The Hand That Holds You
The Hand That Holds You
John 10:22-42
Whose hand is holding you, and will it let go?
I. The Question: “Are You the Christ?” (10:22–30)
John 10:22-26: 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.
John 10:27-30: 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.
Is there any hand that can’t be pried open?
II. The Claim: “I and the Father Are One” (10:30–39)
John 10:31-33: 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 10:34-36: 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’?”
Jesus quotes Psalm 82, where God calls Israel’s judges “gods” because His word came to them and they stood in His place. They failed. And Jesus argues from lesser to greater: if Scripture, which cannot be broken, could call those failed judges “gods,” how can it be blasphemy for the One the Father consecrated and sent to say, “I am the Son of God”?
John 10:37-39: 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.
How can a pierced hand hold anyone?
III. The Response: Believing Across the Jordan (10:40–42)
John 10:40-42: 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.
Which crowd are you in?
Religion says, “If I stay close enough to the temple, if I obey, if I perform, then God will hold me.” The gospel says, “God has taken hold of me in Christ, and therefore I obey.”
Religion makes your grip the foundation. The gospel makes His grip the foundation.
Whose hand is holding you?
Main Idea: Jesus is our good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
The writer of Hebrews says that God, wanting to show “the unchangeable character of his purpose,” “guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement” (Heb 6:17–18). And then he says, “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Heb. 6:19).
Revelation 7:17: For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
The hand that holds you is the hand of God.