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In light of what we have just sung, it is most fitting that we come to John 10. So will you take your Bibles and turn to John's Gospel chapter 10, where we will examine verses 22 through 42 looking at the excellencies and the essential glories of Christ follow along, as I read from this text, John 10, beginning in verse 22,

"At that time, the Feast of the dedication took place at Jerusalem; it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. The Jews therefore gathered around Him, and were saying 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, these bear witness of Me. But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall 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 took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, 'I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?' The Jews answered Him, 'For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make yourself out to be God.' Jesus answered them, 'Has it not been written in your Law? "I said you are gods"?, If he called them Gods to whom the Word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, "You are blaspheming," because I said "I am the Son of God"? If I do not do the works, or if I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.' Therefore, they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp. And He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and He was staying there. Many came to Him and were saying, 'While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true.' And many believed in Him there."

We return, once again, to the greatest of all subjects, and that is the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, especially as they relate to his essential glories as the Son of God, as the Messiah, as the Savior of all who will believe in him. And of course, this is John's stated purpose in his Gospel. I find myself transported, as it were, into another dimension of living whenever I contemplate my blessed Savior and Lord. In fact, the lyrics of the hymnist captures this so well when he said,

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face;

and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."

It's my sincere prayer and earnest desire to proclaim to you once again, the unsearchable mysteries of Christ, and to do it in such a way so that by the power of the Spirit and his Word, you will be able to transcend the dark miseries of life and be transported into the realm of the eternal that awaits you and awaits me and all who have been united to Christ Jesus through faith. You know, sadly, one of the peculiar characteristics of our fallen nature is to obsess and to worry and fret and lose sleep over things that are eternally inconsequential, and then we end up ignoring the things that really matter. We're all worried about our weight, our body image politics, the coming election, the stock market, our favorite team that loses all the time. Our self-esteem is measured by how many likes we get on Facebook, and then at church, we get distracted by all the debatable subjects that lead to what Paul called fruitless discussion - endless controversies - over philosophy of ministry, disputes over non-essentials. How many times do we hear of churches splitting over some petty personal offense, real or perceived? All of these things distract us from the fundamental work of the gospel ministry, and it ends up dishonoring Christ. In fact, Calvin said, quote, "Satan knows that nothing is more fit to lay waste the kingdom of Christ than discord and disagreement among the faithful."  And of course, brotherly love and humility will go a long way as the great antidote to these types of things, but so too, dear friends, is a heavy dose of Christology; that is the study of Christ. Like a lighthouse to a ship in peril, we need to keep our eyes of faith fixed on him, not the perilous waves and storms all around us, lest we sink beneath the waves like Peter. We need to be preoccupied with the purposes and the plans and the provisions and the power of Christ. It was for this reason that Paul said in Colossians three, and I remind you of this often. He says, Since, "you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of the Father. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth." And here's why, "For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God." And if that isn't enough, he says, "When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire and greed, which amounts to idolatry." And on and on it goes.

My friends, the goal of preaching is to dramatically display the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, so that sinners will be converted, and so saints will be animated to celebrate the glories of Christ and be in submission to Him. Preaching is all about communicating the supremacy of God to his chosen creation, so that we will reflect his glory through glad submission, through adoring praise. That's why I stand before you yet again this morning. Beloved, when we see the majesty of God in Christ and in his Word, it is not only irresistible to us, it becomes the source of our greatest delight. Cotton Mather, who ministered in New England some 300 years ago, said, "The Great design and intention of the office of a Christian preacher is to restore the throne and dominion of God and the souls of men." That's why we're here today, because all week long, we've lived in a world that's tried to do the opposite. So join me as we transcend the temporal and journey once again into the eternal, remembering that this world is in our home. We're citizens of another kingdom. We're aliens here. Let's focus on what really matters, and today especially, we will focus on the essential glories of Christ, who gave Himself for us.

I want to do this by looking at this text under the heading of three categories, we will see him, first, Jesus, the Messiah of Israel. Secondly, Jesus, the Son of God, and thirdly, Jesus, the Savior of all who believe. Now we must understand that the text before us in John 10, verse 22 through 42 is the conclusion to the first section of John's gospel. Moreover, this marks the end of John's presentation of Christ's public ministry. In the first part of John, Christ is presented as the shepherd who gives his life for the sheep, the one who is in total submission to his Father's will. But in the second half of John 10, where we're at today, there seems to be a marked contrast. Jesus is no longer depicted as the shepherd or even the door that the sheep access into the presence of the Father. Instead, He presents himself, I should say, as Israel's Messiah, the sovereign God who gives eternal life; a God who is so powerful that no one the Father has given him can be snatched from his hands. He presents himself again as one with the Father in substance and purpose, the Son of God veiled in human flesh. And for this reason, I've entitled my discourse to you this morning, "The Essential glories of Christ." So first, join me in looking at Jesus, the Messiah of Israel as he's presented in verses 22 through 30.

Now mind you, this scene takes place about two months after Jesus gave sight to the beggar that was born blind. Right after he then exposed the Pharisees as thieves and liars, as false shepherds that brutalized the sheep and so forth. So in verse 22 John sets the stage here, he says, "At that time, the Feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem; It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon." Dear friends, this opening statement is filled with solemn symbolism concerning the state, as well as the fate of Israel. We see it first of all in the Feast of the Dedication. This came about during the intertestamental period and was not a feast that was prescribed by God in the Old Testament. It's also known, even today as Hanukkah, or the Feast of Lights, because the Jews will celebrate this by illuminating their homes with candles and lamps and so forth. It was an eight-day celebration held at Jerusalem in memorial of Israel's victory over the murderous Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, who captured Jerusalem; a battle that ultimately took place in 175 to 164 BC. When that happened, he butchered many of the people. He desecrated the temple by sacrificing a pig on the altar in the Holy of Holies, and   if that wasn't bad enough, he removed that altar, replaced it with a pagan altar, and erected a statue of Zeus. His mission was to literally wipe out the Jews, which Satan has tried on numerous occasions. And I might add that Antiochus Epiphanes is cited in Daniel's prophecies as a preview of the coming Antichrist who will act in similar fashion. During that time, a Jewish priest by the name of Mattathias, along with his sons, led a highly successful gorilla campaign for about three years, and then one of his sons, named Judas Maccabeus, led a brilliant campaign against the Seleucid Empire, known as the Maccabean revolt. The Jews then liberated the temple. They rededicated it, and they established the Feast of Dedication on 25 Chislev, 164 BC. This is the context; they're celebrating this feast. And yet, isn't it sad, all of the Jewish zeal for purification in anticipation and honor of their coming Messiah is all rendered futile, useless because of their unbelief. Their Promised Messiah has come to them. He's been announced by the prophet, John the Baptist, and for three years, Jesus has traversed the whole of Israel, calling men and women to repentance, exposing their false teaching, exposing their false teachers, the fallacy of salvation by works. He has performed countless miracles, validating his claim to be the Son of God; inviting sinners to come to him in repentant faith, but the Jews would have none of it. So now the time of in- gathering is over. The season of harvest is past. And so the Spirit of God, through His servant, John, reveals to us it was winter, not only an accurate designation of the season of the Feast of Dedication, but a fitting metaphor of Israel's spiritual condition. Their hearts were cold toward their Messiah, and now, with his public ministry complete, there will be no more public attempts to harvest souls, the chilling frosts of judgment now await them.

This is reminiscent of the imminent Babylonian judgment God promised he would bring upon Judah, of which Jeremiah had warned some 500 years earlier. In that context, in Jeremiah eight, beginning in verse 20, we read this, "'Harvest is past,'" the prophet says, "'summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me.'" Dear friends, there is no greater grief in all the world than watching those we love walking stubbornly and inexorably towards judgment. And this is what we have here. The Jews are celebrating the Feast of Dedication; a feast like all others that looked for its fulfillment in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet there he is in their midst and they can't see him. Indeed, the very purpose of the incarnation was for Jesus to present himself as Israel's Promised Messiah and offer himself as a sacrifice for sin, the ultimate dedication, In fact, biblically divine dedication is connected with the shedding of blood. I think we see even that symbolism here. In fact, the same Greek word "dedicated" is only found in two other places, in the New Testament in the form of a verb; but in both places, it's linked to bloodletting. One of them is in Hebrews 9:18, where we read, "...the first covenant was not inaugurated..." or the same word, dedicated, ratified, put into effect, "...without blood." Again in Hebrews 10 and verse 19 and 20. There we read, "We have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated," or dedicated, "for us through the veil, that is, His flesh..." To be sure, the Lord Jesus' sacrificial death would be the supreme and final dedication to which all others pointed, but they saw none of this. They're celebrating the Feast of Lights, and yet the light of the world has come into their presence, and they cannot see Him because they prefer darkness rather than light. They're commemorating the purification of the temple, preparing the way for their coming Messiah, and yet they would not believe the One who had come to tabernacle among them. Jesus even said of himself, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." So again, this scene seems to be filled with solemn symbolism concerning Israel's state and fate.

The metaphorical imagery seems to be extended further in the second half of the verse. Notice verse 23, "...it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon." It's interesting, prior to this, we see the Lord Jesus ministering in the temple precincts, within the sacred confines of his Father's house, but now he is on the outside. As in the days of Ezekiel, the glory of the presence of God, the Shekinah, has departed, and Ichabod is written on the doorway of the temple. Israel's house is now made desolate, as Jesus predicted. We read of this in Matthew chapter 23 beginning in verse 37 where Jesus said, "'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on, you will not see Me until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!'" He's saying my public ministry is over. I'm now withdrawing myself from national Israel until the time yet future when I will appear again as your glorious Messiah and King, and you will recognize me for who I am.

There's even more symbolism, I believe, in the fact that we are told that this takes place in Solomon's porch, Solomon's portico. This was a covered colonnade or hallway supported by 162 columns, or massive pillars on the eastern side of the temple. It was 82 feet long, 50 feet wide, and we can see where it once existed. It rose from a great depth as part of this massive valley, and it was literally supported by a wall of rock that was 650 feet high, formed of immense stones, some of them were 33 feet long. And here we have a place for Jesus to be sheltered from the cold winds and rain of that season, unlike the open porches within the temple precincts. John may have also drawn our attention to this place, because it would be here in Solomon's portico after Jesus' resurrection that the first believers would come to preach the gospel. This is where Peter and John healed the beggar born lame. In Acts 3:11 we read, "And he," referring to the beggar, "was clinging to Peter and John and all the people ran together to them at the so-called portico of Solomon, full of amazement." The text goes on to describe Peter's sermon and how he called them to repentance as he explained the gospel. So John takes us to this sorrowful seed, and though we don't read it in the text, I can see in my mind's eye, Jesus wrapping his cloak around him to shield from the winds that would be blowing through, even though it was covered and the rain couldn't reach him. He is shielded from the cold winds and the rains of winter, but not from his enemies.

Notice verse 24, "The Jews then gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, 'How long will You keep us in suspense?'" The idea here is, "How long are you going to continue to annoy us?" "'If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.'" Now we must understand that to date, Jesus had never publicly declared himself to be the Messiah of Israel. He had done so privately to his disciples in John 1, to the Samaritans in John 4, to the blind beggar in John 9; but to make such a public declaration, he would have aroused the ire of the Romans, because this would be considered treasonous to them and bring about an untimely arrest. However, all that Jesus had said and done left no doubt to the unbiased mind that his claim was true. And how sad to see, even to this day, and maybe some of you within the sound of my voice, not believing in Jesus despite overwhelming, compelling evidence.

So John tells us the Jews then gathered around him. By the way, the original language tells us that they surrounded him, they encircled him. A favorite tactic of wolves; and they were saying to him, "'How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.'"  Which can be translated "publicly" or "openly." You see, they were fed up with Jesus. He had jeopardized their position of power and prestige, he has exposed their hypocrisy, and they also feared that he might spearhead a revolt if the people keep following him, and if that were to happen, then the Romans would oust them from power. So what they're doing here is they're surrounding him, wanting to kill him, wanting a reason to do so, and they're baiting him to make a public statement so that they can run to the Roman authorities and say, "Look at this guy."

Verse 25 Jesus answered them, "'I told you, and you do not believe the works that I do in My Father's name, these testify of Me.'" Now, of course, Jesus was not the kind of Messiah they envisioned. They wanted a political and military conqueror. They did not want a meek and mild, suffering servant. They couldn't understand any of that. By the way it's interesting, as you think about it, such is always the case with the unregenerate, who, by nature see themselves as the center of the universe; who, by nature will look for a God that is malleable, a God that they can mold and form and manipulate and impress, not one that they can love and serve. Jesus, once again, explains the reason for their dim wittedness in verse 26, he says, "'But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them; and they follow Me.'" Friends, as we look at this text and so many others, we see very clearly that a person does not become one of his sheep by believing in him, rather, one believes in him because one is already one of his sheep.

Earlier in verse 16, Jesus asserts the same truth. There, he says, "'I have other sheep which are not of this fold;'" referring to the Gentiles, who will become part of the church. He goes on to say, "'I must bring them also, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock with one shepherd.'" Once again, their identity as sheep is not dependent on their faith, but rather their faith will be the result of divine election whereby God chose them to be his sheep. In verse three, Jesus says "...he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.'" As we've studied before, not only do the sheep belong to him, but he knows them by name, which underscores a pre-creation intimacy that can only be explained by divine sovereignty. These are the sheep the Father had given him in eternity past, of which Jesus described in John 6:37, where he says, "'All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me, I will certainly not cast out.'"

Now, with respect to this issue that comes up inevitably when we come to these passages pertaining to God's sovereignty versus man's responsibility, let me say this: while we never see divine sovereignty mitigating man's responsibility to believe, it is impossible for our finite, fallen minds to harmonize the two. In fact, when you come to any great Bible doctrine, they are all inscrutable mysteries to us. Try and explain to me, if you will, how God can speak things into existence. How can Jesus be fully God and fully man? And on and on it goes. But my friends, to accuse God of injustice, as some do, betrays a frightening arrogance and ignorance of human depravity. I ask you this, what is unjust about a sovereign God looking out upon a vast ocean of depraved sinners deserving eternal wrath, and then setting his love upon some while passing over others, who, by their own nature and choice have condemned themselves? Why he did that, I will never know. He will probably never tell us. In fact, as I think about it, to save even one of them would be unjust to a holy God, were it not for his provision to impute to them the righteousness of his beloved Son. I'm profoundly humbled whenever I think of him choosing me, because had he not done so, I would have never chosen him, nor would I follow him. So while we cannot harmonize the inscrutable mystery of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, it is perfectly harmonized in the mind of God. And you know, I'm comfortable with that because my God created the universe. My God spoke things into existence. My God causes all things to be sustained by the Word of His power. I can't understand any of it, but I can understand this: my God reigns, and he is sovereign over all things. And when I come to things I cannot explain, I don't try to explain them so that I can get myself out of some theological jam. I just preach what he says. And he says, "I am sovereign over salvation. You will never come to me unless you were chosen." Moreover, "You have got to believe or you will perish in your sins." And when he says that I'm going to preach both of them, because both are true. Jesus makes it so clear, doesn't he? Those who belong to Him will hear and they will follow. Unlike those who do not belong to him. The term "follow" is fascinating. It means to be ever vigilant, to listen to the sound of the shepherd's voice, to have an ear tuned for what he has to say, not only when we come to him in salvation, but as we continue to obey him and place our full confidence in his goodness as he leads us through life. And you know what's really amazing? As we do this, we gradually become more like Christ. Not only that, we suffer like Christ. By the way, if these things are not evident in your life, you may not have ever heard his voice, you may not be following him.

So Jesus says to the wolves that have surrounded him in verse 27, "'My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.'" The point is: unlike you. "'And I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.'" I would imagine there were some there in that crowd who were believing in him, or ready to believe in Him. We know that many did later on at Pentecost. But as we look at verse 27 and 28 dear friends, please, can there be a more concise and compelling statement of our eternal security in all of Scripture? He says, "'I gave eternal life to them.'" That means it is a gift. It's not something earned; it's not something merited. It is not something maintained. It is a gift from God. Then he says, if that isn't enough, "'...and they will never perish.'" In other words, the eternal life that's given to us cannot be lost. It cannot be forfeited. Well, if that's not enough, he adds, "'...no one will snatch them out of My hand,'" Neither man nor demon nor Satan himself can pluck us from his almighty hand. Yes, Pastor, but other passages speak about believers falling away from salvation. In all love and with due respect, you are so wrong. They speak of unbelievers falling away from the principles of saving grace that they have never yet fully embraced, but never falling away from the gift of eternal life from which we will never perish nor be snatched away. Dear friends, nowhere in Scripture do we ever see a sheep becoming a goat. Nowhere in Scripture do we see a man being born again by the power of the living God, and then, because of his own sin, having God return him back to that original state of spiritual death. It's absurd. Nowhere in Scripture do we read of a person becoming a new creature in Christ and then deciding that they want to return back to an old creature without Christ. Never in Scripture do we read of those being made a partaker of the divine nature, suddenly overpowering God and jettisoning that divine nature and going back to what he was before. I know it goes against our rabid commitment to self-determination, dear friends, but please hear this: God is sovereign over all things, we are sovereign over nothing. Moreover, the God of the Bible never subjects his will to the will of man. Yes, but I've known strong Christians who have abandoned the faith and apostatized. No, you haven't. What you witnessed is a skilled hypocrite, probably self-deceived, who was exposed. John tells us in First John 2:19, "They went out from us, but they were really not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out in order that it might be shown that they are all not of us."

Now I want you to notice what Jesus adds; this is fascinating. As if the hand of the Son of God were not enough to secure our salvation forever, he goes on to speak of the Father's hand as well. Notice verse 29, "'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.'" Now you must forgive the analogy here, but it came to my mind as I was meditating upon this, I remember when I was a little boy, and yes, now with my grandchildren, I still do this. I love to catch frogs. And what would you do? You catch a frog and you put it in your hand. Do you hold it like this? No, you hold it like this, and the little frog is in there. And you look and you see him. Beloved, I hope you see that we have Christ holding us in one hand, the Father in the other. We are eternally secure. Every believer is secured between the clasped hands of the Father and the Son. What an amazing thought. It's as if Jesus doesn't want us to miss this. How sad to see people worried that they've done something where they're going to lose their salvation.

By the way, there's a marked difference between the frog and the believer. The frog wants to get out, the believer doesn't. All right? Oh, the blessed security of the clasped hands of divine omnipotence. It's for this reason that some of you will close your letters to me "In His grip." Sometimes I will close mine by saying, "In the bond of His grace," thinking of this very truth. By the way, this is why Paul told the Colossians believers that your life is now "hidden with Christ in God." I simply cannot understand how so many believers cannot see this. I've studied thoroughly their "biblical arguments" of how a man can lose their salvation. And I want to say this in love, because some of you may be here that would argue the other side. But I cannot imagine exegesis so faulty. The only way I can understand it is that it has to be deliberately contrived. The evidence against such a claim is overwhelming. In fact, Jesus perfectly summarized this in John 6:39, in just two verses. He said, "'This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing...'" That should be enough right there. He goes on to say, "'...but I raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.'" Beloved, there was nothing that you could do to gain your salvation, to cause yourself to be born again, and there is nothing you can do to cause yourself to lose your salvation or to be unborn again. The Scripture knows nothing of any of that. We are a love gift from the Father to the Son; a supernatural expression beyond our ability to fathom, beyond our ability to diminish by our own sin and stupidity.

Well, Jesus concludes this amazing statement concerning the protecting care of His sheep by both the Son and the Father by saying, "'I and the Father are one.'" Two persons, one in substance; a glorious and reciprocal relationship he's talking about here. They're both united together in safeguarding the sheep; and yet another claim to deity. I must add that Jesus is not saying that he and the Father are one and the same person as many heretics wish to assert. In fact, the Greek grammar indicates that the word one is neuter, it is not masculine, meaning that they are one in substance, not one in person. And such is a distinction that we see in other passages of Scripture. I mean, how else would you be able to make sense out of passages that talk about Jesus praying to the Father if they were one in the same person, or Jesus doing his Father's will and so on. So Jesus is merely affirming the fact that both he and his Father are united in purpose, in whatever they do, including the securing of the believer. It's just the height of folly to think that man can overpower the omnipotent grasp of the Father and the Son.

Well, all of this was more than the Jews could handle. All they saw was blasphemy. So verse 31, "They pick up stones again to stone Him." Well, we've seen Jesus, the Messiah of Israel. Secondly, we see Jesus, now presented more as the Son of God. Verse 32, "Jesus answered them, 'I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?'" Indeed at the direction of the Father, Jesus had performed countless miracles, works that had saved many lives and brought unimaginable blessing all through the land, to 1000s of people. What he did was more than enough to convince an unbiased mind that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. But the Jews answered him in verse 33 "'For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.'" This is so ironic, dear friends, Jesus did not make himself out to be God. He was God. He is God. Their Creator standing before them; the Incarnate Word that became flesh. What a frightening display of human depravity. Later in John 15 verse 25 Jesus will tell his disciples "'They hated me without a cause,'" and how sad to see people today hate the Lord Jesus Christ without a cause. Dear friends, such malice, such implacable hatred cannot be explained in any other way than by a depraved nature, and it can only be changed by the omnipotent power of the living God. I just cannot fathom the forbearance and the grace of God to endure such cruelty and then to die in our stead, to conquer it; inconceivable.

Jesus answered them, "'Has it not been written in your Law, "I said, You are gods?" If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, "You are blaspheming,” because I said, "I am the Son of God."'" Here, Jesus defends his claims to deity by quoting Psalm 82:6 where the word God is legitimately used to refer to someone other than God himself. In that context, God is condemning the Jews of Israel, and ultimately Israel, he said there, "You are gods," small g, "and all of you are the sons of the Most High." And he goes on to pronounce judgment on them. Of course, God is used in a far lesser sense than the one true God, but in that text, we have the pre-existent logos, the word of John 1; Jesus, addressing the judges of Israel who served as representatives of God and his spokesman. And so the point of all of this is simply this, Jesus' argument would go this way: if the preexistent word could call mere human beings god - small "g" - as recorded in Scripture, why is it inappropriate for the one whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world to call himself the Son of God? He's trying to get them to think, and he continues to challenge them further with more evidence.

In verse 37 he says, "'If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe me, believe the works so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.'" You see, they're blinded by their pride and prejudice. They would not yield to the compelling evidence all they hear is blasphemy. What a picture of those who do not know the voice of their shepherd.

Verse 39, "Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp." Don't you wish you could have been there and seen that? Where'd he go? They surrounded him. You know, there's encircled him. He's gone. Where'd he go? He's done this before. For example, in chapter seven, verse 30, it says they tried to "seize Him." Then it went on to say, but, "...no man laid his hand on Him because His hour had not yet come." And the same thing is true here.

So having revealed to us the essential glories of Christ as the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God, John concludes by presenting him finally as Jesus, the Savior of all who believe. Now, mind you, once again, his public ministry is over. He's going to leave Jerusalem. He will not return for about three or four months. When he returns, he will raise Lazarus from the dead, which will prepare the masses for his triumphal entry, and ultimately take him to the cross. In fact, his rejection here in Jerusalem foreshadows his final rejection that would bring him to the appointed hour of his death. How tragic isn't it? The nation of Israel rejected their Messiah, just as the Old Testament prophets warned that they would do. So we read, "He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was baptizing, and he was staying there. Many came to Him and were saying, 'While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true." And then it says, "Many believed in Him there." So not everyone was blinded by their preconceived ideas of God and the gospel in Christ, but like many today, only a few will hear and follow. Jesus said in Matthew 22 that "many are called, few are chosen." In fact, it's fascinating that at the end of Jesus' life, there were really only a handful of genuine believers. We read about this, for example, in Acts 1:20 there was only 120 believers in Jerusalem. And then you can look in places like First Corinthians 15 and Matthew 28 and there may be several 100 more up in Galilee, but it was a very small little group of people.

Well, I pray that some of you have heard the voice of the Great Shepherd calling you today. And if so, you must believe. You must place your faith in him, repent of your sins, see him, your only hope of salvation, and follow him. This is the prayer of my heart and the prayer of so many. But folks, for those of us who know and love him, may I challenge you to ponder the great truths of John 10. You just want to stick there for a while; just think upon these things. Because, if you will, here's what will happen. The Spirit of God will sweep over your soul with such a profound sense of his presence that it will produce within you a deeper awareness of what God has really done for you and what he's doing in you, and you will be overwhelmed more and more with his love for you, which will animate your heart to perpetual praise for this undeserved love.

And in closing, I want to tell you five things that will give evidence of this, of your increased love for God. Real short, very simple, the more you love God, you're going to see five things happen. Number one, your priorities will change. Your lifestyle will begin to orbit like it never has before, around worshiping and serving Christ, and you will see it primarily occurring within the confines of the church and then going out from there. Secondly, your appetite for Scripture will change. You will read and study and meditate more. You'll want formal discipleship. You'll want godly fellowship. You'll want to know more of the Savior's voice. Thirdly, your speech will change. You will speak that which fills your heart, namely the glorious truths of redemption and all that awaits you in glory. You will be vocal about what God is doing in your life and what he's up to in the world. Don't you love to be around those kinds of Christians? Number four, you will be quick to forgive offenses. Smoldering resentments will no longer be tolerated. Those sins we all struggle with of being discontent and disgruntled over every little thing will be replaced by the fruit of the Spirit, those things don't matter anymore. All that matters is Christ, the Lord of glory, and all that he's done and where we're going - the gospel. And then number five, because of your increased love for Christ, you will gain the reputation of being a cheerful Christian, because the love of God has been shed abroad in your heart. Isn't it sad to see Eeyore Christians walking around? They're all sad, whining about something. Oh, this, that or four other things. Oh, I get so tired of that. Friends, as you focus on the love of Christ, all that stuff just pales into nothing. No more scowl, no more sour, sullen spirit, no more critical spirit, no more being mad and sad; for crying out loud, look what God has done for us, and you won't even be able to tolerate those kind of people. So folks, I close with what I began with, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. Amen? Amen. Let's pray together.

Father, thank You for these glorious truths, I pray that by the power of your Spirit, you will cause them to bear much fruit in our lives. In Jesus name, amen.