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A famous defense attorney once said, there is no client so scary as an innocent man. Now, I could think of some clients I'd less work with than an innocent man, but why do you suppose he would say that?
There is no client more scary than an innocent man. I think it's because you can empathize with him. You're afraid because you don't want to see him go to jail. I mean, you can represent all kinds of guilty people and think, well, you know what, whatever the system does, that's all right.
But if you have an innocent man for a client, there's a lot of pressure on you. You can't let that guy go to jail. He's innocent. There's a weight that comes with that. There's a heaviness that comes with that.
Now, our judicial system has a few flaws. There have been instances of misjustice, injustice, non-justice. Is it misjustice? Whatever it is. Bad justice. Recently, there have been two miniseries about the O .J. Simpson case, two of them.
And the jury, as I watched the first one, and I've recorded the second one and I haven't watched it yet. It's like 10 hours or whatever. The jury, depending on your point of view, was either, you know, they either believed conspiracy theories and therefore found O .J. not guilty, or they were just tired of being cooped up in a hotel and really treated like prisoners.
And so the ones who were on the minority end of the jury who actually thought he was guilty just caved in super fast so they could go home. They were tired of being isolated from the world and treated like inmates.
They wanted to go. And this morning we're going to see a trial of sorts with an innocent life in the balance. And what's most striking about this trial, it has all the trappings of a trial, is that the man on trial is more concerned about the jury than about himself.
Let's read John 10. I'm going to start in verse 22 because I want to, it's a little bit of review, and I want to kind of set the scene for us, put it in context. John 10, verse 22. And we're going to specifically be looking at verses 31 to 39, but we're going to start at verse 22.
At that time, the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, How long will you keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, 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 have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you going to stone me? The Jews answered him, It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law? I said, You are gods. If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father consecrated, and sent into the world, You are blaspheming, because I said, I am the Son of God?
If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. Believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father. Again, they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.
Now, by way of review, just kind of introduce where we are. The human author, John the Apostle, describes himself in today's terms as Jesus... I mean, if we were writing, you know, a contemporary version, he might say that he was Jesus BFF, best friend forever.
He wasn't boasting when he said that he was the disciple that Jesus loved. He was reporting the facts. He was Jesus' best earthly friend. John wrote this gospel toward the end of his life, about 90 AD.
He would have had access to the synoptic gospels, that would be Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But he doesn't just repeat what they've done, because he's looking at them and he says, you know, there's a focus that needs to be emphasized, that hasn't been done yet.
The other gospels mention this, but I'm going to really emphasize it. I'm going to bring out several different incidents that really demonstrate the deity of Christ. That's his focus. Why? Why is that so important?
Because believing that Jesus is, in fact, God in the flesh, is central to being saved. He says that in John 20, 21. One cannot be heaven-bound. One cannot be saved without believing that Jesus is fully God in addition to being fully human.
Now, again, by way of review, I said last time that there were five elements of saving faith, five elements or characteristics of Christ's sheep. Firstly, believers love Jesus. Secondly, believers are beloved by Jesus.
Thirdly, believers obey Jesus. Fourthly, believers have eternal life. And fifthly, they have eternal security. And if you look back at your text in verse 27, my sheep hear my voice. And when they hear that, they believe, they love Jesus.
They don't reject him, they don't hate him. Also verse 27, I know them. Believers are beloved by Jesus. He doesn't just know them in some sort of desultory, I just wanted to work that in, random fashion.
It's not just like, you know, I know you superficially. He intimately knows his sheep. And if we think back on the relationship between shepherd and sheep, they only listen to the shepherd. And he knows them, he knows their walk, he knows all the different flaws in each animal.
He knows them intimately because he spends most of his time with them. Unless they're in the pen, they're with him. Thirdly, notice that they follow him, they obey. That's what it means. And I've used the illustration before.
It would be a bizarre situation in which a shepherd gives a sheep an order and the sheep just stand there and say, no, I don't think so. That would not happen. Sheep follow the shepherd without question.
They just get up right behind him and just follow him. Fourthly, as I said before, they do have eternal life. You see it there in verse 28. I give them eternal life. He's the source. He's the one who dispenses it.
And if you are saved, you have eternal life now and you can anticipate heaven. You will have it forever. It's not just a quantity of life, it's also a quality of life. The peace that comes from knowing that you have been reconciled to God.
And fifthly, they have eternal security. Well, why is that? It's because the sheep cannot be snatched out of Jesus' hand and they can't be snatched out of the Father's hand, he says. Well, he clearly draws an equivalence between himself and the Father.
And he says, I and the Father are one and this is where we pick up this morning. They're not happy about that. The Jews aren't. And that's why we're going to see this trial in essence. And it really is a trial with a charge and a defense by Jesus.
And Jesus' trial here is instructive for us because it not only tells us truths about him and demonstrates his deity, but it also gives us an example of how we ought to deal with unbelievers, with scoffers or with scoffmockers, as I like to say it, mockers, those who don't believe in God.
First notice the charge of the Jews. And I'll get to that in a second, a little more background information. Feast of dedication. Hanukkah. December, probably. Winter, definitely. The Festival of Lights.
A time when the Jews celebrated retaking the temple and cleansing it. Jesus is walking in Solomon's porch, Solomon's portico, the covered area of the temple. As I said last time when we closed in verse 30, I and the Father are one.
That means what? They have the same essence, same attributes, same power. There's no difference between the Father and the Son. In fact, I want to encourage you. I don't do this a lot, but I want to encourage you to mark this verse in your Bible.
Color it, do something with it. John 10, verse 30. And also John 8, 58. And you say, well, why? Well, because these are clear claims by Jesus of his deity, the fact that he is God. I had a trustee working for me in the jails in the middle of the night.
I was reading my Bible, and he was mopping the floor. And he told me, I already knew this, but he told me anyway that he was a Muslim. And he said that Jesus never claimed to be God, and that's why he converted from Christianity to Islam.
And I said, well, that's very interesting. I said, but are you sure? Because here in John 8, 58, it seems that he did. Before Abraham was, I am. A clear response or a clear reference to Exodus 3, 14. When Moses says, whom shall I say has sent me?
And God says, tell him, I am. I am that I am. And he says, well, I don't see that. And I said, well, what about John 10, verse 30? Same thing. He says, well, I don't see it. And I said, well, look at the audience response.
That's a clue, right? If you don't understand something, if it's not clear to you, keep reading. And the response in both cases was they wanted to stone him. Look at verse 31. And this is where we start our trial here, as it were.
The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Now, do you think that they understood what he was saying? I think it's very clear that they did. Just look ahead at verse 33. You, being a man, make yourself God.
Now, it's very unlikely, according to scholars, that there were actually stones in Solomon's porch. That would be an area that would be cleared from stones. So where did these weapons come from? Where did the rocks come from?
Well, that verb that says picked up can also be translated carried. They had them with them. They were the execution team ready to go. We used to call those guys the emergency response team. They were armed.
They were ready. So it seems like there's a little bit of premeditation here. They were hoping for an opportunity to break out the rocks, to get busy. The response of the Jews here is just the same as it was in John 8 -59.
They wanted to execute Jesus immediately. No arrest. No trial by the Romans. None of that nonsense. Just stone him immediately. That is, you know, we think stoning, and we don't think about the process.
The picking up of rocks and just throwing them at the victim. This is a painful, brutal process, and just think about all the hatred, the animosity that it takes to do that. I mean, it's one thing to say, you know what, I could serve, and I'm not saying this, it's one thing to say I could serve on a firing squad.
It's one thing to say I could throw the switch in an electrocution. It's another thing to say I could, you know, inject the murder suspect or the guy convicted of capital murder, some heinous crime, with some kind of chemicals that's going to make him die.
It's another thing to say I could sit there and watch another human being suffer, no matter how much I despise him, and just continue throwing the rocks at him. There's hatred here. But even in the face of this group of Jewish leaders who wanted to kill Jesus and were prepared to do the job, Jesus didn't flinch.
I'll tell you what I'd do, I would run. I would have said, you know, try to hit me with those rocks. But he just calmly engages them. One might even say he evangelized them. He reasoned with them. Look at verse 32.
Jesus answered them, I've shown you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you going to stone me? Now, when I read that, the many good works, I think about Nicodemus coming to Jesus in John chapter 3.
Remember what he says. He says, Rabbi, we know that you, now he's the teacher of all Israel. He is the preeminent theologian of the country. And he says, we know that you are a teacher come from God. For no one can do these signs, these works that you do, unless God is with him.
But look what they say. Or look what Jesus says to them. I've done many good works from the Father. For which of them are you going to stone me? I mean, these people are unhinged. Nicodemus understood that these things could only be done by a representative of God.
He didn't know who Jesus was. These people know about his works, and they want to kill him anyway. How wrong they were. There was a mountain of evidence. Many works of a kind that only God could do. That only could be, or could only have as their source, the Father.
They didn't care about any of that. What would be the right thing to do? Instead of wanting to kill him, what they should have done was what? Fall down and worship him. Think about the man born blind, and how chapter 9 ends.
When he realizes who Jesus is, what does he do? He falls down and worships him. That would be the right thing for them to do. But they want to kill him. And not just a hanging or a firing squad, or any of the semi-painless things that we do today.
Did they maybe misunderstand the source of his works? Were they going to attribute them to someone else? They didn't really care. Look at verse 33. Look, you may have done many good things. We're not upset about any of those things.
We're upset about what you said. You say you're God. They understand it very clearly. They're not in any kind of mental fog about this. But you know, in all of scripture, I don't think there's any assertion made by anyone that is more wrong than this one.
There are 180... I mean, they're seeing this backwards. Because not only was Jesus right in declaring himself God, but he didn't make himself God. He wasn't a man making himself God. He was, in fact, God who had made himself man.
He was God who, in humility and in obedience to the Father, came willingly, in John 1, verse 14, and the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Not a man making himself out to be God, but God who humbly submitted himself to the Father and became man. How could they be so wrong? How could these experts in religion be so wrong? How could these scholars of the Old Testament have things so profoundly incorrect?
Look back for a moment at verse 25. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me. They testify about who he is, the works that he does. But verse 26, But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep, Because they were not Jesus' sheep, because they were not believers, because they did not have the Holy Spirit, they could not rightly understand what he did.
They saw the good works, but they had nothing except hatred in their hearts for Jesus. They're not really unique, though, are they? Isn't this true of every unbeliever? If you talk to them about Jesus, they will accept any description you want to put on him.
He's a wonderful carpenter. He's a wise philosopher. He's the reason I get presents in December. He was a social rebel. He came to overthrow the hierarchy. They'll believe any of those things. But when you say, He was the Son of God who came to die for sinners.
He lived a perfect and righteous life. He died an unjust death and rose from the dead on the third day. Then what? Do they say, Yeah, that's the Jesus I believe in, too. Not if they're an unbeliever. They don't want to hear about that.
They have nothing but hatred and contempt for the very idea of Christianity. And if you tell them that Jesus, the one who was crucified, the one who rose from the dead, is coming back to judge every single person and that he'll send some to heaven because they love him and he'll send some to hell because they reject him, they would willingly, if they could, join this mob, pick up rocks, and stone Jesus to death.
They hate him with every fiber of their being. We should be feeling pretty good about ourselves except when we realize, but for the grace of God, we'd feel exactly the same way. That's their accusation, that Jesus made himself God.
Here's his defense, the defense of Jesus, verse 34. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said you are gods? Questions are such a good way of answering charges. Just make people think a little bit.
What Jesus is going to do here, he's going to argue from the lesser to the greater. If something is true about a lesser thing, then why can't it be true about a greater thing? In other words, if the term God can be applied to a mere mortal, then why not?
Why can't it be applied to the one whom God has sent? In the Sermon on the Mount, sometimes, or often, Jesus will say as he's teaching, You have heard it said, but I say to you. And here he just kind of, this is a little twist.
He says, Is it not written? Well, of course, that's like a rhetorical device. Of course it is. He's going after their authority. Notice how he even says there, Is it not written in your laws if it belongs to them?
Well, they're the keepers of the law. That's how they fancy themselves, right? They're the experts in the law. He says, So is it not written in your law? I'm going to appeal to your own source. That's Psalm 82.
As you know, some of you are already looking in your little side notes, and you see Psalm 82 .6 there, and you're like, I'm way ahead of you. Well, okay, good for you. Psalm 82 .6, I said, You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you.
Nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince. There are different positions on this. The scholars say it's Israel, or they say it's judges within Israel. But here's the overall point.
They were called to be just, to establish justice in the nation of Israel. And so, in that sense, they had the power of God vested in them. They had power over life and death. They had the power to make things right on earth.
They were to establish justice. They were to reflect God's own attribute of justice. But they were gods, small g, because of the power communicated to them by Yahweh, by God. But nevertheless, they would still die.
God is not going to die. So they were not in any real sense deity. They just had the power of God. But if it's wrong, if it's not wrong, sorry, if it's not wrong, if it's not incorrect, to refer to mere mortals as gods, because of the God-given authority and the mission that they had, then how could it be wrong for the one who was sent by God, by the Father, as he often said, to refer to himself as God, or make himself equivalent with God.
And this is interesting, too, here in verse 35, because he testifies, he first presents Psalm 82, verse 6, and then he says, Scripture is reliable. In other words, you want to argue against Scripture, I'm going to give you Scripture as my argument, and then what are you going to do?
Look at verse 35. He says, If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be broken, it can't be broken. It's reliable. It's authoritative. It's always trustworthy. It's inerrant.
He is using logic and Scripture to utterly flummox them, to defeat them. And as an aside, I would suggest to you that this is really, you know, often we hear, or we used to hear all the time, you know, what would Jesus do?
Well, I think this is a great example of where we can actually do what Jesus did and not be foolish. If unbelievers want to debate with you, if they want to accuse you, if they want to accuse Jesus, what do you do?
You use Scripture and logic. People want to debate doctrine or evolution or even the reliability of Scripture. I don't debate those things. I tell them what the Bible says. And then I use logic based on what Scripture says.
That's exactly what Jesus did. Well, why? Why am I going to rely on Scripture? Because of what he says there in verse 35. Scripture cannot be broken. Scripture is infallible. Scripture is sharper than any two-edged sword.
It's the only thing that's going to convict. It's the only thing that's going to change a heart. And it's the only thing by the power of the Holy Spirit that is going to impress upon an unbelieving mind that I need to listen to this.
And now the crushing force of our Lord's argument lands on their collective head. Look at verse 36. Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, you are blaspheming because I said, I am the Son of God?
They were ready to kill him for telling the truth because it was a truth they did not believe. But he turns the tables on them by using logic and Scripture, reason and Scripture. In fact, one man wrote, If in any sense the psalmist may apply this term to men, then much more may it be applied to him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world.
That's exactly Jesus' argument. If it's true of the lesser, these people who were sinful, then it is true of me. Jesus, in effect, tells them he is not a mere man among men but a divinely sent God-man among men.
How much more appropriate was it to call himself God, the one whom the divine Father had sent on a divine rescue mission? When the charges came up on Jesus, he did not deny them, but he embraced them.
He said, you are right to call me, or you're right that I'm claiming to be God, but it's not blasphemy. Blasphemy is saying something that's not true about God, about making a claim to be God that is not accurate.
But I am telling the truth. By reason and by Scripture, he defended himself. And in any court of law, the truth is a compelling defense. It's difficult to defeat the truth. And he goes on with his defense.
He sets before them a choice. Look at verse 37. I am not doing, or if I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. It's an if-then. If I'm not doing the works of the Father, then do not believe me.
But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father. He had publicly testified to the nature of his works on many occasions.
John 5, verse 19. You don't need to turn there. I'm going to read them real quickly. So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son could do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.
For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. And if you recall back in John 5 when he said that, what was their response? That's when they decided they were going to kill him. John 5, verse 36.
But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John, John the Baptist. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.
This is his consistent testimony. John 6, verse 38. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. John 8, verse 29. And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.
So he is doing the works of the Father. But Jesus doesn't leave them there. He doesn't just say, look, I am doing the works of the Father. You know, I don't care what you guys say. Too bad for you. Again, look at verse 38.
If I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works. He says, look, don't even believe in me. If you guys can't believe in me, fine. Believe the works that I'm doing. Why? Well, there's something about that.
If you believe the works, if you believe the miracles that he's done, it continues, that you may know and understand the Father is in me and I am in the Father. Listen, like Nicodemus. If you see the works and you think those can only come from the Father, then you will begin to understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.
And ultimately, what will that conclusion lead you to? To believe in Christ. You'll work backwards into faith. Believing in the miracles that Jesus performed and believing God was the source would lead them to believe that Jesus was who he said he was.
Again, going back to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus in Matthew chapter 7 said, you will know a tree, or a tree is known by its fruit. What's the fruit of his ministry? These miracles. He says, listen, look at the miracles, look at the fruits, and then work backwards and say to yourself, well, what is the tree like?
A tree that can do those things, is this a bad tree? And the answer is no. He wanted even his enemies to believe. Even those who had sought to murder him for months. Again, just thinking about the Sermon on the Mount, this wasn't just something that Jesus preached and didn't live out.
Think about these verses. In Matthew 5, verses 43 to 45, he talks about loving your enemies. He says, love your enemies, pray for your persecutors, those who persecute you. What was he doing right here?
He's faced essentially with those who would love to execute him. And he's showing them love by telling them the truth. He briefly addresses the close relationship he has with the Father. He says, the Father is in him, and he is in the Father.
That's what theologians refer to as mutual co-inherence. Write that down. There will be a test later. Mutual co-inherence, it just means that they live in each other. There is a unity in the Trinity, and it's really kind of complex and hard to describe, but there is a unity in essence, a unity in purpose, and a unity in being.
Even though they have different persons, the Father and the Son. So this morning we've seen the charge of the Jews. Secondly, we've seen the defense of Jesus. And now thirdly, we see the sinful response.
If you've ever seen a jury interviewed after a trial, and there's a sense of relief and everything of the trial is over, and sometimes they give pretty reasoned explanations. O .J. Simpson trial, not so much.
One juror said, I'll never forget, she said, there was no proof. Now, after Jesus has just laid out compelling logic, scripture, and just kind of refreshing their mind on all the works that Jesus has done, and that the only reasonable thing is to conclude that their source is from the Father.
Well, did he change their minds? Has he convinced them? Well, in one sense, yes, because they no longer tried to stone him. But look at verse 39. Again, they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.
So they had been dissuaded in one sense. They maybe had been shamed, or maybe they were unsure. They didn't want to stone him any longer, but that didn't soften their hearts. That didn't convert them.
They were as determined as ever to arrest him, to see him tried. And that was exactly the process that would take place in a few months that would lead to his crucifixion. Now, we're sitting here, and we're like all good Americans.
We're like, well, how did he escape? How did he get out of that? We don't know. We're not told. It's not really relevant to what John is teaching us. We do know this. It was not his appointed time to be seized and tried.
How do we know that? Because it didn't happen. So in conclusion, what's important for us here this morning? What's important for each one of us is who do we say that Jesus is? Who is Jesus to you? What is his relationship to you?
Do you believe in him as fully God, as the God-man, as the ever-existent God who came in human flesh, lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, was raised on the third day, and will return one day to judge all mankind?
Do you have absolute confidence that if you died today, you would immediately be in the presence of Christ? If you don't, I would urge you to talk to one of the men here. Talk to me. Talk to somebody.
For it is only in Christ that we can know that we have eternal life. It is only by being in Christ that we can have the absolute confidence of forgiveness of sin, of being reconciled to the Father. Let's pray.
Father in heaven, we marvel at your son, Jesus, surrounded by men who would put him to death. His response was not anger. It wasn't fear. It was to engage them in their very faulty understanding of Scripture, to point them to the many evidences they knew about, to push them back to their own assumptions and force them to reexamine them.
What an example of love, declaring the truth in love. Father, for those who are here today who don't know you, would you by your Spirit convict them, grieve them? Lord, give them a fear of your holiness, knowing that that fear ultimately will bring them to faith.
Give them a desire to learn more about this Jesus, this Jesus who patiently underwent all manner of insult, threat, but always did exactly what you wanted to do. Father, would you bring salvation to many, from the youngest to the oldest here who do not know you.
Even today we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen.