Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Good morning!

We’re continuing our sermon series on the I AM statements this morning.

As I’ve said each week so far, in each of these 7 statements, Jesus is making it known that he is God, he is the I AM, and he is making God present in the here and in the now.

Jesus is breaking into our world, or the world of the 1st century, and in every passage he is saying to us that he is what we truly need.

And Last week we talked about how Jesus is the door of he sheep, and how he came so that we would have life and have it abundantly and we talked about how Jesus is the door to that kind of life and to eternal life.

And as we walked through the passage last week, we looked at the thieves and robbers who try to steel the sheep away from the flock, and therefore try to steel us away from the abundant life that Jesus offers us.

And we broke this down into four different things:

Pleasure

The first thief we looked at was pleasure.

The world tells us that to be truly happy, truly fulfilled, we need to seek a life that is full of pleasure.

We’re told to go after a life that finds meaning and purpose in the pleasures that the world offers us.

And we said that as we follow after this life that seeks our own pleasure we usually end up in a place of numbness, loneliness, and addiction, trying to find the next thing that makes us feel something.

We end up empty.

Performance

Then we looked at performance.

If we can just perform more, right?

Perform at a higher capacity than our peers If we can just work harder and longer, then we’ll be satisfied.

If we can just study more, if we can just get to the top of our class, then we’ll be happy.

If we can outperform, then we’ll find satisfaction.

This is another lie, another thief that steels us away from following after Jesus.

Posessions

Or, Maybe it’s your possessions.

You need the best phone, the best clothes, the best laptop, the best game system.

Then, you’ll be happy.

Right?

Things make us happy, right?

The more stuff we have, or if we have better stuff than our friends, then we’re happy?

Right?

Popularity

And finally, we looked at popularity.

Your popularity, your position in your circle or in your school is sooo important.

You need to be the most loved, the most liked, the most sought after, and then you’ll be happy.

You need to be the top of your class, and the best at everything, because your position in life is so important and so tied to how you see yourself, that if it’s not where you want it to be, then your whole life crumbles, and everything’s a mess.

There are more things than this, but we closed last with by saying that there are so many thieves and robbers, so many things that call out to us saying “follow us, we’ll bring you happiness.”

There’s so much of this, and so many voices screaming at us.

But, there’s only one shepherd.

There’s only one way to true, full, abundant life.

And that’s Jesus.

Jesus has come to rescue us from the crap that is pulling us into death and destruction.

He’s come to rescue us from our idea of pleasure, he’s come to rescue us from performance, he’s come to rescue us from seeking possessions or popularity.

He’s come to rescue us from all of that, because he knows that for all of human history, humans have sought after those things and have found themselves miserable, crying out for something more, something greater, something fulfilling.

And Jesus came down and said “I am the door of the sheep, and I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

And it’s through following Jesus, our lives are fuller, richer, and abundant.

But, the question for us today I think is, how do we follow Jesus?

How is he able to offer us full abundant life, and how is he able to offer us freedom from all of the thieves and robbers mentioned last week?

Open up again to John chapter 1, and we’ll read through last weeks verses again, but we’ll focus in on 11-16 this morning.

This is the word of the Lord.

Context/Exposition

We spent quite a bit of time last week talking about the sheep/shepherd relationship.

If you remember from last week, sheep are really cute, but really dumb.

And Sheep have to have a shepherd to lead them.

Without a shepherd, sheep are left to themselves, and they’ll end up in real danger.

Essentially, the sheep’s best friend is the shepherd.

When the sheep gets lost, the shepherd looks for it, when the sheep gets hurt, the shepherd cleans and mends its wounds, and when the sheep refuses to follow the heard, and I read this last night and was low-key shook, but when the sheep keeps wandering off, the shepherd used to break the sheep’s legs, and then he would throw the sheep on his back until the legs would heal, and after that the sheep would never leave the shepherd’s side.

But, as I said last week, the sheep knew the shepherd’s voice.

Regardless of where the sheep were, when they heard their shepherd’s call, they would run to him.

The relationship between sheep and shepherd was extremely special.

And here, in verse 11, Jesus says that he is the Good shepherd.

OT Background

And remember, Jesus was speaking to a primarily Jewish audience, Jews would have known all about what a bad shepherd was.

In the Old Testament, the prophets were constantly comparing the rulers of Israel to bad shepherds who were more interesting in feeding and caring for themselves rather than for caring for God’s sheep.

For example,

There are so many verses in the old testament that are similar to this.

And so the audience Jesus was speaking to were longing for a good shepherd.

And what that means, is that what they were longing for was the promises Messiah, the Messianic Shepherd who would make God’s love present.

They were likely thinking of

And so, when Jesus says “I AM the good shepherd,” they knew he was claiming to be the messiah, he was making God present.

They knew what bad shepherds did.

Jesus is now teaching them what a good shepherd does, and what he has come to do.

And so, in the text are three things that Jesus claims to do as the Good Shepherd:

He gives his life as a sacrifice

He knows and cares for the sheep

He searches for the lost sheep

Jesus’ Sacrifice

We’ll look first at the Shepherd’s Sacrifice.

Verse 11 says “I am the Good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

Reflecting on the way we talked about the shepherd last week, it can be easy to perceive the shepherd as someone who is weak, or who is realy soft and tender.

However, the shepherd in the first century would sometimes fight off wolves and robbers and thieves, and maybe even the occasional bear.

He was far from weak, but rarely did the shepherd actually die.

And so, this verse is definitely a metaphor of sorts, but Jesus is pointing beyond the metaphor of sheep and shepherd and he is pointing to himself.

Jesus lays down his life.

Jesus lays down his life for us.

Don’t miss this, the earthly shepherd would often risk his life to guard the sheep, but if the earthly shepherd were to lose his life, the sheep would likely lose theirs as well.

But Jesus doesn’t risk his life.

No, Jesus lays down his life.

Jesus laid down his life, and by laying down his life, he fought for our freedom.

The assumption of this passage is that the sheep, or us, are in some kind of danger, but by the death of the shepherd, or Jesus Jesus, the sheep, us, are somehow saved.

I don’t want to get into all of the theology here, but the death of Jesus, the sacrificial death of Jesus, saves his sheep.

The sacrificial death of Jesus saves those of us who are his sheep from our sins.

And we hear this so much, Jesus’ death saves us from our sins, but what does this mean?

Every problem, every evil in the world, every ounce of anger, every bit of hurt and pain and suffering, all of it can be traced back to sin.

Jesus’ death saves us from our sins, and therefore saves us from the punishment that is due to us, but it also saves us from the pains that sin causes.

When Jesus is your shepherd, when you follow Jesus, when you allow him to work in your life, to change your life, when take captive your thoughts, when you say to him “Jesus, take everything, I trust you, you are Lord, you are savior, and I want to worship and honor you with my life,” when you do that, and allow Jesus to take his rightful place as Lord, then you are saved from all of the thieves and robbers we talked about last week, then you are saved from all of the hurt and pain caused by your sins and the sins of those around you.

Jesus has fought for us, died for us, and he sits with God the father and he intercedes for us.

His blood covers us.

And we can now be freed from sin and from all of the hurt causes by sin.

Jesus Knows us and cares for us

Look at 14-15.