The Choice We Make

John 10 (3)

The Choice we make

- Read John 10:22-30.

Back when Gladys had her cancer, I remember going with her to the doctor and sitting in the backroom, waiting for the doctor to come in. As we waited, I got up and walked around the room, looking at the posters of human anatomy. It is amazing how the body is put together, with all of the skeletal parts, and how the muscles and tendons attach, and looking at how the blood vessels, and arteries and such feed everything. I remember looking at those pictures and thinking to myself, there is no way a person can be surrounded by these pictures everyday and not know that there is a Creator. There is no way you can be surrounded by all of those pictures, and see how everything fits together and works together and how everything has to be exactly how it is in order to work, and to believe it could all happen by accident. As King David said, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

So when the doctor came in I remember asking him, “You’re a believer aren’t you?” He said, “Yes. Why?” I told him, because there is no way you could be surrounded by all of these drawings day in and day out and not know there is a creator.”

I was reminded of that conversation as I recently sat in another doctors office and looked at a drawing of the shoulder, hanging on his door. I looked at all of the muscles and how this one pulled the shoulder this way, and that one pulls it another way, and another muscle makes it move another way, all with the cushioning burse sack of fluid in there to keep it from rubbing and wearing out.

My GP, Dr. Quinn, recently retired. Relatively young still, I asked why? He said he wanted to spend more time working in his church.

But then, I recently visited with a pastor friend in Sanford. As we were visiting I commented on a political sign in the yard across the street from his. He told me, “That neighbor isn’t very friendly. He’s a doctor at Central Florida Regional Hospital and has different women in and out of his house all the time.”

Doctors, presented with the same information. Having had to have studied a lot of the same material while in school, with very different outcomes and lifestyles. What’s the difference? It is what we choose to see. It is what we choose to hear.

In this passage, some in the crowd tell Jesus, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

Now, it is true that Jesus didn’t often refer to Himself as the Messiah. The people there were looking for a political messiah. One that would free them from the Romans. He didn’t want to give them any false hope or false expectations, so He didn’t often refer to Himself as the Messiah, but He did on occasion. According to John 4:26, Jesus told the Samaritan woman that He was the Messiah. In John 9:37 He told the man born blind that He was the Son of God.

Yes, Jesus demonstrated that He was the Messiah through:

I. HIS WORDS

1. Think of His “I AM statements”.

In the Old Testament, God revealed His name to Moses: “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14). So, in Judaism, “I AM” is unquestionably understood as a name for God. Whenever Jesus made an “I am” statement in which He claimed attributes of deity, He was identifying Himself as God.

1) “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35, 41, 48, 51). In this chapter, Jesus establishes a pattern that continues through John’s gospel—Jesus makes a statement about who He is, and He backs it up with something He does. In this case, Jesus states that He is the bread of life just after He had fed the 5,000 in the wilderness. At the same time, He contrasts what He can do with what Moses had done for their ancestors: “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die” (verses 49–50).

2) “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5). This second of Jesus’ “I am” statements in John’s gospel comes right before He heals a man born blind. Jesus not only says He is the light; He proves it. Jesus’ words and actions echo Genesis 1:3, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

3) “I am the door” (John 10:7 and 9, ESV). This “I am” statement stresses that no one can enter the kingdom of heaven by any other means than Christ Himself. Jesus’ words in this passage are couched in the imagery of a sheepfold. He is the one and only way to enter the fold. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber” (verse 1, ESV).