It always comes down to a Choice

John 10:22-

It is the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, it is winter time and that means it may get colder around the Jerusalem and Ramat Hagolan mountains to a level of (34 Degrees Fahrenheit) but most of the time it is 41 to 65 degrees. The feast of the dedication – “This was a feast instituted by Judas Maccabeus, in commemoration of his purifying the temple after it had been defiled by Antiochus Epiphanes. This feast began on the twenty-fifth of the month Cisleu, (which answers to the eighteenth of our December), and continued for eight days.” (Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible)

Jesus is walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon, and 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 part of my flock.  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 gave them to me, is greater that 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.” (John 10:24-33)

Many of us can identify with the crowd that gathered around Jesus on that winter day, we want an answer, and when confronted with truth in such a way that it cannot be misunderstood, we “pick-up stones” and why, because our deeds are evil in the sight of a Holy God, and to acknowledge that requires an action on our part, submission or rejection. 

It is important for you to understand that Jesus is not going to make that choice easy for you anymore than He did to those who gathered around him on that winter day in the colonnade of Solomon.  This was His reply to them; “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.”  (John 10:36-38)  Now they were going to arrest God; that is as dumb as those who are trying to remove God from our Government, schools, and the heart of our people.  But Jesus walked away and went to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and many came to him and believed in Him.  Now it may be your turn, you read the words that Jesus spoke, will you submit or reject Jesus?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice