THE GOOD SHEPHERD, PARTS 1-2 JOHN 10:1-21 DAN BROOKS, PASTOR JULY 6 & 20, 2014 INTRODUCTION This is one portion of Scripture where chapter divisions are unhelpful. The man who was born blind, but now miraculously healed, has made a clear and powerful profession of faith in the Son of Man. Lord, I believe! is what He stated and then he began to worship. This is a beautiful scene for us to witness. I stated last week that what we believe inevitably translates into how we live. Specifically, what we believe will translate into what and how we worship. Look at 9:39-41. So in 10 Jesus is answering the Pharisee s question Are we also blind? Others are listening, like the disciples, but He s talking to the ones who refuse to believe that God is manifesting His presence and salvation in their midst. They say they see, but the reality is that as they continue to reject Jesus and the light of His truth, their spiritual sight goes darker and darker. They are profoundly blind and do not know it. And now He addresses them in a figure of speech. I. JESUS ANSWERS THE PHARISEES QUESTION (10:1-6). Are we also blind? (9:40) A. Jesus identifies them as thieves and robbers (1). 1. Thieves and robbers do not typically enter the front door. 2. The thieves and robbers are the religious leaders who are more interested in fleecing the sheep than in guiding, nurturing and guarding them. 1 3. They remind us of the shepherds in Ezekiel 34 who feed themselves at the expense of the sheep. Neglecting them, these shepherds rule them with force and harshness and scatter the sheep (34:4-5). B. Jesus identifies characteristics of a true shepherd. 1. Authorized access (2-3a) a. 2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the gatekeeper opens. b. He enters as you would expect a shepherd to. c. He doesn t sneak into the fold because His intention clear and motive is pure. d. The sheep are objects of His care and concern. 2. Personal relationship (3b) a. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name 1) The sheepfold pictured in this figure of speech has multiple flocks in it. Typical of the ancient near eastern culture, several shepherds might put their flocks into a sheepfold for the night. The sheep know the voice of their shepherd. So when he comes to lead them out, he has only to call and they respond. 2) Think about who has the authority to give names. 3) Parents name their children and in so doing establish a personal identity 4) But the greater point of calling his own sheep by name is that He establishes and maintains a personal relationship with them. 5) Ill.: My grandfather gave to my siblings and me special names, a sign of relationship. 6) Ex 33:17 And the Lord said to Moses, This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name. 7) Not the knowledge of omniscience, but the knowledge of intimate relationship! 1 D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter- Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 382.
P a g e 2 8) Point The Good Shepherd is intimately acquainted with His people. You are more than a number lost in the vast crowd of the redeemed. He knows you by name. b. and leads them out 1) Leads them out stands in contrast to what these Pharisees just did to the miraculously seeing man. 2) 9:34 says they cast him out. 3) The effect of their doctrine and tradition is to drive people away. 4) Ezek 34:11-16, but note15 16 15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. 16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice. c. They know His voice 1) That s what prompts us to say, like the miraculously seeing man, Lord I believe! 2) 5 A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. 3) Question: Do you recognize the voice of Christ as He speaks to you? Do you respond to Him as He speaks to you? 3. Attentive care a. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them 1) My first thought was that the Good Shepherd has a particular destination in mind, but it is not about getting from point A to point B. 2) As our Lord will later state He goes before us in order that we might find safety and pasture. 3) The image of the shepherd is an extremely important biblical picture of a leader (Num 27:17) because it implies not only an intensely personal relationship between God s people and their leaders but a style or model of leadership exemplified by Jesus (cf. Mark 6:34). The very word leadership is developed from the shepherd imagery, where the shepherd goes before the flock and encounters the problems of the flock first. The shepherd does not issue commands in a pyramid fashion down to subordinates who carry out his wishes like a general or admiral who stays back out of range of the conflict; nor is a shepherd a whip-carrying organizer who drives the sheep into the pen or to a particular pasture. But the shepherd knows the setting, leads the sheep, and they follow him (cf. John 10:4). 2 4) He leads us that He might care for us. b. and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 1) When you read the Bible do you hear Jesus speaking to you? Does your spirit respond by saying, Yes! or That s so good! or Thank you, Jesus. I so needed that today. 2) You hear the voice of Facebook or Spotify, of Fox News and talk radio, but do you hear the voice of Jesus? 3) You hear the voice of business and sales, of promotion and profit, but do you hear the voice of Jesus? 4) You hear the voice of blogs and celebrity religious figures, but do you actually hear the voice of Jesus? c. Do you sit still long enough to listen and hear? d. I remain concerned that professing followers of Christ are so little in the Word. 2 Gerald L. Borchert, John 1 11, vol. 25A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 332.
P a g e 3 e. You can t know where Jesus is leading you apart from this Book. f. You can t actually be a committed follower of Jesus unless you are attentive to what He says and where He leads. C. Jesus reveals their blindness to the truth (6). 1. They did not understand what he was saying to them 2. O, the profound blindness! They said, We see! but they do not see. 3. As a matter of fact, in response to this figure of speech and the explanation, 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? 4. Point: Some of you hear a message like this and say, That s crazy! To some of you the Gospel of Jesus Christ is insanity! You think Jesus was insane and you think that His followers are also insane. 5. But He stands before you today in this very text and calls you to believe. He calls you to follow Him. II. JESUS EXPLAINS AND EXPANDS THE FIGURE OF SPEECH. A. Jesus is the Door of His people (7-10). 1. I am the door (7) a. He is the access to the fold, a place of safety and security. b. He is also access to the pasture, the place of nourishment c. He is the entrance to spiritual life. 2. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. a. Saved: (σῴζω) safety from destruction; in this case it is the destruction that results from wolves. 1) Who are the wolves? (see v. 12) 2) Those who foist their false teachings and philosophies of life on humanity. b. Go in and out and find pasture: (νομή) the act of feeding; what is safety if there is nothing to nourish my soul? c. Life abundantly: (περισσός) more than enough; over and above 1) This has nothing to do with having lots of stuff. If Christ s pasture were just the accumulation of stuff, then He s not offering anything other than what Aristotle or Amway or Wall Street or Joel Osteen offer. 2) The term suggests fat, contented, flourishing sheep, not terrorized by brigands; outside the narrative world, it means that the life Jesus true disciples enjoy is not to be construed as more time to fill (merely everlasting life), but life at its scarcely imagined best, life to be lived. 3 3. The contrast established by 3 words a. Steal: Pharisees and false teachers steal the truth b. Kill: to sacrifice or slaughter; the effect of false teaching is death c. Destroy: (ἀπόλλυμι) destruction; cause to perish; false doctrine always leads to spiritual destruction d. If the abundant life were marked by more stuff, then we would expect to find terms like impoverish or bankrupt or ruin. But Jesus speaks three words that help us to understand 3 Carson, 385.
P a g e 4 the kind of abundance He is offering stands in contrast to the truth-stealing, life-killing, souldestroying teaching of the Pharisees. e. Mt 11:28 30 28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. f. That s the difference between the yoke and burden of Jesus and the yoke and burden of false teaching! g. This is a proverbial way of insisting that there is only one means of receiving eternal life..., only one source of knowledge of God, only one fount of spiritual nourishment, only one basis for spiritual security Jesus alone. The world still seeks its humanistic, political saviours its Hitlers, its Stalins, its Maos, its Pol Pots and only too late does it learn that they blatantly confiscate personal property (they come only to steal ), ruthlessly trample human life under foot (they come only to kill ), and contemptuously savage all that is valuable (they come only to destroy ). Jesus is right. It is not the Christian doctrine of heaven that is the myth, but the humanist dream of utopia. 4 B. Jesus is the Shepherd of His people (11-18). 1. The Shepherd is upright. a. 11 I am the good shepherd. 1) Good: (καλός) upright and virtuous 2) A bit of a paradox, perhaps 3) The One who stands in stark contrast to the morally bankrupt shepherds of Israel who care nothing for the sheep. 4) Shepherd: (ποιμήν) one who provides care 2. The Shepherd loves His people. a. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. b. An expression of love 1) Lays down his life: (τίθησιν) to set, put, place or lay. Fig., to lay down one s life 2) Jn 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 3) 1 Jn 3:16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 3. The Shepherd saves His people. a. Lay down his life is also an act of sacrifice. 1) For the sheep 2) Lit., On behalf of the sheep. 3) What a contrast to the hired hand! He runs away when there is danger. 4) Jn 10:12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 5) Our Good Shepherd set His face like a flint and walked straight into the conspiracy that would lead to His death! 6) The good shepherd shows himself to be a good shepherd because the welfare of the sheep, not his own, is his primary care. 5 7) The abundant life that He previously mentioned is tied to His sacrificial love. 4. The Shepherd knows His people. a. Another point of contrast. The hireling has no personal relationship with the sheep. 4 Carson, 385. 5 F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 226.
P a g e 5 III. 1) 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. b. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father 1) Remember the point from last week? 2) This is not the knowledge of omniscience, but the knowledge of intimate relationship. c. The intimate relationship is the reason the Good Shepherd is willing to I lay down my life for the sheep. 5. The Shepherd builds a fold with many people. a. I have other sheep that are not of this fold b. "The fold represents national Israel, which possessed a form of unity that was visible, external, and tangible. This form of unity, however, was not necessarily internal, for the nation (the fold) included some people who were Jesus' sheep and others who were not. In contrast to the external unity of the fold, Jesus says that he is going to lead his sheep 'out.' An example of this leading out had already occurred in John 9, where the man born blind was cast out of the synagogue because of his loyalty to Jesus. What was already true of the man born blind would become true of all Jesus' sheep. He would separate them from national Israel. Then he would bring his other sheep, sheep that had never been part of the fold, namely, Gentiles. These two groups of sheep would become 'one flock' with 'one shepherd' (John 10:16)." 6 c. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. d. There will be one flock, one Shepherd 1) Ezek 34:23 24 23 And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24 And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken. 2) The unity and safety of the people of Christ depend on their proximity to him. When they have forgotten this and tried to secure unity or safety by building walls round themselves, the results have not been encouraging. The walls have either been so comprehensive as to enclose a number of wolves along with the sheep (with disastrous consequences for the sheep), or they have been so restrictive as to exclude more sheep than they enclose. 7 6. The Shepherd has authority over life and death. a. 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. b. Everyone has the power to do the first thing: lay down my life. c. Authority: (ἐξουσία) the power of right and might d. Question: Who in the world has authority to make himself live again? Only the Son of the Living God! 7. The Shepherd fulfills the Father s charge for His people (18). a. Charge: (ἐντολὴν) commandment, commission APPLICATION A. Two responses in this passage: 1. 20 Many of them said, He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him? 6 Kevin Bauder, Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism, Zondervan, 22 7 F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 228.
P a g e 6 a. His claims seemed so exaggerated and so contradictory to the popular understanding of the unity of God that they could be attributed only to the irrational and blasphemous utterance of a demoniac. 8 b. Because He is the Door to salvation and life. c. Because He is the Shepherd who sacrifices Himself in death so that His people will never die and has authority to rise from the dead. d. Because He is the Son of God charged by the Heavenly Father to lay down His life for His people. 2. 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? a. His words and His works prove His divinity. b. A demon cannot duplicate this miraculous sign! c. Demons do not speak words that give life. 1) Mk 5:5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 2) They are certainly not words of healing and salvation and life. d. If they are not the words of a man oppressed by a demon, whose words are they? B. Are you submitting to the words of Christ? 8 Merrill C. Tenney, John, in The Expositor s Bible Commentary: John and Acts, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 110.