Title: The Good Life: The Shepherd and His Sheep
Text: John 10:1-10
Thesis: Following Jesus is an everyday, day-in and day-out, relationship… and it’s good!
Introduction
Over the years I have been privileged to know and serve a lot of people. I hope my relationships have always been personal in nature… my hope is to be both friend and pastor. However, by virtue of what I do, it is also professional. So one of the most challenging aspects of being a pastor is when my relationship with someone is pretty much defined as professional in nature.
Baptism relationship. Confirmation relationship. Wedding relationship. Crisis relationship. Christmas relationship. Easter relationship. Funeral relationship. All encounters are defined as occasional events.
Another way to understand the difference between a personal relationship and a professional relationship is like that of a pet owner. You have a cat. You love your cat. You live with your cat. You feed your cat. You sit in your recliner with your cat on your lap. You have a personal relationship with your cat. Your pet veterinarian on the other hand only sees your cat professionally and occasionally…
I think it is safe to say, “Jesus does not want to only have a professional relationship with us.” Jesus wants to be personally engaged in our lives from day to day, day in and day out. In our text today Jesus develops that thought using the pastoral model of a shepherd and his sheep. The shepherd is Jesus and we are the sheep in this teaching.
Our relationship with Jesus is initially intended to be a saving relationship.
I. It is saving
“…the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out.” John 10:1-5
There are two different kinds of sheepfolds mentioned in our text today. The first is a communal fold in a town where all the shepherds brought their sheep back at night after a day of grazing in the countryside. The sheep were all held in that communal fold. In that shepherds knew their sheep and sheep knew their shepherds, in the morning each shepherd gave his whistle or call or whatever and each flock followed their respective shepherds from the fold.
In the second portion of our text Jesus spoke of another kind of sheepfold typically used during summer months… the open-country fold. The open country fold was a crude enclosure. In the open country the shepherd would lead his flock through an opening into the enclosure. The shepherd would then lie down and sleep across the opening to protect his sheep inside the fold from whatever might be threatening from outside the fold.
In the open-country sheepfold: Jesus is both the Shepherd of the Sheep and the Gate
“Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved…” John 10:9
Understanding the shepherd as also the gate becomes clear in John 10:9 where Jesus said: “Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved…” The teaching that the way of salvation is found only in Jesus is reinforced in Acts 4:12 where the Apostle Peter, speaking of Jesus, taught, “There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”
This is not a familiar image for us… we do not think of fat lambs or beef cattle or fat hogs or roaster chickens as critters to be saved. They are critters to be eater!
Sheep in America… like most live stock are raised to be consumed. Ranchers have cattle herds to raise and calves to be fattened and sent to market. Pig farmers have sow herds to raise feeder pigs to be fattened into fat hogs and sent to market. Tyson hatches chicks which are transported to growers who fatten them in about six weeks to be sent to market.
We had a rule on the farm… never name a pet calf or pig or chicken! The kids will not eat a pet calf named T-Bone or a pet pig named Bacon or a pet lamb named Chops.
When Jesus was giving his teaching on the Shepherd and the Sheep he was speaking to an audience that had a vivid mental picture of what he was saying. They got it. It is even likely that as he was teaching he looked out over a valley and saw, here and there, flocks of grazing sheep.
If we want to see a sheep we either drive to across Colorado to the Yampa Valley where massive herds graze or easier yet… cut a deal with the Pony Express Pony Ride and Petting Zoo (home of Old McDonald’s Barn Yard Rescues) folks out of Longmont. And they will bring a petting zoo to your door which will include goats, sheep, ducks, pigs, geese, turkeys, rabbits, donkeys and llamas.
Though sheep herding is not exactly part of our Metro Denver day to day experience, things have not changed much in biblical lands… throughout the Middle East there are shepherds with flocks of goats and sheep. And like nomadic herders all around the world their sheep and goats and yaks and llamas are not raised primarily for consumption. They are raised to produce milk and wool.
So while a sheep in the United States or England has a very bleak outlook in terms of life-expectancy… a sheep in the Middle East may live a long and pampered sheep’s life. They named their sheep. The shepherd and his family may think of their flock almost as family. There was something of a relationship between the shepherd and his flock. The sheep recognized their shepherd. They recognized the shepherd’s voice. They recognized their name when he called them. And one of the primary concerns of the shepherd was and is to keep his sheep safe.
In the “War Horse” the story begins on a farm in Devon, England in 1912. A teenager named Albert witnessed the birth and watched the colt grow into a magnificent horse. In a moment of weakness Albert’s father bought the young horse at auction and brought it home to be the farm workhorse… In the first 15 minutes of the story Albert named the horse Joey and trained Joey to respond when he cupped his hands and blew the sound of an owl. At the sound of the owl Joey would come to Albert. Though totally unfitted for the life of a workhorse Albert trains the horse to do the work of a draft horse.
Then along came World War I and all the horses in England were sent to the front in Europe to be one of the eight million horses that served the war effort.
Toward the end of the war Joey is tangled in the barbed-wire of the no-man’s-land that separated the two warring fronts. Soldiers cut Joey free and took him to a military hospital where a military doctor determined his injuries were too severe and that he must be put down. Meanwhile Albert had been wounded and was hospitalized at the same military hospital. Though his eyes were bandaged, when he heard the soldiers describing the horse, he wondered if it could be Joey, so he cupped his hands and began whistling the sound of an owl… it was the sound of his master’s whistle, in the last 15 minutes of the story, that saved his life.
The sheep recognize his voice and the shepherd calls his own sheep by name.
The question then is a simple one: Are you in a saving relationship with Jesus? Have you come in through the gate confessing faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior?
Our relationship with Jesus is also intended to be a secure relationship.
II. It is securing
“Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and find good pastures.” John 10:9
Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in her book “Learning to Walk in the Dark” about how she came to be afraid of the dark. She wrote of a the pastor of the church she attended twice on Sunday and on Wednesday nights, and how he could shift seamlessly from talking about physical darkness to spiritual darkness and of how the “devil” and “darkness” began with the same letter. He read scripture to support his points about outer darkness, the power of darkness, the prince of darkness, and people of darkness.
She wrote of how on Wednesday nights she would race to her car, get in and lock all the doors… whatever courage she had “wilted in the presence of this evil new threat of darkness.” (P. 41)
Before too many weeks had passed she asked to be baptized “the way someone on fire asks to be hosed down” she so wanted to be saved from the devouring power of darkness. She wrote, “I wanted Satan to know that I had gone over to the other side.” (P. 42)
Fear of the darkness and fear of the Prince of Darkness and fear of being cast into outer darkness is sobering stuff… frightening stuff! However, Jesus does not want for us to live our lives terrified of the going to hell much less the darkness. Jesus said, “Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and find good pastures.” John 10:9
In our relationship with Jesus we are both: Saved and Secure
Jesus says of his sheep, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me. For my Father has given them to me and he is more powerful than anyone else.” John 10:28
The Apostle Paul wrote of this security in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In I John 5:11-13 we are assured: “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life. I have written these things to you who believe so that you may know that you have eternal life.” If you have trusted Christ as your Savior you can be assured that you have eternal life.
The question here then is: Are you secure in your relationship with Jesus? “I have written these things to you who believe so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
Our relationship with Jesus is intended to be a satisfying relationship.
III. It is satisfying
“My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” John 10:10
Jerry Seinfeld says, “Life is truly a ride. We’re all strapped in and no one can stop it. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang onto the bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair’s messed up, you’re out of breath and you didn’t throw up.”
Life is something of a ride with all kinds of experiences…I don’t know about you but I see a lot of people who are working really hard at trying to find meaning and satisfaction in life. They are doing it in all kinds of ways and apparently no one can get enough of whatever it is they think they need.
I think one of the best commercials ever produced is the Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” commercial. In the original clip there are three elderly ladies standing at a burger joint counter. Before them is an enormous hamburger bun. One of the ladies lifts the top of the bun to reveal a tiny beef patty which prompts one of the ladies to ask, “Where’s the beef?”
I like this clip almost as much as I like the one where the little lady, driving a Rolls Royce comes careening around a corner and into a burger drive-thru… she continues to make laps around the burger joint and through the drive-thru and each time as she passes the serving window she shouts, “Where’s the beef?”
In the original commercial the three ladies at the counter were looking at a very satisfying looking bun. The burger had promise. It looked good on the outside but when they lifted the top of the bun they saw that inside… the burger was not satisfying at all. Such is life!
The world is full of people who outwardly look to have everything life can offer but inside they are not satisfied… they continue to ask, “Where’s the beef?”
When we began this morning we spoke of how when we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus we become one of his sheep, so to speak. He knows us. He knows our name. We are his. As his sheep we are secure in his care… nothing can separate us from his love. And then Jesus says the outcome of being saved and secure is to then live out a satisfying life… an abundant life.
Does life more abundant mean more stuff or more life?
Life more abundant means we have more life!
Life more abundant means we have a more meaningful life!
The dictionary defines abundance as ample quantity, profusion, affluence and wealth. Because we live in the west, whenever we hear a word like abundant or abundance we immediately get all giddy. Abundance means more. Abundance means more money. Abundance means a better job. Abundance means a bigger house. Abundance means a handsome husband and a beautiful wife and a house full of beautiful, bright, high-achiever kids. Abundance means health. Abundance means smooth sailing through life. After all I am a child of the King and the King is rich so I should be rich too. God has power so I should have power too.
Life more abundant means we have more life… a meaningful life now and a forever life then.
When we follow Christ we are not just punching a time clock or parenting or mowing the lawn or chatting it up with a neighbor, or taking in a Rockies game or visiting someone in the hospital or walking down the grocery aisle… the bible says, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” I Corinthians 10:31
The bible says we are “the light of the world.” The bible says we are “Christ’s ambassadors.” We are “children of God.”
The question now becomes: Are you saved, secure and in a satisfying relationship with Jesus?
Conclusion
Psalm 23 is a summation of what it means to live an abundant life now and an eternal life then, in the care of Jesus, The Good Shepherd.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul;
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil; for you are with me;
Your rod and your staff comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil, my cup ever flows.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Following Jesus is an everyday, day-in and day-out, saving, secure and satisfying relationship both now and forever… and it’s good!
