The Testimony of Works

Introduction

Illustration: How many of you enjoy a good courtroom drama every now and then? John is a bit like one of those.

Jesus is basically being called to the stand as a defendant here and the Jewish leadership who are literally surrounding Him in the temple are the prosecutors and they ask Him a direct and challenging question to which He must mount a defense. I can almost here the Law and Order “dun dun,” you know? So what does Jesus do to defend Himself, and what can that teach us as students of God’s word today?

Let’s take close look at today’s passage and see for ourselves. Today we will be reading John 10:22-42. Let’s read the word of God shall we?

John 10:22–42 CSB

Then the Festival of Dedication took place in Jerusalem, and it was winter. Jesus was walking in the temple in Solomon’s Colonnade. The Jews surrounded him and asked, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” “I did tell you and you don’t believe,” Jesus answered them. “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify about me. But you don’t believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” Again the Jews picked up rocks to stone him. Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these works are you stoning me?” “We aren’t stoning you for a good work,” the Jews answered, “but for blasphemy, because you—being a man—make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Isn’t it written in your law, I said, you are gods? If he called those to whom the word of God came ‘gods’—and the Scripture cannot be broken—do you say, ‘You are blaspheming’ to the one the Father set apart and sent into the world, because I said: I am the Son of God? If I am not doing my Father’s works, don’t believe me. But if I am doing them and you don’t believe me, believe the works. This way you will know and understand that the Father is in me and I in the Father.” Then they were trying again to seize him, but he escaped their grasp. So he departed again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. Many came to him and said, “John never did a sign, but everything John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there.

So let’s take a look at Jesus’ defense in this makeshift court and what it can teach us about Jesus, about being His disciples, and about making disciples of all nations. If we look closely I think there are three major points of emphasis throughout this conversation. The first is that Jesus wants to reassure those who follow Him that they can trust Him to keep them safe and give them the eternal life that He has promised them. Second we see that we can trust Jesus’ promises because of who He is and the unity He shares with the Father. Finally we see that Jesus’ works and words back up all that He says and give us reason to as disciples of Jesus be incredibly confident in Him and in our status because of Him.

They Will Never Perish

Illustration: Who here has ever been to TreeGo? The first thing they make you do is put your whole weight on the safety harness.

We do a lot of things throughout life to reassure ourselves of our safety. Especially with public trust being as low as it is these days, most of us lock our doors to our houses and lock our cars in parking lots. We use antivirus software, we screen our calls if we answer them at all. We do what we can to reassure ourselves that we are safe and don’t have to worry about being stolen from or taken advantage of or worse. This of course is a much better alternative to feeling fearful or anxious at all times.

Yet for all the safety steps we take and healthy choices we make we know that there’s nothing we can do to avoid the fact that everyone dies. It’s the end of everyone’s story. Though through medical advances we’ve been able to lengthen the average lifespan there’s still an upper limit to the length of human life.

Or is there? Jesus made some pretty strong promises to give us the security and safety that we have been missing when it comes to facing our death. Let’s take a look at Jesus’ response to the Jewish people that were questioning Him about being the Messiah in verses 25-29:

John 10:25–29 CSB

“I did tell you and you don’t believe,” Jesus answered them. “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify about me. But you don’t believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

Now some of us when we first see a passage like this we immediately think about the ongoing debate between those who say that God chooses who will be saved and those who say that God offers a real choice to everyone on whether or not they will be saved. This is one of those passages that those on the side of salvation being God’s choice alone like to quote most often. There’s a chance many of you didn’t think of that, but for those who did I think it’s honestly missing the point when we look at Bible passages with those debates in mind.

If you will forgive me a short rant, I’m becoming more convinced every day that we as Christians have for a long time lost the art of reading the Bible for what it says instead of what we wish it would say. What do I mean by that? I mean that the Bible has a clear and direct agenda, God inspired the Bible to teach us about who He is, who we truly are, and about how we can be saved and live according to His way. There are many questions the Bible doesn’t answer that we want to know the answers to. So we bring these questions to the Bible and come up with dogmatic answers based on passages taken from their original context and read from a particular point of view and then we argue and break up churches over it and damage the unity of the church.

This is tragic, because while the Bible is less clear on the debate between predestination and free will it is incredibly clear on Christian Unity. The thing is, when Jesus said this it was never about whether or not people had a choice on whether or not they would become one of His sheep, and it wasn’t about whether or not it’s possible to walk away from the faith. This was all about reassuring His sheep that they would never be taken from His hand no matter what happened to them.

If this then means that as some say “once saved always saved” than I would have a hard time squaring that with the many, many verses of the Bible that strongly encourage us to remain in the faith and the ones that warn about the dangers of walking away from the faith. If this means that God freely decides who will be saved with a grace that cannot be rejected than I would have a hard time squaring that with the many, many verses of the Bible that encourage people to choose belief in Jesus and encourage us to spread the gospel to every single person.

Maybe the simple answer is that God never intended to explain exactly how human free will and God’s choosing His people interact. Maybe we’re just supposed to believe both that we are chosen and that we are responsible for choosing Him back and not worry so much about how those two things can be explained in detail. Maybe if we did that with more theological beliefs the church wouldn’t be so hopelessly shattered into hundreds of denominations over such tiny irrelevant details of Bible trivia that were never the main thing.

So then, what is the point of this passage? The point of this passage is that our loving Good shepherd doesn’t want us to live in fear. That as He stood surrounded by angry men holding stones ready to hurl them at Him and end His life He knew that many of His followers would face the same thing. He knew that His disciples would die for His sake, and He wanted them to know that nothing could forcefully seperate them from the love of God. Whether or not they could seperate themselves from the love of God was another matter entirely. The point is the same one that Paul makes in one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Romans 8:37-39

Romans 8:37–39 CSB

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So then if you are hearing this sermon and you are one of Jesus’ sheep than you should never be afraid. Jesus has promised eternal life to all who would follow Him. The devil can’t do anything about that. Those who reject us and make fun of us can’t do anything about that. The most corrupt and evil governments of the world who kill people for believing in Jesus can’t do anything about that. No one is able to snatch you out of the shepherds hand.

The Son and the Father are One

Illustration: There’s no perfect picture of how the Father and the Son are one. Ordinary fathers and sons aren’t one substance, they are seperate. If you wanted to mix something with water and talk about how it can’t be unmixed it would imply that they weren’t always one. If you wanted to talk about the hydrogen and oxygen that make up water you’d be closest, but there are actually ways to seperate oxygen from hydrogen in water.

That’s the trouble in trying to understand God. He is so much bigger and greater than us that when we try to fully understand His nature we come up short. That’s a good thing. A God whose nature was easy to understand would surely be a God of our own invention. We should expect as creatures not to fully understand our creator.

This seems very true when we think about the nature of the Trinity. How can the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be One God but still somehow three Persons? It’s not that hard to understand in principle that it is true, but to understand the nature of it is beyond us. Yet if we believe the Bible is the Word of God and that what it says is true than we cannot avoid the Trinity, because the Bible teaches that there is only one God, but that the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God. This is one of the passages that so clearly teaches us that the Son is God. Already in the last passage Jesus says two parallel sentences that put Himself on equal footing with the Father, when He says that no one can snatch the sheep out of His hand while also saying that no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. Then He takes things further starting at verse 30,

John 10:30–36 CSB

I and the Father are one.” Again the Jews picked up rocks to stone him. Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these works are you stoning me?” “We aren’t stoning you for a good work,” the Jews answered, “but for blasphemy, because you—being a man—make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Isn’t it written in your law, I said, you are gods? If he called those to whom the word of God came ‘gods’—and the Scripture cannot be broken—do you say, ‘You are blaspheming’ to the one the Father set apart and sent into the world, because I said: I am the Son of God?

Let’s nerd out about some Greek, shall we? The New Testament was written in Greek and while the English translations that we have are produced by very smart people and are generally very good representations of what is written in the original language, some things just don’t translate. Take for instance the sentence “I and the Father are one.” In English this is still a pretty powerful sentence, but in Greek much more so. This is because Greek is a much more inflected language than English. Meaning that words have different endings to indicate things like Gender, Number, and function in a sentence. English has some of this, but not nearly as much, especially when it comes to Gender. In this sentence in Greek, the “I” and “Father” and the verb “are” are all masculine in Gender. Which makes sense. Jesus is a man, God the Father always names Himself in masculine terms. The interesting part is when we get to the word “one,” which actually isn’t masculine. It’s neuter. This simple grammatical distinction means that Jesus isn’t saying that He and the Father are one person, but one thing. That means that Jesus is saying that He and the Father are the same substance but different persons. This is very trinitarian theology.

It might at this point in this series feel as though we’re beating a dead horse here. Out of 22 Sermons in this series through John, 15 of them have Jesus’ being God as one of the main three points of the sermon. And to be honest the number would be higher if it wasn’t for the fact that I have chosen at times to emphasize some other point in the passage because of how often this comes up. This isn’t because this is some particular hobby horse or passion of mine. It’s really unavoidable. John the apostle really, really, really wants his readers to understand that Jesus is God. He makes it pretty unmistakeable. Undeniable even.

Now some would say in this case that it sounds like Jesus is contradicting the charge of the religious leaders here by defending Himself and thus denying that He is god. First of all, when Jesus quotes this passage He’s doing a very first century Rabbi argument called an argument from the lesser to the greater. He’s basically saying, “look, if God can refer to the readers of Psalm 82 as “gods” than how can you accuse me, the one that God sent into the world, of blaspheming by calling myself the Son of God?” In other words, He’s not denying that He called Himself God but coming up with a legal defense against their stoning Him.

Plus even if it seems vaguely like a denial here, well that doesn’t explain the other dozens of places all over the gospel of John that say He is God. I feel very confident in saying that it is impossible to believe that the New Testament is the word of God without believing that Jesus is God.

Why does that matter? Because for one if Jesus is God than He deserves worship and we will be judged for not worshipping Him if we deny that He is God. Second, because if He is God than we can have even more confidence to back up claims like the last point, that He will hold us in His hand and that nothing will be able to take us away from Him. If that’s the claim of a man it’s not much of a claim, because He will also die. If it’s the claim of God Himself, than it’s a claim that cannot be denied.

Believe the Works

Illustration: How do you know whether or not to trust someone on their word? By what they do and what they say. Did they follow through? Have they demonstrated honesty in the past?

Generally speaking we probably don’t think about this much with the people we know. Usually we trust the people in our lives by default, especially those whom we love and with whom we live and do things together. Usually it’s only when someone demonstrates a reason not to trust them that we become suspicious. Of course this all depends on the situation. If someone you love for example asks you to do something dangerous then you might stop and think about how much you really trust them. Or if someone you trust is accused of a serious crime it might make you stop and think about what they’ve demonstrated in the past about their trustworthiness.

Jesus finds Himself in one of those moments where people are questioning Him and His trustworthiness in our passage. He’s being accused of blasphemy and the people are standing with their rocks in their hands ready to stone Him to death. This is one of those moments that might have made His disciples stop and think about how trustworthy is this Jesus they have been following? What has He demonstrated about Himself to make such big claims about who He is. Do His actions back up His claims? Jesus Himself brings up His demonstrated works starting in verse 37:

John 10:37–42 CSB

If I am not doing my Father’s works, don’t believe me. But if I am doing them and you don’t believe me, believe the works. This way you will know and understand that the Father is in me and I in the Father.” Then they were trying again to seize him, but he escaped their grasp. So he departed again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. Many came to him and said, “John never did a sign, but everything John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there.

So they accuse Him of blasphemy and He defends Himself first by demonstrating that their legal case is thin, but second by basically saying “look at my record.” And what a record it is. So far just in the gospel of John, who is very selective about what miracles He records, we have seen water turned to wine, we have seen a boy healed from a great distance with just a word, we have seen a long time paralytic stand and carry his mat, we have seen more than five thousand people fed by just five loaves of bread and two fish, we have seen Jesus walk on the water, and we have seen a man who was born blind given His sight. Many more miracles we know from the other gospels were performed in front of many witnesses. Demons were cast out. And all along Jesus has never acted selfish or hypocritical and has never broken any law. That’s the record that He confronts them with.

So basically, they have no case. You see some people get the mistaken idea that Jesus calls us to a blind faith. To trust Him despite their being no evidence at all. This is not an accurate picture of the faith, the active trust, that Jesus is calling us to. God has given us evidence all around us so that Paul can say in Romans 1 that all people everywhere are without excuse for not believing in Him. Jesus demonstrated His credentials by performing works that would have been impossible if He wasn’t who He said He was and though this wasn’t evidence yet for the religious leadership Jesus went on to demonstrate by His death and resurrection for all of us that He truly is the Son of God and can truly save us from our sin.

So then for us the record speaks clearly that Jesus is who He says He is. That faith put in Him is faith very well placed. Paul said that if the resurrection wasn’t true we of all people should be most pitied. I say that if the resurrection is true than we of all people should be the most hopeful, the most confident, the most loving and the most assured that Jesus the Son of God is with us even until the end of the age in all things, can I get an Amen on that?

Conclusion

The more that I study the gospel of John the more I find myself falling more deeply in love with it. There is just so much truth packed so beautifully into the images and stories that He shares. There’s so much depth and beauty to the way that Jesus speaks and the things He does, and I love the subtle but forceful way that John gets across His most important message, that Jesus is God in the flesh. In this passage we read first that those of us who follow Jesus have nothing to fear because we can be reassured that those who trust in Him will never be snatched away from Him but that instead we will inherit eternal life. We learn also that Jesus can back up this promise because He is one with the Father, meaning that He is God Himself come to earth as a man. Finally we see that Jesus backs up His claim to be God by living a perfect sinless life and by doing good works and miracles that show us who He truly is without a doubt.

Throughout this series we’ve seen time and time again passages that when applied to our lives reassure us that we have nothing to fear as followers of Jesus. It is my strong hope that as I continue to emphasize that point over and over again that all of us at Fredericton Christian Church can build our confidence as followers of Jesus and know for certain that our hopes are well placed in Him. That way when He sends us out on mission every day to make disciples of all nations we can do so with our back straight and our head high knowing that He is behind us all the way. So let us go from this place with that confidence in knowing that we can do all things through His strength and wisdom because He is with us always.

Let us pray.