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Our first scripture reading comes from Isaiah chapter 9.
But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time, he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time, he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Nations.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.
You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult, in every garment rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
From the prophet Isaiah, we turn to John, the Gospel of John, chapter 10, beginning at verse 22.
At that time, the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the Colonnade of Solomon.
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.”
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, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will 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 picked up stones again to stone him.
Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you going to stone me?”
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.”
Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be broken, 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’?
If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. 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.”
Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands. He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained.
And many came to him, and they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true,” and many believed in him there.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Jesus, we believe you. We have read about and heard about your works, and we believe in you through them, and we believe in you because of your spirit who fills us inside. Be with us now, open our hearts to receive what you have to say, open our ears to understand, and increase our faith daily.
And through this time, we pray this in your name. Amen.
The first two titles that Isaiah proclaimed for the Messiah, Wonderful and Counselor, were understandable, appropriate, and reasonable expectations to have about an expected future prophet in the Kingdom of Judah.
The prophets Elijah and Elisha certainly could have been described as being Wonderful because of both the quantity and the quality of miracles which were attributed to them.
And both the prophets Nathan and Isaiah served as counselors to their kings—Nathan to David and Isaiah to Hezekiah, respectively.
However, if the third title of Mighty God was theologically preposterous and potentially blasphemous, then the fourth title of Everlasting Father is even more outrageous.
Not only would this Messiah figure be considered divine—like the many surrounding nations considered their kings—an idea heretical and blasphemous for a Jew to even consider entertaining.
You’ll recall the responses of Daniel and his friends to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and his proclamations requiring worship.
But for Isaiah to call the prophesied Messiah the Aviad, the Forever Father, can only be interpreted as equating him with Yahweh himself.
Who else, except the creator of the universe, the Eternal being who possesses alone the discrete quality of being in himself, the Great I Am, the originator and first source of everything, who else could possibly be rightly called the Everlasting Father?
This particular title for the Messiah, Jesus, seems the most odd and is often overlooked or forgotten by us Christians.
I mean, Jesus is our King. Jesus is our brother, while God is our Father, right? Did not Jesus himself teach us to pray by praying, “Our Father, which art in heaven”?
Thinking about Jesus also being the Everlasting Father just sounds and kind of feels weird.
We tend to forget that within the Trinity we have three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are each distinct yet also possessing the same nature and essence, and that each person relates to the two others in perfect unity and equality—not only of will, power, purpose, or activity, but also in title.
The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father, yet all three are equally the Lord, Yahweh, the Creator, Sovereign, holy, righteous, and just.
They are Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. Their divine titles, you see, cannot be separated from who they are. They are God, the Lord, and they are one.
Now, having read and heard the story of Jesus’s trial and crucifixion so many times, I am sure that we all remember that the only charge for which the Jewish Sanhedrin was able to convict him was for blasphemy—proclaiming that he is God.
Except the irony, of course, is that the religious crime which they accused and convicted him of as being false was actually true.
Although they brought many witnesses to accuse him falsely, they were neither consistent nor convincing enough to convict Jesus. Only the truth could convict him.
Matthew recounts, and the high priest said to him, “I adieu you by the living God; tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
And Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?”
They answered, “He deserves death.”
See, Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He was guilty as charged. Yet Jesus did not actually assert his divinity when he was on trial, instead pointing out the fact that he was, and it was his enemies—those who hated him and those who sought his destruction—who were confessing him as the Christ, the foretold Messiah and the Son of God.
But what was it that brought these Jewish leaders—the priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees—men so obsessively devoted to preserving their ritual purity and personal holiness to such a point of hatred against this man Jesus that they were willing to intentionally commit or endorse perjury and murder, expressly violating the sixth and ninth commandments, just to remove the social, political, and religious threat of Jesus?
Back in Luke 4, Jesus stood up in the Nazareth synagogue and read from the Isaiah scroll, concluding by saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
And then the people of his hometown, his own hometown, tried to throw him off of a cliff for saying that the spirit of the Lord is upon me through what he read.
They tried to kill Jesus for blasphemy because he claimed to have a divine anointing.
Now, it may be argued that the title which Jesus used most often in reference to himself, the Son of Man, was itself a claim of divinity.
Apart from Jesus’s use in the gospels, the expression is most often found in Ezekiel as a reference to the prophet.
However, the reason for Jesus’s use of the title is sourced from the prophecy of Daniel. He wrote, “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him, and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”
So when considered within the context of all Old Testament Messianic prophecy, this one who is like a son of man fulfills the christological ideal—a king who is both Divine and human and one who can also stand tall in the presence of the Ancients of Days, the Lord, as an equal.
Thus, the expression Son of Man may be viewed either or both in perspective as prophet of God and divine King.
Meanwhile, this duality actually allowed Jesus to freely use the title for himself with minimal complaint from the educated elites who recognized him as a prophet of God, while it also implicitly described him in his divine nature as king.
But it is within the Gospel of John that we find the most occasions of Jesus making statements which may be interpreted as personal claims of divinity.
We have seven “I am” statements: I am the bread of life, the light of the world, the door, the Good Shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way and the truth and the life, and the True Vine, as well as the explosive eighth declaration, “Before Abraham was, I am.”
Each of those “I am” statements used an odd Greek expression, ego Amy, which could be translated as the grammatical redundancy of “I, I am.”
But what is so important is that ego Amy is how the Septuagint translates God’s response to Moses in Exodus 3:14 when Moses asked, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they asked me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said, “I am that I am,” or in the Greek, “Hey go Amy.”
Now ordinarily, a Greek-speaking person would only ever use Amy when saying “I am” about themselves, but a Jewish speaker combining those two words in this way, referring to themselves, could only be referencing, intending, and claiming one thing: the name of God, the Lord Yahweh.
If the Apostle John makes it quite apparent that Jesus is very much aware of his unique relationship with God and that Jesus was really not shy about making it known, then the moment when the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, most closely, clearly, and expressly identifies himself with the Divine Messiah prophesied by Isaiah as the Everlasting Father is here in today’s texts.
“At that time, the Feast of Dedication took place in Jerusalem.”
Now this is a most unique and peculiar moment in the text of scripture.
The Old Testament law mandated every male Jew’s attendance at three annual religious feasts: Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, First Fruits and the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost, and lastly at the completion of the harvest in the Feast of Booths.
While the other two important holy holidays were the Day of Trumpets, or Rosh Hashanah, and the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, this Feast of Dedication is nowhere mentioned in sacred scripture except for here.
You probably know about it by a different name: the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah.
The Jewish holiday celebration, which incidentally begins this weekend, this festival celebrated the rededication of the Second Jerusalem Temple after it had been desecrated and profaned by a pagan sacrifice offered by the Seleucid King Antiochus IV.
This festival would last for eight days corresponding with the duration of Solomon’s Temple dedication found in Second Chronicles.
After the initial Maccabean rededication, it was established that a festival of remembrance would continue to be held every year celebrating this spiritual cleansing of the Lord’s Temple as preparation for the Lord to return and dwell among his people once again.
So what is the importance of the Feast of Dedication in this passage? Why does John alone in the New Testament make this mention of it?
Because the true point and purpose of rededicating the temple was so that the Lord might return and fill it with his presence as he did when Solomon first dedicated the temple and when the Israelites completed building the Tabernacle in the wilderness—that the Lord would dwell among his people as Emmanuel, God with us.
Because here in this passage, describing Jesus at the temple in the Feast of Dedication, it’s here that Jesus clearly announces his unity with the Father—with the Lord, with Yahweh—and those who are the ears to hear heard him, and they knew and understood that Emmanuel had actually come to the temple in the person of Jesus Christ.
God the Son, the Lord returned to the reconsecrated and re-sanctified Temple to dwell among his people once again.
But Jesus was walking in the temple in the Colonnade of Solomon, 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.”
These people wanted to know exactly who Jesus is. They wanted some external confirmation. They wanted him to confirm their suspicions.
And 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, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
See, Jesus had already told them. He had already declared himself as the “I am” several times already.
Jesus had shown them who he is through all the miracles which he had performed, yet despite the evidence of their eyes and all the knowledge of their minds, they still did not believe in him because it was not given them to believe, even as all those who did belong to him believed and followed him.
“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will 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.”
Speaking about the work of his Father in heaven and his own work, Jesus proclaims their mutual sovereignty and omnipotence in salvation.
“No one will snatch them out of my hand, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”
No one will, and no one is able to snatch Jesus’s sheep away from him. Only the Lord God may give someone life, and Jesus proclaims that he is the one who gives his sheep eternal life—the righteous gift that fallen Adam would have had if only he and Eve had not sinned in the garden.
After this, Jesus declares his present and personal divinity: “I and the Father are one.”
Blasphemous words to the ears of every Jew who heard him. Blasphemy spoken within the sacred grounds of the Lord’s holy temple itself.
Blasphemy, it’s true, it was already bad enough that Jesus spoke about the Lord God as his Father.
Jesus spoke as if he had a personal relationship with God—an idea which was inconceivable and incomprehensible to the average Jewish mindset.
A personal relationship with God? That was something for Moses or David or the prophets. I could have a direct relationship with the Lord as my Father? God in a relationship with me, not only with me as part of God’s chosen people but with me personally?
What a terrifying idea! The Sovereign Creator, the king of the universe, being in a relationship with a sinful person like me.
Even now, for us Christians, if we truly stopped and thought about it, what a great and terrible thing it is for us to be in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, with God himself.
People will say that they have this relationship rather easily and flippantly, but if we think about what this relationship means to and for us, then we would not act so cavalierly speaking about our relationship.
Then we would show Jesus and God more of the respect that they deserve. But if you truly believe on him, then the Lord God, Jesus Christ, is in a loving familial relationship with you, and you are in a loving familial relationship with him.
You are in a close personal relationship with God, our Heavenly Father, and with God, Jesus, our brother and King, and with God the Holy Spirit, our Paraclete. You are an adopted, chosen, elected child of God.
But Jesus, in this declaration, now goes far beyond, so far beyond the idea of a person having an intimate personal relationship with God.
He declares that he is God himself. Every Jew knows, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” And yet here, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.”
I am the Everlasting Father. Jesus and God are one and the same.
Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, and Yahweh are one. Blasphemy! But it would only be blasphemy if it were not true.
How do these Jews respond to Jesus’s declaration? They picked up stones again to stone him.
See, the crowd was getting rather ugly at this moment.
But Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you going to stone me?”
And 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.”
Now, calling a blasphemer was the right and good and proper thing to do according to the law of Moses. Leviticus 24:16 says, “Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him; the sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the name, shall be put to death.”
So stoning the blasphemer was the duty and responsibility of all the people—swift justice enacted by those who heard it.
It was a communal act of judgment—a warning to others against further blasphemy.
And here, Jesus, if he were only a man, would have been blaspheming the name and therefore deserving of death.
Still, Jesus defended himself against this charge of blasphemy by pointing to his works, his miracles, and likely his personal righteousness, his good and virtuous life lived according to the standards of Torah.
“If I’m not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. 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.”
Remember, miracles serve as proof and evidence for the validity of both the messenger and his message.
By his own interpretation, the wonderful works of Jesus demonstrated that he came from God and that God was with him.
The Pharisee Nicodemus also confessed to being convinced of Jesus’s status as being sent from God: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”
But now Jesus had taken it one step further by saying, “I and the Father are one.”
Jesus intended for his good works to demonstrate exactly who he is. His works are sufficient evidence of his unity with the Lord because he had already done far greater miracles than any prophet who came before.
And Jesus turns to scripture to defend himself in his words, asking, “Isn’t that written in your law, ‘I said you are gods’?”
And if he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be broken, 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”?
He quotes Psalm 82:6: “You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you. Nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall away like any prince.”
Where the Lord sits in divine counsel and judges those who possess authority over the earth, convicting them of their failure to act justly, their failure to do what is right, their failure to do as God commanded.
Again, Jesus interprets the inerrant, unchanging, and unbreakable scriptures, understanding them in a reference to those whom scripture—God’s Torah law—had been entrusted.
They are the ones whom the Lord calls gods—men possessing God’s law and entrusted to administer it in his place as his vassals, as image bearers of the Divine Sovereign.
Those men surrounding Jesus in the temple would have been Pharisees, priests, and Levites, as well as ordinary common Jewish men.
These men who now wanted to stone Jesus are who Jesus interprets as being those condemned gods of the psalmist. They are those whom the Lord condemned as having neither knowledge nor understanding—they walk about in darkness.
Now Jesus does equate himself with them in having received the law, but also as being different because he alone does what it commands.
Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.
Again and still, they did not understand Jesus nor did they believe him.
They called Jesus a blasphemer because he said that he was the Son of God, because he obeyed the Father and did what the Father commanded.
So Jesus escaped. He went away across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained.
And many came to him, and they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man is true, and many believed in him there.”
Jesus continued to teach, but the Jewish leaders did not immediately come after him for his alleged blasphemy, and so many people came to faith and believed in him.
Now although we do not often think about Jesus as being the Everlasting Father, that is who he is.
Jesus is the Lord, and the Lord is the Everlasting Father. And it is okay if we do not easily personally relate to Jesus as the Everlasting Father because none of us really understand the Godhead of the Trinity.
We do not know how it works, nor can we even ever describe it very well or even rightly.
But what is important is that we do believe it and that we trust that it does work. We believe that God is always working for the good of those who love him, for those whom he loves.
And I believe that the most important thing for us to take from today’s lesson is the comfort, the hope, and the security we find in Jesus’s words: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will 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.”
We faithful ones are Jesus’s sheep. We hear his voice, he knows us, and we know him intimately and personally, and that is why we follow him.
No one can ever possibly separate us from or snatch us away from Christ because we are safe and secure in his hands, for his hands are the hands of the Everlasting Father—the one who has given us to Jesus, the one who is greater than all.
Again, this is why we teach the perseverance of the saints and why this doctrine is such a comfort for every Christian who trusts in Jesus, because Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”
We are persevered and preserved unto salvation because Jesus Christ is the Everlasting Father. Amen.
Let us stand and say what we believe using the words of the Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended to hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended to heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
Our closing hymn is number 259: “Angels from the Realms of Glory.”