Well, I want to invite you to turn with me to John chapter 10, John chapter 10 in your Pew Bibles, that's page 800 and something, it's in your worship God. I can't remember what it is, I think 867 or something like that. John chapter 10 that we'll be looking at this morning, this is one of my favorite passages of Scripture. And the reason why is because I think it puts Jesus on full display, it puts something about who he is on display in a very personal, very relational, very gorgeous sense, and it also displays something about us. It brings us an acute awareness of who we are, what our natural disposition is and how that all kind of comes to pass in the course of our normal life and how it relates to who we are in Jesus Christ. So it's a beautiful passage, it's a bit of a long passage and I know how easy it is to tune out after about three or four verses into reading of it, but I really want you to cue into this because I think there's a lot to be gleaned from it. So let's take a moment to read it now in John chapter 10 beginning in verse 1. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief in a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep, to him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he is brought out all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him for they know his voice, a stranger they will not follow but they will flee from him for they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure of speech Jesus used with them but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So Jesus again said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, he who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me just as the father knows me and I know the father. I lay down my life for the sheep and I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd for this reason. The father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down to 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 that was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said he has a demon and is insane. Why listen to him? Others said these are not the words of one who was oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind? At that time the feast of dedication took place to Jerusalem. It was winter and Jesus was walking in the temple and the colonate of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you were the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you and you do not believe. The works that I do in my father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. The sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish. And no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of their father's hand. I and the father are one. The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them. I have shown you many good works from the father. For which of them are you going to stone me? The Jews answered him. It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy. Because you, being a man, make yourself God. Jesus answered them. Is it not written in your law? I said, you are gods? If he called them gods whom the word of God came and scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him who the father consecrated and sent into the world, you are blaspheming because I said, I am the son of God. If I am not doing the works of my father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the father is in me and I am in the father, again, they sought to arrest him. But he escaped from their hands. He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing it first and there he remained. And many came to him and they said, John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true and many believed him there. Amen. This is God's holy, inspired, and an errant word and we ask this morning that he would write that word upon our hearts. Why don't I know what you think about pets? Some of you are pet people and some of you are not pet people. Some of you are dog people and some of you are cat people and some of you are nothing people kind of like me. I am not in the pets. We had a beagle growing up and she was adorable and sweet but she tore up the yard and she stunk the high heaven. And so I am not eager to get another pet, but my wife loves pets. So this is one of those marital things that you get to deal with when you get married. She loves pets, she really a cat person. And recently we had this cat just show up to our house. It was sitting on the window seal of our kitchen and we were in the kitchen, we heard meow, meow, and we opened the window and there was this cat. And so Rebecca whose heart just bursts for love with any feline that there is out there gets a little bowl of water or milk and some tuna for this cat. And the cat is well fed, the cat is nourished and so the cat comes back every single night to our house. And eventually Rebecca opened the window and let the cat in the house. And it is all over after the cat gets in the house. And once the cat enters the house it is yours, I mean the cat becomes part of the family. So we are feeding this cat and we are buying flea collars for the cat. And the cat curls up with us on the sofa and watches the 10 o'clock news with us at night. Well unfortunately we found out that the cat belonged to our neighbor. So we had to give the cat back. And even for a non cat pet dog, any kind of person like me, yes there was a measure of sadness that occurred in the stone household as a result. Well Jesus is a sheep person. That is what he is spelling out for us here. Jesus is a sheep person and he loves his sheep. He loves the sheep to the point of death. In verse 15 we see that he lays down his life for the sheep. That is how much he treasures the sheep. The love that any of us have for any other person or any other pet doesn't even begin to compare for the love that Jesus has for his sheep. And the main point that Jesus is trying to get us to see here in John chapter 10 is that he is the only door through which his sheep must enter in order to enjoy a rich, satisfying, protecting, saving, abundant love of God. He's the only door. It's the same message that Jesus is going to spell out for us when we get to John chapter 14 in a few weeks where he gives us that famous verse in John 146 where he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father but through me. So he's suggesting that there is an exclusivity to him. If you want to have that salvation, if you want to have that peace with God, that security, that reconciliation to God where there was one hostility, then he is the door through which people must enter. And only those who enter the door of him have the right to be called sheep. His sheep, the one for whom he laid down his life. And so he uses this metaphor for the people of God, for the church, for his people of the sheep. And quite frankly, he's not exactly flattering us when he calls us sheep. There's sheep are some of the stupidest animals on the planet. I mean, they are full-fledged dumb. Their dipstick does not touch the oil. These animals will follow each other off of a cliff. They will literally follow each other off of a cliff. They're highly distracted. When they fall down, they can't get up. They need one of those medical alert things. They cannot take care of themselves at all. They'll be part of a flock of sheep, and they will get distracted by something that they see on the side. And they will wander off, and they'll have no idea how to get back into the fold. Not at all. And so the shepherd is always having to leave these other sheep and go chase down the sheep that's wandering off. And he's saying church, that that's who we are. And there's nothing we can do about it. We were born that way. It's part of our inherent nature. That's what we're like. And no amount of education or being raised right or any of that other stuff can somehow make amends for the fact that we are sheep at the very core of our being. Whether we want to admit that or not, it's the reality for us. I don't know of any professional sports team or college team, or even high school team where the mascot is the sheep. I mean, I don't know any of them. There's the University of Delaware Blue Hins. There's the Texas Christian Horn frogs. My favorite, the University of California Santa Cruz banana slugs. If you know anything about Santa Cruz, it will not surprise you that someone there called the banana slugs. But no one calls their team the sheep. No one. The reason why is because sheep are remarkably easy to attack. I mean, you can take them down. They're easy to just pummel, and they pose no threat to anybody. You have a greater opportunity of getting hurt by a poodle than you do than being hurt by a sheep. That's why when you go to the zoo, the only animals that you can actually touch are sheep. That's where you send your two-year-old. And so the sheep are so prone to attack. They're so vulnerable. And he's saying this is who we are. And he's saying that there are thieves, and there are wolves out there. And there are hired hands who are hired to take care of the sheep, but they don't really care much for the sheep. They're renters. You know, renters are. If you have a property and you rent it out, you can pretty much count on the fact that it's going to be damaged in some way, because they don't own the place. They don't ultimately care for it like you care for it. And so there are all of these elements out there. They're coming out there to attack and subvert the sheep. The sheep would typically be rounded up into a pin. There would be a fence that would be built around them. They would be heard into a pin. And there would be one door through which the sheep could enter, only one door. And the shepherd would leave them into the pin through that door. And if there was a thief that would come and try to steal the sheep, the thief wouldn't bother to enter through the door. The thief would climb the fence and seek to rob the sheep. That's what they would do. And then if there was a hired hand leading the sheep in some respect, when the wolves came, when there was some kind of external threat that came upon the sheep, what would he do? He would abandon them because they're not his own. He cares much, much more about his own life, about his own safety than he cares about the safety of the sheep. And so what in the world does this have to do with us? What it has to do with us is this, it's that you and I are under a constant attack from the predatory aspects of the world that seek to hone in on our areas of weakness. So it's going on, let me say it again, we are under a constant attack, it is a wartime that we're in. This is not peacetime, this is wartime, and we're under constant attack from influences within ourselves and from the outside that are seeking to attack us at the point of our very identity in Christ. That's what's going on, it probably happened this morning in your life. It definitely happened this week in all of our lives and it will definitely happen later today in this upcoming week in our lives, it's the reality of our existence. They feed upon our desire, our inherent desire to abandon the true shepherd who really cares for our soul, who really cares for our being. They feed upon our desires to do our own thing, to chase after things that will ultimately use us and abuse us and steal and kill and destroy us and ultimately lead us to death. I think there's an old testament background to this passage that you really need to key in on and it comes from Ezekiel chapter 34. In fact, I want to just invite you and your Bibles to turn there with me. First I do know the page of, it's page 722 in your Pew Bible. I just want to show you a couple of verses here, this is exceptionally important because the people of God, the people of Israel, the sheep, and that time they were led by spiritual leaders who were known as shepherds, and those shepherds were using the people of God to their own ends. So the prophet Ezekiel has some harsh words for these shepherds, harsh words for him. And this is what he says beginning in verse 2, I just want to read a couple of these verses here. This is what he says, speaking the words of God in Ezekiel 34 verse 2, he says, aw, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves, should not shepherds feed the sheep, you eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones but you do not feed the sheep, the weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd and they became food for all the wild beasts, my sheep were scattered, they wandered all over the mountains and on every high hill, my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth with none to search or seek for them. Do you know who he's speaking to here? He's speaking to pastors, he's speaking to elders, to overseers, to the leadership of the people of God, of the church, a professor of mine in seminary encouraged me to read this passage every single week of my ministry. Read it once a week, and I don't do that, I do read it once or twice a month because it is an acute reminder that the church is not only full of hurting, straying, burdened weak into people who are constantly under attack, but it's a message to those of us who were overseers of the church, that we have the privilege and the responsibility of leading the sheep to the true shepherd, that's what we're to be about. And part of the ugly history of the church since the beginning of time is her continual subversion by her own leadership, the continual subversion of people's identity in Christ by her own leadership, and the fact that so many elders and pastors have been subtly undermining Christ in the lives of the people, has caused them to get them to build a definition of their lives upon something other than Christ and upon something other than the gospel, and happen so subtly. That's what the Pharisees were doing here, that's who Jesus is personally engaging with, personally challenging here. And I want to suggest you that in the 21st century, in America, the church is bogged down with loads and loads and loads of Pharisees who are actual leaders, pastors, elders in the church who are leading her off the cliff today in so many respects. So this is an imminently practical issue for us today. Let me explain a little bit about what I mean specifically. A couple years ago, I came across a mind-boggling study by a guy by the name of Christian Smith. He's a professor at Notre Dame University right now. And he did a study on the religious lives of American teenagers, and he concluded that the religion of America could be described as this in three words, moralistic, therapeutic deism, moralistic, therapeutic deism, and these are the contours of it, five of them, here's what they are. Number one, a God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth. Number two, God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as is taught in the Bible and by most other world religions. Number three, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Number four, God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. Number five, good people go to heaven when they die. And many people listening to that would say, sounds pretty good to me, I mean what's wrong with that? And that's the whole point. Because there's everything wrong with that, absolutely everything is wrong with that. There's enough truth in it to be wildly enticing. The Pharisees were always speaking a lot of truth, most of what they said was true. The overwhelming majority of what they said was true. And it is true that God does want people to be good and nice and fair to people. But when you get this truth detached from the gospel, what you get is a God of our own imagination. You get moralism detached from the gospel. You get a God whose purpose is to get you just to fulfill the things that you have already decided that you want for yourself. And it's a leading right off the cliff. It is not the gospel. That's what's so subtle about this thief that comes to kill and steal and destroy. Look, the thief does not come to you with scary hair and skull and crossbones tattoos all over his body. And a shirt that says Aussie Osborne kills on it, he doesn't come to you like that. The thief, the enemy comes to you dressed beautifully, attractive, something that you are wired to want to follow after. That's how he does it. He'll come to you in the form of someone that you trust. He can come to you in the form of someone who you trust to even lead you to the true shepherd, but who through laziness or infidelity to the scriptures or through manipulation or a desire to see you entertained first and foremost above all things or through capitulation to the trends of the culture and the name of evangelism or in terms of being relevant. Any of those things can come to you in that fashion and lead you away from Christ. And so I read this, I read what Jesus is saying here in John 10. I read what Ezekiel is saying in chapter 34 of his book and I think, wow, what an utterly convicting piercing message that that is. As I read it, and I read it as Darren Stone, minister of the gospel called by you as members of this congregation who you are trusting with your very own souls to direct you and lead you to the gospel and to Jesus Christ as a man who was approved by a plurality of elders hand laid on him or damed to the gospel ministry, taken vows to fulfill that office. And I also read it as Darren Stone, one of the sheep, one of those who has been called just like any other Christian into the fold to follow Jesus Christ as someone who has been passionately, deeply, profoundly loved by his Savior to the point of death. Those are the two perspectives that I read this set and there are two applications for you in one of them. Here's the first thing that I think that you need to keep in mind here. First is that I want to challenge each one of you. I seriously want to challenge each one of you to pray regularly for your elders in this congregation. Pray for myself, pray for John Cheney, pray for Chuck Pringle, pray for David Allen, pray for David Kuhnge, pray for us, that we would be faithful shepherds, that we would faithfully lead you to Christ, that we would love you, and pray for you, and serve you, and lay down our lives for you, so that you would grow into maturity in a depth of faith, to where you're really treasuring Jesus Christ above all things, who are standing in the gap for you. Pray that we would be those people, pray that God would raise up more men in this congregation to be faithful shepherds as well, that we would be people, that we would be men, that we would be elders, that we're living an ongoing personal repentance and faith and embracing of that gospel, and come alongside us and bring us encouragement, encourage us in that. We need that, there's a second thing, the second thing is that you need to remember as one of the sheep to tune in to the shepherd's voice, to tune in to it, to listen to him, to hear him, to listen to what he has to say, and to let that take deep roots within your heart. See, Jesus says that he knows the sheep, and he knows the sheep by name, and he calls them by name, but you know what else? The sheep know his voice. They're able to discern between the voice of the true shepherd and the voice of the thief. They're able to do that because they know this shepherd, they tune their ear to listen to him, so when a false shepherd comes along, when a thief comes along, they don't recognize that voice. They don't follow after that voice. That voice doesn't grab their soul, it doesn't grab their affections. The one that grabs their affections is the voice of the true shepherd. They're used to hearing that voice. They've spent time hearing that voice. They've intentionally sought after that voice, and so when they hear that voice, that's the voice that they desire to follow, not the voice of the one who has come to steal and kill and destroy. So listen to this shepherd. He's given you his word. He's given you 66 books. He's given you millions of words. He's given you everything you need to be equipped for faith in life, and he's given you the Holy Spirit to impress that word upon you, to grow you, to mature you, to bring you to that place of joy and rest in Christ in this shepherd. I should probably introduce the shepherd to you. So here we go, the shepherd. The shepherd loves the sheep. I painted a rather ugly picture of the sheep, a less than flattering picture of the sheep, but here's one thing that you need to know about the sheep. The sheep are tremendously valuable, sheep are tremendously valuable animals, and the shepherds love their sheep. Their whole life is wrapped up in their sheep. That's what their life is built upon. That's what they think about when they go to bed at night, and they think about when they wake up in the morning. They're thinking about their sheep. They're thinking about what's best for their sheep because the sheep are so valuable to them. That's why they are named, and the shepherd knows the sheep by name. You do not name an animal that is bound for the dinner table to you. These sheep, in this cultural context, they were not, they're not bound to become shishkabal. They're valuable in a different way. They're named. We have another neighbor that has a pet chicken named Loretta. Maybe if you live in the country, you have a pet chicken. I don't know. I've never lived in the country. We live in a neighborhood in the city, and they have a chicken. The chicken's name is Loretta, and that chicken is never going to turn into chicken catchatory for them. That chicken is their pet. They love that chicken like their pet. It has a name. Their affections are upon that chicken. And we have a name. Jesus knows us by, and he knows us personally, intimately, deeply, much better than we know ourselves. That's what the shepherd does. And so listen to me. We are helpless. We're distracted, and we're wandering. And yet at the same time, we're highly valued, and deeply loved by the shepherd. Do you know what the shepherd does for the sheep? The shepherd does everything for you. The shepherd just does everything for these helpless creatures. And that's what your shepherd does for you. He does so many things, and we don't have time to plumb the depths of all of that this morning. So I'm just going to point out three very quick ones before we finish up here. And here's what they are. He leads you. He seeks you out, and he dies for you. So the shepherd does. He leads. He seeks, and he dies. Let's look at his leading for just a minute. In the Western culture, shepherds drive their sheep. They drive them from behind. But in eastern cultures, in the ancient Near East even today, shepherds lead their sheep from the front. They're at the front of the sheep. That's how they're leading the sheep. And Jesus is at the front of our lives, and he's leading us, and he's pointing us to the fact that he is the source of satisfaction for our greatest needs. He's at the front of our lives, pointing us away from the things that would destroy us. Whatever we're going to go through, he goes through first, because he's in front of us. And listen, as a sheep, sometimes he is going to lead you down some seriously rocky paths, seriously rocky paths, down into a valley, down to a place that hurts, down into a painful place. But you have this assurance, Christian, and don't ever forget it, that he is going there before you. He has gone there before you. He is enduring the pain. He is enduring the challenge. He is enduring the struggle before you. He's going there with you in the midst of that. And I know that some of you are here this morning, and you are going through some of the most profound, heartbreaking, painful struggles you've ever known in your life. And Jesus wants you to remember that he's there with you in the midst of that. But he's going with you in the midst of that. He's not only going with you, he's going before you, and he's doing it because he loves you, because he's seeking to protect you, because he's seeking to drive you to himself, to those green pastures. I don't know how long the struggle is going to last in your life. You may go to the grave in 80 years from now, never getting out of the struggle. But he's there with you, and he's endured that pain far worse, far worse than any struggle that you can ever begin to imagine. He's there. His presence is there. We've discovered this when the disciples were in the boat, and Jesus walks in the water, and he jumps into their boat. He jumps into the context of their pain, and he refreshes them with his presence. That's what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit has a unique way of coming to you, and a very gracious, very personal, very unique way in the midst of your pain. And so he's leading you. Do you trust him for that? Do you believe that? Sometimes when he's leading you through the valley, or sometimes when things are even going well in your life, you're prone to wander away, though, aren't you? There's a great hymn, prone to wander. Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. That's true for every Christian, that that is our tendency to do that. And when he, we wander, Jesus seeks us out. He seeks us out. I already mentioned this, tons of sheep, one wanders off. Jesus goes and chases them down. But you know what a shepherd would do when he goes and seeks after a sheep that has wandered off? He has to go, the shepherd has to go to the sheep, and literally tackle the sheep to the ground, and tie up its legs, and pick it up, and put it over his shoulders, and take it back into the flock. Look y'all, when the sheep wander away, there's been a considerable amount of violence done to the sheep to get the sheep back into the fold. And so that's the way that it looks in our lives. So often we are prone to wander away. So much of the stuff of life is alluring to us, it's attractive to us. The world and the stuff of the world that actually destroys us. I told you this already, the enemy comes dressed beautifully. He's attractive to you, and so you want to wander off into that. And Jesus comes to you to bring you back into the fold, but sometimes it's painful. It hurts, it hurts a lot. You wander off again, and he has to come and tackle you to the ground and tie up your feet, and put them back, back up and bring you back in, and you do that a million times over and over, and it hurts.
If it hurts, that's a good thing. God's bringing you to an awareness of your sin. He's bringing you to an awareness of the fact that you've wandered off. He's still pursuing you, and bringing you back in. What you should be scared of is if the fact that there is a clear blatant ongoing, unrepentant sin in your life, and it doesn't bother you at all. It's not painful. And you have no interest in the fold. You have no interest in coming back. You don't sense any sense of being chased down. The thing we need to key in on here is that Jesus comes and he brings us back in, and it's that loving discipline that he brings to us to show us that he truly treasures us and he treasures us to the point of death. It's the last thing you need to see here. The shepherd lays down his life of sheep. He has the authority to do that. Jesus has the authority to do that. He was given the authority by the Father to do that, not for people in general, not just for anybody, but for his particular sheep. That shows you just how infinitely valuable you are to him. When those who are supposed to care for you abandon you, when the stuff of life there seeks to destroy you, the shepherd is coming to you and leading you and seeking after you and dying for you. And when Jesus dies, when the shepherd dies, he's not just displaying some good example, some kind of suicidal example of how much were loved by God. What his death actually is is a substitute. He's substituting himself for the position that we would be in if he had not mediated that. If he's not out in front, standing in front of us, protecting us from the darts, the flaming darts, the mortal darts of the enemy, then we would take that ourselves and we would endure the pain of death. We would endure eternal hell forever, but instead Jesus as the shepherd substitutes himself for us. He stands there. He takes it on himself. He takes our sin upon himself. It becomes his. He owns it. That's what becomes his. And he exchanges it for his grace, his righteousness, his protection. That's what he does for us in the gospel. And he sustains our souls as a result. Don't you remember the Psalm 23, that famous Psalm, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. See, she cannot lie down unless they're perfectly safe. That's true. They don't lie down unless they feel perfectly safe until the danger and the vulnerability has been removed. And Jesus Christ, our substitute, our good shepherd, has taken the sting of death away from us. That's why when we read Paul, he says, where O death is thy victory, where O death is thy sting, because Jesus has taken that for us and he's given us a new identity. He's always seeking out our best interests, always. So stop thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. It's not. He's the one that leads us to green pastures. He's the one that leads us beside the stillwater. And the green pastures are entered into by entering through his door, through faith alone. In the good shepherd alone. That's it. And then by continuing to gaze upon him, to rest in him, to follow him, to see the stuff coming at you that seeks to destroy you. And then by looking to the shepherd in order to find them all. That's what he does for you. And that's good news. And if you don't believe it, consider that an invitation this morning. Father, this is a beautiful passage. It humbles us down to our knees. It reminds us of our frailty, of our corruption, of our helplessness, and it reminds us of just how astonishingly beautiful you are, that you would come down and walk with us and lead us and protect us and guide us and pursue us even to the point of death so that we could be called your sheep, that can never be snatched out of your hand.
Lord, remind us of that. Let that be the theme of our lives, let that resonate within us as we go about our weak as we go about the tasks that you put before us. Let us remember that you are the good shepherd who has laid down his life for the sheep. Do that in our lives so that we may come to a complete enjoyment of you. And we pray this all in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.