never change.
We will always be family, and you will always be loved.'"
And Jeff wrote after that, "That really touched me."
For a man in prison, I understand why that would really touch you: We'll always be family; you'll always be loved.
But what's the basis of the promise?
From the scriptures, it's the understanding that the divine Son of God has come to save you and to keep you.
And though you might loosen your hold on Him, He will not loosen His hold on you.
And as we move into new challenges as a church, as you move into a new year with challenges you and I cannot anticipate, that we need to know: that the one who came as the Son of God not only saves as a gift, but He holds out of the strength that is of heaven itself.
I thought of it cause I was working on this message and reading the blog of musician Matt Redman.
He was responding to a short message he saw on Twitter with his longer blog.
The message on Twitter was this: Somebody said, "I cannot wait for the new year.
It's going to be a great year."
And Redman responded, "My first thought was, well, that depends on what you mean by 'great.'
Last year was a rough year for my family.
There has been a lot of loss and regret.
My father died back in April.
We were financially wrecked by car repairs, and health issues abounded.
To be honest, I expected the year to open new opportunities for a job for which I am better suited.
But it never happened.
We wanted the year to be different than it was, and that seemed possible, because we'd had years that we could look back on and say they were great.
But this was not one of those years.
Maybe your new year will be a great year, and all your dreams will come true.
But it is also possible that you will experience severe emotional and lasting pain because some tremendous loss.
It is possible physical pain will be a large part of your life this year and years to come.
It is possible that you will sin in ways that you never even thought were possible.
It is possible you will lose your job and financial ruin will lie--, will rise like a specter in the dark of every night.
It is possible that death will stalk your door and visit your home.
You may find yourself in sackcloth and ashes, guessing the rating of the storm that has taken so much from you.
And, yet, despite what the prosperity preachers say, the worst year you have ever seen may be upon you and Jesus has not gone anywhere.
Christ will still be faithful."
He will still hold you, though your grip loosens on Him.
He will not abandon His people.
He will not forsake you.
The promises of our sovereign God will remain unspoiled in our heart and for eternity and for days long to come.
He will never lose you.
You cannot be snatched from His hand.
Because He is the divine God who promises it is so.
And when you believe Him and truly hear His voice, regardless of the storms that come upon you, you can have the peace of God that passes all understanding.
Why?
Because, the apostle said, "I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
You are His.
He is yours.
And nothing in this world is going to change that, because He holds His sheep and no one can snatch you out of His hand.
Why?
Because He is the Son of God, the King who has come to give Himself for you and to hold you now and forever.