John 10:31-42 (Jesus True Israel)

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you.

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I'm so thankful that the children are in there. There's two sort of basic ways to do church.

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There's a way to do church where it's really professional and all of your all of your timing is right and your music is right and your slides are right, and then there's the way we do church.

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Which is not always perfect, but I love that our children are getting to see us sing praises to God.

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I love that they're growing up hearing the praises of God. I love that they're getting to to be around adults who love

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Jesus. Like what a blessing in a storehouse of righteousness that we're pouring into these children who are getting to see and experience this for years of their life before they grow up and enter the world.

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I love that. So anyway, I'm glad we do that. Today we're going to be wrapping up John chapter 10, and the passage that we're looking at is actually fairly complex.

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It's a very complicated passage, and it can be very easy to misunderstand.

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It has been easily misunderstood in the past, especially in the more Pentecostal, charismatic sort of movements, and what we're going to do today is we're not going to do a lot of application.

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And if you have been around for a while, then you know that we don't normally do a lot of application anyway. Baby birds get the the chewed up food put in their mouth, and then they grow up.

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As we grow up in the Word, I don't need and you don't need me to apply the text for you.

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You need me to teach the text. You need me to exposit the text. You need me to declare what the truth of this is, and the

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Holy Spirit will help you apply the text at home in your life, in your time with God.

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But today we really do need to understand what this text is saying because it's a difficult text. Now the theme that's running through this text and the theme that's running through the entire

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Gospel of John is that belief leads to life in Jesus's name. John says that in chapter 20 verse 31, these things have been written so that you will believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life in his name. That theme shows up in this passage as well, even in the midst of the complexity and in the midst of the depth and in the midst of the

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Old Testament background that we're gonna have to pull in to be able to understand this. And by the time that we are finished,

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I hope that we echo with John that our heart has seen that theme where we will have life in his name.

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And what do I mean by life? I mean eternal life. I mean sanctifying life that regenerates you, that breeds new life into you, that makes you a new creation, that gives you new thoughts, new affections, new emotions, new habits, new beliefs, that makes every part of you brand new as we wait on Jesus to return when you get a new body.

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Praise God for that. When we live in the new Jerusalem, praise God for that, for all of eternity with Christ when he makes all things new, when the curse is lifted.

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That's what I want us to see running through this passage is the newness of life that is offered to those who are in Christ, Jesus, even as he rebukes the

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Pharisees, even as he does it in a very interesting way, in a way that only

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God could do, in a way that we'll see the wisdom of God running through the way that Jesus even rebukes them today.

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I pray that all of us would see that life, receive that life in Christ, and that none of us would be on team

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Pharisee, where that life will be taken from us and that eternal life will be turned in the opposite direction of the wrath of God for eternity, where his judgment is abiding on us.

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That's what I pray, that we would be on the side of God's life and not on the side of the

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Pharisees. This is the final interaction that the Pharisees are going to have with Jesus, which is a pretty shocking thing to think about.

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It's the final interaction that the Pharisees are going to have. And when I say interaction, I mean that two parties are involved.

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The Pharisees are going to try Jesus in a courtroom scene, but Jesus is going to be like a sheep before his shearers.

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He's going to be silent. He's not interacting with them. This is the last time that they will interact with Jesus here in John 10.

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That means John 11 through the rest of the gospel. This is their final shot. This is their final opportunity to hear the truth coming out of Jesus's mouth, and they're going to totally reject it for the final time.

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They're going to be forever separated from God. After John 10, Jesus is going to go away for three months while he prepares himself and his disciples for the final

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Passover, where he's going to be crucified for the sins of his people. And what we've seen now bubbling under the surface of the text for months is this rejection, this growing hatred by the

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Pharisees that is now climaxing here in John 10. I believe that it really began.

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They were annoyed with him in John 2 when he said he could rebuild the temple in three days. They hated him in John 5 when he healed the man who's been sick for 38 years, healed him on the

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Sabbath. They hated him there. They wanted to kill him there. John 8, they wanted to kill him there. John 10, they want to kill him.

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This hatred has been climaxing until the point to where today it's at its highest.

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Today we're going to do two things. We're going to examine the final interaction with Christ by the

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Pharisees and see how they reject him, and then we're also going to celebrate the life that is available to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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That's all we're going to get to today, and what a great way to end. So with that, let's turn to John chapter 10 verse 31 through 42 as we consider these things together.

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The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them,

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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

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God. Jesus answered them, has it not been written in your law? I said you are gods.

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If he called them gods to whom the Word of God came and Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the

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Father has sanctified and sent into the world that you are blaspheming? Because I said I am the Son of God.

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If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe me. But if I do them, though you do not believe me, believe the works so that you may know and understand that the

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Father is in me. And I am in the Father. Therefore they were seeking again to seize him, and he eluded their grasp.

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And he went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and he stayed there.

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Many came to him and were saying, while John performed no sign, yet everything

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John said about this man was true. Many believed in him there. Lord Jesus, you're infinitely wise.

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The way that you answer these Pharisees with the particular

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Scripture that you answer these Pharisees is unbelievable to me. It makes me so humble to think like out of all of the ways that I could picture myself responding or any of us responding, it wouldn't have been this way.

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And yet you accomplish a lifetime of material in one sentence with this passage, with this answer that you gave.

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Lord, I pray that even though there's many different facets of meaning that are going on in this passage,

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Lord, I pray that there would be clarity today on that. I pray that even as we just barely scratch the surface of this, that we would see what it is that you're saying, and that,

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Lord, we would get a deeper glimpse of how you bind the entire Bible together, every bit of it.

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So Lord, we ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Again, the

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Pharisees rage is at an all -time high, and it all centers around his claim to being equal with God.

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In one of the shortest verses in the Bible, and next week we will actually maybe get to the shortest verse in the

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Bible, Jesus wept in John 11, this verse is only six words in the original Greek. It's, I and the

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Father are one. And again, we're not talking about the kind of unity that can be established by human means.

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We're not talking about theological unity, where I just believe the right things about God. That's not what

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Jesus is talking about when he says I and the Father are one. We're not talking about missiological unity, where he's saying

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I do the mission correctly that God has prescribed. That's what missiologically means.

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He's not talking about doxological unity, where I worship God in the way that I'm supposed to worship

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God. He's not talking about epistemological. I'm using really big words right now. I'm defining them though. Epistemological means that I know why

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I know something. It's the how do I know anything? He's not saying that I have the same epistemology as God.

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I don't have the same axiology as God, meaning that I have the same value structure as God. No, Jesus is saying my unity with God is ontological, meaning

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I have the same essence, I have the same being, I have the same nature, that I am God. That's what he's saying.

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When he says I and the Father are one, he's saying I am, by very nature, God. And he's not saying that God the

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Father and God the Son are the same and he's not saying that God the Son is God the Father, but he is saying that I and the

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Father are one. One God, three persons. When you figure that out, let me know.

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But it's true. The Word of God is true. Let every man be a liar because the Word of God is true. Even if our brains aren't big enough or strong enough or or witty enough, intelligent enough to understand it, these things are true.

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God is one God, three in person. That's what he's saying. The Pharisees knew what

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Jesus was claiming. They didn't actually believe that he meant something other than he meant. They actually knew what he meant.

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That's why they picked up stones to kill him. They didn't misunderstand his claim at all. Again, I bring this up often, but you'll have people say that Jesus never claimed to be

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God. Well, they didn't pick up baseball -sized stones for nothing. They knew what he was saying.

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They understood. It says they picked up stones again to stone him.

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That word again means that this is not the first time that they've tried to murder him with stones. This is the third time, in fact.

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Most scholars believe that in John 5, in the city, that was them attempting to stone him there.

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He eluded their grasp. John 8, picks up stone to kill him, and then

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John 10, here the third time. The third time. This is what they've done. We start to see a sort of pattern emerge in the

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Gospel of John. A pattern that I just noticed, just saw this week, but it applies backwards into the things that we've seen before.

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There's this sort of pattern where Jesus will reveal himself to the people. He will reveal his divinity.

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He will expose his equality to God. It will infuriate the Pharisees. Jesus will appeal to witnesses to substantiate his claim, and then they will want to kill him.

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And then Jesus will leave the city. This is the third time that this pattern is sort of developed over the course of this

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Gospel. Look at John 5, 17 through 19. But he answered them, my father is working until now, and I myself am working.

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For this reason, therefore, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him. They weren't trying to kill him because he had a good work ethic.

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They weren't trying to kill him because he had a high standard for his labor. They were trying to kill him because he was making himself equal to God.

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My father's been working from every day up until now, and I myself work. He's correlating himself with God. They were seeking all the more to kill him because he not only was breaking the

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Sabbath, but he was calling God his own father and making himself equal with God. Pharisees got it.

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Therefore, Jesus answered and was saying to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of himself unless it is something that he sees the father doing.

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For whatever the father does, these things the son also does in like manner. Now in this passage, he appeals to his works.

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He says, look at the things that I'm doing, and you'll see that I am God. I'm not just empty word, hollow mouthed, saying something that isn't true.

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I'm doing stuff that's proving that I am God. Look at my works. He says, look at the father's works and you will see that I am

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God. He says, look at the testimony of John the Baptist and another part of John five. He appeals to Moses.

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He appeals to the testimony of God. He appeals to the testimony of the word. In ancient Judaism, you needed two witnesses to corroborate a report.

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Jesus gives them four. He doubles the necessary amount of witnesses to show that he is one and only

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God. And yet they reject him. They have this murderous rage about them that fuels them to want to stone him in the city.

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And Jesus leaves. John six one tells us that he leaves the city and he goes to Galilee.

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That's the first time this pattern is established. He appeals to his witnesses. He affirms his equality with God.

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Pharisees respond with rage. Jesus leaves the city. Now look at John eight. This happens again.

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Pharisees have been stewing for about a year by the time you get to John eight, maybe a little bit longer.

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It says your father, Abraham, this is Jesus speaking, rejoice to see my day. And he saw it and he was glad.

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So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham. And Jesus said to them, truly, truly,

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I say to you before Abraham was born, I am. Therefore, they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hit himself and went out of the temple.

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In John eight, we're not reading all of it, but he appeals to many witnesses. He says, I'm the light of the world. He appeals to God as his witness.

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Again, he appeals to his works. He appeals to his obedience as a testimony. In John five, he appeals to Moses. In John eight, he appeals to Abraham.

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He's appealing to all of the people that he should be appealing to for them to believe. And yet they don't.

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He says, Abraham, rejoice to see my day. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

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You hate God because you hate me. That's what Jesus is saying. If you hate

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Jesus Christ and you hate God, that's what Jesus is saying. Jesus affirmed his equality with God by giving the tetragrammaton, the four letter word for God.

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I am that I am Yahweh unmistakable. So the word

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God gave to Moses that we read about earlier, when he says, what should I tell the people that your name is? And he says, tell them I am has sent you pure essence, pure being, pure existence.

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God, not a beginning, not an end. Perfect being God. Jesus is saying this is me.

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This is a word that no one would ever write without washing their hands. This is a word that no one would even speak for threat of of being punished for it because they're unholy.

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And how can they speak such beautiful, clean, perfect things on unclean lips? And Jesus said it out loud.

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Ego me in Greek, I am God. And the

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Pharisees were incensed and they respond with murderous rage.

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And you can hardly blame them if Jesus wasn't who he said that he was, because this would have been blasphemy, which they will accuse him of.

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Johnny, we see Jesus leaving the city. We see that in the synoptic gospels, John, does it tell us?

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But he goes back to Galilee just like he did before. Same pattern is established in Johnny.

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John 10, same pattern. Our text for today, at that time, the feast of dedication took place in Jerusalem and it was winter and Jesus was walking in the temple of the portico of Solomon.

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The Jews then gathered around him and were saying to him, how long will you keep us in suspense?

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What a sarcastic question. If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them,

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I told you and you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name.

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These testify of me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.

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My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them.

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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.

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I and the father are one. The Jews picked up stones again to stone him,

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Jesus answered them, I showed you many good works from the father for which of these are you stoning me? The Jews answered and said, for a good work, we do not stone you, but for blasphemy.

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Because you being a man have made yourself out to be God. Jesus said, if I do not do the works of my father, then don't believe me.

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But if I do them, though you don't believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the father is in me and that I am in the father.

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Therefore, they were seeking all the more to seize him. And he eluded their grasp and he went away beyond the

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Jordan. This is in Galilee, the place where John was first baptizing and he stayed there. Again, Jesus appeals to his works.

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He appeals to the testimony of God. He appeals to the same things that he's appealed to before, but even less so because now they're asking a disingenuous question.

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They don't want to hear Jesus's defense. They've heard it before. They're asking him to share who he is so that they can indict him in front of the crowd, arrest him and murder him.

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They're saying, tell us plainly. That's why I said that's a sarcastic question. They want Jesus. They're handing him the noose and they're saying, tell all the crowd that you're

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God so that we can turn them against you and kill you. That's what they're saying. Now, Jesus, after they respond with this murderous rage, they're going to essentially what they're trying to do is form a murder squad that's going to grab

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Jesus, take him out of the city to a hidden location, which is what they would have to do if they were going to stone someone because it was against Roman law for them to commit capital crimes or capital punishment.

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And they would have taken their chances on killing him outside of the city because their rage was this white hot at this point.

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Jesus is going to leave the city in John 10, the final time he leaves the city before he comes back on the week of his death.

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But Jesus is going to engage them today. And he's going to prove to them that he is who he says he is.

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And he's going to prove to them that they are a cursed generation of people under the wrath of God.

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And he's going to do it with an argument that's unexpected to say the least.

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Again, we see this predictable pattern emerging. We see that they have a fiery rage against the son of God, but they also have a flawed rationale for how they got to that rage.

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That flawed rationale was built on an assumption that Jesus is guilty of blasphemy. They believe that he actually had committed the crime that they were accusing him of.

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And this has sort of been happening all throughout the gospel. When he said, I'll rebuild the temple that annoyed them. When he said when he worked on the

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Sabbath and healed a man that caused them rage. When he said, I am that I am. When he said, I'm equal with the father.

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These things were making them believe that Jesus, a mere man, was claiming himself to be

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God. They even say that for a good work, we don't stone you, but for blasphemy, because you being a man, a mere mortal, make yourself out to be

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God. Now, we need to understand what it means to blaspheme

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God before we can continue. Blaspheming God, it's a part of the

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Old Testament law, comes out of Leviticus 24, 16. That's the first chapter of the

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Bible that blaspheming is mentioned. It's in a scene where a young man and an

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Israelite are fighting. This man is an outsider. He's not a native of the country of Israel, and they're fighting with each other inside the camp, and all of a sudden, the foreigner screams out and curses

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God, and the people of Israel are like, we don't have a law for that. What are we supposed to do if somebody curses

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God? So they bring the matter to Moses, and Moses brings the matter to the Lord, and this is what the Lord says. The one who blasphemes in the name of the

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Lord shall surely be put to death. All of the congregation shall certainly stone him, the alien as well as the native, when he blasphemes the name shall be put to death.

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This means anyone in Israel and anyone outside of Israel who's inside the parameters of Israel, if they curse the name of God, they're going to die the death of stoning.

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Now the death of stoning is not like gravel in your driveway.

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It's large stones hurled at a person until they perish. And then even larger stones would be piled up on top of their body in this big heaping mound of stones so that anyone who walks past it will see this is what happens to the one who blasphemes.

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It's a marker, it's a billboard, don't do that. That's the first thing. The second thing is that it's sort of this dramatic imagery.

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It's imagery of covenantal cursing, because if these heavy boulders are on top of you, then you can't stand up.

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You can't, in the afterlife, rise from the dead. That's sort of what Israel was doing.

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It's a metaphor. They didn't actually believe that the spirit couldn't get past the rocks. It's a metaphor for covenantal cursing of God, that you are under the wrath of God forever.

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No resurrection for you, no heaven for you, it's over. So if you were stoned, that's the symbolism that was going on.

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So when they're trying to stone Jesus, they're trying to say you're not fit to live and you are so far gone that you're not fit for God and for eternity.

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Imagine the audacity to say that to the Lord of glory. The word blasphemy comes, it's actually a few

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Hebrew words that we translate blasphemy from in English, but in the Torah, it comes from the word nakav.

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I know you want to say it, so let's get it out of our system, nakav. Hebrew is really fun to say.

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This word means to bore a hole into something. It means to hollow it out. It means to empty it or to drain it.

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That's the literal definition of the word blasphemy in Leviticus 24, 16. So what that means is, is you're attempting to bore into the name of God and drain it of its majesty.

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You're treating it as common as every day. You think about a bank.

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Before we had digital ledgers and before we had digital assets and online transactions, you think about a bank maybe 150 years ago where they actually had assets on hand and a bank robber comes in.

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This bank sort of represents an institution of the community where everyone is invested in it, everyone is blessed by this bank in a perfect world maybe, and the bank robber comes in and he bores out the safe and then he pops open the door and he drains it of all of its assets.

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150 years ago, that was a capital crime and you would be punished by the punishment of death for doing that.

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That's a bank. Think about how much more treating the name of God as common, boring at it, and trying to rob it of its majesty.

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You can't do that, but imagine even thinking that you could. The reason that the capital punishment was given to this crime is because what a heinous crime it is for us, a created being, to approach the almighty and think that we can rob him of his splendor and his glory.

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What a damaging, wicked, heinous sin. Maybe you think, well, thank

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God I haven't done that today. Well, we have in small ways. Maybe we haven't cursed the name of God like this foreigner did in Leviticus 26, but we've treated

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God's name as common. We've treated God's name flippantly. How many times have you heard someone say it or you even said yourself, oh my, and you're not crying out to the

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Lord in prayer? You're not extolling his virtue or praising him for his goodness? How many times when we've stumped our toe or got shocked because we got too close to a hot wire and we've paired the name of God with a curse word or a word that is common and base?

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How many times have we elevated our own name up unintentionally or intentionally above the name of God?

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This is what they're accusing Jesus of doing. They're accusing him of being a man, but elevating his name up to the status of God.

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They're accusing him of boring out its majesty, robbing it of its glory so that he could be significant.

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And they believe that he deserves the punishment of death. And he would have, had he not been

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God. Had Jesus not been who he said he was, then they would have been right and we would have to agree with their assessment and we would have to grab the stone with them and join in.

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We don't like to think about that as moderns because capital punishment seems dirty to us, but when you understand how significant and holy and righteous

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God is, you can imagine why they were so vigilant to protect that.

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But Jesus was not blaspheming because he was God, he was telling the truth. He wasn't defaming the name of God, he was honoring the name of God.

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He was pleasing God because he was speaking accurately about who he was. And he gave them evidence after evidence after evidence to see it.

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He turned water into wine, something that no human being can do. He miraculously fed the crowds, something no one could do.

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We read about that today in Mark. He healed the sick, he walked on water, he healed the blind. All these things are miracles in the

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Gospel of John. There's further evidence in the Synoptic Gospels and the Pharisees could not see it.

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And it wasn't because they weren't smart, they were the religious scholars of their day. They wrote books on theology, they were seminary professors, they were pastors, they were priests, they were ones who knew the

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Bible better than you and I could ever imagine. Most of them had the entire first five books of the Bible memorized, if not all of the

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Old Testament. They were prevented from seeing the truth, not because they weren't smart enough or righteous enough or whatever else.

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They were prevented because they were not Jesus' sheep. They had the wrong identity. They were not his, they didn't belong to him, so therefore they could not see divine blindness was put over their eyes.

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It says in Matthew that he told parables to keep them from understanding. It says in John that he would prevent them from seeing, that he would cause them to be stuck in their sins.

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They were not his sheep, therefore the confusion would never leave them. So with stones in their hand and their own flawed opinions about Jesus, they stood there ready at a moment to grab him, to drag him out of the city and murder him.

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But Jesus engages their flawed understanding here. Jesus doesn't immediately leave the city, and he's going to do so by using the

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Old Testament to refute them. Again, this is the final interaction Jesus has with them. This is the final thing he has to say.

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Typically when we do that, we do it really, we say something really important. When this is the last interaction we're going to have with a person, we say something that matters and that's what

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Jesus is doing. Now just to give you a little bit of a landscape of where we're heading,

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John 10, Jesus leaves the city and he's not going to come back until John 11, three months later where he heals

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Lazarus and raises him from the dead. Doesn't interact with the Pharisees though. John 12, he rides into the city just a few days later,

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Palm Sunday. They sing praises to him on that day. They lay down the palms on that day, but they reject him.

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John 13, he gathers with his disciples in the upper room. John 13. And then

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John 14, John 15, John 16, John 17, and John 18 are all in the upper room.

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All of that, just about as much as we've already went through already, is one, two hours in the life of Christ in the upper room.

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The end of John 18, he's betrayed by Judas. John 19, he's crucified. John 20, he's resurrected. John 21, he's spending with his disciples.

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The Pharisees have no more chances. This is it. This is their last shot and unfortunately we know the outcome.

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They will remember this day forever in hell. That thought is going to gnaw at them that they missed it.

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Is it any wonder that hell was called a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth? Verse 34 through 38 is

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Jesus' final repudiation of the Pharisees where he challenges their misunderstanding. This is verse 34 and 36.

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Jesus answered them, has it not been written in your law, I said you are gods. If he called them gods to whom the word of God came and the scriptures cannot be broken, do you say of him that the father sanctified and sent him to the world that you were blaspheming because I said

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I'm the son of the gods. This is a challenging passage. Jesus is telling the

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Pharisees that the word of God calls someone other than Yahweh gods.

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I thought there was only one God. This seems like an error almost.

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When you read it, it's a little shocking. Maybe you say, I don't understand that, I'm going to keep going. I was tempted to do that this week.

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You've got a group of people today that take this passage and take a couple other passages like it and say that the

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Bible communicates that we can become little gods. It's called the little gods theology.

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Kenneth Copeland says this, Creflo Dollar says this, many charlatans, wolves, and heretics on TBN and Daystar say this, and they basically twist the scriptures to say that we can have the very power of God to do the very works of God, miracles of God.

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I've heard Kenneth Copeland, who is fueled by demons, I've heard him say that he flies in his private airplane and can make sure that he has proper good weather because God has given him the ability to speak weather into existence because he believes he's a little god.

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What a fool. What a liar. These are aberrant, unholy, and demonic things that people are saying.

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They're twisting John 10. They're twisting the theology of John 10, so we have to study this.

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We have to know what this says. If for no other reason than to combat the error, the rank error that is existing in the church today so that we'll understand what

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Jesus is saying. Now to understand what he's saying, you have to know the context. Jesus is quoting a scripture from the

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Old Testament. He's not just making this up, he's quoting Psalm 82. Now I'm going to be reading, hopefully if my slide magic is right, and it usually isn't, it's going to be from the

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New King James instead of the NASB. I'm doing that on purpose because I think the New King James translated it better.

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God stands in the congregation of the mighty and he judges among the gods. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?

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Defend the poor and the fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and the needy, deliver the poor and the needy, free them from the hand of the wicked.

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They do not know nor do they understand, they walk about in darkness, all the foundations of the earth are unstable.

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And I said, you are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High, but you shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.

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Arise, O God, judge the earth for you shall inherit the nations. Now when we think about this, this is a

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Psalm by a man named Asaph. Asaph was one of the choir leaders in David's orchestra or choral motif, whatever you want to call it.

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Asaph wrote 12 Psalms, and this one says that God calls some group of people or some group of beings gods.

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So we need to unpack that. And the way that scholars have unpacked that across history is they've come up with basically three different interpretations on what this means.

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Who are the gods that it's talking about in verse 1 and verse 7,

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I think? The first way that people have tried to understand this is that gods in this passage means angels.

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They're the fallen angels. They're the fallen angels who didn't exercise their authority correctly over the nations.

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This is the Nephilim, they say, before the flood. These fallen angels, these sons of God.

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And they say that this is what these are talking about, the downfall of the fallen angels who've been given authority to rule just as God has given authority to rule, and that they are the ones that fell.

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But that doesn't make sense with the context of John 10. When you look at this example, why would

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Jesus use this example to substantiate his claim? He's on trial in John 10.

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They said, you've committed blasphemy. He's on the witness stand. Why would he say, well, let me quote this passage from Psalm 82, which talks about men being angels.

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The Pharisees would have been like, what does that have to do with anything? How is that relevant? Jesus, are you claiming to be an angel?

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Then Jesus would say, no, because he wasn't claiming that, and then they would have stoned him. This would have been the worst defense you could possibly imagine.

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And the Pharisees don't object in that direction. They don't say, Jesus, what are you talking about angels for? Because the

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Pharisees didn't believe this passage was talking about angels. The Pharisees didn't believe, Jesus didn't believe this passage was talking about angels.

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So this defense that scholars have come up with, I think, falls woefully short. It does not explain the context of the passage.

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So let's move on. I'm not going to spend any more time on it. The second way that scholars have tried to understand what

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Jesus says and what Psalm 82 says is that gods in this passage means the judges or the rulers.

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The NASB translates it in that direction. That's why I didn't use it, because I don't agree with it. The logic of the passage is that since these judges, since these people, since they're acting out a judgment type of role, then only

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God can act in a judgment type of role. So therefore, God is giving them and attributing them the name of gods because they're acting like God.

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And the people who believe this particular way of viewing this passage say that these judges are acting foolishly, that they're stealing from the people, they're acting unjustly, which the leaders of Israel often did, and it's them, the judges, who are going to bring condemnation upon themselves.

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And this makes a lot of sense in context with John 10 if you forget that John 10 has a gap.

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John 10 1 through 18 is about the Pharisees being thieves and robbers and liars, and that would make sense in the first part of John 10.

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But we remember three months have passed in John 10, and Jesus is not trying to shame the

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Pharisees in this scenario. He's trying to absolve himself and show that he's innocent and that he's not guilty and that they're the ones who are broken.

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So this particular passage doesn't make sense of the context of John 10, it doesn't make sense of really what

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Asaph is trying to accomplish in Psalm 82, and we're not going to spend any more time on it because I don't agree with it.

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That's me being mildly funny, but it does fall short. The third and the best explanation for this is that the gods of this passage are the

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Jews in the wilderness around Mount Sinai, and I want to show you why I think this is true. Psalm 82 is a psalm by Asaph, and it says that God stands in the middle of the congregation of people.

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This is a very Sinaitic type of phrase, where God is literally standing and dwelling in the midst of his people who are gathered around the mountain.

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And it says that they are the ones who received the word from God. That is a very Sinaitic moment because at the mountain of Sinai, they literally received the word of God via Moses, who brought down the law.

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So you've got that going for it. It says that they were unjust, they followed after wickedness, and they walked in darkness.

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What could be darker than sacrificing a golden calf at the same time that Moses is up getting the law of God?

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They grumbled against God. They refused to enter the promised land of God. The passage in Psalm 82 says that the earth was shaking.

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Yes, of course it was. We see that in Exodus, where the earth is shaking and trembling because the holiness of God is breaking out against this wicked people.

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We see that they all died in the wilderness. It doesn't say wilderness, but it says they all died.

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That generation died. We know that that happened in the wilderness people who refused to enter the promised land.

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All of this brings a lot of clarity to Asaph's context. Let's read it one more time now with this wilderness idea in mind to see these themes at play.

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God stands in the congregation of the mighty and he judges among the gods.

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How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked, defend the poor and the fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and needy, deliver the poor and the needy, free them from the hand of the wicked?

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They do not know, nor do they understand. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are unstable.

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I said, you are gods and you are all children of the Most High, but you shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.

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Arise, O God, judge the earth. That really fits with the

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Exodus motif, but there's more. There's more evidence. Asaph wrote 12 psalms, one for every tribe in Israel.

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Half of Asaph's psalms are looking backwards, looking back at the history of his people.

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Almost all of them are looking at the wilderness generation. Almost all of them. There's a couple that are looking at the

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Red Sea, 74, 76, 78. Most of them are looking at Sinai, 74, 76, 79, and 80, especially the tabernacle, which is 73 and 74.

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Asaph's goal in his writing, his poetry, his hymnody, the way that he is writing hymns for the people of God is to look back at the sin and to look back at the wickedness and to show the people, we don't want to be like them.

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We don't want to be like the ones who died in the wilderness. We want to be the ones who obey God and who live in the promised land and who are free and who worship

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Him in spirit and in truth. Asaph is the kind of writer who's a historical writer who's looking backwards.

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This sort of validates the interpretation. This is the only interpretation that understands the sonship themes that are talking about.

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It calls them children of the Most High. Now that could be angels because we see in Job where the sons of God come and they gather around the throne.

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But Adam is called a son of God. Israel was called a son of God. Did you know that? Israel was called the firstborn son of God.

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God says in Exodus 4 .22, Then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the

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Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn. So I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me.

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But if you refuse to let him go, indeed, I will kill your son, your firstborn. So here you have the context of the

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Exodus. You have the sons of the Most High, which is a common way of referring to Israel.

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You've got all of this there. And if that weren't enough to tip the interpretive scales in this direction, there's more.

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It's the only one that understands Israel's representative nature to the world. In Exodus 7 .1,

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Moses says this. The Lord God said to Moses, see, I make you as God to Pharaoh.

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What? I make you as God to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.

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You know what God is telling Moses? He's saying you weren't going to walk into the court of the most powerful man in the world who thinks that he is a

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God, and you are going to display God to him. You are going to humble him.

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You're going to deliver the truth of God to him. You're going to showcase the miracles of God to him. You are going to be the closest thing to God that this pagan man sees.

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That's what it means when he says that you are going to be God to him and Aaron's going to be your prophet. Think about Israel. Israel was called to be a light to the

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Gentiles. They were called to showcase the glory of God to the world. Israel was called to be God's special representatives, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation that showcased the glory of God to the world.

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They would be the closest thing the world ever saw to God. Is it that inappropriate for them to be called

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God's little g in this passage? Moses is called that in the exact same way.

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Israel is called that to showcase the glory of God to the nations. If that were not enough,

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I'm piling it on because I think this is right. The interpretation of the rabbis in Jesus' day universally believed that Psalm 82 applied to the wilderness generation.

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That's important because when we interpret the Bible, we don't interpret the Bible from what a 20th century

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German has to say. And I say that not to make fun of Germans. A lot of Germans say a lot of bad things about the Bible. After Martin Luther, it's downhill for the

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Germans. But we don't follow them. We follow what the Bible says.

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We follow what the original audience would have heard from the original author. And the original audience listening to Jesus would have thought he was talking about the wilderness generation.

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We learned that in Philo. We learned that in Second Temple Judaism. We learned that in the Mishnah. We learned that in the Talmud. This was sort of a common understanding of what this passage meant, that it was talking about the wilderness generation.

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So Jesus was not saying that all human beings are little divine gods. That's not what he was saying.

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He was not saying that this passage is limited only to the leadership of Israel. That's not what he was saying.

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And he was certainly not saying that he himself was an angel. That would have been a very odd thing for him to do on the witness stand.

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Jesus was saying that if the Old Testament can call the entire congregation children of God, why are you stoning me because I said

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I'm God's son? That's what he's saying. He's saying if the

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Bible is comfortable to use this language, then why are you stoning me for something that the

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Bible itself has done even before, and I'm just being consistent? Now Jesus was certainly saying more than that, but it's brilliant the way that he makes this case because he shows that he knew the

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Bible better than they did. That they're trying to convict him for something that is in their law and even in their songs that they sing.

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Jesus challenges their authority towards Scripture. He says if you or if he called them gods to whom the word of God came and Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the

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Father sanctified and sent into the world, you are blaspheming me because I said that I'm the son of God. Jesus is accusing them, the theological experts of their day, the scholars, the ones who were the

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Bible nerds. He's saying you don't know your Bible and you're trying to break the sufficiency and the inerrancy of Scripture to support your movement instead of reading out from it what it's actually saying.

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He totally turns it on their head. He's calling himself sanctified.

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Where does he get that term? Because Israel itself was sanctified. Israel was sanctified. The word sanctified means set apart.

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God chose Israel out of the nations, called them out of Egypt, set them apart and sanctified them at Mount Sinai.

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And he's saying in the exact same way, God has called me out of heaven, sent me to earth, set me apart for the mission of God.

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And yet he's even saying more than that. He's saying Israel was just a type and shadow of what I came to do.

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I'm true Israel. Jesus proves their claim to be utterly absurd.

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The most sophisticated argument that you could ever imagine that none of them could have ever come up with on their own. He shocks them with his intelligence and his mastery of the

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Scripture. And yet they still hate him. And yet they still want to kill him. What we see here is that the best preacher and the best theological message is not enough to win the hearts of the reprobate because they're not

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Jesus's sheep. They're not his. If you're not his, you can't hear the message of the gospel, no matter how it's delivered.

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Jesus is preaching this message in front of them and they're dead. Their ears are stopped up.

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He proves their claim absurd, but they still reject him. And this leads to the final rejection. Verse 37 and 38, 39 say this, if I do not do the works of my father, then do not believe me.

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But if I do them, though you do not believe me, believe my works so that you may know and understand that the father is in me and I am in the father.

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Therefore, they were seeking again to seize him, to grab him, pull him out of the city and stone him, but he eluded their grasp.

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They knew what Jesus had done. They saw his signs. They heard his wisdom. They saw his intelligence.

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Every prophecy that they had memorized from Isaiah and Jeremiah and Micah, Zechariah, all point to Jesus.

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And yet their hatred only grew. Their blindness only increased. Their confusion only deepened. And they raised their stones to murder him.

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Now what I find interesting in this final part is how Jesus takes Psalm 82 and he shows that you should not be wanting to kill me based off Psalm 82.

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And he takes it and he applies it to the Pharisees and the Jews of the first century.

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He's saying the same people who died in the wilderness, who were banned from the promised land is you.

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It's you. What wisdom from God that he could take all of this out of one passage and apply it to them condemning them.

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It says that he went away beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing and he was staying there and many came to him and were saying, while John performed no sign, yet everything

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John said about this man was true and many believed him there. I can't tell you how important this passage is even though it seems like it's just a transition.

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He goes back to the place where he started his ministry. If you remember,

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Jesus started his ministry with John the Baptist at the Jordan River. He was baptized there. He goes into the wilderness and he's tempted in Matthew there.

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We don't see that in John, but that's what happens. This Jesus goes back to the beginning. That is so important, especially as we bring all these themes together with Psalm 82.

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That's why I said this is a complicated passage. If you don't fully understand what's going on, that's okay.

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I've racked my brain with it all week and barely feel like I have a hold of it. We can talk about it later, but Jesus goes back to where he begins because he's showing that everything in Psalm 82 applies to them.

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He goes back to where he began. Why is that important? Because when Jesus came onto the scene, he was showcasing that he is true

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Israel. John the Baptist announces him as true Israel. Jesus goes down into the water as true

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Israel. And you say, how can that possibly be? The Israelites went down into the divided waters of the

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Red Sea. They were led by the second member of the Trinity through the waters. God is speaking above the waters.

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The Holy Spirit is hovering as a cloud of fire. And when Jesus goes down into the waters of baptism, every element of that is there.

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God speaks. The Spirit hovers. The sun goes down into the water as a symbol of how he's going to lead his church to follow him to the promised land.

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Then where does he go? He's led by the Spirit to the wilderness and he's tempted. Remember the

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Israelites, they were tempted with bread and they failed. They grumbled. Jesus was tempted with bread and he succeeded.

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They were tempted with worship. Are you going to worship God in truth? They sacrificed to a golden calf.

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They failed. Jesus says, you know, you've heard not to put the Lord your

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God to the test. Jesus succeeded in worship. He succeeded in the temptation of bread where Israel failed.

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He's redoing their history. The Israelites were supposed to conquer the nations.

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They were supposed to possess the nations. What is Jesus tempted with? By Satan. If you'll bow down and worship me,

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I'll give you the nations. He's tempted with the same three things that Israel is tempted with.

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He goes through the same baptism that Israel goes through, except he's faithful and they're not. That tells me he's redoing the story of Israel.

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He's redoing it in his image and in his name and in his likeness. Why? Because he's remaking

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Israel. Israel rejected him. He showcased what he was going to do in John 1 when he did these things and in John 10 he goes back there and he starts gathering followers and people start believing in him.

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He starts assembling a population around him, citizens around him who are going to be a part of his new

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Israel, his kingdom. Jesus is going back to the beginning to show that he is true

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Israel and there's Psalm 82. The Pharisees, the Jews that rejected him, they're the ones who are like the wilderness generation who will die and who will never enter the promised land.

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In AD 70 it happened. The Romans surrounded the city. They burned it to the ground.

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They killed over a million Jews and that entire generation was wiped out just like in the

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Exodus. But the church of God still stands, the new Israel of God. Paul says that if you believe like Abraham, you're part of the

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Israel of God. All of this, all of these

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Old Testament themes, Jesus is using to declare who he is.

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He's not only God, he's the author of a new nation, a new people. That's the gospel and that's where we're going to end our time here today.

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The Bible doesn't say that we have to clean ourself up. The Bible says that we've been made new, new people, new creation, grafted into a new country, a new nation, given a new citizenship.

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We are citizens of heaven, right? We're not citizens of America. I guess on paper we are, but we're citizens of heaven.

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That citizenship trumps this country. No pun intended. I didn't actually mean that.

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We have a new mountain that we gather around. Can you think about that?

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Moses led his people to that old mountain called Sinai. Jesus led his people to a mountain called Calvary. We have a better mountain.

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Jesus is a better priest than the priest of Aaron. He's a forever priest after the order of Melchizedek. We have a new sacrifice, no longer a sacrifice that only covers us for a season of time.

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We have the forever sacrifice when he died on the cross and he says, it is finished. A better sacrifice, a better priest, a better temple, a better nation, a better citizenship.

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We've been brought into the promises that go all the way back to Psalm 82. They rejected it and because of Christ's work on the cross, you and I have been brought into it.

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We've been brought in. Jesus is doing so much in this passage to show us that he will save his people and those who reject him are going to reject him, but he will, by God's power, save his people.

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If you're a part of that, don't puff up your chest with pride. It's because Jesus did it all.

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God did it all. He brought you into something that he's been working before the foundations of the world. What a glory.