Christmas Eve (For Now) | John 10:1-18

John chapter 10, beginning in verse 1.

John 10 · chapter mention

God's word says, Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and 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 has 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 said again 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 any one 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, who does not know his own 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, and 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 of my own accord.

I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.

This charge I have received from my Father.

Let's pray the Lord together this morning.

Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that our shepherd is the good shepherd.

Lord, we are skittish, frightened sheep.

We are defenseless to all of those that would come against us.

The only hope that we would have is that we would have a shepherd that would stand in the gap for us, that would lay himself out for us, that would defend us and fight for us and provide for us.

And in Jesus, we have all of that and so much more.

So, Father, as we come in to enjoy Christmas today, I pray that even more than that, we would enjoy the good shepherd today.

And that, Lord, we would hear his gentle call, we would hear his voice ringing in our ears, that it would thrill our hearts, and that we would follow after him.

We ask these things now in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

I like that.

When I was growing up, Christmas Eve was a big night for us.

So my family, my parents, they typically gave us our nicest best gift on Christmas morning.

But on Christmas Eve, they would give kind of like appetizer gifts that we all got to open.

And when you opened the appetizer gifts, if the appetizer gifts were good, then you knew Christmas morning was gonna be epic.

I actually think that as we await the return of Jesus, this is a really good view way for us to view the Christian life.

That in Jesus' first advent, what he came to do is he came to provide for us the first fruits of the gifts that he's going to give to us.

The appetizer gifts.

That there's a real sense that until Jesus returns, that we as the people of God are always living on Christmas Eve.

Think about the gifts that we've already been given.

You have already been forgiven of your sins.

Your future is already secure.

You already have possession of the Holy Spirit who is refining you and transforming you and giving comforting you and applying the peace of your salvation to you.

These are the gifts that you already have.

And it's just Christmas Eve.

Can you even conceive how good Christmas morning is gonna be when Christ returns and we have all of the gifts in totality?

I think this is what he's getting at in our text this morning in John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

He says there, and this is our Advent verse.

You'll remember, Advent means coming.

He says, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I came.

My Advent is because that you may have life and you may have it abundantly.

That is that what we understand is that Jesus came to restore human flourishing.

He came so that we could enjoy life in the way that God intended for life to be enjoyed before sin came into the world.

Of course, the difficulty with that is that we haven't received that gift in total yet, have we?

We're living in Christmas Eve.

We've experienced the provision of the salvation, we've experienced the provision of the Spirit, but we haven't experienced the provision of total human flourishing because of the difficulties of our lives.

But I think what he's teaching his disciples that is that even in the meantime, even while we're living in Christmas Eve, we have enough of the gifts of God that we can go ahead and begin enjoying the life that's been given to us.

That we can even now begin experiencing by faith the abundant life that has been provided to us by Jesus.

And so in this final Sunday before Christmas, what I want us to think about is I want us to think about all of the ways that Jesus has provided for us so that we can have an abundant life, not on Christmas Day, but on Christmas Eve, while we await the coming of our Savior.

The first way that we can have an abundant life is to recognize that we are both known and knowing.

We are both known and knowing.

You'll notice there in verse one that it talks about something called a sheepfold.

That's not a term that we typically use.

What a sheepfold was is in ancient Israel, there in the center of the community, there would be a centralized pen.

During the days, all of the shepherds would go out and they would graze their flocks in the pastures and they would allow them to eat and travel freely and they would keep watch over them.

But as the day kind of wound to a close and dusk began to set in, and the sheep would become more vulnerable, and the shepherd would become more exhausted, all of the different shepherds of the community would come and they would bring their flocks to a centralized pen called the sheepfold, and they would pool their resources together to be able to pay for a gatekeeper to watch over their flock until they came back the next morning.

And what this meant was is that your flock was mingling in with the other flocks.

They were all mixed together, but this wasn't a problem.

You see, the shepherd and the sheep spent a lot of time together.

They spent almost every waking moment together.

So they knew each other.

They had endeared themselves to one another.

They recognized who each person was.

In fact, they would become, the shepherd would become so attached to his sheep, and we understand this because of our pits, that he would name them.

And so the next morning, when the shepherd awoke and he went to gather his flock, he would come and he would stand at the edge of the gate and he would call all of his sheep by name.

And the sheep, as he called them by name, would recognize his voice, and they would separate from the flock, and they would come and approach their shepherd.

And Jesus says that this is a picture of how he relates to his flock.

This is a picture of how he relates to his sheep.

That Jesus knows your name.

You ever thought about that?

Jesus knows your name.

You ever stomped on an ant bed?

You probably have.

It's probably the most psychopathic thing that you've done in your life, if you stop and think about it.

You go and you step on an ant bed, and what happens?

You have thousands, maybe millions of ants.

I don't know how many are in an ant bed, it's a lot.

They're running everywhere and they're scattered all about.

And you have just introduced complete chaos, pandemonium, and upheaval into their lives with a single step.

Hundreds of their friends have just died.

All of their homes have been destroyed.

They have no idea what's gonna go on the rest of the day or how they're gonna be okay.

And you know what you feel about it?

Nothing.

Nothing.

No remorse, no concern.

It's psychopathic, right?

I think that for many of us, that's how we tend, if we we wouldn't say it out loud, but that can be how we tend to think about how God relates to his creation.

That God's looking down on us and we're clanging into each other and we're running every which way, and we don't really know what's coming or going.

It feels like our house is coming apart.

There's death everywhere that we look.

And sometimes we feel like maybe God is up there seated on his throne, just looking down without remorse, as though he's some psychopathic God without any care at all.

And intuitively, instinctively, all of us seem to know that we're meant for something more than that.

We're meant to matter more than that.

Genesis 1 calls this being made in the image of God.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon says that this is because eternity has been written onto our hearts that we we recognize that we're a part of something bigger.

We're longing for something more.

And so here is Jesus, and he's looking to his disciples, knowing that it's going to be passed down from that generation to the next generation, all the way down to our generation, so that we can know that you matter to God.

You matter to God.

Who you are is significant to God.

Look at the terms that he uses to frame this up.

He sits there and he says that you are his own.

He says that he calls you by name, that he leads you out to his own pastures.

And do you know what the pastures of Christ represent here in John 10?

They represent the promised land.

They represent an abundant life that we can have in Jesus here and now.

And so, what Jesus would want his disciples to know, what Jesus would want you to know here on this final Sunday of Advent is that he is there at the edge of the pen and he's calling your name of his own disciples, of his own people, of his cherished flock, and he is doing it with a smile on his face because he longs to be reconciled and reunited with you.

That he knows your name.

But that's not the only reason that we have an abundant life.

It's not just that he knows your name, it's that you know his voice.

You know his voice.

You see, sheep are naturally skittish little creatures.

They don't really have any ability to defend themselves or to protect themselves.

And so basically, their defense mechanism is to just run from everything, run from everything.

And so when the shepherd is there and he's calling out his sheep, they're not just looking, listening for a shepherd that knows their name.

They're listening for their shepherd who knows their name.

That it doesn't just can't just be the right name, it's got to be the right name spoken by the right person with the right voice, because they recognize, he says, the voice of their shepherd.

That they've learned.

That the one that they can depend on, even though they would be much more likely to run away from a man than to run to a man, that they've learned that there's at least one man, there's one man who they can trust, there's one man that will protect them, there's one man that will provide for them, there's one man that will nurture them, there's one man that will pet them.

And so when he calls, when he says their name, when they hear his voice, they recognize it and they run to him throughout the gospels in dozens of different ways, with dozens of different metaphors and all kinds of pictures.

You know what Jesus says repeatedly about his people?

He says, My sheep will know my voice.

My people will recognize me when I'm calling out to them that my people will know my voice, and when they know my voice, they will know that with me, with me, they are okay.

You see, the picture is, is just like the sheepfold, all of us are kind of in this pen together, aren't we?

You and your neighbors are all in the same sheep pen.

That is, we're all facing the same hardships in life, aren't we?

Man, all of us have baggage.

All of us have a past, all of us have areas of trauma in our lives, all of us are facing the impending threats that seem to be lurking and looming around every corner.

All of us are worried about our kids.

All of us are dealing with the stress of work, all of us are in this pen together, right?

The distinction is that here is Jesus on the edge of the pen, and he's calling out from the gate, he's calling out, and he's asking.

Anybody that would come, all that will come, can come to him and they can have eternal life, and they can come to him and they can have abundant life.

But the distinction between you and your neighbors is that your neighbors can't hear his voice, they don't recognize his voice, and so they self-medicate, don't they?

Sometimes we're tempted to do the same.

Self-medicate, they turn to alcohol or to drugs, they turn to relationships and to sex, they turn to achievement and promotion and success.

But the picture here is not Jesus' disciples, not Jesus' disciples, because though we're in the same pen, and though we're struggling with the same struggles, and though we're facing the same battles, and though we're carrying the same baggage, we hear the voice of our shepherd, and even though everybody else is tempted to scatter, we run to him because we know that with him we are safe, and with him we are secure, and with him we are okay.

Do you know how you have an abundant life right now?

An abundant life is not the result of easier circumstances.

An abundant life is not a result of the alleviation of all suffering.

An abundant life is recognizing that you are in the presence of your shepherd and that your shepherd will take care of you.

It reminds me of when I was growing up, I grew up in the woods, alright?

And I ain't talking about the neighborhood in Collierville.

I'm talking about the real woods, alright?

And so around my house literally were hundreds of acres of just forested land.

And so when I was in junior high, 13, 14, 15 years old, before I could drive, I would ride the bus home, or I would have a friend that would drop me off, and as soon as they dropped me off, like a good country boy, man, I was out in the woods riding dirt bikes, deer hunting, something like that.

And so I can remember a time I was 14 or 15 years old.

It was old, I was old enough to really have a lot of confidence that I knew what I was doing and no realization, self-awareness that I had no clue what I was doing.

You know what I mean?

That that kind of age.

And so I went one afternoon after school and I went a little further than I'd ever gone before.

I was hunting.

And I stayed a little bit later than I'd ever stayed before.

And so I got to be about 30 minutes past dark.

Now, I don't know if you've ever been in the woods at dark before, but the woods transform in the dark time.

And everything looks exactly the same, and it seems like there's creatures around every corner that are trying to kill and assassinate you, right?

And so I remember I was right on the edge of panic because I realized that I was turned around, turned around and I wasn't positive how to get home, and all of a sudden, right before I could panic, I heard Cody, Cody, it was my dad.

My dad was calling out my name, and as soon as I heard my dad say my name, I knew that I was fine.

I knew that I was okay.

Now, the irony is had it been any other man on earth yelling my name in the darkness of the woods while I was lost, I would have been more afraid, not less.

But I recognized the voice of my father.

And when I heard the voice of my father, I immediately knew I was okay.

And so my dad started shouting, just come to my voice, son.

Come to my voice, son, come to my voice.

And I knew that if I went to where my dad's voice was, dinner was already prepared.

He would bring me in and we'd have a party.

Y'all see the picture?

This is the picture.

This is who our savior is as we sit and deal with all of life in this pen.

Is there as our Savior and He's calling out, my son, my son, just follow my voice, and it's meant even in the chaos of life, even in the hardship of life, even in the disappointment of life, to hear his voice and to know that it's all okay, that if we'll just follow his voice, he's gonna bring us home, prepare us dinner, and that everything is gonna be fine.

That you can have an abundant life right now because you are known and because you know him.

Not only is it because you are known and knowing, but it's because you're safe and secure.

You're safe and secure.

Devoted shepherds, they didn't contract out the gatekeeping work that uh that many of the other shepherds did.

That they would bring their flock to the sheepfold, but then they themselves would sit at the gate and look over the sheep.

And really, gate is a bit of an overstatement.

It's not a gate the way that we would conceive of a gate.

It was a gate as in it was a gap in the fence.

And so what the sheep, what the shepherd would do, the devoted shepherd would do, is he would go and he himself would sit in the gap of this fence.

So he became the gate.

So quite literally, if there was gonna be a sheep that was going to escape and go find itself in trouble, it had to go through the shepherd.

If there was gonna be a wolf that was gonna find its way into the pen and attack the flock, it was gonna have to go through the shepherd.

So much so that when the shepherd was time to go to sleep and was getting tired, he would stretch himself out and lay flat in front of the gate so that a sheep would have to step on him to go and get lost, so that a wolf would literally have to step on him to get into the pen, that he would sacrifice his own body for the defense and the protection of the flock.

Notice what Jesus says: I am the door.

I am the door.

That Jesus is the one who is sitting in the gap of the pen, and he's saying, He's saying, to get to you, they've got to go through me.

Jesus is the one that lays his body out flat, so that if the wolves come and try to take you out, they have to step on him first.

The picture is that he is a particularly devoted shepherd who is giving up at the cost of his own body, your safety, your security, and your well-being.

Isn't that beautiful?

In fact, there's a couple of pictures here that we're meant to say, see, to be able to drive this home.

The first is that we're meant to see that we are saved from the wilderness.

We are saved from the wilderness.

You'll notice that he says, uses the word saved explicitly.

He talks about going in and going out.

He talks about finding the pasture.

I've already kind of given you a clue of what he means by pasture.

See, in the Gospel of John, I mentioned this in our introduction to Jesus series, in the Gospel of John, John is particularly interested in showing that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the Jewish festivals and feasts.

This is coming to a climax here in John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

And in John chapter 10, what he's trying to show is that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles.

John 10 · chapter mention

It has two different names.

The Feast of Booths was a time in Israel's calendar in which they commemorated their sojourning in the wilderness.

You'll remember there in the wilderness that what took place is that God's people lived in tents.

They they were without a home.

And God existed himself in a temp temp in a tent, in a tabernacle.

That's why it's called the Feast of Tabernacles.

And there, being exposed to the wilderness, there without any hope of provision, because the tabernacle was there in their midst.

God provided for them until ultimately God brought them into the promised land where they would be safe and secure, the land that was flowing with milk and honey.

And so every year in Israel's calendar, what they would do is they would set aside a time in which the whole family would go out into the midst of the wilderness and they would pitch a tent and they would sleep there and they would remember what their ancestors had experienced at the hand of God.

They would remember God's provision and they would remember God's protection, and they would remember how the Lord had delivered them through all of these experiences.

And so they would go there and they would remember how before they got into the promised land, life in the wilderness had been difficult.

And so here's the picture.

Here's the picture.

The picture is that Jesus is saving us from what?

He's saving us from the wilderness.

Jesus is delivering us where?

He's delivering us into the pasture.

He's delivering us into the promised land.

So the picture here is that Jesus is the true and greater Moses who has come to rescue us out of the wilderness, to bring us into the land flowing with milk and honey.

In other words, that Jesus has come to take us out of our suffering, out of our misery, out of our sin, that we could have with him an abundant life.

Isn't that beautiful?

And this morning, this morning, if you're suffering, this morning, if you feel the weight of your life crashing down around you.

This morning, if all you see are broken dreams, if all you feel is the stressors of life, you know what you need to hear?

That Jesus will not leave you in the wilderness.

Jesus will not leave you in the wilderness.

In the wilderness.

That's why I came.

That Jesus has come that he might lead you into his pastures, that he might lead you into the promised land, that he might lead you into abundant life.

Now, right now in those pastures, those pastures are filled with crosses, aren't they?

Those pastures are filled with crosses because it's Christmas Eve.

It's not yet Christmas morning.

But the assurance that we have is that even though, even though right now we are living in the midst of pastures, even though right now there are crosses everywhere that we look, even though right now, even as the people of God, we endure hard circumstances, the certainty that we have is that all those crosses are ultimately going to do is to increase our reward in heaven and to form us more into the image of Christ.

And for us to have in front of us the knowledge that be that after the cross comes the resurrection, comes abundant life, comes eternal life.

So we're supposed to see that he saves us from the wilderness, and then we're supposed to see that he secures us in the flock.

Have you ever thought about the fact that Jesus' life was not even what we would consider to be a good life?

Like Jesus says that the foxes have dens and the birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to rest his head.

Like Jesus wasn't going home every night to assert a sleep system, right?

He lived homeless.

Jesus' calendar was demanding.

Everybody that was anybody hated him.

Jesus would do good things, and the good things that Jesus did seemed to get all of the wrong results.

It's like no good deed went unpunished.

Jesus was seemed to never have a quiet moment to himself, and crowds were thronging, and disciples were arguing.

It was always a thing, right?

Yet if you read John 15, you read John 17, you know what we find out?

Jesus' joy was full, y'all.

Jesus' joy was full.

In other words, Jesus discovered how, in the midst of a difficult life, in the midst of what we would not even consider to be a good life, how to at the same time live an abundant life.

Like it's possible, even in the here and now.

And I think what we see in our text is Jesus' secret.

He's got his secret on how he was able to live an abundant life, even in the midst of a difficult life, so that he could pass that down to us and so that he could secure us even more.

How does he do that?

Notice what he says in verse 15.

He says, The Father knows me and I know the Father.

The Father knows me and I know the Father.

And so I lay down my life for the sheep, right?

So he's like, Why do I care what the Pharisees think?

The Father knows me.

Why am I worried about Caiaphas's opinion?

The Father knows me, and I know the Father.

Yeah, the cross is a grueling work.

I wish this cup could pass from me, but I will walk, I will count it all joy, and because of the joy that is set before me, I will go and I will lay down my life.

Why?

Because I trust the Father.

I know the Father.

I know the provision of the Father and the character of the Father and the goodness of the Father.

I know the Father, and the Father knows me.

And so I am tethered by this unshakable truth that enables me to have a durable joy during a difficult life.

Now, he escalates the point.

He escalates the point in a way that is meant to arrest us.

That's meant to take that racing heart that's in your chest and bring it to rest.

That's meant to restore to you the oxygen in your lungs from where you can't catch your breath all of the time.

Back up to verse 14.

Look what he says about us.

He says, I know my own and my own know me.

Now, circle this in your Bible.

Just as the most important clause in this whole text, just as I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.

Do you see what he's doing there?

He is relating our connection to him, to his connection within the triune eternal Godhead.

The Father, Son, and Spirit have experienced in all eternity past, will know in all eternity future an unbroken bond among themselves.

Perfect harmony, perfect relationship, inextricably secure.

Since eternity past, into eternity future, it can never be severed, it can never be broken.

If it was broken for a single second, the entire solar system would fall out of the sky.

But it is not so.

And he says, just like that, just as secure as I am in the Father, you are secure in me.

Y'all, are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me?

Like, there is no stronger statement that Jesus can make than to say that you are just as secure in him as he is in the Father.

You see, brothers and sisters, this is the joy of our election in him.

This is the significance of Ephesians chapter 1, verse 4, when it says that in eternity past, before the foundations of the earth, I chose you.

Ephesians 1:4

The significance is that God has always known you so that when you were born, you would know him.

And now that you know him, into eternity future, you will always know him.

You cannot be snatched from his hand, you cannot be stolen from his kingdom, you cannot be removed from his flock.

That when you are in the flock, you are eternally in the flock, and you are just as secure in Christ as Christ is secure in the Father.

Y'all, that's enough for abundant life, isn't it?

Even in the chaos that we live in, even in the struggles that we know, even in the broken dreams that we experience, that's enough to give us the joy that is durable and abiding through it all.

Reminds me of a story, true story I read several years ago on the Gospel Coalition.

There was a story of a missionary couple, a missionary family.

They went to a post-communist, atheistic country in hopes of building Jesus' church there.

And when they went early on, they had some really significant success, and they were able to begin assembling at a local congregation of believers.

But then at night, their two-year-old son started just shrieking and screaming with nightmares.

One night turned into two, two turned into a week, a week turned into weeks, weeks turned into months.

Night after night after night, it was shrill and shrieks and screams as their child would sit there and writhe in his bed because of the nightmares that he was having.

And nobody was sleeping.

It was causing complete pandemonium and unrest in their lives.

So one day the mom is sitting down and she could finally get the little boy to describe to her what she was seeing.

And he began to describe the most ghastly figure that you could ever imagine.

And she knew that he had not read any stories about that, he had not seen any movies like that, he had not seen any shows like that.

She recognized that this was beyond the normal creative imaginative abilities of a little boy, that this was spiritual in nature and demonic in oppression.

And so what they decided that they were going to do is they assembled their congregation.

And they each took a shift.

And every member of the congregation would go at a different hour at a time and they would pray outside that little boy's window all night long.

Well, after they did that, the little boy slept like a baby that night.

Slept like a baby.

And so the mom, eager to go and hear how his night, and what you can only imagine, goes that next morning, and when he wakes up, she scoops him up into her arms and she says, Oh man, baby, I'm so glad that you slept well.

Did the monster not come tonight?

The little boy said, No, no, no, no.

The monster came, but he was outside my window, mom, and he couldn't get in.

That's the picture of our shepherd laying himself across the gate.

That the wolves want to come and they want to ravage our families, they want to ravage our faith, they want to ravage our joy.

But what we're supposed to recognize is that Jesus is the door, Jesus is the gate, and he has, at the expense of his own body, laid himself out to tell them in order to get to my flock, you've got to go through me.

Brothers and sisters, you are safe, and you are secure no matter what this world says to you.

And that means, that means that right now, right now, you can start enjoying an abundant life.

You're known and you're knowing.

You're safe and you're secure.

You're atoned and you're assured.

You're atoned and you're assured.

You know, everything that I've said so far about shepherds might lead you to believe that these were the most honorable men in all of Israel.

But they were not, okay?

They were considered to be among the lowest.

They were considered often to be perpetually unclean.

You see, shepherds were known to kind of have sticky fingers, right?

They they would go to the gate and they would call out their flock, but then kind of in the process, often they would kind of scurry a few of your sheep out along with theirs so that they saw the opportunity and and they would they would take it.

And so they had really a bad reputation of being thieves.

The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

You see the imagery here.

They had this bad, they had this bad reputation of being thieving and conniving and opportunistic whenever the moment came.

And this really served as a metaphor for the leaders of Israel.

The leaders of Israel were often referred to as shepherds, and the condemnation that we often hear from the prophets, the condemnation that we're hearing here from Christ Himself, is that the shepherds of Israel had feasted upon the flock rather than protecting the flock.

The shepherds of Israel had allowed the flock to be for their own benefit and their own good, not themselves for the good and the benefit of the flock.

So they had not been good shepherds, they had been bad shepherds.

And so now we have Jesus and he's contrasting himself with them.

He's saying, I'm not like them.

I'm not like your past experiences with other shepherds, I'm not like those that are seeking to take advantage of you.

I'm not like those that are seeking to feast upon you.

I am the good shepherd.

And the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them.

But no one, verse 18, takes it from me.

But I lay down my life of my own accord.

That Jesus is contrasting.

You see, most people, most people, they see in you what they can get out of you, don't they?

They see in you what they can get out of you.

That they want to be in relationship with you so long as being in relationship with you benefits them personally.

This is what thieves and hirelings do.

And the moment that your life adds drama and complexity to their lives, the moment that your life adds inconvenience to their life, the moment that your life becomes just, you know, a little bit extra for them, it's often hard to get them to take your calls, isn't it?

It's often hard to get them to return your text messages, isn't it?

It's often hard to get them to go on a lunch date with you, isn't it?

Hirelings.

And this has been your experience with so many people in your life.

Some of you've experienced a dad like this.

Some of you've experienced a husband or a wife this way.

Some of you have been treated this way by your company.

Jesus wants you to know that he's the good shepherd.

And the reason that he's good is he didn't come to get something from you, he came himself to lay down his life.

He's good because he came to die.

He's good because he came at the expense of himself for your ultimate benefit.

And you know what that means?

That means you can stop trying to earn his love.

That means that you don't have to try to atone for every bad thing that you've ever done.

That means that you don't have to keep trying to live a life that is impressive enough that you might catch the eye of God and that he might in some way give you some kind of blessing.

It means that the responsibility that you actually have is to look to the shepherd who has laid down his life for his sheep and to know that he has already atoned for all the things that you've done.

He's already lived the life that was approved by God, he's already secured you into his kingdom.

So you don't have to self-loathe.

You don't have to spend all of your life trying to beat yourself up and punish yourself.

You don't have to live all of your life reminding yourself of your most shameful moments.

No, you look to the shepherd and you recognize that all of it is finished, all of it is done because he has come and he has done it.

Jesus came because he is the good shepherd and he came to die.

That's not all he did, though.

Jesus didn't just come to die.

I think this is important.

Jesus came to win.

Jesus came to win.

A dead shepherd doesn't actually help you very much, does he?

Maybe he's a good man.

Maybe he's an honorable man.

Maybe he's the kind of shepherd that lays down and sleeps at night.

But if the wolf comes up while he's asleep at the gate and bites him on the neck, he's got you next, man.

Like there's nothing you can do about that.

What hope do you have?

Right?

So here is the good shepherd, and he's good because he's willing to come and to lay down his life to protect you, to stand in the gap for you.

But he's good also because he has authority to take his life up again.

Because he's not gonna stay dead, because he's gonna be resurrected, he's going to win, and when he wins, Satan loses, and death loses, and sin loses.

And when he wins, y'all, we win with him.

We win with him.

See, that's what Advent is about.

That's what Advent is about.

We remember that in Jesus' first advent, he came and he won.

And he secured all of the first fruits of our promises, he secured our future, he overcame the power of death, he overcame the power of sin, and his resurrection assures us that his second advent is sure enough, is about to come very soon.

That we have already received the good gifts.

Oh, but brothers and sisters, the better gifts are yet to come.

Because right now, right now it's Christmas Eve.

And Christmas Eve, it's awesome.

But Christmas morning is gonna be headache.

Can I pray for us?