Entrusting Faithful Men

As we have already seen in the previous posts on the “Door of the Sheep”, Jesus equated the religious leaders of Israel as bad shepherds, who did not truly care for the sheep. He equates them, in fact, with robbers and thieves. “All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.” (John 10:8, ESV).

So who were these religious leaders? We have three groups that were prominently discussed in the New Testament – the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes. The Pharisees were the Jewish rabbinical sect viewed as the ruling religious party of Palestine in Jesus’ day. The Pharisees came onto the scene after the Maccabean revolt against Seleucid and Greek rule in 167 BC. The Zealots continued the battle against the Greek influences, oftentimes using violence. The Pharisees appear to have formed as an alternative to the Zealots around 100 BC, recognizing that the opposition of the Greeks (and the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persian before them) as God’s punishment for failing to keep the Law. continue reading…

The next two I AM statements occur in the same dialog in John 10, “I am the Gate for the Sheep (John 10:7) and “I am the Good Shepherd” (John 10:11, 14). But let’s begin in John 9, for chapters9 and the first half of chapter 10 occur together.

John chapter 8 took place in the fall (October 32 AD) at the Feast of Tabernacles, six months before Jesus’ crucifixion. John 10:22 takes place in the winter at the Feast of Dedication, or what is more commonly referred to as Hanukkah today. So the setting is sometime between these two feasts (mid October to early December 32 AD).

(John 9:1-5) Jesus and his disciples walk past a beggar, blind from birth. Based on their understanding of Exodus 20:5, that the consequences of a man’s sin can be passed down several generations, the disciples ask Jesus who was at fault for this man’s condition. The disciples viewed his pitiful condition as divine retribution. But Jesus saw it as an opportunity awaiting His divine grace and pleasure. “Neither,” came His reply. “He was born that way to experience something truly marvelous and miraculous”. He reminds the disciples of his earlier claim continue reading…