Established in God's Love: Knowing God

This morning, we are going to jump right into the passage of the Good Shepherd…to set this up for us, we need to understand what has just happened according to John’s telling of the story.

Jesus and the disciples have arrived in Jerusalem for the Festival of Lights, more commonly called Hanukkah. As they are there to participate in this annual festival, Jesus heals a blind man and once again, the Pharisees have challenged who Jesus is. I believe the primary reason that Jesus is being challenged is because many of his contemporaries believed that physical ailments are a result of sins that either the person or their ancestors have committed. What Jesus explains is that this individual nor his parents ever committed a sin that caused his blindness but rather this man was born blind so that the power and authority of Christ could be revealed in due time.

Now, this might be hard to comprehend that someone might be blind but if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. As humans, we rely so heavily on our physical senses that the only way we know how to prove something to be true is to see, hear, taste, touch, or smell something, right? Well, for Jesus’ contemporaries, this was the same. So, if we consider what is happening around him, it only makes sense that we are approaching the time when he will head to the cross and he needs to prove to those around him who he is and more importantly, what he came to do.

Now, with that little bit of a setup, the passage we are reflecting on today is a continuation of this story. Having just healed someone from blindness, Jesus has jumped into a teaching about what it means to have spiritual blindness and how if we just believe in who he is and what he has done for us, we become one of his sheep. Which is why we hear this idea about the thief versus the shepherd. With me so far?

Ok good, let’s look at this passage now and we are going to look at the very first verse again...

John 10:10 The Message

A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.

Let’s consider this for a moment…We are standing amid the throng of followers who have gathered to hear Jesus speak and teach about eternal life. And this passage this morning begins with a reference to a thief and he is specifically speaking of the evil one but there are many thieves in our lives today…there are computers, televisions, phones, work, and many other vices which take our hearts and minds away from God. Now, this is not to say that we should go live like the Amish, but that we need to be taking time to still ourselves enough to open our hearts and more importantly our ears to hear God’s voice. Here, Jesus is speaking figuratively and literally...

Some of you might be thinking, didn’t we just talk about this not long ago? And you would be correct, we have spent a lot of time lately talking about how to listen for God. But I want you to know that this is the question I hear most from folks…how do I know that God is speaking to me? To be honest, I don’t have a tried and true specific answer to that question, but I can tell you that God does still speak to us…and I am reminded of another story I once told you about a pastor who preached the same sermon three weeks in a row and when asked by the leadership if he was OK, his response was that he continued to preach the same sermon because he did not observe anyone doing anything about his message...

This is not to say that I do not see people hearing God’s voice because we have so many good things happening but I am concerned that some may be hearing God’s voice but choosing to ignore and not listen to God’s instructions. Listen, we could sit here and argue that God is telling some of us one thing but telling others something different and I would direct you to this verse once again. Sometimes the thief comes in and tells you lies and that’s not the worst part. The worst part is when we believe those lies and think it is God’s voice. There is no way to know for sure because there is so much and so many that come up against us in this world, it really is hard to know when God is truly speaking, so I want to explore this morning what might happen if we hear and follow God’s voice because truthfully, this is what this passage is all about.

The effects of knowing God

I believe there are really three ways of knowing if we are truly listening to God’s voice...

We experience a spiritual transformation

We experience a moral transformation

We experience a boldness of action, meaning that we do not fear the unknown or change but rather walk into change with open hearts expecting to change lives, including our own

So let’s start with Spiritual transformation...

Spiritual transformation

We hear a lot today from TV evangelists and others around us that if we have truly accepted Christ into our lives and hearts then we will experience a change in our lives. I have to be honest, it hard to experience a change if you have never believed in anything other that Christ. Let’s be real here for a moment…I grew up in the church, I have never had a time in my life when I did not believe, and for anyone to suggest that I am not a Christian because I did not experience a religious experience the day I accepted Christ is a bit ridiculous to me. I will say again…I have never had a time in my life when I did not believe. For those who came into the church from somewhere other than me will obviously have a different experience but for me to be asked when I had my transformation, I stutter and stammer. And I am here to tell you…THAT’S OK!!! It’s completely OK to have not ever experienced a transformation because honestly, I believe that transformation came the first time I stepped into Sunday school at the age of 5 and a pastor treated me with absolute and complete love. But to say that is the day, I cannot because I also believe that I wake up each morning and when I say “Thank You”, I am once again committing myself to my faith for the day.

For this passage, I want us to remember that each of us, if we sat back long enough to think about it, probably have a moment when we can say that we gave ourselves over and put our full faith and trust in God. But here’s the thing, I don’t think that this is truly what God desires…remember, we talked two weeks ago that God created us to be in fellowship and relationship with one another and more importantly, in relationship with God. This week we are speaking specifically of our relationship to and with God. If you are in a relationship with anyone, there has to be a lot of give and take. If one party is always giving and the other, always taking, there is an inequality and the relationship inevitably will fail. Our relationship with God is no different. The only reason we should look for a spiritual transformation is to be able to connect more with God and that means not listening to the lies of the thief who tells us constantly that God has abandoned us but rather spending more time in prayer, reading the Bible, and being in fellowship in a family of faith. Honestly, this is what we should be doing at this time of our calendar as we prepare ourselves for Advent and the birth of the King...

The second transformation that should come out of a relationship with God is a moral one...

Moral transformation: from evil to good

As I said, there are many things that pull us away from God and there are many more that make us think that we need to be doing more. Our creator did not create us to just do good but rather to be good from the inside out. Here’s what I mean…Paul tells us numerous times in his letters that we are not saved because of the good things we do but rather that we are saved by our faith. You see, faith is the basis for all the things we say and do so therefore it is not our actions that save us but rather our hearts.

To be perfectly blunt, our faith should instruct our actions and some of our actions do not speak about our faith at all. When we give ourselves over to our relationship to God, we need to be doing only those things which bring God glory. This means that we should not be spreading rumors or gossiping, those are actions of the thief and most of the time in my experience, they are lies. Listen, there is much that we can be doing and so much good that can come our of our faith and trust in God. I have to admit this is one that I struggle with as well, especially in the car. I was with a colleague not long ago and he reminded me that most of us lose our salvation in the car. But it is so easy to give ourselves over to the thief. When we close our hearts to our creator, we open ourselves to so much evil and wrongdoing. This is the moral transformation that needs to occur and it needs to start this very moment…we need to close our hearts to the thief and open ourselves to a deeper relationship with our creator. When we are open for the thief to come in and steal our salvation from us, we are no different than the Pharisees of Jesus’ time…he even addresses this in this passage…hear this and hear it loud and clear...

John 10:12–13 NLT

A hired hand will run when he sees a wolf coming. He will abandon the sheep because they don’t belong to him and he isn’t their shepherd. And so the wolf attacks them and scatters the flock. The hired hand runs away because he’s working only for the money and doesn’t really care about the sheep.

Boldness of action for God

The next transformation comes as a result of the other two…if we truly open to hearing God and only God in our hearts and ears, then our actions should reflect that. Think about what Christ did for us on that cross and I really don’t need to say anything more…I am not saying we should all put ourselves on the cross because that is a really hard place to be, trust me, I have been there and people continue to try to put me there. There is only one savior and only one man that could do that but, again to be perfectly blunt, our actions should reflect how we feel about God. Each of you are the only ones who can answer the question of what this looks like but if you sit back and think about what you have been saying and doing lately, and your gut is telling you that something you did or said is not acting on behalf of giving glory to God then I would say that God is trying to convict you that maybe you need another transformation…

As we look toward the coming weeks, hearing and listening to God is going to be extremely important and I challenge each of us to look deep within our hearts to see if we are not living as if we hear God’s voice…God is still speaking but I wonder if anyone still listens...

Prayer

Let us pray…Gracious God, when we are closed to you, help us to open ourselves to your redeeming love, it is all we need, Amen.