John 10 (2)
Pay Attention to who you follow
- Read John 10:1-21
In verse 4 we read, “And His sheep follow Him because they know His voice.” His sheep follow Him.
The writer John makes it clear in this Gospel, that the Shepherd in this passage is Jesus, and the sheep He is referring to are those who are saved. Those who have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And again, in verse 4 we read, “And HIs sheep follow Him because they know His voice.”
My friend, who and what you follow in this life can make all the difference win the world in where you end up and how you do, both in this life and in the one to come.
There is a tire store you can go into right now in Orange City. If you walk in the front door and look to your left, 90% of the time you will see an older gentleman sitting there in the corner chair, watching TV. He used to be an electrician. He had his own company in Sanford. At one time he had over 20 electricians working for him. He had a house on the St. John’s River that in the 80s and 90s was worth over 1 million dollars. There’s no telling what it’s worth today.
His first wife died at a relatively young age and he decided to marry again. He’s still married to his second wife, but they no longer live together. As a matter-of-fact, he lives in a small place in Debary. He goes down to the tire store for the company, and because they have cable tv he can watch, because he can’t afford that at home.
Why the change? What happened? He followed his passions instead of the Lord, and it cost him everything he had spent a lifetime building.
Who and what you follow makes all the difference in the world, both in this life and in the life to come. Who or what are you following?
Are you following a plan you put in place, working and striving to get ahead?
Are you following a path put in place for you by your parents? Some parents try to live through their children. They try to accomplish all the things in life they wanted to accomplish and all the things they wanted to do in life through their children, with no regard for how the Lord has shaped or made them.
Are you following a path laid out for you by others? You’re growing up and people say, “You’d be good at such-and-such” and you spend your life trying to accomplish and do what others have said about you without ever thinking about what you really want to do, and without ever thinking about how the Lord has shaped and made you.
Are you following a path of least resistance? You get out of school and know you need to get a job, know you need to start working and making a living, so you take the first job you come across and then are unable and scared to leave that job, because you’ve gotten a little good and it and you can’t walk away from the money you’re making so you spend a lifetime doing a job you hate.
A while back I was at Sunniland in Sanford, talking to the manager there. Sunniland sells 2 products. They mix, bag and sell fertilizer and they sell roofing materials. Their slogan is, “from roots to roofs.” I was talking to the manager there, about the roofing business, and about roofers. He said, “No one plans to be a roofer. That is a job where they just end up.”
That’s one reason so many roofers, and a lot of people in the construction industry, end up leaving work early on Fridays, and calling in sick on Mondays, or coming to work on Mondays with a hangover. They drink, party, or whatever you want to call it on the weekends, trying to forget what their lives have become.
There is nothing in the world wrong with those trades. I’m a roofer myself. As a matter-of-fact, I was working on my brother-in-law’s roof several years ago and the guys installing the air conditioner in his addition said to me, “You’re a pastor?” I said, “Yeah.” And you’re a roofer? Yeah. Never saw one of those before.
I work 2 trades, just as Paul did, because that’s how the Lord led me, and let me tell you, it makes all the difference in the world who you follow. Let me ask you this morning, Who are you following?
Jesus says, “My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me.”
Let me tell you about my Shepherd.
I. My Shepherd Has Been around for a while.
I remember when I was in my teens, I used to look at folks in their 20’s and think, “Man, when I get to be in my 20’s life is going to be good. There won’t be anyone telling me what to do. I won’t have to go to school anymore. I’ll be making money so I can do what I want. Life will be good in my 20’s.
You know what I learned when I got into my 20’s? I learned you still have a job you have to go to. You still have a boss you have to report to.
And don’t tell me, “I’ll start my own business. I’ll be my own boss.” Hogwash. We had a lawn business for a couple of years. You know what you end up with when you run your own company? You end up with a whole bunch of bosses. I had more than 100 people telling me what to do, and when to do it.
You learn some things with time, with age. You see Mr. Joe over there? He’s been around since just after God created dirt. He’s been around for a while. He’s seen a few things. He’s experienced a few things.
For the last 8 months we’ve been told that Covid is going to kill us all. Before that it was Sars, and Ebola. When I was in my 20’s it was mosquito carried diseases.
When I was in middle school, we were told that the earth couldn’t produce enough food to feed a growing world population, so we needed to learn to eat algae. Now our government is paying farmers to plant trees in their fields and to cut down on the amount of food they are growing.
In the 70s and 80s, we were told that we were going to run out of fuel. Oh, the world is going to run out oil. Today, we are producing more oil than ever. Foreign countries have dropped the price of a barrel of oil in an attempt to kill the oil industry in this country, and still, more and more oil is being discovered.
Do you remember Y2K? Oh my word. The world is going to end at the start of the new Millennium. No computers are going to recognize the new date so everything is going to stop. We won’t be able to get food. We won’t be able to find gas. We won’t be able to do anything. Folks were stockpiling supplies. Buying barrels of gas. Filling their pantries with food. And you know what happened? Nothing.
Well, something did happen. Drew woke up that night, as he often did, and could’t go back to sleep, so his mother held him in a rocking chair in the living room, and watched the new year come in on TV all around the world, while his dad slept in the back room.
The sky is falling. The sky is falling. If you have been around for awhile, you begin to notice that folks cry wolf an awful lot.
No wonder the writer of Ecclesiastes says:
“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
Life can get repetitive. The schemes the Devil is using today are nothing new. He’s been telling the same, tired, worn out lies since the Garden of Eden.
And, let me tell you. My Shepherd has been around for a while. John 1 tells us, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the Word was God, He was with God in the beginning.”
Jesus has been around forever. That’s since before people started calling you about the extended warranty on your car. Forever! Turn to someone beside you and tell them, “Forever.” Forever! So He’s seen a few things.
Nothing surprises Him. He has seen what happens to people when they follow God’s will, and when they follow their own. He has seen what happens when people live in sin and when they obey God’s Word. He has seen the peace, and the joy, people have when they follow Him and the pain and misery, and wrecked lives people experience when they go their own way!
My Shepherd knows what leads people to cry with the writer of Ecclesiastes, “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.” and what leads people to cry with Paul, Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Oh my friend, My Shepherd has been around for a while!
II. MY SHEPHERD KNOWS EVERYTHING
Second, I want you to know that my Shepherd knows everything.
I remember in seminary, taking a class called, “Great preachers from 30 AD to 1600. We studied preachers like the Apostle Paul, Polycarp, Ireaneous, and a bunch of others. We had a final coming up, so I spent a good deal of time studying up on each one of those preachers. When we got to class, written on the board was this. “Take out a sheet of paper. List all of the preachers we have studied this term, and what you know about them. I had 2 hours to write and I wrote 6 pages front and back. However, when I wrote one of the preachers’ name, I could not remember anything about the man. I couldn’t remember when he preached, where he preached, how he preached, or anything about the man. My mind went blank so beside his name I simply wrote: “I know I was not as prepared for this exam as I thought I was.”
Did you know that has never happened to Jesus? Never has. My Shepherd knows everything.Tell somebody, “Everything.” Everything.
There is nothing My Shepherd doesn’t know.
1. My Shepherd knows me -
- John 10:3
He calls HIs sheep by name.
I went to college at Northeast Louisiana University in Monroe LA. They call it something else now, but that’s what it was called when I went there.
Now, I didn’t know anyone in Louisiana. They didn’t have a particular program I was looking for. I went there because I didn’t want to get lost in the crowd. A friend of mine and I were going to go to school together. He was majoring in Agriculture and I was majoring in business, so I looked for the smallest university south of the Mason Dixon, that offered degrees in both. Because I didn’t want to get lost in the crowd. And, they did know me. When my Business Law professor learned I was from Florida, he’d do the gator chomp every time I’d walk into class. I didn’t want to get lost in the crowd.
Well let me tell you my friend, you’ll never get lost in the crowd when it comes to my Shepherd. Verse 3 tells us, He calls His sheep by name.
Are you kidding me? Naming sheep? My dad wasn’t very original at naming our critters around here growing up. I remember he named one pig “Maybe” because when he bought her the owner said that she may be pregnant. He named another one 50, because he paid $50 for her.” Other than that we didn’t spend a whole lot of time naming critters.
But my Shepherd knows my name. He knows Tom’s name. He knows Marks name. He knows your name. He knows you. He knows what you like and what you don’t. He knows what hurts you and what helps you. He knows what you’re good at and what you struggle with. He knows you.
He created you. He gave you the looks you have. He gave you the talent you have. He gave you the abilities you have.
Your teacher may forget your name. Your doctor may not recognize you. Your pastor may not know you. I call poor Clarence, Curtis 1/2 the time. I may get confused, but my Shepherd knows you.
You may feel that no one knows you. You may feel that no one cares. But I want you to know that Jesus knows you and you are very special to Him.
2. My Shepherd knows what you’re thinking -
In Matthew 9, a man comes to Jesus on the Sabbath with a withered hand. There were self-righteous folks in the church there thinking to themselves that it wasn’t right for Jesus to heal on the Sabbath. In verse 4 we read,”
> Matthew 9:4 Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?
In Matthew 12, Jesus cast a demon out of a man. The Pharisees say among themselves, Only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, does this man drive out demons.”
Then in verse 25 we read,
> Matthew 12:25 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.
You may be able to fool me, or fool the other people in the church. You may be able to fool your friends. You may be able to fool your spouse even, but you can’t fool the Lord. He knows everything. He knows what you’re thinking.
3. My Shepherd knows how things work.
The story is told of a man whose car was broken down on the side of the road. He had the hood up, and was under the hood trying to figure things out. I do the same thing today. My vehicle breaks down, I open the hood and stick my head under there. I don’t know what I’m looking at, but it’s expected. We pretend.
The man had his head under the hood when another man pulled up. He went and looked under the man’s hood, tinkered for a minute and then said, “Start her up.” The owner of the car, tried to crank the car and it started right up. He asked the man who helped him, “How did you do that? I tried everything.” The helper answered him, “I’m Henry Ford. I built that car so I should know how it works.”
Well let me tell you my friend, John 1 tells us “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the same was with God in the beginning. All things were created by Him, and apart from Him was nothing made that was made.”
Jesus, My Shepherd knows how things work because He made them.
He knows how marriage is supposed to work because He invented it.
He knows how families are supposed to work, because He invented them.
He knows how work, and sex, and relationships, and parenting, and finances and retirement, and all of that is supposed to work, because He invented them.
You having trouble in your relationship, ask The Shepherd.
You having trouble with your finances? Ask the Shepherd.
You having trouble with a co-worker? Ask the Shepherd.
You having trouble with your parents? Ask the Shepherd.
Oh my friend, My Shepherd has been around for a while. My Shepherd knows everything.
Third, my Shepherd can do anything.
III. MY SHEPHERD CAN DO ANYTHING
Think of some of the things Jesus did while on earth.
- Walked on water
- Cast out demons
- Healed the sick
- Stopped the storms
- Multiplied 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed more than 5,000 people. Biggest fish fry in the history of the world, and it was hosted by Jesus.
My Shepherd can do anything. I’m not saying He will do everything, I’m saying He can. He didn’t stop the fire for Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego, but He walked through it with them and protected them. Why? Because My Shepherd can do anything.
> Jeremiah 32:27 “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?
Have you asked the Shepherd to help you with that situation? Have you asked Him to guide you, to give you wisdom and understanding?
What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!
My Shepherd has been around. My Shepherd knows everything. My Shepherd can do anything.
IV. MY SHEPHERD WANTS THE BEST FOR ME
- John 10:10
I have come that they might have life and that they might have it in abundance.
In abundance. What a sad way to live when all you do is go to work everyday to make enough money to pay the bills and live for the weekend. What a sad way to go through life.
How sad it is, to live your entire life just wanting to collect toys, and take trips, and to drag through everyday between those. To try to fill your hours with entertainment, and amusements, and TV and anything else that will pass the time.
When you follow My Shepherd, He gives meaning and purpose to everyday. He gives abundance.
All of sudden, that job becomes a mission and a mission field. Yes, I may be roofing, and it may be hot as blazes, but I am able to help this lady and keep her from being swindled by someone else. Yes, I may be roofing, but I can show people what a Christ-directed, Spirit-filled person looks like. When Hayley’s not around, I can stand on a roof and sing, and maybe even shake my booty a little, and let folks see what joy a person can have even in the midst of uncomfortable times.
I may be patching a roof on a gay bar, but when that girl gets dropped off to pick up her car that she left there the night before, I can offer her some water while she’s waiting on her keys, and show her a man who wants nothing from her and who wants to do nothing but help her. I can show her that not all men and not all Christians are angry, judgmental, and hurtful.
My Shepherd wants the best for me. He gives abundance and fulfillment to the everyday. You begin to see those mind-numbing chores, as you modeling for your children what a God-fearing, Jesus loving lady looks like. You begin to see mowing the yard as a time to look at the beauty the Lord has made and as a time to praise Him.
My Shepherd wants the best for me. He wants to turn the mundane into meaningful. My Shepherd wants the best for me.
V. MY SHEPHERD LOVES ME
- John 10:11
That is saying something when someone is willing to die for you.
Give the plan of salvation.
VI. WHAT SHEPHERD WILL YOU FOLLOW?
Man I met outside Zion Nation Park.
Made a fortune. Lost it when the hurricanes hit in 2004, because his help left. Started again, lost it when the economy went south in 2008 Now, he pushes a mop and a broom, a few hours a day, 4 days a week to pay his lot rent for his camper.
He followed the wrong shepherd, and what’s even worse, the next life is going to be worse for Him than this one.
What Shepherd are going to follow.
