Friday after the First Sunday after the Epiphany of our Lord
Posted on January 12, 2024 by under
Scripture: St. John 10:31-38 (NKJV)
10:31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. 32 Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me?”
33 The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.”
34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not 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, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”
Devotion
We see, once again, the delusion of the unbelieving mind in our reading today. The unbelieving Jews are getting ready to stone the Lord Jesus for blasphemy as He is claiming equality with God. This should not be hard for them to understand, after all, the Lord Jesus revealed that He is true God and true man by the works He has done. Yet they still do not believe.
Jesus tells them that the Scripture cannot be broken, and even makes a reference to earthly leaders being called ‘gods’ in Psalm 82:6. If that is the case for earthly rulers, how much more so for the Lord Jesus Christ who is called God, not as a title or designation, but because He is actually God; the second person of the Trinity.
By this, our Lord shows that those who wished to stone Him were simply not believing the Scriptures. The Scriptures cannot be dissolved, cannot be broken, cannot be put aside. The Scriptures are fulfilled in the miracles and works of Jesus, in His public ministry, and in His death and resurrection. Therefore, the core of unbelief is rejection of the Word of God. When the unbeliever cannot explain the works of Christ, which show evidence of who He is, then they will attack the Scriptures themselves.
Collect: O Lord, we beseech Thee mercifully to receive the prayers of Thy people who call upon Thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
