John 10:1-21 – The Gospel of John

Welcome to City Church Dublin Sermon Archives.

Join us this week as we continue to work through the Book of John in our series, The Gospel of John.

Welcome to you.

If you're new or visiting, my name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at the church.

You're very welcome here with us.

We're going to be looking at that passage from John 10 in just a few moments' time.

So if you have a phone or a Bible with you, you can be looking at that.

Sometimes in uh in John's Gospel, when Jesus speaks in metaphors, the metaphors need a little bit of explaining.

Uh, when Jesus is talking about rivers of water, it was really helpful to think through that kind of water uh gathering and pouring ceremony that that happened during the Feast of Tabernacles.

We looked at that a few weeks ago.

When we're looking at Jesus saying that he's the light of the world, it's helpful to know uh that actually great huge torches were were lit around the temple in Jesus' drawing on that.

And it's good to kind of explain the metaphor.

In fact, it's necessary to explain the metaphor in order to kind of uh get the get the real meaning behind what Jesus is saying.

But the the metaphor that Jesus uses uh now doesn't need any explaining.

I suspect that there's nobody in here who's a shepherd.

Um, if you are, what are you doing in the city?

Um I also suspect perhaps even that you don't know too many shepherds.

And yet the metaphor of shepherds and sheep is not really one that needs too much explaining.

We understand what Jesus kind of means when he talks about a shepherd leading and caring for his sheep.

That's what shepherds do.

It's a wholesome and positive and pastoral uh image.

But if I were to push you a little, uh I would suspect that if you really think about it, one of the implications of Jesus' metaphor here is that he's uh calling those who follow him a sheep.

You think, oh, we could have done better than that.

Like a sheep, like really not the most intelligent animals, a little bit wayward.

You maybe don't like the idea of considering yourself to be a uh a sheep.

But that's what Jesus is getting at.

That he is the good shepherd, and we who follow him are his sheep.

In this parable, there are those who pretend to be, it's kind of a it's a an extended non-narrative parable.

It's not telling a story, he's kind of teaching with a metaphor.

But it's a in this parable, he's saying that there are those who pretend to be shepherds, who are in fact uh thieves and robbers, those who are wolves who seek to uh ravage the sheep and and scatter them.

And perhaps instinctively we can think about those types of people.

Perhaps you've had the misfortune of of interacting with people who have not actually had your best interests at heart, who have not cared for you, people uh who you have followed, who you have identified with, whose acceptance you've longed for, and yet they turned out actually to be she to be uh thieves and robbers.

They haven't nurtured and cared for you.

We try also to to shepherd ourselves.

You say, I'm not a sheep, I'm a shepherd.

We try to shepherd ourselves and and lead ourselves along our our own way.

Only sometimes and inevitably to find ourselves kind of caught in in various sorts of thickets, whether it's anxiety or loneliness or pain or disappointment.

Or if that doesn't happen, the worst of all is a shepherd who thinks he's a shepherd is a sheep who thinks he's a shepherd and goes through his whole life proudly saying, I'm a shepherd.

What Jesus would show us this morning is not just that we are sheep, but that he is the good shepherd.

One of the things that uh sometimes churches just emphas uh emphasize is the the truth of the Bible.

Now we believe that the Bible is true.

I believe that when Jesus says that he is a shepherd, that that is a true thing.

But Jesus doesn't just call him the true himself the true shepherd.

He says, No, I am the good shepherd.

The Bible isn't just true, it's good.

It's not just true for your life, it's good for your life.

Jesus is not just the true shepherd, he is the good shepherd.

And this morning my hope, my prayer is that you would begin to glimpse the goodness of the Good Shepherd.

Because if you do that, you'll understand how positive a thing it is to be counted as one of his sheep.

Four things this morning about the goodness of the Good Shepherd.

First, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, knows his sheep.

That's the first good thing.

He knows his sheep.

This is fascinating.

I was reading this this week.

So in the ancient world, just to give you a little bit of uh context, in the ancient world, obviously shepherds were quite poor, not uh not too many wealthy shepherds.

Um and so what you would do with your other shepherdy mates is you would all club together to uh to build one pen.

Because you couldn't all afford to have your own individual pen.

You didn't have the the land to build it on.

But you if you all came together and said, well, let's just have our pen, then the four of us, the five of us, and we'll put all of our sheep into that one pen.

And we're gonna hire a guy who will be the gatekeeper, and he'll only let us, the shepherds, in.

He'll watch the sheep uh during the night, and so we'll come along and we will call the sheep.

And so, what would happen in the morning is all of the shepherds would come along and they would the gatekeeper would recognize that uh that the shepherds were coming, he would open the gate for them and allow them in.

And then each shepherd in this mixed sheep pen would call his sheep, and the sheep would recognize the voice of their shepherd and come out.

That's what Jesus is getting at in John 10.

Isn't that amazing?

That the sheep knew the voice of their specific shepherd, and so they wouldn't leave for another one.

But Jesus doesn't just say that they know his voice, Jesus actually pushes it further.

He says in verse 3, the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own by name.

He calls his own by name.

This is the contrast with uh ancient shepherding.

Uh, I don't get a sense that you uh that you named all of your sheep.

There's there's Bob and there's Gladys and uh there's there's Jim and there's Henrietta, let's let's get let's go, everybody.

No, no, but Jesus doesn't just call his sheep, he knows them by name.

Folks, this is really central to what Christianity is.

This is essential to Christianity, not just that you, as individuals sitting here in this theater, you are not nameless, faceless statistics.

You are not a number.

You are not a member of a crowd.

Knowing Christianity to be a follower of Jesus is about knowing and being known by the Good Shepherd.

He knows you by name.

And hearing the voice of the shepherd, calling you by name, he calls you out of yourself to follow him.

That is the goodness of the Good Shepherd.

He calls you, he knows you by name.

Jesus is contrasting throughout this passage in uh in John 10 between the shepherd who knows his sheep and calls them by name, and the the thieves and the robbers who have no rightful claim on the sheep.

They cannot enter through the gate.

The gatekeeper doesn't recognize them, so they have to come in by another way.

Uh, in this uh context in John 10, we've got to remember that Jesus has just healed a man born blind.

And so the religious leaders are overhearing this.

He's talking to them.

In fact, we know that explicitly because uh they don't understand his figure of speech in verse six.

But Jesus is talking about the religious leaders, and he is implying to them, and it will become more explicit as it goes on, that they are the ones who are creeping in through the window, that they're the ones who are coming to kill and to steal and destroy, that they're the ones who seek to ravage the sheep.

When Jesus talks about the robbers, he's talking about the Pharisees, but the religious leaders.

In doing so, Jesus is picking up uh ideas that were long since laying down in the Old Testament, where God was challenging the leaders of Israel to say that actually they weren't shepherding the people of God well.

That they weren't looking out for the people of God, they were looking for their own interests.

So let me read to you a couple of passages, a short one and then a slightly longer one.

Uh, this one from Jeremiah, Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter my sheep, declares the Lord.

Therefore, thus says the Lord the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who are my people, you have scattered my flock, you have driven them away, you have not attended to them.

Behold, I will attend to you and to your evil deeds, declares the Lord.

I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all of the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.

Or Ezekiel 34, and this is the longer one, and this is fascinating.

Ezekiel 34.

The word of the Lord came to me, Son of Man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy and say to them, even to the shepherds, thus says the Lord God, Ash, shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding themselves.

Should you not, shepherds, feed the sheep?

You eat the fat, and you clothe yourselves with their wool, you slaughter the fat ones, and 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 strays you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and with harshness you have ruled them, so that they were scattered, because there was no shepherd.

Then Ezekiel thirty-four turns.

Listen to what God says.

For thus says the Lord God, Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep, I will seek them out.

As a shepherd seeks out his flock among his sheep and have that have been scattered, so I will seek out my sheep, I will rescue them from all the places where they have scattered, and I will bring them back from the peoples, and I will gather them, I will feed them, I will feed them and lead them to good pasture, I myself will be their shep be their shepherd.

I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord.

I will seek the lost, I will bring back the strayed, I will bind up the injured, I will strengthen the weak, I will uh be s I will uh sorry, I will strengthen the weak and the fat and the strong I will destroy, I will feed them in justice.

And it concludes in verse twenty-three of Ezekiel thirty-four.

He says, I will set over them one sh one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them.

He shall feed them and be their shepherd.

I, I the Lord, will be their God, the servant of David shall be prince among them, I the Lord have spoken.

And now Jesus stands up in the midst of the crowd and says, I am the good shepherd.

This promise that God himself would come and lead his people has been hanging there since Ezekiel spoke, five hundred years before the birth of Jesus.

And now he says, I am the fulfillment.

I am great David's greater son who comes to lead his sheep.

I know my sheep, and I call them by name.

Jesus is a shepherd promised of old, who will lead his sheep, who knows them, who calls them by name.

Second, Jesus is a good shepherd because he nurtures his sheep.

He nurtures them.

The metaphor changes in verse 7.

Jesus began to say to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.

All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.

I am the door, whoever enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

The thief comes only to k steal and to kill and destroy.

I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.

See how the metaphor switches?

Uh Jesus, uh, there's a door-ness to Jesus.

In what sense is Jesus a door?

In the ancient world, if you were taking your sheep out to pasture, and obviously you're you're grazing lands over a uh a far country, and so you would get far enough uh away from home that actually it would take you too long to get back to the to the pen that you had made.

And so rather than trekking all the way back, the shepherds would uh would sleep out in the cold.

And what they would do is they would gather uh brambles and uh and thicket and basically make a makeshift pen out of the the brambles and put all the sheep in there and leave a small entrance, a small little gap in this circle of thicket, and that's where the shepherd would lie down and sleep.

He himself would be the door to the pen.

He would be the one who keeps them safe in their going out and their coming in.

He would become the door.

There are thieves and robbers who want to harm the sheep, but the shepherd guards the way.

He is the way into the pen.

He keeps his sheep safe from those who would want to destroy them.

And from this place of safety, what do we read in verse 9?

He leads them out to find safe pasture.

The good shepherd, the Lord Jesus, knows his sheep and provides for them green pastures.

He leads them in and out, and he nourishes them, sustains them.

This is all very lovely, but I suspect that there's something missing.

Because maybe this is just me, but I don't just want to be safe.

I don't like the idea of just being safe, penned in.

But Jesus doesn't just say that.

Jesus goes further because he understands that our hearts yearn for something more than just safety.

And that's where verse 10 comes in.

We don't just want safety and to be provided for.

No, we want life.

Life.

And Jesus in verse 10 offers life abundantly, abundant life.

This is not just when Jesus offers abundant life in verse 10, he's not just saying, I'm going to give you more life than you have already had.

It's not just a quantitative, I'm going to increase the amount of life.

It's a qualitative life, abundant life, life that is weighty, life that is full of meaning, life that is deeply significant, that is infused and subfused with joy, life that is exhilarating and overflowing with gladness and with gratitude.

When Jesus says, I've come that they might have abundant life.

He's not saying, Don't just be safe.

I'm going to lead you out of the place of safety, and there I'm going to give you abundant life.

I'm going to give you a meaning and a significance that no suffering can take away.

I'm going to give you a joy that transcends circumstance.

I'm going to give you an identity that is better than all of the people and tribes that you have been following.

Follow me, the Good Shepherd says.

That is what he offers.

All of this again is said in contrast with the robbers, the thieves who come to kill and destroy, who do not seek the abundant life of the sheep, who desire their obliteration.

And again, there's a sense in which we can identify with that.

We can identify with people who use people as resources to be discarded.

We see it in the uh in the in the political arena.

People make great grand promises about how they're going to help us and sustain us and make our life better.

And then it turns out that actually they were just seeking our vote.

Despots and dictators, sadly, in our world, rise up and they ravage and they destroy people.

And sadly, we see it in our churches.

Those who passer with harshness, those who are bullies, those who seek their own career and platform off the backs of those who volunteer their service and who long for kindness and mercy and nurture and care.

Jesus stands in contrast to them all.

Says, I have come to give you life and life abundantly.

But it is also seen not just in these negative depictions, but thieves and robbers who come to kill and destroy can also come with smiling faces.

The smiling face of the person who says that the way that you're living doesn't matter.

Who says that sin, that addiction to me, myself, and my that God's okay with it, that it doesn't account for anything, who nods and approves every choice and decision.

They're thieves.

They're killing and destroying you with kindness.

You must ask yourself, are they seeking my abundant life?

Or is there lack of intervention gonna end up in my destruction?

Jesus the good shepherd comes to give abundant life to his sheep.

And as we've seen all the way through John's Gospel up until now, sometimes that means poking Jesus pokes the places you don't want to be poked.

He's provocative.

He says things that make you feel uncomfortable.

But he is still the good shepherd.

Who knows his sheep and wants good for them.

Third.

Jesus the good shepherd dies for his sheep.

Verse 11 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 own the sheep, sees a 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 my father knows me, and I know my father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.

On one level, if Jesus is meaning this purely metaphorically, then he is just like every other shepherd.

A shepherd might be prepared to die for a sheep.

Shepherd might be somebody who stands in front of the sheep.

And the wolf and says, No, I'm gonna take you on.

You see, in the Old Testament, how David wrestled lions and bears and things like that in order to defend his sheep.

But Jesus doesn't just mean this theoretically or metaphorically, in the way that Jesus was, or David was probably prepared to die.

Jesus isn't talking about it metaphorically, he's talking about it literally.

Jesus is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

He intends to die for his sheep.

The hired worker, by contrast, loves his own life more than the sheep because he has no real investment in the sheep.

He doesn't own the sheep.

The sheep aren't his, and so his life is worth more.

When he sees the wolf coming, he flees and saves his own skin.

But the good shepherd loves the sheep, loves his sheep more than his own life.

And so he willingly, voluntarily lays it down.

How is verse 10 true?

How is it true that Jesus has come to give you abundant life?

What is the mechanism that makes that possible?

It's verse 11.

What makes that possible is that Jesus lays down his life for his sheep.

There are wolves that would destroy and devour us.

Our sin would enslave and addict us to ourselves, death would engulf us, leaving us hopeless and lost.

But the good shepherd, who is the Lamb, let's not forget, who is the Lamb of God, as John identified him, who takes away the sin of the world, he does not flee.

He stands between you and your greatest enemies.

He stands between you and those wolves, so that you might not be destroyed, so that you might not be scattered, but rather gathered into his flock.

And all of this, remarkably, is that is at the Father's behest.

The Father loves the good shepherd, because the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.

But look, Jesus is no martyr.

This is really remarkable.

What Jesus says in verse 17, have a look at it.

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

I mean, that's bonkers if you think about it.

Any one of us, uh, in a sense, because I has the authority to lay down our life.

Right?

You could lay down your life.

But you don't have the authority to take it up again.

But that's what Jesus is saying.

Verse 18.

No one takes it from me.

I lay it down of my own accord.

I have authority to lay it down.

Fair enough.

That's a normal sane person thing to say.

And I have authority to take it up again.

Sorry, what?

What do you what do what do you think?

What do you think of Jesus here?

Because either he's a loon.

I have authority to take up my life.

Dead people don't tend to do that.

Or he really is the beloved son of the Father, the good shepherd, the the Lord, the one who has life in himself, just as the father has, the one who really does have authority to take up his life again.

Jesus isn't a martyr.

The cross isn't a sorry, petty end to a promising career.

He has authority to lay down his life and the authority to take it up again.

Isn't that remarkable?

He really is the good shepherd.

Jesus intends to die for his sheep.

When we follow people, when we follow ideas, when we give ourselves to those idols, whether it's money, sex, power, comfort, affirmation, approval, all of those things require something from us.

All of those things will demand sacrifice, sacrifice of time, sacrifice of relationships, sacrifice of our own security.

Every idol that you are tempted to follow will demand sacrifice from you.

Every idol wants its pound of flesh.

Not Jesus.

Not the Good Shepherd.

He doesn't say you die for me.

He says, I die for you.

I am the Good Shepherd.

I lay my life down for his sheep.

He doesn't demand sacrifice.

He gives it all.

This has at least two implications.

One implication is an implication for me and for the other leaders at City Church.

It's not here explicitly, but it really should be.

It is an important implication.

This is how people ought to lead in the context of the church.

This is what leaders should be like.

Leaders are not those who are in charge, the ones who have the authority over you.

Jesus says that in Mark 10.

In the world of the Gentiles, it says, They're leaders lord it over them, not so with you.

No, the the leaders in the church are the first to die.

The leaders in the church are the first servants.

The leaders in the church are the first over the top.

We should be dying every day for the sake of the sheep.

Look for leaders who embody that.

Second implication for all of you.

What this means is that Jesus is approachable.

Especially if you carry wounds.

Especially if you carry heart and pen this morning.

Because we worship a wounded Savior.

A good shepherd who has given his life for the sheep.

The Good Shepherd who knows what it is to carry scars.

He knows what it is to hold out nail-pierced hands and bid you to follow him.

He asks nothing of you that he himself has not already given.

He was in the First World War, in the trenches in the First World War, and is part of that great kind of corpus of Christian poetry that came off the back of that dreadful war.

And he wrote this poem called Jesus of the Scars because he came back shell-shocked.

What we would call he had post-traumatic stress disorder.

And for him, seeing and knowing that Jesus carried wounds and still bid him to follow was a warm and inviting and comforting and soul-uplifting image.

It's about a five, four or five stanza poem.

I'm just going to read you the last one.

They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne.

But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak.

And no God has wounds but thou alone.

And no God has wounds but thou alone.

Are you beginning to glimpse the goodness of the good shepherd?

That you who carry wounds look at Neilpear's hands and place yours in his as he bids you to follow, as he leads you into green pasture, as he gives you abundant life, because he's laid down his for you.

Do you believe that?

Finally.

Where have we been?

Jesus is a good shepherd because he knows his sheep.

He calls them by name.

Jesus is a good shepherd because he nurtures his sheep.

He gives them life abundant.

Jesus is the good shepherd because he dies for his sheep.

And finally, Jesus is a good shepherd because he transforms his flock.

Jesus transforms his flock.

He transforms it in two ways.

First, he expands it.

Verse 16.

And I have other sheep that are not of this fold, I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice, so that there will be one flock, one shepherd.

How does Jesus transform his flock?

He expands it.

He's talking to Jewish people, using this image long laid down in the Old Testament, that the people of Israel are the are the are the flock of God to be shepherded and cared for through generation after generation.

And now Jesus says, Do you know what?

Your vision's been too small.

I'm about to expand it all because it's not just about this flock.

It's not just about ethnic Israel.

There are other sheep in other fools, and I've come to call them.

Folks, this is the engine for church planting.

This is the engine for global missions.

That there are there are American sheep.

There are Romanian sheep.

There are Irish sheep.

The green ones.

That's us.

There are South African sheep.

There are Nigerian sheep and Ugandan sheep and Mexican sheep and even English sheep.

We could go on and on and on.

Commiserations to the English for yesterday.

Jesus is seeking sheep from his global fold, that he might gather them all into one pen.

And look around you.

We're a small expression of that multinational, multicultural, multi-ethnic fold of Jesus, all following the Good Shepherd.

Isn't that wonderful?

That he is gathering sheep from all over.

This is why we're planting a church.

This is why we're sending out Duncan and Becky, and now they're two children, whoop-whoop, and their launch team to plant Redeemer in Church Town.

Because we believe and have confidence in the Good Shepherd that there are sheep in Church Town who, when they hear the voice of the shepherd, they will respond and come out and follow him.

We believe that that's true.

If we didn't, we would just stay here in our nice little pen with our comfortable seats.

Hello to you in the VIP section.

But we don't.

We believe that Jesus is gathering worshippers, that he is calling sheep to himself, those who he knows, who he will call by name.

And in the same way that as Jesus said in John 5, that those who are in the grave will hear the voice of the Son of Man and come alive, in the same way that the dead cannot stay dead if they hear the voice of the Son of God.

So the sheep of his fold will leave their former pastures and their the thieves and the robbers that are shepherding them, and they will follow after the good shepherd and they will find life abundant.

We believe that that's true.

We believe that that's true for City Church.

We believe that that's true for Redeemer.

That's why we do what we do.

Can you be part of the mission with us?

Can you be part of the mission here at City Church?

Like, that's important to me.

Okay, join us.

Serve with us to that end.

Be part of us.

Speak to your friends and colleagues of the Good Shepherd.

Or maybe you're like, no, I love the idea of a church in church town.

I've had to drive like half an hour to get here and there's no parking, or I've got to pay parking.

But dunning on the south side, I'm all about that.

And I'm going to go and talk to Duncan.

I'm going to shake his hand and say, congratulations on becoming a new father, give him a cigar or something, and then say, give me information about your church plant.

I want to hear more about Redeemer because I want more people to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and know abundant life in him.

Could you do that?

Jesus transforms his flock by expanding it.

Secondly and finally, Jesus transforms his flock by changing us all individually.

This passage finishes back with a reference to what has happened before, 19 to 21.

You kind of wonder why is this kind of tackled in the end to this passage?

And there was again a division among the Jews because of these words.

Many of them said he has a demon, he is insane.

Why listen to him?

Others said, these are not the words of one who's oppressed by a demon.

Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?

When this happens in the Bible, um when the Bible writer brings us back to something that has already happened, we're supposed to uh read what has happened in the in the interval uh in light of what has already happened.

And this is like a little bracket, a little closed bracket at the end of basically from the start of chapter 9 through to 1021.

We're supposed to be thinking about the blind man again that we looked at last week, that the man who was born blind was given sight by Jesus.

And what's the point of doing that?

Is that John is showing us that the Good Shepherd has come, that everything that he is doing, everything that he is saying, is true because he really can and does transform people in the same way that he opened the eyes of the man born blind.

He transformed his life.

And so we're supposed to go away and thinking, hold on, this guy doesn't just have a demon.

This guy has the possibility to transform everything about my life.

And becoming a Christian has a tendency to do that.

And so the testimony of the blind man rings in our ears again from last week.

He says, once all I know is I was blind, but now I see.

I was blind, but now I see.

In John's Gospel, up until this point, what have we seen?

We've seen, we've seen lame men walk, we've seen the sick healed, and now we see the blind see.

Jesus, the good shepherd, who lays down his life for his people, who gives abundant life to his people, he transforms them.

You become a Christian that will change every aspect of your life.

Maybe not overnight, maybe not instantaneously.

In fact, as I said last week, the first 70 years of being a Christian are the hardest.

It gets easier after that.

But the Good Shepherd will begin incrementally but very deliberately to change you, every part of you.

Your desires, your loves and your longings, your values, change you emotionally.

He'll bring you into a new family.

He'll connect you with other sheep, brothers and sisters who love you, and we can serve together on something that will far outlast us.

Jesus transforms his sheep.

This is what Christianity is about.

Christianity, the Good Shepherd is not seeking simply to recruit people to a society or a club, nor is Christianity about socializing you into a nice middle class friendship group.

It is about being completely transformed by the Good Shepherd who knows you by name, who offers you abundant life, who lays down his life for you, and who promises to change you every day.

I am the Good Shepherd, Jesus says.

Come, be a sheep.

Follow him.

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