Is Jesus the Son of God? Why God's Hands Hold Your Fear

From the sermon preached on September 13, 2026

Jesus stood in the temple during the Feast of Dedication and said something that made the religious leaders reach for stones: "I and the Father are one." That claim sits at the center of what it means to call Jesus the Son of God, and it changes what a person does with fear. Instead of arguing louder, Jesus in John 10 points to two things: his works and God's hands holding on to the people who follow him.

Pastor John Starke preached through John 10:22-42 at Apostles Church Uptown, walking through the argument the religious leaders missed, the comfort Jesus offers people who are afraid, and the discovery waiting for anyone willing to look at his works. This post follows that same path. It starts with the argument Jesus makes for his own identity, moves into what God's hands actually promise, and ends with what people discovered when they looked back at everything Jesus had done.

The scene in John 10 is tense. Jesus is walking in the temple during the Feast of Dedication when the religious leaders surround him and demand a plain answer: is he the Christ or not. Rather than answering with a slogan, Jesus in John 10 makes an argument built from their own scriptures, quoting a single phrase from Psalm 82 the way a rabbi would, trusting his hearers to recall the whole passage behind it.

In Psalm 82, Israelites who received God's law were given the title "gods," a kind of delegated dignity tied to carrying God's word into the world. They failed at it; they did not defend the weak or judge fairly. Jesus's argument in John 10:34 is not that he deserves the same title on equal terms.

It moves from lesser to greater. If flawed people could be called gods simply for receiving God's word, Jesus asks, how much more should the one who is God's own word, sent into the world by the Father, be recognized as the Son of God.

Read the passage slowly enough and the logic holds together even before comfort enters the picture. Take a few minutes this week to read John 10:22-42 in full alongside John 1:1-14, where "the Word became flesh," and notice how the two passages argue the same point from different directions.

Jesus, Son of God, does not simply assert the claim and walk away. In John 10:25 and again in John 10:37, he tells the religious leaders to judge him by what he has done: the hungry fed, the sick healed, the blind given sight, the dead raised. Jesus, Son of God, is asking to be read the way a reader learns an author's voice after enough pages; the works carry a signature, and the signature belongs to the Father.

That argument reaches past ancient religious leaders into ordinary fears about money, career, and reputation. Many people treat those three as loadbearing columns, certain that removing them would bring the whole structure down. Jesus, Son of God, is not saying career or money are worthless; he is revealing that they were never built to carry that much weight in the first place.

The honest step is naming, out loud or in prayer, whichever of those columns currently feels like it is holding everything up.

Jesus's divinity is not offered as a doctrine to master before comfort is allowed. In John 10:27-29, Jesus describes two hands holding the same people: "no one will snatch them out of my hand," and then, "no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand." Jesus's divinity means those two grips are one grip, and it is aimed directly at fear rather than around it.

One illustration from the sermon makes this concrete. A father sat on a fire escape with his wife after dropping their children at college, naming a fear that had quietly become loadbearing: if a certain outcome did not happen, it would say something permanent about his worth. Jesus's divinity, and the security that comes with it, does not remove real loss or grief; it means the deepest structure of a person's life was never actually resting on that outcome to begin with.

A woman who once said she flinched at the word "father" because of her own father's neglect eventually wrote that she had learned, slowly, through Jesus, to trust God as Father. She did not get there by imagining a better version of her own father; she got there by watching Jesus's works. That is the same invitation this passage extends: look at what Jesus has done, and let that settle what kind of hands are holding you.

Name one specific fear this week and bring it directly to God in prayer, rather than letting it stay vague.

John 10 sets two competing sources of security side by side: things that promise to hold a life together and consistently fall short, and the hands of the one who actually can. John 10:30 records the claim underneath the whole argument, when Jesus tells the religious leaders that he and the Father are one. The table below lays out the contrast Jesus draws between what people commonly lean on and what he offers instead.

Fear about money, career, and belonging does not stay theoretical for long; it shows up in a missed rent payment, a hard performance review, or a quiet question about whether anyone would notice if you disappeared. Those pressures are common to anyone trying to build a stable life, regardless of what block they live on.

Whether you are in East Harlem, Washington Heights, Hamilton Heights, Morningside Heights, the Upper West Side, or the Upper East Side, a community group meets nearby to talk honestly about exactly this kind of fear. Sunday worship gathers at 10:30am at Regis High School for anyone who wants to hear more of what God's hands actually promise.

John 10:22-42 ends with people going back to where John the Baptist first pointed to Jesus, reflecting on everything they had seen, and believing. Jesus never asked anyone to take his identity on a slogan; he asked them to look at his works and draw an honest conclusion. The same invitation stands now: look at what Jesus has done, and let that settle what is actually holding your life together.

Did this raise questions about who Jesus is and whether he can be trusted with your fear? Taking the next step starts with a simple visit; plan your visit below:

Start with our weekly newsletter, which follows this sermon series with ongoing reflections; sign up here.