In the fall of 1977 I was a freshman at WSU, and I was miserable.
-I felt like I was failing at everything.
-I was struggling in the classroom and getting pummeled on the football field…I had a concussion and a couple of broken bones and that was from practice, because I was on the bench for the games.
-I didn’t have any close friends and I was not in Christian community…and at that time, I was trying to hide from God rather than turning to him in my need.
I was sitting on my parent’s front step on a Sunday afternoon feeling depressed, hopeless, and void of all motivation.
My dad walked outside and saw me sitting in my gloom.
He didn’t know that two days before I had walked to my car on campus and considered just driving to Texas and getting away from the pressure.
I don’t know how I thought that would help, but I wasn’t super rational back then.
What kept me from going was I was low on gas and cash, so I went to class instead…true story.
My dad didn’t know all that was going on with me, but he knew enough to say,
“If you quit school, you are my son. If you don’t play football, you are my son. I will always love you.”
There is an appropriate time to say to your sons and daugthers…”suck it up”…my dad gave me some of that in my life.
Then there is a time for…”You are my son. period.”
That confidence of acceptance and relationship empowered me in a new way on that day.
I already knew it was true, but I needed to hear it again on that day.
The security of my relationship with my dad was the foundation for me moving forward without the deep fears that I had been giving into.
The feelings that had become truth in my mind…feelings of failure…needed the objective truth of permanent relationship with my dad.
Security of relationship empowered agency…I can keep going…my hope was recovered.
Agency equals hope…hope inspires action.
If I had left school…I wouldn’t have met Christy, or the coach who would come to Wichita the following year and prove to be transformational in my life…I could go on and on…my life would be very different.
Security of relationship with my father was foundational for me making choices based on the facts not my fears and feelings.
We are John 10 today.
There are two tragedies for John that he writes of in his gospel and his letters.
- The tragedy of the false security of the unbeliever
- The tragedy of the false insecurity of the believer.
John addresses the first tragedy many times, such as in chapter 8 when those opposing Jesus say, “We have one Father, God.”
Jesus responds with, “If God were your Father, you would love me.”
He addresses the second tragedy throughout his gospel and his letters such as
And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:11-13
But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John 20:31
The first tragedy is like a person walking with great confidence on a weak and unstable bridge across a deep ravine.
Their misplaced confidence will lead to their death.
The second tragedy is like a person walking with great fear on a strong and stable bridge across a deep ravine.
Their misplaced fear will make their journey full of anxiety and void of joy and productivity.
The first tragedy is, of course, far worse.
But still it is tragic to live in fear, when you could have lived in confident hope.
Today, we will focus on John 10:28-30…words from the Lord Jesus that like those of my earthly father, can inspire confident, hopeful, faithful living.
Let’s begin in verse 22 to get the context.
John 1022 At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon.
The feast of dedication, we know as Hanukkah, is celebrated in Nov-Dec time frame, so this is a couple of months after the Feast of Tabernacles.
The Feast of Dedication wasn’t one of the feasts prescribed by Mosaic Law, it celebrates an event that took place between the end of the OT and beginning of the NT.
The Syrian ruler Antiochus IV had prohibited Jewish practices like sabbath observance and circumcism, but then he went a step too far.
In 167 BC He had a priest sacrifice a pig on the altar at the Temple in Jerusalem and required Jewish people to offer sacrifices to pagan deities.
An armed revolt ensued, lots of guerrilla warfare, this was successful and Jewish religious freedoms were restored.
The revolt was led by a guy named Judas Maccabeus, or Judah the Hammer…he was a special forces kind of guy…he didn’t mess around.
The cleansing of the temple after the victory is what the Feast of Dedication celebrates.
Jesus is walking on the East side of the temple; in the area protected from the cold winter winds called the colonnade of Solomon.
24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
The word used for gathered around means literally encircled.
This is not a friend encounter.
By the question, Are you the Christ” they were looking for a “Jesus the Hammer”…to lead in political victory over Rome.
Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
They were not equipped with a perspective that would allow them to see that their ideas of a messiah were wrong.
This would take a work of God in their lives…and their own willingness to respond to God as he opened the eyes of their hearts.
Jesus was the suffering servant king as prophesied in the OT.
His Kingdom was not political and military…at least not in his first advent.
If they had eyes to see…all he has said and done spoke clearly to the fact that he is the Messiah…some saw it, some did not.
WHY did they fail to see?
Jesus said that they were not his sheep.
The fact that God is sovereign in salvation does not excuse them, they have chosen to not believe.
Again, as is true in John over and over…God is sovereign in salvation and humans are responsible to believe.
If you want to try to work that out in your mind, go for it…but John simply gives us both of those facts.
Now we are at the verses we were where aiming for.
28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 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. 30 I and the Father are one.”
Before we focus on this passage, let’s finish up this chapter.
31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
These were not some pebbles laying around, they were large stones used to repair the walls.
They intended to crush him, to kill him.
They understood Jesus was calling himself God…but they had no category for the Trinity…three persons, one being.
They thought he was advocating for him being another God…polytheism.
This was a terrible heresy…there is only one God.
34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— 36 do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
Jesus is referring to Ps 82.
He is simply saying that Scripture proves that the word “god” is legitimately used to refer to others than God himself…not there are multiple gods.
Side note: look at what Jesus says about the book of Psalms. “Scripture cannot be broken.”
Jesus affirms the full authority of the Old Testament
But his point here is that they are partly right…he is making himself equal with God.
And they are partly wrong…he is not saying that he is a “competing God”
So, they are terrible mistaken…they don’t understand their own Scriptures well enough to see that he is the fulfillment of them.
He is the one their Scriptures pointed to.
Now, having stood them down and calmed the emotional mob with his reason…he has room to continue.
Now remember he is saying this to a group of people standing there holding large stones that can crush bones and skulls.
His Psalm diversion worked…so he continues.
37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.”
Don’t take my word for it, but be honest…what have you seen?
The blind from birth now see and so much more.
What does this indicate about me?
Think about what the signs you have seen and what they point to.
In the next chapter Jesus will give the ultimate evidence of who he is…he will raise Lazurus from the dead.
They remain blind and seek to arrest him…but it’s not time yet…so, John doesn’t tell us how, but Jesus escaped from their hands again.
Maybe Roman guards saw the commotion and showed up with swords unsheathed.
He left Jerusalem and went away from those who refused to believe, he went back to the place where John the Baptist had ministered, and many believed there.
The theme of John again…belief and unbelief.
The constant drumbeat of John…believe, believe, believe.
Now, let’s go back to verses 28-30.
28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 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. 30 I and the Father are one.”
If you have believed in Christ (not mere intellectual assent but biblical belief…transfer trust) you have eternal life.
The only way you can lose it is if someone greater than God himself takes it from you.
To say, “Well no one can take me from Christ’s hand, but I can remove myself from his hand.”
Is a bit of a silly argument…”no one” clearly would include the person who is in Christ’s hand.
You would be one of those “no ones”…otherwise there is small comfort in these words.
We know how fickle our own hearts are…if the possibility remained that we could remove ourselves from Christ’s hand…there is not much assurance in the words of Christ here.
Even more, the most forceful phrase in the passage “They shall never perish” is constructed in the Greek to say, “They shall certainly not perish forever”.
John is foot stomping his point here.
Jesus is giving to those who belong to him, a promise like my father gave me.
This is meant to inspire faithful, fearless, action…regardless of what happens to them.
And a world of hurt is coming to his followers…they will need this confidence.
So do you, and so do I.
“But what of those who fall away?”
A couple of things:
- In Scripture, only those who persevere to the end have been truly born again.
Or to put it in the positive…those who have been born again, will make it to the finish.
Go back to John 8 from a couple of weeks ago.
“If you continue in my word, then you are truly my disciples.”
In his first letter John wrote.
They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
1 John 2:19
Saving faith finishes.
That is what scripture teaches.
- Those who fall away may give external signs of salvation
Judas who betrayed Christ must have acted almost exactly like the other disciples.
He was so convincing that when Jesus, at supper, said one of his disciples would betray him they didn’t all stare at Judas, they all asked, “Is it me?”
Paul wrote about “false brethren” and “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
They look legit.
Jesus talked about people who even prophesy in his name and cast out demons…and he will say to them in the end, “I never knew you.”
He told the parable of weeds and wheat growing up in the same field and warned against trying to decide too soon which was which…it would come to light in the end.
One passage that is often used as evidence that you can in fact lose your salvation is in Hebrews 6.
4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6 if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. 9 Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case—things that accompany salvation.
We are not going to spend a lot of time here since we have addressed this passage in the past, and our focus is the gospel of John.
But this passage is actually about the security not the insecurity of the believer.
The writer of Hebrews is describing a person who has dabbled in faith and has experienced some of the benefits of common grace but not saving grace
Then, in verse 9 we find, as he directs his words to his audience of believers…”We are confident of better things in your case, things that accompany salvation.”
In other words, I believe you are believers so this will not be true of you.
Let’s do application by using some questions and answers
- How do I know I am saved?
Are you right now trusting Christ alone to forgive your sins and take you without blame into heaven forever?
Yes. Then trust the promises of God.
- What about my past sins?
I continue to have guilt and doubts because of all I have done.
The past belongs to God and is covered by his grace.
So, same answer.
Are you right now trusting Christ alone to forgive your sins and take you without blame into heaven forever
- How do I know I will be able to endure to the end?
The future belongs to God…not to you.
You trust him today with it.
Paul wrote that he eagerly expected and hoped that he would have sufficient courage to honor Christ no matter what came his way.
He trusted God today, with tomorrow.
Guilt is based on the past; fear is based on a potential future.
The past and future belong to God, not you.
Leave them with him…and trust him and obey him today.
Life by faith in Jesus, not in your feelings of guilt(past) and fear(future).
“And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” Romans 8:30
Justification is where we are made right with God by faith through grace.
Glorification is where we are made perfect in Christ after physical death.
Paul indicates that all who are justified will be glorified (he speaks of it in the present tense, because it is certain)
- But what if I stop believing and obeying?
DON’T.
That’s what John would tell you…don’t.
Or here’s what the writer of Hebrews says to your question:
See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. Hebrews 3:12,13
See to it…you must yourself, muster grit to remain in his grace…see to it.
That you don’t allow a sinful unbelieving heart to turn you from God.
How do you “see to it?”
Encourage one another daily.
This is not about “Be worried, you may fall away…your position is not secure.
This is…be proactive, take initiative…see to it…by living in proactive, believing, community.
What the marriage expert John Gottman said about human relationships holds true for your relationship with God.
Love doesn’t keep commitment alive; commitment keeps love alive.
Nurture your commitment and you will nurture your love.
A key way to nurture commitment is to live in connected community…this is God’s design.
The whole thing about the body by Paul, clearly describes this reality.
There are plenty, who are unchurched who claim to be Christian…maybe they are, but this would make no sense to the writers of Scripture.
See to it…by encouraging one another daily.
If you stop obeying…confess and get back to obeying.
Don’t waste time laying in the pig pen wondering if your father will take you back…he has already said he would.
Ignore feelings of doubt and guilt and disbelief…nurture your commitment and you will nurture your love.
- What about those people who claim Christ and live like unbelievers.
Unless you can directly help and influence them, their status with God is none of your business.
If you can help and influence them…Scripture says that you are to warn and encourage and challenge them.
- Won’t this security make it easy for me to sin, won’t it take my motivation to obey away?
I have to be honest; I have heard this question before, but I don’t understand it.
Maybe it is because of the earthly father I had, that others haven’t had.
When my dad told me, “You are my son no matter what.”
The opposite of “Awesome, now I can just go do what I want” happened.
My heart became increasingly determined to please him, not to dishonor him.
Paul addressed this in Romans 6.
In Romans 5 Paul lays out the case for confidence in Christ, he begins that chapter with:
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Confidence is essential to endurance in hard times.
The Holy Spirit, Paul writes elsewhere is the downpayment on the fullness that is promised to us.
He ends chapter 5 with, “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”
He is writing Confidence in the grace of Christ…not in self and our ability to sustain faith.
Then in Chapter 6 Paul begins with,
“So (since this is true) should we continue to sin so that grace might increase?”
He heads off that nonsensical argument…if more sin equals more grace…hey, let’s sin more to get more grace.
“No way in the world!” he responds…we died to sin; how can we live in it any longer.
Real security in our relationship with Jesus doesn’t lead to a heart that wants to dishonor him…that would be a bad sign as to whether someone is actually born again.
Let’s look at another passage from John’s letter.
18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:18
I feared my dad, but it was the fear of a son who was loved.
I feared his displeasure, I feared dishonoring him…I did not fear suffering his wrath or being disowned by him.
My confidence in what John wrote, “that you may know (not hope) you have eternal life”…does not cause me to make light of God’s wrath or his grace.
It increases my gratitude.
Because of the sacrifice of Jesus, God’s only son, I will not suffer the wrath I deserve…I have been eternally adopted into the beloved.
If the enemy can’t keep us from Christ then at least he can keep us from living in the confidence that it ours in Christ.
Peter wrote…
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises… For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
2 Peter 1
This lack of confidence in the promises of Christ can lead to us being ineffective and unproductive in our faith…it blinds us to the reality of the cleansing of our sins.
I know this is probably easier for me because of the gift of my earthly father.
Some of you need to understand at the deepest level of your soul that God is not like your earthly father.
And sadly, for some in this room…God is almost nothing at all like your biological father.
I will let the Lord Jesus have the last words today.
Luke 15, the prodigal son parable.
I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ 20 So he got up (from the mud of the pig pen) and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. 21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So, they began to celebrate.
That, Jesus said, is who your father is…it is up to you to take him at his word.
And live in confidence that he will hold you securely in his hand.