Grace Messages

Today, guest Speaker Rob Armstrong fills in to speak from Hebrews 1:1-3. We explore how God wrote the Old Testament, the primary message of the prophets, and 7 unique and wonderful facts about Christ.

We will finish up Jesus’ conversation with the Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem during the Feast of Dedication (Hannukah). Jesus was asked a direct question in verse 24, He has answered it, and they did not like His answer and accused Him of the capital crime of blasphemy. Jesus now responds, and He does so the same way He has been doing in the Book of John: (1) He appeals to the Jewish scriptures, AND (2) He appeals to the signs/works He has been doing. Once again, they do not like His answer and they proceed to attempt another execution…

As mentioned last week, Jesus is in Jerusalem again during the Feast of Dedication (Hannukah) and is now roughly three months away from the Feast of Passover and His crucifixion. Jesus has returned to the shepherd/sheep analogy that He had used three months earlier, and He said something emphatic in verse 28! However, Jesus did NOT stop there! This morning, in our passage, He builds on what He just said in verse 28, and makes the truth of the believer’s security even more emphatic!

As we move from verse 21 to verse 22, we have fast-forwarded in time about three months. We are now roughly halfway between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of Passover, where Jesus will be crucified. John puts this section immediately after the Good Shepherd discourse because Jesus returns to this illustration three months later with the same group to once again affirm His identity and the value of what He came to do.

As we continue looking at the powerful and piercing metaphor Jesus shared regarding shepherds and sheep, Jesus shared an incredible truth in verse 11…He is THE Good Shepherd. He is the One the Old Testament anticipated with this metaphor. Couple that with the fact that Jesus used the phrase “ego eimi” (I AM) to describe Himself four times in this passage, and we can see that He is saying that He is Yahweh the Shepherd – the ONE they were expecting! This morning, He will go on to explain WHY this is the case – WHY He is this GOOD shepherd!

Today, Joshua Miller fills in for Pastor John and discusses how to stand firm in your faith with truths from Ephesians in this sermon. Learn how to stay grounded and unwavering in your beliefs no matter what challenges come your way.

Today the religious leaders learn that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He is not only the gate, but the gate keeper. The blind man’s excommunication from the synagogue and Jesus’ pursuit of him in John 9 gives us the reason Jesus uses the illustration of the sheep and the shepherd in John 10. The shepherd’s life was commonly understood in Jesus’ day, but as we saw last week, the Jewish religious leaders did not get what Jesus was saying. This morning, Jesus begins to circle back and explain what He intended to communicate with this illustration

“How good is good enough to go to heaven?” This morning, we want to answer this question from the Scriptures by using the story of Zacchaeus to answer it. Often, religious thinking is as short-sighted with their answer to this question as Zacchaeus was in his physical stature.

As we turn the page into chapter 10 of John, we are still on the same trip to Jerusalem that Jesus started in John 7. The account we pick up this morning is just a few days after the Feast of Tabernacles, and immediately after the healing of the blind man. In a sense, the chapter break here is unfortunate. The blind man was cast out of the synagogue for his faith, and he was thrown into the arms of the good shepherd – thus the teaching and illustration in John 10 is really a commentary on the conflict of John 9.

Today we finish the story of the incredible healing of a blind man by Jesus. In John Chapter 9, we have been considering John’s sixth hand-selected SIGN chosen to convince His readers to put their faith in Jesus Christ. That sign was an UNDENIABLE divine miracle, as Jesus gave sight to a man who was born blind. As the Jewish religious leaders finished their investigation, they cast the blind man out of the synagogue and right into the arms of Jesus! This is when the REAL miracle occurred – this blind man was given spiritual sight; he was born again!