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June 29, 2022
Key Verses 28: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life,
29 and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand."
The Bible is a big book. This book tells us of numerous incidents and teachings.
I used to ask a student I met in the cafeteria when I was studying in Dortmund,
"What is the most important teaching of the Bible?"
Then he answered: "The Ten Commandments".
We can summarize the biblical teachings in two points:
The first point is the doctrine of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
The second point is the doctrine of the way to blessed eternal life.
If we accept these two points correctly, we can give glory to God and enjoy blissful, eternal life under the blessing of the Holy Spirit.
Today's text speaks about the second point of biblical teaching.
May God help us today to accept the second teaching well and enjoy a happy, blessed life.
1. Let's listen to Jesus' voice! (22-30)
This event took place a little later, after Jesus told the famous parable of the Good Shepherd. At that time the temple dedication, a festival of rejoicing, was taking place in Jerusalem, and Jesus was visiting the temple during the festival.
Then the Jews gathered around him and said, "How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us openly” (24).
They felt that the reason why they didn't know whether Jesus was the Christ or not was that Jesus hadn't told them clearly about it.
Jesus said to them, “I have already told you (clearly), but you do not believe. The works I do in the Father's name testify for me. But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep" (25).
They did not believe in Jesus as Christ because they were not His sheep, even though Jesus worked miracles and preached the truth in God's name.
Jesus continued his explanation.
“27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me.
28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one can snatch them from my hand 29... 30 I and the Father are one.”
Although the hardened people will not listen to Jesus' voice, the God’s people will hear his voice and follow him. And Jesus gives them eternal life and leads them into the kingdom of heaven, and nobody and nothing can snatch them from the hand of Jesus. Therefore, they will never be lost.
Their salvation is certain. This is a divine guarantee. That's wonderful!
But the people who don't belong to Jesus don't understand his word. They don't believe in him as Christ. They are lost.
Jesus says here that God has already predetermined who will be saved as Jesus' sheep and who will be not (27-29).
Concerning predestination, a question may arise:
If God has already predestined who will be saved and who will not, where is man's responsibility?
In order to answer this question, I would like to explain the doctrine of predestination of God and responsibility of man.
The Bible teaches us human responsibility on the one hand and divine predestination on the other. Everything in heaven and on earth belongs to God. It is up to him how he disposes of his property and what he does with all his creatures. Everything in the universe and in every human being happens according to the will of God.
And according to his good will, before the world began, he had already determined everything already what will become out of us. This is called predestination.
The Bible, on the other hand, teaches us that every person is responsible for his own thoughts, words, decisions, and actions. That means that everyone is responsible for the consequences of their decisions and their actions, both temporally and eternally.
Because of this responsibility, God judges everyone righteously at the last judgment. Therefore, no one can claim that God is unjust. God is absolutely just.
Divine predestination and human responsibility seem to be contradictory. But the two teachings do not contradict each other.
This can be explained as follows: God judges everyone according to his works. Because every human being has broken some laws of God, he would have to be judged by God and condemned to hell. No one has a chance to escape from damnation and become God's child.
But Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. That is why God offers us grace; he forgives all who confess their sins and believe in the sacrificial death of Christ for their sins, and takes them as his children and gives them eternal life and the kingdom of heaven. That's the gospel.
God grants every human being full freedom of choice either to believe in the gospel or to disbelieve. Every person is therefore responsible for his own decision. It is a heavenly secret that every human being has complete freedom and makes his or her decision exactly as God intended and predestined. This wonderful correspondence between divine predestination and human responsibility is the wisdom of God.
When Jesus offered the Jewish leaders to receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life through repentance and faith in Jesus, they proudly refused his offer and wanted to kill him.
Despite the danger of his own life, Jesus kept trying to lead people to believe in him so that they could have eternal life. This shows us his burning love for all people.
The despised people like the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well and the beggar born blind gratefully accepted his offer of mercy and received eternal life and the kingdom of heaven.
We return to the Bible text.
Jesus calls people who believe in him and follow him as God's Son and Christ, his sheep (27). They like to hear his voice and to follow him. He provides his sheep safe protection, deep rest and guidance.
The shepherd knows each sheep personally and calls out their individual names. He has a love relationship with his sheep, as we read in verses 14 and 15:
"I am the Good Shepherd and I know mine and mine know me, as my Father knows me and I know the Father."
Jesus knows each of us well because he is God. And we believe in him as Christ and God's son and follow him.
We are sure that we have eternal life now, as his word: "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them from my hand" (28).
Because we are in the hands of God, we have the security and certainty of salvation. We will never be lost because Jesus saved us and will lead us safely to the kingdom of heaven.
No one and nothing can snatch us from the hand of God.
Jesus Christ came into the world to give us a good opportunity to believe in Him and to have eternal happy life. Therefore, everyone should seize this opportunity to believe in him to receive the divine blessing,
I had an elementary school friend in my home country. His father was a communist and was probably shot dead by police around the time of the Korean War. My friend was articulate. He wanted to be a great politician. But because his father was a communist, Korean law barred him from pursuing a political career.
Eventually he became a successful businessman in Alaska, USA. Nobody tried to invite him to believe in Jesus until he was 40 because everyone said he wouldn't believe in Jesus anyway. But his mother invited him to church when he was down on his business bankruptcy. Today he is a believing, successful businessman in the USA. He also served as the chairman of the Korean Christian Businessmen in Alaska.
Everyone can seize the opportunity of Jesus' grace and experience His blessings abundantly. Jesus wants to offer us another opportunity today to believe in him and experience the great blessings of God. Jesus invites each of us to come to him and experience the refreshment (Matthew 11:28-30). He says, "I will refresh you, for I am gentle and humble in heart."
We are offered the opportunity to experience heavenly blessings.
Everyone who became a Christian a long time ago and now has a difficult lifetime should accept Jesus' grace again and experience fresh grace.
2. Let’s believe in Jesus as God's Son! (31-42)
Did the people who heard Jesus' offer of eternal life want to believe in Jesus and accept eternal life? Unfortunately not!
Rather, they picked up the stones to stone Jesus (31).
But we should really get to know the work of God through Jesus and, through faith in Jesus, accept eternal, blessed life as God's gift.
So let's get to know what it means to believe in Jesus Christ.
I want to encourage each of us to believe in him in three ways.
First: Let us believe in the deity of Jesus Christ!
Jesus said in verse 30, "I and the Father are one."
With these words, Jesus declared that he and God are one and the same being. Jesus is God who came into the world in a human body. That is why Jesus has power to give eternal life to those who believe in him.
Jesus is omnipotent, and his resurrection proved that. We are to worship and honor him.
Jesus said in verse 30, "I and the Father are one."
Then the Jews wanted to stone Jesus as a blasphemer and said, “We do not stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy, for you are a man, and you make yourself God” (33).
Jesus answered them,
"36 How do you say to him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming God, because I say, 'I am the Son of God?' ...
38 so that you may know and know that the Father is in me and I in him.”
We can get to know God to some extent through the Old Testament. But this was insufficient. That is why God revealed himself to us through Jesus Christ so that we can know God better, trust him and become his children.
In fact, through Jesus Christ we can really get to know God and his holiness, omnipotence, mercy, and love and establish a personal relationship with God. And we can become God's children and have blessed fellowship with him. This is a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven.
Second: Let us believe that Jesus died on the cross for my and your sin.
The reaction of the Jews shows us the correctness of the statement that Jesus and God are essentially one.
When the Jews heard Jesus' claim, "I and the Father are one," they immediately understood that Jesus made himself equal to God. For the Jews, there is no second god like the Son of God. So they immediately complained that Jesus was a "blasphemer". There is only one punishment for the blasphemer: the death penalty.
They said, "You are a human, but you make yourself a god!"
They picked up stones to stone Jesus.
It is quite true that Jesus was a man like us. But he is also the true God, for God became a man like us in order to show God to us and to die for our sins as the sacrificial lamb of God.
That is why John said in 1:18,
“No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten who is God and is in the bosom of the Father has declared him to us.”
This Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from sin, as John the Baptist said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).
Praise God who became man and took away all our sins!
Third, let us confess that Jesus is my Shepherd and yours!
Jesus continued his teaching in divine calm and power.
Jesus' opponents claimed that they wanted to punish Jesus as a blasphemer according to God's teaching in the Bible.
When Jesus was in Solomon's hall of the temple, the Jews surrounded him and said to him,
"How long are you keeping us in the dark? If you are the Christ, say so frankly” (24).
But Jesus reminded them that God Himself had said to the human judges to express their authority, "You are gods; you are the sons of the Most High" (Ps. 82:6).
The Bible also referred to human authorities as gods or sons of God to describe their authorities. Nevertheless, one cannot say that this has violated the teaching of the Bible.
But Jesus called himself “God's son” because he really is God's son.
Let's look at verse 36!
“What about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?”
In verse 38b Jesus says, "The Father is in me and I in him."
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