The Shepherd and His Sheep

Introduction

Illustration: When you think of leadership, what comes to mind? I’ve seen a lot of posts that contrast a boss driving people from behind and a leader leading people from the front. That’s a Biblical picture of leadership, one expressed often by the idea of a shepherd. In fact the greatest king of Israel had a history as a shepherd. Shepherds don’t drive their flock from behind, they walk and the flock follows after them. That’s How God leads us. It’s also how God asks us to lead. In fact the word Pastor comes from the latin word for shepherd.

In any case God is a leader who always goes first and shows us the way. He even went so far as to come down from heaven and be born as a human being in order to show us the way by example. When He did this one of the groups of people He took the most issue with was the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. They were supposed to be the leaders of the people. Yet they were like blind men trying to lead blind men as Jesus says of them in Matthew 15:14

Matthew 15:14 CSB

Leave them alone! They are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

When we were last in the Gospel of John we read about a man who had been blind from birth who could see more clearly than the Pharisees. He realized who Jesus really was, and they banned Him from their gatherings over it. It’s immediately after this that Jesus accuses them of willful blindness and then compares their leadership to His own. Today we’ll be finishing up the last few verses of John 9 and continuing into ten. We’ll be reading from John 9:39-10:21

John 9:39–10:21 CSB

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, in order that those who do not see will see and those who do see will become blind.” Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and asked him, “We aren’t blind too, are we?” “If you were blind,” Jesus told them, “you wouldn’t have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains. “Truly I tell you, anyone who doesn’t enter the sheep pen by the gate but climbs in some other way is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought all his own outside, he goes ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will never follow a stranger; instead they will run away from him, because they don’t know the voice of strangers.” Jesus gave them this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them. Jesus said again, “Truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, since he is not the shepherd and doesn’t own the sheep, leaves them and runs away when he sees a wolf coming. The wolf then snatches and scatters them. This happens because he is a hired hand and doesn’t care about the sheep. “I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. But I have other sheep that are not from this sheep pen; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.” Again the Jews were divided because of these words. Many of them were saying, “He has a demon and he’s crazy. Why do you listen to him?” Others were saying, “These aren’t the words of someone who is demon-possessed. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

So Jesus accuses them of being blind, and when they incredulously deny their blindness He tells them that the reason they are sinful is because they are so confident that they see when they do not. Then He launches into a parable to show the difference between their leadership and His. He is the gate and the shepherd, they are the thieves and the robbers, and the hired hand in this image.

I thought it would be most appropriate not to talk about the bad example of the Pharisees, but to focus our attention this morning to the things this says about who Jesus is. In part as a refresher on the picture of Jesus that John gives us in His gospel after we’ve been away from it for more than a month, but also because we don’t have time for everything so let’s focus on the positive image instead of the negative it’s constrated to.

With that in mind we are going to take a look at the parable of the Good Shepherd in John 10 and see what it can teach us about who Jesus is. We see in this passage that Jesus is the only way to come to God. That He is the exclusive entrance into the Kingdom of God that He came to bring to the earth. We also see that He is the kind of shepherd who deeply knows and loves His sheep and calls them all by name. Finally we will see that Jesus died for everyone so that we could all be given a chance to have life and have it to the full.

Jesus is the Only Way In

Illustration: Imagine a vast chasm with only one bridge spanning across. Others claim to have bridges, but you know they don’t make it all the way. Wouldn’t you want to let people know not to waste their time with the other bridges? That there was really only one way to cross?

You see the thing about Jesus is that He didn’t really leave room for an “all paths lead to God” kind of theology. I understand the attraction behind the idea, especially as someone who doesn’t like confrontation. It would be nice to just be able to leave people alone to find their own path to God. Yet if Jesus really is who He says He is than we aren’t leaving people to find God, we’re living them going down dead end roads. And if what the Bible says is true than by leaving people on these dead end roads we’re letting them live and die apart from Jesus, leaving them to eternal seperation from God. That’s not very loving is it.

On the other hand if you aren’t following Jesus, don’t you want to know if the other paths are hopeless? Don’t you want to know if they really lead to eternal life? According to this passage Jesus makes a bold claim that He is the one to be saved and to “come in and go out and find pasture. Let’s take a look at verses 7 to 10.

John 10:7–10 CSB

Jesus said again, “Truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.

Now in this metaphor that Jesus is sharing with the Pharisees, the sheepfold or herd of sheep represents being God’s people. Having a relationship with God as we would say today. So when Jesus says that He is the gate for the sheep, He is claiming to be the exclusive way that people become God’s people. He’s the way that people enter a relationship with God.

One could argue that He says here only that anyone who enters by Him will be saved, but doesn’t say that those who don’t won’t be saved. Well in case you want to get that technical, here’s another place where Jesus gets a bit more specific about this. John 14:6

John 14:6 CSB

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Well you can’t get any more direct than that, can you. No one comes to the Father except through me. You can’t get to God apart from Jesus. This means that Christianity is entirely incompatible with other religions. You cannot be a Christian that believes other religions also lead to God. Maybe there are other religions that could be mixed and matched, I don’t know, but Christianity is not one of them.

The temptation here for many is to conclude that this isn’t fair. That God should reward honest seekers after Him and shouldn’t punish people who tried to reach Him by different means. The trouble is that this misunderstands something foundational about the nature of the Gospel. The gospel isn’t about anything that you or I do. It’s not about seeking God or about doing good works. Those things aren’t enough to make up for the debt of sin that we owe. The gospel is about Jesus dying for our sins. That’s why He’s the only way. Because if you don’t believe in Him and His sacrifice for you than His sacrifice doesn’t atone or pay for your sins. Simple as that. No other religion or religious figure paid the debt for our sins. Only Jesus did it. So it’s not a matter of God refusing to bless the efforts of people of other religions. It’s about God making a way where there wasn’t one before, and that’s now the only way.

So then to any who are on a spiritual journey of seeking God I would encourage you to take the way that He made, because it’s the only way. It’s the only path. Only Jesus as both God and Man could bridge the gap of sin that stands between us and God. That’s not exclusive for no reason. It’s exclusive because it’s the only way that works.

And to those of us who love and follow Jesus the encouragement of Scripture this morning is to reach out to people who do not believe. Even those who believe differently than we do. Because we know that seeking God some other way will not work, the loving thing to do is to tell people about the way that Jesus made for them. In a gracious way of course and understanding that your message may be rejected and there’s nothing you can do about that. But if we don’t at least try than that means we’re standing by while people go down the wrong road and miss out on eternal life with Jesus.

Jesus Loves His Sheep

Illustration: How many of you have pets? Now how many of you ever lived on a farm? Sheep, at least in first century Israel, are sort of treated in the middle generally speaking.

Despite a lot of what you might have heard, sheep are actually quite smart in their own way. They recognize the voice of the shepherd who raised them and can distinguish it from other people’s voices, which Jesus alludes to in this passage, and there were many who would even train them to respond to specific melodies from musical instruments. This was important because often shepherds would share pens for their sheep at night, so then they would come in the morning and call out their sheep, and only their sheep would follow them. That’s pretty cool, right? Of course sheep got their reputation from low intelligence because despite this kind of trainability they were kind of useless without someone to lead them. An apt image for Jesus to use to talk about people in my opinion.

The point of all that is to say that sheep take a bit of a tender care that might not be required of something like, say, a herd of beef cattle. I’m sure not all shepherds loved and cherished their sheep. Not all treated them kindly and took good care of them. But certainly the ones we would call “good shepherds” would have. After all Proverbs says this in Proverbs 12:10

Proverbs 12:10 CSB

The righteous cares about his animal’s health, but even the merciful acts of the wicked are cruel.

So we know that when Jesus talks about a good shepherd He means one that takes time and gives attention to His animals. Let’s take a closer look at what Jesus says about what kind of Shepherd He is.

John 10:11–15 CSB

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, since he is not the shepherd and doesn’t own the sheep, leaves them and runs away when he sees a wolf coming. The wolf then snatches and scatters them. This happens because he is a hired hand and doesn’t care about the sheep. “I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep.

Jesus as we’ve said is contrasting Himself with the Pharisees and the other leaders of the Jewish people here, but does so in an extreme way that really shows just how deep His love is for all of us. He knows us intimately. He calls us all by name He says in verse 3. He knows us better than we know ourselves and calls us out to follow after Him if we are truly His sheep. This is why He was willing to die for our sakes as we’ll get to in the next point.

The crazy thing is that Jesus not only knows and loves us but invites us to know and love Him in return and to be one with Him and the Father. He gives lost sinners like all of us the chance to be reunited with the Holy and loving God of the universe forever. Isn’t that pretty cool? John writes in 1 John 4:15-19

1 John 4:15–19 CSB

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love. We love because he first loved us.

It’s all about love my friends. Jesus loved us so that we can love, first God and then one another. So then the application to this truth that Jesus is the Good Shepherd who knows and loves His Sheep is to first lose the fear of punishment like John said in His letter and have confidence that Jesus is taking care of us. He loves us tenderly like a Good Shepherd loves His sheep. The second is to love God with everything we have. He gave us love and the greatest commandment is to return the love He gave us to Him. Then finally we share this love with others. It’s not exactly going to run out if we share it. God’s love is more than we could ever completely give away.

If we do all those things we live up to the legacy of love that Jesus left for all of us, not because we need to in order to be saved, we dont, but because we are greatful and that truly understanding His love makes sharing it the natural outflow of our hearts.

Jesus Lays Down His Life for All His Sheep

Illustration: Being a shepherd in ancient times was a dangerous job. Think back to what David told Saul when he asked to challenge Goliath, that he had fought and killed lions and bears who took lambs from the flock. There was also thieves and robbers to worry about.

As a man sometimes I think about whether I would be able to do what it takes if I ever had to defend my family from life threatening situations. Hopefully it never comes to it, but it’s hard to say I would with confidence. You really never know what you’re capable of until the moment actually comes. But we aren’t talking about wives and children even in this case, but sheep. Of course back then your sheep dying could mean the loss of your livelihood and therefore the means of getting food for your wife and children. So it was serious business. So then a good shepherd was willing to put his life on the line to protect his sheep.

That’s an expression of love. Love as a verb certainly includes sacrificing your own good for the sake of the person you love, and what better expression is there for that idea than risking your very life for the sake of the ones you love? Yet for Jesus He wasn’t even just risking His life, He was intentionally laying it down for His disciples.

John 10:15–18 CSB

just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. But I have other sheep that are not from this sheep pen; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

Let’s remember some context here. When Jesus is saying this He’s saying it to Jewish leadership in a nation that is the chosen people of God, who weren’t supposed to intermingle with the Gentiles for fear they would follow their gods. Many took this too far and hated and mistreated gentiles when possible. When Jesus says that He has sheep that aren’t from this flock He’s clearly alluding to the fact that He has Gentiles who will come to God through Him.

This seems pretty ordinary to us because we attend a church where most if not all of us have absolutely no Jewish ancestry at all, but this was pretty radical at the time. For one thing, the gentiles coming to worship the God of Israel was one of the predictions about what would happen when Messiah would come. For two, many ignored this because like I said they despised gentiles.

In any case the implication that is lasting an matters most to us is that while the means to coming to God is narrow, that only Jesus gives access to the Father, the call is wide open. Jesus wants people of all tribes nations and tongues to follow Him. Hence why we see this picture in the book of Revelation, Revelation 7:9

Revelation 7:9 CSB

After this I looked, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands.

The lamb of course in this picture is Jesus Himself. Forever pictured as a lamb because of the sacrifice that He made on behalf of all of us. He died because He loved not just the Israelites but all people. He didn’t die because He confronted the Jewish leaders and they had Him killed. Jesus confronted the Jewish leaders in part so that they would have Him killed. And He makes it clear throughout the gospels that if He wanted to He could call down the power of God and heaven to prevent His death. His death was completely voluntary out of love.

Then He got up from the dead just as voluntarily. He took up life again to make a way for all of us. So then we like Jesus should not be particular about who we invite to know Him. There is no class race or group of people that Jesus doesn’t want to come to Him. He calls us to make disciples of “all nations” following after His example. So then we should be prepared to go out into all the world and share His truth even with the people that we find it difficult to get along with. Maybe even especially the people that we find it difficult to get along with.

Conclusion

So at the end of the day I guess what it all gets down to is that Jesus is pretty great. Seriously though, if anyone else said the kind of things that Jesus said you would probably think they were obnoxious, crazy, or at least thought way too highly of themselves. The thing is that Jesus backs up all that He’s saying by His sinless life, His miracles, and His death and Resurrection on our behalf. So that when we read about the kind of Person He is we can see Him for the amazing savior that we need. We can see that He is the only way to God because of what He did for us that we could never do for ourselves. We can see that He knows us and loves us deeply, more than any other person ever could. We also see that when He died He did so out of His love for each and every one of us, and out of a desire that all people would know and follow Him, even if not will.

So when we come to church, when we read our Bibles, when we come to God in prayer, this is the God that we worship. The good shepherd who lays down His life for us, His lowly sheep. What a beautiful picture it is, and one that God has used since even the Hebrew Scriptures. Let’s end on the poetic expression of God as shepherd that David wrote in Psalm 23

Psalm 23 CSB

A psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd; I have what I need. He lets me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside quiet waters. He renews my life; he leads me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord as long as I live.

Let us pray.