His Sheep Hear His Voice (John Part 31)
Text: John 10:22-30
Before we read our text this morning, I want give you some background into the scene. Our text is going to be John 10:22-30, and this portion of the chapter begins by saying it was the time of the Feast of Dedication, and that it was winter. For those of you who don’t know… the Feast of Dedication is Hanukkah. Instead of one day of Christmas, the Jews have “8 Crazy Nights”. Seriously though… Hanukkah began in 165 B.C. Let me give you some background on it. In 323 Alexander the Great died, and his empire was divided into 4 parts, each part going to one of his generals. One of those parts of the empire became known as the Seleucid Empire. It controlled what is today modern day Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, part of Saudi Arabia… and it controlled the land of Israel. And the Seleucid Empire had one bad ruler after another. And they were constantly at war with someone… Whether it was the Ptolemic Empire, the Parthians, the Mauryan Empire, or the wild, Arabian nomadic tribes. Eventually Antiochus Epiphanes
gained control of the Seleucid Empire and he tried to clamp down and solidify his power. And he continually had problems in Israel with rebellions and uprisings. He blamed the religion of the Jews, so he tried to abolish the Jewish religion… he marched on Jerusalem, slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews, set up a statue of Zeus in the temple and slaughtered a pig on the alter. You can actually read about how Daniel prophesied this event. He called it the “abomination that causes desolation” (See Daniel 11:31). This caused the people of Israel to revolt, and they fought a short war against the Seleucids, and actually won their freedom in 165 B.C. … for a little while at least, until the Romans came and conquered them. But that’s what Hanukkah is celebrating. This victory over the Seleucids. So it’s not a holy day, or a feast day, set up by God… it’s not a Levitical holiday. It’s a holiday created by man, to commemorate a victory. So that’s the holiday that’s going on, as Jesus was walking in the Temple on a porch that was called The Colonnade of Solomon. Which was basically a covered porch outside the temple. And John makes sure to let us know, it was winter. And in a way, that has a symbolic meaning. Because this will be the last time that Jesus teaches publicly. The rest of John’s Gospel, we’ll see that Jesus is only teaching His disciples, not the public at large. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” (Jeremiah 8:20). Jesus has spoken to the Jews over and over again, but their hearts were hardened, their ears, and eyes, and minds were closed… and this was it.
So there’s your background information… now, let’s read our text John 10:22-30 (READ).
Now let me ask you… did you read verse 26 correctly? Most people read verse 26 like this: “You are not My sheep, because you do not believe.” But is that what the verse says? Nope! It says, “You do not believe BECAUSE you are not My sheep.” There’s a big difference there. Then look what Jesus says in verse 27, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”
He’s been saying the same thing all through the Gospel of John. And the Bible teaches this over and over and over again.
Christians hear and understand the Bible… non-Christians do not hear and understand the Bible. Christian’s hear the voice of Christ and follow Him, non-Christians don’t. It’s not rocket science. It’s what the Bible teaches.
Listen to how the Apostle Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “The natural person DOES NOT accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he IS NOT ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THEM, because they are spiritually discerned.”
So what is it that prompts Jesus to tell these Jews that they’re not part of His sheepfold?
Well they come to Him, while He’s out on the Colonnade of Solomon, and they say, “Tell us if you’re the Christ… tell it to us plainly… no more parables... just give it to us straight.” But that’s what He’s been doing all along. And that’s what He says to them… He says, “I told you, but you don’t believe.” Every sign, every wonder, every miracle, every healing… all the things that Jesus has been doing and saying up to this point have been pointing to the fact that He is THE CHRIST. All of those signs pointed to the fact that Jesus is The Anointed One. The Savior, the Lord, and the Messiah. But these people are hardened to the truth. We talked a little bit about this over the last couple of weeks… how the Old Testament shows that one of the clear signs of the Messiah was that He would give sight to the blind. In-fact; no one else in the Bible ever does this. Giving sight to the blind is the clearest sign that Jesus is Christ the Lord.
And isn’t it interesting that some people can see it plain as day, but others can’t... ?
John the Baptist sees it… Andrew and Peter… Philip and Nathaniel, and John the beloved… Then Nicodemus sees, and the Samaritan woman at the well, and her whole village does too. The lame man at the Pool of Bethesda and the man healed of blindness… they see it too. But the majority of the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees… they can’t see it… they can’t understand it… they can’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
And in our text, Jesus explains why. “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me.”
So the question that we should be asking ourselves as we look at this passage is: Are we His sheep? Are you in the sheepfold? Are you a follower of the Good Shepherd?
It’s important that you know the answer to that question, because look at what the sheep get… Look at verse 28 (READ).
There’s so much in that verse. Jesus says, “I” give them eternal life. Meaning that He gives it. You can’t earn it, you can’t work for it, you can’t be good enough, or smart enough, or worthy enough. It’s something that Jesus gives to His sheep. And it stands to reason, if you’re not part of the sheepfold… if you’re not following the Good Shepherd, then you haven’t been given this eternal life. You’re still dead in trespasses and sin. You’re still separated from God.
So this eternal life, comes only through Jesus Christ.
And its ETERNAL LIFE, not eternal existence. Do you know the difference? An office chair exists. A plastic cup exists. A grain of sand exists, but those things don’t have life. To have life means you have the capability to think, and reason, and learn. You have the capability to feel joy, and love, and compassion. So this is eternal, abundant life, that Jesus is talking about.
Now people will argue and say, “Well people who aren’t Christians have those capabilities as well… they can think, and reason, and learn, and they have the capability to feel happiness, and love, and be compassionate.”
And to that I would say -- What does the Bible say about the person who is not a Christian… they are dead in trespasses and sin… right? That’s Ephesians 2:1… It says that the person without Christ doesn’t think, or reason correctly… that their minds are darkened by sin, and that they are incapable of understanding the truth, or even thinking correctly about the things of God. Romans 8:7 says, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, IT CANNOT.” That’s not only saying that a person outside of Christ doesn’t want to submit to Christ… it’s saying that THEY CAN’T. They don’t want to, and they can’t! Ephesians 4:17-18 says, “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.” So they’re spiritually dead, alienated from the LIFE of God… Their minds are darkened by sin… They are unable to come to God… they don’t want to come to God… There are none who seek God, no not one. That’s the condition of being outside of Christ.
And so Jesus is making this contrast here. He’s saying that He gives eternal life… this spiritual life, as opposed to life in the flesh… which is actually being spiritually dead. The person who has life in the flesh, can think… but they think wrongly. They can reason, but their reasoning is skewed and twisted. They can express and feel emotion, but it’s always perverted, or warped, or worldly, or messed up in some way. That’s why the world can’t understand why we do what we do, or why we live how we live. They can’t understand the way we think about certain things.
To them, the things of God… God’s ways… seem foolish, or intolerant, or backward, or wrong. Or just plain irrelevant. And to us who are Christians, we see the immorality, and the corruption, and the futility of their thinking and their way of life.
And as Christians; we’re constantly battling that… the devil, the world, and the flesh pull on us, and try to get us to fall back into that futility of thought, and into that futile, and wrong way of thinking. But even though the world pulls on us, and that old sin nature sometimes rears its head… look at what Jesus says. “I give them eternal life, and they will NEVER perish, and NO ONE will snatch them out of My hand.”
Eternal life, means you have spiritual life FOREVER… it’s not there for a little while and then lost. You are eternally secure in Christ. That’s exactly what Jesus says… “They will never perish”. Never means NOT – EVER… The reason that people think that they can lose salvation, is because they don’t understand how salvation comes in the first place. They think that salvation comes because they chose to place their faith in Christ… of course in order to think that, they have to ignore everything the Bible says about being born in sin, about none seeking God, about non-sheep not being ABLE to believe, about men loving darkness rather than light, and not willing or able to come to the light. They have to ignore everything the Bible teaches and instead believe that they somehow had the intellectual, and spiritual, and moral capability to generate faith in Christ… which really when you get down to it… is just another version of works based salvation. Let me tell you how the Bible teaches we’re saved… it says that God, in His sovereignty, choses to grant to you the benefits of Christ’s obedience, so that you can be declared righteous before God… And God choses to grant to you the benefits of Christ’s death on the cross, so that your sins, past, present, and future are forgiven.
That’s how you were saved.
Romans 9:15-16, “For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.”
If you are His sheep, no one will snatch you from the Shepherds hand. And then Jesus goes on to say, “My Father, who has given to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” Listen to me Church… the devil will attack you. He will come at you. He will try to sift you like wheat. He will send thieves and robbers to try to get you separated from the flock so that he can steal, kill, and destroy… He will try to make you lose your saltiness and become in-effective for the kingdom, but as far as your salvation goes. You are secure in Christ. And you’ll be with Him forever.
Jesus is saying all of this in this passage this morning… and look at how He closes it out. “I and the Father are One.” This isn’t just a “good teacher” or a “wise philosopher” whose saying this… This is God Almighty. This is the God who created all things, and holds all things together.
If you are His sheep, and you hear His voice this morning, I pray that you’ll be obedient to whatever He is saying to you… and I pray that if you’re not… that He will call you into His flock before that spiritual “winter” comes to your life.
Let’s Pray
CLOSING
