John 10:1-33

Christ Never Loses His grip

10:1-5 When it comes to Christianity there are many other shepherds that try to vie for your attention. They offer to you many temporal pleasures, they grab your attention for the moment, but they are like sand in your hands it drains out it leaves. You know what else sand does? it is abrasive it can cut. These vices, the posting on social media, buying new clothes, being the most popular, being the smartest in classes may get you into temporal place but they don't know you. The Real you Christ knows his sheep. You don’t need to be the smartest, the most popular, the most followed with Christ. He takes you as you are.

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to John a. The ‘Figure of Speech’ (10:1–5)

If this background is primary, then in the context of Jesus’ ministry the thieves and robbers are the religious leaders who are more interested in fleecing the sheep than in guiding, nurturing and guarding them. They are the leaders of ch. 9, who should have had ears to hear Jesus’ claims and recognize him as the revelation from God, but who instead belittle and expel the sheep

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to John a. The ‘Figure of Speech’ (10:1–5)

both now and in Jesus’ day, lead their flocks, their voice calling them on. That such a shepherd goes ahead of his sheep and draws them constitutes an admirable picture of the master/disciple relationship. The

10:6-16 This reading might have arisen as a result of the interpretation of verse 1* in this sense: Jesus is described as the door, since one comes into the community only through him. Jesus is the shepherd of the sheep, from whom they receive everything that is necessary to life, and who shelters, leads, and cares for them

Ernst Haenchen, Robert Walter Funk, and Ulrich Busse, John: A Commentary on the Gospel of John (Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 47.

John 2: A Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 7–21 10:1–42; Jesus, The Good Shepherd

clearly constitute a unity of their own. It begins with the words, “I am the good shepherd.” That is immediately elaborated upon: the good shepherd sacrifices himself for the sheep. His counterpart in this context is not the thief and the robber—it would be absurd to speak of him here—but the “hireling.” The sheep do not belong to the hireling, and he thus does not risk his life for them

10:17-21 This is the gospel.

The Message of John (iii) Jesus Indicates Who These Blessings Are for (10:16)

The self-sacrifice of the Son is related to the Father’s love for the Son (17). The Father loves the Son because the Son loves us unto death. This is a remarkable revelation. Our need, and Christ’s gracious response to it, is the occasion of the drawing forth of the Father’s love for his Son. This does not mean that the Father’s loving the Son is contingent upon Christ’s loving us. Rather, the love of Father for Son, and of Son for Father, is antecedent to all our experience of his grace, and is indeed its ultimate basis. Yet that love finds a fulfilment in the heart of God as the Son gives himself to us

The voluntary self-sacrifice of the Son. Christ embraced not just his death but also the resurrection that would follow. Why? Because he knows his sheep he knows what they need. The need the profound forgiveness of their sins and the hope of the resurrection in heaven.

Cindy story?

10:22-33

Isiaih 45:11, 12

Look at your hand, how big is it.

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to John a. Jesus the Messiah (10:22–30)

The Feast of Dedication was not authorized by the Hebrew Scriptures; it was a relatively recent institution. In 167 BC the Syrian Antiochus Epiphanes overran Jerusalem and polluted the temple, setting up a pagan altar to displace the altar of Israel’s God. Chafing under the brutal repression, under which possession of any part of the Hebrew Scriptures was a capital offence, many Jews revolted and developed the fine art of guerilla warfare.

The Dedication was happening it was not that far back in the minds of the Jewish leaders. Antiochus Epiphanes set up a pagan altar declaring his own religion. Christ now is declaring his own religion in a way he is saying that he is the Son of God he is God himself. The Jewish leaders react to this by taking up stones.

Look at your hand, how big is it.

The greatest miracle someday is not God giving you everything that you ask for but you accepting in your heart what it is that he has for you. Accepting that he is sovereign in control. Faith that faith in him is a gift, Trusting him in faith. His sheep hear his voice.

Remember this: It is on two pieces of timber is where the gospel is founded upon. It is in the hand of Christ that we are found. In Faith we trust in God’s redeeming work.