John 10:22-42

JESUS AT THE FESTIVAL OF DEDICATION

22 Then the Festival of Dedication took place in Jerusalem, and it was winter. 23 Jesus was walking in the temple in Solomon’s Colonnade. 24 The Jews surrounded him and asked, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

25 “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. 26 But you don’t believe because you are not of my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 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. 30 I and the Father are one.”

RENEWED EFFORTS TO STONE JESUS

31 Again the Jews picked up rocks to stone him.

32 Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these works are you stoning me? ”

33 “We aren’t stoning you for a good work,” the Jews answered, “but for blasphemy, because you — being a man — make yourself God.”

34 Jesus answered them,“Isn’t it written in your law, I said, you are gods? 35 If he called those to whom the word of God came ‘gods’ — and the Scripture cannot be broken — 36 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? 37 If I am not doing my Father’s works, don’t believe me. 38 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.” 39 Then they were trying again to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

MANY BEYOND THE JORDAN BELIEVE IN JESUS

40 So he departed again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. 41 Many came to him and said, “John never did a sign, but everything John said about this man was true.” 42 And many believed in him there. — John 10:22-42 (CSB)

The Need For Renewal (V. 22-26)

Festival of Dedication

Antiochus IV Epiphanes

Judas Maccabeus

This isn’t the first time the temple has been desecrated…

“How long are you going to annoy us?”

The Picture Of Renewal (V.27-29)

THEY LISTEN TO JESUS’ VOICE

But no matter how many times I watch the video, or read the recipe, I find it difficult to make a simple omelette the way he does it so effortlessly. A recipe for an omelette is as simple as it can get. But information about how to make one does not readily translate into the actual making of the thing. In other words, there is a huge gap between informational knowing and the actual knowing of making. The same can be applied to theology. There is a huge gap between knowing theological concepts, or what Christians call the gospel, and the actual practice of knowing.

– Makoto Fujimura, Art & Faith

THEY ARE KNOWN BY JESUS

THEY ARE WALKING WITH JESUS

THEY ARE GIVEN LIFE BY JESUS

THEY ARE SECURE IN JESUS

Romans 8:31-39

What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.

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.

Those who hear Jesus’ voice and recognize it as the voice of ‘their’ shepherd will be safe for ever. He will look after them, and even death itself, the last great enemy, cannot ultimately harm them. The reason Jesus can be so confident of this is that the guarantee is his own unbreakable bond of love and union with the father, and the fact that the ‘sheep’ he owns are the ones the father has given him…Christian confidence about the future beyond death, in other words, is not a matter of wishful thinking, a vague general hope, or a temperamental inclination to assume things will turn out all right. It is built firmly on nothing less than the union of Jesus with the father—one of the main themes of this whole gospel.

– N.T. Wright

The Source Of Renewal (V. 30-42)

“I and the Father are one.”

“Isn’t it written in your law, I said, you are gods?”

Psalm 82

Set apart. Consecrated.

John 2:19-22

Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.” Therefore the Jews said, “This temple took forty-six years to build, and will you raise it up in three days? ”But he was speaking about the temple of his body. So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made.

And many believed in him there.

Ephesians 2:19-22

So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole building, being put together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you are also being built together for God’s dwelling in the Spirit.