God Among the Gods
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jeremy_1_11-28-2025_124929: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Rebuilding Faith.
These are 10 minute Bible messages for people with questions and doubts, and today we are finishing John chapter 10. We're gonna look at Jesus quote, a bizarre verse in the Old Testament, and I suspect if this is the first time you've seen it, this is a verse that will mess with your theology.
In fact, this is an entire chapter being referenced here that most Christians aren't aware of and don't know how to make sense of, and yet Jesus is going to reference it today and we're gonna try to figure out what on earth is going on. So let's dive in. This is John chapter 10, beginning in verse 34.
Jesus replied, it is written in your own scriptures that God said to certain leaders of the people, I say, you are Gods, and you know that the scriptures cannot be altered. [00:01:00] So if those people who received God's message were called Gods, why do you call it blasphemy? When I say I am the son of God, after all, the Father set me apart and sent me into the world.
What on earth is Jesus talking about here? Now he's referencing again one of the crazier chapters. In the Old Testament that today we don't normally talk about, but if you stare at the wording in this chapter that Jesus is referencing here, it'll give you a conundrum that you likely don't have a box for.
So let's look at it.
It is time.
jeremy_1_11-28-2025_124929: The actual reference that Jesus is making here comes from Psalm 82, verse six. It says it like this. I say, you are Gods. You are children of the most high. Now it's a little weird [00:02:00] for God to be referring to.
Other gods, right? Isn't there just one God? So let's look at the entire context of Psalm 82. Let's go back to verse one of Psalm 82 to figure out what's being talked about here.
And here's what verse one says, Psalm 82, verse one. God presides over Heaven's court. He pronounces judgment on the heavenly beings now again, you might be wondering, what are these heavenly beings? 'cause you might read that and think he's talking about angels.
But as you see in the context, this is not a reference. Two angels. In fact, there's a different translation. Lham, English Bible says it like this, God, which is the word Elohim in Hebrew, stands in the Divine Assembly. He administers judgment in the midst of the gods, which is again the word Elohim.
So essentially, you get [00:03:00] this. Elohim stands in the midst of Elohim. Now, if that jolts you a little bit, if that feels a little bit strange, then good. You're paying attention. That is a foreign notion to a lot of us. What do you mean there's more than one Elohim?
There's more than one God. What? What is going on here? You have God among the Gods.
Think about that for two minutes
jeremy_1_11-28-2025_124929: what on earth is this a reference to? And more importantly, why is Jesus quoting this? Why is Jesus referencing this strange chapter in the Old Testament? Well, let's keep reading in John chapter 37 to see how Jesus is using it.
It says, don't believe me unless I carry out my father's work. But if I do his work, believe in the evidence of the miraculous works I have done. Even if you don't believe me, then you will know and you'll understand that the Father is in me [00:04:00] and I am in the Father. So again, what Jesus is doing here is he's explaining his identity using this reference to Psalm chapter 82.
The context is a critique on these other gods being mentioned. Now. Again, these are not, it's a heavenly realm, heavenly host, whatever, but it's not angels. It's God. That's the way it's referred to, and it's a critique on them.
There's a book called The Unseen Realm by an author named Michael s Heiser. This book explores Psalm 82 and the ramifications of it, of what does this theology indicate is going on in the Old Testament scriptures and throughout the Bible. So if this subject is fascinating to you, I'd recommend this book.
But here's how Michael Heiser, describes what's going on in Psalm 82. He says, Psalm 82 states that the gods were being condemned as corrupt in their administration of the nations of the earth. The Bible nowhere [00:05:00] teaches that God appointed a Council of Jewish elders, which is how some people won't explain this to rule over foreign nations.
He's saying that doesn't make sense, and God certainly wouldn't be railing against the rest of the Trinity, Jesus and the spirit for being corrupt. So the normal ways we might wanna explain what's happening here doesn't make sense as Heiser is explaining it. So today what we would realize is if this scripture is calling these evil rulers gods, how much more appropriate is it for the good ruler Jesus to be called the Son of God?
So again, he's putting himself in a context that would have been familiar to the ancient near East, Jews that is not familiar to us today, but he is playing with their images, their understandings of how all of this worked to explain his divinity to explain who he is. And then let's look at the last few verses of chapter [00:06:00] 10.
Once again, verse 39. They tried to arrest him, but he got away and left them. He went beyond the Jordan River, near the place where John was first baptizing and stayed there a while, and many followed him. John didn't perform miraculous signs. They were marked to one another, but everything he said about this man has come true.
And many who were there believed in Jesus. So as Jesus keeps explaining these ideas of who he is, tying back to images they had in their Hebrew scriptures, they begin to understand the light bulb comes on for them. They go, oh, this is the person we've been looking for. Now you may be thinking about it now.
This whole conversation's bizarre. This is totally strange. What is going on? But this is a good reminder for you and I to remember when we are studying the Bible, especially when we're studying the Bible in something that doesn't make sense to us, that is [00:07:00] confusing to us. We need to read it through their eyes, through their context.
Again to quote Michael Heiser. He says it like this. The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers. It's the context that produced the Bible. Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and therefore to the Bible.
Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences. Basically what Heiser is saying here is when we read it from our lens today of what we understand as God today, sometimes we can miss what is being said because we failed to stop and consider what did they understand about God, what was being said to them
so we start there as we figure out what's the bigger narrative unfolding here. And so here's how I would wrap up this [00:08:00] discussion today to go, what on earth do we do with this? Here's something you may not realize. Ancient Israelites did not hold to a literal sense of monotheism as we understand it today.
Now, again, this may be surprising to you, but this helps you understand what we find in passages like these. They believed that each nation had their own God and seemed to think that these gods were legitimate. This is what Psalm May two is referencing. There are legitimate other gods, but they believed their God, was better, was bigger, was stronger than all the other gods of all the other nations. And so Jesus in John 10 is tapping into this Hebrew understanding of Gods of national gods. To help them understand who he is, but don't miss this. Jesus offers a gigantic twist to this illustration [00:09:00] because what Jesus is saying is that he's not just another nation's God, which is what Israel was looking for, who is our God?
And Jesus saying, I'm not just another nation's God, I am the son of God and I am the God for all. Nations. This is what we see throughout the New Testament, that Jesus is not just for the Jews. Jesus is not just for one group of people. Jesus is for the world. And this was a transforming thought for them.
And he uses Psalm 82 and the image that they had there. To make this point so we can see how Jesus explained himself in their worldview to offer us another way of understanding who he really is. I'll see you next week on Rebuilding Faith. I.
