The religious elite continued to try and trap Jesus. So, during the Hannukah celebration, Jesus was walking in the temple and they gathered in mass and thought they would ask the million dollar question…”Are you the Christ?”
Jesus was neither surprized nor concerned. He essentially repeated the answer again.Look you fools how many ways do you want me to spell this out. Everything I do is at the direction of my Father. I do them becuase He and I are one. I am redeeming folks for Him and returning them to Him. I am able and excited to do that because He and I are one. Once He has them, He will never let them go. He is restoring the relationship that has been destroyed by sin. This is happening, you see it and still you only want me dead! But, all the while, He and I are one!
The leaders thought, aha! We got Him now. They did not. Jesus left and returned to the place where He started at John the Baptist’s site and continued preaching and seeing lives restored and redeemed. He did it because He and the Father are one.
If some one would ever claim that Jesus never claimed to be God, they are like the religious elite of Jesus time. They have it laid out time after time and still fail to believe. There would have been nothing Jesus could have said to persuade them because they did not want truth; they wanted power. They wanted to invent their God their way. Nothing has changed. We have to accept and follow the Lord on His terms. If one is unable to handle that, then their best approach is to create their own gods—religion, money, power, pleasure, and the list goes on.
At the end of the day, however, Jesus is still God and He and the Father are one!
God Bless You
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.
40 He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. 41 And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” 42 And many believed in him there.
Walking With God 