John 10

John chapter 10

Tonight we're going to be back in John chapter 10, looking at our series on the book of John. We start this chapter with the parable. We know a parable is something that is unique really to Jesus's teachings at the time. This was not something that was common practice for anyone else to do. Jesus taught a little bit differently. He taught in these parables. And basically what a parable is, is kind of an illustration, if you will, of something that they knew, something that they understood. And relating it to Christ, relating it to the gospel, relating it to salvation. The parable that we're going to be talking about tonight is the parable of the Good Shepherd. Now, in that time, a shepherd was something that these people understood. They understood shepherd, They understood sheep. They understood the job of each one of them. But we know that Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd. He is our shepherd. We're the sheep. We need to know our role. We need to know what Christ role is as well.

So let's go ahead and get into the scripture. Look at the 1st 6 verses, John chapter 10. It says, “truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear. His voice, and he calls his own sheep by his name and leaves them out. When He puts forth all His own, He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow Him because they know His voice. The stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from Him, because they do not know the voice of strangers. That's a figure of speech. Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what these things which He were saying to them.”

So again here Jesus is talking about the parable of the Good Shepherd we see in the 1st 2 words of the verse one it says truly truly, if you're looking in the King James, it says verily, verily we know to pay attention. When we see that, we know to pay attention, understand what Jesus is saying. Now he's talking in a metaphor here. He's talking about sheep and a shepherd. But now he's not talking about physical sheep and a physical shepherd. He's talking about people. He's talking about himself.

We know that he is our Shepherd. He is the Good Shepherd. He watches out for us. He watches over us. Versus get down here in a minute, we will look at where he laid down his life for us. The shepherd knows his sheep very well. The same way the sheep know their shepherd, If you take this in a real life scenario, if you are around sheep every single day, they will come to you. They will do things for you that they won't do for other people. I had some sheep one time and I had them on my cousins farm. And his son would go out there and mess with him and feed him and play with him every single day. When he walked into the field, they come right to him. Anybody else walked into the field, they wouldn't come close to him. You had to try to him up to catch him. But now he could just walk out to the field, hold his hand out and they'd come to him.

Sheep know their shepherd. They know who is around them every day. They know who is taking care of them. And again, the same way with the shepherd and his sheep. If you are around a group of sheep every single day, day in, day out, you know them. You can just tell by looking which one is missing. You don't have to count them.

But when Jesus is saying these things, they had no idea what he was talking about. They didn't understand that he was speaking in this parable. They were confused. What chief? What shepherd? What's he talking about? This makes no sense. We need to understand that Christ is our true shepherd. He is the Good Shepherd. He protects us. He protects his sheep. Jesus stays with his sheep just like a shepherd. The Good Shepherd will never leave his sheep. We know that. Christ told us He will never leave us. He will never forsake us. He's not going anywhere. He's with us all of the time. Do you see how this is the same thing? Do you see why Jesus is saying that he is the Good Shepherd? He does the exact same thing for us.

Now another thing that's talked about in these 6 verses is strangers. Just like I mentioned to you about the sheep that I had, If a stranger walked into the field, you ain't gonna catch him sheep. They're not going to come to you. They're not going to follow you. They don't know you. Do we have strangers, maybe in our lives or maybe just in society in general, that try to get us to follow them? Do we have people in our society that try to get us to put them in the place where we have Jesus? You better be careful with that. Because nobody can take the place of Christ. Nobody should take the place of Christ in our lives. Make sure we are not letting anyone else guide us. Now, I'm not saying you can't come to church, listen to a preacher. I'm not saying you can't watch the preacher on YouTube, Facebook or whatever. I'm not saying that. Don't put anybody in the place where Jesus is meant to be. Don't let anybody get to that point in our lives but him.

Let's move on down. Look at verses 7 through 21. It says, “So Jesus said to them again, Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out. Fine pasture. The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I'm the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming. And leaves the sheep and flees. The wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, even as the Father knows me. And I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. If I have other sheep which are not of this fold, I must bring them in also, and they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock with one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from me, but I lay down my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from my father. A division occurred among the Jews because of these words. Many of them were saying he has a demon is insane, why do you listen to him? Others were saying these are not sayings of one demon possessed. A demon cannot open the eyes of the blind, can't he?”

All right, one thing that Jesus is saying here is He is the only way to heaven. Because back there in verse seven, he says, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. No matter what anybody tries to tell you, Christ is the only way to heaven. That's it. Now they're going to be people out there who are preaching false doctrine. There are going to be people out there that will tell you that you can do this, you can do that. There's all these other ways, but there's not. There's only one. Through Christ, we have to do what He tells us to. We have to follow His Word. That's the only way we can make it. The steps of salvation are laid out plainly in the scripture. If we don't follow those, we're not going to heaven. If we follow those, we are. It's quite simple, but we as humans tend to want to complicate matters. We want to overthink things. We want to complicate things and make them more difficult for us to understand and follow.

I don't know if you caught this or not, but back in verse 10 it says the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. Who's that remind you of? Should remind you of the devil because that is what he does to our lives. That is what his entire goal is, is to kill, steal and destroy anything in his path. And I'm going to tell you tonight, he's good at his job. He knows what he's doing. He is very good at it. Umm. And we have to have Christ to fight him off. That's the only way. We can't do it on ourselves. We can try. We may think that we can, but the only way that we can truly fight the devil is with Christ on our side. He's the one that has to do the fighting for us.

Going back to Christ for just a minute talking about Jesus said that he laid down his life for the sheep, said there in verse 14. I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own, my own know me. Verse 15. I lay down my life for the sheep. We know that He did. We know that He endured the cross for us. We know that they killed our Lord and Savior. He laid down His life for us. We didn't ask him to do it. We didn't hire him to do it. We didn't pay him. We didn't say, hey, I need you to do this. No, he did it out of love. That's what's a Good Shepherd does.

Jesus talks about the hired hand here and to a lot of theologians, a lot of people believe that this. Represents religious leaders. Religious leaders in that time would perform their duty only at the good times. But when the bad times come, there were some of them that would run. There were some of them that wouldn't stay around for that, they didn't want to. Part of that, they just wanted to be there for the good times. Unfortunately, that's not what we were supposed to do. But these people are still out there today. Don't say that it will never happen, because it very easily could.

There in the last few verses we looked at, they still didn't understand why Jesus was able to say these things. Some thought that he may have had a demon. Someone even said here. How can a demon open the eyes of the blind? That makes sense to me. It's a very good question. I think. If he is a demon, how is he able to do all these things? How was this ability? I mean, how did he have the ability to do all these things? How did he have the authority to say all these things and they come true? Because anybody can go out there and commit blasphemy. Anybody can go out there and say the things that he did. But nobody can do the things that he did. Does that make sense?

Want to ask you a quick little question here before we move on to the next set of verses. Do we trust Jesus as our protector? Do we trust Him as our shepherd? Do we put our faith in Him? We should. But the question is, do we?

Move down. Look at verses 22 through 30. It says, “At the time the feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem, it was winter and Jesus was walking in the temple and the portico of Solomon. The Jews were then gathered around him, and they were saying to him, How long will you keep us in suspense if you are the Christ? Tell us plainly, Jesus answered them. I told you and you did not believe the works that I do in my Father's name. These testify of me. But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the hand of my father. And I and the father are one.”

So now one thing I want to touch on here again, John is talking about food. He's talking about a Jewish feast, the feast of dedication, and that's the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. And you can look that up today. You know when it is, it's even on our calendars. They wanted to. Jesus to tell them exactly who he was. They wanted him to come out and bluntly say that he was the Messiah or not. And basically he tells them, hey, I told you. You do not believe me, but look at the works. Look at what I have. Did my father's name these testify of me? Now, I don't know if they were trying to trap Jesus or if they were genuinely curious as to who he was and just to see what he would say.

But I want you to think about something just like we talked about a second ago. He talks about his works. Because anybody could say exactly the same words that he did. You can look them up today. You can go down on the street corner in town and say exactly what Jesus said, but you can't do what he did. The miracles that he was able to perform, the things that he was able to do. Shows us who he is that testifies as to who he is. Because there's no way that he could have performed those miracles as if he wasn't divine. There's no way he could have done all the things that he did if he wasn't the Messiah. It's impossible. You can't do it.

Along those same lines, I want to ask you a question. Are we seeking Jesus out of genuine faith? Or are we seeking him because we're skeptical? Because I'm sure there were a lot of people when they were following Jesus that were just wanting to see what he would do. I'm sure there were a lot of people that were following him around just to see what would happen next. Do we follow Jesus just to see what he'll do? Do we follow him because we believe in him? Here's the difference. Which one are we?

Let's finish up this chapter, verses 31 through 42. I don't know if you caught this or not, but that last verse we looked at, verse 30 says I and the Father are one. I see their reaction to this. It says, “The Jews picked up stones to again to stone him. Jesus answered. I showed you many good works from the Father. For which of them you are stoning me? Jesus answered him. For the good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy, because you being a man, make yourself out to be God. Jesus answered them. Has it not been written in your law? I said, You are gods if he called them gods, to whom the word God came, and the scripture cannot be broken. Do you say of him? Whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, you are blaspheming, because I said I am the Son of God. If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I do them, then you do not believe me. Believe the works so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father. Therefore they were seeking again to seize him, and he eluded their grasp. He went away again beyond the Jordan, to the place where John was first baptizing. He was staying there. Many came to him and were saying while John performed No sign. Yet everything John said about this man was true. Many believed in him there.”

So what we see here is again, this offended the Jews. This is the third time in the book of John that they tried to stone Jesus. And he basically is telling them here, he said, I've done all these works because my father has told me to do this. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is what I'm here for. This is all from God and you're trying to kill me for it. Why? They're thinking again, he's blaspheming. In reality, he's just telling him who he is. But they don't understand it. they don't understand what he is saying.

So they tried to seize Jesus. Because there was number doubt in their minds that He was saying that He was equal with Yahweh. He said I and the Father are one. There's no other way to really take that. But again, they were offended by it. They thought he was blasphemy, but in reality he couldn't do that because he used the Christ. He's the Messiah, He is equal with God. But Jesus was able to get away from them and he went, and it says that he went beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and he was able to stay there. People believed in him there.

One thing I want you to understand here, Jesus doesn't expect us. To believe in him just because of what he says. That's why he talks the way he does here. We need to look at his actions. We need to look at what he did. And also what he said, but we need to look at what he did because there was no way that anybody else could do that. If Jesus wasn't divine, He couldn't do any of this. He could do nothing. He would just be like you and I. There's no miracles that he could have performed.

So if we're looking at things apologetically, if we're looking at things in a way that we can defend the Bible and defend Christ. We need to look at it this way. That's a very good argument that we can use when we're trying to convince someone that Christ is real. Look at what he did, not just what he said. Because often we want to concentrate solely on what he said. But you have to put both of them together. You have to use both sides, especially in an apologetic argument or debate or whatever you want to call it.

Because we do not need to believe that Jesus was just only a historical figure. We need to believe and we know that he was real. He was a real person here on earth. He's divine. He's the Son of God. He is the Messiah. Remember that when we're talking to people about Christ, let them know that as well. Not only was He real, but He's the Messiah. He's divine as well.