Well, how did one Bible verse from the Old Testament disarm a mob?

Today we feel the really good Bible question from an international listener to the podcast.

Dear Pastor John, hello to you and thank you for this podcast.

My name is Beatrice, and I live in Malaysia.

My question for you is about what the Bible means when it says,

You are gods.

Says this in Psalm 82, 6, and then Jesus quotes it again in John 1034.

A verse we read together today in our Bible reading, John 1034.

Can you explain to me what this means?

Here's the situation.

In John 10, Jesus has just said in verse 30, I and the Father are one.

And now the Jewish leaders who hear him say this,

putting it together with everything else that he's been saying,

infer that he's blaspheming by making himself equal with God.

So in verse 31, it says,

the Jews picked up stones to stone him. Now, that's a crisis because the hour for Jesus'

death has not yet come. Jesus is going to die when he has chosen to die and not a minute

sooner. No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord. And so he has to somehow

diffuse this critical moment where he's about to be stoned legally because the Jews could stone

people for blasphemy. He's got to somehow get out of this situation so that he can make his way in his own time

to the kind of death he intends to die. So, Jesus is going to deflect this threat in a couple ways.

First, he says, for which of my good works are you stoning me? And they answer, it's not for your good

...