Ashton Earwood - "Know His Voice" - John 10:1-11

It's good to be in church, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to stand up here this morning and to open God's word with you all.

This morning we're going to be in John chapter 10, if you'd like to go ahead and turn there.

John 10 · chapter mention

And while we're turning there, I want you to think about something with me for a moment.

There are certain voices in your life that you immediately recognize.

You don't have to stop and think about who's speaking.

You don't have to see the person.

Sometimes I don't even have to say more than a few words.

You just know their voice.

And really, that's something we've learned how to do throughout the years in our lives.

It happens naturally.

Nobody really teaches us how to do it over time.

We just learn to distinguish the voices we hear.

For example, this morning, if you could not see me, if I'd never said my name, if there were no other indications that it was me standing up here, you would still be able to tell pretty quickly that I'm not Pastor Derek.

Why is that?

We don't sound the same.

We sound different.

Our voices are different.

And in your own life, there are voices that you don't have to work very hard to recognize.

For example, if your spouse calls you from another room, you probably don't have to ask who it is.

If one of your children calls you, especially if something's wrong, you know that voice.

For me growing up, if I heard my mom call out my first, middle, and last name from somewhere else in the house, I knew exactly what was calling my name, and I also knew I was probably in trouble.

But the point is there's somebody that maybe you've known, you've grown to have a relationship with, and you just know their voice.

It's not really that complicated.

You recognize a voice because you've learned the person behind the voice.

You spend time with them, you listen to them, you walk through life with them, their voice becomes familiar.

And that's why you recognize it almost immediately.

And this morning I want us to think about that spiritually.

Because whether we realize it or not, every one of us is listening to voices.

There are voices telling us what matters, telling us what success looks like, telling us how we should live, telling us where we what we should believe in, what makes us happy.

Sometimes it's culture, sometimes it's family, sometimes it's somebody we respect.

It's our past.

Sometimes fear can be a loud voice in our life.

And sometimes it's our own desires.

And sometimes the loudest voice in my life is my own voice.

What I think, how I feel, what I want, what makes sense to me.

And here's the problem with all of those things.

Not every voice is leading us in the same direction.

So for the believer, the question is not what do I think or how do I feel, or even what does everybody else say.

The question is, what has my shepherd said?

And we're going to read about that here in a minute.

But if I belong to Jesus, then I don't just need to know about Jesus.

I don't just need to know about my shepherd.

I need to know his voice.

And that's really what I want us to look at together.

The title this morning is Know His Voice, because that's the picture that Jesus gives us here in John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

So Know His Voice.

So as we read these first couple of verses together, I want you to pay attention to the relationships that Jesus describes between the shepherd and his sheep.

Pay attention to who knows whom, who is speaking, who is listening, and ultimately who is following.

So we're going to read verses one through five in John chapter ten.

It says, Most assuredly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs up some other way, the same as a thief and a robber.

But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

When he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.

So there's several things that happen in those five verses, but specifically I want us to look back at verse number four where it says the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

They know his voice, and because they know his voice, they follow him.

And that's kind of the thought I want to build everything around this morning is the closer you walk with Jesus, the easier it becomes to recognize his voice, to know his voice.

So maybe the question we need to wrestle with this morning is not do I believe in Jesus, but maybe we need to go deeper than that.

How well do I actually know the shepherd that I'm claiming to follow?

Because there's a difference between being familiar with Christianity and being familiar with Christ.

There's a difference between knowing that, knowing what happens at church and knowing the shepherd.

There's a difference between knowing Bible stories and knowing his voice.

And I think that's an important distinction for us to make, especially sitting in church on a Sunday morning, because it is very possible to become very familiar with Christianity itself because you know when to stand up on Sunday mornings, you know when to sit down, you know the songs, you can know the language, you can know the Bible stories, you can have a Bible verse on your social media, you can know the difference between Genesis and Revelation, you can know what Christians believe.

You can grow up in church, attend groups, come to worship every week, become very comfortable around the things of God.

And those are not bad things.

Those are all very good things.

But being familiar with the things of God is not automatically the same thing as personally knowing God.

There's a difference between knowing information about somebody and actually knowing that person.

And the same thing can happen spiritually.

We can know about Jesus without truly walking closely with Jesus.

We can know what the Bible says without allowing the Bible to shape how we live.

We can know the right answers without surrendering the areas of our life where Jesus is asking us to follow.

And we can become so familiar with church that if we're not careful, we mistake being comfortable in this environment for actually walking closer with God.

In this passage of scripture that we just read, Jesus is not just describing sheep who simply know facts about their shepherd.

If you look at the language again, it says they follow him for they know his voice.

There's a relationship there, there's connection there, there's trust, there's obedience there.

They know who is speaking and they trust him enough to follow where he leads.

So this morning, when I ask, how well do I know my shepherd?

I'm not asking how many Bible verses we can quote.

I'm not asking how many years we've been in church.

I'm not asking how much theology we know about scripture.

I'm asking something a lot more personal.

I'm asking, am I actually walking with Jesus close enough to where his voice is becoming familiar to me?

Because the closer you walk with Jesus, the easier it becomes to recognize his voice, just like how we learn each other's voices.

And before I go any further, let's just make sure we understand the picture Jesus is giving here.

Jesus is using the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep for describing our relationship with him.

So Jesus is using that relationship to those who belong to him.

So basically, I'm a shepherd, I'm a sheep, he is my shepherd.

And as we keep reading through the chapter, he makes that very clear in verse 11.

He says, I'm the good shepherd.

We're going to get there in a moment, but for now, when we talk about the shepherd, we're talking about Jesus, and when we talk about the sheep, we're talking about those who belong to him.

And with that picture established, I want us to notice the first thing that Jesus tells us about this relationship.

So let's look and see what Jesus tells us about the shepherd, his sheep, and his voice.

The first point this morning is the shepherd knows you.

The shepherd knows you.

John 10 3 says, He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

So before we talk about whether you know the shepherd, don't miss what happens first.

This is very important.

The first thing that we see is the shepherd knows you.

He doesn't just know about you, he knows you.

The shepherd doesn't just simply know that he has sheep, he knows each of his sheep individually.

Because not only does our shepherd know us, he created us, right?

When we talk about the shepherd, we're talking about Jesus and the one who created us knows us by name.

He knows us because he's the one who made us.

And we can read all about that in Psalm 139, how God formed us, how he knows us, and how there's nowhere we can go outside of his presence.

So when we say this morning, the shepherd knows you, we're talking about the one who knows you more completely than anybody else could ever know you.

And Jesus uses this picture very intentionally because we live in a world sometimes that people desperately want to be known.

We want people to notice us.

We want people to recognize what we do.

We want people to appreciate us, to respect us, to include us.

And none of those things are inherently wrong with wanting meaningful relationships or wanting our lives to matter, but sometimes we get so consumed with being known by people that we forget that we're already fully known by God.

He doesn't just know the cleaned up Sunday morning version of us, he knows what we're worried about, what we're carrying, what we're praying about, what we're ashamed of, what we're tempted by, the things that nobody else knows, what keeps us awake at night.

Basically, he knows the version of you that everybody sees, and he also knows the version of you that nobody sees.

And yet he still calls you by name.

Remember verse 3, he said he calls his own sheep by name.

And I think we can understand a little bit of what Jesus is showing here because as we talk about sheep for a minute, if I looked out across a field and I saw a hundred sheep, and someone came up to me and said, What do you see?

I'd probably say, I see about a hundred sheep.

But the shepherd sees the individual sheep that make up the flock.

And we can better understand that in different areas of life.

So uh for me, I coach football, and somebody sitting in the stands can look on the field and they can see a football team.

When the team is playing good, they might say, Oh, well, that's a good team.

When they're playing bad, that's a bad team.

But as a coach, I don't just see a team, I see the individual players that make up the team.

And I know when a player is messing up, I know how I should address it.

And there's some players that need to be coached differently than other players.

I know there's some players that I can be stern with.

I can tell them what you're doing right now is wrong, it's not good, I need you to fix it.

And they fix it and they move on.

And sometimes there's a player who will mess up, and I need to pull him aside, talk to him, explain what I'm seeing and how he can do it differently.

And if I if all I did was just scream at every single one of my players the same way, I'd probably be a terrible coach because each player is different.

The standard doesn't change, but because I know my players individually, I know how to coach them individually.

And parents in the room probably understand that better than me.

If you have multiple children, you know that your children are not all the same.

One child responds to correction one way, while another needs to be approached differently.

One child might need a stern talking to, one child might need stronger discipline, that was me.

And another one might need you to sit down with them and have a meaningful conversation.

Once again, the standard does not change.

Standard in your home.

It doesn't change from child to child, but the rules don't change from child to child, but you know your children, you know their personalities, their tendencies, you know how they respond.

And that's the kind of connection I want us to see here.

So the same way a parent doesn't just know that they have children, but they know their children individually and they care for them and protect them and love them.

That's the same thing with a shepherd and his sheep.

He doesn't just know that he has sheep, he knows each of his sheep individually.

Personally, he knows them.

He calls them by name.

So this morning, you may feel like just one person in a world full of billions of people, or you might even feel like one person singing a church full of people, but you are not lost in the crowd to your shepherd.

He knows you, he knows you personally.

And when we really understand that, it should change how much we value being known and approved by everybody else.

So, a question before we move on to point two is how much of your life is spent trying to prove yourself to people who will never know you as completely as Jesus already knows you.

So, some people they they're exhausted trying to be enough.

For some of us, we're we're trying to be enough for our parents, for our spouse, for the boss, for friends, enough for ourselves, even at times.

But Jesus already knows everything.

Your sin doesn't surprise him, your failure didn't surprise him, your past doesn't surprise him.

You are completely known by Jesus.

And here's what makes this even better the one who knows you completely is the one that you can completely trust.

The one who knows you completely is the one that you can completely trust.

A relationship with the shepherd does not stop with the shepherd knowing the sheep.

The sheep also learn their shepherd.

Jesus knows his sheep, right?

But look again at verse number four.

The sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

And that brings us perfectly into the second point, which is you can't recognize a voice you never learn.

You can't recognize a voice you never learn.

So pay attention to this verse as I read it again.

The sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

So go back to where we started this morning.

How do you recognize somebody's voice?

You become familiar with it.

You've heard them before.

You spend time around them.

You learned the person behind the voice.

The same principle is present in this example that Jesus is giving us.

The sheep have spent enough time around the shepherd that when the shepherd speaks, they recognize him.

They know him.

And here's where we need to be careful.

Because sometimes I feel like us as Christians, we talk about hearing God's voice and we make it a lot more mysterious than it needs to be.

We're not talking about sitting quietly and waiting on an audible voice from God.

And this is important because I think we need to be careful about assuming that every thought we have or every feeling or every desire that enters our mind came from God.

We have a habit of doing that sometimes, but my feelings can be wrong.

My desires can be wrong.

My interpretation of a circumstance can be wrong.

But God has given us something that will never be wrong.

And it's his word, right?

So he leaves us with his word.

And if you want to know what God has said, start with what God has already spoken.

If we read throughout his word, we learn him better.

We learn the shepherd, we see his character, we see his commands, we see his promise, we see what he loves, we see what he calls sin, what he calls righteous, how he tells us to live.

The more familiar we become with the truth, the easier it becomes to recognize something that contradicts it.

And that brings us to something that I really want to talk about, and that is your attention is discipling you.

What do I mean by that?

Something is shaping you every day.

Something is teaching you how to think.

Something is shaping what you consider normal.

Something is shaping what you desire, something is teaching you what success looks like, something is shaping what you fear.

So the question is not, am I being influenced?

Of course you are.

The question is, what is influencing me?

So just think about the last seven days.

What got your attention?

Over the past seven days, how much time did you spend hearing everybody else's opinion?

How much time did you spend consuming entertainment?

How much time did you spend scrolling or watching or listening, reading, thinking, worrying?

And then how much time did I spend learning the voice of my shepherd?

How much time did I spend with the Lord?

Because here's a question that I think is worth sitting with for everybody in this room, myself included.

If everybody else gets hours of my attention and God's word gets minutes, which voice am I training myself to recognize?

Where am I naturally going to fall?

Maybe that's part of the reason why God's word can sometimes sound foreign to us.

Sometimes it doesn't make sense to us like it should.

We've become deeply familiar with a voice outside of the shepherd.

And when we don't spend time in God's word consistently, eventually we can start getting confused by what's actually true.

What does that mean?

It means that God's word is very true and God has spoken it very clearly.

But because we spent so much time listening to everything else, we are no longer familiar with what God has said.

And I think about how easily this can happen.

If I spend majority of my time in conversation with friends, if I am constantly scrolling my phone or watching television or watching the news or listening to music or taking in everybody else's opinion, and then I barely open God's word, how am I going to clearly distinguish between what God has said is true and what the opinions I've formed from everything else is claiming to be true?

Because whether we want to admit it or not, we are very easily influenced.

All of us are.

And here's one of the hardest ones.

Just because my feelings are telling me something does not make it true.

Just because I want something does not mean it's okay.

Our feelings are real, but our feelings they are not authority.

For the Christian, the ultimate question is not what do I feel?

It has to become what has God said.

And one of the best ways to recognize what is false is not to spend your whole life studying every single possible lie.

It's to know what's true.

And how do we know what's true?

By knowing his word, by knowing his character, by knowing his promise, knowing his commands, and knowing his voice.

And we learn all of those things by spending time with him.

How do we do that?

How do we spend time with the shepherd?

Spend time reading his word, spend time talking to him in prayer.

And maybe we need to start turning down some other voices in our lives to where we can hear the shepherd more and become more familiar with him.

Because remember, you can't recognize a voice that you never learned.

But there's one more part of verse four that I don't think we can miss.

Jesus does not just say that the shepherd or that the sheep know the shepherd's voice.

Look at what he says again in verse four.

The sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

They recognize his voice and they follow where he leads.

And that's important because the goal of knowing God's word is not so that I can recognize what God said.

It's so that what God has said actually changes the way that I live.

I can know what Scripture says, I can recognize what's true.

I can tell you when something contradicts the Bible.

But if I know the voice of my shepherd, but I constantly refuse what he says, then what good is recognizing the voice?

What good is knowing his voice if I just refuse to follow it?

And that brings us to our third point.

Hearing his voice requires following his voice.

Hearing his voice requires following his voice.

And I'm going to read this verse again, verse 4.

The sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

So Jesus doesn't stop with, they know his voice.

It says they follow him.

Recognition produces response.

And this is where this passage gets really challenging for some of us who have been around church a long time.

What does that mean?

Because some of us don't have a recognition problem.

We don't have problems reading scripture.

We don't have problems talking about Christ.

We don't have a recognition problem.

We have an obedience problem.

We heard the sermons.

We've attended Bible studies.

We read the passages.

We studied scripture.

Sometimes we already know what God says.

We just don't really like what He said.

Or maybe even we agree with what He says, but we still don't do it.

We'll pray, God, show me what you want me to do.

And sometimes He's already told us what to do.

Just by reading His Word, we can see that He tells us to forgive, tell the truth, love your enemy, flee from sin, be generous, give unto the Lord financially, give tithes and offerings, stop gossiping, serve, pray, love your spouse, raise your children in the Lord, make disciples.

So sometimes we ask God for a new direction while we are actively ignoring the old instruction he already gave us.

So we're asking him for a new direction when we have a whole Bible full of direction that we're already not following.

And sometimes we convince ourselves that because we intend to obey eventually, that somehow counts as obedience now.

We convince ourselves that because we intend to obey eventually, that somehow counts as obedience now.

What do I mean by that?

I know I need to forgive them.

I'm just not ready yet.

I know I need to stop, just not right now.

I know I need to give more.

I just don't know if I have enough.

I know I need to have that conversation, eventually I'll get there.

I know what God's word says, I'm just working through it.

And listen, there are certain situations that require wisdom, prayer, and patience, but sometimes what we call waiting is just delayed obedience.

And sometimes it's not even that we completely refuse to follow God.

We just want to follow him on our own terms.

What does that mean?

I'll follow God as long as he's leading me somewhere that makes sense.

I'll follow God as long as it doesn't cost me too much.

I'll follow him as long as it doesn't make me uncomfortable.

I'll follow him as long as his direction lines up with where I already want to go.

But go back to the picture that Jesus gives.

The sheep follow the shepherd because they know his voice.

What does that mean?

The sheep does not have to understand everything that the shepherd understands.

They don't have to see everything that the shepherd sees.

They just have to know that's my shepherd.

And if that's my shepherd, then I can trust where he leads me to go.

Because the shepherd can see things that the sheep can't.

Keep in mind, we're not talking about actual sheep.

We're talking about us in Christ.

The shepherd knows where the danger is.

He knows where attacks may be waiting.

He knows where the sheep can safely eat.

He knows where they can find water.

And sometimes the safest way to get the sheep where they need to go may not be the shortest or the easiest way to get there.

And the sheep may not understand why the shepherd is leading them in that direction, but the shepherd does and they trust him.

The sheep does not have to understand the entire journey in order to follow the one who does.

They just have to trust their shepherd.

And maybe that's where obedience really begins.

Not with understanding everything God is doing, not with agreeing that his way is going to be easier, not with knowing exactly everything's going to work out the way it should, but maybe obedience begins with trusting the one who is leading me.

And remember what we established all the way back in point one the one who knows you completely is the one that you can completely trust.

So if he knows me completely, if he loves me completely, if he sees what I cannot see, then his word tells me to do something that's very difficult, what do I do?

When his word confronts me with something in my life that I don't want confronted, what do I do?

When his word tells me no, when I desperately wanted it to be a yes, what do I do?

I have to decide, do I trust my shepherd enough to follow him?

So here's a harder question.

What has God already shown me that I have not obeyed?

What has he already shown me that I'm not obeying me personally?

What am I resisting my shepherd?

Where am I resisting my shepherd?

I think we can all ask ourselves this because you don't truly follow the shepherd if you only follow him when he's already going where you want to go.

Basically, if I only follow Jesus when he's going right where I want him to go, then I'm not really following him.

I'm asking Jesus to follow me.

And we can confuse that in our minds sometimes, but following Jesus requires surrender.

What happens when God's word confronts my habits, my relationships, my finance, my pride, my bitterness, my desires, my plans?

What happens when the voice of the shepherd tells me something that I don't want to hear?

Because if Jesus only gets to lead me when he agrees with me, then I'm not following Jesus.

I'm asking him to follow me.

And that raises another important question.

Why should I trust him that much?

Why should I trust him enough to let him have control over my life?

Why should I surrender my life to him?

How can I trust him?

I'm so glad you asked.

Because we're going to read John 10 10.

The thief does not come except to steal, kill, and destroy.

And I, Jesus speaking here, have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.

So remember what we've been talking about.

Every voice is leading you somewhere.

Some voices promise freedom, but then they produce bondage.

Some promise happiness, but leave emptiness.

Some promise life, but they slowly take it away from you.

And Jesus says there's a thief whose destination is destruction.

But Christ says, I have come so that they may have life.

And then verse 11, I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

That's our answer.

Why should I trust his voice?

Why should I trust him enough to follow him?

Not because I always understand where he's leading, not because obedience will be easy, not because following Jesus means I won't suffer, not because I like the way that he leads me all the time.

I trust the shepherd because I know the shepherd, and if I ever question his love for me, I look at the cross.

Jesus does not simply just say that he loves his sheep.

The shepherd gave his life for his sheep.

Our Savior laid down his life for you and for me.

He knew our sin, knew our rebellion, knew our disobedience, he knew everything that we hide, and still Jesus went to Calvary.

He took the punishment for my sin.

He was buried, he rose again.

So when following God gets difficult, when God's word confronts me and I don't agree with it, when I don't understand, when following costs me something, I can still trust him.

Why?

Because the hands that are leading me are the same hands that were pierced for me.

The God I'm following is the same God who gave his son to die for me.

So as I wrap this up at the beginning this morning, we talked about voices and how we immediately recognize them.

Why do we recognize them?

Because we've learned the person behind the voice.

So I want to leave you with a much more important question.

How familiar are you with the voice of your shepherd?

Not how long have I been in church?

Not do you own a Bible?

Not do you know a lot about Jesus?

Do you know him personally?

And if you do know him, are you following him?

And I want you to be honest and consider these questions.

What voice currently has the most influence over me?

Is there something God has already said that I'm refusing to obey?

Am I actually growing more familiar with my shepherd?

Maybe we've let other voices get too loud.

Maybe fear, maybe success, maybe money, maybe culture, maybe a relationship, maybe your own desires, and maybe God is not asking you to discover some brand new revelation this morning.

Maybe he's calling you back to something that he's already said.

So we don't just need to try to hear him better.

We need to actually get to know him better.

Open his word.

Spend time with him.

Pray.

Obey what he's already shown you.

Surround yourself with people that point you towards him.

And when another voice contradicts what your shepherd has already said, you know which voice to follow.

Because Jesus said, the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

And remember, the closer that you walk with Jesus, the easier it becomes to recognize his voice.

So the shepherd, he knows your name.

And you can trust where he's leading you because the good shepherd gave his life for his sheep.

And as they come to lead us in song this morning, the altars are open.

And if you need to spend time talking to God, come.

If you don't know the Lord this morning, that's the first step.

You can't follow a shepherd if you don't have a shepherd.

So this is the first step.

Allow myself or somebody else to walk you through what that looks like.

And this morning, after we pray, continue to talk to the Lord about whatever it is that He has shown you through His Word this morning.

And just know that at the end of the day, when following Jesus gets difficult, when we start to turn up other voices in our life and turn down the shepherd, we can't forget that verse that says, The good shepherd gave his life for his sheep.

That is who we follow.

We follow the one who sacrificed himself to save me.

So this morning, if there's something you need to talk to God about, if there's something that you need to turn down in your life so that you can hear Jesus more, the altar is the first step to doing that.

And this morning, as we pray, just know the altars are open and that if you need somebody to pray with you, we will do that.

If you need somebody to show you the Lord, we can walk you through what that looks like.

But would you pray with me this morning?

Dear Lord, we just we thank you for this time together.

We thank you for allowing us just to come together and to worship you and I.