"At that time the Feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem; 23 it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon. 24 The Jews then gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, "How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly." 25 Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me. 26 "But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. 27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 29 "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. 30 "I and the Father are one." 31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. 32 Jesus answered them, "I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?" 33 The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God." 34 Jesus answered them, "Has it not been written in your Law, ’I SAID, YOU ARE GODS’? 35 "If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), 36 do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ’You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ’I am the Son of God’? 37 "If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; 38 but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father." 39 Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp."
A couple of main themes have been recurring throughout the book of John; one by the Author’s design because of his stated purpose in writing, and one in the history that he records.
The establishing and defense of the fact of the Deity of Jesus Christ is John’s main theme. Another is the growing division and enmity between Jesus and the Jewish ruling elite in Israel, headquartered in Jerusalem.
We will see both of these themes build finally to their climax, or nearly to their climax, here in these closing verses of chapter 10. I say ’nearly’ because the actual and historical culmination of both of these recurring themes will be reached at Calvary and the cross of Christ and His resurrection.
Their hatred of Him will reach its zenith as they nail Jesus to the cross, and His Deity will finally and unquestionably be established in His resurrection -- as Paul said in his opening words to the Romans, "...who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ out Lord".
But it is here, in Jerusalem, at the Feast of Dedication, also called the Feast of Lights, where Jesus, the Light of the world (Jn 9:5) will say His final words to the Jews concerning His Deity, and here where they will stop their ears and close their eyes to the truth.
They will still see Jesus in the context of His entry into Jerusalem on the donkey’s foal, and His final public appearances in and around the Temple during that final week leading up to Passover; but this is the last opportunity they will have for face to face verbal exchange with Him prior to His arrest and trials.
As I mentioned, and as John says in verse 22, it is the time of the Feast of Dedication. Without repeating a teaching on the occupation of Antiochus Epiphanes during the intertestamental period and his removal in 165 BC by the Maccabees and the reclamation of the Temple in 164, just let me point out that the Feast of Dedication, or the Feast of Lights as it was also called, was to commemorate that rededication of the Temple to God and God’s demonstration of approval in that the lampstand in the Holy place, which would normally need to have it’s oil replenished on a daily basis, stayed lit and the oil miraculously undiminished for seven days following the rededication.
So here in our account we see the Light of the world coming to His Temple, and in sharp contrast, the darkness of the world seeking to put that Light out. I don’t want to build further on that theme here, but it is something to meditate upon later, that these final events -- this determinative confrontation between Light and darkness should take place during an occasion known as Feast of Lights..
THEIR FOOLISH QUESTION
Now it is not very often that I have ever employed the use of alliterative outline in my sermons. I know that many preachers and public speakers use that tool and it can be a helpful one if not over-used or clumsily contrived.
I used that tool here, as you can see in your outline, because we’re talking about the final confrontations between Jesus and the Jews that culminated in the coming of the ’night’ Jesus had mentioned to his disciples in chapter 9 verse 4 and my purpose today is to highlight those final downward steps of deliberate unbelief taken by these Jewish leaders so near the end of the earthly ministry of our Lord.
So let’s look first at their foolish question.
Look at the wording of verses 19 - 21 of this chapter of John’s Gospel.
"A division occurred again among the Jews because of these words. Many of them were saying, "He has a demon and is insane. Why do you listen to Him? Others were saying, ’These are not the sayings of one demon-possesseed. A demon cannot open the eyes of the blind, can he?’"
In saying ’because of these words’, John is of course referring to the discourse of Jesus recorded in the first 18 verses.
As I read verses 19 - 21 I am reminded of the CS Lewis quote wherein he declares that after considering all the claims Jesus made of Himself the choices of the individual in response are to either kill Him as a demon or shut Him up as a lunatic or bow and worship Him as Lord and God.
As Christians, because we have already been given the mind of Christ and have His indwelling Spirit, we hear those words of Lewis’ and automatically accept the final choice as the only wise and viable one.
The fact remains however, that people in this dark and sinful world continue to opt for those earlier choices; not because they necessarily think they are the right and correct choice, but because they desire to continue to reject Christ and in rejection of Him they will do with Him according to their sinful will.
So when we read verses 19 - 21 we see the responses of those different groups of people, who have continued to exist in history and even are all around us today. There is a division. Some will stubbornly accuse Jesus of being demonic, some will scoff at Him as a fool, and others will say that He could not do the things He did if God were not with Him.
Our arguments of common sense, our books of apologetics, our documentation of historical fact -- none of those things are going to open the eyes of the deliberately blind, nor are they going to convince the willing skeptic. Let me repeat here -- untill they have believed they will never understand.
Therefore we should not be surprised as we come to our text verses, beginning with verse 22, when we come to verse 24 and find the Jews surrounding Jesus in Solomon’s portico and asking, "How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ tell us plainly".
Now why do I relate their question to the statements of Lewis and the content of verses 19-21? The answer is in the response of Jesus in verse 25.
Their ignorance is deliberate! Their unwillingness to believe renders them impotent to comprehend. "I told you, and you do not believe."
Then He goes on to mention His many works that have been done in their presence, indicating that they reject those also.
You won’t believe when I tell you, and you won’t believe your own eyes and ears when I perform the works that only God can accomplish.
Therefore their question was a fool’s question.
In a recent sermon I pointed out that when Jesus is in the presence of the true student; one who really wants the truth, He spends much time with them. He is patient and gentle with sincere questions asked in ignorance. But when He is being confronted and challenged by unbelief He doesn’t waste His time.
It’s the same here. He doesn’t really respond to their question the way we would expect from someone being put in a position to defend himself. Here is what I mean.
Get the picture in your head. Jesus has known for some time that the Jews want Him dead. Remember that He spent about 5 or 6 months in relative seclusion in Galilee before coming back to Jerusalem in order to stay out of their grasp until the appointed time. So He knows and I think by now most everyone knows that the religious elite in Jerusalem would like to see this Jesus go away for keeps.
So here He is now, getting out of the cold in Solomon’s portico during a winter feast time, and verse 24 says they gathered around Him.
The word means to encompass. It is used of beseigers. It means they surrounded Jesus. They were desperate and they probably planned to make sure this time He didn’t get away.
That’s why they ask this particular question. It’s not because they really want to know -- want to hear Him claim to be the Christ so they can worship Him.
They want to hear Him make an overt claim to Deity so they can accuse Him of blasphemy and killl Him.
Just in case you’re doubting me, jump forward to verse 39 and you’ll see confirmation of what I’m saying. They tried to seize Him, but once more He eluded their grasp.
Isn’t that amazing? He’s in an enclosed space, He is surrounded by those who want to harm Him, but when He is finished for the day He avoids them once more and goes His way.
So yeah. Their question is the question of fools who do not ask because they want to know but because they want to kill.
I would wish that seminary professors who are teaching classes on evangelism and reaching the lost would bring in these passages as part of their curriculum. I’m not saying they do not; I don’t know. But I would hope that they would. Because then young ministers would go to their churches later and one of the things they would teach their people is that not everyone who demonstrates curiosity about Jesus really wants to know so they can believe. It might help them and it might help their congregations to be prayerful and discerning about their approach and responses and their use of resources to the unchurched, so that evangelistic outreach might be more organized and focused and time/money/resources used more wisely -- rather than the ’shotgun, shot-in-the-dark’ approach that so often seems to characterize the outreach programs coming down to our churches from accountants and armchair tacticians at the organizational level.
Part of spreading the Gospel, my friends, just like long ago, is knowing when to kick the dust off our feet and move on. That hasn’t changed at all.
It never will.
That, in essence, is what Jesus is going to do in verse 39. But let me get back to what I was saying earlier. He didn’t directly respond in the way we would expect someone to respond who is surrounded and in immediate danger.
I mean, in this instance, no matter how much I thought they already knew, I think I’d be prepared to try very hard to convice them so they don’t bash my brains out with stones.
Not our Lord. He just says, ’I already told you.’ I told you and I showed you. And the rest of His words in verses 27-30 aren’t intended to convince but to incite -- although they are infinitely significant words for the true believer and we’ll come back to them before we finish today -- but in this setting Jesus is speaking the truths that He knows will only fan the murderous intent in their darkened hearts.
In short, He tells them the reason they don’t understand is because they aren’t among those chosen to inherit eternal life. Does that help you understand why they picked up rocks intending to stone Him to death?
THEIR FATUOUS REASONING
Let’s talk about their silly, inanely foolish, or fatuous, reasoning. Look at verses 31-33 again.
"The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. 32 Jesus answered them, "I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?" 33 The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God."
Now let me tell you why I chose the word ’fatuous’ for this portion of the outline. Yes, I needed an ’f’ to go with ’foolish’ and ’final’, but there’s an even better reason than that. ƒº
Deliberate unbelief, sad as it is, is also usually silly in its manifestation. What I mean is, when people deliberately reject obvious truth they usually do it in a way that appears stupid, silly, nonsensical.
They say and do things related to their rejection that cause the one who sees the truth clearly to exclaim, ’Are you kidding? Can’t you see the evidence right before your eyes?’
It reminds me of a program my daughter was watching where the speaker was relating an event where some archeologists had invited a teacher of the theory of evolution to a site where they had uncovered a dinosaur footprint fossilized in an old riverbed, and there was the footprint of a man in the middle of that print. The speaker said the professor was standing near the spot but when the archeologists told him what they wanted to show him he refused to turn around and look at it. It was immediately behind him, but he refused to simply turn his body and look at the evidence they wanted to show him.
Now this isn’t an event I have personally documented and I’m roughly relating a story that was told by someone else who claims that this really happened. But it is simply an example of how ridiculous people will be when they don’t want to have their minds changed once their minds are made up.
There are many areas of life in which we see the same propensity in people. Battered spouses will stay with their abusers because they are afraid of abandonment. That is absolutely tragic.
Men will refuse to go to a doctor even when ill and in pain because they don’t want to hear what they think they might hear after an evaluation, even when they can feel the lump; or can’t keep food down; or exhibiting other unusual symptoms.
Had these Pharisees seen the miracles of Jesus? Of course they had. They had been there, they had heard of others He performed, they had heard His words or had His words reported to them, but they rejected all the evidence out of hand because their minds were made up about Him.
He claimed to be God, and so they wanted to accuse Jesus of blasphemy, and acceptance of the evidence would only prove His claims, so instead of accepting the evidence and therefore believing the claim, they ignored the evidence so they could continue to reject His claim and kill Him.
Is that inanely foolish, fatuous reasoning? Yes, I think it qualifies.
Jesus has already said in response to their question that He has both told them and performed the signs that would prove His claim to Deity but they would not believe. Now He throws that evidence up in their face again.
Does He do it out of anger or spite or arrogance? No! He does it out of His grace. Look how long Jesus has put up with this nonsense from the Jews.
Throughout His entire public ministry they’ve asked these same faithless questions and thrown out these same faithless challenges and they continue to do it even now, yet out of His grace He gives them one more opportunity to acknowledge the evidence and believe the truth.
"I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?"
Do you hear what He is saying to them? Notice Jesus didn’t say, "I have done many amazing miracles which the prophets even said that the Messiah would do, therefore if you stone Me you are stoning the Messiah"
But y’know what? That’s really what He was saying. But look at His wording. "I showed you many good works from the Father..."
Once more Jesus is reminding them that His claim is that He has come down from the Father to do the works the Father gave Him to do. He is saying, ’The God of your fathers sent Me here and gave me works to do, and I have done them, so if you condemn Me for them you condemn God’
And here is the epitome of their fatuous reasoning. We don’t stone you for the works, but because you claim to be equal with God.
What? Wait! In order to stone Jesus for blasphemy they have to ignore the works, because the works prove His claims and therefore He is not a blasphemer, in which case they would not want to stone Him if they were really looking for the coming of the Messiah from God, because they would see the works and believe, but they don’t really want Him to be the Messiah so they have to ignore the works so they can stone Him... DOES ANY OF THIS MAKE SENSE? NO! It is silly, fatuous, inanely foolish reasoning from dead, dark sinful souls that hate God and hate His Christ and won’t even turn their bodies around to look at the obvious evidence.
See folks, it’s not that the facts didn’t fit their theology. The problem was that the facts exposed their sin and darkness and that’s what they could not stand.
"And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil" Jn 3:19
Now we have to go on and look at the action of the Jews that demonstrated their final decision and ended their chances of coming to the knowledge of the truth, but first we have to talk about what Jesus said to them in verses 34 -- 36. This looks like a difficult passage to us but it wasn’t for them. They would have understood clearly what Jesus was saying to them it’s confusing to us unless we know what His point of reference was.
"Jesus answered them, "Has it not been written in your Law, ’I SAID, YOU ARE GODS’? "If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ’You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ’I am the Son of God’?"
In the Old Testament there were judges that were set to rule over Israel. They were like traveling magistrates. God, the supreme Judge, sent them as His own emissaries to judge in His name and in His authority.
Therefore a judgment from them was as good as a judgment from God, and any rebellion against them was rebellion against God.
Therefore, since they ruled in the place of God, the Old Testament called them gods. They received their office by divine appointment, so they were in essence, the voice of God to the people.
Now there’s nothing tricky here. I looked up the word ’gods’ in the Greek as it was used in John 10 by Jesus, and I looked it up in the Hebrew as it was used in Psalm 82:6, which Jesus was quoting, The Greek was theos which means god, and the Hebrew was elohim, which means god.
All it means is that they represented God to the people and their judgments were valid as though coming straight from God. They were human judges to whom the Word of God came.
Now here is where Jesus throws in the phrase, ’and the Scripture cannot be broken’. And that was a sort of preemptive strike in case they wanted to claim that it was a mistake to use that word -- that it didn’t really belong there -- no, this is Scripture, and none of them can deny that it is Scripture, and none of them would disagree with the claim that Scripture cannot be broken. It is what it is and it is unchanging and inerrant. So Jesus has effectively disarmed them as regards that particular point.
So the only possible response is ’yes, He called them gods to whom the Word of God came’.
Therefore...
They were called gods who started on earth and got their words from God, can’t I be called the Son of God, when I started in Heaven and came down from God?
In other words, you’re letting semantics rule your brain. Your judges were here on earth and the word came to them, I came from there with the Word; don’t I deserve a greater title than they?
So how can you accuse Me of blaspheming for saying I’m the Son of God, when I have demonstrated many times over that I am the One God sanctified and sent into the world?
And once more...don’t miss this...once more, Jesus tosses up those good works that He’s been doing which they’ve been ignoring and gives them one more chance to come to their senses and stop acting silly.
If you don’t want to believe My words, believe My works, and see that they can only be done by One who is in the Father and the Father in Him, and believe for their sake.
Do you understand the gracious offer Jesus was making them? The Bible says that we are saved by grace through faith. The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God. Jesus was to tell Thomas later that those who have believed without seeing have the greater blessing.
Do you realize that at this 11th hour, at the end of this last confrontation Jesus had with the men who in a very short time would put Him on the cross, He actually offered to accept their belief even if it was as a result of what they saw rather than what He said to them?
You don’t believe My words? You won’t consider My claims just because I’m a Man and you didn’t expect your Messiah to be a Man from Nazareth? Fine. Ok. Just look at the works!
I’ve created food to feed multitudes. I’ve raised up the paralytic from his sick bed. I’ve given sight to the blind and deliverance to the demon-possessed. I’ve done all the things the prophets said Messiah would do when He came. Just look at those and believe.
What a gracious offer! Does it go contrary to what we New Testament preachers teach about faith apart from works? I guess it sort of does...
But hasn’t God declared that in His sovereignty He will have compassion on whom He will and show mercy to whom He will?
And it looks to me, my friends, like at the penultimate moment God was extending His compassion and mercy one last time to the men who wanted Him dead.
And they made their final decision...
THEIR FINAL DECISION
"Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him..."
That’s it.
Here, in this place where after King Solomon’s prayer of dedication, 2 Chronicles 7:1-3 records
"Now when Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the house. 2 The priests could not enter into the house of the LORD because the glory of the LORD filled the LORD’S house. 3 All the sons of Israel, seeing the fire come down and the glory of the LORD upon the house, bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave praise to the LORD, saying, "Truly He is good, truly His lovingkindness is everlasting."
Here in this once holy place, those who had been entrusted with the oracles of God; those who presented themselves to the nation of Israel as the ones who spoke for God and led His people, made their final decision to ignore what they had seen, deny what the Scriptures revealed, neglect the warnings of God, and throw the Landowner’s Son out of the vineyard, kill Him and take His inheritance (Matt 21:38).
"Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp".
What a horrible thought...what a terrible vision...Jesus...leaving.
And as I pointed out in the beginning, that was it. That was the end of the public ministry of Jesus; the last of His face to face confrontations with the Jews.
After this His ministry turned private and we’ll have just a word or two about that in closing -- but Jerusalem will not see Him again until He comes to complete the plan of redemption with His own blood,
And for the nation of Israel darkness has come -- the night in which no man can work -- for the Light of the world has left her, driven away by her unbelief, and the next work of God she will see will be His sacrifice of His only begotten Son...and two days later His glorious resurrection in power and life...but for her it is already too late.
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. 38 "Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! 39 "For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ’BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’ "
WHAT THE WORDS OF JESUS MEAN FOR THE BELIEVER -- vss 26-30
Now let’s go back up to verses 26-30 for a minute. Because they are words that refer directly to you and to me if we are true believers in Christ.
"But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. 27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 29 "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. 30 "I and the Father are one."
You may have heard these words before. You may have heard them used in a sermon -- maybe even the text verses of sermons you’ve heard. But have you ever noticed that they are words being said to unbelievers who wanted to kill Jesus because of who He was?
You see, if you take them out of the context of the chapter as I just did, and read them by themselves, your mind may process them as a promise Jesus is making to a friendly audience. But friendly as those words may be to us, let’s not neglect to notice that Jesus is using words like ’they’ and ’them’.
Because Jesus wasn’t talking to people to whom these words apply. So He’s talking to the men surrounding Him, about someone else.
With that in mind, listen to these words: "You do not believe because you are not of My sheep". Friends, Jesus didn’t say, "You are not of My sheep because you do not believe"!
The sheep do not choose the shepherd, the shepherd chooses the sheep. He calls them out. He owns them. They are His sheep by His choice before He calls them, then He calls and they know His voice and they follow.
If you are one of His today, it is because He chose you and the life He gave to you enabled you to hear His voice and respond to His call. Those who surrounded Jesus, and those who ask the foolish questions in unbelief and those who demonstrate silly reasoning because they are dead and without the Spirit of Christ, and those who make their final decisions in neglect and rejection of truth put before them will not believe and so cannot believe because they are not of His sheep.
But what does He say to those who are not of His sheep concerning His sheep?
Now listen, this is powerful, if you understand that the most pressing question of the ancient Jews -- the one they debated and ruminated over and sought answers for day in and day out, - the one for which they searched the Scriptures (Jn 5:39) was ’how can I inherit eternal life?’
And yet, talking to them about someone else Jesus said,
28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 29 "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."
Are you picking up on why their anger seethed so against Him?
You know, this is a side note and I won’t go far with it, but I’ve often wondered if Saul of Tarsus, who later called himself a Pharisee whose zeal surpassed that of all his countrymen, was one of the ones present during these confrontations with Jesus. I wonder, because the memory of some of these things Jesus said to them may have had something to do with the venomous hatred that dripped from Saul’s heart and lips and he went about his persecutions of the infant church.
The main thing on their minds is ’how can I have eternal life’, and Jesus has just said, "You can’t have it!"
But those to whom that gift is given are and will be secure in the Father forever. They will never perish.
Are you a true, born again believer in Christ? You will never perish!
They cannot be snatched out of the Savior’s hand. Are you a true believer in Christ today? You can never be snatched out of His hand...and you are doubly secure in that He went on to say you cannot be snatched out of the Father’s hand. He’s gotcha, Christ-follower. You are of His sheep, responded to His call because He made you know His voice, and neither you nor anyone or anything can remove you from His hand.
Wait...I can’t do it? No! You didn’t choose Him, He chose you. You’re His by his doing, not your own. But you are His by His marvelous grace and you rest secure in Him forever.
Jesus said, "I and the Father are one". He didn’t just mean they were one in agreement or one in purpose. He meant what He would later confirm to Philip; "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father". And that alone should give you the deepest and most profound confidence and assurance, believer, that you have an eternal home from which you eternally cannot be removed.
I’m going to close, but I promised we’d say just a little about the private ministry with which Jesus finished His days before His crucifixion. This is very encouraging news and I’m so glad John included it -- so glad the Holy Spirit shared this with us, at the end of this chapter in which Jesus is so thoroughly hated and rejected by the nation He created and loves.
Look at verses 40-42
"And He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and He was staying there. 41 Many came to Him and were saying, "While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true." 42 Many believed in Him there."
Isn’t that a beautiful picture? Jesus retreats from unbelief for the moment and takes up residence again where it all began. He goes back to where He first came down to John, baptizing in the Jordan. Can you imagine the serenity and the refreshing of this place of peace where for the moment there is no conflict and no animosity; just the memory of those first days when the Holy Spirit came upon Him and the Father voiced His approval from Heaven and John was saying ’Behold, the Lamb of God’.
And John says ’Many came to Him’ and ’Many believed in Him there’.
Do you get it? Jesus is only weeks away from accomplishing the purpose for which He came; to give His life a ransom for many; and the Father blesses Him with ’many (who) believed in Him there’.
This even intensifies the indictment against the ruling Jews, doesn’t it? Because even the common people living in the region beyond the Jordan, who were witnesses to the ministry of John and now Jesus are able to make this all-important distinction and say, "John performed no miracles, but John’s testimony was surely true about this Jesus".
That is simple, saving faith being expressed, friends. And it blesses my heart to read that the Father let Jesus spend His last days of earthly ministry in peace among His sheep.
The Lord always has His remnant in this world. I’ve said that before and I repeat it to you; He has always had and until the end will have His believing remnant in this world and where they are there He will always be.
Because He gives them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of His hand.
Night finally came to Israel and the work of the Son of God was almost done. But He still had some private work to do among His sheep to prepare them for the days ahead, and we’ll talk about those, Lord willing... then it would be time for the cross, the grave, the skies.
