Chapter X
Verses 1-6. The blind man, whom our Lord had healed, who had fallen at His feet, worshipping Him as the Son of God, and who had been cast out by the blind leaders of the blind, had become the sheep of the Shepherd, who came to seek and to save that which is lost. The teachings given next by our Lord are therefore closely related to this incident. The beginning of this chapter refers to the false teachers and guides of the Jewish people, those whom the Lord denounced in the closing verse of the eighth chapter. The sixth verse tells us that the Lord spoke to them in a parable,“‘This parable spake Jesus unto them.” It is one of the few parables recorded in John’s Gospel not found in the Synoptic Gospels.
The parable is introduced with another, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you.” ‘The parable contains a very familiar figure of the Old Testament Scriptures. Jacob in his prophecy spoke of “the Shepherd of Israel,” who is “‘the stone of Israel” as well (Gen.xliv:24); in the eightieth Psalm, that great prophetic Psalm, the Shepherd of Israel is addressed, and that Shepherd is the Lord Himself, for “He dwelleth between the Cherubim” (Psa. Ixxx:1). Isaiah beholds Him feeding
His flock, “He shall feed His flock like a shepherd” (Isa. xl:11); Ezekiel received a great message concerning the false shepherds of Israel, their judgment, and the true Shepherd who will gather His sheep (Ezek. xxxiv); Zechariah, too, had a vision concerning the shepherds (chapter xi); and in another passage we read, “Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts; smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered, and I will turn my hand to the little ones”’ (Zech. xiii:7). If the listening Pharisees, the false shepherds of the nation, knew their own Scriptures, the parable of the Lord in its meaning would have been clear to them, “‘but they understood not what things they were which He spake unto them” (verse 6).
Here the sheepfold is Judaism, and to it the Shepherd of Israel, the promised Messiah, had come. He came in the appointed way, not in “‘some other way,” like the thief and the robber, those who sought their own gain and benefit. These are the false shepherds, including the leaders of the people in whose presence He spoke this allegory. And because He came by the right door to the sheepfold, in grace and righteousness, as the holy One, the porter opened to Him. The porter signifies the power of God by His Spirit, by which the door was opened, though the false shepherds tried to keep Him out. He came, and as a result “‘the sheep hear His voice.” But all the sheep of Israel did not hear His voice and accept Him; only those who were given to Him by His Father. Thus He came and called “His own sheep”’ by name. The healed man was one of them, and so were Philip and Nathanael, as well as Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and the others who believed on Him and followed the true Shepherd.
Then follows what is nowhere mentioned in the prophets, “He leadeth them out,” which means that He leads them out from the fold of Judaism into different pasture. Luther comments on this passage in the following words: “The ‘leading out’ is the Christian’ liberty, that they are now free and no longer locked up and imprisoned as they were before under the anxious constraint and fear of the law and divine judgment; but are now under the sweet kingdom of the grace of Christ.”” Those who followed Him were set free, receiving from Him eternal life; they were to be brought outside of the Jewish fold and to constitute afterwards not another fold, but His flock, the one flock, His Church. He Himself “‘goeth before them” as the shepherd goes before the sheep. Wherever the Shepherd goes the sheep follow after Him. They cast Him out and He was outside; there the sheep are with Him. The path He went is the path in which His sheep follow. And when the Shepherd died for the sheep, He went before them in a still higher sense. The good Shepherd became the great Shepherd of the Sheep in resurrection, and has gone before to the place where in His own time all His sheep will follow Him. The mark of His own sheep is that they hear His voice, and that a stranger they will not follow; they own but the one voice and the one authority. Like the sheep in the pasture, which know the tone of the shepherd’s voice; but when a strange voice calls they become frightened, and instead of obeying the strange voice, they flee; thus His own sheep know the voice of Himself, and, having spiritual discernment, they will not follow another, though the false shepherd may simulate His voice.
Verses 7-13. There was no response from the side of His hearers, for their darkened minds, and probably more so, their proud hearts, kept them from understanding what He said unto them. If they had known the message of Ezekiel (chapter xxxiv) and believed what Ezekiel had written, they would have understood what He spoke about. He, therefore continues to speak to them: “Verily, verily I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.” While He entered as the true Shepherd by the door into the sheepfold, Judaism, He now speaks of Himself as the door of the sheep. The only way of becoming a sheep of His flock is by Himself; there is no other way into the flock of God, the sheep of Christ, but by the Lord Jesus Christ.
The eighth verse presents a difficulty: ‘All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.” That this cannot mean the true Prophets of God, who came before Christ appeared on earth, is obvious. Attention has been called to the fact that in a number of leading manuscripts the two words translated “before me” are omitted. Others translated these two words “instead of Me.’’ The latter would necessitate the view that our Lord speaks here prophetically, inasmuch as no persons preceded Him who claimed Messiahship, but the false Christs came after Him. The difficulty seems to disappear if the words “before Me” are taken to mean precedence in authority, those who claimed precedence above Him. The Greek tense of the verb “come” (Aorist) does not necessarily mean a coming of the past only. Now the Pharisees rejected the authority of Christ and claimed to be teachers above Him. This they did in the examination of the blind man (ix:16 and 24). The view, then, that our Lord had in mind the Pharisees of His own time, who rejected Him and denied His Messianic authority, thereby claiming a place above Him, seems to be the correct one. The learned Lightfoot, in his comment, says that our Lord probably refers to the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Essenes,who had long misled the Jews before Christ came, and that these three Jewish sects were the three false shepherds whose casting off is foretold in Zech. xi:8. And the sheep, true believers like Simeon and Anna, with many others did not hear them and placed no faith in these arrogant leaders and teachers of their nation.
In the next verse we find another mention of the word “door,” and here the great blessing — which is for those who have entered in by Him, who is the door — is more fully revealed. “I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” When He speaks of Himself again as the door, it is in anticipation of His death and resurrection. Not the Christ who walked in obedience on the earth is the door through which salvation, and all that goes with it, is bestowed through grace, but the Christ who died and rose again. Of this He speaks directly. Through the shepherd who died for the sheep salvation is secured. The first great blessing through Him, by believing on Him, is salvation. This priceless gift for which He paid as the substitute of His sheep, belongs to each believer; it is the present and eternal possession of every sheep of Christ. That door stands open for “any man”; this is the “whosoever” of John iii:16 and Rev.xxii:17.
But there is more than salvation, there is liberty and food as well. “And shall go in and out,” this is liberty. The narrow fold does not permit that, for it means confinement, lack of liberty. Thus it was in the Jewish fold. Christendom speaks unscripturally of different folds today: it means also confinement and not the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. There is an anticipative statement of this word of our Lord in Num. xxvii:17. Moses asked the Lord to set a man over the congregation, those who are the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand (Psa. xcv:7), and Moses said that the man whom the Lord would choose ‘‘may go out before them, and go in before them, and who may lead them out, and who may bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd.” ‘Then the Lord appointed Joshua, at his word they were to go out and at his word they were to go in (verse 21). Joshua is the name of our Lord; for the Greek Jesus is the Hebrew Joshua. And Joshua stands typically for Christ risen from the dead, who brings in His people. The Lord Jesus leads out into perfect liberty His own sheep and leads them in. Under the law there was no such liberty, but He came, sent forth by God to redeem those under the law, to lead them forth from bondage into the liberty of sons (Gal. iv).
And there is food too, “and shall find pasture.” The pasture is not in the fold. The sheep must go forth, outside of the fold, to find that which sustains. Thus spake David of the great Shepherd, ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures” (Psa. xxiii). ‘The blessed Shepherd provides the food for His own; yea, He Himself is that food.
This is followed by a contrast — ‘The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” The false shepherd, the thief, behind whom stands the liar and murderer from the beginning, comes to steal, to kill and to destroy; He came for the one great purpose, “‘that they might have life and have it abundantly.” The thief came to take life; He came to give life. What is the life and the life abundant? Life is the possession of all who believe on Him; the believers in the Old Testament possessed spiritual life, for in Him was life; and the life was the light of men (John 1:4). But He had come, the true God and the eternal life, and as we have learned from the preceding chapters, eternal life is His gift to all who believe on Him. “He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life.”
Those who heard Him speak and believed on Him when He was on earth received life, for He had said, ‘“The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” It was true then, as it is true now, “He that heareth my words and believeth Him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death into life’? (John v:24). His disciples who had believed on Him possessed this life; they knew the Father and the Son, for “this is eternal life,” as He tells us in His great prayer (chapter xvii), ‘that they should know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” But life abundant, the fullness of that life, the abundance of it, was made known after His finished work, after He had passed through death, was raised from among the dead, seated at the right hand of God, and after the Holy Spirit came. Now the abundant life is fully revealed, and those who have believed on Him possess in Him that abundant life, which has triumphed over death; they are risen in Christ, seated in Christ, complete in Him, sons of God, heirs of God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, one spirit with the Lord, identified with Him, and members of His body. This abundant life is the believer’s portion. It does therefore not mean some kind of a deeper, individual experience, unscripturally termed ‘“‘the second blessing,” or ‘fa holiness experience.” Every believer through grace has this life abundantly.
Then follows that precious verse in which He speaks of Himself as the good Shepherd, and His sacrificial work. “I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.” This statement sums up all the predictions and types of the Old Testament Scriptures concerning Him and His work of love. He came to die for the sheep, those who are given to Him by the Father. This statement also answers completely the miserable invention that Christ died to seal in death the Truth He had preached, that He was a martyr on account of His convictions and His doctrine. He did not lay down His life for His doctrines, but for His sheep.
And now He speaks no longer of “thieves and robbers,” who entered the sheepfold, but of the hireling shepherd. What a contrast! The hireling only cares for what he can get out of the sheep. “They feed themselves... they eat the fat...they clothe themselves with the wool” (Ezek, xxxiv:1-6). They are not his sheep and he cares not for them. When the wolf appears, he flees. The wolf catches the sheep and scattereth them. Such is the hireling; he knows nothing about loving the sheep. The wolves are the false prophets and teachers (Matt. vii:15 and Acts xx:29) and behind them stands the great enemy, Satan. The hireling is the instrument through which the wolf catcheth and scattereth the sheep.
Verses 14-18 Once more He speaks of Himself as the good shepherd, but now He mentions the fact that He knows His sheep, those for whom He died. He knows His own. Let us think of Him as One who knows thoroughly everything that each one of His own is feeling, and cannot utter to others. Every temptation from riches, from poverty, from solicitude, from society, from gifts of intellect, from the want of them, from gladness of spirit, from the barrenness and dreariness of it, from the whirlwind of passion, from the evil thoughts which spring up out of fleshly appetites, every sorrow and heartache, and everything else — He knows, and He knows us. And all He knows is through intense, inmost sympathy, not with the evil which is assaulting, but with His own who are assaulted by it. Thus He knows His sheep, as only He can know them; yea, He knows each by name. But the knowledge is mutual. He knows us and we know Him. But it is unfortunate that the authorized version has obscured the real meaning by a wrong punctuation. The right rendering is as follows: “I am the good shepherd and know Mine, and Mine know Me, even as the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father, and I lay down My life for the sheep.” It is a most precious thought which we meet here, that the mutual knowledge of Christ and His sheep is after the pattern of the knowledge of the Father and the Son, and the Son’s knowledge of the Father. The knowledge of the Father and of the Son is of mysterious, unfathomable depth, and because the knowledge of the Lord of His own and the knowledge of His own of Himself, is likewise so very wonderful it is thus linked with the mutual knowledge of Father and Son.
Then once more He speaks of His great work of redemption: “I lay down my life for the sheep.” In connection with His coming sacrificial death our Lord speaks of “other sheep.” ‘These other sheep are the Gentiles. That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the Gospel, was not made known in other ages (Eph. iii:1-6). Here our Lord gives the hint that such would be the case after He had laid down His life for the sheep, not only for the sheep of the Jewish fold, but the other sheep, the Gentiles. The other sheep, which are not of the Jewish fold, He would also lead, and they would hear His voice and follow Him. Then there will be one flock and one shepherd. The authorized version states “one fold,” but this is a serious mistake. Not one fold, but one flock, not an exclusive enclosure of an outward church — but one flock, all knowing the one Shepherd, and known of Him.* This one flock is the one body as revealed in the great Epistles, especially in Ephesians. The fold is Jewish; to speak of the Church as a fold is Judaizing the Church, which ‘is the almost universal thing today. Even those who have been used to emphasize the truth of the oneness of the body of Christ, who speak and teach of the Church as “the one flock,”’ have now their different folds or parties, and manifest the same unscriptural sectarian spirit as the more prominent sects.
“Therefore (on this account) the Father loves Me, because *Luther’s comment is helpful: “The sheep, thought the most simple creature, is superior to all animals in this, that he soon hears his shepherd’s voice, and will follow no other. Also he is clever enough to hang entirely on his shepherd, and to seek help from him only. He cannot help himself, nor find pasture for himself, nor heal himself,
nor guard against wolves, but depends wholly and solely on the help of another.”
I lay down my life, that I might take it again.” This is another deep statement revealing the relation of the Father and the Son. It has been said “‘we must be content to admire and believe what we cannot fully understand.” The infinite complacency, and approbation by the Father of the work His ever blessed Son came to do, was expressed by Him when our Lord in the beginning of His ministry, had gone into the baptismal waters of Jordan, and the Father’s voice declared, ‘“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”” Nor must we overlook the fact that in these words, as well as what follows in the next verse, our Lord speaks of Himself consciously as God: “TI lay down my life....I take it again...I have power to lay it down....I have power to take it again.” It is the “I’’? of the Lord. Yet here, too, is His obedience in humiliation, ‘“This commandment I received of My Father.”
Verses 19-21. This is the third time according to this Gospel that there was a division on account of Him in Jerusalem. The schism was caused on account of these sayings. Thus was fulfilled Isa. viii:14: “He shall be... for a stone of stumbling”; and Simon’s word, “Behold this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against”? (Luke ii:34). Then once more the blinded Jews accused Him of having a devil, while others defended Him. ‘Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?” His miracles were not spurious, or produced by hypnotic influences, as it is the case today in Christian Science and different faith healing cults, but they were the manifestation of His own Divine power. In Isa. xxxv:5, that great prophecy concerning the kingdom and the kingdom signs, the opening of the eyes of the blind is especially mentioned. Some understood and believed that He is the Messiah, the promised King of Israel.
Verses 22-31. The feast of dedication is mentioned only in this passage; nowhere else do we read of it. It is not a feast appointed by Jehovah, but a feast of commemoration of the cleansing of the temple after the defilement by Antiochus Epiphanes, and was first appointed by Judas Maccabaeus in the second century before Christ (see 1 Mac. iv:52-59). It is known today as the feast of Chanukah, a feast of joy and gladness. While they were making glad on account of the past deliverance, the Lord of Glory, who dwelt in visible glory in the tabernacle and in the Solomonic temple, was in their midst, uttering these words of eternal life, and they knew Him not.
The place where our Lord walked was in the outer court, a part of which was a kind of a colonnade, where teachers and rabbis often met, to debate on religious questions. Then a company of Jews, probably Pharisees, approached Him. Perhaps some time had elapsed, when they had become divided on account of Him. During this interval they probably decided to put a question to Him. “How long dost Thou make us to doubt? If Thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.” They were undecided, in a state of suspense; they were uneasy. They demanded that He show Himself ‘“‘plainly,” which in this case means ‘‘openly, with all boldness.”” They evidently wanted a manifestation from His side which corresponded to their carnal expectations.
But He had told them and they had not believed. All along, beginning with the fifth chapter in this Gospel, He had given this great witness about Himself. Furthermore, He had done the great works in the name of His Father, and all these works bore witness of Him. In spite of it all they were unbelievers and had rejected His own words and the witness of the Father. The Lord adds, “‘But ye believe not, because ye are not of My sheep, as I said unto you.” That they were not His sheep was evidenced by their unbelief. The cause of their unbelief was not some kind of an election, which had marked them out before they ever were born, to be excluded from the flock the Shepherd came to gather; but it was their unbelief which was the cause of not becoming His sheep.
Then once more He speaks of “His sheep.”” The character of sheep as illustrating a believer in Christ has often been pointed out. Sheep are helpless and much dependent on the shepherd; they are harmless, weak and foolish, and more than any animal they lose their way and go astray. Such we are, every child of God will gladly acknowledge. But we are His sheep, for whom He died, and He keeps and guards, protects and shields, feeds and guides His sheep, because they are His property. They hear His voice and follow Him.
Full of comfort to all His sheep are His words of gracious assurance. His sheep shall never perish. The eternal life they possess is His gift, the gift of His own power; and that life is His own life. ‘They shall in no wise perish”; and that for the simple reason ‘‘no one shall seize them out of My hand.” If those who oppose the doctrine of the perseverance of the Saints, that a believer, a sheep of Christ, can never be lost, would consider that He who uttered these words is the omnipotent Lord in Glory, that He not only died for His sheep to save them, but that He keeps them by His own power, all the unfortunate quibblings of the Arminian theology would end forever. That there are powers which try to wrest the sheep of Christ from Him, the powers of the devil, the flesh and the world, is indicated by the word “pluck” or “seize hold on.”” Every true sheep of Christ knows this and experiences constantly the conflict with these powers. But what power is greater, the power of sin, of the devil and his demons, of the world, or the power of Him who died, who arose, who is exalted far above all principalities and powers, who has all power in heaven and on earth? There can be but one answer. ‘To say that the power of sin, the devil and the world can snatch away a saved believer, who received eternal life and the Holy Spirit, so that he is lost, is to believe that the power of Christ is insufficient. We quote Bishop J. C. Ryle’s helpful words:
“The doctrine plainly taught in this text may be called ‘Calvinism’ by some, and by others ‘a dangerous tendency.’ The only question we ought to ask is, whether it is Scriptural. The simplest answer to this question is, that the words of the text, in their plain and obvious meaning, cannot be honestly interpreted in any other way. To thrust in, as some enemies of perserverance do, the qualifying clause, ‘they shall never perish so long as they continue My sheep,’ is adding to Scripture, and taking unwarrantable liberties with the words of Christ.* But let us also note that only
*Whitby interpreted it: ‘They shall never perish through any defect of mine,” though they may fall away by their own fault, is a sad instance of unfair handling of Scripture.
‘His sheep’ shall never perish. The man who boasts that he shall never be cast away and never perish, while he is living in sin, is a miserable self-deceiver. It is the perseverance of the Saints, and not of sinners and wicked people, that is promised here. Doubtless the doctrine of the text may be misused and abused, like every other good thing. But to the humble believer, who puts his trust in Christ, it is one of the most glorious and comfortable truths of the Gospel. We are safe in Christ, we shall never perish; this is one thing; but to feel that we are safe is quite another. Many true believers who are safe do not realize and feel it.” But more than that, we are not only His sheep, but we are the gift of the Father to the Son, and the Father is greater than all. To believe that the sheep of Christ, given to Him by the Father, can be plucked out of the Father’s hand, is miserable unbelief.
““‘My Father who hath given to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to seize out of the hand of My Father. I and the Father are one.’ Here we rise to that height of holy love and infinite power, of which no one could speak but the Son; and He speaks of the secrets of the Godhead with the intimate familiarity proper to the Only Begotten who is in the bosom of the Father. He needed none to testify of man, for He knew what was in man, being Himself God; and He knew what was in God for the self-same reason. Heaven or earth, time or eternity, make no difference. Not a creature is unapparent before Him, but all things are naked and bare in His eyes. And He declares that the Father, who had made the gift, resists all that can threaten harm, and as He has given to Christ, so He is greater than all, and none can seize out of His hand. Indeed the Father and the Son are one, not one Person, but one thing, one Divine nature or essence. The lowliest of men, the Shepherd of the sheep, is the Son of the Father, the true God and the eternal life. And He and the Father are not more truly one in Divine essence than in the fellowship of Divine love for the sheep.”*
“I and the Father are one.” ‘This one matchless state-
*Wm. Kelly.
ment silences forever Arianism, Unitarianism, Russellism and other perverters of the essential Deity of our Lord. Then for the third time the Jews took up stones to stone Him. As Augustinus remarks on this incident: ‘‘Behold the Jews understood what the Arians do not understand.” And another ancient commentator declares: “These stones cry out against the Unitarian.”
Verses 32-42. The third time they had tried to stone Him. Many hands had reached down to the ground and picked up a convenient stone; they were ready to stone Him. Behind this new attempt stood the murderer from the beginning, Satan. All along for 4,000 years this fallen being had tried to frustrate God’s plan in redemption, and, knowing that these purposes of redemption centered in the promised Redeemer, the Son of God, Satan aimed at Him. Beginning with the first fratricide when Cain slew Abel, to the cold-blooded murder of the little boys in Bethlehem, when the promised child had been born, he attempted to make impossible the work of redemption. Yet he failed continually. And here Satan made another attempt. Yet they were unable to cast a single stone. Surrounded by the howling mob which cried ‘Stone Him!” as they cried later “‘Crucify Him!”’, He is the picture of majestic calmness. He rebukes them. He appeals to the great works, the miracles of divine power He had done. ‘These were the evidences of His Messiahship. They showed that He is God, one with the Father. Was there anything in these works He had shown them from His Father, which required such an action which they were about to execute when they picked up stones? “For which of these works do ye stone Me?” But they were ready with an answer. The logic of His words was at once recognized by these shrewd assassins.
“The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we stone Thee not; but for blasphemy, and that Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God.” Thus they had to bear once more a witness that all His works were good, that what He did was not evil, but good and righteous. What galled them was His repeated witness that He is God, one with the Father. They had not forgotten what His lips had spoken when the lame man had been healed by Him, when they realized that He claimed God as His Father, thus making Himself equal with God (John v:18). It shows clearly that the Jews in our Lord’s time attached a much higher and deeper sense to our Lord’s frequently used language about God being His Father than modern readers are apt to do. In fact they regarded it as nothing less than a claim to equality with God. Modern Arians and Socinians (that is, Unitarians, Christian Scientists and the Russellites), who profess to see nothing in our Lord’s sonship but a higher degree of that relationship which exists between all believers and God, would do well to mark this verse. What they say they cannot see, the Jews, who hated Christ, did see. “That ‘contemporaneous exposition,’ to use a legal phrase, of our Lord’s words, deserves great respect, and carries with it great weight and authority. As a man, our Lord was a Jew, educated and trained among Jews. Common sense points out, that the Jews, who lived in His time, were more likely to put correct sense on His words than he modern deniers of His Deity.’’*
Their answer charging Him with blasphemy contains the claim that they stood up in honor for God, and that they defended Him against this man. If this were true, God, because He is righteous, would have had to reward them for their holy zeal in rejecting a blasphemer. But instead of receiving a reward after they had rejected the Lord Jesus and delivered Him into the hands of the Gentiles, God had their city burned, the temple, of which they boasted, destroyed, and the whole nation was dispersed among all nations. The subsequent history of the Jewish people, a history of blood and tears, is a witness that He whom they hated without a cause, whose works they saw, whose words they heard, was and is the Son of God, one with the Father, and not a blasphemer. Every generation of Jews since that day when they condemned the Lord of Glory, sharing by unbelief in this rejection, has borne witness through sufferings untold, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
He answers the awful charge by the Scriptures. In the eighty-second Psalm is a little statement, which He in His
*Expository Thoughts on John.
infinite wisdom selects to show them their fatal error. They had said, “Thou being a Man makest Thyself God.” In that Psalm it is written, “I said ye are gods.” Asaph, who penned these words by the Spirit of God, speaks of those whom God had put in places of authority among His people, such as kings, priests and rulers, as being gods. The same fact is stated in Exod. vii:1: “And the Lord said unto Moses. See I have made thee a god to Pharaoh.” He was to act in the place of God towards the Egyptian king. Kings, judges and rulers derive their power from God and act thus under His authority; therefore they are called “gods.” Then the Lord applied this brief Scripture statement: “If he called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken; say ye of Him whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God?” The writer of the Psalm by the Spirit of God called others gods, to whom the Word of God came, that is, who were commissioned by God to act in rulership, why, then, did they call Him, whom the Father had set apart and appointed and finally sent into the world, a blasphemer, because He claimed to be the Son of God? The argument is perfect. Nor must we overlook that brief statement, ‘“‘the Scripture cannot be broken.” He thus bears witness to the inspiration and authority of every word in the original text of the Bible. Every word is of God and it cannot be set aside.
Again He appeals to His works. If they were not the works of the Father, they should not believe Him. But all His works were of the Father, of which they must have been convinced. And if He does the works of the Father, though they believed not His words, they ought to believe the evidence of His works and thereby believe that the Father must be in Him and He in the Father. But this plain statement following His great argument only stirred up their Satanic hatred and opposition. A great tumult must have followed. Perhaps many hands were stretched out to catch Him, to lay hold on Him, to arrest Him and through murder make an end of His ministry. ‘But He escaped out of their hand.” This was done in a miraculous way; no other explanation is possible. Here is the seething mob, Satanically energized, ready to tear Him to pieces. They rush upon Him, but suddenly He is gone. We do not know how the escape was effected. He may have become invisible; or their eyes may have been suddenly blinded. How it was we do not know; but it was a miracle, and demonstarated once more the fact that His life could not be touched; He alone had the power to lay it down and to take it again. Once more it is true, “His hour had not yet come.”
He is seen next beyond Jordan in the place where John had first baptized. There He abode. It was at this place where He began His blessed ministry about three years ago (John 1:28). There He had been proclaimed by the lips which were silent now, as the Lamb of God. And as His ministry was about to end He returned to the same place. There He abode awaiting now the time when He would offer Himself as the Lamb of God.
A great gathering then took place — ‘“‘many resorted unto Him.” They remembered John the Baptist. They remembered well the words which the great herald of the King had spoken. He himself did no miracles. But while John worked no miracles, what he had spoken about Him, who had gone into Jordan to be baptized, had become true. The result was ‘“‘that many believed on Him there.” How they believed, whether only convinced in their minds that He is the Messiah, or whether they believed on Him as the Son of God and as Saviour, no one can tell. Perhaps the many who resorted to Him and believed on Him, belonged to those who on the day of Pentecost were saved.