The Effectual Shepherd

John 10:17-21 ESV

17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” 19 There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. 20 Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” 21 Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

I remember a time when I was about 17 or 18 years old I went with a few friends of mine to get dinner at Steak n’ Shake. When we came into the restaurant, I noticed another friend of mine’s dad already there, sitting at a table and enjoying his meal. As soon as I saw him, I made my way over to him and stood there talking to him for a moment before my friends and I went to sit at our own table.

The waitress came and we gave her our orders, and as we sat there talking, a couple of minutes after we had given our order, the waitress came back to our table and told us that my friend’s dad had paid for our meals.

When I discovered this, I walked over to his table and said, “Thank you so much for paying for our meals, but you didn’t have to do that.” He responded to that by saying, “Well, I know that I didn’t have to; I wanted to!”.

Now, I know that that probably sounds small and miniscule, and it probably is, but for some reason that has stuck with me throughout the years. “I didn’t have to; I wanted to.”

And when I sat down to write our sermon for this morning, I was reminded of that particular situation once again. And the reason why is because in our text for this morning, Jesus says essentially the same thing, but of course, on an infinitely grander scale.

In fact, we may say that this is the crescendo of the parable of the Good Shepherd, for it is in our text for this morning that we see described for us the mission of Jesus in this world, the primary purpose for which He came. And also, we see the divided response of those who heard these gracious words proceed from the mouth of the Savior.

You see, if you ask a number of people in general why it is that Jesus came to this world, what His primary purpose was in this world, you will receive several different responses. But the primary purpose for Jesus’ first coming was to die. It was to die for the sins of those whom He had come to save.

It was the Father’s good pleasure that the Son would take the sins of His elect upon Himself; that was the primary purpose and mission of Jesus. And that is exactly what He did, and He done so, not by coercion, but willingly, because He wanted to.

Now, if you tell people that Jesus came to die for sin, the responses that you will receive from that statement will vary. Some, whom God has been pleased to enlighten, will humbly accept this fact, recognizing that even they need to be saved from their own sins.

Another response that you will receive will be those who hear about the primary purpose of Jesus in this world realizing that yes, there is indeed sin in them, that they are in fact sinners, but they will insist that they don’t need Jesus or anyone else to make them righteous, because according to them, they are overall good people who just need to “clean themselves up” a little bit.

But then, another response that you will receive from those who hear about the primary purpose of Jesus in the world is hostility. “Sin? Don’t tell me that I am a sinner!” They’ll say, “There is nothing wrong with me just the way that I am, and I don’t need to be saved from anything!”

And in the day in which we today live, the latter two responses are among the most common. But they have been terribly deceived!

In fact, when we look to the first verse of our reading, verse seventeen, we see Jesus plainly state His purpose in this world when He says,

John 10:17 ESV

17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.

So, when Jesus begins here by saying “For this reason the Father loves Me”, what He is saying is that His Father loves Him for the following reason.

Now, this does not indicate that the Father’s love for the Son was contingent on anything that the Son would perform. It’s not as though the Father says to the Son, “Do this or I won’t love You!” But rather, what Jesus says here is “Because the Father loves Me, I do the following.”

And so, what Jesus says here is that He does what He says He will do as a result of the love that the Father has for Him. Because the Father loves Him, He does what pleases the Father, and that which Jesus says pleases the Father here is that He, “lay down His life that He may take it up again.”

Again, we see in this statement, the primary purpose for which Jesus came into the world; that He may die, lay down His own life, that He Himself may take that life up again in resurrection.

This is the supreme example of the Son’s love, first, for His Father, in obeying what pleased His Father, and second, for those whom He dies for, lovingly dying for the elect and then rising again in resurrection in order that they may have everlasting life.

And as we move on to verse eighteen, we see the love of the Son all the more, when Jesus says,

John 10:18 ESV

18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

And so, the love of the Son for His Father and for the elect is shown in an even greater light as He declares that the death which He dies is no powerless, unwilling death.

He says, “No one takes My life from Me”. This means that it is not as though Jesus had been overwhelmed and was thus powerless to resist the power of those who sought to take His life from Him.

Remember over in the eighteenth chapter of John’s gospel, verse six, when those who came to arrest Jesus had heard Jesus identify Himself, and at hearing His words, they “drew back and fell to the ground”. Indeed, at that very point we see that Jesus could have easily walked away from His captors if He was pleased to do so.

No, there was none who forcibly took Jesus’ life from Him, but rather, He submitted to be arrested and crucified, because it was His Father’s will and good pleasure that He do so, and as Jesus said elsewhere in John’s gospel, chapter six and verse thirty-eight, He came not to do His own will, but the will of His Father.

And how this is accomplished, that is, how the laying down of His own life specifically for His elect people and being raised again for His elect people is accomplished is due to the fact that Jesus has the authority, the ability to do so, being God Himself.

Therefore, because the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father, the Son, having received His charge from the Father, steadfastly sets out, sets His face as a flint to accomplish everything that the Father has charged Him with.

Glorious, tender words indeed! Words that communicate the primary purpose of Christ while He sojourned in the world.

He came first and foremost, because He loves His Father and His Father loves Him. And because the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father, the Son then willingly came to the world that He may willingly lay down His own life and then take it up again for the glory of God and for the salvation of the elect.

So, here it was that Jesus concluded His parable of the Good Shepherd. And as we look at verse nineteen, we see the response to words of the Savior, where we read:

John 10:19 ESV

19 There was again a division among the Jews because of these words.

So, we read that “because of these words”, because of the doctrine which Jesus had spoken of and taught here, “there was a division among the Jews”. So, when Jesus spoke the truth, particularly the truth concerning His primary purpose in the world, there were some who heard and believed and there were also those who heard and did not believe.

But this shouldn’t surprise us. We should remember the words of the Lord spoken over in the book of Isaiah, chapter eight, verse fourteen, words that speak of Jesus by the way, where we read:

Isaiah 8:14 ESV

14 he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem

And so, we see here the twofold affect that the word of God has upon those who hear it. Those whom God has chosen to receive the Word favorably look at Jesus and utilize Him as a sanctuary. It is He Who they trust to save and deliver them from their sin. It is He Who they claim as their righteousness.

But then, there are the reprobate, those who are not chosen to a gracious salvation, the ones whom God leaves in their sin, and to them, the gospel is offensive and serves to solidify their eternal stumbling when they hear it and reject it.

We see both classes, both groups, elect and reprobate in the last two verses of our reading, verses twenty and twenty-one, which read:

John 10:20-21 ESV

20 Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” 21 Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

So, many of the Jews who heard these words of Jesus responded in the worst possible way. They said that Jesus is possessed by a demon which results in Him being insane.

They could not prove Jesus to be false, but because they didn’t want to believe Jesus, they said that there must be some reason why He’s wrong. Because of their darkened, depraved hearts, they resort to baseless accusations, saying that because they disagree with Jesus, though they can’t disprove Jesus, He must be crazy.

And as far as the works and miracles of Jesus, the reprobate, those who are identified as the “many” here, say that because Jesus is able to perform miracles, yet they disagree with Him, it must mean that He is able to perform these miracles as a result of a demon that is working through Him.

Now, again, notice that those who oppose Jesus here are identified as “the many”, while those who believed on Him, those among them who are of the elect are identified as “the others”. What this likely tells us is that the majority of those who were then present did not believe. They were the enemies of Christ.

But what the “others”, those who were among the elect said in response to this outrageous statement by the “many”, those opposed to Jesus was that the words that Jesus spoke were not the kind of words that would be spoken by one who was demon oppressed. No demon would, nor could, speak such gracious, life-giving words.

But they focused not only on the words of Jesus, but they also focused on the works of Jesus. They said that no demon would nor could open the eyes of a blind man. They can not and they would not! Indeed, this was clearly the work of God.

The elect saw, and they understood. They saw the works of Jesus, they heard the words of Jesus, and they said, “We better listen to Him!”

And so, continues the division of “the many” and “the others” still to this day. So remains the division of the majority, the reprobate and the minority, the elect still to this day.

But you know, it doesn’t matter what “the many” thinks. Their hostility will get them nowhere. Indeed, it is popular these days for those of the world to say things like, “that is your truth and thisis my truth”, but nothing could be more ridiculous!

That would be like you holding a cat and me saying to you, “that is your cat” and me holding a puppy and saying, “but this is my cat”. Obviously, one is a cat and the other isn’t. And you know, I can wish and hope and pray that my dog is a cat. I can believe it with all of my heart… but it’s still a dog, and not a cat.

And so it is that the reprobate may say that their way and our way are both the right way, but simple logic tells you that that can’t be. Jesus cannot be the one true God and not be the one true God at the same time. He either is or He isn’t.

And while those who seek to enter into the sheepfold by “another way” may think that they’ve found an alternative route to the same destination, the reality is that there is one way, and His name is Jesus Christ.

May we be steadfast in our allegiance to Him!

Amen?