We’re starting a new three-week series today called Jesus in Blue Jeans.
When God became man in the person of Jesus He came to earth as regular people. He wasn’t surrounded in thunderbolts as some of the mythical ancient Greek gods. He wasn’t wearing a halo the size of the rings of Saturn around His head. He came into this world as the helpless child of an everyday couple. He skinned his knuckles in the carpenter’s shop of his stepfather Joseph.
Even when He began His public ministry He decided to hang out with the blue-jean type crowd. We know that at least half of the twelve apostles were fishermen - every day, ordinary guys.
I chose the title "Jesus in Blue Jeans" for this series because we’re going to cover every-day spirituality - Jesus at my dining room table - Jesus on my job or at school - Jesus in my friendships.
Sometimes we see the big picture of how having faith in Christ leads to heaven but we miss the fact that He has so very much to say about our every-day life. About buying groceries and driving down the highway. About talking to our neighbors and getting along with our co-workers. About planning our future and balancing our checkbook. About leading a rich and satisfying life.
We’re beginning this series with what I think is one of the best blue jean pictures that Jesus painted of Himself. We’re starting with the word picture Jesus painted of Himself as the Good Shepherd.
If shepherds could have, I think they would have worn blue jeans. I think they would have loved wearing pants that were sturdy and comfortable to wear. I think they wouldn’t have minded at all that blue jeans weren’t shiny or glamorous. Blue jeans are the clothing of every-day life.
By using word pictures like calling Himself a shepherd, Jesus taught us "Common Ways to Live an Uncommon Life." He’s letting us know that you don’t have to have your picture on the front page of the tabloids to be important. You don’t have to be abnormal. You can be normal. You can be average. But at the same time your level of enjoyment of life can be ABOVE average. You can be normal and yet lead a rich and satisfying life!
I don’t think many of us are really interested in living dull, boring and colorless lives. That happens to a lot of people but I don’t think it always happens because they want it to happen. I think it happens by default. It happens because sometimes we don’t make conscious choices about what we’re doing.
A lot of times we end up going with the flow and the flow is going away from the great things God has for our lives. I want to talk to you today about some common ways you can live an uncommonly satisfying life, simple things Jesus taught us about living that add richness and meaning to our lives.
Look at the commonness of Jesus. Look at His “down to earth” approach to being our Savior. He depicts Himself as a shepherd – not as one of the richest merchants in the Roman Empire, not as a powerful politician, not even as one of the religious rulers of the Jews.
He paints Himself as a man who takes on the often dirty, dangerous and uncomfortable job of tending sheep. A shepherd gets out in the hot and the cold with his sheep, he has to protect them from predators and sheep stealers, and he has to exert himself to travel up and down valleys and mountainsides to lead them to green pastures.
Jesus portrayed Himself as a shepherd because He not only taught us how to live – He SHOWED us how to live. He modeled what the uncommon life is all about. And He modeled it, and this is the good news, He modeled it in a way that is attainable for all of us common, ordinary, every-day people!
Here is what Jesus said in chapter ten of John’s Good News Account that clues us in on common ways to live and uncommon life.
1 “I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, (A sheepfold was a pen used to corral sheep. Often made of rocks or even a natural cave, shepherds would lead their animals into the sheepfold for protection and to keep them from straying off.) rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber!
2 But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
4 After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice.
5 They won’t follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don’t know his voice.”
6 Those who heard Jesus use this illustration didn’t understand what he meant,
7 so he explained it to them: “I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep.
8 All who came before me were thieves and robbers. (Jesus wasn’t talking about the Old Testament prophets. He was referring to the existing regime of Jewish religious rulers. Instead of bringing people to God they were leading people astray. They were robbing people of the good things that God had for them, not only eternal life but of a rich and satisfying life.) But the true sheep did not listen to them.
9 Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures.
10 The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. (Circle that phrase. “My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”)
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep.
12 A hired hand will run when he sees a wolf coming. He will abandon the sheep because they don’t belong to him and he isn’t their shepherd. And so the wolf attacks them and scatters the flock.
13 The hired hand runs away because he’s working only for the money and doesn’t really care about the sheep.
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me,
15 just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep.
16 I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd. John 10:1-16 (NLT)
What does Jesus say here that has to do with my every-day spiritual life? What’s the “Jesus in Blue Jeans” connection? What’s the connection between the common life I live, and the uncommon way Jesus invites me to live?
How does what Jesus says here provide the means for me to go to the next level? What steps can I take to get to the rich and satisfying life that Jesus is talking about in verse 10?
We’re going to look at two COMMON WAYS TO LIVE AN UNCOMMON LIFE. We’re going to consider a couple of practical steps I can take to live a rich and satisfying life.
The first thing I can do is…
1. I CAN FOLLOW CHRIST’S VOICE.
This is essential to leading a rich and satisfying life, an uncommon life. If I want to lead the rich and satisfying life that Jesus came to give me I need to follow His voice to experience it.
Speaking of Himself as the Good Shepherd in verse 3 Jesus says, “…the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. (Circle “the sheep recognize his voice,” and “they know his voice.”)
It was customary for shepherds to combine their flocks together in one sheepfold at night and then in the morning each shepherd would stand at the gate and call his own sheep and they came out because they recognized their shepherd’s voice.
Similarly Jesus says His sheep “recognize” or “know” His voice.
In order to follow the voice of the shepherd you have to know the voice of the shepherd.
I want you to listen to some recorded voices and shout out whose voice it is as soon as you recognize it.
[The following voices were played over the church sound system: Neil Armstrong, “One small step for [a] man. One giant leap for mankind.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “I have a dream…” Franklin Roosevelt, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Etc. A few humorous voices were used as well. A good list of distinctive voices may be found at WavSource.com.]
Do you know why you recognized those voices?
For one thing, you’ve heard them over and over again. That’s how we recognize someone’s voice.
One of the best ways to know Christ’s voice apart from all the other voices clamoring for your attention is to spend a lot of time listening to Christ’s voice.
We can’t play you a recording of Christ’s voice over the church’s sound system but we don’t have to. You can hear His voice in other ways.
I can hear His voice by listening to the leadership of the Holy Spirit through the reading God’s Word, the Bible. If I’ll slow down long enough and listen closely enough I can hear the very breath of God because the Bible is “God-breathed.”
"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…" 2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV)
I can hear Christ’s voice by carrying on a conversation with God in prayer.
In normal conversation we say something while the other person listens and then the person we’re conversing with says something back while we listen. It’s strange that we often don’t converse with God that way when we pray. We talk and talk and talk and hardly ever stop to listen.
Do you know what Christ’s most repeated statement is in Scripture? It is, “He that has ears, let him hear!”
I need to open my spiritual ears and listen to God talk when I pray. I need to let Him speak to me. The Holy Spirit can talk to me in my mind and in my heart.
I’m not talking about new revelation from God. I’m talking about the promptings of the Holy Spirit that coincide with what’s already been written in the Bible.
The Bible says that when I’m not listening to God my soul isn’t being properly nourished.
"Why spend your money on something that is not real food? Why work for something that doesn’t really satisfy you? LISTEN CLOSELY TO ME and you will eat what is good; your soul will enjoy the rich food that satisfies." Isaiah 55:2 (NCV)
My soul is satisfied by listening to God.
If I want to live a rich and satisfying life I need to start listening for the Lord’s voice. That’s pretty simple. But its also pretty important because the more I hear and follow His voice the more satisfying my life will become.
So we see that we recognize a voice because we’ve heard it over and over again.
Another way we recognize someone’s voice because it’s dear to us.
I can be in a crowd of people and even with my high-frequency hearing loss and tinitus (constant ringing in the ears) I can detect Deb’s voice because her voice is so dear to me. I’ve told her plenty of times in over thirty years of marriage that one of the sweetest sounds in the world to me is her just saying my name.
When you make Jesus your best friend His voice becomes dear to you. It stands out from the crowd.
I need to learn to listen for and hear the voice of the Good Shepherd.
But learning to listen isn’t enough.
Leading a rich, satisfying life won’t just happen because I learn to hear God’s voice. I won’t lead an uncommon life – my life won’t experience the rich and satisfying aspect that Jesus talks about here if I’m not FOLLOWING the voice of Jesus.
The true sheep follow the Good Shepherd’s leadership. They don’t follow the leadership of other voices that claim to speak spiritual truth. Jesus made that clear in verse 5 – “they won’t follow a stranger.” They know the voice of the Good Shepherd well enough to recognize the voices of the thieves and robbers. Every other voice that calls out to be Shepherd of your life is the voice of someone who wants to rob you of a satisfying life.
Through the years people have said to me that they tried following Jesus but it wasn’t satisfying for them. “If it gives you a satisfying life Brian that’s fine but it doesn’t work for me.” Do you want to know why it doesn’t work for some people? They hear Christ’s voice and don’t follow it. They don’t respond to the truth they’ve heard from God.
They become self-willed or impatient, they listen to other voices, and then try to blame their lack of experiencing a rich and satsifying life on God.
Do you know what can eventually happen when I don’t follow God’s voice? Do you know what happens when I hear God’s voice but I don’t heed it?
When I don’t pay attention to what God is saying to me I wander aimlessly through life. That’s what the Bible, God’s Word says.
"Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: ’Today, IF you will hear His voice, (Circle "if." You and I have a choice.) Do not harden your hearts, as [happened] in the rebellion [of Israel] and their provocation and embitterment [of Me] in the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers tried [My patience] and tested [My forbearance] and found I stood their test, and they saw My works for forty years.’" Hebrews 3:7-9 (Amp)
Why did God’s people wander for 40 years in the wilderness instead of immediately enjoying the blessings and benefits of the Promised Land? God told them to possess the land but they were fearful because 10 out of 12 spies came back from spying the land with a negative, pessimistic report. They saw “giants in the land” and even though it was a land “flowing with milk and honey” the giants were bigger to them than God was.
AND because they hardened their hearts and stubbornly refused to listen to and heed the voice of God they wandered aimlessly for 40 years! They could have had a rich and satisfying life if they had only listened to God and heeded what He told them!
I can lead a rich and satisfying life if I hear AND HEED the voice of the Good Shepherd. I hear Christ’s voice. I follow it. That in itself takes me a long way toward leading the rich and satisfying life Christ offers me.
But there’s still a big problem. Jesus said there are other voices trying to get me to follow them. He called them “thieves and robbers.” He says they’re out “to rob and kill and destroy.”
There will always be other voices trying to pull me away from the voice of the Good Shepherd. Which leads to the second COMMON WAY TO LIVE AN UNCOMMON LIFE.
If I want to lead this rich and satisfying life that Jesus offers me, not only must I listen and follow His voice, but…
2. I CAN SHOW SACFRIFICIAL LOVE TO OTHERS
Jesus said that, as the Good Shepherd, He sacrificed His life for His sheep.
You say, “I’ve tried following Christ’s voice but I keep hearing other voices and I get distracted, I get confused, I get flustered and I start following those other voices sometimes.”
Here is a great strategy for silencing the other voices: sacrifice your life for others.
If I want to lead the rich and satisfying life that Christ offers I must let everything I think and say and do be colored by love. You see that in the setting for this word-picture of Christ as the Good Shepherd. What “setting” am I talking about?
Just before Jesus painted this word picture of Himself as the Good Shepherd He had given the gift of sight back to a blind man! (John chapter 9.)
This should often have been a cause of great celebration. Instead, the Jewish religious leaders were aghast. They criticized Jesus harshly because he healed this man on the Sabbath. They weren’t angry because Jesus broke the fourth commandment about the Sabbath, but because he ignored their man-made additions to God’s law.
The law that God gave man about taking one day out of seven for worship and rest is a great law. It honors God and benefits us. Even secularists who don’t believe in God will tell you that the human body has natural biorhythms that correspond to a need for extra rest every seven days.
God created us and all along He knew what we needed. We don’t need to be on the go all of the time. We need to stop and rest. We need to stop and worship. We especially need to stop if we’re going to hear His voice.
His rules are for His glory and our good.
But the rules made up by the religious hypocrites of Jesus’ day were concocted to make the followers of such rules “appear” to be religious without genuine relationships with God. They were for man’s glory, not God’s, and they certainly weren’t established out of love and concern for others.
Some of the ridiculous man-made additions to Sabbath keeping included:
Not wearing false teeth on the Sabbath because that would be “bearing a burden.”
Not looking in a mirror on the Sabbath because you might see a gray hair and be tempted to pull it out.
You couldn’t spit in the dirt because that would be making mud and that would be work.
The rules makers were so mad at the blind man for believing in Jesus that they kicked him out of the synagogue! They told him that he couldn’t worship there anymore.
Why would they do that? Because they were "thieves and robbers" just like Jesus said. They didn’t care about the man and his needs or his feelings. They were indignant that their rules had not been kept.
How would you like to get kicked out of church for believing in Jesus and praising Him for what He’s done for you? Wouldn’t that be ironic! Wouldn’t that be absurd!
One of the biggest obstacles to leading a rich and satisfying spiritual life, after you’ve settled it that you’re going to hear and follow Christ’s voice – is that there are people with rules, rituals and regulations trying to rob you of your liberty in Christ.
This can really take the joy out of life. Trying to meet man’s expectations is often a vain pursuit. A lot of people are impossible to please. And even if you generally please some people, you can’t please everybody. I can please God, even though I’m not perfect He knows my heart, so He’s pleasable. But men don’t always know what’s in my heart. They misjudge me. So they’re often not pleased with me.
People like to make rules so you’ll please them. Of course we need some rules. God has given us rules to live by, rules that are for our own good. Parents give their children rules and they should. Schools have rules. Society has rules.
But we need to understand something very clearly. Rules can never do what loving relationships can. They were never meant to. Man made religious rules often serve to make us more miserable instead of making us happier. We can’t enjoy the rich and satisfying life that Christ offers if we’re jumping through man-made hoops all the time.
People can be nice to one another because they’re following the rules and THEY HAVE TO BE nice to one another, or, they can be nice to one another because they love each other – and THEY WANT TO BE nice to one another.
"The law says, "You must not be guilty of adultery. You must not murder anyone. You must not steal. You must not want to take your neighbor’s things." All these commands and all others are really only one rule: "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." Love never hurts a neighbor, so loving is obeying all the law." Romans 13:9-10 (NCV)
If I operate by only one rule, "loving my neighbor as I love myself" – I won’t commit adultery or murder or steal or lie or covet.
An overabundance of rules often stems from a lack of love. When we break God’s rules it is often because, at the time we break them, we often love ourselves more than we love God or others.
SO I CAN’T AFFORD TO CONFUSE MAN MADE RULES AND RITUALS AND REGULATIONS WITH THE LOVING RELATIONSHIPS GOD WANTS ME TO HAVE. When I start living by rules, rituals and regulations instead of relationships I’m hindered from leading a rich and satisfying life.
When I listen to and follow man-made rules I stop listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd and start listening to man’s voice.
Jesus said that I couldn’t serve two masters. (Matthew 6:24)
Jesus is the Good Shepherd – the one who wants His sheep to find green pastures and have a rich and satisfying life. He’s the gate to the sheepfold. The religious con artists of His day, the Pharisees and scribes and such, were the thieves and robbers. They were trying to rob people of their joy in Christ. People are still trying to do that today.
When I start living by rules, rituals and regulations instead of love is that I lose my joy. I can’t have a rich and satisfying life because my focus is misplaced. I only have joy when my focus is on the Good Shepherd because He knows where the green pastures are!
If I love others I’m following the voice of the Good Shepherd.
Love is a common thing – but it leads to an uncommon life. Love is the thing that most leads to a rich and satisfying life. Not material things – they can’t totally satisfy me – especially not the spiritual part of me. Not pleasures. Not popularity. LOVE.
Jesus, the Good Shepherd loved us so much that He gave up His life for us. He died in our place. He modeled love as the Good Shepherd by sacrificing His life for the sheep. We can lead a rich and satisfying life by making sacrifices for God and for others because we love them.
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, 15 just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd."
Love makes sacrifices. No one modeled this better than Jesus. If you love others you will make sacrifices for them. Talk is cheap. The spiritual pretenders in Jesus’ day and today like to make and keep rules because it’s a substitute for the real thing. Sacrifice is the real thing. It’s what love does.
Some of you sacrifice your time in the nursery or junior church because you love kids and you love their parents. Some of you sacrifice your gas and time to pick others up and give them a ride to church because of your love. Some of you will sign up for “Faith in Action”, to be involved in the community service projects next month because you love others. Some sacrifice their time cleaning the church and mowing the lawn. Some of you give sacrificially. You give above and beyond a tithe so that your church and those sent on missions to other parts of the globe can share the Good News about Christ.
Having two worship gatherings has been a sacrifice for our church. Why would we sacrifice? Because that’s what love does! We want to have room to grow. Jesus said He had “other sheep.” Those of us in the sheepfold are not the only sheep Jesus has! Using this building twice on Sunday mornings doubles our space to bring others in. When we all meet together in one worship gathering we fill the room. Nice feeling for us. We get to see everybody. But it’s not all about us. It’s about making sacrifices for people who don’t know Jesus yet. That’s what love does. It makes sacrifices.
The sacrifice that Jesus modeled for us to follow is like the Coast Guard captain who ordered his crew to sea in the midst of a storm to rescue a sinking ship. A frightened young crewmember protested, “If we go out we may never come back!” To which the experienced captain replied, “We must go out, we don’t have to come back.”
Why is loving sacrifice a common way to lead an uncommon life? Because people who love others and sacrifice for others are happier than those who think only of themselves are.
"…the Lord Jesus said, ’We are more happy when we give than when we receive.’" Acts 20:35 (NLV)
He didn’t saying that receiving didn’t make us happy. He said giving makes us happier than receiving does. If you love the feeling you get when you receive then you won’t believe the feeling you get when you give sacrificially!
I want you to ask yourself a question, “Am I leading a rich and satisfying life right now?”
If the answer is "No," or if the answer is, “I’m leading somewhat of a rich and satisfying life but it could be better,” then evaluate the cause and cure on the basis of what Jesus said in today’s Scripture.
Ask yourself, “Do I need to listen more closely and follow the voice of the Good Shepherd?” “Am I hearing but not doing what Jesus told me to do?”
“Do I need to love others instead of being caught up in rules keeping?”
“Are there some sacrifices I need to start making in order to show my love?”
Let’s pray.
