The Good Shepherd: Finding Guidance and Safety in Christ

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We're reading from John chapter 10, verse 11 to 21, and there's a few hints in here about what I am.

John 10:11–21

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep.

So when he sees a wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.

Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he

is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me,

just as the father knows me, and I know the father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.

I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also.

They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.

The reason my father loves me is that I lay down my life, only to 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 authority to take it up again.

This command I received from my father.

The Jews who heard these words were again divided. Many of them said,

He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?

But others, these are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon.

Can a Morning, everyone.

Good morning, everyone. I don't know whether you got all seven sayings of the

I Am statements, but I'm sure that you were scrambling to find an eighth.

Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. And as we get to this passage in John chapter

John 10 · chapter mention

10, that's what I'm focusing on this morning, this Jesus saying that I am the good shepherd.

Many people have tried to imagine what Christ would look like in our contemporary culture.

And up the back there, you'll see a shepherd maybe that would look like that.

But the best way to understand the relevance of Jesus' life today is not for

us to bring Jesus into our culture, but really to seek to understand what the

shepherd would mean in his culture, where he lived.

And then once we understand the context of Jesus' culture, then we can introduce

it into to what we might view it like today.

And the one way that we can get to understand what the culture would be like

back then is to understand if he says he's the good shepherd,

well, the Bible clearly points out what a bad shepherd might look like.

And that happens in Ezekiel, and some passages are going to come up for us now.

And Peter, can you try to stop the ringing, please?

Ezekiel chapter 34 says this. The word of the Lord came to the Son of Man's

Ezekiel 34 · chapter mention

prophecy against the shepherds of Israel.

Prophesy and say to them, this is what the Sovereign Lord says.

Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take for themselves.

Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat curds and clothe yourselves

with wool and slaughter choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock.

You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured.

You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost.

You have ruled them harshly and brutally so that they are scattered because they have no shepherd.

And when they were scattered, they became food for wild animals.

Next section, God expresses his displeasure with the selfish shepherds.

He says, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord.

Surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd

and you have been plundered and so have been plundered and have become food for the wild animals.

And because my shepherd did not search for the flock but cared for themselves

rather than the flock, I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.

As a shepherd looks after the scattered flock when he is with them,

so I'll look after my sheep.

I'll rescue them and all the places where they have scattered on the day of clouds and darkness.

I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the sovereign Lord.

I will search for the lost. I'll bring back the strays. I'll bind them up,

bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.

But the sleek and strong I will destroy.

I will shepherd the flock with justice.

We need to notice in chapters 34 of Ezekiel 23 and 24, God says,

I'll place over them a shepherd, my servant David, and he'll tend them and be their shepherd.

I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them.

I, the Lord, have spoken. Pretty huge. When Ezekiel was written,

David had already been dead for 400 years.

And yet he says that I'll place David as shepherd over his flock.

So this is a huge prophecy about Jesus, the son of David, who is the good shepherd.

And the closing verses of this sums up the shepherd's heart for the sheep in

Ezekiel chapter 34, verses 30 and 31.

Ezekiel 34:30

Then they'll know that I, the Lord their God, am with them. and they,

the house of Israel, are my people, declares the sovereign Lord.

You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, a people, and I am your God,

declares the sovereign Lord.

Then if we move from Ezekiel to Jesus' time, which is what we're doing,

even though they were immersed into religion up to their eyeballs and led by

the chief priests and the Pharisees, those leaders that Ezekiel are probably

talking about, We read in Matthew 6, verse 36.

Huge.

Isn't it? The prophecy of the Bible and how Jesus is the good shepherd.

How do you feel about being likened to a sheep? After all, sheep are not the

sharpest animals in any pen, that's for sure. just think about it if horses

get loose from their yard and.

When they're brought back, they're not feral, as the general rule is anyway.

If dogs get out, they generally turn into wild dogs unless they come back home.

If animals get out of a zoo, well, then they revert back to a kind of a wild state.

They'll hunt and they'll pack and they'll survive and instincts will kick in.

But sheep, they'll just stand there in the place where they're fed and just

wait for the food to drop out, like a teenager kind of, stand in front of the fridge.

Isn't there supposed to be food that come out of this fridge?

If they get lost, they just stay lost until someone finds them.

And if they find themselves on their back, they just lay there until they die.

They'll eat things that will kill them if not shown what to eat.

And if predators come along, they're absolutely helpless, a pass from intervention.

And even Hollywood got it right when a pig's smarter than a sheep.

Without a shepherd, the sheep die. They are utterly dependent on the shepherd.

They're directionless and without guidance.

They're helpless in the midst of danger.

And we're likened to sheep.

I get into my brain that Colin Buchanan song, I can't help it. It's just in there.

We all like sheep have gone away, bah, bah, do, bah, bah.

And my kids are 25 years old, and I still remember it in my brain.

Right throughout the bible we get the picture of

our dependency the dependency of sheep and the

need for their protection the need for their healing and

guidance but more than that we see that jesus

is the shepherd the almighty shepherd the one who will lead them to peace and

satisfaction we know don't we we've heard it in many many passages sometimes

we have this little bo peep understanding of Jesus as a shepherd.

Like if farmer wants a wife language, it's the simple but sensitive farmer.

But unlike shepherds today in the Middle East, they were, in the Middle East,

they were fierce defenders of their flock. They were courageous.

They were the shepherds that would lay down their life for their sheep.

They lived with their sheep. They They never went home.

They camped out with them. They did everything for their sheep.

The shepherd is the sheep's protector, the provider, their vet,

their leader, their guide, their owner.

Sheep need a shepherd.

And so do we. And Jesus utilizes that picture over and over again as the New

Testament does, as he uses that image of him being the shepherd.

It was clear in the Old Testament that the people understood God to be their

shepherd, their protector, their provider, their physician, their leader, their guide.

They belong to him.

We see that in Genesis, where Jacob referred to God that way.

He said, the God who has been my shepherd all the day of my life.

In Psalm 23, we know that really well, don't we?

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

In Psalm 28, we read, the Lord is the strength of his people,

a fortress of salvation for the anointed one.

Save your people and bless your inheritance.

Be their shepherd and carry them forever.

Then in Jeremiah 31, very, very well-known passage. Hear the word of the Lord,

O nations, proclaim in distant coastlands.

He who has scattered Israel will gather them again and watch over his flock

like a shepherd." We need a shepherd.

We needed in the Old Testament, we saw that, and today we need a shepherd.

The one who can protect us, the one who will guide us, the one who will take you and I to calm places.

The one who restores the weary with an aching heart, the one who provides for

you and for I in complete safety, deep satisfaction and inner peace.

We know this. We know that we need a shepherd as people from all walks of life

who haven't even the faintest idea how to go through life, long for guidance,

long for direction.

I've ran, And as many ministers have who have been around for quite some time,

hundreds of funerals, and I've ran funerals for people who have no Christian faith whatsoever.

And nearly all the time they'll say, well, what do you want read?

Well, we want Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

It's the deepest yearning of the soul to find safety and peace and satisfaction.

It's the quest that can only happen through the shepherd, whether we read it

in Psalm 23 or we read it in John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

But what does John chapter 10 tell us of the good shepherd and what does it mean for us?

John 10 · chapter mention

Well, first of all, as we've gone through our series, we've seen that all of

these things point towards the reason why John's written is that we might believe

that Jesus is the son of God and have salvation in his name.

He points himself out to be God. He says, I am the good shepherd in verse 11

and repeats that in verse 14. I am the good shepherd.

And when Jesus says, I am, he deliberately depicts himself as God,

the one who goes back to that Moses time.

I am who I am.

And so when the Old Testament people are hearing Jesus say, I am the good shepherd,

I am God, they're riled. How could Jesus possibly say that?

So the ordinary Israelites considered the name of God not to be spoken from human lips.

In fact, it was so revered that it was only pronounced once a year at the Day of Atonement.

And then only the high priest could speak of Yahweh.

If the name needed to be written, the scribes would take a bath before writing

it and then destroy the pen afterwards after they wrote it. That's pretty huge.

I am statement literally means I, even I, and only I, am the good shepherd.

So Jesus is stating there is no other shepherd but him.

What does it mean for us to say, for me to say, for you to say, the Lord is my shepherd?

See, Tim Keller puts it like this. He hits it on the head when he says, we like the sound of it.

We like the truth of it to say that the Lord is my shepherd.

We are confronted by this.

We acknowledge it in our dark hours of life when we say we need his help.

But most of the time, we don't want a shepherd. We just want a consultant.

God, the consultant, the one who can come in our time of need.

We might need him at a particular time for protection or provision or healing

or guidance, so we call upon him.

But we don't need a consultant, as Keller says. We need a shepherd,

as sheep who are completely and utterly dependent on God.

It's easy to say, isn't it, that the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want.

It's hard to put into practice, though. what does it mean for us to trust that

good shepherd, to trust the one who guides, to trust the one who directs?

We have some hint of it when Paul says, I'm weak and he is strong.

What will it mean for us to walk with him? What would it look like?

Well, first of all, that means that we

will rely upon him absolutely completely

we won't treat him like god

as a fireman to put out our fires or a policeman to

come along when we're in a tighter need or a doctor to

come along to bring them about healing or someone who

is a financial consultant when our finances are

gone now it goes more than that that jesus is

the one in which we are in his

arms comes he doesn't intervene into

our life he interacts with our life day

by day as we walk with him might

be silly to sound that way that we think god to be a fireman or police or doctor

or whatever it might be but as sheep he is our shepherd and it's absolute intimacy with him him.

There is no area of our life where he is excluded.

He's in every area, in every way.

He is with us. The second thing Jesus came, as we read in our passage,

verse 11 to 15, is that he came to save us.

Jesus has shown himself to be God, and as God, that will translate late in him,

allowing him to be part of every area of our life.

But as we look at the shepherd, we see that not only did he come to walk with

us, he came to lay his life down for us, to save us.

See, in Jewish law, a hired hand was required to defend the flock against wolves,

against any kind of predator.

But when the pack came, maybe just the individual, when the pack of wolves come,

they could run for the hills.

They had no requirement at all to risk their lives for their flog.

So while it was not unheard of for a shepherd to lose their life defending his

flock, death was always unintended.

But with Jesus, however, his death

was voluntary. He laid his life down voluntary. No one took it from him.

He gave his life for you and for me, motivated not out of obligation because

of the role that he played, but motivated out of love for you.

Look at verse 18. No one takes it from me. I lay my life down on my own accord.

We're not to think that Jesus died as a martyr or he was murdered.

He intentionally laid his life down for the sheep.

C.S. Lewis, a famous writer, said it costs God nothing, as far as we know,

to create ate nice things, but to convert our rebellious wills,

it cost him crucifixion.

For the shepherd in the Middle East, his sheep was everything.

They were his glory, really, and his wealth and his precious possession.

He owned them. They were his pride and joy.

But Jesus says, I'm not a I am the shepherd, and my sheep know me, and I know them.

He says, they are my joy, they are my pride, they are my glory,

they are so much more, and they will not perish on my watch.

Still disobedient sheep. I can't speak for you, but I'm stupid.

And I will literally stand in front of the fridge and wait to see whether something comes out of it.

And Jesus said, while I was still a sinner in a helpless state,

standing before the fridge, waiting for something to happen in my life, he died for me.

I need to understand that my complete dependency as a sheep is on him for my salvation.

I need to accept his sacrifice as a shepherd, that Jesus died so that we might

be in relationship with him.

See, Jesus shows himself as the one who provides salvation for us,

and he does so because he wants a relationship with us.

And like I spoke about, he did it because he loves us.

And as I said, he knows us, and we know him.

He knows us, not just like he knows our voice, like he knows what we say or

what we're about to say, although he does do that as well.

There's an app that was created by the Japanese and it translates dogs' barks.

Pretty amazing. It's called the Bowlingual Dog Barking Translating Device.

And it's a canine translator and it's a brainchild of this guy, Suzuki,

who was developed by some Japanese, as you can imagine, sort of this company,

and it analyzes over 200 breeds of dogs, and it kind of packs in there a database

of all different kind of barks,

and then what happens is that the dog barks, you put into the bowel lingual

what type of breed of dog that you have, and it comes out English what they've been saying.

Pretty amazing, isn't it? I'd love to know what our dogs are saying.

99% of the time, it's feed me more food than what you just provided. Or I'm barking.

I've got to say that Toby, our border collie, has got into the habit that he

sits at the back door and barks and drives you absolutely nuts because what

happens is you're watching television or something like that.

The dog barks if I knew what he was trying to say. But this is what Toby's actually

saying, if we use the bilingual,

he's saying, if you let me out the back door, then I'll bark out the backyard

so that when you come in, you feed me treats because you came in.

And that's what Susan does.

We let Toby out. He goes out the back. He barks at planes or snakes or whatever,

because there's a big snake in the backyard.

And then when we call him back in, Susan gives him a treat because he was a

good boy and came back in. So guess what? You come.

I'm going to bark at the the back door so I can go out and buy nothing.

Doesn't just know us like that. When he knows the sheep by name,

he's not saying, well, I know every single just bar that they have.

He's saying, I know you completely, not just your name.

I know the Australian government just knows our name. They've actually reduced

our name to a tax file number or a Medicare number, or Qantas has gone down

to a frequent flyer number, but he's saying, I know you.

And that word know is much more than an app.

He knows you like someone might know the intimacy between a husband and wife.

That's that word. He knows you completely.

He knows everything about you and loves you anyway.

He knows what you need and how you're stuffed up so that you You most often

now stuff up, create a need within us, and yet he cares for you and provides

for you. I need to ask you a question.

Jesus knows us that way, but do you know him? Verse 15 states that our relationship

with God as the good shepherd is to be patterned after the depth of intimacy

that we enjoy, that he enjoys with the Father and the Son.

It says, just as the Father knows me, I know the Father. Father,

and I've got to ask myself that question, and you have to ask yourself that

question, do you know Christ like that?

Came to save us. He came to rescue us, really, from ourselves.

See, I'm thankful that Jesus just doesn't offer us a relationship.

He comes after me. He came after me to rescue me.

Verse 16 talks about that, serves as a good reminder that Jesus is out there

searching for his sheep.

I have other sheep that are not of this pen.

I must bring them there also. They too will listen to my voice and they shall

be one flock and one shepherd.

Specifically, Jesus is saying we have the Jews as God's people and they have

been right throughout the Old Testament, but there are other people other than

the Jewish people who are going to be part of the people of God.

And I am going to go out there and I'm going to search for them and I'm going

to bring them back. So they are all God's people.

Listen to Luke 15 says when Jesus tells the story about the lost He says,

suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.

Does he not leave the 99 in open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?

And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.

Then he calls out his friends and his neighbors and together he says,

rejoice with me. I have found my lost sheep.

And I tell you that in the same way that there will be more rejoicing in heaven

over one One sinner who repents than over the 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent.

So Luke 15 tells us this, what the shepherd does, he protects us from ourself.

Like sheep, we'll just stand there wanting to be rescued.

Like sheep, we'll be lost and not even realize we're lost until we get into incredible danger.

And you might not even know right now that you are in danger because you might

not be be in the place where God wants you to be, and that is in relationship with him.

So he has searched for you, and this might be the place that you find him.

He calls your name, and he wants you to respond to him.

Because in verses 19 to 21, he says, do you hear my voice?

Do you hear the shepherd? And it's striking that even after Jesus shows himself as God,

even after he speaks of the salvation, after all the signs that we have looked

at in John, it's not just what we've read, it's what they have seen,

and yet they just don't get it.

At these words, the Jews again were divided.

Are you divided? Do you know Jesus as your shepherd? Because he knows you and he has searched for you.

And all it takes from you is to realize that we all like sheep have gone astray.

Each of us have turned to his own way.

You add the bar bar do bar bar will only

probably matter if you have four-year-old kids but we have

gone astray but god laid on

jesus our sin so that we might be saved and so that we might be rescued and

so that we might follow him and he might lead us to green pastures he might

protect us and at times when we need it,

he will jerk us in the right direction so we follow him in the places that he wants us to go,

rather than wander away like sheep. Let's pray.

Out of all the I am statements, Lord, this one here rings home because in the

story, we're definitely not the shepherd even though we sometimes feel that

way that we guide our own life.

We seek to build our direction in our own life. We save ourselves when things have gone wrong.

We really decide our own path.

But we're not like that. We are like sheep.

And I pray, Lord, that we would recognize that you know us and you know us by

name, not just literally our name, but you know us through and through.

So I pray, Lord, that people who don't know you might just reach out their hands

and say, look, take me, guide me, lead me.

You came to save us. You came to rescue us. What from? From our sin.

So I pray, Lord, that we give our sin to you and you deal with it as you have on the cross.

And I pray, Lord, that you lead us to places where we should go.

Then when we go off track Lord you get your big hook and you put us back on

track not because out of discipline Lord but out of love that we might walk

with you all the days of our life,

I pray this Lord in your name.