"Absolute Authority" John 10:17-18 Sunday Morning Worship Service

John ten, verse eighteen, Jesus speaking, and he declares, 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.

Verse 18 is an echo of what he had just said in verse 17.

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.

You see in verse 17 and 18 a twofold declaration that Jesus is going to die and then resurrect.

This is, without dispute, the central point of Christianity: the death and resurrection of Christ.

Many churches are built with a cross in the middle, testifying to the death of Jesus Christ.

In Protestant churches, anyway, the cross is empty, testifying to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

At the center of our worship service this morning is a table with the communion elements on it.

Central to our worship is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And the death of Jesus Christ is, of course, always paired with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

To speak of the one is to speak of the other.

You can't speak about the death of Christ without understanding he is resurrected, and you can't speak about the resurrection, even logically, without understanding that he was crucified.

The two are paired.

They go together.

Even in our passage this morning, verses 17 and 18, twice Jesus says, I laid down my life so that for the purpose of me taking it back up again, they go together.

You could even, even when Christians reference one, the other is clearly implied.

Say we worship Jesus because of his death.

Mean by that, his death and resurrection, or we celebrate his resurrection.

We mean by that that he died for sinners and rose from the grave.

This is on full display here in John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

John chapter 10 is the section of scripture where Jesus identifies himself as the great shepherd of the sheep.

John 10 · chapter mention

The idea of the great shepherd comes from the Old Testament, Ezekiel 34, a very well-known word picture in the Old Testament to the Jews.

This is not an obscure passage like it might be for some of us.

We don't often think about Ezekiel 34, the reference there, but for the Jews, it was a very well-known prophecy, very well-known passage.

In Ezekiel, God is giving judgment upon Israel.

Ezekiel himself is the watchman announcing the judgment, and he compares Israel to sheep.

Only the sheep are being attacked by their shepherds.

The shepherds represent the religious leaders of Israel.

They are not protecting the sheep from the wolves, they are not helping the sick sheep.

They're not bandaging them up.

Instead, they're fleecing them, selling the wolf for a profit.

They're slaughtering the sheep.

The shepherds are very bad and wicked people, Ezekiel says.

And so God looks for somebody to shepherd his sheep.

And as he looks, he doesn't find anyone.

And so in Ezekiel 34, God says, I know what I will do.

With my own arm I will rescue my people.

So Ezekiel 34 testifies that God himself is the shepherd.

This is echoed in Psalm 23 by David, who of course wrote earlier, where David declares that Yahweh is the shepherd.

And so when John chapter 10 arrives, and Jesus declares that he is the shepherd, this is a very brazen and unambiguous self-attestation of his own deity.

John 10 · chapter mention

Jesus is declaring that he is God.

Yahweh says, I will be the shepherd.

Jesus says, I am the shepherd.

It's another way of saying that he is God.

That's what he's declaring.

But there is a massive plot twist in John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

The shepherd from Ezekiel 34 does not die.

The shepherd is God, God comes for the sheep, but the shepherd doesn't die.

Here in John chapter 10, Jesus says, I am the true shepherd.

John 10 · chapter mention

I'm not like the hirelings, I'm the true shepherd.

I'm going to lay my life down for the sheep.

That's going to startle the disciples.

Jesus had already been testifying that he's going to go die.

He said it many, many times.

When they were back up in Galilee, he said, We're going to Jerusalem, so the Son of Man will be betrayed, crucified, buried, and resurrected on the third day.

I mean, he said that repeatedly.

The disciples are, I mean, they're hearing, but they're not listening.

So here, when Jesus says, I am the good shepherd, you can picture the disciples going, Amen, preach it.

And I'm going to prove it by laying my life down.

And I don't know if the disciples would even hear that part of the expression.

So Jesus is now comforting the disciples by saying, I'm going to lay my life down, but there's not a period there, but only to take it back up again.

So he's already trying to frame the disciples' thinking here.

So whenever they think of the death of Christ, which is going to happen, they will know that he would also resurrect.

This is the mission of Christ.

You see in here that this is something that it doesn't happen to Jesus, but the whole thing is flowing from the Father's plan, the Father's love, the Father's authority, the Father's mission, all that's wrapped up in here.

And I want to use that as an outline here to unpack this passage.

We're going to look at what the Father gives Jesus in this passage.

And Jesus starts with the Father, gives him love.

You see that in verse 17.

For this reason, the Father loves me.

Jesus is pointing here as he's talking about his own death.

There's no greater love than love of the Father for the Son.

God Himself is love.

God overflows in love.

I mean, all of God's attributes are, you know, God is one.

All of his attributes are undivided, but but love stands out.

God is love.

His love just overflows from the person of God.

If you wanted to try to describe God in one word, there's no way you could do it.

There's you know too many words, but love would be a great place to start, wouldn't it?

God is love.

And his love overflows from himself.

He can't contain his love.

God is not stoic, God overflows with love.

Now, when you go into eternity past, before the creation of the world, God is still love.

God is still love.

The Father overflows with love for the Son.

All of the Father's attributes, all of the Father's essence, all of the divine being is framed by love, marked by love, and it is all communicated to the Son.

God, the Father is just overflowing with love for his son.

It's another way of saying God loves himself, but as God loves himself, the object of his self-love is the Son.

The God is just overflowing with love towards the Son.

And it's always been that way.

There's never been a time when the Father didn't have a son, and there's never been the time where the Father hasn't loved his son with an eternal, overflowing, Trinitarian love that's beyond comprehension.

God is truly love.

And his love has an object, and the object is the Son.

The Father has loved the Son from eternity past.

Do you understand that the love that God has didn't begin with creation?

This is one of the great distinctions between Islam and Christianity.

Islam lacks a trinity, of course, and so there's no one for Allah to love.

In Islam, God has to create the world so that he can have objects to love, which lets you know that God, by his own nature in Islam, is not loving.

Because he exists from eternity without love.

Love for Allah in Islam would be a learned attribute, if anything.

And you see that.

I mean, that's this Islamic whole culture and worldview would be hard-pressed to say that it's marked by some kind of divine love.

What a contrast with the Trinity.

What a contrast that God from eternity past is love in and of himself.

An overflowing love.

So much love flowing out of the Father, it finds residence in the Son.

The Father is just showering his love on the Son.

It just flows from him like a fountain.

This is why the Old Testament repeatedly refers to God as a fountain of love or a fountain of joy or a fountain of delight.

That God is overflowing with love for the Son.

God doesn't need the world to be loving.

Love doesn't need the world for it to have an object.

God has always eternally loved the Son.

As the Father pours his love into the Son, the Son and the Father love each other.

From that proceeds the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, of course, is called the Spirit of Love.

See, the persons of the Trinity relate to one another by love, by giving.

The Father gives himself all of himself, every one of his attributes, all of the essence of God.

This is the love, the eternal generation, eternally begotten.

Jesus is called the only begotten Son.

The Spirit comes from the Father and the Son, he's the Spirit of love, and the persons of the Trinity love each other eternally and cyclically.

They overflow in love towards each other.

But this is the most incredible part about this.

As much as God loves himself, as much as the Father loves the Son, and the Father, and the Son loves the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, as much as all that's true, that can't even contain the love of God.

The love of God overflows from that into the world.

The incomprehensible, unimaginable, undescribable love of God flows out of God to the Son, from the Father, and the Son of the Spirit, and then into the world.

God creates the world as an overflow of his love, and he creates the world to put that eternal triune love on display in the world.

So God creates the world to display his love for creatures that he makes out of love, to celebrate his love and delight in his love.

And the chief picture of that love in all of human history is, of course, the cross of Christ.

So this is more than poetic flourish here in John 10, 17.

This is Jesus declaring in a very true way, as the Father loves him, so he is going to give himself as a sacrifice for the sheep.

He says, for this reason the Father loves me, because I lay my life down.

That's the connection there.

The love of the Father to the Son will be on display in the death of the Son.

That's where the love of God is on display.

This incomprehensible, magisterial, triune, eternal love overflows into the world at the cross, at the death of Jesus on the cross.

It's God's display of love for the Son.

It's the Son's display of love for the world.

You see the love of God breaking into the world through the cross.

You want to know what the love of God looks like?

You can look at the cross.

You want to know what the love of Jesus looks like?

Look at the cross.

Now Jesus doesn't go to the cross in order to earn God's love.

That might be one way of understanding this, is if Jesus were saying, I'm obeying God to earn his love.

I've got to go die so that I earn his love.

When you read the rest of the passage, it's clearly not what he's saying.

He's saying, because of the eternal love that the Father has given him, he and the Father are in this together.

They're operating in unity here.

This is the divine plan of love.

Think of the Old Testament.

God wants to give a picture of this kind of love through Abraham.

So he tells Abraham to go up on the mountain, bind your son, and sacrifice him.

Abraham does so and takes the knife.

God stops Abraham, provides a substitute, untides the son, a ram from the thicket.

The ram will be the sacrifice.

You see the gospel on full display there, that God is angry at sin, that God will pour out his wrath on a substitute instead of the sinner.

He will provide the substitute himself, but that the ultimate sacrifice will be a son.

But there's a key phrase in that description.

God tells Abraham, Go up on the mountain and take the Son, your only Son, the Son whom you love.

The picture of the gospel is not complete unless you understand the Father's love for the Son.

First John 4, verse 9.

1 John 4:9

And this the love of God was seen, that he sent his only son.

You know, the Jesus ministered for probably three years.

I mean, we don't know really how long, but three years is a reasonable enough guess.

You get three different Passovers described, three different trips to Jerusalem, so three years is a good enough guess.

But that three-year period is bracketed by a voice from heaven declaring the love of the Father for the Son.

It begins with his baptism at the beginning of his ministry.

He goes into the water, the heavens open up, a voice from heaven declares, This is my beloved son.

This is my son in whom I'm well pleased.

This is my beloved son.

The Holy Spirit descends in the image of a dove, dove-like, on Jesus.

So you see the Father, Son, and Spirit together, and the three persons of the Trinity operating in creation at one point in time at one scene.

And what are they communicating there?

They're communicating the love of God.

This is the beloved son.

Jesus' ministry ends with a very similar exchange.

He's at the end of his ministry, and the heavens open up in Matthew 17, verse 5.

Matthew 17:5

A bright light fills the sky, and a voice from heaven comes down and says, This is my beloved son, with whom I'm well pleased.

His ministry is bracketed by this.

One of my favorite passages to preach is the parable of the vineyard.

It's where Jesus tells his own version of redemptive history.

Jesus uses a parable where he describes, in his own understanding, the storyline of the Bible.

You want to know the main plot line of the Bible?

You can look at that parable because that's where Jesus gives it.

He says there was a man, the man represents God who had a vineyard.

The vineyard represents Israel.

Israel was supposed to produce fruit for God, fruit of repentance, fruit of magnifying his glory.

They didn't.

The vineyard owner sends servants to collect what is due.

The servants are beaten up, abused, killed even.

The servants, of course, represent the prophets.

The God sent prophet after prophet to Israel.

They were abused and rejected.

And so finally, after a long period of time, God says, I know what I will do.

I'll send my son.

And of course, they killed the son, throw him out thinking they'll take over the vineyard.

You know, they'll be their own God, they'll be in charge of the vineyard.

And so God responds by taking the vineyard from them and giving it to others.

But then there's a powerful line in that narrative that I skipped over.

Mark 12, Jesus says, after the servants are beaten up and abused and killed and their heads are bashed in, and describes it very graphically.

The owner has a son, one beloved son, whom he loves.

He'll send that one.

Can you imagine the pathos or the emotion of Christ as he's telling that story himself?

It's about him.

He's sending him the son that is loved.

This is what Jesus is saying here, that he is this great shepherd of the sheep.

He's going to die on the cross.

And he's doing so because of the Father's love.

Colossians 1 verse 13 says that when you're saved, you are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son.

Colossians 1:13

This is the first truth that Jesus relies on here as he begins to frame his own death.

This reason the Father loves me.

Again, he's not going to the cross to earn the Father's love.

The Father's love predicates all of this, is what he means.

The Father loves the Son so much there's not going to be another savior.

The Father doesn't send an angel, father doesn't send merely prophets to be the saviors.

Because, although God certainly loves the angels and loves prophets, but he has a special love for the Son.

In Isaiah, God says, I will not share my glory with another.

I alone will save my people.

I will not share my glory with another.

And yet he sends his son.

I mean, it's just such a remarkable picture of the infinite love of the Father for the Son, that the Son would get to be the Savior.

So the Father shares his love, like he shares all of his attributes with his son.

Jesus himself says, I have life in me because the Father has given it to me.

Life, light, love, everything the Father has is the Son's because the Father loves the Son.

Secondly, the Father gives Jesus eternal love.

Secondly, the Father gives Jesus absolute authority.

Absolute authority.

No one takes it from me, Jesus says, speaking of his life, but I lay it down of my own accord.

That phrase of my own accord should strike you as awkward.

You don't speak like that in English, right?

Have you ever said, I'm doing this of my own accord?

Unless you're driving somewhere and you own an accord.

You don't speak like that.

You might say, What is the phrase we say?

I'm doing this of my own volition?

Or you might say, I'm doing this of my own free will.

I mean, that might be a phrase you say.

That's what Jesus is saying here.

He's doing this.

He's going to die of his own volition, of his own free will.

The Greek literally says, uh, of my own self.

He said it's the pronoun for myself.

He says, I'm doing this to myself.

It's translated of my own accord, but because that's what it means.

I'm doing this to myself, Jesus says.

I'm going to go to the cross, and it's me who's doing it.

So when the disciples see Jesus dying, they're not going to think this is something that happened to him.

Jesus doesn't give them that out.

This is something he's doing to himself.

No one does it to him, he says.

Critical point no one does this to him.

He's not mastered by anybody.

He is the master of all people.

And this is important because when you read the account of the crucifixion coming up in John's gospel, you get a little window into this is obviously God's work.

I mean, Jesus is being interviewed by Pilate.

Remember, Pilate says, Are you a king?

And Jesus says, What do you say?

And Pilate says, Why are you talking to me like this?

Don't you know I have the authority to take your life?

And Jesus responds by saying, You don't have any such authority.

The only authority you have is what has been given to you from above.

So you look at Pilate, and Pilate, Pilate is reluctant in this whole thing, isn't he?

He doesn't want to put Jesus to death.

I mean, that's obvious in John 19.

Pilate doesn't want anything to do with this.

It's a hot mess.

Pilate's got his wife leaning on his ear one way, saying, This guy's innocent.

He's got the crowd outside chanting for him.

Pilate stands up and washes his hands and says, you know, you guys get what you deserve.

That's bad leadership, isn't it?

I mean, hey, this is the wrong thing to do.

It's terrible.

It's an innocent person being put to death.

But you know what?

You ask nicely, so there you go.

I mean, that's really the picture.

Pilate is not in charge of this.

He's not the one in control.

He's hesitant.

He's second-guessing.

He's reluctant.

He ultimately just a pawn in this.

He bungles the whole thing.

But at the end, he says to Jesus, I have the authority to do this.

And Jesus says, You only have authority that comes to you from above.

Meaning himself, you tracking, right?

You're tracking with Jesus' logic.

Meaning himself.

He is the one with the authority over his own life.

The only other place that word is used in John's gospel is back in John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

So you're going to notice that.

John chapter 10, I am the only one with the authority over my life, Jesus says.

John 10 · chapter mention

John 19, the only authority over my life is from above.

That's another way of John pointing to Jesus' deity.

Jesus says that he alone has the authority over his life.

Not Pilate, not the Romans, nobody else.

The only one with authority over his life is him.

Pilate pulled the trigger, but Pilate could not even aim the gun.

You could say Jesus' death was at the hand of the Jews.

They killed him.

Certainly they tried to.

They conspired, didn't they?

For months, if not years, they were conspiring to put him to death.

But the final week of his life, the conspiracy you know downshifted.

It took some strength into it.

I mean, they started conniving, they they cornered him in the temple to trap him.

Matthew 19 says to trap him in his words.

They hounded him.

They followed him.

They hunted him back in Matthew 12.

They were hunting him to the fields to catch him breaking the Sabbath.

I mean, they were after Ennex used to put him to death.

They finally got Judas to betray him.

They bribed Judas.

That's not even sufficient.

They do this mock trial at night.

The whole thing was a scam.

They break every one of their legal rules.

The Jews had all kinds of very, I think, profound and just laws governing capital trials.

They abandoned all of them.

They weren't allowed to happen at night.

You had to be allowed to cross-examine your witnesses.

The witnesses contradicted themselves.

The testimony wasn't admissible.

They had to have charges beforehand.

They voted in order of least senior to most seniors.

I mean, all of those they threw out the window.

They certainly put him to death.

When they handed him over to Pilate at the crack of dawn and said, you kill him, Pilate puts him in Antonio Fortress and wants to release him, and the crowd of Jews is there chanting for Barabbas instead.

I mean, so you could say it was the Jews who killed him.

But it wasn't.

Back in John 10, verse 18, Jesus says, I'm doing this myself.

John 10:18

I have authority to lay it down.

See that phrase in the middle of 18?

I have authority to lay it down.

That's the word used back in John 19, where Jesus says, The only one with authority to take my life is in heaven.

Jesus is saying back here in John 10, verse 18, I am the one with that authority.

John 10:18

This is my plan.

Revelation 13, verse 8 describes Jesus as the lamb slain before the foundation of the world as written in the book of life.

Revelation 13:8

He says that the book of life describes the lamb being slain, and it was written before time.

So when you look at John 10, verse 18, do you understand what Jesus is saying?

John 10:18

Is that he's the one who wrote it.

This didn't happen to him.

He's the author of it.

Jesus isn't an actor who reads a script and says, Oh, I can do that.

I mean, Jesus is the author of this plan.

He's the one who wrote the book before time that features his death in time.

So of course it's going to happen because he's sovereign over time.

This is all his doing.

It was his will.

Think of Philippians.

Jesus having equality with God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself.

He did it himself.

He lowered himself.

Do not picture Jesus as a reluctant messenger, a reluctant servant.

Don't picture Jesus' mission for the to the cross as a matter of his own obedience to the Father.

It's very common to frame it that way.

It's very common for people to say Jesus, because he's the eternal Son, is eternally obedient to the Father, and so he's on a mission of obedience.

That's not what's happening here.

This isn't obedience.

This is Jesus Himself.

You recognize how the concept of obedience is not helpful here.

I mean, let me give you a very basic example.

You're at home, the trash is filled, you tell your 15-year-old son, son, take out the trash.

Okay, you're the authority in the house, your son is subject to you, so you say, take out the trash.

All kinds of things go wrong here.

The son says, I'm going to take out the trash so I can earn your love.

That's bad.

That's not a healthy environment, right?

So Jesus is not going to the cross to earn the father's love.

That's of course not true.

But also, if the son were to tell you, you know what, I will take out the trash.

But not because you told me to, because you're not an authority over me.

I'm taking the trash out because I am my own authority and I choose to take the trash out.

Wow.

So when Jesus says here, I'm going to the cross on my own authority, don't frame it like obedience.

He is doing it on his own volition.

This is his plan.

This is his plan.

Thirdly.

Father gives the son eternal love, absolute authority, and then a redemptive mission.

Verse 18 ends with this charge I have received from my Father.

The word charge means command.

It's a very common New Testament word.

It's the word used to translate commandments.

The Ten Commandments, that's the same word.

So there is a command.

The Father gives the Son to go to the cross.

So this can sound almost like Trinitarian doublespeak.

Like earlier, I'm saying Jesus isn't going because of a command, he's going because of his own will, and now I'm saying it's also a command.

How do you put these together?

You recognize that the Father, Son, and Spirit have one will.

They're a one-willed being.

There's an essence of God, and the essence of God crafts the plan of plan of redemption.

The Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

This is all their plan.

They're all in this together.

They have one plan for salvation.

Jesus is not going because he is ordered to go.

He's going because he wants to go.

The Father isn't watching Jesus go on some kind of rebel mission.

The Father gave the command to go.

Father, Son, Spirit.

The plan, of course, just like love and life and all the attributes of God flow from the Father to the Son, from the Father and the Son to the Spirit.

All three persons of God have crafted this plan of redemption.

They have all planned it.

They all desire it.

They all want it.

None of them are operating independently from the other here.

So as Jesus goes, it's not absent the Father's command.

It's not like the Father doesn't know he went or doesn't want him to go.

No, the Father willed for him to go.

The Father charged him, commanded him to go.

But it's not like Jesus is going because he was charged or commanded.

He's going because this was his plan.

Human analogies break down very quickly here.

We have nothing like this at all.

You know, as I mentioned earlier, take out the trash flow.

It was the very thing I wanted to do anyway, Dad.

It doesn't work at a human level.

But it does work in the Trinity.

The Father, Son, and Spirit have the same plan for salvation.

And don't picture Jesus as a savior and God is reluctant to save.

Jesus gets away and he's gonna die on the cross, and now God has to take you because Jesus paid for you, you know?

You break it, you buy it, and Jesus bought you, so there you are.

This is the Father's plan.

It's the Son's plan, it's the Spirit's plan.

They're all doing this together.

Jesus says, as the Father has life in himself, so I have life in myself.

The Father gives life to the Son, and it's life in himself.

We can't say that.

He's very different than us.

As the Father has life in himself, the father loans us life for a second, but we don't have it in ourselves.

We're not a fountain of life here.

Same with authority.

As the father has authority, he gives it to the son, so the son has authority in himself.

But the father and son's authority is one.

Why is this important for you to know?

Ask yourself this.

What are they doing with their authority?

What is God doing with his authority?

What's he doing with his love?

What's going on here?

This is not just a lesson about the Trinity.

What's actually going on here is that the Father is channeling his eternal Trinitarian love into the world to save people from their sin.

The one will of God here is that you would be saved.

The one will of God is that the Father would send the Son, the Son would go on his own free will, the Son would come to the earth and die for sinners.

The one will of God is that the Holy Spirit would come and save those for whom the Son died, those for whom the Father sent him.

I mean, this is operating together for your salvation.

No, no, no, the Father, Son, and Spirit are not independent operators here.

They're doing this together and they are doing it for salvation.

Their love for you is seen in the cross because God wants to save you.

And when he saves you, he brings you into himself.

Which is mind-blowing to think about, that the eternal, eternal, incomprehensible love of the Father for the Son comes to you through faith in Christ.

When you put your faith in Christ, you're brought into Christ, you're adopted into Christ, and so the Father's love that surpasses all understanding is now your love.

He loves you with that same love.

Because everything has its source in the Father, Father, Son, Spirit, so does the plan of salvation.

Look at this back in Ephesians 1.

The Father predestines, the Son redeems, the Spirit seals.

At the baptism, the voice from heaven, this is my son.

Father pointing to Son, Spirit pointing to Son.

When you're baptized, you're baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

First, second, third.

There's not division, though.

It's not like Jesus wanted to save you, but not the Spirit and the Father.

It's all together.

And it's all about salvation.

John 3 16, for God, meaning Father, Son, Spirit.

For God, Father, Son, Spirit, so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

Jesus is the second person in the Trinity, the only begotten Son, to save you.

It's not in vain that the voice from heaven says, This is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased.

It's not in vain.

God declares that so that others would be saved and baptized as well.

The point Jesus is driving home here, though, is that the disciples will be loved by the shepherd because they're the sheep.

Disciples will be loved by the shepherd because the shepherd will die for them.

But as I mentioned, that's not the end of the story.

The shepherd in Ezekiel 34 doesn't die.

Jesus will die, but he will also rise from the grave.

The Father's love is seen back in verse 17, not just in the death of Christ, but also in the resurrection.

Or verse 18.

The authority of Jesus is seen not just that he's the authority to take his own life, but he also has authority to take it up again.

The Father's charge is seen not just in the charge to go to earth and die on the cross, but the charge to go to earth and die on the cross and resurrect from the grave.

This would be tremendously comforting for the disciples if they remember it, and I hope it's comforting for you now.

This was the Father's plan, this was the Son's plan, this was the Spirit's plan, that the shepherd would die and resurrect.

Please don't miss the irony of this, that the good shepherd, we can focus so much on the Father and the Son's relationship here, because that's what these two verses are about, that we can miss the bigger irony that the shepherd becomes the Passover lamb.

I mean, that's the real image here.

The shepherd is going to go to his grave to defeat the grave.

The death and resurrection of Christ represent the ultimate fulfillment of the divine mission of God to save sinners.

So if you want to experience the love of God, you experience the love of God through Jesus.

There's no other way to be saved.

You can't be saved in another religion because there's no other shepherd.

You can't be saved apart the Trinity, apart from the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Spirit, because there's no other Savior.

There's no other if you reject the Trinity, you reject the Son to be the Savior.

Jesus can say that He is the way, the truth, and the life.

No one can come to the Father except through Him.

Because He can also say, if you've seen Him, you've seen the Father.

They're all together.

And you experience their overflowing love through faith in Christ.

God, we're grateful that you have shown the gospel to the Savior who's a substitute through the one who came to live, to suffer, and die.

What a shepherd we have, what a savior we have, and we give you thanks for that.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.