Clough John Lesson 44

The Good Shepherd – John 10:1-18

In John 10 we have a section that begins in a very obscure way, apparently, yet in John 10 we have some of the most momentous and most quoted sayings of the Lord Jesus Christ. All trough the section that we have studied, up until this point, we have seen the conflict, the rising conflict between the Pharisees and the Lord Jesus Christ. This chapter is the culmination of that struggle. The Lord Jesus Christ’s third Jerusalem trip is going to end; in fact, this address that He now gives is the last public address recorded by the Apostle John. John has been very careful in designing his Gospel to concentrate upon the effect that Christ has had in Jerusalem. All the other Gospel writers, of course, deal with the Galilean ministry of Christ. Now if you think back you will see the progress that has occurred up until this point. This is the end as far as Christ was concerned. He’s not going to bother any more with the crowd that could care less about the Word of God and He’s just going to terminate His public ministry here. From this point forward in John’s Gospel Jesus Christ turns to brief the disciples.

Let’s see how it works out. In John 3 there was a discussion with Nicodemus and the whole summary of that discussion with Nicodemus is over Christ’s authority. It dealt with a preliminary view toward Jesus Christ’s judgment; it dealt with the idea of the fact that Jesus Christ could make claims of things in heaven as well as things on the earth. From that we have the famous passage of the new birth. It was a challenge over who did Christ think He was making these kinds of claims.

In John 5 we have a more heated discussion between Jesus and the authorities and this discussion was over Jesus Christ’s nature. Who was this Son who claimed equality with the Father when only God in the Old Testament would dare say this. Then on this third trip we have had an almost violent discussion between the rulers, Christ and the crowds, over His specific claims.

Now if we’re going to interpret John 10 correctly we’re going to have to relate it to John 9 because the way it begins is never the way John ever begins any kind of discourse. John begins a discourse always in quite another fashion. When we see, “Verily, verily, I say unto you,” that’s always in response to something that has happened so John 10:1 is not a new event, it’s just part of the old one and because it is, this would be as good a time as any to answer some of the feedback cards. One of the feedback cards dealt with John 9:41, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin. But now ye say, We see. Therefore, your sin remains.” The person who asked this particular question was concerned with the issue of whether the sin mentioned here, the blindness is the same kind of thing where Paul argues in Romans that law gave a knowledge of sin that wasn’t there before. Now if that’s the case, then it means that when the Word of God enters a man’s mind he is held accountable in a way that he wasn’t held accountable before the word entered his mind. And that is, to answer the question, exactly what Christ is talking about in verse 41, these people aren’t blind at all, because all men from God-consciousness to begin with have some revelation. That’s the extent of every person’s revelation [he wrote something on the overhead], it varies from culture to culture but all men have some God-consciousness. This is why no one except an uninformed idiot will ever say that a person has no knowledge of God. Everyone has knowledge of God, it’s a question of whether you’re going to admit it or not.

And then we find a second deal going on and that is that when we are exposed to the Word, are we or are we not going to have a situation where the Word of God revealed enough information beyond the primitive God-conscious level to hold a person responsible. We find that Jesus Christ insists the Pharisees knew what they were doing, the Pharisees had access to the Word of God in the Torah, and therefore it is not true that they are blind in the sense of responsibility. They said “We see. And so your sin remains.”

Now He goes on and enters into the great shepherd discourse. Now all during the discussion of John 9 you noticed that most of it did not pertain to what Christ was talking about in 40-41. Most of the discussion in chapter 9 was dealing not with Christ and the Pharisees but with the blind man and the Pharisees. And you’ll notice certain things happened to that blind man. In verses 24 and 19 the Pharisees explicitly state that they know and he doesn’t; they are setting themselves up as the guiding authorities for the nation. And so in verse 24 they “again called the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise; we know that this man is a sinner.” And in verse 29, “We know not from where he is.” They’re setting themselves up as the authorities and they go so far in the context of John 9, notice in verse 34 they expel him from the synagogue. So you have two things, these are going to be referred to in all this business about the shepherd and the sheep. That is given because of what happened in John 9. Notice, the blind man is being herded along by authorities that are not rooted in God’s plan, they are men who claim an autonomous knowledge and the result of their claim and its impact on this blind man’s life is that the blind man is excommunicated.

Now in John 10:1 Jesus Christ makes His analysis of the situation. John 9:40-41 are His analysis of their intent, and now beginning in 10:1-5 he tells them a little parable. So the first five verses of chapter 10 is the parable of the shepherd and the sheep. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that enters not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. [2] But he that enters in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. [3] To him the porter opens; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out. [4] And when he puts forth his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. [5] And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.”

Now obviously is introducing a shepherd illustration and like many of the great symbols in the Bible the shepherd image occurs in context after context after context. So as Bible-believing Christians, we have to say wait a minute, hold it, before we get into any details. Let’s see why the sheep and the shepherd come up time and time again in the Bible. Not just in one century but in many centuries, not just with one author but many authors; a consistent treatment of the theme of the shepherd and the sheep.

It goes back to creation; God made the creation to show forth His handiwork; we know that from Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork.” Why? Because God made it that way. And one of the animals that God made was the sheep; He made it deliberately to illustrate things. The anatomy, the behavioral characteristics of sheep are deliberately created to teach us about God’s truth. Sheep are some of the stupidest animals that ever existed and therefore God thought that they’d be excellent illustrations of believers. Sheep have been known to do the most asinine things. One of the fellows at Dallas Seminary was telling me, he had a job working in Amarillo and to continue funds he had to work on a sheep ranch and he just sat there and took notes on all the idiot things they did thinking that this would be excellent training for him while he was at Dallas Seminary and to be a pastor. And he was telling one thing after another, how he was out there one day and he opened up the gate to let them out and the gate was off center, the idea was that they had kind of like a corral, a fenced area and the sheep were all here and he opened the gate over here and got them going forward, only one problem, they all hit the corner and refused to do a column right, so they all just piled up, just one right on top of another and none of them ever had the brilliant idea of making a right turn to get out of the gate. This is obviously typical of sheep. Another time he was telling me about how he had cleaned out the place, they had some shelters for them, and laid down food down for them and they proceeded to baptize it with excrement. And of course that’s a beautiful illustration of what believers do with the Word of God.

So sheep are excellent illustrations of our behavior pattern as believers and the Lord Jesus Christ assumes that we all know this idiotic behavior pattern when He starts using the sheep and the shepherd illustration here. To show you a little bit what the terrain looks like in Israel where many of the flocks of sheep are kept [he shows slides]. The danger to sheep is not just from wild animals as you may guess from this passage though it’s true that many animals are predators of sheep. In the areas of which most of these people knew and where they lived and the kind of thing they were familiar with, here is an area out near the Mount Sinai region and you’ll notice there’s not much food. The shepherd is in charge, not only with protecting those sheep, but also in charge of moving them to areas where there’s water and food. Now you figure out in that area of terrain where you can get water and food. The Bedouin know, apparently the sheep haven’t died of starvation yet because there’s plenty of them, but that shepherd will move those sheep all through the passes and so on. That’s the context culturally and historically of this passage about the shepherd and the sheep. It’s not obviously all that bad in the area of the central highlands of Judah and Samaria but this is kind of an extreme area near Sinai that gets the point across about how necessary the shepherd is to the sheep. Here is the area of the Negev, here are the sheep on the right and the goats on the left, that’s how they separate them, and they have them all lined up; here’s one man with his flock of sheep going that way and apparently here’s another one with his flock of goats. So that’s to give your mind’s eye a picture a little bit of the sheep culture of Israel.

Let’s go through some of the illustrations that Christ draws from this. A major point that we want to see is that earlier and prior to the Lord Jesus Christ the shepherd/sheep thing was used of the kings of the nation. Turn to Psalm 78 once again we’ll see the importance of knowing your Old Testament. You just simply cannot come into the New Testament and hope to understand something without a framework. Psalm 78:70, notice who is mentioned here, notice he is the king. “He chose David his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds; [71] From following the ewes great with young, He brought him to feed Jacob, His people, and Israel, His inheritance. [72] So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.” Who is being spoken of? The king.

Now this passage is important for several reasons; it is a reflection of general ancient near eastern thought. If we had time I could take you to some of the cuneiform writings and you would see the same theme, where the Emperor, or in the Mesopotamian area the King would be called the great shepherd-king. So it wasn’t just in Israel that this theme went on. Notice why; it says in verse 72 David fed the nation “according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.” So in the context sheep do not just refer to believers. Sheep provide the foil for the shepherd and the shepherd in the Scripture is not just the picture that you see often times in Sunday school material. According to this passage the shepherd would carry the connotation of the king. This changes the flavor a little bit of John 10. Jesus is not just talking about Himself being this nice sweet little gentle person. When Jesus Christ claims that “I am the shepherd” He is claiming to be the King. It is part of His kingly claims; the King was the shepherd over the nation, thus there is more to this than just the mere shepherd.

Now to provide further background from the Old Testament for some of the things Christ is going to say in John 10, turn to Jeremiah 23:1 and notice God’s attitude toward the shepherds. I’ll just show you some of the though if you have a concordance you can look these up for yourself and study them in context. The word “pastor” is nothing more than the Latin word for “shepherd.” That’s where it comes from. “Woe be to the pastors [shepherds] who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture! Saith the LORD.” He is talking about the leaders of the people, spiritual and political. [2] “Therefore, thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors [shepherds] that feed My people, Ye have scattered My flock,” and you’ll see that word “scatter” in John 10, “You have scattered My flock, you have driven them away, and have not visited them; behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD. [3] I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all countries to which I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds;” notice plural, and you’re going to see “folds,” plural, again in John 10, and everybody has all sorts of ideas, what about the sheep of the other fold. There’s no problem with the sheep of the other fold, just look at what you just read here in this verse, it tells you what the folds are—nations. Notice the plural, “I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all countries where I have driven them,” and then in parallel, “and bring them again to their folds,” these are the places answering to where they came from, here are some sheep that came from one nation, here’s a sheep that came from another nation and so on, “and they shall be fruitful and increase, [4] And I will set up shepherds over them who shall feed them; and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord.

Verse 4 is important for you to apply what we are now going to see in John 10 to your Christian life. What good does it say to say that Jesus Christ is my shepherd? What it says is, verse 4, that we should not fear any more, that we should not be dismayed. It should be an encouragement to know that Jesus Christ is our shepherd who constantly herds us and this ought to have some impact, that is, if you believe this thing at all, ought to have some impact on your life. We could cite other passages, for example, Zechariah 11, which we won’t because we want to turn to the key passage of all passages, Ezekiel 34, the entire chapter. We’re going to go through this chapter, not in detail but enough to give you background so you can understand what Christ is telling the people. See, it’s a parable; parables are given to people so that those who have the equipment can understand and those that are just fooling around, passing the time of day, could give a damn, that kind of attitude, are not going to understand and that’s good they don’t understand. But for those who are interested they will understand and so Ezekiel 34 deals with a background that was known in Christ’s time. The Pharisees knew this chapter very well and Christ knew they knew this chapter very well and so He’s going to deliberately say certain things that would only make sense if you know this chapter, so let’s look at Ezekiel 34.

Ezekiel 34:1 “And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, [2] Son of man,” so you have direct revelation through the prophet Ezekiel, “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God unto the shepherds;” so Ezekiel is addressing the rulers, the rulers of the nation Israel, and look what he says, “Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? [3]Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. [

[4] The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.” Now notice this; in this passage you have Ezekiel saying to the people and saying in particular to the shepherds over the people that you have not taken care of the herd. And notice what’s involved in taking care of the herd, healing that which was sick and so on, now obviously they didn’t have the gift of healing back then so this healing is not physical so much as it’s dealing with the spiritual and political leadership. People who were going crazy because of the lack of leadership in the national entity of Israel, who, when they had leaders they had pragmatists who were busy negotiating all sorts of treaties with Egypt and with Assyria because they refused to trust the Lord, that kind of operation. So think of verse 4 and think of the context of John 10; who was it that the Pharisees threw out of the synagogue? He was a crippled blind man. See, this is where Christ is taking the imagery of Ezekiel 34.

[5] And they were scattered,” and what happens, the Jewish believer is going to be thrown out of the synagogue and they are going to be scattered, “they were scattered because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered.” So if the people are going to be scattered there’s got to be a shepherd to take care of them. [6] “My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them.” See the longing of God for people to seek out His sheep. [7] “Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord; [8] As I live, saith the Lord God, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became food to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock; [9] Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord; [10] Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be food for them.” God predicts in Ezekiel that He is going to call His flock away from these false shepherds; it’s a prophecy.

[11] “For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out.” And who does Christ say He is? The great shepherd who seeks the sheep. Do you see once again what we’ve encountered again; do you how often it is that Yahweh of the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament are identified totally…total identification. Who is it that’s going to search in verse 11? Who is it that’s the great shepherd? Jehovah Himself. And who is it that is the great shepherd in the New Testament? Jesus is. [12] “As a shepherd seeks out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. [13] And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country.” And obviously what we have here is a prophecy of the calling together of the elect of the nation Israel into the millennial kingdom. [14] “I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel. [15]I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down,” that’s resting, what a shepherd does, “saith the Lord God. [16] I will seek that which was lost,” does that phrase sound familiar from the New Testament? “I will seek them who are lost,” where did Jesus get all these phrases from? From the Old Testament, from passages like this, “I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment. [17] And as for you, O my flock, thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the he goats.” He goes on to discuss his care and love for the flock. [18, “Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet? [19] And as for my flock, they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet; and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet. [20] Therefore thus saith the Lord God unto them; Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle. [21] Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad;”]

Then in verse 22 he says, “Therefore will I save my flock,” the word “save” is going to occur in John 10, “save,” it’s a rare word for the Apostle John, and he’s getting it back from Ezekiel 34 as Christ got it from here, “Therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle.” Now look at this one, verse 23, “And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. [24] And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it.” There’s the Messianic prophecy of David being resurrected in the millennial kingdom to be the shepherd over Israel. It was always considered down, both by Jew and Christian alike, that this passages teaches that the head of the nation Israel will be David resurrected in the millennial kingdom. That will be his office in the millennium. But more than that it shows you that in a greater sense the greater David, the Messiah, will also serve a shepherd function.

[25, “And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods. [26] And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing. [27 ]And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them. [28] And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall the beast of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and none shall make them afraid. [29] And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. [30] Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord God. [31] And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God.”]

Now with all that background let’s turn to John 10; now see if it doesn’t make more sense. Jesus had begun to address the rulers in John 9:40-41. Who were the rulers but the false shepherds; they were the ones that had excommunicated for the poor blind man only for the sake he had his eyeballs created in one day; big sin, it just happened to fall on the Sabbath. All right, now what does Jesus do? He says, and He begins in the first five verses in this parable to identify and distinguish the true shepherd from the false shepherd and this has to do with Messianic claims. It is in essence what He is doing in verses 1-5, is He is just simply telling us over again, this time using different words, different illustration, but the same old thing, I am the Messiah. That’s what this shepherd story is all about. And so He distinguishes Himself two ways from the false Messiahs and the false leaders of the nation.

First, in John 10:1-2 and the first part of verse 3 He distinguishes Himself from the thief and the robber who enter the fold by a different way. Then in the last part of verse 3, 4-5, by the fact that He sticks with the flock out in the field. You see, verses 1, 2 and 3a deal with the sheep in the fold; verses 3b, 4 and 5 deal with the sheep in the field, and in both cases, whether the flock is in the fold or whether the flock is in the field the shepherd is always there to protect. He says, “I say unto you, He that enters not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” What does Jesus mean by this? He means that Jesus Christ has entered the fold; the fold is the nation Israel, this is where that flock exists. It is to be equated with the nation. We get that principle of interpretation from Ezekiel 34. We have the nation, out from the nation Jesus Christ is calling the faithful remnant. And this fold is entered into by a certain procedure. How? The Old Testament model, Jesus is claiming I fulfill the Old Testament model; I fulfill in My person, in My virgin birth, in My prophetic king-making announcement by John the Baptist, I entered the right way. Everyone else who claims to be a leader, all you Pharisees, you have no prophetic authentication of your position, nobody told you to do what you’re doing, nobody told you to excommunicate believers from synagogues, you have no authority for what you’re doing. I have authority because I fulfill prophecy. That’s Christ’s argument.

Now He says further, John 10:3, “To him the porter opens;” now we can’t press the parable too far but the porter could be John the Baptist, the one who is the king-maker, “To him the porter opens, and the sheep hear his voice: and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.” This is a very interesting thing about calling sheep by name. There was a man who wrote a book, In the Steps of the Master, 1935, H. B. Morton, who before he wrote this book traveled extensively in Palestine and one of the things he did was observe the Bedouins shepherds and their work in the land. And he gives an account of this kind of thing. He says, (quote): “Early one morning I saw an extraordinary sight not far from Bethlehem. Two shepherds had evidently spent the night with their flocks mixed together in a cave. The sheep were all mixed together and the time came in the morning for the shepherds to go in different directions. One of the shepherds stood some distance from the sheep and began to call, first one, then another, then four or five animals ran towards him, and so on until he counted his whole flock.” And so the Bedouin have a certain sound they make and they apparently make this all the time they’re leading the sheep so the sheep get used to this sound and they can be all mixed together in a cave for protection but when the shepherd wants his sheep and not someone else’s he’ll make this sound and the animals respond.

And this is what Christ is saying in verse 3, I present the Word of God, out of My mouth goes forth the call to the sheep and My sheep hear My voice; those who are not My sheep will not hear My voice. This should raise questions as I say this and as you read this text the wheels should be beginning to turn in you mind as to who are the sheep and what is the call. We’ll answer that as we get down to the details of the parable but this is a very basic question you ought to be asking yourself. John 10:4, “And when he puts forth” in verse 4, now I prefaced my remarks for showing you how stupid sheep are and that’s the only way you can understand this verb, “when he puts forth his own sheep,” now that’s not just “put forth.” In the Greek it’s exballo, it means to throw out. In other words, He’ll call some of those sheep out and then some will just start wandering around inside and never come out. So the shepherd gets in there and he picks them up and he throws them out. You see, that’s a little different than that nice sweet little shepherd picture that you have of Jesus Christ. This means you get rough with the sheep and you toss them out, stupid things, and that’s what Christ does with us, throws us around a little bit, and that’s what He’s saying He’s going to do here, He throws them out, and then “he goes before them,” once He wakes them up, gets them all out, then He begins to lead them. Notice He has to get rough with them before the sheep will follow Him. That’s always a principle of leadership, you have to exercise your authority before its respected.

“…and the sheep follow him: for they recognize His voice.” Notice this, “they recognize His voice,” the whole theme in here, whoever you say these sheep are they have to be people who recognize Jesus’ voice. Now let’s read further, [5] “A stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.” There will be almost an intuitive rejection. Now couple that with the blind man; do you remember what happened in John 9:30-32, remember that portion of the discourse, the man answered and said now here’s a marvelous thing, you don’t know from where He is and yet He’s opened my eyes. Do you get the impression from reading verse 30 and 31 and 32 of chapter 9 that the blind man really is turned on by the Pharisees leadership? Not at all, their leadership is suspect, they only attain their position by fear but they can’t generate allegiance because for some reason the blind man… we know the reason, but the blind man just doesn’t follow their leadership here. It’s a rejection.

John 10:6, [“This parable spoke Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spoke unto them.”] after Jesus got through carefully explaining all this they didn’t understand. That’s what always happens; these were autonomous authorities that thought they understood everything, they could tell the blind man what to do and all his neighbors and yet when the parable was spoken they did not understand it, which shows that they did not study Ezekiel 34.

All right, John 10:7, “Then said Jesus unto them again,” He has to repeat Himself, now He’s going to repeat Himself explicitly, He’ll change up a few little details but He’ll go through this thing until they understand it, “Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.” He changes a little bit, instead of say I went through the door, “I am the door.” “I am the door of the sheep. [8] All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.” He could be referring here to many men, like Judas the Galilean and others who were pseudo Messiahs that came to the nation and failed to get any kind of a hearing among true believers. You will notice an implication of verse 8, which we’ll apply later to our Church Age, that false teachers in history do not draw out elect people.

Now in some cases you’ll find a sheep all fouled up some place, but here is one of the sobering aspects of the implications of this claim. The sheep here… and understand by this point we have to deal with the issue, who are the sheep. The sheep are not saved people necessarily. Was the blind man saved when he was called by Jesus? Not at all; in the process of Jesus calling the blind man he was saved, but seeking after the sheep that are lost it’s not seeking after believers who are out of fellowship. It is seeking those who will become believers. Now you see the sheep here refer to the elect remnant; the elect remnant inside the nation Israel. Here’s the nation Israel, and within that nation there are a group of people who are believers and potential believers and it’s those people who respond to the claims of Christ.

What is the theme of the Gospel of John? “These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ.” Who is it that’s going to believe that Jesus is the Christ? The godly remnant of course and who is it that’s not going to believe that Jesus is the Christ? Those who have not been called. You see, it’s appeal to human volition, here, choose, on the basis of these facts, says John, but then very carefully he says under God’s sovereignty I know who is going to choose and I know who isn’t, God has it all planned. So Jesus calls His own sheep by name out from the folds like He called that blind man out of his blindness, a perfect picture of the Church Age, when we all are born blind spiritually and God calls to us and He gives us our sight spiritually and we become believers. That’s the picture you have as applied to the Church Age.

And you’ll see, then, that Jesus Christ is arguing in verse 8 that the robbers, that the thieves, that is those who falsely appeal to the elect will not have a following among the elect. And here’s the tragedy; what this is saying is that where you see false movements arise that draw off thousands and thousands of people, where you have some of the fastest rising religious sects today in the cult camp, what you are seeing is not the elect being deluded at all. What you see is the thieves and the robbers calling to sheep other than those who are those whom will respond to Christ. It’s a tragedy that you witness, as thousands of people are led into these false movements, and it would seem to indicate not necessarily and dogmatically in every case they’re beyond help, or else we wouldn’t bother to witness to them, but it is saying that the appeal that the false teacher has appeals to a latent apostasy in the heart, and this is why false teachers can be so popular so frequently, they appeal to the autonomous man in some way.

You can analyze every major cult this way. You can go, for example, to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and explain very easily why they’re so popular; they appeal to the craving we have for knowledge of the future and because many Christians have not taught the world the knowledge of the future we have it apostacized, we have people distorting this knowledge, people lusting after knowledge of the future, independently of their salvation. And so we get this thirst developed for any false teacher that will come along and give us a little popular eschatology or future things. Or you can take the cult of the Mormon Church, the Church of the Later Day Saints; in this case you have a tremendous appeal to man’s morality, to his righteousness, you have the slick operation and I don’t mean that in the bad sense of the word, I mean just that in the usual high quality type operation that the Mormon Church has, that appeals to man’s righteousness.

So where you have the robbers and the thieves you have them appealing to sheep other than those that are called out by the Word of God. It’s a little more serious, this is why John’s Gospel presents us with not do you believe Jesus, here, let me provide you with a little more evidence. It’s rather, let me present you with all the evidence of Jesus and then you judge yourself. Judge whether you are or are not going to respond to Christ; you just take your own destiny in your own hands by your response to Christ. You see, it’s totally reverse, the changes. Usually the Christian, we all try to be apologetic for Jesus, we try to put forward a good case and oftentimes we convey to the non-Christian world we have a beggar for a Jesus; Jesus has to get on His hands and knees to plead with men to believe in Him. It’s not that at all, Jesus in His magnificence presents Himself and His claims to man and He says you show your election by your act of belief in Me, and those of you who don’t, you show something else. So the trial isn’t on Jesus at all, the trial is on the men who see and who hear Christ’s claims. That’s where the trial is; not on Christ.

And then He says in John 10:9-10, a famous section, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved,” same word borrowed from Ezekiel, “he shall be saved,” that’s an unusual word for John, it’s usual for Paul but not for John, “and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” The sheep will respond to the only place they can get out of the corral, which is the door, Christ is that door, He is the way and therefore they cannot function apart from Him. They can’t go in and they can’t go out, they have to go out to get food, they have to go in to get shelter. They’re in the fold or they’re in the field, one or the other, but either way they have to go through Christ.

John 10:10, “The thief cometh not,” says Jesus, “but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. [11] I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” That life is the life predicted in Ezekiel 34 that has to do with the final millennial kingdom. It also has to do with the eternal state. It has to do in short with both spirit and body, therefore the resurrection is included in that. “I am come that you might have life, and have a surplus of it,” that’s what this is saying. What it’s saying is that if we accept, experientially as Christians, the shepherding of Jesus Christ over our souls we’re going to be thankful for the life that He’s give us. What’s the first and great commandment? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and we can produce that attitude in our souls if we perceive Jesus to be the shepherd who gives us life with a surplus so that we do not lack anything that we need. Christ is promising this in verse 10.

Verse 11, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” Now here Christ introduces something new. In the advance of the Gospel of John we’ve noticed a very cryptic progress. In chapter 3 Jesus said there was something called eternal life that would somehow be given when He was lifted up. And that’s all He said, life from being lifted up. There was something about life coming and it was going to come through Christ in some way. That’s all we knew back in John 3. When we advanced to chapter 6, remember “he that munches on My body and he that drinks My blood, he it is that has life.” What do we have there? We have a progress in the sense that now we understand the life is by consumption of Christ, somehow Christ will be consumed in giving us this life.

Now in John 10:11 He chooses this moment, His last public speech to make the dramatic announcement as to how this life will be given. It will be given in a strange way because it doesn’t do the flock of sheep any good for the shepherd to die because after he’s dead the animals become a prey and yet Christ seems to depart from good shepherding tactics and He says “the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep.” Now the resurrection is implied in that. How is the resurrection implied there? Because if the shepherd gives his life and he dies he’s not around to lead his sheep, is he? So that wouldn’t be a good shepherd in the complete sense of the word “good.” But if the shepherd were to die, secure something for his sheep and then come back to guide them, then he’s a good shepherd. So implicit in all of what Jesus says is the resurrection. He’s giving us more and more and more details about the coming death on the cross.

Now He transfers in John 10:12 and following, not to the fold but now to the field. This is the shepherd, the sheep, after they’ve been called from the fold, what He is going to do for them in the field. “But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees: and the wolf catches them, and scatters” the word “scatter” again a word borrowed from Ezekiel 34, “scatters the sheep. [13] The hireling flees, because he is an hireling, and cares not for the sheep. [14] I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and I am known by them.” Christ here shows that He is going to shepherd the sheep after they are called from the fold. Let’s go on further and then we can tie it together when we finish at verse 18. Verse 15, “As the Father knows me, even so I know the Father: and I lay down My life for the sheep.” Now what He’s saying here is that Jesus Christ is related to His Father, Jesus Christ is related to the sheep. This relationship between Christ and the sheep is somewhat like the relationship between Christ and the Father. How is that? It is a relationship that is spiritually perceived. I don’t mean intuitively, I don’t mean in some irrational way, I mean in a mysterious way a Christian, the born again Christian knows that he knows Christ. He knows that he knows Christ; there is that almost intuition in the depths of his soul, you know that you know Christ. And it’s this, almost direct spiritual perception that He’s talking about in verse 15.

Then He goes on and makes the announcement in John 10:16 about the other fold, “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. [17] Therefore does My Father love Me,” and so on. Now verse 16, what’s that talking about, that “other fold.” All right, we said the word “fold” refers to nation, one fold is Israel and so obviously the other fold is the Gentile nations. Unlike the book of Mormon and associated propaganda verse 16 is not talking about the inhabitants or North and South America. It includes the inhabitants of North and South America, and Europe, and Africa, and Asia, all continents are included in verse 16, not just North and South America, because the contrast is not between the eastern hemisphere and the western hemisphere, the contrast is between Jew and non-Jew. That is the other fold.

Therefore in John 10:17-18 and he goes on to develop this, notice, “17 Therefore does My Father love Me, because I lay down my life,” now if you just look at this, it looks like verse 16 is out of place, doesn’t it. In verse 15 He’s talking about dying for His sheep, then He seems to go off into a tangent in verse 16, then in verse 17 He comes back and starts talking about dying for the sheep again. Now when you see that happen in Scripture train yourself to ask questions of the text and ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate you as to why He wrote it this way. All right, “the other sheep I have … they must hear my voice.” How will the Gentiles hear Christ’s voice? They will only hear His post-crucifixion voice. If Christ did not die the gospel would not have been preached to us or to our ancestors. If Christ had been accepted by the nation Israel, His message was confined to the nation Israel, theoretically Christ would have been inaugurated into the kingdom and where would we be? But rather, because Israel rejected Messiah, causing His death, that worked together for good so that the Gentiles of the other fold hear. So the death accomplishes many things. Not only does it secure our [not sure of word] but historically the death of Christ caused a division within Judaism that then led to the spread of the gospel beyond the pail of Israel into our lands and our continents.

Then in John 10:17-18 He returns to the flow of His death and He then makes another announcement that’s startling. And theologians have debated over this one for many, many centuries. “Therefore does My Father love Me, because I lay down My life that I might take it again. [18] No man takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” A very mystical statement. Do you know what that’s saying? Christ was not killed on the cross. The Romans didn’t kill Christ; Christ chose the moment of His death. When Jesus Christ hung on the cross…see, this is going to amplify when we get into the death, a lot of you think of the cross of cross, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross and so on, which is a fantastic hymn, but I wonder how many of you realize the real stress point on the cross. You’ve probably heard all these gooey tails about how the nails are put through the palm, they’re actually through the wrist and they’re made of wood so they just kind of punch and ram their way through, and then imagine a few pegs drive through your feet that way, and it obviously wasn’t a very pleasant way to die. But many men were crucified; they crucified thousands of people in the ancient world. So the pain, physically, of the cross of Christ was not unique. Christ did suffer but the pain He bore physically was not the particular sufferings that He bore.

What was it, then, that Christ suffered so for? Christ faced tension on the cross and when we get into the narrative you’re going to notice something. He goes to the cross and they begin to offer Him a drink and He says no. What they’re offering Him is an anesthetic, they’re offering Him an anesthetic so that while He is bearing this (quote) “pain,” which we’ll define in a moment, He won’t feel it and Christ, while He’s dying on the cross rejects anesthesia so that He can think with His mind, because all during the time that He is dying for your sins He has to hold Himself alive. In other words, Jesus Christ is fighting to keep alive on the cross while He is bearing the judgment for our sin and only after those three hours of darkness are finished, after He has died for your sins and mine, then He says let me have a drink. Why does He do that? Because He’s all done and then He chooses the moment of His physical death and checks out and that’s it, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.” That is unique the Father is always said to come take our human spirits; when you die, when I die, God will take our human spirit from us, but when Christ dies He says “Father, into Thy hands,” now is the moment, I die. So Christ becomes the only member of the human race that chose the exact moment of His death.

Now again, think of why He did this. He chose the moment of His death so that He could choose the moment of His life. He had to sustain Himself on the cross while He was bearing sins. Now tie these two things together; I say He has to stay alive and I say that He has to choose the moment of His death; the moment of His death is under His control. Now put those two together and what do you have as far as a magnificent picture of Christ dying on the cross for you? All during those three hours it was within His power to destroy Himself. What a temptation, to be in pain, and you often hear people who are dying in agony scream out, my God, someone kill me, and this goes on. It goes on in battlefields. I remember one of the stories that Bob Thieme often tells about, some of the friends that he trained out in Arizona who were flying a B-17 back to Britain after bombing Germany and the thing came down on the runway with a full tank of gas and blew up. And these men were being fried alive inside and this man had to be on the outside and he could hear their screams as they screamed for someone to shoot them. Now that’s the pain and the tragedy of tremendous pain, that people will cry out for someone to kill me. Now all during the time Christ bore your sins He had it easy, it would be like those men in that burning B-17 having a loaded revolver, they didn’t have to cry for anybody to kill them, they could have pulled the trigger at any moment. Christ could have pulled the trigger at any moment, that’s how close it was. Christ didn’t have to say My God, when are You going to kill Me, He could have killed Himself any time. But He chose to stay alive long enough so that as the sins were piled on top of the cross, everyone of those was borne; it was an act of Jesus Christ’s own choice.

That’s why these verses that seem to be so innocently tucked in the middle of this great shepherd discourse are so extremely powerful. They will be answered, verses 17-18, by another verse later on when John goes to describe the crucifixion. Verse 18 is there to prepare you for the great scene when Christ says “into Thy hands I commend My spirit,” active voice, not Father take My spirit, I do it. So this sets up for a tremendous understanding of what it was to die for the sins of the world.

Now let’s tie this together and apply it to the Christian era. The shepherd is obviously Christ; fold one is Israel; fold two is the Gentiles; the one flock is the Church, not known and revealed in detail here but we know later on became the church, all people called out. Now let’s go back to the very beginning and what did I say the shepherd was a picture of? The King, and so when Christ announces that He is King over Israel, but not only over Israel but King over the Gentiles, those sheep of the other fold, what is He saying but I am King of Kings and Lord of Lords? It is His highest claim to be King over the sheep from all the folds. The claim to be the good shepherd is the claim to be King of Kings, King over all Kings, both Jew and Gentile; that’s the claim.

Now let’s see if we can apply this. We showed you some passages out of the Old Testament where God condemned negligent shepherds. Now let’s ask ourselves, after we’ve gone through this text, at least 18 verses of it, ask ourselves if we really buy this, whether we really believe that today, tonight, the Lord Jesus Christ is our shepherd. Now if we buy it, and if we’ve understood correctly John 10, this carries certain implications. A shepherd cares for His sheep, sometimes roughly but always cares for his sheep. Now if you are trusting tonight you ought to be trusting the fact that the shepherd cares for you. Someone cares for you and Peter tells you in 1 Peter 5:7 what to do if you buy this; if you really buy that Christ is your shepherd you will cast your care upon Him. That’s an immediate application of the doctrine of the great shepherd, that this great shepherd is the King of Kings and He is fully sufficient to every problem you’ll ever have. You can be under the pile on the campus, you can be under the pile in personal relationships, in your marriage, in your home, on your job, wherever you may be, you may be buried. But does Jesus Christ care? Yes. You see, every time we worry, every time we say well Lord, I know that’s what the Bible says but…. Every time we’ve done that we’ve essentially said I dismiss You as my shepherd, You are a negligent shepherd. You see, it’s quite an implication when we reject the promises of the Word of God.

Let’s take some illustrations of where we ought to be trusting Christ as the great shepherd. Are we trusting Him with the sufferings in our life. The lambs and the sheep in the flock would have to trust the shepherd when he bound them. They’d break their leg and he’d work with them, put a cast on it, the sheep looks down, what the heck is this he put on me, I can’t walk with this on. But he would have to actively trust that the shepherd knew what he was doing in fact. And so therefore do we trust in His shepherding in times of suffering.

Do we trust in His shepherding in the way He has appointed under-shepherds in local churches or are we busy because we doubt the efficacy of the local church, busy setting up one Christian organization after another to replace the local church, or to take precedence over the local church. If you are, you’re not trusting the great shepherd because the great shepherd has his own system for shepherding and that system involves local churches. Part of the deacon’s job is to be an under shepherd, he helps the shepherding in God’s ordained system. And you’ll never know whether you have the gift of administration or anything else unless you try. Don’t think you have to have 85 hours of college credit before you can be on the board of deacons. Some of the best men on the board of deacons who became “best” under the pressure of having to face the responsibility of the board. The responsibility built them as Christian men. It caused them some stress and some strain but it built them as Christian men. Don’t take the pious little excuse, well I’m not qualified. Maybe that’s true, if that is, okay, but don’t let that be a false excuse. If this flock is to be shepherded properly I can’t be the only one involved in the shepherding, it’s too big, there are too many details and my policy always if there’s not enough people to shepherd I just start cutting out one activity after another until we get it down to manageable size and that’s the alternative. This is not a threat on any male voting member of this flock; all I’m saying is that’s realism. If you go back there and find out there’s no toilet paper in the john, well, maybe that’s one of the places we cut out.

Let’s go to some other areas a little bit more devotional than those. I often find in counseling that this business of trusting in Christ as shepherd often breaks down at the point of discerning God’s will for your life. Often times you coast and you cruise until you get yourself in a position at the end of the semester, or you get fired from a job, and then all of a sudden, wham, what do I do now, and you rush around 80 miles an hour trying to find something desperately. In this situation one of the first things you’re going to have to do is you’re going to have to relax. It’s hard; that’s the least time that you’ll ever want to relax but you’re never going to find God’s will for your life because what’s going to happen, and it happens every time, it seems like people hop at the wrong thing. They get into a crisis where they’ve got to make a choice and because they’re overanxious they jump and they leap in the wrong direction and then we have a big long mess trying to clean up because someone made a premature decision; they didn’t wait, they didn’t trust. Well gosh, I’m going to starve to death. You’re not going to starve to death, you can go out and put a peanut butter sandwich in your mouth; relax, put the Word of God first. God will promote, do we believe that Christ is the shepherd.

Some of you are panicking in the area of money; this is going to become an increasing problem as inflation escalates, as it will. Do we trust Christ as the shepherd to provide us in this area. There are numerous areas, I could go on and on and on about areas to trust in our shepherd, if we believe that He is the shepherd. We could go on and argue all night on applications for the non-Christian but we won’t, I’ll just draw it to a close by this final challenge. If you are here without Christ and you have never trusted in Him, as you have been exposed to the character of Christy through the Word tonight, if the Holy Spirit is doing a work in your heart you will see this gel. This will make sense to you, maybe it’s never made sense before. I’m not asking for an emotional response, I’m simply saying that if you are here without Christ and it makes sense that the God of the Bible is there, that your major problem with Him is moral revolt and rebellion against His authority and that as you saw from Christ’s crucifixion tonight that’s the only way, and you believe that is the only way, then talk to me after the service or talk with a Christian friend. But this is a matter of great seriousness, whether we respond to what we see of Christ’s character. Shall we bow our heads….