The Shepherd Who Cares (John 11:10-16) with Ken Lesta

It is good to be back here with the friends and family from Emmanuel Baptist Church and to have this opportunity of opening God's word and sharing it with you today.

You are in our prayers often.

You are in our hearts always, so many of you.

What a beautiful hymn to begin what will be a message looking at the Good Shepherd.

As I prayed about what I should begin, what I should speak on this morning, I wanted something that challenges us, but especially encourages us and comforts us in our everyday life.

It's something where I'm at in life, and so something that we all need at different times.

And so my mind went to the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the good shepherd who so deeply cares for us.

Perhaps the best known chapter in all of the Bible would be Psalm twenty three.

It's known as the shepherd's psalm.

Most of us can say its first verse, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

We might wonder why such a psalm about shepherding still touches such a spiritual and emotional cord deep within the hearts of tens of millions of Christians across this world, especially since we in this modern Western world no longer live in an agrarian or pastoral society, one that is used to sheep and shepherds.

But even though probably we have never met a real shepherd, and it may even be that you've never even met a live sheep, yet our hearts long for what we perceive as being the care of a shepherd towards his sheep, as he leads his sheep, as he guides them, as he provides for them, as he protects them as they go through life's trials and storms.

In John chapter 10, Jesus is that good shepherd who so deeply cares.

John 10 · chapter mention

Shall we pray as we consider God's word?

Our Heavenly Father, how we thank you for your word.

Your word tells us who you are, the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sovereign God.

It tells us of the pathway to come to find eternal life, and it's in your Son, the one who is called the Good Shepherd.

And so would you help me as I share your word?

Would you minister your grace to our hearts?

Help me to speak truth.

And Father, help us to receive it, to be challenged, to be encouraged, to be comforted.

You know where we're at.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you haven't already done so, would you please turn in your Bibles to John's Gospel chapter 10.

To give you the immediate context of the words that I will be reading, the words of Jesus in verse 11, Jesus has just confronted the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders in Jerusalem, who in John's Gospel chapter 9 had just banished, excommunicated from the temple, a man who had been blind, but Jesus had healed him on the Sabbath day.

It was God's plan that these religious leaders would be the shepherds of Israel, the spiritual carers for God's flock, the people of Israel.

These leaders had been appointed by God to care for the people, but their true interests, their true heart was seen in how they now had cast out the once blind man, banishing him from the temple.

I mean what kind of caring shepherd would cast out his sheep and drive them away.

In contrast, we hear the words of the Lord Jesus in verses eleven through to sixteen.

He says, I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees.

And the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.

The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep.

I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep, and am known by my own.

As the Father knows me, even so I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep, and other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd.

I'd like for us to look closely at the Lord Jesus in this passage.

He is the shepherd who so deeply cares.

And I want us to ask that question, what should this mean to me today?

How should this encourage me?

How should it challenge me?

Three times in the six verses that I read, Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd.

He doesn't say I am a good shepherd, one of many possibilities, but the good shepherd the one who is from God, the one who was promised by God, the one who alone is truly good, a word that means noble, beautiful, good in contrast to all that is unlovely and all that is tainted.

He is totally and always good, and he cares for his people, his sheep.

The passage before us gives us at least three reasons why Jesus is indeed the good shepherd, the shepherd who deeply cares for those sheep, and for you and for me today.

First, as we look at this passage, we learn that Jesus is the good shepherd who loves his sheep.

We read there in verse 11 the words of Jesus, I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

As Jesus is speaking, there amongst the crowd are the religious leaders, the Pharisees, who were supposed to be Israel's caring shepherds.

And yet, as mentioned earlier, they'd already cast out that blind, now healed man for no fault of his own.

They cared nothing for that man at all.

And yet the depth of Christ's loving care is seen not simply in healing that once blind man, but as he says in verse 11, the fact that he says, I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

Soon, recorded in John 15, verse 13, Jesus would say, Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.

John 15:13

And yet Jesus, the good shepherd, he would do that for us, not those who were his friends, but those who once were his enemies, those who were despisers of the cross, those who ignored him and cursed using his name, who had no thoughts towards him, he would give his life for us.

Without question, a faithful shepherd would be willing to risk his life to protect his sheep from robbers or wild animals such as wolves.

But Jesus goes far beyond the risking of his life.

He goes down where he purposely, sacrificially gave his life for his sheep.

That word in verse eleven that is translated to give is a word that is translated in verses 15 and 18.

The very same word to lay down, to lay down his life.

He gives his life in that he lays it down, and the sense of that word is that he lays it down very carefully, purposefully.

It's like laying down a blanket upon the ground or laying a body in a tomb, deliberately, carefully, lovingly.

And he did that for me.

He laid down his life.

No one took it from him, but he laid down his life for you and for me.

That's how much you are loved, and I am loved by that good shepherd.

And if Jesus would do that for you, then don't ever doubt that he loves and cares for you, whatever situation you find yourself in, no matter what struggles you're facing, no matter what pain you feel, no matter how lonely you may feel at times, there is no greater love than the love of the Good Shepherd towards you.

We see the depth of Christ's loving care.

But in our passage, we also see the disparity in loving care as seen between the actions of the Pharisees, the hirelings, as Jesus calls them, and the true shepherd.

And he's aiming this directly at the religious leaders that are listening in.

Jesus says in verses twelve and thirteen, after calling himself the good shepherd, he says, But a hireling.

He who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees.

And the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.

The hireling flees because he is a hireling, and he does not care about the sheep.

The hireling, the hired man, doesn't have the same commitment as the owner of the sheep.

When the hireling sees a wolf coming, he doesn't think about the lives of the sheep, but he thinks about his own life and he flees.

But in contrast, Jesus is the true shepherd, the good shepherd, the one to whom we belong.

He we doubly belong to him because he is our creator, he has made us.

But also Acts 20, verse 28 says he has purchased us with his own blood.

Acts 20:28

We are doubly his.

He will never leave us, he will never forsake us.

As we mentioned, the Jewish leaders of the day, they had no shepherd's heart.

They were hirelings.

They had used the sheep, they had fed themselves from the flock of sheep, but they had no real care for them.

I must say I'm thankful that here at Emmanuel Baptist Church for the fifty plus years that we have existed, God has given us pastors who genuinely care, under shepherds who love the sheep.

But any shepherd, any pastor in any pulkrit, pulpit across this world, who doesn't love his sheep but takes that position for status or for money, that person is nothing but a hireling.

The true shepherd sacrifices his life and pours his life into the sheep.

That is the sacrifice of the good shepherd, the Lord Jesus.

His love is infinitely greater than the love of any pastor or of any person.

Jesus is the good shepherd who loves his sheep.

But also in our passage we learn that Jesus is the good shepherd who knows his sheep.

Verse fourteen.

Jesus says, I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep.

The sense of this word that is translated know, to know someone, ginosco, is that of a very personal, experiential, intimate knowledge.

For instance, most of us can say that we know hundreds of people by name, but for most of us, there are very few that you and I know deeply in any sense of depth.

Yet the Good Shepherd knows his sheep, every one of us in the most deep way possible.

I love Psalm 139.

We read, O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.

You know my sitting down and my rising up.

You understand my thoughts afar off.

You comprehend my path and my lying down.

You are acquainted with all my ways.

The Lord knows deeply everything about us, and there are things that we would not want anyone else to know about our lives, maybe our thoughts, our past, and yet he knows everything about those things, and he forgives us in Christ, and he loves us.

So what does the Good Shepherd know about us?

Well, first of all, he knows our names, each one of us personally.

In verse 3 of John 10, Jesus as the Good Shepherd also calls himself the doorkeeper.

And that used to confuse me as a young preacher, as a young Christian, rather.

But in a sheepfold, you normally didn't have a door to the sheepfold, you would have a gap between the rocks or the shrubbery that was enclosing the sheep.

And the shepherd himself would sleep in that door.

He became the door and the doorkeeper.

He slept there in that gap, so that no wild animal could get in and no sheep could exit to get lost.

And yet verse three says that the shepherd calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out of the fold.

That's so very different from people that are shepherds today who have sheep stations.

They drive their sheep, they hope that most of them live on, but they don't build a relationship with their sheep.

But the ancient shepherd did have that relationship.

He lived with them.

He knew each sheep personally, he knew their personality.

He would in most many cases know individual bleating of sheep.

He knew which ones were stragglers, which ones would get lost.

He knew the unique scars that some of them had gained along life's way.

In a similar way, the Good Shepherd knows us.

You are precious to him.

He knows you as an individual by name.

For the first twelve years of my life, I grew up in England, and my father was head dairyman of a dairy farm, but also would have show cattle that he would show across all of England.

To me, the British Frisian cows were just black and white cows.

And in most cases, they all looked exactly the same.

But to my father, he could call each one by name.

He knew their history, he knew how much feed to give them, he knew their needs.

And I remember as a boy walking through the fields with my father, and the dairy cattle would follow him, and he would know them.

Of course, the Lord Jesus knows us infinitely more than any man might know his cattle or his sheep or even one another.

Even the very hairs on our head, the Bible said, are numbered.

You are important to the good shepherd.

He knows you by name.

And he loves you.

The Lord Jesus not only knows us by name, he knows us by nature.

Around 200 times in these scriptures, those who know the Lord God are called His sheep.

And when you think about it, what an apt title to describe our nature.

So what are sheep like?

Well, think of it this way: if we were going to start an Emmanuel Baptist Church soccer team, would we call ourselves?

We are the Emmanuel Baptist Church sheep.

Causes terror for everybody every other team that comes along.

They want to be tigers and bears and eagles, not sheep.

Because the sheep is not powerful.

We want to be named not as something a passive, dependent, weak blob of wool, but God calls us his sheep because he knows our nature.

Sheep all too easily go astray.

That lovely passage in Isaiah 53 of Christ verse 6 also speaks about us.

All we like sheep have gone astray.

Sheep are timid, overall defenseless, thoroughly dependent on the shepherd, and of course they all too often follow the flock.

Jesus, the good shepherd, knows exactly what we are like.

I still am often touched by the words of the songwriter.

Prone to leave the God I love.

Take my heart, O take and seal it.

Seal it for your courts above.

I see that proneness to wander even in me after all these years of ministry and walking as a Christian.

But yet I find comfort in The words of Psalm 103, verse 14, for he knows our frame.

Psalms 103:14

That is, he understands our constitution, he understands our nature, he remembers that we are dust.

We're weak.

We're passing.

We struggle.

And therefore, he deals with us on the basis of his mercy.

He's the shepherd who deeply cares.

He's the shepherd who knows our names.

He knows our nature.

And the Bible says also he knows our needs, our every need.

Throughout this passage, the shepherd's care for his sheep is repeated over and over again.

In verse three, he leads out his sheep, he walks with them to places of pasture.

In verse nine, the good shepherd lays down across the door of the sheepfold.

And while he's there, he protects the sheep as they go in and out and find pasture.

I think the idea of this reference to saying that he is there and his sheep go in and out.

They go in to find in the Good Shepherd a place of safety and security.

And they go out and he leads them into pastures and cares for every provision that they might need.

Day and night the Good Shepherd knows our every need.

For those who are lost, He seeks them.

For those who are weak and struggling, He carries them in His bosom.

He knows every struggle, every hurt, and He reaches out to us where we are at.

You don't have to get it together to first come to Jesus.

He comes to you.

He knows our every need.

And it's comforting to know that.

The Good Shepherd knows us.

He knows our names, he knows our needs.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who loves his sheep.

He's the Good Shepherd who knows his sheep.

But also He's the Good Shepherd who unites his sheep.

We read in verses fifteen and sixteen once more Jesus' words.

And I lay down my life for the sheep, and other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.

Then also I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and they will be one flock and one shepherd.

The good shepherd is one who unites his sheep.

He's continuing to use this imagery of a shepherd and sheep, but of course he's speaking about people, us.

We learn of the compassion of the great shepherd, that it's not simply for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, a term that Jesus uses such as in Matthew ten, verse six, but his compassion is for all of humanity, for we all need a shepherd, the shepherd, the good shepherd, the Lord Jesus.

Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.

Them also I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and they will be one flock and one shepherd.

Jesus speaks of other sheep from a different fold, whom he would reach out to and join together with the flock of Israel.

And he's speaking here, I believe, of the Gentiles, the non-Jewish nations, of us who now believe, who would join with those who from Israel who believe, who would be brought together as one flock and one fold.

It's a reference to the church made up of Jew and Gentile who would trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one great shepherd.

And this would have been a radical concept to all who were listening to Jesus at that time.

The Pharisees, the crowd, and even his own disciples would have struggled with the thought that the Gentiles would be brought in.

Most Jewish people despised the Gentiles and their way of living.

And yet there will be one flock, no distinguishing nationalities, no special race, no denominational tags, but one flock of all who are saved by placing their faith in the good shepherd who laid down his life for them and shed his blood for them, who became the sacrifice for our sins.

My prayer is that we might have the same compassion as the Lord Jesus to those who live around us, who know almost nothing about Jesus and His love and care for them, who so desperately need Him.

Might we pray for them and live our lives before them as those who love the Lord Jesus, and as God gives opportunity, share that He can be their shepherd too.

The compassion of the Good Shepherd.

But our passage also speaks about the characteristics of the Good Shepherd's true sheep.

How should we live if we are genuinely the sheep of the Good Shepherd?

How does someone know if they are part of God's true sheep?

Watched over, protected by, and cared for by the Good Shepherd.

A passage suggests that there are several clear evidences that someone is genuinely saved and belongs to Christ.

The first evidence is where we can say with clarity that we know Jesus the Good Shepherd.

Jesus says in verse 14, I am the Good Shepherd and I know my sheep and am known by my own.

Did you catch that?

I am known by my own.

This word to know, as mentioned earlier, speaks of a personal, intimate, experiential knowledge.

Standing around Jesus and listening were a variety of people.

There were those who are Jesus' disciples.

There were lots of curious onlookers listening in.

And of course the Pharisees, the religious leaders who in verses 19 through 21 of John's Gospel chapter 10 will ridicule Jesus and say that he is demonic and mad.

God's true sheep know the Good Shepherd.

So do you know the Lord Jesus?

Do you know the eternal Son of God?

Do you know the one who laid down his life for your sins?

Who is the Good Shepherd to you?

Do you know him and you're sure that you know him as your Savior, as the one you're trusting in, as the one who bore your sins on Calvary?

A second characteristic of those who belong to the Good Shepherd is not only that they know him, but they hear the Good Shepherd's voice, and they follow him.

Hear the words of Jesus in verse 27.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and what do they do?

They follow me.

In the ancient world it was common for several flock flocks of sheep to mingle along the road as the shepherds met each other with their flocks, or even at night time there would be a large fold, especially in the valleys, and several shepherds together would put all of the flocks of sheep together.

And yet, at the sound of the shepherd's voice, it could even just be a clicking of the tongue.

The sheep knew his voice, and each of the sheep belonged to each individual shepherd, they would immediately, leaving the other sheep behind.

They responded to the shepherd's voice.

How about us?

Do we listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd?

Do we follow him?

There are so many voices that we could listen to in this modern world, most of them calling us into the very wrong direction.

The voice of this secular world calls us to pursue its goals, to love its entertainment, to live out its morals, calling us to live for ourselves, not for the Savior who loves us, to have just enough of Christ to say, I have hope that I won't go to hell, but really we're living for ourselves.

Those voices lead us dangerously towards death.

But do we listen to the Good Shepherd?

Do we pick up God's word and read it to hear the voice of God just quietly by his Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts?

Do we let God's word enter our hearts and change us?

Do I follow Jesus, keeping my eyes on the Good Shepherd?

Please don't listen to the wrong voices.

But in closing, I want you to think about the commitment of the Good Shepherd towards his sheep, to those who put their trust in him.

It's recorded in John chapter 10, we'll read verses 27 and 28.

John 10 · chapter mention

Jesus says, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.

What a commitment here.

Just think that he offers to everyone who will put their trust in him and believe that he, the good shepherd, laid down his life for his sheep.

For those who will believe that he gives to them, he offers to them this gift of eternal life, to remove our rightful condemnation, so that we no longer are perishing, but he gives us a new heart and a new life and a new desire, and it begins with forgiveness of our sins and a new spiritual life that looks towards the Good Shepherd and wants to follow Him and hear Him and live for Him.

And one day we'll stand before the eternal Holy God in the righteousness of the Good Shepherd, the one who gave his life for us.

That is a secure hope.

For the Good Shepherd holds us firmly in his loving and his own omnipotent hand.

Jesus is indeed the Good Shepherd who cares for us, the Good Shepherd who loves us, who knows us intimately and doesn't turn us away, who unites us together and securely keeps us safe.

As the chief shepherd who is coming again and forever we will be shepherded by the Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus.

I wonder, do you know this, Jesus?

Maybe you've been thinking about it, maybe you've struggled in your life.

Which direction are you walking in?

Listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd and put your trust in Him.

He comes to you where you're at, and you need to just cry out to Him and ask for His cleansing, His forgiveness, and believe on the Lord Jesus.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for our lovely shepherd, your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, the good shepherd who leads us day by day, who knows everything about us and loves us so dearly.

The good shepherd who one day will come back for his church for us.

And until that day, help us to walk in such a way that we hear his voice, that we follow and give honor to his name.

We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.