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Recognizing the Voice of the Shepherd

Writer's picture: pastorsusancgpastorsusancg

John 10: 1-18 Sermon preached December 29, 2024


Introduction

Before verse one in Chapter 10, Jesus and his disciples encountered a blind man. His disciples asked him if the man or his parents had sinned, resulting in his blindness. Jesus said, “Neither; he was born blind so that the work of the Lord might be done in his life.”   Then, Jesus healed the man.

The man was excited that he could now see, but the Pharisees wanted to know who healed him on the Sabbath (as if they didn’t know; who else?). The man got mad at the Pharisees for calling Jesus an evil man, so they accused him of being wicked and kicked him out of the temple.

Jesus returns to the scene and says, “For judgment, I have come into this world so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”  Naturally, the Pharisees take offense to this comment and question him.  At this point, he begins his sermon on the good shepherd versus the bad shepherds.

 

Sheep and shepherds in Jesus’ time

Everybody listening to Jesus’ sermon about sheep and shepherds should have understood everything he said.  Sheep, shepherds, and the whole agrarian lifestyle had been a part of their culture for centuries.

Likewise, the people knew, "By nature, sheep are stupid and prone to get into danger, and they need a shepherd to care for them” (Wiersbe, 123). I’m not sure if they realized that our nature is not that different from the sheep's. We are prone to wander as well.

Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a robber.  The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep.”(vs. 1-2)

The gate Jesus is talking about is the gate to the sheepfold.  Each village in the sheepherding regions of Palestine had a fold where sheep were kept at night.  Warren Wiersbe tells us, “The sheepfold was usually an enclosure made of rocks, with an opening for the door.  The shepherd (or a porter) would guard the flock, or flocks, at night by lying across the opening.  It was not unusual for several flocks to be sheltered together in the same fold.  The shepherds would call their sheep in the morning and assemble their flocks.  Each sheep recognized his own master’s voice.”

Gary M Burge shares a modern-day version of this phenomenon.  “During the Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s, the Israeli army decided to punish a village near Bethlehem for not paying its taxes (which, the town claimed, simply financed their occupation). The officer in command rounded up all of the village animals and placed them in a large barbed-wire pen.

Later in the week, he was approached by a woman who begged him to release her flock, arguing that since her husband was dead, the animals were her only source of livelihood. He pointed to the pen containing hundreds of animals and humorously said it was impossible because he couldn’t find her animals.

She asked if he would let her take them if she could separate them herself. He agreed. A soldier opened the gate, and the woman's son produced a small reed flute. He played a simple tune again and again-and soon, sheep heads began popping up across the pen. The young boy continued his music and walked home, followed by his flock of twenty-five sheep.”

I guess sheep can be taught some things.

 

Who the shepherds are

In this passage, Jesus is referring to the self-appointed Jewish religious leaders as thieves and robbers.  They, doing the work of the devil, not God, climbed the walls of the sheepfold to fleece and slaughter the people spiritually, such as the healed blind man they had just excommunicated because he questioned their intentions.

These religious leaders didn’t love their sheep; they loved the power and money that came with spiritual leadership.

And “so ingrained was their belief that as Abraham’s descendants, they were part of God’s flock they completely missed Jesus’ indictment of them when he stated that he was the true shepherd and they were false shepherds to whom the sheep would not listen.” (pg. 429)


I will lay down my life for you and give you abundant life

Jesus, conversely, loves his sheep and is willing to die for them, as any true shepherd would. Four times in this passage, Jesus tells us that he “willingly lays down his life” for us.

MacArthur writes, “The phrase ‘lays down his life’ is unique to John’s writing and always refers to a voluntary, sacrificial death.

Even though Jesus continued to tell his followers that he would die a sacrificial death so that they would live, they missed it.  They never understood what Jesus told them about his love for them and the future.  Perhaps, like us, they were too concerned about the present to consider the future.

They were also looking to a future in which the Messiah would overthrow Rome and establish Israel’s lost kingdom, and the king would not need to die.

Wiersbe states, “[This] voluntary death was followed by his victorious resurrection.  From the human point of view, it appeared that Jesus was executed, but from the divine point of view, he laid down his life willingly.  When Jesus cried on the cross, “It is finished!”  He then voluntarily yielded up his spirit to the Father.  Three days later, he voluntarily took up his life again and arose from the dead.  The father gave him this authority in love.” (pg. 125)

 

Hearing God’s Voice

In today’s Old Testament passage, Samuel heard God’s voice clearly but didn’t recognize it as such because he did not have an intimate relationship with God yet.

In Samuel’s time and in first-century Palestine, too, few people heard God’s voice because they had ignored him so long that he stopped talking to them.

Samuel lived in the temple, where God was present, but he was not working for God. Instead, Samuel served Eli, focusing only on the day-to-day maintenance of the altar.

The author of 1 Samuel tells us, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord because he had never had a message from the Lord before.” 3:7

I have found that God has spoken to me differently over the years.

 

The Shepherd knows his sheep intimately.

While we are all members of the human race and share many characteristics and needs, each of us has unique characteristics and needs. 

Jesus knows each of us intimately. He knows what we need, our likes and dislikes, our fears, and what brings us joy. He also knows how to get our attention. For some, he can whisper their name, and they hear; for people like me, he must often get out a holy 2 x 4.

He knows us like we know our children. When our kids were growing up and needed discipline, we learned that grounding Matt made our point. Not so with Kristen, who was just as content to stay home and read a book as she was to spend time with her friends.

Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep, and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father…” (vs. 14-15). The word meaning to know, used here, is more than just “intellectual awareness.”  It speaks of an intimate relationship between God and his people.  The Eastern shepherd knows his sheep personally and knows best how to minister to them.

Jesus knows us so well that he knows how we’re hurting, what we’re joyful about, and what our concerns are, even before we voice them. He knows us so well that he can better meet our needs than we can.

This information may lead some of you to ask, “What is the point of prayer if God already knows?”

 

The Shepherd wants us to know him intimately.

In a word, relationship.  Wiersbe writes, “The Good Shepherd knows his sheep, and his sheep know him.  They get to know him better by listening to his voice (the Word) and experiencing his daily care.  As the sheep follow the Shepherd, they learn to love and to trust him.  He loves “His own” and shows that love in how he cares for them.” (pg. 124)

Have you ever developed a close relationship with someone without speaking to them?

One of the best ways of describing our relationship with God is to think about the human relationship of courtship and marriage. Those who are married can remember when we fell in love with the person we are now married to. We remember how focused our thoughts were on that other person. We savored every conversation and were so happy when we were together. The years have a way of taking their toll on that kind of excitement in a relationship. So quickly, we take each other for granted, have our little complaints about each other, and, if we are not careful, can grow distant. What once brought enormous mutual pleasure in the relationship loses the intimacy that is so important and no longer brings pleasure, joy, and fulfillment. You and I are privileged to cultivate that in our earthly relationships and develop that intimacy with God increasingly.

Sometimes, we take God for granted, as we do the people in our lives. We forget how excited we were when we first became Christians and how often we read the Bible, prayed, and shared Jesus with others. Our relationship with God fizzles; we no longer feel the intimacy we once did.

But we aren’t stuck there; we don’t have to settle for a mediocre relationship with God. We can build a closer, more intimate relationship with God today.

Often, when we believe God is silent in our lives, he isn’t. He may be speaking, but we don’t recognize his voice. It takes practice to recognize when God is talking to us. That practice happens when we set aside time to listen rather than talk during prayer.

It won’t happen unless we decide that our relationship with God is worth the hard work of growing closer to him. And as we listen to God’s voice more often, we will more often recognize that God is speaking to us.

 

Conclusion

The two most important things Jesus tells us in this passage are that he loves us and wants us to love him back.

He loves us enough that he laid down his life for us.  He wants us to love him enough that we will do the same for him. 

How often do we think about loving God that much?  Will you consider that this week?  Are you willing to develop such a strong and intimate relationship with Christ that you will lay down your life for him?

 

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