Many years ago, Candid Camera staged their prank at an exclusive boy’s prep school where all of the students tested well above average. Candid Camera staff posed as career consultants who assessed and interviewed the brilliant young men to determine what career would be best suited to them.
At the end of all the testing, one young man eagerly awaited the “career counselor’s” verdict. Surely, the counselor would tell the boy to pursue becoming president of a college or a bank. Maybe, he should pursue a career as a research scientist, something in line with his “superior” intellect. But, no, the “counselor” had other ideas. He told the young man:
“Son, after evaluating your tests and interview, I’ve decided that the best job for you is—a shepherd.”
The student did not know whether to laugh or cry. After all, who wants to be a shepherd? Why devote your life to “stupid sheep” who do not seem to have sense enough to find their way home? (Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary).
Shepherd is not the first career choice for many, but that is how God identifies Himself to His people. In Psalm 23, David, the Shepherd King, writes, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” And in John 10, Jesus identifies Himself as the “good shepherd.”
So, what is Jesus saying when He says, “I am the good shepherd?” And what does that mean to follow such a shepherd? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to John 10, John 10, where Jesus makes it very clear what it means to follow Him.
John 10:1 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber (ESV).
In this context, the thieves were the Pharisees, who in the previous chapter kicked a beggar out of the synagogue. They did not care for this man or anybody. Instead, they mistreated him and thew him out. On the other hand, Jesus, the good shepherd took him in.
John 10:2-6 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them (ESV).
In Jesus’ day, several flocks of sheep were often kept in one big sheep pen with a stone wall all the way around it. A gatekeeper guarded the pen at night to prevent thieves and wild animals from entering. Then, in the morning, each shepherd came to the pen to call his own sheep and take them out to pasture. When a shepherd called, only his sheep would respond. The rest would scatter away.
In Palestine today, it is still possible to witness a scene very similar to this. When Bedouin shepherds bring their flocks home from the various pastures they have grazed during the day, often those flocks will end up at the same watering hole. They get all mixed up together—eight or nine small flocks turning into a convention of thirsty sheep. Even so, their shepherds disregard the mix-up. When it is time to leave, each shepherd issues his or her own distinctive call—a special trill or whistle, or a particular tune on a particular reed pipe—and that shepherd's sheep withdraw from the crowd to follow their shepherd home. They know to whom they belong. They know their shepherd's voice, and it is the only one they will follow (Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, Cowley, 1993, p. 147; www.PreachingToday.com).
And that’s what it means to follow your Good Shepherd. 1st…
HEAR THE SHEPHERD’S CALL.
Listen for Jesus’ voice. Pay attention to His invitation to follow.
In 1801, at the age of 30, Ludwig van Beethoven complained about his diminishing hearing: “From a distance I do not hear the high notes of the instruments and the singers’ voices.”
Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks notes that Beethoven “raged” against his decline. To be able to hear his own playing, he banged on pianos so forcefully that he often broke them. By the age of 45, he was completely deaf. He considered suicide but his conscience kept him from going through with it.
He lost all access to the world of sound around him. At times, he held a pencil in his mouth against his piano’s soundboard to feel the harmony of his chords. However, after he was completely deaf, Beethoven produced the best music of his career. That music culminated with his incomparable Ninth Symphony, a composition so daringly new that it reinvented classical music altogether.
Brooks wrote, “It seems a mystery that Beethoven became more original and brilliant as a composer in inverse proportion to his ability to hear. Deafness freed Beethoven as a composer, because he no longer had society’s soundtrack in his ears” (Arthur C. Brooks, “This holiday season, we can all learn a lesson from Beethoven,” The Washington Post, 12-13-19; www.PreachingToday.com).
My dear friends, to hear the Shepherd’s call, turn down the deafening volume of society’s soundtrack. Shut the world out of your ears and listen only to Jesus, because the voices of this world will lead you astray and steal your joy. On the other hand, Jesus will lead you into “green pastures” (Psalm 23:2), which are full of “pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
Late one evening, a professor sat at his desk working on the next day’s lectures. He shuffled through the papers and mail that his housekeeper put there and began to throw them in the trashcan. Then a magazine caught his attention. It had someone else’s address on it, so the postman had delivered it to his office by mistake. When he picked it up, the magazine fell open to an article titled, “The Needs of the Congo Mission.”
The professor began reading it idly, but then these words consumed his thinking: “The need is great here. We have no one to work the northern province of Gabon in the central Congo. And it is my prayer as I write this article that God will lay His hand on one—one on whom, already, the Master’s eyes have been cast—that he or she shall be called to this place to help us.” The professor closed the magazine and wrote in his diary, “My search is over,” and he gave himself to go to the Congo.
The professor’s name was Albert Schweitzer. By chance, that little article, hidden in a periodical intended for someone else, found its way to Schweitzer’s mailbox. By chance, his housekeeper put the magazine on the professor’s desk. By chance, he noticed the title, which seemed to leap out at him, and the rest is history. Dr. Schweitzer became one of the great humanitarian figures of the 20th century (Dan Betzer, Pentecostal Evangel).
By chance? No! For Jesus is still in the process of calling His sheep today. Please, shut out the noise of the world around you and hear the Shepherd’s call on your life. Then 2nd…
ENTER THE SHEPHERD’S DOOR.
Walk in the way Jesus opens for you. Take advantage of the opportunities He provides for you.
John 10:7-9 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture (ESV).
Once the shepherd got his sheep out to pasture, there was another enclosure for the sheep. This enclosure had one opening with no gate or door. Instead, the shepherd himself lay across the opening and literally became the door of that enclosure. If a sheep got scared, it could run to that opening and the shepherd would let the sheep in. If a sheep wanted out to graze, the shepherd would move out of the way to let the sheep out. In Jesus’ day, the shepherd was literally the door to protection and provision for his sheep.
In the same way, Jesus is your door to protection and provision today. In fact, He is the only way to the eternal and abundant life God offers to anyone who trusts in His Son. Jesus said…
John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (ESV).
The thief in this context is the religious leader, who is interested only in protecting and providing for himself. So watch out for such leaders. They will take your money while they live in luxury in gated communities. On the other hand, Jesus wants to give you His life. He wants you to live life to the full. That’s why he came. He came that you might have an eternal, abundant life starting today.
Philip Keller, in his book A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, describes his experience as a shepherd in east Africa. A tenant shepherd, who neglected his sheep, rented the land adjacent to his. The land was overgrazed, eaten down to the ground. His sheep were thin, diseased by parasites, and attacked by wild animals.
Keller especially remembered how the neighbor’s sheep would line up at the fence and blankly stare in the direction of his green grass and his healthy sheep, almost as if they yearned to be delivered from their abusive shepherd. They longed to come to the other side of the fence and belong to him (Leith Anderson, “The Lord Is My Shepherd,” Preaching Today, Tape #136).
Maybe, that describes some of you. You long for something better, because you have been under the care of this world’ s shepherds for too long. If that’s you, please, come to Jesus. He is the door to the eternal, abundant for which you long.
Consider the contrast in the lives of two men. The first is 19th Century, evolutionary scientist Charles Darwin. He once wrote in his autobiography:
“My chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life has been scientific work.” From this work, he added, “I am never idle,” as it is “the only thing which makes life endurable to me.” Later, he wrote:
“Up to the age of thirty poetry… gave me great pleasure, and … I took intense de¬light in Shakespeare… But now for many years I… found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me… My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. (This) loss is a loss of happiness… (I became) “a withered leaf for every subject except Science,” which he saw as “a great evil”.
Contrast that with an 18th century pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards. At age 19, Edwards wrote:
“Resolved… to cast my soul on the Lord Jesus Christ, to trust and confide in him, and consecrate myself wholly to him.” Later Jonathan Edwards reflected on how his consecration to Christ affected his soul over the years. He wrote:
“[It] brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness and ravishment to the soul. In other words, it made the soul like a field or garden.”
Two gifted men. One became “a withered leaf” and the other a “garden” (Thaddeus J. Williams, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History, Weaver Book Company, 2017, Introduction; www.PreachingToday.com).
One devoted himself to science. The other devoted himself to the Lord, and that made all the difference in the world! Who or what are you devoting yourself to? Please, devote yourself to Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. 1st, hear the Shepherd’s call. 2nd, enter the Shepherd’s door. Then 3rd…
KNOW THE SHEPHERD’S CARE.
Experience Christ’s compassion for you. See what Jesus does for those He loves. Jesus says in verse 11…
John 10:11-15 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep (ESV).
The Good Shepherd gives His life for His sheep. You see, when evening settled over the land, danger lurked. Lions, wolves, Jackals, panthers, leopards, bears, and hyenas were common in the countryside. So the shepherd literally risked his life to care for his sheep. Indeed, some of them even gave their own lives, protecting their sheep.
That’s what Jesus did for you. He died on a cross, protecting you from the death penalty of your own sins. Then Jesus continues…
John 10:16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd (ESV).
The Good Shepherd not only cares for His own sheep. He reaches out to other sheep in desperate need of a good shepherd. That’s you and me, Gentiles, who will join with Jewish believers in Jesus under ONE shepherd in ONE flock.
John 10:17-18 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (ESV).
The Good Shepherd, after giving His life, rises from the dead to continue caring for His sheep.
Wayne Cordeiro tells the story about a church member named Bully, a gentle man who got his nickname from his days of barking orders at construction sites. After Cordeiro noticed the scars on Bully's hands, he asked him, “Bully, how'd you get so many cuts?” Bully told the following story about a tsunami that hit the Hawaiian Island in the 1960s:
I was working above the bay that our home overlooks. One morning, the tide receded so much that the children ran out to catch fish in the tide pools left behind. We'd never witnessed the tide so low before, and it gave the kids an unprecedented opportunity to play and romp through the reefs that now protruded above the waterline like newly formed islands in the ocean. But what we didn't know was that the ocean was preparing to unleash the largest tsunami our sleepy little town had ever experienced.
Within minutes, a sixty-foot wave charged our unsuspecting town with a force we'd never seen before. The hungry waters rushed inland. Like bony fingers, the waters scratched and pulled homes, cars, possessions, and people back into a watery grave. The devastating power of that wave left in its wake twisted buildings, shattered windows, splintered homes, and broken dreams. I ran as fast as I could to our home, where I found my wife sobbing uncontrollably. “Robby is missing,” she shouted. “I can't find Robby!”
Robby was our six-month-old child who was asleep in the house when the ocean raged against our helpless village. I was frantic as I looked over the shore strewn with the remains of the frail stick houses that were now piled in heaps along the sands. Realizing that another wave may soon be following, I began running on top of the wooden structures, tearing up pieces of twisted corrugated roofs that were ripped like discarded remains of a demolition project. I tore up one piece after another running over boards and broken beams until I heard the whimpering of a child under one of the mattresses that had gotten lodged beneath an overturned car.
I reached under and pulled up my little son, Robby. I tucked him under my arm like a football player running for the end zone, then I sprinted back over the debris until I reached my wife. We ran for higher ground, hugging our child and one another, thanking God for his mercy.
Just then, my wife said, “Bully, your feet and your hands. You're covered in blood!”
I had been wearing tennis shoes, and I didn't realize that as I ran over the wreckage, I was stepping on protruding nails and screws that had been exposed in the rubble. And as I pulled back the torn corrugated roofing looking for Robby, the sharp edges tore into my hand… I was so intent on finding my boy that nothing else mattered (Wayne Cordeiro, Sifted, Zondervan, 2012, pp. 205-208; www.PreachingToday.com).
Even though Jesus rose from the dead after He died, He still bears the scars on his hands and feet (John 20:25-28) after rescuing you from sin and death on the cross.
After Jesus declares that He lays down His life and takes it up again, His audience has a mixed reaction.
John 10:19-21 There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” (ESV)
Please, reject the notion that Jesus has a demon and trust Him to care for you as He did the blind beggar. 1st, Hear the Shepherd’s call. 2nd, Enter the Shepherd’s door. 3rd, Know the Shepherd’s care. And 4th…
REST IN THE SHEPHERD’S HAND.
Be confident that Jesus will never let you go. Trust that you are forever His!
John 10:22-26 At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep (ESV).
Some people refused to believe in Jesus, because they were looking for a political savior. It was the Feast of Dedication (a.k.a. Hanukkah), which commemorates Judas Maccabeus revolt against Antiochus IV, the Syrian ruler who overran Israel and desecrated the temple in 168 B.C. The time for the eight-day feast was in December, two months after Jesus’ last confrontation with the Jewish leaders at the Feast of Tabernacles (E. A. Blum, Bible Knowledge Commentary). Now, they’re demanding to know if Jesus will deliver them their Roman oppressors, but Jesus has a far greater deliverance in mind.
John 10:27-30 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (ESV).
Jesus and the Father are one, one in essence and purpose. Instead of a temporary deliverance from Roman oppression, they both want you to have permanent deliverance from death and sin. Jesus uses the strongest language possible in verse 28 when He says, “They will never perish.” Literally, “They will in no way perish into all eternity.”
Once you trust Christ as your Savior, you can never, in no way, lose your salvation; you can never, in no way, lose the eternal, abundant life He gives to you. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be eternal, would it? That’s because Jesus and His Father, both, hold you in their hands. As a believer, you are secure in the hand of God!
Elisa Morgan talks about the night her 11-year-old daughter Eva noticed she was distracted as she tucked her in to bed. Elisa told Eva about a friend's teenage daughter whose hair was mysteriously falling out. She encouraged Eva to pray for Amy. Eva’s simple words, “Jesus, please hold Amy's hair on her head,” touched Elisa.
As the doctors experimented with different treatments, Amy continued to lose her hair, but Eva continued to pray the same prayer: “Jesus, please hold Amy’s hair on her head.”
After six weeks, the doctors determined that Amy had alopecia, an extremely rare disorder where hair loss is unpredictable but can be complete and permanent. When Elisa told Eva, Eva took her mother’s hand and closed her eyes. This time her prayer was different. “Dear Jesus, if you won't hold Amy's hair on her head, would you please hold Amy?” (Elisa Morgan in “Christian Parenting Today, Christian Reader, Vol. 34; www.PreachingToday.com).
No matter what’s going on in your life, dear believer, Jesus holds you securely in His hand. Even if you start to doubt Him, those doubts will not snatch you out of His hand, because He holds onto you; you don’t hold onto Him.
So, when times are hard, feel secure in the assurance that He will never let you go!
That’s what it means to follow Jesus. 1st, hear the Shepherd’s call. 2nd, enter the Shepherd’s door. 3rd, know the Shepherd’s care. 4th, rest in the Shepherd's hand. And finally…
TRUST IN THE SHEPHERD’S DEITY.
Believe that Jesus is God, and depend on His omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent control of the circumstances of your life.
John 10:31-33 The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God” (ESV).
Jesus had claimed oneness with the Father.
John 10:34-38 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (ESV).
Jesus argues like a rabbi to answer the rabbis, who oppose Him. He says, “If your unbreakable scripture calls unjust human judges “gods” in Psalm 82 (vs.1 & 6), then you cannot accuse me of blasphemy for claiming to be the Son of God.”
But Jesus also claims to be more than a human judge. He claims to be what Psalm 82:8 calls the judge of all the earth, God Himself. He claims that He and the Father are inseparable—The Father is in Him, and He is in the Father.
John 10:39-42 Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands. He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there (ESV).
Please, don’t be like the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. Be like the common people across the Jordan River. Believe that Jesus is God and trust Him to run your life.
Joshua Butler, in his book The Pursuing God, describes the relationship between Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit as a team. He writes:
“Say a family is trapped in a forest fire, so a helicopter team undertakes a rescue. One fireman flies the helicopter over the smoky blaze to coordinate the operation and see the big picture. A second fireman descends on a rope into the billowing smoke below to track down the family and stand with them. Once he locates the family, he wraps the rope around them, attaching them to himself, and they are lifted up together from the blaze into safety.
“In this rescue operation, the [fireman in the helicopter] looks like the Father. [He] can see the whole field unclouded from above to sovereignly orchestrate the plan.
“The second fireman looks like the Son, who descends into our world ablaze to find us, the human family, and identify with us most deeply in the darkness of the grave.
“The Spirit is like the rope, who mediates the presence of the Father to Jesus, even in his distance, and raises Jesus—and the human family with him—from sin, death, and the grave, into the presence of the Father.”
“Of course,” Butler says, “like all analogies, this one falls short. The Spirit is a person, not a thing (like the rope). And the Father, Son, and Spirit, [though separate persons, are] one God, sharing a divine nature and essence as one being (Joshua Ryan Butler, The Pursuing God, Thomas Nelson, 2016, page 122; www.PreachingToday.com).
The point is: it takes all Three persons of the Trinity to accomplish your salvation. God the Father planned it (Ephesians 1:3-6). God the Son carried out the plan on the cross (Eph. 1:7-12). And God the Spirit secured your salvation forever (Eph. 1:13-14).
Please, appreciate what all three Persons of the Trinity have done to save you from your sins, especially what Jesus has done. If Jesus was anyone less than God, He could not have carried out God’s plan to bear the eternal weight of your sin on the cross. The penalty for sin is an eternal, agonizing death in hell (Luke 16:22-24; Romans 6:23; Revelation 20:10, 15), so only the eternal God could pay that eternal penalty.
Please, trust God the Son with your life, who paid that penalty for you, then rose again to give you eternal life.
That’s what it means to follow Jesus as your Good Shepherd. 1st, hear the Shepherd’s call. 2nd, enter the Shepherd’s door. 3rd, know the Shepherd’s care. 4th, rest in the Shepherd’s hand. And 5th, trust in the Shepherd’s deity.
The banquet hall was filled. To speak for the occasion, the organizers brought in a world-famous orator; and after a wonderful meal, he mesmerized the crowd with his voice as he recited poetry and famous selections of speeches.
Near the end of the program, he asked if anyone had a favorite selection that they would like for him to recite. From the back of the room, an old preacher stood up and kindly asked if he would mind reciting the 23rd Psalm. The speaker said that he would be glad to do it if, when he was finished, the old preacher would recite it, as well. The old preacher nodded his head and sat back down.
In a beautifully trained voice that resonated throughout the great room, the speaker began, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…” When he was finished, there was thunderous applause and a standing ovation.
He then looked at the old preacher and said, “Alright sir, it is your turn now.”
In a trembling voice that was cracked by time, the old man began to recite, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” When he was finished, there was no applause, but neither was there a dry eye in the building.
After the event, someone asked the famous orator, “What made the difference?” The orator replied, “I know the psalm; he knows the shepherd” (www.heavenlyheartburn.wordpress.com/ 2006/09/26/do-you-know-the-shepherd).
Do you know the Shepherd? I hope you do, because knowing Him makes all the difference in the world. Knowing Him means experiencing an abundant life, which never ends. If you don’t know the Shepherd, respond to His call today. Ask Him to be your Shepherd before you leave this place.
