Christ Has The Listening Sheep In His Hands

5.11.25 John 10:22–30

22 Then the Festival of Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple area in Solomon’s Colonnade. 24 So the Jews gathered around Jesus, asking, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I am doing in my Father’s name testify about me. 26 But you do not believe, because you are not my sheep, as I said to you. 27 My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

Christ Has the Listening Sheep In His Hands

Sometimes in academia, when people earn a doctorate, they quickly want to be called “doctor” for the honor of what they’ve earned. It’s kind of a source of pride. Wouldn’t it sound strange if you called your mom and dad by their first name instead of their title? I rarely called my parents by their first names. It didn’t seem right. They earned their title and they deserved to be called by it.

It was the title they were concerned about in today’s text. If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. The Jews in the temple weren’t asking in faith or hope that He was going to save them. It was more like a prosecuting lawyer in court who wanted a reason to accuse Jesus and get Him arrested.

If you remember from your catechism training, the Christ was anointed to be the ultimate prophet, priest, and king. As Priest, He was specifically anointed to die for the world as the world’s substitute, as God in the flesh. If you want Him to do nothing more than speak to you on behalf of God, but not die for you AS God, well then you’ll end up in hell. He’s come to be the Christ, the one anointed to die for the world. C.S. Lewis said it very well in Mere Christianity in his most well known quote,

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Jesus answered them, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I am doing in my Father’s name testify about me. 26 But you do not believe, because you are not my sheep, as I said to you. No one had ever healed a man who had been lame from birth. They had never seen anyone raise a man from the dead, especially four days later. How many other works are not even mentioned in the Bible, things that were simply amazing? All of them done for the good of humanity. All of it screamed divinity. It wasn’t that they didn’t see it. It was that they didn’t want to believe it.

You can see the same ignorance in our world as well. Nobody had ever really seen or heard of DNA until the later 1800’s and 1900’s. Then it was discovered how complex a single cell could be. Everything screamed, “Creative design!” Yet people refuse to see what is obvious. You look at the beautiful design of butterflies and sunrises and oceans. You can see how men and women were created uniquely, to be the way God created them to be. Yet so many want gender to be interchangeable, and men and women to be the same. In the news you hear how people are more than willing to believe in aliens, but not in God. Our society is willing to believe in ANYTHING BUT God.