Thoughts on July 4th, John 10:30 in Context

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is Monday, July 4th, 2022.

And most of you are grilling, or swimming, or boating, or doing something along those lines.

And here I am, sitting in The Dividing Line studio. Why would we do this on July 4th?

Well, partly because there's going to be some, I'm getting a little echo back on me here, but partly because there's going to be some construction around here that's going to make it a little bit difficult for us to use our big studio, for at least a few days anyways.

And I wanted to get in here to be able to use the big board to talk about some stuff about John chapter 10 and things like that.

But yes, it is July 4th. And there are a lot of people who will not celebrate today.

I've never been a big, huge July 4th guy in Phoenix.

It's normally, well, a whole lot hotter than it's going to be today. I've got to admit, we're in some ways making up for 2020 in 2022.

It is sort of bouncing out. It's just not been nearly as hot this summer.

I don't know, we may get taken off of social media for saying that. Doesn't really fit the narrative, but that's just the way it's been.

But a lot of folks are saying, because of Roe v.

Wade, they're not going to celebrate the 4th of July. They're having a childish hissy fit.

And there are people like that. There are a lot of Christians who are saying we should just be rejoicing in our wonderful country today.

And it is a wonderful country in the sense that it has beautiful landscapes, amazing.

There's a book that Doug Wilson's been talking about. I've read about half of it so far. Young author, his name is escaping me at the moment, but who talks about how there just really isn't any place else on Earth that has the resources, transportation, river transportation, just the natural ability to be successful as the

United States does. And so there are lots of things like that that we can indeed be thankful for.

And as we look at, for example, the horrific suffering of the people of North Korea, in Vietnam, in China, in certain

Muslim countries, yeah, we can indeed be very thankful for all these things.

But I simply have to be realistic in light of what has taken place over the past two years, two and a half years almost, and especially over the past couple of weeks.

We know the psalmist said in Psalm 33, we all know this text, blessed is the nation whose

God is Yahweh, the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance. I've told the story before that many years ago here in Phoenix, one of the local television stations, this was before things like cable and stuff like that, on the hour would have blessed is the nation whose

God is the Lord as their call sign, their station identification.

And that's not the case any longer, of course, but at least a lot of older people in the

Phoenix area memorized Psalm 33, 12a without even wanting to try to in that process.

But there is a blessing upon a nation whose God is Yahweh. Notice the assumption. The assumption is every nation has a

God. And you might say, well, that was just back in the primitive world. No, it remains the same today.

Every nation has a God. And that God can be a false deity.

It can be philosophy. It can be military power. It can be money, success, pleasure, sex, drugs.

It can be moral debauchery. But every nation has a God. And if a nation wishes to be blessed by God, then blessed is the nation whose

God is Yahweh, the one true God, the God who is the creator of all things. But we also know in Proverbs 14, 34, righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.

And so on July 4th, as we think about the United States, and I'm sorry if you're watching outside the

United States, just hang with us for a while. I'm not going to be on this subject all that long.

When we consider the United States and we consider the dividedness of our people, there has never been a time in my life when there has been a deeper, more fundamental division.

Divisions, it's not just a single division, unfortunately, that has not gone deeper and has no more threatened the very existence of this nation than we are experiencing right now.

Jesus said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. And we are a house divided, not just in two, but in 30, 40, 50.

The commonalities, a nation has to have some type of fundamental shared worldview to be able to exist as a nation.

And that consensus is long gone in our experience here in the

United States. I'll be honest with you, it would be a lot easier to pretend the past few weeks have not happened.

I'd be able to go along with all the tweets I've seen from people today saying we should be really, you know, upbeat and optimistic and things like that today and just celebrate and things like that.

But that would be something I could do if we had not seen the utter worship of the culture of death from a five -year -old in Arkansas.

Did you see that? A little five -year -old child in Arkansas holding a sign chanting, my body, my choice.

Now, does that child have any idea what they're saying? No, but they are being perverted at a very early age.

So you go from that five -year -old in Arkansas to the senile president of the United States demanding the murder of the unborn be enshrined in law and to overthrow the rules of the

Senate and everything else to get that accomplished. And everything in between.

All the commentators, all of the people saying they're gonna leave the United States, they never do, where are they gonna go?

So it'd be a lot easier if we hadn't seen that kind of stuff. It'd be a lot easier to not address these things had we not stared in horror at the public debauchery and celebration of sexual perversity that is the month of June in the

United States. And the pride marches, how long have pride marches been going on?

A long time. But for a lot of us, they happened in San Francisco. Right?

Now they're everywhere. They're in all through the

Bible Belt. Main streets shut down and people flaunting their hatred of God's law, flaunting their sexual perversity in various stages of nudity or just full on nudity.

And parents who bring their children to observe these things and now the argument literally being made throughout our media that this is a good thing.

What was utterly unthinkable only a matter of years ago has already transitioned into this is the good, you're a hater if you say there's something wrong with this shut up or we will shut you up.

Drag queens are now celebrated. They've become the high priestesses is there's something

I don't know even what they are of self -expression and freedom.

Go ahead and plop your grandchild down on the lap of that barely clothed whatever it is.

Or celebrate to be a good according to our government.

Fatherhood, manhood, mocked and decried. Motherhood profaned.

You can't listen to a news report today without having your moral sensibilities attacked.

I was listening to a report about a woman and it was like being punched in the gut, slapped in the face when it said and her wife commented.

Her wife commented. Well, we have Pete Buttigieg, right?

So you've got his husband. No, we don't have either one. That is an assault upon the meaning of husband and wife.

I will not do it. It is wrong. It is morally wrong. And any nation that celebrates it will not last long upon the face of this earth not because as because God created this world and you can't live that way.

Expect last long. Marriage mocked right, left and center.

I again saw I was watching something for a completely different reason.

And all of a sudden this guy says and my partners are with me today.

The camera goes these two women are polyamorous and they're open about it.

And everyone's clapping and it's so covenant of marriage mocked.

Drug overdoses, all time high. People dropping right, left and center and the media doesn't even want to talk about it.

Doesn't even want to talk about it. One of the reasons being it's because the borders are wide open and therefore plenty of fentanyl and everything else to kill everybody.

Hey, what was it in California? They found this guy was 150 ,000 or 15 ,000.

I don't know, it was 15 ,000 or 150 ,000 fentanyl tablets. And they were released without bail on their own recognizance.

They'll be back, yeah. Suicides everywhere.

Suicides everywhere. Blood running in the streets. Reports today of some type of shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, outside of Chicago.

They're saying it was a white guy. So they're reporting on it now. Not nearly as many people shot as were shot in Chicago over the weekend.

But those were black people shooting black people. That's gang violence and nobody cares. So it doesn't even get reported.

You have to look it up. But oh, it's a white guy with a rifle. As long as it's a black guy with a pistol, who cares?

But white guy with a rifle, this fits our narrative so we're on it. Blood in the streets. Crime at an all time high.

I watched the video of the shooting of, what, less than two weeks ago?

Of the young black man in Akron, Ohio. Now, you lead the cops on a high speed chase and then you jump out of the car and you're running and they're chasing you and then you turn on them.

That's pretty much suicide by cop, I get it. That's a good way to go.

But they shot him 60 times. More than 60 bullet wounds.

Blood in the streets. Tyranny on the rise. And amazingly, it's not just governmental tyranny.

It is corporate tyranny. The government and corporations working together to establish absolute control over every aspect of your life.

Becoming digital currency. You don't realize how absolutely dangerous that is and how once it's established, the government owns you.

You are literally putting your hands out and say, put the shackles on. Put them on me, enslave me.

That's what it will result in. How many banks have already said, we're not gonna deal, we're not gonna work with you.

We're not gonna deal with you. You think any of those banks would blush for a second to do the same thing with a church that stands against homosexuality, against transgenderism?

That's the whole point, it's enslavement. We are a house divided.

Our universities have collapsed into absolute nonsense. You can't find a straight thinking person in any of the

Ivy League schools any longer. This is where we are and I, you know the phrase post -Tenebrous

Lux, right? After the darkness, light. But as I look at our situation, it's post -Lux

Tenebrous. It's after the light, darkness. Because think of the light.

What is the biggest selling book in the history of the United States? Everybody knows.

There are more Bibles in this land than any other book by multiple numbers, multiple degrees.

There has been, in many places in this country, you drive down the freeways, you drive down the highways, and you can't go more than a matter of minutes until you are next to another church.

Yeah, I have noticed as I've traveled, more and more of them are getting closed. But there was that history.

I've mentioned a number of times that I have a New Testament that I snagged on eBay because my former fellow elder had a copy of it from his dad who had fought in World War II.

And the government had handed these out to all the GIs. And it had a letter in it from President Roosevelt recommending to everyone the reading of these words.

There is much light, tremendous amount of light from the beginning.

Now, it did not burn as brightly at every point in history. You do not have to claim that, oh, everybody up until the 1960s were all

Christians in the United States. That's what you're saying. No, I'm not saying anything of that kind at all. But there was a foundation that recognized the necessity of seeing man as the creature of God and necessity of this being a nation of laws.

And that there was a foundation for having this be a nation of laws because, well, what book did you put your hand on to swear the oath of office?

What book did you put your hand on to swear into giving testimony in a court of law?

Bible. There was a recognition of that foundation. I've read this before, but I wanna read the full context this time.

I think it's important to hear these words.

Adams was one of the founding fathers of the nation. And he wrote a letter. It's a letter to the officers of the 1st

Brigade or the 3rd Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October, 1798, found in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull, pages 265 to 266.

If you wanna look it up, good luck finding it. But here's what was said.

Leave this to John Adams. While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world, while she continues sincere and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence.

But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world.

Because we have no government armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion.

Avarice, ambition, revenge, and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our constitution.

As a whale goes through a net, our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred obligations, that which you have taken and so solemnly repeated on that venerable ground is an ample pledge of your sincerity and devotion to your country and its government.

There is no way to understand any of that outside of the Christian worldview, Christian understanding of mankind, and that line echoes in my mind.

Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

We do not have a moral and religious people. And hence, the attack upon the constitution makes perfect sense.

It has been a blessing. It has lasted longer than any other in history, but its founders said, we designed it for this kind of people.

And as I watch, and I don't retweet these things because they're pornographic, but as I watch these videos of the past just two weeks of drag queens and pride marches,

I know that every single founder, even those that were not particularly religious, would look at that and go, no hope.

They all knew the history of Rome. They knew what caused the decline and fall of the

Roman Empire, and they wouldn't think that a nation that would look with approval upon that kind of behavior could last any time at all.

Never has the myth of neutrality been seen to be so inane, so empty as today.

My generation lived with it. We deceived ourselves into thinking that we could just have our spiritual life, and then you've got the life out in the world.

And so when those crazy hippies started doing what they were doing in the 60s, I remember my parents talking about it.

Look, I've told the story. At five years of age, four or five years of age,

I'm sitting there watching the evening news on CBS, Walter Cronkite. I'm tracking with the war in Vietnam.

I know who the president is. And so when my parents start talking about drug -using hippies and their horrible rock music and all the rest of that stuff,

I remember it clearly. But that was out there. That was out there.

That's never really gonna impact us in our lives. That's just out there, except those hippies took over the universities and the government.

And so the time for, well, you know, it's all just, all my

Christian faith, just in my heart, you know, a time's passed because the tyranny of the secular state is such that they cannot allow for even the possibility of someone thinking otherwise than what the state wants you thinking.

I don't know if I'd even have the guts to do it, but I've told you about the

Stasi prison more than once. That wasn't the worst place. It wasn't the worst place.

I'd have to have lots of warnings up for the program to tell you about some of the worst stuff that the communists did.

And even if I told you about it, the whole point of telling you why and telling you about it and that kind of thing would be to illustrate the reality that secular totalitarianism, atheistic communism, does the evil that it does by nature.

It's because of what it is, and it cannot be avoided. And it proves the truth of Romans 1 and numerous other passages of scripture in the process.

And it is in the halls of Congress. It is in our government right now. It truly is.

And so what are we to do? Well, the days of the, it's all just in my heart

Christianity is over. We have to loudly proclaim to everyone,

Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And that actually means King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Not just the nice, safe, religious kings and religious lords.

King of Kings and Lord of Lords is a claim of ultimate authority over all of creation because he is the creator himself.

The only hope of mankind is in submission to him. With everything, nuclear weapons and pandemics and biological warfare and genetic engineering.

And I'm saying the answer is found in someone who lived 2000 years ago.

Yes, because he's still alive. Exactly what I'm saying. That's the only way that mankind is going to be able to find peace and flourishing and prosperity in light of the dangers that we pose to ourselves because we most certainly do pose those kinds of dangers.

So it's July 4th. And many moons ago, on September 13th, 2001,

I came on the dividing line and I said, well, our nation's really pulling together.

It's all this discussion of God bless America, but the only blessing that this nation actually truly needs is the blessing of heartfelt repentance.

And we didn't have, outside of maybe San Francisco, the kind of wholesale, open, proud debauchery parading down our streets in 2001 that we have today.

So the idolatry has not changed. The nation is not giving me any evidence whatsoever that it's turning from its idolatry.

And that's our only hope. That is our only hope. And we need to teach our children and our children's children what will be our only hope.

When this all comes crashing down and no society that's doing what this society is doing can avoid that fate.

When this all comes crashing down, what do you build on? What do you rebuild with? Secularism will always destroy.

It will always destroy. And that's where we are. Okay, let's take a deep breath.

There's no one watching anymore. And let's talk about some things that are absolutely and completely non -controversial.

Many years ago, I did a debate with Dr.

Mitchell Pacwa. And Father Pacwa is a wonderfully nice fellow.

He really is. And we debated the doctrine of the mass. Now, this was the first time we had met.

We did two debates, justification and the mass on two nights at a large

Catholic church in, I think it was El Cajon, if I recall correctly. Southern California somewhere.

And I think we got to know each other a little bit better in later debates, and so they were more personable,

I think. These were pretty, these are some of my earliest debates. And so I was very formal, probably hurried too much, didn't connect the audience as much as I would in later years.

I was young and I was learning. And in that debate,

Dr. Pacwa argued that in Matthew chapter 26, and in the parallels, of course, in Luke, two things were present there.

Let's get that out of the way. There we go. Put it down the middle. While they're eating,

Jesus took some bread and after a blessing, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body.

So most know that this right here, this is my body.

Tuta estin ta somamu, this is my body. And we have the verb of being, aimi, right here.

This is my body. And if you are familiar with Reformation church history, you know that in the

Marburg colloquy, I had the opportunity, very thankful, I had this chance in 2017 to stand in the room where the colloquy took place.

And you may have seen the artist rendering of the debate between Zwingli and Luther.

And Luther writes on the table in Latin, but it's this phrase, this is my body.

And he just keeps, this is, is, is, estin, this is my body.

And Zwingli failed to convince him, but most people say actually succeeded in convincing pretty much everybody else in the room that Luther was being rather pig -headed and didn't really have a lot of defense of his position, but that's what took place.

And obviously, Dr. Packwood is saying, this is my body. This is a direct statement.

And he has taken some bread and says, this is my body.

And so since in Roman Catholic theology, that means even before Christ gives himself upon the cross, he works the miracle of transubstantiation, even before his own sacrifice, he works the miracle of transubstantiation and offers himself to his disciples.

And then when he, in Paul's version of this, this is very difficult to see over there, unfortunately.

Let me see if I can find it. Having trouble finding it.

No, you have to walk over, apologies. I'm close. There has got to be a way to do this differently.

Ah, ah, I actually got to it, yay. In Paul's version, not save that, come on, thank you.

In Paul's version, let me just scroll that down.

When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

And so Dr. Packwood focused on poieta. This do in remembrance of me.

And poieta is an imperative, so it's command. And so since they understand

Jesus to have worked the miracle of transubstantiation in saying, this is my body, same right here, this is my body, do this.

Jesus was, by using the imperative there, ordaining the apostles as priests with the power of transubstantiation.

Now, just in passing, this was a relatively new idea in the days of Thomas Aquinas.

But Aquinas' dedication to the mysteries of the

Eucharist is well -documented, very, very well -documented. The point is in both of these places, you can see how an external system, an external theological formulation is being substantiated in a way where if you stood back and you said, well, wait a minute, that's not what

Matthew would have understood. There's no evidence of the sacerdotal priesthood in the early church, the primitive church, and that develops later on, and they're at the

Passover, and there's all sorts of things at the Passover that are symbolic, the bitter herbs representing the sufferings of the people of Israel, and everything on the table was a symbol of something.

That was the point of the whole Passover. And so the original context of where these words were spoken would be determinative, and what's happened is that original context has been removed, and a later theological system has replaced the original context as the determining factor.

Because do this, and remember it's a me. That is a really hard sell to try to turn that into ordination to the

Roman Catholic priesthood with the ability to bring about the miracle of transubstantiation.

That's a big one, isn't it? And yet, that's what they do. That's what they do.

Let me give you, I think, one more example. One more example.

You know what, why? In fact,

I'm gonna get rid of this one, too. See, now it's perfect. Now, here's one that if you are

Reformed, and this discussion is especially for Reformed folks, even those of you who don't think that I am anymore, though my positions haven't changed.

In John chapter six, a number of my current critics have admitted that I was central in introducing the concept of transubstantiation to the doctrines of grace.

The book on the Trinity may have been one of the first books I read on the Trinity, things like that. And you'll recall that in the forgotten, the

Potter's Freedom, I was responding to Dr. Norman Geisler, and one of the things

I think a lot of people benefited from, there was a frustration for me initially.

You know, you couldn't tell at that time what a blessing that book was gonna be, and everything else.

It just, at the time, you're going, you're gonna write a book in response to Geisler, really? You're wanting to commit theological suicide, and you'll never be invited to anything anymore.

Okay, that's probably a good thing. Anyway, you will recall that I wrote to Dr.

Geisler, and I asked him about the book, about his exegesis of John 6, 37, because while he quoted from John 6 in a number of different places in the book, he never provided any exegesis.

He had said, I had asked, and he said, well, I provide exegesis in the book. So when I wrote back,

I cited every single thing he had said about that verse. Every single thing.

Some of you may recall, I asked friends in our IRC chat room, I'd buy them the book, and then

I would ask them to go through every single page and create an index for me, because there wasn't a exhaustive scripture index in the original edition.

And I'd pay them with Amazon gift certificates. This was back in 2000, I think.

And so I had myself, I believe,

I had already done the look at every single page, marked down every place where John 6 is referenced.

And so I sent him a letter, again, respectful, saying, here's everything you said on John 6.

There's no exegesis here. And there wasn't. And he sent a note card back, says, if you publish,

I'll respond. That was it. That was the last communication I ever had. Directly, anyways, from Dr.

Geisler. And you all will remember that what Dr. Geisler did is he went down here to verse 40.

For this is the will of my Father, in order that all the ones looking upon the Son and believing in Him might have eternal life, and I will raise

Him up on the last day. It goes off screen there, but that's what it is.

Ah, well, you can see it in English, anyways. And so he goes to verse 40.

And so the one looking, the one believing, that means everyone has the ability to look, everyone has the ability to believe.

It's your looking and believing that determines whether you can be given by the Father, et cetera, et cetera. So he jumps down to verse 40 and then reads the conclusions out of verse 40 up into 37 through 39, which of course is the key text.

And what he does then is he turns the text on its head.

So instead of following the argument from here down and defining your terms, again, that's how you do ex

Jesus. That's how you would want a letter that you've written to be read, a book that you've written to be read.

That's how human communication takes place. You go in order.

He jumps down here, gets his conclusion, and then reads it back up into this, so as to miss or to dismiss what's in verses 37 through 39.

And it just seems that my Reformed brothers should be able to recognize this when it happens someplace else.

This isn't something we argue about, is it? We all saw, yeah, Geisler did that.

Yeah, that's true. He did. Well, okay, then let's go to, and now

I've got to go back to the first one. So this'll be tricky. Got to go once.

Yay. Now, unfortunately, there we go. Got that out of the way.

Yay. Okay, over the weekend, a bit of a discussion developed.

Josh Sommer tweeted the following tweet. Quote, Jesus did not say,

I and my Father are one in purpose. Jesus said, I and my Father are one, full stop.

The substantive verb, very unusual phrase, makes the

Father and Son identical in essence. To make the essence differ from Father or Son fails to account for the language of John 10 .30.

Now, I didn't bring a copy in with me, but just pretty much right at a quarter century ago, because it took some time to write it.

So yeah, it would be right at last century, 25 years ago.

I wrote a little book called The Forgotten Trinity. And first 15 years, 20 years after it came out, not much in the way of controversy.

I mean, Unitarians didn't like it, the Jehovah's Witnesses didn't like it, and stuff like that. But amongst our folks, yeah, people were using it.

And, you know, I got so many letters and communication and people coming up to me saying, man, you really introduced me to the idea of loving the

Trinity and seeing it right there in scripture, it's just, it's wonderful. And it was great.

Go back to the book, look up John 10 .30. The later editions have a good scripture index in it.

We had to actually provide that for a while. The first printing didn't really have a good scripture. We created our own and put it on the website.

But look up John 10 .30. I expressed the same viewpoint

I hold now and my concern about the misuse of John 10 .30.

25 years ago. Okay, it was published in 98, so 24.

But like I said, you write books before they're published. So a quarter century ago,

I was concerned because I would see people just simply throw

John 10 .30 out as a proof text of the deity of Christ by simply quoting it.

I am the father of one. And then they would make a metaphysical assertion.

See, this means the father and the son are fully deity. They fully share the one being that is

God. We actually used language back then that was much more expressive than the really, really vague technical stuff.

Now, let me give you one person, Rich, I doubt you've seen this one.

Here's one that was posted yesterday. A person is the divine essence subsisting in a relative property.

A person is the divine essence subsisting in a relative property. Now, I get that.

I get what's being said. The problem is that it's using language that was meant to deal with only one set of questions about the doctrine of the

Trinity. And it is so much less than the biblical presentation.

It's only concerned with one very narrow aspect.

And that very narrow aspect isn't nearly enough to deal with the fullness of biblical revelation on the relationship of father, son, and spirit to one another, their actions in time, and things like that.

And so it was a little easier to understand what the discussions were back then.

They've gotten really much less meaningful to the people in the pew, which is a shame.

It's a real shame. Anyway, going back to what we're saying here, I pointed out the context of John chapter 10 in the forgotten

Trinity. And so let me just remind us of what's going on here.

We know Jesus has just said to the Jews, John 10, 26, but you do not believe because you are not of my sheep.

Pretty strong words to the Jews. And he doesn't say you are not of my sheep because you do not believe.

It's the reverse of that. You do not believe because you're not of my sheep. Most people hear it and make that switch in their mind to fit their

Arminian synergistic presuppositions, but that's not what it says.

The reason you don't believe, you're not of my sheep. I give my life for my sheep. And 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. So before we continue on, catch what's being said.

John expects that you've already read chapter six, and John expects that you've already read chapter eight, and both of those chapters, of course, they weren't a part of his original writing, but you know what

I'm saying. Both of those chapters have already given us this terminology.

For example, in verse 29, he's gonna say, "'The Father who has given them to me is greater than all, "'and no one is able to snatch them out of my

Father's hand.'" He doesn't stop to explain the

Father who's given them to me. Yeah, because that was already in John six. That's already there.

You already have that mysterious, but deeply biblical idea of the

Father sovereignly giving a people to the Son. And if you can't tell who's giving whom to whom and why, in light of what the persons are doing, you've lost the

Bible as your source. You've lost the Bible as your source.

And my friend, you will not teach the sheep of Christ his truth unless you use his word.

Hear me, you won't. You will not succeed. You will fail. Good morning.

I think it's taken for what it's worth. So verse 28 says, "'And

I give to them eternal life.'" Now, right there, right there, you have an incredible claim.

Moses couldn't say that. Isaiah couldn't say that. They are his sheep.

They follow him. They are following me. All of this is rich in Old Testament imagery.

Regarding Yahweh and the sheep of the pasture and all of it.

"'And I give eternal life to them, "'and they will, ooh, may, "'er a subjunctive strong denial.'"

They'll never perish. Ooh, may. It's not just ooh. Ooh, may.

Never. Can't happen. Forever. Never. And no one is able to snatch them out of my hand.

I mean, that's claim to deity. There's no question about it. Giving of eternal life. Making the claim, they'll never perish.

My sheep never perish. I have the ability to save perfectly. But again, you already read that in John six.

You already read that in John eight. That's already been established.

And now it's being asserted again. And this idea of my hand, he's, that comes from, he will keep them.

They will not perish. Why? Because they're in his hand. He's holding them.

That way they'll never perish. I remember years ago,

I've told the story before, and I won't take too much time on this because it'll take us off of our subject, but had this guy at our church, big

Southern Baptist church, start teaching that you could lose your salvation. And, you know, the leadership dealt with him and moved him along.

A couple of years later, I ran into him at a Berean Christian bookstore, 35th Avenue in Camelback. Remember clearly. And we start talking and immediately the debate starts.

And I brought this text up. And I said, what does Jesus mean when he says, they will never perish.

No one will snatch them out of my hand. And his response was, that's right. No one can snatch you out of Jesus' hand.

But you can jump out. But you can jump out. I said, but it says they won't perish.

What happens if you jump out? Eh, well, anyway. So the balance is always there, just as in John chapter five,

John chapter six. The balance is always there. When you have the assertion on Jesus' part,

I give eternal life to them. The balance is then brought in.

My father, not just the father, but my father. Putting Mu there,

Jesus is distinguishing himself from the father. And there is a, an action.

Ha -pa -ter -mu, ha -der -ken -moy. My father who has given them to me.

John six, all the father gives me will come to me. The father draws to the son.

I believe we are in danger in the current situation where I believe a very imbalanced situation is developing of losing the richness of the inter -Trinitarian accomplishment of redemption for the sake of some philosophical speculation where you have people running around and going, if you don't believe this, you're gonna become a tritheist.

Where are the tritheist churches, by the way? Have you run across any? I've not seen one.

I mean, not even the Mormons are tritheist. That's too few. The Mormons have an unlimited number of gods.

I mean, there are more gods in Mormonism than the Hindus ever dreamed of. The Hindus got 330 million, but I haven't found the tritheist church.

Maybe they're out there somewhere. I just haven't Googled deeply enough or something. I don't know.

But my father who gave them to me, there is a distinction of actions, is there not?

Did the son give them to himself? No. The father gave them to me.

If your theology is too brittle and philosophical and shallow to believe that, stop calling it

Christian theology. Stop it. You've got to deal with what this says.

This is the source of Christian theology. This is the source of Christian truth. I'm sorry?

The source, that's right. My father who has given them to me is greater than all.

Now, there was some, I didn't, I just saw it before we went on the air.

And there was some argument, it seemed, and I couldn't tell if it was from today or if this was from back, but there was some argument about greater than all.

And as I see this, when it says, udais dunatai, so that one we've seen, but no one is able, goes back to John six, harpazine, to grasp, to snatch them out of my father's hand.

When it says udais, I don't see that as including the son. He's not in view.

Not because you can't tell the difference between the father and the son, and not because it's just simply one hand, because the father has given them into his hand.

So it's a little bit like, for you have, remember the illustration I've used over and over again, it's a beautiful illustration.

Your life, you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

So there is a way, you must, again, allow the biblical categories to say we are united with the son in a way that we are not united with the father or the spirit.

We are united with the father and the spirit through the son, but the

Bible is the one making the distinction. So when Jesus says, I will make my, we, the father and I, will make our abode with you in John, he's talking about the coming of the spirit.

And so you see that the different aspects of redemption that are being accomplished by the divine persons.

And if you say, yeah, but they're all the same action. Well, they are inseparable in their unity and the accomplishment of the decree of God, but they are not inseparable in the language.

And if you squish them all together to accomplish your philosophical goals, you end up squishing out the meaning of the text itself.

So yeah, there is only one decree of God. The father, son, and spirit are in perfect harmony with one another.

They accomplish the one decree of God. Yes, you go beyond that. You show me where the Bible tells me to do that.

And you can't, it's your philosophy and you know it. That's why you go, you can't be a biblicist.

So all of this takes us, I'm just gonna go ahead and leave that there because it's still on the screen.

Everybody can see, it's just. I and the father are one.

Ego kai hapater hen esmen. I and the father are one.

Now, is there an obvious context here? There is, there is. You have the sheep receiving eternal life from the son and you have the father giving the sheep to the son and you have the assertion that no one will ever snatch them out of the son's hand and no one has the ability to snatch them out of the father's hand.

And that is why they will receive eternal life because the father and the son are intent upon accomplishing the eternal life of the sheep.

And I pointed out in the Forgotten Trinity that esmen, just the standard verb of existence,

I'm me, is plural. I and the father, we are one.

That's important because when you're dealing with modalists, they wanna say,

I and the father, we are one person. I am the father because that's just my, the one hand.

They ignore the distinction of the father giving to the son, the son being the one that the sheep hear his voice, they follow him, he's the good shepherd.

Distinctions that are right in the text. They ignore that and say, see, he is the father.

It doesn't say, it says, we are one. It's plural. It's very important.

And I think a lot of you who, again, you're the imbalanced philosophers, you aren't out there dealing with these people.

And I know you just shut your ears off at this point, but listen to me.

I've learned over the decades how people become imbalanced.

I have said, you can go back for decades. And I've said,

I am so thankful the Lord did not allow us to stay focused only upon one particular group.

We start off dealing with Mormonism. And I've seen people, not all, not all of you stretch the imagination, but I have seen people who get just so focused upon this one thing that, you know, ends up, the

Mormons are behind everything. And it wasn't very long after we started dealing with Mormonism that people come along and they start asking questions.

Well, Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on my door. What do you know about them? And sort of forced to start learning that and that was a long process.

And then Benny Diaz came along and said, hey, let's make you really unpopular and so on and so forth.

And so we've had to deal with these different perspectives. And what happens is what that forces you to do is to stay balanced.

When you're only pulling one direction, you can't remain balanced.

But if you're pulling this direction and you got somebody back this side and they're just waiting for you to fall into their hands, you've got to stay balanced.

And so that's one of the reasons that there have been arguments against Mormonism that we've never used because we recognize that would be contradictory to what we're saying to Jehovah's Witnesses, see?

And so you have to have balance. And if you're not out doing the work and meeting these people, you're not going to see the need for that.

And so the point is the cults will say, oh, they're just one in purpose, just one in purpose.

Well, what is the purpose? The purpose is giving eternal life to the sheep. You take that back to the Old Testament, that's what

Yahweh does. And so is this text on the deity of Christ? You better believe it's on the deity of Christ. How could it be anything other?

But the simple statement, I and the Father, we are one to jump from that to what

Jesus is talking about is he's making the philosophical distinctions between substance and essence and person and da -da -da -da -da -da -da and bring theology and it's developed hundreds of years later and say, ah, period, full stop.

That's what this is about. You can't defend that because remember the text we look at before?

That's what was going on there too. And you agreed with us. You agreed. You saw it.

You recognized it. And rightly so. So, what are we saying here?

Here's what we need to see. Oh, here's what

I need to do. Do -do -do -do -do -do -do.

There's somebody out there right now going, it is not fair that he has that thing. Just not fair.

So, what you have is we have John 10 .30, okay? John 10 .30.

And we have its meaning in context. And what you do is you see that in the context of, in the larger context of John, John's gospel, okay?

That's the larger context. And then you get the New Testament. That's the larger context.

And then of course, you know, scripture, the major big context, okay?

And it is perfectly appropriate to look at this and to see what does that mean in all of John?

That's perfectly, do it. And then we need to see John in reference to Peter and Paul and the

New Testament. And then we see the Old Testament backgrounds and the consistency. All those things are true.

And then once we have that, then we can tie this together with everything else in John that tells us more and more about Jesus.

And so we can put these things all together and come to a theological conclusion, okay?

And what makes this valuable and important is the strength of these connections, okay?

If we're just simply citing texts that don't really have a lot to do, we haven't done our homework, and there isn't a consistency, then the conclusion is going to be very weak.

But the reason that these conclusions, these theological conclusions that we come to can be passed on from generation to generation to generation across linguistic boundaries and across cultural boundaries is because of the strength of the connection they have to their biblical source, because this is what is theanoustos.

This is God speaking. Now, the problem comes when you develop a system.

What did I? Oh, okay. The problem comes when you develop a system.

It's so much faster than doing it the other way. And so you come up with your theological system, and that system becomes the lens through which you then view any given text or scripture.

It tells you what you're gonna find in John 10, 30.

It's the system. It's the lens. Now, this may be completely true, but it has become the ultimate authority.

What's found, the truth of John 10, 30 is subordinate to what the system tells you to see there.

And so what happened in the conversation, what happened in the conversation was when people pushed back with Pastor Sommer, eventually what he said was, to me,

Christ's purpose would be meaningless apart from consubstantial unity with the

Father. So I'm saying that Christ's immediate sense in John 10, 30 is consubstantiality of essence as the ground for his purpose, that is calling retainment of the sheep in verses 28 to 29.

Let me read that again. Christ's purpose would be meaningless apart from consubstantial unity with the

Father. So I'm saying that Christ's immediate sense, so this would be what he intended by the words in John 10, 30 is consubstantiality of essence as the ground for his purpose, that is the calling and retainment of the sheep in verses 28 to 29.

So the full stop thing sort of got pushed aside, needed to, but do you see what that is?

It's upside down. It's what Geister does in John 6. It's upside down.

You're making assertion. The meaning that Jesus intends to communicate is consubstantiality with the

Father. Now, I'm sure the Jews all would have gone, what? What? Because the only way to understand consubstantiality with the

Father is in the light of developments that are 300 years down the road. Now, what's in Scripture has to determine the developments 300 years down the road.

That's why Nicaea's authority is dependent upon its consistency with Scripture. If you don't see this, then you have to answer one major question.

Where does that come from? Because it's now your ultimate authority.

And if the system that developed over time is your ultimate authority, and it determines how you then interpret the pages of Scripture, then fundamentally, foundationally, epistemologically, you have to find out where this comes from.

What's its ground? What's its authority? And there are only a couple answers you can give to that.

And none of them are Protestant. None of them are Protestant. You're stuck with it.

You're stuck with it. And you can say, well, but it's ultimately subordinate.

You can use all sorts of words, but here's, again, take this stuff outside of your little groups and take it out into the world.

Try to communicate Christian truth to people who don't already agree with you on the foundations.

And you'll pretty quickly start realizing there's a lot of really sharp people out there. They're gonna realize where the cracks in your foundations are.

I think of that young kid. Told the story many, many times of the sharp,

I think he was a returned missionary. Young Mormon that came up to me, Maine and Hobson, and we were passing out a tract,

Grace Plus Works is dead, and he very quickly, I mean, we're talking within the first minute of conversation, realized that if what

I was saying was true, then God predestined to certain people into salvation. He recognized it. Now, part of that might be because of what the

Mormon Temple Ceremony says about that, which presents it as the very doctrine of the devil himself. But he recognized that.

He saw that if grace was as free and powerful as we were saying it was, then

God must have predestined people into salvation. He saw it. And there are Muslims that I've talked to that they see what the foundational issues are, and I just think if y 'all would get out a bit more, you'd realize that it just seems these days that y 'all are sort of going, well, as long as we can differentiate, as long as we can come up with a technical term, that's good enough.

We can say that it means this, and therefore, that's good enough. Your technical terms don't mean a whole lot on the street.

And isn't that where the proclamation takes place? Isn't that where Paul was going? Seems to be, seems to be.

So let me just touch on a couple other things here, and we'll be wrapping up.

One thing that I do want to also include in this, okay,

Josh Sommer again, and I'm gonna talk about someone else. Consider if the incarnation was not a triune work, but only a unique work of the

Son. The Son would possess a distinct will from the Father to incarnate, but He would also possess a distinct power to work or affect

His own incarnation. This would result in a division of the divine essence since we confess God is all -powerful.

Therefore, either the works of the Trinity are inseparable, or the persons are three distinct substances willing and doing accordingly.

I want you, we need to think this through, because this is really where the extended assertion of divine simplicity, inseparable operations, again, in the extended, it's not that God works in perfect harmony, it's that, well, here, let me put it in the words of someone else.

Stephan Gedeon, hi Stephan, how you doing? Said this, the

Father is greater than all those who would try to pluck believers out of the Father's hand, which is identical to the

Son's hand. This is why Father and Son are doing the same thing here.

Because hand is figurative for God's power and might, it refers to the what and not the who.

The Father gives none of creation, including the elect to the Son, with respect to divinity, because all of creation already belongs to the triune

God. Let me get rid of this one.

There is another quote, and I'm trying to find it.

Too many, yeah, there it is, there it is. Too many, lots of little boxes on the screen.

If all of creation does not already belong to the Son, with respect to divinity, then you are borderline with Arianism.

All things made by the Son and for the Son, Colossians 1 .16. And this is Trinitarian appropriation, since all things are also made by the

Father and for the Father. There is no modalism borderline in my view because what distinguishes, here it is, because what distinguishes the persons of the ontological

Trinity is their relations of origin. The persons are not distinguished by external actions.

Okay, there's where 99 .995

% of all Christians down through history have no earthly idea what was just said. And if that's required for Orthodoxy, there's never been, there have been very, very few

Orthodox Christians down through history, very, very few. But here's what you need to understand as being said.

There are numerous people who are arguing, again, based upon extended assertion of divine simplicity, extended assertion of inseparable operations, that you cannot distinguish

Father, Son, and Spirit by what they do in time. Now, I want you to think about that.

I really want you to ponder that. The only way to distinguish

Father, Son, and Spirit is their relations of origin. What are relations of origin?

How many people right now, if you ask this question of them this coming

Sunday, what are the relations of origin? We'll be able to give you an answer.

What's being referred to is the distinction of Father, Son, and Spirit in regards to procession, spiration, the

Father begets the Son, the Father and the Son, the

Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son in the West, not in the

East, but the internal relations of the divine person.

You remember that in John, right? In Romans? It's nowhere.

It is a theological analysis of a small number of texts that can even be considered relevant to try to give us some idea of the relationship of the divine persons before creation.

It is not the subject of a tremendous amount of divine revelation, if any at all.

And so how is it that all of a sudden we've gotten to the point of saying the only way to distinguish the persons is not by what they do, not by how they've revealed themselves, not by their actions in time.

It's because of a philosophical system that has been developed to answer questions within one context of the world that the church has gone out into.

And that now has become the overarching authority. So the persons are not distinguished by external actions because they're all the same action.

But you're sitting there going, but the Father sent the Son. It's all one action.

But the Father sent the Son, and the Son humbles Himself, and He does not consider equality with the

Father's Son to be grasped, and that's not what the Father did. That's what the Son did. That's not the same thing the

Spirit does. But they're all the same action. Yep, all the same action. Inseparable operations.

Utter destruction of any meaningful understanding on our part of the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit. You simply cannot go into John 17, verse five, and get anything out of that because the only way to distinguish

Father, Son, and Spirit is their relations of origin.

Don't bother looking at relations of origin in your concordance. It's not there. It is a theological construct that can either be useful not in destroying biblical categories, but illustrating biblical categories.

But it always must be seen as being lesser than the biblical revelation, as maybe shedding some light on one small aspect.

This is what happens when it becomes the be -all and end -all of all things. John 17,

Philippians 2, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1. It all gets squished down into a flat pancake.

Amazing. Amazing. But that's what we're looking at. That's what we're dealing with.

So whole point is this. John 10, 30 has a meaning that when, not interpreted by our overarching lenses, but when placed together with the rest of divine revelation teaches us not only the deity of Christ, but the beautiful, gracious reality of the relationship of father and son.

And if your commitment to some kind of philosophical conclusion leads you to go, no, the son does not receive anything from the father.

Remember a few weeks ago when one of these guys said, you can't say the father loves the son, except that Jesus said it twice.

Well, that's only in appropriations. So in other words, there's always an out. That language does not come from scripture.

It comes from a system and it's used to diminish the testimony of scripture.

We can't do that. That, can you imagine some of these guys in cross -examination with sharp

Unitarians or Muslims, or it would really be ugly, really be ugly.

Bad stuff. Don't do it. Don't do it. So there you go.

Now, you either start with divine revelation as your foundation, and then go in those larger contexts all the way out to all the scripture.

And then you put those truths together. Remember, we've drawn this on the board before. You put those truths together.

There are certain things that are absolutely necessary. If you have one God, you have three divine persons and they are not to be confused with one another.

You've got the doctrine of the Trinity. That's the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. You can do that.

But there comes a point. There comes a point when the light of scripture comes to an end.

And if we go running past that, we end up in self -contradiction and the darkness that we've imposed upon ourselves.

You really do. So when I go into a debate and I quote

John 10 .30, I can be consistent because I'm using the same consistent rules of hermeneutics that I use in debating

Geisler's misunderstanding of John 6 or the Roman Catholic abuse of 1 Corinthians chapter 11.

I'm consistent. I'm doing the same thing. And you all agree over there, but not over here.

Oh, not over here. Because now I'm stepping on your tradition, on your new toy.

So all of a sudden, oh no, we can't do that. I'm being consistent. And so when

I debate the Muslim and I apply the same rules of hermeneutics of ancient languages and context to the

Quran, and they then run off, and this happens, this happens in Surah 5.

Where I'm going, well, look, look at the consistency in Surah 5. It seems to be what's, oh, no, no, no. I can't mean that.

Why? Because we have this system. And I say, you can't do that. I can't turn around and do the same thing.

And that's what you're doing. That's what you're doing. Oh goodness, we went for an hour on that.

I sort of figured we probably would. And it's July 4th for crying out loud. You know how weird it is that we're sitting in this room on July 4th talking about stuff like external actions and relations of origin and stuff like that.

Well, that's what we do around here. And there are a few of you out there that still appreciate it. So we appreciate you as well.

All right, well, that's it for the program today. I hope that I didn't ruin anyone's cookout or your, man, we were so poor when

I was a kid. All you did on July 4th was you put the sprinkler, the one that went like this in the front yard, and you went running through it.

We didn't have a pool. Only rich people had pools. What are you talking about? And you'd go running through the sprinkler in the front yard.

And that was pretty much it. But it was fun. Well, we might play cowboys and Indians and all sorts of really completely politically incorrect stuff like that too.

But we need sticks for guns and all that stuff that just absolutely ruined the nation.

Anyhow, have a great 4th, the rest of the day. Please consider what we said in the first half hour. Pray for our nation and pray for God to do a mighty work amongst us.