Challenging The Divine

Introduction
We are in the Book of John. And as we have pointed out, belief is a huge theme. The word “believe” in it’s various conjugations occurs over 110 times in the book. John wrote the book so that you might believe. Believe what?

Believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God. Why would he care if you believe this? Because by believing you may have life in his name.

You want life, ZOA, meaning, purpose? Then believe what Jesus says about who he is. And in that moment of belief this MIRACLE happens. You are given life. It’s a MIRACLE.

John chapter 10 is going to end with that miracle of life-giving belief. But we are also going to see its ugly, dark cousin. We are going to witness the miracle of willful unbelief. And here’s what we mean. The evidence for Christ’s deity, power, and authority is so strong, the offer of love is so overwhelming, the offer of grace so limitless, it literally takes a miracle to refuse it. It is IRRATIONAL unbelief.

We are going to see both ends of the spectrum. Those who believe and worship; those who disbelieve and try to stone him. And the absolute genius of John 10 is that Jesus is able to speak to both groups simultaneously. The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay.
Parallel
Let’s recall the story from last week. You may remember that Jesus is teaching on the temple mount in Solomon’s Portico. And I have an opportunity here to make a correction that was pointed out to me last week.

Remember we talked about Antoniah’s fortress being right here. And I said this was Solomon’s Portico. This is actually called the Royal Stoa. Solomon’s Portico is more accurately right here.

So Jesus is teaching from this area beneath the watchful eye of Rome - the garrison is anxious for action peering over the parapet of Antonia’s Fortress and the Pharisees dare him. Tell us who you really are. Do you have the nerve to put your money where your mouth is? Are you the Christ? Come on Jesus, just say it.

What they are clearly trying to do is get him to say he is a political Savior (messiah) so they can go get him executed by Rome. The Jews didn’t have authority to execute anyone. So if they are going to get the Romans to kill Jesus then they have to get Rome to care. And the only way Rome is going to care about Jesus is if they believe he’s an insurrectionist. Rome has a system for taking care of seditionists. It’s called the cross. Rome was all about Peace through force. You make trouble and you die. Other than that carpe diem. Live long and prosper. Whatever. We don’t care.

So the Jews say to Jesus tell us plainly, in other words, tell us in language Rome can interpret.

Now, let me give you an insight into Jesus’ strategy here. Jesus of course knows exactly what they are trying to do. Exactly. And he has no desire to help them. Jesus wants to be crystal clear to the Jews and vague to Rome. That’s his strategy. He is always giving the Jews plenty of information to keep them enraged but not enough information for Rome to care. He’s a master at this. He’s doing this constantly in the gospels.

Here’s one of my favorite examples. When Jesus is standing before the high priest in the last week of his life. It’s Thursday late… deep into the middle of the night and the Jews are waiting for daybreak getting ready to present him to Pilate. And they are trying to drag out of him a confession that he is a King. They want to accuse him of sedition before Pilate so that Pilate will see the threat and execute him. Now look at how Jesus responds. At first he’s silent.

Now do you see the genius here? Confess that you are the political Messiah we have all been waiting for. He doesn’t say, “Yes, I am.” Instead he says, “You have said so.” He says yes, without saying yes. Do you see that? It’s genius. And then he quotes Daniel 7.

From now on, you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.

Now to a Jew what Jesus said is crystal clear. He just quoted the most thoroughly Messianic parts of Daniel’s prophecy and applied it to himself. We’ve nailed him. But you see, it doesn’t help them at all to build their cause against him in the eyes of Rome. What are they going to do with that? Go to Pilate and say, “Pilate, this man claims to be seated at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.” Pilate would respond, “He must be smoking something.” What does Rome care about that? What in the world are you talking about? Why are you bothering me? Go back to your temple.

So do you see Jesus’ strategy here? He’s clear to the Jews and vague to Rome.

Now let’s return to our text. So remember, the Jews come to Jesus and say to him, tell us plainly. Are you the Messiah or not? Jesus, who are you? Tell us plainly. Jesus wants to be crystal clear to the Jews and vague to Rome. That’s exactly Jesus’ strategy here in John chapter 10, and that will really help you read our text today because it can be confusing without the interpretive key.

And Jesus responds by saying, “I’ve already told you who I am.” You don’t listen because you aren’t my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. Nobody can snatch them out of my hand. And then he says this:

I and the Father are One
Now what do we make of this phrase, “I and the Father are one.” Through our Trinitarian glasses this seems like crystal clear evidence that Jesus is divine. What could be more clear?

However, it’s not as clear as you might think. Bear with me in a little technical discussion here. The Greek language is a highly inflected language which means that it has lots of endings that match in case, number and gender. For example, most people know a little Spanish. In Spanish the word for good could either be bueno or buena depending on if it’s modifying a boy or a girl. beuno chico for a boy vs buena chica if it’s a girl. That’s inflection.

In Greek, you have three gender options. A modifier can be masculine, it could be feminine or it could be neuter.

So in Greek if I say,

Now let’s come all the way back to it. Now when Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” which do you suppose it is? If he were saying I and the Father are one person, you would have to use masculine because the modifier “one” is modifying both Jesus and the Father. But it turns out it’s actually neuter because Jesus is actually saying here, I and the Father are on the same mission. We have the same purpose. We are unified in what we are doing.

Probably the clearest parallel here is actually John 17. This will help.

Here also, the word “one” is neuter. In the same way that the Father and son are unified in purpose (one in purpose), I want the church to be one in purpose. Do you see that?

Here’s the point. When Jesus says I and the father are ONE (neuter), you can’t say conclusively that this is a reference to Jesus being the same being as the father because when we get to John 17 we’d have to conclude that being one as Jesus and the Father are one would mean that the entire church would have to be ONE and the SAME person.

That doesn’t work. The Greek construction is not a slam dunk trinitarian proof text. Do you see how even a declension of an adjective can be theologically interesting!

Time out for a second. If this type of original language insight is interesting to you, in our Faith Academy session one, we have a beginner Greek class starting up, taught by our resident Greek expert Larry Krum.

Wouldn’t you love to be able to read this text?

Of course you would! Now, the class is not designed to make you proficient in Greek (although you could continue on to do that); rather it’s designed to help you use the many great Greek tools we have for studying Greek and gathering these insights on your own!

Now, let’s come back to our text. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” What did your Greek lesson teach us? We can’t, with a good conscience, use this as a proof text for Jesus’ divinity. Jesus could have made it clear by providing an object and using a masculine modifier. He could have said, “I and the Father are one being.” But he didn’t. He made the object implied and chose a neuter.
The Response To Vagueness
But that’s not a problem at all; he did it on purpose. Jesus wants to be crystal clear to the Jews and vague to Rome. He’s giving just enough to enrage his enemies but not enough to condemn him before Rome. It’s genius. I and the Father are one. We are on the same mission of saving sinners. We are synchronized in our eternal mission to redeem the lost. We are agreed and tuned to one another in our purpose to rescue lost sheep. Am I the Conquering Christ? Am I? You tell me. He said it but didn’t say it.

If ROME was listening they would shrug their shoulders. This guy is insane. But EVERY JEW PRESENT knew exactly what he was doing. And the Jews were divided in their response.

Any Jewish person determined to SEEK God would have heard the message of the good shepherd and thought, “How in the World could Jesus, as the Son of God, DESCEND so low so as to die for the sheep?” And they fall on their face to worship.
But any Jewish person determined to REJECT God would have heard the exact same message of Jesus and think, “How in the world could Jesus dare ASCEND so high so as to claim to be the Son of God?” And they accused him of blasphemy and picked up stones to murder him.

Now I think you have to really envision the intensity of the moment. Jesus’ life is on the line. This is a pretty critical moment. The modern equivalent would be someone raising a gun and pointing it at your head. Whoa. How is Jesus going to diffuse things?

At first he seeks clarity. I’ve done many good works. For which of them are you stoning me? This is Jesus trying to ask for his rights to be read. I need a technical answer here as to what I’ve done wrong. Show me the law I’ve broken. When you murder someone, you get the death penalty. That bad work justifies the death sentence. Jesus says, “I’ve done nothing but good works. Why do I deserve to die?”

And they answer that question. We are not murdering you for your good works. We are murdering you for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God. So now Jesus is going to respond to the charge of blasphemy itself.

Now you have to understand what, in specifics, they are chafing against. They are chafing against this concept of Jesus referencing himself as the ‘Son of God’ and this brazen claim that God was his father. It’s actually not the phrase, “I and the Father are one” that ultimately gets them. It’s the Father - Son relationship that is so problematic.

We talked about this a little back in John chapter 5, but let’s refresh on this point.

Back in chapter 5 they were trying to pin him down (once again) by asking him directly, “Are you saying God is your father?” If yes, then you are saying you are equal with God. Now in our ears that’s a pretty big jump. If I say I am the son of Dale (my father), you don’t hear me saying, I am equal with my father. And the reason you don’t hear that is because that’s not what it means in our culture.

But in a Jewish context, being a son meant more than being genetically connected; it’s fair to say that might even be the secondary idea. Now to illustrate this, in the Jewish culture, when a male child was born, they would not say, “congratulations, here’s your son.” They would say, congratulations, here’s your child. He did not become a son until when? Until his bar mitzvah. At bar mitzvah the boy became a man and then he was officially his son. And the idea is that after his bar mitzvah he became equal with the father. He had that full standing of equality as a man. So when you read Son of God, it’s not talking about progeny. It’s talking about equality. This concept of EQUALITY is behind a lot of the idioms we have in the NT. The Bible talks about Judas as the son of perdition. He’s not literally born of a person named perdition. He’s one with perdition. He’s one with evil. James and John were called sons of thunder. They are one with thunder. So that’s what is meant by that title.

So to say you are the son of God is blasphemous. You are one with God. Now Jesus is going to challenge this association they are making between using the term son of God and blaspheme by quoting from Psalm 82.

So we are going to need to jump over to Psalm 82 in order to understand this more fully. Now here’s how the Psalm begins.

Now the immediate interpretive question that jumps out when you read the text is “who are these gods mentioned in verse 1?” Now you have two basic interpretive options. Some people say these are angelic beings and demons, what the NT describes as principalities and powers in the heavenly places. So you may remember in Job…

The sons of God in Job 1 here clearly refer to angelic beings and even Satan himself. So that’s the first view. The second view is that this is actually a reference to human rulers. In the ANE the rulers of the world were almost always seen as being divine. So perhaps ‘sons of God’ could be a reference to human kings. So that’s the second view. Now it doesn’t matter what view you take in order to understand Jesus’ reasoning.

Either way, God is pictured as sitting among these so-called gods, these heavenly beings or these human rulers and saying, “We are going to have a court trial.”

And what is the subject of the trial? Injustice. God speaks and says, “How long will you judge unjustly and favor the wicked?” These rulers, whether they are human rulers or angelic rulers, are using their power to back the injustices of the world. They are using their power to actually create ON PURPOSE social injustice.

And God is about to pronounce judgment on them for this. So in verse three God begins to speak to this assembly of ‘gods.’ Here’s what you should be doing.

3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the rights of the afflicted and the destitute. 4 Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

And he pictures these oppressed people as wandering around in darkness.

5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

And then after that incriminating judgment comes the part that Jesus quotes in our passage in John 10.

I said, You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; 7 nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.

So the Psalmist is saying, even though you have this very exalted status as ‘gods’ whether that be human kings or heavenly powers because of your sin, you are about to come crashing down because you have misused your authority and power. So that’s Psalm 82

How is Jesus using this? Here’s the first thing to say. Jesus isn’t trying to write a commentary on the Psalm here. He’s not trying to explain any deep meaning here.

He’s just extracting from Psalm 82 one simple point that relates to the charge against him. They want to stone him because he claims to be the Son of God and for them that is sufficient evidence of blasphemy. Jesus uses Psalm 82 to say, “Your reasoning doesn’t make sense. If you are going to charge me with blasphemy, at least do it in a way that is consistent with the Scriptures.”

And he shows this inconsistency by calling attention to the fact that in the Psalms the very term “sons of God” is used for beings less than God.

And nobody accuses the psalmist of blasphemy? If the Psalmist can use ‘son of God’ to refer to Satan or to angels or to human kings, why can’t I?

Now Jesus is NOT arguing that he is merely a human king or merely an angelic being like the ‘gods’ of Psalm 82. It’s really key to notice that he doesn’t EQUATE himself with the beings of Psalm 82.

In fact, notice he actually sets himself above them. Notice how absolutely perfectly he words it in verse 36, “Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming?’” “I am claiming to be the one who God sent into the world. That’s the claim. But how can you say that this is blasphemous on the basis of my usage of the term ‘son of God’? I’m not backing down an inch on the claim But you can’t charge me with blaspheme because I used that title. You’ll have to come up with something better than that.”

Here’s a way to say it:

He doesn’t defuse the situation by reducing his claim to deity;
He defuses the situation by expanding the term Son of God so that his enemies have to find another route for the blaspheme charge to stick.

So after defusing the charge of blaspheme,

Essentially what he is saying here is this: You have charged me with blasphemy. The definition of blasphemy is where a man claims to be God. I am claiming to be God. So the only way that this cannot be blasphemy is if I am actually God.

Make your choice. Now here’s where all of John chapter 10 is headed. Make a choice. And make a choice based on the EVIDENCE.

They saw Jesus perform miracles. Jesus says, "Fine, I realize my words are hard to believe. I’ll give you that. That’s completely understandable. That’s why you have been mercifully given miracles. The miracles authenticate the claims. If you don’t believe the claims, believe the miracles that point to the claims.

Now, you might be saying, “I wish we had miracles today, so that I could believe.”

Listen, I think what science has revealed about the created order in the past 100 years has revealed a world of such stunning complexity and design that in terms of the quality of evidence, it’s on par with the miracles of Jesus’ day. Anyone who cares to investigate the issue will bump up against a world so staggering in complexity, so marvelously designed that your mind will hurt to try to even conceive of it. Let me just give you one of my favorites:

Now I’m not a scientist by any means, but I love this stuff because I can appreciate complexity and design when I see it.

So you are likely familiar with the DNA double Helix. Every time a cell divides in your body every base pair in that double Helix, all 3 billion of them, has to be copied and there’s a machine designed to do that. So this is an accurate representation of the actual DNA replication machine that’s occurring right now inside all of our bodies.

So it’s like a production line where the double helix chain of nucleotides unfolds, from the left-hand side and it pulls apart the structure like a zipper and makes an exact copy. So DNA comes in and hits the blue, doughnut-shaped structure and it’s ripped apart into its two strands. One strand can be copied directly, and you can see these things spooling off to the bottom there. But things aren’t so simple for the other strand because it must be copied backwards. So it’s thrown out repeatedly in these loops and copied one section at a time, creating two new DNA molecules. Of course all along you have cellular proofreading and error-checking going on to ensure that no mistakes are made. Now you have billions of these machines right now working away inside you, copying your DNA with exquisite fidelity. It’s an accurate representation, and it’s pretty much at the correct speed for what is occurring inside you.

This information is then used to build every mechanism at work inside your body. Does that not boggle your mind? And that’s just one of the many, many processes that are at work inside your cells right now.

All of which are so complicated and so precise it defies any naturalistic explanation. Now if you want to get lost in this, here’s a page you can go to.

The process synthesizing ATP will blow your mind (5 star review)
The electron transport chain
Muscle structure and function

Listen, this week we were making some changes to our computer in the back and one little, tiny chip fell off the motherboard of the computer. I could barely even see it. And guess what? The entire computer stopped working. The whole thing shut down. Why, because it’s all designed to work together. The same is true for every biological mechanism at work in all life on earth. The smallest corruption of data, the slightest alteration and the entire organism ceases to exist.

I think if Jesus were here right now he’d say, "If you don’t believe me, then believe the works. Look at the created order and marvel. Look at the design. Look at the created order and just marvel. What we experience today is a willful ignorance, a willful unbelief that parallels and maybe even rivals the unbelief in Jesus’ day.

Now by the way, when it speaks of Jesus crossing the Jordan, that detail is included to let you know he crossed into a different political jurisdiction. He’s moving around very wisely, very intelligently avoiding trouble.

Now speaking about some hardening their heart to Jesus and others opening their heart wide, there could not be a more current example of this than our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan.

This is a modern day example of this. You have some who have read the same words you are reading and have bowed the knee and confessed Jesus as Lord and it all resolves in worship.

And then you have others who refuse to confess Jesus as God and will literally murder others who do. The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. The human heart does not change.
announcements
I want to close this morning by praying for our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan and many of the neighboring countries.

I struggled to know what information to present this morning in this regard since it’s so hard to find accurate information. In these early stages, the best information comes from those whose eyes are on the ground. Fortunately we have a connection.

Tim Carns who attends our church here and preached a few weeks ago trains leaders internationally and works with several pastors in the region, one man in particular who lives in lahor, Pakistan which closely neighbors Afganistan regularly conducts ministry there and sent out an update to Time.

I want to share and use it as a springboard for a corporate time of prayer:

Listen, our world needs Jesus. What is going on in Afghanistan is a stark reminder, it’s not any more serious than what is going on with your next door neighbor. They need Jesus too. Bring a friend to church. Help your friends see Jesus.