I and the Father Are One, Part 3

I and the Father are one. He is claiming to be the divine Savior, God of very God. I search a major Internet bookseller for the word Jesus.

You'll come across literally thousands of titles. Yet many of those books raise questions, but give no answers. Or worse, they cast page after page of doubt on who Jesus is and what he taught. To truly understand who Jesus is, you have to turn to the pages of God's unchanging Word. John MacArthur takes you there today on Grace to You, in a study that will strengthen your faith if you are a Christian, and challenge your beliefs and give you hope if you're not. It's all about rediscovering the Christ of Scripture.

With that, here's the lesson. Open your Bible, if you will, to the tenth chapter of John's gospel. We're looking at John 10, verses 22 to 42. Let me read it to you, starting in verse 22. At that time, the feast of the dedication took place at Jerusalem.

It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon. The Jews then gathered around him and were saying to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ or the Messiah, tell us plainly. Jesus answered to them, I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father's name, these testify of Me, but you do not believe, because you're not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give eternal life to them, 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 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. 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? 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.' 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. 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." This is the final public declaration by the Lord Jesus of His deity. This is also the final invitation in the temple, in the face of the Jewish leaders, before He leaves for three months of isolation across the Jordan with His disciples and those who came to Him there, as noted at the end of the chapter. As far as John's gospel is concerned, here is John's final record of Christ declaring Himself to be God and calling on people to believe.

He's doing it at the Feast of Dedication, which was their celebration of the great Maccabean revolt that threw out Antiochus and the Syrian invaders in the period between the testaments the Jews today celebrated under the name Hanukkah. It was in that event in the winter that Jesus declared this final declaration of His deity in the temple to the Jewish leaders, and the people gathered there for celebration of this great feast. And as I said, it becomes for John the final invitation, as at the end, Jesus says, believe in Me, believe in Me. Since the beginning of the gospel of John, the same emphasis has been made. Jesus is God.

That's how it started. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. That is John's point in this gospel, as he says at the end. These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name, eternal life. Believing that Jesus is God is necessary for eternal life.

If you do not believe that, you will enter into eternal death and the punishment of everlasting torment in hell. That is the message of the gospel. That's the message of the New Testament. He is not a noble teacher only. He is not a religious leader only. He's not a highly moral man.

He's not someone with unusual wisdom alone, although all of those things are true. He is God, and anything less than that is blasphemy against Him, against Him. Now it needs to be stated that the Jews had made a different conclusion. It isn't that they, by this time, with only three months to go before His death and resurrection, it isn't by this time that they were still in process. No, they had made their decision long before this, months before this, and it's recorded when Jesus was still in Galilee. You remember in chapter 12, they rendered their final verdict on Jesus. They said He does what He does by the power of Beelzebul.

They couldn't explain His works, His miracles as natural or human, so they knew there was a supernatural power behind Him. They then declared that it was Satan, that His power came from hell, that He was demonic at the highest level, that He was literally indwelt by Satan himself. That was their fixed conclusion. And because it was a fixed conclusion, Jesus said, you will not be forgiven.

There's no way out of that. If that's your final verdict, there's no possibility of salvation. And in a very interesting transition, the end of chapter 12 in Matthew records that He declared them beyond salvation because they'd made a final conclusion that He was satanic. And starting immediately in chapter 13, He began to speak in parables.

Now, I just want to make a point for you. There is an assumption today that Jesus spoke in parables to make things clear to unbelievers. In fact, you hear people say, we need to talk in parables. We need to be storytellers like Jesus. We need to get away from doctrine and propositional truth and we need to be storytellers.

This is just rampant, even among evangelicals. And I want to make something very clear. Jesus did not speak in parables in order to make things clear to unbelievers. He spoke in parables as a judgment so they would not understand. This was a judgment.

It was a judgment tempered with mercy. He said, hearing they will not hear as prophesied by Isaiah 6, seeing they will not see and they will not understand. That's why I'm talking in parables. But He said to His disciples, to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom.

And how did they know them? He explained the parables to the disciples. Mark actually says from that point onward, He spoke only in parables. That was a judgment.

That was a judgment. So we are at that point and we've been at that point for a long time with the Jews, the Jewish leaders, Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes. We've been there for a long time, for many months. But there's even grace in this final session before Jesus disappears for three months in that one last time in His public ministry, before His Passion Week, He calls on them to believe. So we've been looking at this encounter.

There's a lot here. The first thing we saw here, there are five scenes that unfold, was the confrontation in verses 22 to 24 where the people gather around the Jews. That phrase by John refers most often to the leaders, and then the people are with them as well, their followers.

And, of course, there were tens of thousands of them gathered at the feast in the temple at that time. And they ask the question, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you're the Messiah, tell us plainly. Well, He's told them again and again and again and again, and He's told them so clearly that He's not only the Messiah, He's also told them that He is God, and because up to this point they've tried to stone Him three times since chapter 5. So He's told them.

This is a hypocritical thing. The only reason they ask the question is to expose Him to saying something blasphemous so that they can stone Him on the spot. If you're the Messiah, tell us plainly. Jesus answers in verse 25, and we go to the claim. He reiterates the claim, I told you, you do not believe. You do not believe, even though the works that I do in My Father's name, these testify of Me, but you do not believe. We spend a lot of time talking about that, about the human responsibility and salvation to believe.

There's also a divine side. Verse 26, you are not of My sheep. Verse 27, My sheep hear My voice. I know them. They follow Me. I give eternal life to them. They will never perish. No one will snatch them out of My hand. And He gives the divine side.

You don't believe, and you're responsible for that unbelief. But then on the other hand, mysteriously, you are not My sheep. If you were My sheep chosen by the Father, you would hear My voice. You would follow Me. I would receive you. I would protect you.

You would never perish. No one would ever snatch you out of My hand, and no one would ever snatch you out of the Father's hand, verse 29. And then He sums it up by saying, I and the Father are one. In other words, we are one in this divine operation of redemption. I am involved in redemption in the salvation of God's chosen sheep at the same level as God Himself. He is claiming to be the divine Savior, the divine Redeemer, God of very God. I and the Father are one. And of course, their response, as we saw last time, they picked up stones again to stone Him. Temple was always under construction, plenty of stones, and they grabbed their stones for the fourth time that John records in the last few chapters, ready to stone Him for claiming to be one with God, in essence, and the work of salvation. I call people to salvation.

I draw people to Myself. I give eternal life to them. You remember back in chapter 5, He says, as the Father has life in Himself, so the Son has life in Himself. That's God. Whoever does not receive life is God. Whoever is the source of life that everything that lives receives from is God.

And when Jesus says, I give eternal life, He is saying, I am the source of life, therefore the eternal God. They didn't mistake His claims. They knew He was claiming deity. They knew He was claiming to be equal with God. And so, immediately, we go from His claim at the end of verse 31, they pick up stones. Then in verse 32 comes their charge against Him, verses 32 and 33.

This is the blasphemy section. Jesus answered them, verse 32, stopping them in their tracks with the stones in their hands. They pick them up. They're holding them. They're ready to knock them over and crush out His life in a furious hail of rocks. I showed you many good works from the Father, for which of them are you stoning Me?

The majestic calm here is really amazing, unflinching, unruffled. He stops them dead in their violent tracks. Not surprising because He evacuated the temple at the beginning of His ministry.

He'll do it at the end, and it was full of tens of thousands of people who fled as fast as they could, simply at the threat that He posed. When they came to arrest Him, the temple police came back without Him, and they said, well, why don't you have Him? And they said, never a man spoke like this man. Just His words stopped the action. And as violent as they were, as out of control as their anger was, He stopped them with His words. Their arms are lowered, apparently, in verse 33, because they speak. They say, for a good work, we do not stone you, but for blasphemy. And because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God.

Just complete calm, subdued the violence. His statement is sensible, reasonable, rational. I showed you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you stoning Me?

From the Father is the key phrase. So for which of the good work from the Father do you stone Me? This just stops them.

They have an answer. They said, 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're stoning you for blasphemy. And that, based on the Mosaic law, that a blasphemer was to be stoned. They thought they were carrying out their righteous duty, you being a man.

Let me just make the point. There are people who have denied the humanity of Christ, who have said that He was some kind of a phantom. In their minds, clearly, He was a man. This was not debatable.

This was not open to question. Everyone knew He was a man. 1 John says, if you deny that the Son of God, the Messiah, has come in the flesh, you're judged by God. He is a man. He was born the way men are born.

He lived as a child and a young man and fully human in every sense. So you are a blasphemer because you being a man, which is not in question, make yourself out to be God, which in their minds is the ultimate and extreme blasphemy. So they feel their religious duty to crush out His life at that very moment, where the stones may be still in their hands. But for whatever reason, no stone is thrown, and it has to be the very divine restraint imposed on them by the Son of God Himself. He causes them to have to think, and He does a really interesting thing with their own law. Look at verse 34. Let's be rational. Stop the violence.

Let's be rational. 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? This is just such an interesting thing. He says, could you just be objective for a minute? Can you just think with me for a moment?

Can you set aside your fury, the emotion, the hate? Stop and consider the Old Testament. Why are you so inflamed that I am calling myself God, when in your own Scripture men are called gods?

Wow. I mean, this shows the mental alacrity of Jesus, which would be unparalleled in any human being who ever lived, to scour in an instant the Old Testament and pluck out an obscure section, not even from the law and the prophets, but the Psalms. Go back to Psalm 82, because that's what He quoted. Psalm 82. And Psalm 82 is a judgment by God on the rulers of Israel. Verse 1, God takes His stand in His own congregation.

God shows up in Israel, and He's not happy. He judges in the midst of the rulers. So we're talking about rulers, and by the way, rulers were judges. That's essentially what they did. They were judges.

They adjudicated issues, solved problems. It says to the judges, how long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? You're corrupt. You are partial to the wicked.

Because of your corruption, you have an affinity for the corrupt. Vindicate the weak and fatherless. You're supposed to be their protectors. Do justice to the afflicted and the destitute, the plaintiffs. Rescue the weak and the needy, implied from the oppression. Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.

That's what you're supposed to do. But they do not know, nor do they understand. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. Listen, everything that holds together society is rattling loose because there's no justice. Verse 6, I said, you are gods and all of you are sons of the Most High. What does He mean? He means, look, small g, you are gods because you are the representatives of the one true God. You are God's agents in the world. You are the sons of the Most High.

He has delegated authority to you and you receive His Word. That's what it says over in John 10. If He called them gods, to whom the Word of God came.

They were the ones who were to teach and apply and uphold the Word of God. Nevertheless, you will die like men. And there's some irony and some sarcasm in use of gods. He may be saying, you think you are gods.

You think you are more than you really are. But you will die like men and fall like any one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth for it is you who possess the nations. In the Old Testament, Jesus says, corrupt judges were called gods.

Maybe sarcastically, maybe ironically, but the Word was used for them because they received the Word of God, and they were the instruments of God and the agents of God. And there's a sense in which that's true with a small g. Well, if those corrupt judges could be called gods, if He called them gods, God Himself in Scripture called them gods to whom the Word of God came, do you say of Him whom the Father set apart and sent into the world, you are blaspheming because I said I am the Son of God? You see the analogy. Take a comparison, He says. If I do not the works of My Father, don't 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. This is an amazing argument. He goes right into the Old Testament to make His case.

Certainly, if the term gods could be applied to corrupt rulers, it's not a stretch for the uncorruptible, perfect, sinless, righteous Son of God to be called God. Think what you're doing before you start throwing stones. Think what you're doing. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. His current study is looking at critical truths about Jesus that you may never have heard, or maybe you've simply forgotten them. It's titled, Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture. Now John, today you showed how brilliantly Jesus made use of the Scriptures to assert His deity. And of course, it was the Old Testament that Jesus quoted, which was the only Scripture that existed while He was here. So I'm wondering, can Christians fully know and understand Christ if they don't have a deep grasp of the Old Testament?

How important is the Old Testament for knowing and loving Christ? Well, I think the best way to approach that is to say that when you come into the Old Testament, you don't get past the third chapter of the first book of Genesis before all of a sudden you are confronted with the fact that there's going to be a man who's going to come into the world and crush Satan's head. And we're still in the third chapter of Genesis. It's not long in Genesis before you find out that Abraham is about to kill his son, and God stops him and provides a lamb.

And you see a picture of God providing a substitute for a human sacrifice. And all of those realities just continue through the whole of the Old Testament, and they get more refined and refined until you get into the prophets and they get specific, like Isaiah 53, details about Christ's life. So you can know about Christ from the New Testament, and clearly that's where the full revelation of God in Christ is given. But you cannot know the reality and truth of the fullness of Christ unless you know how he was presented in the Old Testament.

It fills up the picture completely. So you can have the Old Testament, and you wouldn't have the full revelation of God, because God has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son. That's the clearest revelation of God. But the Old Testament is in perfect accord and perfect harmony, and it predicts all the things that were true of Christ and everything that he fulfilled. One of the reasons that I'm talking about this today is to remind you about the MacArthur Study Bible. All of this that I've said to you just in the last few minutes is in the footnotes of the MacArthur Study Bible. If you have a study Bible, you can go to the Old Testament, every passage that relates to Christ, and I'll point that out to you and help you to understand exactly how it does connect with Christ. So if you don't have a MacArthur Study Bible, New American Standard, New King James, ESV, Spanish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, lots of different versions, affordably priced and available from grace to you. Tom Smith Right, and whenever you come across a verse and wonder, what does that mean? Well, that's where these footnotes come in, and they cover nearly every verse. To help you get a fuller picture of Christ, and to know all of Scripture better, order a MacArthur Study Bible today.

You can call us toll free at 800-55-GRACE, or go online to GTY.org. In addition to the 25,000 footnotes, the MacArthur Study Bible also comes with dozens of maps and charts, detailed introductions to each book, thousands of cross-references. It's an all-in-one resource for unlocking the meaning of God's word page after page. Again, to get the MacArthur Study Bible, visit GTY.org, or call us at 800-55-GRACE. And when you get in touch, make sure to let us know how you're listening, whether it's on your local radio station, online, through the Grace To You app. Of course, we'd also love to hear how John's teaching has encouraged you. Perhaps you're better equipped to tell others about Jesus Christ because of today's lesson. If God is using this broadcast in your life, please let us know. Send us an email at letters at GTY.org, or you can mail a letter to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day, and be here tomorrow when John wraps up his study, Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on God's one verse at a time, on Grace To You.