Jesus and the Father Are One

(John 10:30-42)

I. Introduction.
A. Orientation.
Weve seen so far in chapter 10:
That Jesus is the way by which we come to God.

Picture the Kingdom of Heaven as a very large house.

Everyone inside and only those,
Are safe from hell and sure of heaven.
There is only one door into that house: and thats Jesus.

He stands at the door

The door that He is,
The door that He opened
And He invites you to come in
If you havent come,
Listen to His voice today,
And come in.

Weve seen that He is the Faithful Shepherd.

He not only welcomes you to enter,
But if you will, He will take care of you
He will provide everything you need here,
And all that you will need hereafter.

This also means He will never lose you.

Once you enter the kingdom through Him,
Hell protect you
Not only from yourself,
So that youll never want to leave;
But from anything that might try to take you away.
He will do this
Because you are His prize,
The reward the Father promised
For His work of saving you.

This door is a one way door.

Once youre in the ark of salvation,
You will always be safe.

B. Preview.
This is the point Jesus began to expand on last time.
If we have trusted Him,
We will never be lost for two reasons:
Because He has given us eternal life,
And because no one can take us away from the Father.

This morning, we see

Why both are absolute guarantees

We will make it to heaven:

Because they both come from God:
Jesus says, I and the Father are one (v. 30).
II. Sermon.
A. What is Jesus actually saying here?
1. Does He mean that He and the Father are one in purpose
That they want the same thing:
Which is for us to be saved
And thats why we will never perish?
That is true
The Father and Son have always loved us
And have done what is necessary to secure us forever
And for this, we should be very thankful.
But if thats all Jesus meant,
Why would the Jews have accused Him of blasphemy?
And why would they have wanted to kill Him,
Simply for saying He wants what the Father wants?
The Jews believed they wanted the same.

Did He mean to say that He and the Father are one Person,
As the United Pentecostal and Apostolic churches believe today?
He cant mean that:
He says, I and the Father are one.
If they were both the same person,

Why didnt He just say, I am the Father.

Its true that He said to Philip,
He who has seen Me has seen the Father (John 14:9).
But what He meant there
Was that they are so much the same in character and purpose,
That to see one is to see the other.
John writes that Jesus came into this world to explain the Father (1:18).
If Jesus meant to say He is the Father,
He would have used the masculine form of the adjective one.
Instead, He uses the neuter form:
He doesnt say We are one person, but that We are one thing.

So what did Jesus mean?

He meant that He and the Father are one in Being
They are the same divine essence;
The same stuff;
They are one God.
This not only makes sense of the neuter adjective
It also explains why the Jews wanted to kill Him.

This, by the way,

Also shows us why the Jehovahs Witnesses are wrong.
They believe the Father is a divine being,
While the Son is a created being

That the Father is God,

But the Son is a creature:
Jesus says they are both the same: divine!

Now why am I pointing out

The errors of the UPC, Apostolic, and the JWs?
Why do we need to point them out?
Because of what Jesus says:
If anyone is to be saved,
They must believe that He is God
Not only because thats who He is
He says, I and the Father are one (v. 30)
Not only because to believe in any other Jesus
Is to believe in a Jesus that cant save you
But also because thats what Jesus says we must believe
If we are to be saved from our sins.
He said earlier to the Jews, Therefore I said to you that you will die in your
sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins (8:24).
Only a Christ who is God and man can save us
Which is why John in his Gospel
Emphasizes this very point.

2. Now just because the Bible only knows of a Savior

Who is both God and man,

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And just because that Savior
Is the only One who can reconcile us to God,
Does that mean those we tell
Are necessarily going to believe and receive Him?

Look at how these Jews responded:

John tells us in verse 31, The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him (v.
31).
There is still a natural distaste for God
That has to be overcome.
How can we overcome it?
Ultimately, God has to do it.
But there is something He expects us to do:
We need to point to the evidence.

Thats exactly what He did.

Jesus answered them, I showed you many good works from the Father; for
which of them are you stoning Me? (v. 32).
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 (v.
33).
Jesus pointed again to His miracles:
Not only to show His innocence,
But to prove He is who He claimed to be,
That they might believe.

But they still didnt believe

They couldnt see how One

Who was clearly a man,
Could also be God
Regardless of His miracles.
They couldnt understand the Incarnation
Because they lacked that key ingredient: faith.
Remember: the Jesus we offer to others
Is more than a man: He is God.
But He is also man.
He had to be both to reconcile God and man.

B. But now, does Jesus make this claim to deity, only to deny it?
1. Thats how some understand what He says next.
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? (vv. 34-36).
Is Jesus in essence saying,
Lets not get carried away folks.
Lets all just put the rocks down.
You misunderstand Me.
Im not claiming to be the God
Im just claiming to be a god
In the sense that God used the word

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To refer to the judges of Israel.

Does that seem likely

After all that Jesus has claimed?
When Jesus called the Father, My Father.
The Jews knew what He meant.
For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him,
because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His
own Father, making Himself equal with God (John 5:18).
On another occasion,
Jesus said to them [the Jews], Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was
born, I am. Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid
Himself and went out of the temple (8:58-59).

Does it seem likely that after what John wrote

In the opening verse of this Gospel
That Jesus would deny His deity?
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God (1:1).

If Jesus wasnt denying His deity,

What was He saying?
He was defending Himself in much the same way
As He did when the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees
Tried to trap Him with their trick questions
About whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar,
Or whose wife the woman who had the seven husbands

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Would be in the resurrection (Matt. 22).
To silence them then,
Jesus asked why David called the Messiah, Lord,
When Messiah was clearly his Son
Remember, the father is always greater than his son.
David could call Him this,
Because Jesus, his Son, is God in our nature.

Hes doing something similar here:

He providing an argument that should stop them
From trying to kill Him for blasphemy.

In Psalm 82, which I read earlier,

God calls the judges of Israel elohim, or gods,
Because He had called them
To exercise judgment
Which was a divine role
On His behalf.

Now if God called these judges gods,

And Scripture cannot be broken
If it cannot be mistaken
What should the One be called
Whom the Father sanctified/set apart,
And sent into the world,

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For the purpose of saving His people on His behalf?

Jesus is saying, If God sent Me for this purpose,
Am I blaspheming because I said I am the Son of God?
If god can apply to the lesser,
It can certainly apply to the greater.
In other words,
Jesus just took away their grounds
For accusing Him of blasphemy.

2. Finally, He pointed again to the evidence of His claim:

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 (vv. 37-38).

Again, Jesus is God.

This is our guarantee of safety.
This is the Savior we are to tell others about,
That they too might be safe in Him.
And to help them see that He is,
We are to point to what He did:
He healed the sick, made the lame to walk,
Opened the eyes of the blind,
Cleansed the leper,
And raised the dead.

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Will they believe us if we tell them
If we point to the evidence?
Some will and some wont.
Thats the final thing we see.

C. How did those who heard Him respond?

They didnt believe,
And they still wanted to kill Him.
We read in verse 39, Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He
eluded their grasp.

Some wont believe

No matter what we say.
But just because some wont,
Doesnt mean all wont:
Jesus sheep will hear His voice
And they will believe.

Jesus now practices

What He had earlier told His disciples to do:
If they dont receive you in one city, go to the next (Matt. 10:23).
He went where there would be those who would receive Him.
John writes, 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.
Many believed in Him there (vv. 40-42).
Jesus went back to harvest

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Where the seed was earlier planted by John,

And the ground had been prepared by the Spirit.

When we run into those who dont listen,

We should go back to those we witnessed to earlier.
Just because someone doesnt receive Jesus
The first time we talk with them,
Doesnt mean they never will.
We need to scatter seed as broadly as we can,
Apply as much water as we can,
And then wait on the Lord
To bring as great a harvest as He wills. Amen.

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