Jesus Antagonizes Temple Jews (J35)

Jesus needled temple Jews, teaching things,
Spiritual truths, they could not understand;
Hot retorts returned higher-venom stings
Yet truth plus truth made their tempers expand!
“Before Abraham e’en was born, I am;
I know God, my Father, but you sure don’t;
If I glorify myself, I’m no Lamb;
But I glorify my Father; you won’t!
When you degrade me, you dishonor Him;
If I said, “I don’t know God.” I would lie,
For I came from God and was sent by Him;
He is my Father, and His Son am I!”
Each Jew looked for and found at least one stone;
Unseen, He walked away, was quickly gone!

Scripture Quoted: John 8:56-59 (NIV)
“ ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.’ ‘You are not yet fifty years old,’ the Jews said to him, ‘and you have seen Abraham!’ ‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’ At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.”

Commentary on: John 8:48-59 (NIV)
If ever there was an obfuscated dialogue, this was it. Jesus was conscious of His life in heaven as God; certainly He had been God before Abraham was born. These Jews had said they believed in Him as Lord; therefore, they should have accepted the things He told them as if He were God. However, they could not; they tried to make sense of His statements literally, as from a 30-year-old man, proving their insincerity in believing He was the Son of God. Furthermore, they had been dulled spiritually by God, along with the rest of their race in Isaiah 6:9-10, 700 years before Jesus came into the world as a man. Jesus was stating truths as God would—example, “I came from God; He sent me.” and “You shall know the truth, and it will set you free,” etc. The Jews would pick up on “set you free”, and answer back, “We are no one’s slave.” This has been described in my last 3 blogs; it is still the first day after the Feast of Tabernacles, and Jesus is talking to the same Jews. Instead of becoming His faithful disciples, they are growing angrier and angrier.

Yet, Jesus is perfectly aware of what He is doing. He knew their belief in Him was insincere. (By the way, it is even more the case today that many who “go forward” accepting Jesus are actually in the same spiritual condition as these Jews; they may think they believe, but often the test of time will show that their profession of faith was insincere.) Jesus kept His mission of dying on the cross uppermost in His mind; the last thing He wanted was thousands of insincere Jews promoting His candidacy for being the long-promised Messiah, perhaps being an obstacle to His execution. Just like the five thousand who followed Him to Capernaum after seeing the miracle of their being fed on five biscuits and two sardines, who Jesus turned away by using the spiritual terminology of “eating my flesh”, He turned these away with other spiritual conundrums. The Jews can look forward to a special “pouring out of grace on them” at His Second Coming (Zechariah 12:10-14).

"That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)