John 10:22-42

Thank you, music ministers.

If you have your Bibles, turn with me to the 10th

chapter of the

Gospel of John.

Definitely a Johannian kind of week

for me, hence we are back,

in our verse by verse exposition of John.

And for those of you who were here in Sunday school.

You're going to hear some of the same exact points, again, that you

heard from Ed this morning.

I didn't plan it that way.

That works.

It won't hurt you to hear it again.

Because it's important points.

I don't know if you remember this, you may or may not.

I lost a sermon in my computer, from

John, verses 22 24,

the whole thing, but we're going to cover those verses

today anyway, and that's what review

in the next sermon is always good.

I can take that material and make it work.

But we're actually going to take two sermons to

cover from verses 22 to 42,

and the end of this 10th chapter of John, and

the first of that will be today.

Because of the content, I'm

going to be moving all around in these verses, but,

as always, for sure, we're going to cover every single verse.

This tenth chapter is, really,

a turning point in the Gospel of John.

At the end of this chapter, we're

going to see that Jesus goes away for about three

months.

He spends time just one on one with the disciples.

Then he comes back in chapter 11.

He raises Lazarus from the dead, and

then he has his triumphal entry in chapter 12.

Then, chapters 13 to

16, in John, cover one night, in

the upper room, then chapter 17,

as you know, is the incredible high priestly prayer

of Jesus with the Father.

And then you get to chapter 18, and

Jesus has his arrest, followed by his death, and his resurrection.

So that's kind of where we are in the whole

panoply of the ministry of Jesus in John.

And chapter 10 is really what this is, is the

last account that John

gives of Jesus' public ministry.

And it's critical.

Because John wants to

make very sure that

nothing is left unclear

in terms of the claims of Christ.

This is important.

Remember the purpose statement that John gave us way back at the beginning of John?

These things have been written so that you may believe that

Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and

that believing you may have life in his name.

That's the whole reason John wrote, John.

OK?

All through this gospel that we

are now studying for the second time, John has

been amassing evidence to

support that purpose statement.

He wants to leave no mistake as

to the claim, the primary claim,

that Christ made, because it is the

most incredible claim that

any human being could ever,

possibly, make the

claim,

I am God.

And in this 10th chapter, we

probably get the clearest, most straightforward

example of that in verse 30.

Look at it.

where Jesus says, I, and the father, are one.

And then verse 31 to 33, the Jews picked

up stones, to stone him,

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, because you, being

a man, make yourself

out to be God.

Now, those verses alone leave

no doubt about

what Jesus was claiming, and what

the Jews clearly understood him to be claiming.

There's no mistaking this.

With any honest reading of those

verses and many others in the Gospel of John, it's

really impossible to twist this around, although many do.

Like all the cults, who do not believe in

the deity of Jesus, who

do not believe or teach that

Jesus Christ is God the Son,

the second person of the Trinity.

They don't teach that right down the street where all the controversy was this past two weeks.

They don't teach that Jesus is God, the son, the

2nd person of the Trinity in the way that the Bible teaches that he is.

It's really crazy.

To hear and to read, Jesus

say, and we just read it, we just heard it,

I and the Father are one.

And then they call him a blasphemer.

Why did they call him that?

Because he made himself out to be

God and then say, but the

Bible doesn't teach that Jesus is God.

Is anybody feeling the

weight of cognitive dissonance with that?

The deity of Jesus is the heart of the matter.

This is the great claim of the gospel.

This is the great claim of the Christian faith that

Jesus, while truly 100%,

man is also truly 100% God

at the same time, and he exists

right now at this moment in his glorified,

resurrected body.

He took the title.

Son of God.

That is a title.

That doesn't mean he's

the son of God, like Trenton, is the son of Philip.

That's not what that means.

It's a title that speaks to the uniqueness

of his personhood as

God within the Trinity.

That's what the title, Son of God, means.

The Bible teaches there is one nature, one

essence, but three distinct persons.

And you've heard me say it.

I will say it again.

Thomas Watson's famous quote.

That's heavenly arithmetic.

You can't do heavenly math with your little p

brain, and neither can I.

God, the Father, God, the Son, God,

the Holy Spirit, any denial of

that is the real blasphemy, of which they were

accusing Jesus on that day.

If you do not hold to

that view exactly, as

I just stated it, then you are not a Christian.

period plumb end of discussion.

If that hurts somebody's feelings.

I can't help them.

I don't invent doctrine.

I just preach it and proclaim it as

it's clearly written in the book.

And I can't imagine how this

issue could be spelled out any clearer than

we find here in John Chapter 10.

Now, as we come to this text, there

are five scenes that we are looking at here

in this last section of chapter 10.

And the first one is found in verse 22.

And it's the scene of confrontation.

Look at verse 22 with me.

It says, at that time, the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem.

This is what the Jews today called

Hanukkah.

It's also known as the Feast of Lights.

It was established during the intertestamental

period when Judas Maccabeus overthrew

Antiochus Epiphanes

and those pagan invaders, they

took back the temple, and they reestablished worship there.

That's what the feast is celebrating.

In verse 23, it says, look at it, it

was winter, and Jesus was walking in

the portico of Solomon.

Now, what was that?

That was what was left of

the massive retaining wall of the Temple

of Solomon, which was destroyed

in 568 BC.

And what they did, the retaining wall

that was left from the old temple, they took and

put a half roof coming off of it, and

then there were large columns to support it.

So it was called the portico of Solomon,

and then verse 24.

It says, the Jews then gathered around him.

And we're saying to him, How

long will you keep us in suspense?

If you are the Christ,

Tell us plainly.

This is the confrontation, which

has one goal in mind.

And that goal is not to get information.

Rather, it was to get a public declaration

that they could twist and manipulate,

to incite the people, so that

they could justify their plan of killing Jesus.

It's just dripping with sarcasm.

Look at it.

How long will you keep us in suspense?

If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.

Now, they have been told.

Over and over and over again who Jesus is.

This is pure deceitfulness on their part.

And then after the confrontation, we come next to

the claim, verse 25, Jesus

answered, I told you.

And you do not believe.

I already told you.

How many times have I told you?

Over and over and over again.

And Jesus then, again, validates

his claim in the same way that he has

been doing all along, I told

you, and you do not believe,

that's the problem.

And then he says, next, the

works that I do in my father's name.

These testify of me.

The issue, again, was very simple.

You do not believe.

That's what everything comes down to.

All through this gospel, starting in chapter one,

there is a call for people to believe.

They're even one to believe.

Remember, Jesus said, therefore, I said to you that you will die in your sins,

for unless you believe that I am he,

you will die in your sins.

What a warning.

And we also know what these Jewish leaders believed about Jesus.

I made reference to it in my remarks at Salem Baptist last Sunday night.

He does what he does by the power of Satan.

Remember they said that?

He's demonic.

They also said he's insane.

And they did everything they could to

try and convince people of that.

They believe the wrong things about

Jesus, just as many people today, believe

the wrong things about Jesus, but

you can't get around the biblical facts, that

it is a command to believe the

gospel, repent and believe the gospel,

lest you perish.

It's not a suggestion.

Oh, I hope he comes.

It's a command.

And that reality.

Hmm, is what makes the next verse, and

the theology in the next verse, so

very extraordinary.

Look at verse 26.

Feel the weight of this.

Jesus said, But you do not believe, and

then he says next, because you

are not of my sheep.

That folks, is a massive statement.

Don't just whiz by that.

That's a massive theological statement.

This brings the issue of believing all

the way up the chain to the divine side.

And we just looked at the human side.

You do not believe.

And, you are fully

culpable for that unbelief.

And you will be held responsible

eternally for that unbelief.

But, at the same time, all

the way up the ladder to the divine side,

you don't believe, because

you are not of my sheep.

This is a stunning statement.

You don't believe because you're not one of my own.

You don't belong to me.

Jesus could not be more straightforward or

clear about this.

Remember earlier, look in John chapter 10, verse 14.

Remember, he said, I am the good shepherd,

and I know my own, and my

own, no me.

And how do we know that this group that

he's talking to are not his sheep,

well, all the way back in chapter 8, verse 43.

You remember what he said?

Why do you not understand what I am saying?

It is because you cannot hear my word.

You can't hear me.

You don't know my voice.

Why, Jesus?

Why didn't they know your voice?

Verse 44, you are of your father the devil.

And you want to do the desires of your father.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand

in the truth, because there's no truth in him.

Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature,

for he is a liar and the father of lies.

And then verse 47.

He who is of God.

Here's the words of God.

For this reason, you do not hear them because

you are not a God.

Extraordinary.

There's another way to say, you are not my sheep.

This is really staggering to contemplate what Jesus is saying here.

The divine side of salvation.

We started to see this sovereign purpose of God and salvation with Nicodemus.

Remember back in John chapter 3.

And Jesus explained to Nicodemus that, You want to enter the kingdom?

Well, Nicodemus, that requires a supernatural work.

A heavenly miracle has to happen here, Nicodemus.

Heaven has to come down.

to make that happen.

You can't even see the kingdom.

much less intorate, unless you've been born again.

And he likened that reality to a new birth, right?

New creation, nobody can create himself.

And the question arises, how does that happen?

Well, without any ambiguity

whatsoever.

Remember what Jesus went on to tell Nicodemus, say, hey, the spirits like the wind.

He blows and he comes as he wills.

It's not at your discretion.

It's at his discretion.

Jesus was probably most straightforward

in John 6, as we study.

No one can.

Amen.

No one has the ability to come to me unless

the father who sent me draws him.

No one can.

No one has the ability to come to me unless

it has been granted by the Father.

Amen.

How else do you read that?

Right.

It's not ever gonna happen.

in a person's life unless God moves first.

Explain to me any other explanation of what Jesus just said.

And we keep coming back.

to these profound realities as

we study this Bible.

You want to know why we keep coming back to this topic?

Because it's all over the Bible.

Because this is clearly, church, something that

God wants us to understand, or it wouldn't be everywhere.

Now, let's get our bearing straight.

Okay?

Every person, every human being,

has an absolute responsibility to

repent, and believe, or perish, and

at the same time, we

talked about it in Sunday school this morning.

God chooses his sheep.

He initiates.

He initiates the drawing, the

calling, the regenerating, and he even grants

the gifts of repentance and faith.

They're gifts.

Look it up.

And again, every time

we come to this issue, I

have to give you a very uncomfortable truth to our human reasoning.

We cannot harmonize these two

truths with our human reasoning.

They don't harmonize with human thinking.

God chooses some, not all, yet all are responsible.

Can you harmonize that in your brain?

But guess what?

They do harmonize perfectly in the mind of God.

And here is the one thing that I will not do for the

rest of my days as a preacher.

I will not destroy either of

these truths by coming up with

some kind of out of the box, humanly divine,

devised, middle ground tunnel of time theory,

like Ed talked about this morning.

I'm not going to do that.

It's not in the Bible.

They're both taught in scripture.

They're both true.

And I look at these two things.

Just like I do every other doctrine in scripture.

Truth, truth.

Both truths.

Now, if you were here, I'm going to give you the classic

example.

In case you've never heard it, there might be somebody in here who never heard it.

I don't know.

And gave it this morning, if you were here, you're going to hear it again.

Because it's the most stunning examples that we have.

Think about this.

The people.

who beat Jesus.

Think about those Roman soldiers.

that punch Jesus in the face.

tore his back to shreds with the cat of 9 tails.

Just for a second, think about being

the human beings that did the physical beating,

and then being in hell, now knowing perfectly who Jesus is.

And knowing forever that you did that to the king.

Anyway.

Were they responsible for what they did?

You can be sure that they

were judged accordingly by God, right?

Well, let's look at Acts 427.

Acts 427 tells us who

all the human culprits were at the cross.

Look at it.

For truly, in this city, that

were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus,

whom you anointed, now here they come, both Herod,

and Punchus Pilate, along with the Gentiles,

and the peoples of Israel.

There they are.

Right?

All the suspects.

Completely guilty.

And held absolutely responsible,

as Ed said this morning, for the most heinous crime in human history.

Far above all other crimes, when God became a man,

we murdered him on the cross.

There's no crime greater than that.

You got that?

You got all the culprits.

You got the suspects down?

All responsible?

Next verse.

28.

To do, whatever,

your hand, and your purpose, predestined

to occur.

Whose hand?

God's hand.

Whose purpose?

God's purpose.

Well, wait a minute.

Well, if God predestined that, did they happen?

What about them?

How could they be responsible?

Don't try to do that with your human reasoning.

That's where you're messing up.

That's where people who don't get this straight mess up.

Want another one?

I'll give you another one.

Acts 223.

Peter's preaching.

He's addressing the men of Israel, and he's speaking of Jesus.

He said, this man.

Delivered over by the predetermined plan,

and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to across.

by the hands of godless men and put him to death.

It's right there.

You going skip that?

because it makes you uncomfortable.

You're going to try to come up with some kind of tunnel of time.

You put him to death.

You are responsible.

You will be held accountable.

But at the same time, God ordained it before the universe existed.

Both true.

Both those things are true.

And I believe that one day, we

will harmonize those two things by God's grace

just like God does.

Now, but not in this lifetime.

And guess what?

I'm okay with that.

If you understand the clear meaning of the words in scripture

on this subject, you believe them

for what they say, and guess what?

You don't have any choice but to be okay with it.

Because it's the truth.

And at the same time, to

me, it's simple, just stay in your lane.

Don't try to be in God's lane.

Stay in your lane, of calling people to repent and believe the gospel.

Isn't that simple, right?

And the bonus for all of us who understand this biblically is,

as we call, as we sow the gospel C, we

can black up to a place of real comfort.

in the sovereign purposes of God, realizing that gang.

I don't know who he's going to call.

He calls who he wills.

And I also know this.

All that he calls will absolutely come 100% guaranteed.

I lose none of them, Jesus says in John 6.

And I really raise them up at the last day.

Now, if you can think back and remember, this reality

is, this is even where Jesus went for comfort.

Remember, I taught you that, because at that point

in John's gospel, and in Jesus' ministry,

many of the disciples left, and they walked away.

Why?

Well, his words got too hard for them to deal with, and where does he go?

He goes straight to those sovereignty verses in John 6 for comfort.

Remember the context there?

The rejection of the people after all those amazing miracles

are just weighing heavily on Jesus, and he turns

right around as they walk away, and he says, well, no one can come.

unless the father draws.

Now, let's move ahead in John 10.

These are some very comforting.

Very profound verses.

Look at verses 27 to 29.

Let's read that.

Jesus says, 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 mean, that's just an explosion of security for

every believer right there.

It's like a nuclear bomb of eternal security.

It's so airtight.

It's so absolute.

There's just no escaping the reality of

that chain of divine and sovereign

intention here in salvation for every Christian.

And again, as far as Jesus goes.

In his earthly ministry, he's almost at the end of the line here.

His three years are almost done.

Many have rejected him.

The religious leaders have said, You are demonic.

You are out of your mind.

And he says, Well, if you don't believe, you will die in your sins.

And then he comes back to his own place of comfort here and

says, You don't believe because you're not of my sheep.

My sheep, here, my boys.

And they follow me.

That's what they do.

my sheep do.

And I give them eternal life, and they'll never perish, and no one

will ever snatch them out of my hand or my father's hand.

This is essentially the grand overview

of the sovereignty of God and salvation.

God chooses, God draws.

God holds.

God raises, and nobody is ever lost in the process, ever.

This is where Jesus found encouragement.

If one is chosen to be a

sheep, if one is

designed to be a love gift from

the Father to the Son to

worship and serve Him forever in eternal

glory, then they are eternally secure in that choice.

Guess what eternal life is?

Eternal.

I am always amazed.

At the people who look at the same Bible that I

do, and come away with this doctrine that

you can lose your salvation.

I'm just amazed.

What are you reading?

Jesus didn't say?

And I give them temporary life based on how they behave.

He didn't say, I give them potentially eternal life.

It's up to them.

He said eternal life.

Sweet, look, verse 27, I give eternal

life to them, and just in case anybody

is confused about that.

He says next, and they will never perish.

That's why I don't get the Lose your salvation crowd.

I don't get it.

I've told you many times, John MacArthur's quote.

If you could lose your salvation, you would!

So would I.

I guess they... base it

on some kind of unknown metric of Christian

life performance, which I have never figured out.

I mean, where's the line?

And if our performance is the standard, we are

toast, Jack.

Toast.

Look at the words.

You have the positive.

I give them eternal life, and

then you have the negative, and they will never perish.

To perish means to be separated

from eternal life into eternal death.

No one will ever be separated from

eternal life, who possesses it, perishing

is clearly, completely out of the

question for one who possesses eternal life.

Your eternal salvation, rest ultimately,

ultimately, on God's eternal decree.

If God chose you.

To live forever, guess what?

You will.

He's in charge of everything, folks.

Everything.

You will never perish.

because God designed salvation that way.

And Jesus goes on.

Because somebody comes up with the idea that

someone, or something,

can come along in your life and somehow

change your status before God.

Jesus wants to make clear, verse 28, and no one

will snatch them out of my hand.

Not only that, 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.

So, man, I mean, if you can come away from

all of that and still believe you can lose your salvation, I don't think I can help you.

I just really can't help you.

I can't come up with clearer words than that.

In fact, if you hold that view, just after reading

verses 28 and 29, think a little more deeply.

You're actually questioning the ability of

Jesus to keep and hold on to his sheep when

you're saying your salvation is not secure.

You are also questioning the ability of

God, the Father's ability.

to hold you and to keep and to hold on to his sheep.

That's just not a very wise position to be in, if you ask me.

We, believers, are God's sheep.

He has ordained Christ to

be our good shepherd.

And his duty is to receive us, to care for us, to

protect us, to feed us, and to suggest that

he cannot fulfill that perfectly, as

all kind of wrong.

And you are real confused about the Christian faith.

Real confused.

And then, of course, we always get them folks.

They want to point to somebody, Oh, remember, Fred?

Man, Fred, he came to church, guns are blazing, man.

He was at church every Sunday.

Then all of a sudden, as every other Sunday, the

next thing you know, we didn't see Fred at all.

And man, he just got busted in a sting, with

about six felonies.

What about Fred?

I thought he was eternally secure.

Really?

Well, look at 1 John 2:19.

That's not a more simpler explanation in the Bible.

I don't know why people have a problem with this.

They went out from us.

Why did they go out?

Why did Fred go back to living like a felon?

But they were not really of us.

For, if they had been of us,

if they had really been of us, they would have remained with

us, but they went out so that it would be

shown that they are not of us.

Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.

But I completely understand the answer, right

there, to this question of why people

fall away.

It's very simple.

They were never saved in the first place.

Isn't that simple?

Faith, whip their lips.

But they didn't possess true, genuine, saving faith.

We are secure because we've been given eternal life.

To say that eternal life ever has an end to

it for anybody is a contradiction in terms and

makes absolute nonsense out of the promise that Jesus made.

And since we didn't do anything to

merit eternal life, guess what?

We can't do anything to forfeit it.

If Jesus says we will never perish, you can

take that straight to the bank.

It'll never happen.

If any of the sheep ever perish eternally

in outer darkness, then guess what?

Jesus lied.

Jesus is a liar, and we're all doomed, if Jesus is a liar.

We're all dead.

If there is one soul who came to Christ, on

his terms of repentance and faith, in this life, and they wind up

missing from heaven, then you could just throw it all into garbage.

God ain't even God, the Bible is just another of the many books

written by men, if that's true.

Notice.

Notice.

Jesus' reference here to both himself

and the Father, too, holding the sheep in their hands.

That demonstrates a perfect harmony

in purpose and power in agreement in

securing the sheep, and that gives

Jesus, just yet another opportunity

to declare who he is.

And next, he does it.

In verse 30, with as much power

and strength and straightforwardness

as he ever did on any other occasion,

in verse 30, next, he says, I and the

Father are one.

Wow.

Can you imagine it?

Imagine their face.

Their faces at that moment.

He just transitions from showing

how he and the Father are one in

securing the redeemed, and now he makes a statement outright,

and it's just truly unmistakable

for people who know how to read.

What he's saying with this is, I and the Father are one.

We have equal sovereignty.

We have equal love for the sheep.

We have equal divine power,

both of us equally, to secure the sheep,

because we are equal, because

we're one in essence.

Later on in John 17, 10.

Jesus is praying.

Look at it, he says to the Father.

All things that are mine are yours.

And yours are mine, all things.

Nobody else can say that.

But Jesus, all the sheep that belong to the Father belong

to the Son because they are equal in nature, equal

in essence, along with the Holy Spirit in the Trinity,

but I digress.

We don't have time to go to that.

The unity that Christ has

with the Father is a unity of essence that is divine,

eternal, supernatural, and

most of all, holy.

And remember these Jews hearing this, just put

yourself back in that day, on that day.

They are hearing these words, and they are

looking into the face of a Galilean carpenter from Nazareth.

That is just as common as any other man in Israel.

And with such a staggering claim, Jesus,

you would have to have a whole lot of verification

about that kind of claim, right?

Well, they did!

They just had three years of jaw

dropping miracles.

They did have verification.

But they just did not believe.

Oh, Colossians 2, 8.

Paul says, see to it.

that no one takes you captive through philosophy

and empty deception, according

to the tradition of men, according to the

elementary principles of the world,

rather than according to Christ.

Don't be wrong about Jesus.

Worship the right, Jesus.

Don't let any professor, or pundit, or philosopher

confuse you.

That's happening every day in our colleges across America, and has been for quite some time.

And then Paul makes it real clear for everybody in verse 9 and next.

Ray says, about Jesus, for in

him, all the fullness of

deity,

Godhood dwells in bodily form.

Jesus is God.

That is the claim of Christianity.

And that is why when Jesus speaks, he

speaks with such authority.

That's why them guys said that day.

No man never spoke like this, man.

You don't even know.

People in our world today they don't want to hear anybody that speaks with authority.

especially Jesus.

With the standards that he has, to speak the truth,

with authority in our culture, gets you labeled as a

hater, or a lunatic, or a fire

and brimstone preacher.

Amen.

Look next in John 10:31.

After Jesus said, I

and the father were one, that was all

that the Jews could take at that point, verse 31.

The Jews picked up stones again to Stoneham.

I don't know if you remember this, but it was a while back, we talked about this.

They've now descended into the lowest level

of debate and conflict and disagreement.

Remember, there were different levels I took you through.

This is the lowest level.

When you get solo,

in disagreement and debate that you can no

longer make an argument.

You can no longer just make your case,

you just want to resort to violence and kill your opponent.

That's where they are.

Remember back in John 5:18.

For this reason, therefore, the Jews were seeking all the more to

kill him, because he was not only breaking the

Sabbath, but also calling his God his own Father,

making himself equal with God.

There it is again.

And that was months earlier.

I mean, back then they knew exactly what he was claiming.

John 7:1.

After these things, Jesus was walking

in Galilee, for he was unwilling to walk in Judea because the

Jews were seeking to kill him.

John 5, 8, John 8, 58,

right after Jesus said, before Abraham was,

I am, it says this, look, therefore they picked up stones

to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and

went out of the temple.

And now here we are in John 1031.

I said, a 4th attempt.

to kill Jesus.

And there's going to be a subsequent attempt in verse 39.

Now, as you know, the Romans took away from the Jews' capital punishment.

Romans maintained the right to take a life.

So understand in all these instances with all these rocks in

their hands, this was not no legal procedure that was happening here.

This was just anger, hatred.

Boiling over from a religious mob, and

if they could have, they would have killed him right on the spot,

and there never would have been a cross, if

not for the divine hand of Providence, saying, not yet.

Not yet.

Wouldn't have been for that.

Jesus would have been dead long before Good Friday.

Jesus gave us insight into the hostility coming from these

Jews back in John 7.

Jesus is speaking with his brothers, who don't believe verse 6 to 7.

So Jesus said to them, My time is not yet here, but

your time is always opportune.

The world cannot hate you.

Why is that?

Because they were not believers that time.

They belong to the world system.

But look what he says next.

But it hates me.

Why?

Because he offered heaven to him?

Is that why they handed me?

Because he offered them eternal life?

Is that why they hated him?

Well, no, he tells you, well, look next.

Because I testify of it that its deeds are evil.

Let me tell you, that's a direct path to persecution right there.

I wonder if anybody's ever really been persecuted for offering people heaven,

or telling people Jesus loves them and has a wonderful plan for

their life, or Jesus will give you peace and purpose, in your

life, in heaven when you die, oh, that's true.

But if not all you say about Jesus is true,

He probably escapes and persecution.

On the other hand, If you tell people they're sinners.

If you tell people that their law breaking will bring about the

full fury of the wrath of God upon them when they

die, if they don't repent and believe, that'll

bring you some persecution right there.

So we've seen today that the

confrontation is really just a hypocritical inquiry.

Why don't you tell us who you really are, is what they're saying.

But the claim, as they had long known, unmistakable and clear.

And they just react like a crazed mob,

wanting to crush out his life,

but it doesn't happen because

it's not yet his time.

As ordained by God.

And guess what?

He will not be dying on their terms.

Remember, no man takes my life from me.

But I lay it down, he said.

And then next, he moves to confront the

real blasphemers, and we're going

to look at that next time we're in John, but not today.