“Full of Contradictions?” (John 10:22-39) | 1/12/20
John 10:22-39 | 1/12/20 | Will DuVal
If you missed last week, let me quickly catch you up. We kicked off a new 12-week sermon series entitled TOUGH TEXTS, in which we are tackling the most difficult passages in the Bible. And I PREFACED last week’s sermon by giving you THREE reasons we are taking on this series, and FOUR factors that make a text tough.
The reasons we are spending time on this series are:
#1 - We believe at West Hills that 2 Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God[b] may be complete, equipped for every good work.” ALL Scripture. Not just the easy parts. And if it’s really God’s word, then we’re gonna trust that it’s in here for a reason, and that our NEGLECTING ANY part of Scripture will leave us IN-COMPLETE. You won’t be complete, Christian, until you’ve got every part of God’s word down into every part of your being.
Reason #2 – NON-Christian, we’re doing this series for you too. I walked away from the church years ago because I didn’t feel like I was getting real answers to my real questions of faith. We don’t want to be one of those churches. The church, of ALL places, should be a safe place to bring your honest doubts and struggles. I’ve got them too. Let’s work thru them together.
And THIRDLY – we want to better EQUIP YOU, the CHURCH, to REACH OTHERS with the gospel outside these four walls. YES, INVITE your friends - Katie Troll wins the award for best FB share this week; Abbe Keen won it last week. Next week could be YOU! :) But at the same time, recognize that some of your non-Christian friends wouldn’t be caught DEAD in church, so you’re gonna have to take the Bible to THEM. And we want to empower you to DO that.
Lastly, FOUR quick factors that make a text tough:
It seems IRRELEVANT (“What’s the POINT of this passage, anyway?!”)
It seems INCONSISTENT (“How does this passage FIT with science, history, the REST of the Bible?”)
It’s PERSONALLY problematic (“This passage UPSETS me; it just doesn’t SIT right with me, for one reason or another”), or...
It might be THEOLOGICALLY problematic (“If this is true, what does it say about GOD? And can I even bring myself to WORSHIP that kind of God?”)
Last week we focused exclusively on category 1: the seemingly IRRELEVANT. We read and considered obscure genealogies, obsolete construction details, and OTHER boring lists we find all throughout the Bible, and answered the question: “Why would God spend so many PAGES on this stuff?!” And I gave you SEVEN reasons. This MORNING, we’re going to focus in on category 2: The allegedly INCONSISTENT. And answer the question, “Is the Bible full of contradictions?”
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So let me START by giving you the simple answer, right up front, and it’s the one you probably expected from a Bible-loving pastor and church: NO. The Bible is not full of contradictions. It contains NO inconsistencies. As the word of God, all Scripture really IS God-breathed, and God doesn’t make mistakes. Proverbs 30:5 - “Every word of God proves true”. Psalm 119:160 - “The sum of your word is truth”. Now, if we HAVE any skeptics with us this morning, again SO glad you’re here, but before you charge me with the logical fallacy of circular reasoning - “The Bible is true because it SAYS it’s true” - let me READILY ADMIT that I am biased. That the Bible is a priori my ultimate source of authority, so of COURSE I look to it for proof of… EVERYTHING. I come to the text WANTING it to be true, BELIEVING it to be true, and therefore always GIVING Scripture the benefit of the doubt. What I would simply challenge YOU with this morning, is to be so honest with YOURSELF, as to admit that you are at least equally biased. That you also come to the text with your OWN presuppositions and desires. To paraphrase atheist Thomas Nagel, “It isn’t just that you don’t believe in the Bible... you don’t want the Bible to be true. You don’t WANT it to be the word of God.” You approach the Bible with your own FAITH. Friends: we ALL have faith; we just put it in different things. Yours might be in science, human progress, your own intellect; mine is in Scripture. But let’s don’t pretend that EITHER ONE of us comes to the Bible objectively, as an impartial dispassionate observer; postmodernism was right about that much: we ALL bring our subjective biases to the table.
So what I want to do in this sermon, more so than even attempting to harmonize all the “inconsistencies” - because listen, I’ve got a list here, you can come check, of 125 alleged contradictions; 39 PAGES worth! And I’ve only got 35 min.; so I will BRIEFLY touch on some categorical ways of resolving textual tensions in our last 5 min. - but I want to spend the BULK of our time together showing you why I don’t think it MATTERS. Why I could stand up here and harmonize all 39 pages worth of so-called contradictions - and rest assured, it can be done; there are biblical answers to ALL of the skeptic’s questions; we’ve got a student in our youth group who DID it! Klaire Wells - when I taught through Apologetics two years ago, I showed them this list, and said as a THROW AWAY, cuz I knew none of them would put in the time and effort, I said, “If anyone can answer ALL these alleged contradictions, I’ll give you $100”, and Klaire DID IT! She came back the next week with an even LONGER list of explanations for every single one! So an intelligent freshman can go toe-to-toe on this stuff. But the debate over the Bible has really never been about who’s smarter or who has the most evidence; it’s really about what you WANT to believe. You’re going to find what you WANT in the evidence.
Turn with me to John ch.10. Where we find an exchange between Jesus and a group of his 1st c. skeptics. I want to use this exchange to help us understand what is REALLY going on in the skeptic’s heart, and extract some principles for responding. Because I think their 1st c. skepticism towards the Incarnate Word of God - Jesus - has A LOT to teach us about our own modern-day skepticism toward the SPOKEN word of God, the Bible.
SCRIPTURE: Would you STAND with me, for the reading… John 10:22-39
At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. 24 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.” 25 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, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me,[a] 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 have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 33 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.” 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 Scripture cannot be broken— 36 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’? 37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 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.” 39 Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands. THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD...
So 8 takeaways, I glean from this telling passage, about the nature of skepticism and our appropriate Christ-like response:
Most skeptics have already answered their questions (vv22-25). Look at vv24-25: They ask Jesus, “TELL us already: are you the Messiah?!” And Jesus’ RESPONSE is - “I DID tell you already; and you wouldn’t listen…”; See, we like to think of ourselves as open-minded, reason-driven people: just show me the evidence, and I’ll follow it wherever it leads. But even SECULAR research in the field of cognitive behavioral psychology refutes that, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize a few years back for his work on this; his analogy was the elephant and the rider. The rational part of your brain, your prefrontal cortex, that you LIKE to think drives your decision-making, is a like a tiny rider sitting on top and trying to steer the giant ELEPHANT that is your amygdala. Your UN-thinking, auto-pilot, emotional RESPONSE system. That’s why you FREAK out when someone cuts you off in traffic, even though it makes ABSOLUTELY NO logical sense. That person in the other car CANNOT HEAR you screaming at them! It’s why I STILL eat at Taco Bell. I’m not unaware of the health consequences. I just don’t CARE. Blame it on my amygdala - I LOVE the taste. And it’s why some of you will see your New Year’s resolutions to read the Bible this year fall by the wayside. You KNOW you ought to be devoted to studying God’s word. You just don’t LOVE it yet. If you LOVED the word of God, it wouldn’t have to be a spiritual DISCIPLINE. I don’t have to discipline myself to be physically intimate with my wife. Some of y’all with 3, 4 kids are like “Ah, yes, I remember those days; when we didn’t have to SCHEDULE physical intimacy…” I just LOVE my wife, and I love doing THAT, so my BRAIN and my BODY follow my HEART. That’s why Jesus didn’t die to give us new HEADS, a better theology; he died to give us new HEARTS. To reorient our AFFECTIONS.
And in the case of both the 1st and the 21st c. skeptic, they could be shown all the rationalizations of Scripture they WANT, and they’d still be unconvinced. Because most often they’ve already answered the question of the Bible’s veracity in their own minds before they even sit down to discuss it. They don’t WANT the Bible to be true.
The proof is in the pudding. (vv25, 32, 37-38) → Jesus says, “the works that I do bear witness” about me. The same holds true for the Bible. Say what you want about about its contents, but you can’t argue with the Bible’s track record. I mean, I guess you CAN; nowadays you have militant atheists like Sam Harris essentially trying to re-write HISTORY to prove how awful religion is, and conspicuously ignoring the fact that Christianity gave birth to virtually EVERY societal good humankind has even enjoyed: hospitals, schools, the public welfare system, food banks, homeless shelters → the CHURCH invented all this stuff, long before politicians co-opted it for their own job security. But again, you’re gonna see what you WANT with the evidence. So NO amount of evidence is EVER going to convince Bill Maher, or your atheist brother-in-law, or your apatheist co-worker, because ultimately this is a matter of the HEART. And the only SOLUTION, then, is a work of the HOLY SPIRIT. God HIMSELF is going to have to touch and soften their HEART. 2 Corinthians 4:4 says “the god of this world - Satan - has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel”. So what your lost loved ones need more than your arguments is your PRAYERS. I’m not saying don’t ENGAGE them. We should absolutely witness, answer questions. But we do so PRAYERFULLY, remembering that this person is BLIND. And only the HOLY SPIRIT has the power to lift the veil. Cause the scales to fall off. BECAUSE, point #3...
Believing is seeing. (vv26-27) → Jesus says, v26, “You don’t believe because you’re not among my SHEEP”. You haven’t yet been given NEW EYES, eyes of FAITH, to see. Again, so often we think about it upside-down. We think, “God, if you really want me to believe, then SHOW me. PROVE yourself to me. Give me a sign!” But like Jesus warned the Pharisees in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke 16, when the rich man PLEADS with Abraham from Hades, “At least send Lazarus BACK to earth, to warn my family to repent!” And Abraham says, “They’ve already got Moses and the prophets. If they won’t listen to the OLD Testament, “neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” (Lk. 16:31). These BLIND, hypocritical 1st c. Jewish leaders had traded God’s inspired OT Law for their own man-made traditions, and SOON, we hear in Matthew 28, they would knowingly go so far as to stage the world’s worst COVER UP of all time, to deny Jesus’ indisputable, historical resurrection. Even doubting Thomas has to be rebuked: “You believe because you have seen me... Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”” I tell the story of a skeptical, agnostic student I had at Culver who I simply encouraged to pray, and ask God to reveal Himself. He came back to youth group the next week and told me he’d woken up in the middle of the night that week and seen this strange, inhuman, shadowy specter sitting on top of his dresser. Convinced himself he must be dreaming; went back to sleep. In the morning, his roommate asked him if he’d seen the ghost on top of the dresser last night. I said, “Grant: at the VERY least, now you believe in the supernatural! Right?!” He thought about it and said, “Maybe it was just one of the guys on the hall playing a prank.” Friends, until your eyes are opened, you will ALWAYS find another explanation.
On the FLIP side, #4 - God keeps those He calls (vv28-29). Vv28-29 here is the strongest articulation anywhere in the Bible, of the glorious promise that true believers in Christ will not and CAN not lose their salvation. “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me,[a] is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.” So let me just say this - to those of you who ARE believers, Who HAVE trusted in Jesus as YOUR Lord and Savior for the eternal forgiveness of your sins and for your salvation: GOD will sustain your faith, THROUGH your doubts. God is big enough to handle your honest questions.
See, it’s not really about WHETHER you doubt - we ALL do! - it’s about HOW you doubt. If Joe Plumber, the professional, tells me it took him 3 hours to fix my running toilet, so here’s the bill… I’ve got doubts; but if I tell my WIFE, Polly, “Babe, it took me 3 hours, I had to watch 5 different youtube videos and make 3 trips to Home Depot,” she might still be frustrated at the COST - that I missed the family outing, but she’s not gonna question me. She TRUSTS me, gives me the benefit of the doubt. So I ask you, Christian, WHEN you doubt, do you give God the benefit OF that doubt? I’ve used this analogy before: not everyone with a knife is a bad guy. When God is performing spiritual surgery on you, do you ASSUME he’s the good physician, removing a spiritual tumor? Or do you assume He’s the thug in the back alley? Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (v27) They TRUST me. And even when we run out of our OWN faith, we trust in God’s promise that “When we are faithless, he remains faithful” (2 Tim 2:13). That “those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Rom 8:30) He will KEEP us, and sustain our faith, even through our doubts.
The Bible is God’s word (v30, 35). Jesus claims to be God’s incarnate word in v30: “I and the Father are one”. Clear claim to His divinity. That’s why the Jews pick up stones to kill him. In a not dissimilar way, in v35, he affirms Scripture as God’s spoken word: “the Scriptures cannot be broken”. They are infallible. Inerrant. Scripture cannot contradict itself, or science, or history, because all truth is God’s truth, and God doesn’t lie.
This is personal (v31). V31: You don’t just STONE someone over a disagreement. The Pharisees weren’t even ALLOWED by Rome to practice capital punishment; so you KNOW they’re ticked off here. This isn’t just some theological difference of opinion; they HATE Jesus. This is PERSONAL for them. And for the 21st c. skeptic, the same is still true today. There’s always a story behind the story, right? The film God’s Not Dead kind of smacks you over the head with it - the Christian film industry still hasn’t discovered the role of SUBTLETY in story-telling. But the point stands nevertheless - when the atheist professor finally cracks in the end and confesses that he hates God because God let his mom die at an early age - every skeptic has a reason to disbelieve; the REAL reason. Not the excuse they give you. My liberal divinity school just gave me an intellectual excuse to disbelieve in the Bible I already didn’t WANT to have to believe in, because I knew deep down it would require some inconvenient life changes that frankly, I wasn’t interested in making. Namely, it meant letting God be God, when I rather liked being my own god. The same is true, to SOME extent, for EVERY non-believer. It’s ALWAYS personal. We’ve got to keep that in mind when we’re witnessing: again, don’t ignore their questions. But keep in mind that the presenting issue is RARELY the real issue, at the heart of things.
Remember we are ALL fallible humans, who make mistakes in interpretation (vv33-36). In v34, Jesus asks these self-proclaimed OT experts sarcastically, “Is it not written in your Law,” elsewhere, he lays it on even thicker: “Have you not READ?” I thought you guys were supposed to be the religious experts?! Yet here I am, an uneducated Galilean carpenter, having to explain the Bible to YOU. Friends: when you come to something in the Bible that SEEMS like a contradiction, that you can’t seem to reconcile in your own mind, perhaps rather than jumping to “Oh, there’s a problem with the BIBLE,” you recognize instead that the problem could be with your own understanding. With your finite, fallible mind, and limited capacity for comprehension.
Finally, #8 - don’t forget: God wins (v39). V39: though they sought to arrest Jesus, it wasn’t yet his time, so he escaped. But when it comes to the BIBLE, Isaiah 40:8 assures us that “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” The Bible’s day will NEVER come. It has stood the test of time for 2,000 years now. Neither you, nor I, nor the smartest skeptic in the world has yet or will ever find any new “contradiction” that somehow everyone else for the past 2,000 years missed, and now threatens to bring the entire Christian faith crashing down. There are justifications for EVERY troubling text, because God ALWAYS wins.
But let’s spend at least a FEW minutes here checking out these alleged contradictions. As I said, rather than attempt to answer all 125 - I will, by the way, POST these on our Facebook group, I’m not gonna give you $100 this time, but you’ll certainly win my respect, and more importantly, you’ll be a more prepared apologist, a defender of the truth - but I do want to at least give you 8 quick strategies for harmonizing and making sense of an apparent inconsistency that you might find in Scripture. Plus an example or 2 with each.
#1 - Consider the NARRATIVE context.
Exodus 20:8 - “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” vs. Romans 14:5 “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike.”; which is it? Is the Sabbath special, or not?
Or Exodus 21:24 - an “eye for eye, a tooth for tooth”; but JESUS says in Matthew 5:38-39 ““You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you… turn the other cheek.” Which is it?
Well, in the Old Testament it was one, under the NEW covenant, it’s the other. God doesn’t change, but we do, so His parenting changes accordingly. I could stay the same loving father toward my daughter, but spank her when she’s 3 years old, and ground her when she’s 16.
This is also the reason we don’t experience so many of the healings and miracles nowadays that we see all over the Bible. We shouldn’t EXPECT to; we’re living in a different CHAPTER of God’s redemptive story. We have to consider the narrative context.
#2 - Consider LITERARY context.
That saves us from getting our panties in a bunch over passages like Psalm 93:1 “the world is established; it shall never be moved.” The Bible refutes the helio-centric model of the solar system! Well, the psalms are POETRY, so I guess to the extent that you’d call John Mayer a liar for singing “Your Body is a Wonderland” - “Wait a minute! My body is NOT a theme park!!” That’s not the author’s PURPOSE in Psalm 93. Which is a good segue way,
#3 - Consider the PURPOSE.
We’ll start studying Genesis in April, but I’ll put my cards on the table now and say, “I don’t think God’s purpose, in Genesis 1 and 2, was to offer us a scientific textbook.” I think He intended SO much MORE than that. I’m not saying we ought to buy into evolution hook, line & sinker, I’M just saying, let’s at least read the Bible the way God intended.
Related, #4 - we have to Consider the AUTHOR. (who is writing/speaking here?)
I’ve heard people rip verses from the book of Job out of context to prove that if you’re suffering, you must have done something to upset God. FORGETTING that those verses were SPOKEN by Job’s three friends who BADLY FAILED their biblical theology class, and were explicitly reproved by God in later chapters FOR it. If only bad people suffered, what would that say about JESUS?! Consider the speaker.
#5 - Consider the LINGUISTIC context (what does this word or phrase actually MEAN? Sometimes you have to go to the original Hebrew or Greek language…)
Like when Mark says, “Jesus could do no mighty work there, except that he healed a few people” Well, obviously the fact that he healed ANYONE is evidence that he hadn’t lost his divine power; this is an IDIOM, a turn of phrase. It’s like if I said, “Ugh - I just can’t EVER preach a good sermon with you people.” The point would be my sermons are gold; y’all just don’t appreciate them. Jesus can do NO RIGHT in their eyes. Would also apply to some of those controversial verses about whether or not the “rock badger” actually chews it’s cud, like Leviticus 11:5 says; we don’t even know for sure which animal that Hebrew word REFERS to!
#6 - Consider the APPLICATION (how ought this text be applied?)
Ex: Proverbs 26:4, and 26:5 directly “contradict” one another. And they’re placed directly side-by-side for that very purpose; for effect. To EMPHASIZE the fact that there’s just no winning when it comes to answering fools! It’s a lose-lose. OR, if the OTHER interpretation here might be that SOME times you have to answer a fool, lest he think himself right; but OTHER times, you shouldn’t even BOTHER. And it takes a TRULY wise person to know the difference. When to apply which verse. The application all depends on your specific circumstances. How can the Bible BOTH say, “Refrain from anger” AND “Be angry, but do not sin”? Because it ALSO says, Ecclesiastes 3: “There’s a time for EVERYTHING. A time for peace, a time for war.” The circumstances dictate the application.
#7 - Consider the PERSPECTIVE.
Even though they were inspired by God, the Bible’s authors didn’t stop being human while they were writing. So if Matthew remembers there being ONE angel at Jesus’ empty tomb, and John remembers Mary saying there were TWO angels… if I walk away from that passage thinking the REAL story here is how many ANGELS were there… I mean, Let’s get the facts STRAIGHT here! I’ve kinda missed the point - there’s a dead body that missing, and OH there He is, it’s Jesus. And he’s alive now. That’s the story, all 4 gospel writers tell. From different perspectives.
#8 - Finally, Consider God’s POWER.
A talking snake? A 969 year old man? Fitting millions of species of animals on a single wooden boat? That’s all just in the first 6 CHAPTERS! And the skeptic won’t be satisfied by this final suggestion to consider God’s power, but at the end of the day there’s just no getting around the fact that this is a pretty supernatural book, because it’s the autobiography of a pretty supernatural God. And if you can bring yourself to believe there’s a God powerful enough to create ALL of this in the first place, then is it really all that difficult to believe He could do any of the REST of the stuff we find in Scripture? You can believe in 6 literal days of Creation or not, but don’t disbelieve because you question whether God was CAPABLE of pulling it off.
So friends, there are your 8 ways of harmonizing apparent inconsistencies. I’ve given you 8 MORE reasons why I don’t think it ultimately MATTERS, because at the end of the day, no one will enter or be denied the Kingdom of Heaven on INTELLECTUAL grounds. This is a matter of the HEART. So let me just leave you with ONE reason why you should WANT to believe: because God is GOOD. His WORD is GOOD. And He PROVED it, by sending His only Son, Jesus, to die in YOUR place, in MY place, that if you will but turn from your sin - the sin of your DIS-belief, and trust in Him for the forgiveness of your sins YOU WILL BE SAVED. We ALL have faith. I ask you this morning: where is YOUR faith? Let’s pray.