Shepherd

Introduction

We just finished a season of elections. Newly elected officials will be sworn into office soon. Choosing a good politician is difficult. Some will say it is because there are too few good politicians. I suspect that most of the time we choose according to selective perceptions. We aren’t given all the facts and then our own perceptions are added to it. Let’s consider three candidates and see who you would vote for.

Candidate A associates with faith healers and consults with astrologers. He’s had two mistresses. He chain smokes, and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.

Candidate B has already been kicked out of office twice. He sleeps until noon, used drugs when he was at university, and drinks one and a half litres of brandy every night.

Candidate C is a decorated war hero. He’s a vegetarian, doesn’t smoke, drinks an occasional beer, and hasn’t had any extra-marital affairs.

Which candidate would you vote for? Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Candidate B is Winston Churchill. Candidate C is Adolf Hitler. Selective facts and selective perception leads us to often choose poorly. In John 10, Jesus continues his discussion with the religious leaders. We know that our Bibles did not originally have chapter and verse divisions. You will notice in your Bibles that there is no break between chapter 9 and chapter 10. Jesus has declared that the religious leaders are really blind. They think they know God but they fail to see the hand of God at work as this man who was born blind has been healed.

So in a lengthy monologue, Jesus elaborates on what it means to know Jesus and to remain in one’s own blind perceptions. The symbols change but the discussion is the same. The symbol changes from sight to hearing, but the results are the same. One hears the voice of the good shepherd. Our study time today will focus on what it means to hear the voice of Jesus and to see Jesus as the true Shepherd. We are selective in our perception. Let’s remain focused on the True Shepherd today.

The Discourse

From the beginning of this discourse, Jesus sets the stage for his view of the religious leaders. One must enter the sheep pen through the sheep gate. This image is lost on us. In Jesus’ day, a shepherd would house his sheep in a pen at night. A watchman would be hired to protect the sheep at night, while the owner slept. It was also common that shepherds would blend their sheep with other sheep. This was cost efficient and provides insight for Jesus’ language of a shepherd entering a pen to call his sheep to follow. The true shepherd would go through the gate of the pen to call his sheep. He wouldn’t climb over the fence or try to gain entry to the pen other than through the gate. So far so good.

But verse 7 makes the explanation clear. Jesus is the gate. In other words, if one is to have access to the sheep, one must go through Jesus. As the gate, he is the one through whom one can enter into a place of safety. The religious leaders are described as thieves and robbers. They have not sought safety through Jesus. They have tried to kill him. They have ignored him. They have persecuted him. But they have not believed him.

Jesus goes even further by identifying himself as the good shepherd. The Old Testament uses the image of the shepherd to indicate God’s care for Israel. Think of Psalm 23: “the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…” In addition to God, the kings and other leaders of Israel were also pictured as shepherds of the people in their role of protecting, defending, and guiding the people. But when the leaders were not proper shepherds, God was displeased. Hear this example from Ezekiel 34:1-6, which uses Shepherd imagery to convey God’s displeasure with the leadership of Israel.

God judges the shepherds of Israel for abusing their power, taking advantage of the people, and letting them wander from God. But a little later in Ezekiel 34, picking up at verse 11, God makes an interesting promise: God promises to be chief shepherd—he will care for the people and bless them. He goes on to talk about administering justice and finally ends up in verses 22-24. Hear that—God promises to put a son of David on the Throne and make him a good shepherd. In Ezekiel, God both promises that He will be the shepherd and the son of David will be the shepherd. And in John 10, we find Jesus making the perfect fulfillment of those promises. It’s obvious from Scripture that Jesus is our Shepherd.

The Shepherd and the Sheep

The point of this discourse is to convince us as readers that Jesus is who he claims to be. Specifically, this discourse was to appeal to the religious leaders to listen to Jesus’ voice. We see the outcome at the end of the section in which declare that Jesus is a lunatic and others point to the sign as proof that Jesus must be something special.

I want to take just a couple of moments to point out the promises of the Shepherd from this text and then look at our response to those promises. Jesus makes numerous promises in this text:

He promises to lead the sheep. Just like the shepherd of Psalm 23, Jesus will lead so that the sheep have safety and plenty.

He says he will provide salvation. While we might think first of all of spiritual salvation and that is true, he means more than this. His promise as found in verse 10 means life now that is filled with more than we can possibly ask or imagine. This is a spiritual emphasis not a physical one.

He promises to lay down his life for his sheep. An allusion to his death, but it includes the idea of substitution. Jesus will give his life so that the sheep will not die.

This would be an appropriate time for us to take the Lord’s Supper. Jesus gave his life so that we would not die.

Just as Jesus makes promises in this text, there is also the expectation of the sheep. The sheep hear the voice of Jesus and run from the voice of the stranger. Certainly Jesus has in mind the voice of the religious leaders but as we saw in chapter 8, the religious leaders were guided by the voice of their father, Satan. You say you are listening to the voice of Jesus rather than the voice of the stranger, Satan.

Then explain to me about the thoughts that keep you up at night. Explain to me those thoughts that pop suddenly in your head and you don’t know where they came from. Explain to me the voice that says “if I don’t do this, people will not like me,” or “what other people think matters too much for me to not laugh at this joke or do this immoral thing.” Explain to me the voice in the back of your head that says, when you suffer a slight wrong, “They meant full well to do that!” or “What did that snide glance really mean?” or “You don’t like that tone of voice and you shouldn’t put up with it!”

Or even worse, explain to me that voice in the back of your head that says, when you fail “Typical. You’re worthless. You should be ashamed. You’re a phony and everyone knows it.” Do you think those destructive voices come from Jesus? Or is it the voice of Satan fanning small doubts and insecurities into flames of self-destruction? This is the war of the mind.

Whose voice do you hear? The good shepherd calls. Will you hear his voice? Will you follow only him? Will you run from the stranger’s voice?

Follow Jesus

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