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.
We look at the world differently as Christians. When we experience a beautiful sunset or walk through the woods, that’s God’s gift to us. When we see a baby being born, there’s another gift from God. Even in the midst of our sicknesses, we feel God’s love for us. He’s only drawing us closer to Him through the pain. Yes, God is in the good, the bad and the ugly. That’s how we see it, through the eyes of faith.
You can ask, “What’s wrong with them? It should have been obvious to see!” Well, Jesus answers it rather simply. You do not believe, because you are not my sheep, as I said to you. Jesus’ fellow Jews claimed to believe in God, but they adamantly refused to believe in Jesus as their Christ. They wouldn’t submit to HIM. They were personally against HIM. That’s why they wouldn’t believe, even though Jesus’ miracles made it obvious who He was.
They’ve actually done eyesight experiments that illustrate what happens with Jesus. They’ll have people look at a certain spot, and while they are concentrating on that one spot, they fail to see a man dressed in a monkey suit dancing right in front of them. In the opposite way, it’s kind of like when you have a friend or a family member who is dating someone who has red flags all over the place. He’s mean. He’s abusive. He’s full of himself. But she can’t see it. She believes differently about him, because she’s looking at something else, or he’s telling her something she wants to hear, needs to hear. She can’t see him for what He is, when anyone else can. Maybe that’s a good illustration for what happened with Jesus. It should have been plain for the people to see who He was in a GOOD way, but they didn’t want to see it. They were looking for something else.
But Jesus says it’s a matter of LISTENING more than seeing. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. Again, here’s another interesting thing. If I’m listening to you, you would think that I would know YOU better. And I would. But Jesus doesn’t emphasize that here. He says that as people listen to His voice, HE KNOWS them. He pays careful attention to them and seems to get to know them all the better, even though He knows everything as God. When you teach a class, you get to know your students personally. You can see who is interested and who isn’t. They look at you. They ask questions. They want to know more. As a teacher, you can hear the questions they ask. You can tell what worries them and what excites them. You can address them all the more personally when they sit and listen. You can encourage them to follow all the more, as you personally address them and talk to them, and you can lead them in the right direction. I tend to think that I got to know one of my beloved professors pretty well, and he knew me better as well, because I took such an interest in his teachings. We had a back and forth, because of that.
Contrast this to what the people had experienced with the Pharisees and Sadducees. They weren’t going to listen to Jesus. They wanted everyone to listen to them. And for them, it wasn’t as much about listening as it was about obeying and doing what they said. Who would match up and who wouldn’t? Who was a real Jew, a real Pharisee, and who wasn’t? But Jesus was trying to show them a completely different system.
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.”
Sometimes on Facebook they have these videos from the Dodo that show dogs that have been abused or abandoned. If anyone wants to go near them they are at first skittish and afraid. It takes a bit of patience and risk to try and approach the animal to grab hold of it. They have to speak gently and gently reach out their hands. I had a member in Topeka who wanted to take care of a wild cat that had come into their house, but the only way he could do it was to try and get hold of it. It would hiss and snarl at him. Finally, he got tired of waiting. He cornered it and grabbed hold of it. When he got hold of it, it actually bit him and dug deeply into his hand. But he held onto it anyway. Eventually, through the pain and persistence, he was able to tame the cat.
In order to grab hold of us, Jesus had to allow us to grab hold of Him, put Him on a cross and crucify Him. He had to allow us to spit on Him and mock Him, falsely accuse Him and abandon Him. We were trying to get rid of Him and throw Him out of this world. But all the while, through all the pain and suffering, even when we didn’t realize it or want it, while we were throwing Him out, He was gently speaking to us. “Father forgive them. Why have you forsaken me? Into your hands I commit my Spirit. It is finished.” With His words and actions, He was grabbing hold of us with His love and mercy, paying the price for our sins and rebellion. God was dying for us willingly, freely, and lovingly.
Who is He grabbing hold of? Sheep. Sheep need to be protected and fed. They do easily go astray. They need to be comforted and led. They aren’t the biggest and boldest of creatures. I’d rather be compared maybe to a bull or a lion, not a sheep. But that’s not what Jesus compares us to. And if you’re not willing to see yourself in the sheep, the chances are you won’t see your need for the Good Shepherd either. You won’t want His mercy or forgiveness or protection. You won’t want Him to grab hold of you.
Do any of you remember the Abominable Snowman from the old Bugs Bunny cartoon? He picks up Daffy Duck, thinking that he is a bunny rabbit, and proceeds to rough handle him while trying to take care of him, calling him George. When Logan was a toddler he picked up a cat at my father in law’s house by the neck and was carrying it around. (The cat didn’t bite or claw or anything, so we knew it was going to be a good cat to bring home.) God doesn’t grab hold of us like that. The Father sees us scared and afraid. He speaks to us gently in our pain and in our fear. Sometimes He grabs hold quickly and firmly. At other times He takes a little longer, letting us go our own way. Eventually, one way or another, He picks His sheep up firmly and yet gently, and places us in Jesus’ hand, and then the Father wraps His hand around Jesus’ hand and says, “I got you! I got you for eternity! You’ll never end up in hell, not now.” He speaks to us gently and lovingly. He makes us aware of the misleading voices. In today’s text, He progresses from saying no one WILL snatch them to saying that no one even CAN snatch them from His hand. It’s a message of grace and mercy, love and protection, unlike anything they were used to.
So what do we continue to do as His sheep? My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. There are certain types of voices that are soothing and comforting. Personally, I especially like the sound of Michael Buble’s Christmas music during Christmas, or perhaps Handel’s Messiah. You listen to the music and it calms you and soothes you. You might go to the same artist time and time and time again, you never get sick of the songs or the lyrics. You know them by heart. They are your “go-to”s at certain times. But with Jesus it’s more than a melody. It’s the words of God, promising us a free and full salvation, by grace, through faith in Jesus.
Think of Mary at the empty tomb. She’s crying and hysterical, thinking that Jesus’ body had been stolen. Her eyes are full of tears. She’s all out of sorts. As she’s talking to Jesus, telling her what she thinks happened, it doesn’t take much. All Jesus has to do is call her by name. That simple voice, saying her name, it completely calms her. I may have told you about a young vicar who told the story of visiting an elderly member in the nursing home. He was in pain, writing and screaming. The vicar decided to just go next to the man and start reading Psalm 23 to the man, calmly and loudly, over the man’s screams. Slowly but surely, as he went through the Psalm, the man calmed down and melted into a gentle man again. The voice of the LORD calmed His soul.
Today is Mother’s Day. Many will probably try to contact their mothers and talk with them, wishing them a Happy Mother’s Day. It’s kind of a sad day for me, the first one without my mom. She always would answer when I called, “How’s my baby?” (I was the youngest living child.) I won’t hear that voice this year. I have no mother on earth to call. So this day brings me a little sadness.
But we can remember that this is more than Mother’s Day. This is also Good Shepherd Sunday. If you’re feeling lost and abandoned, angry and afraid, just go back to the Word of God. Go back to your baptism, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Go back to the Supper. “Given for you. Shed for you.” When I can’t sleep at night, I make sure to listen to the Word of God, especially the Psalms or the Gospels, and that always seems to do the trick. Unlike the podcasts, the voice of God relaxes me. He reminds me of God’s love, and I fall asleep in the arms of Jesus. Listen to Him, and open up to Him. In doing so, you will know just how much He knows you like no one else, and loves you like no one else. You’ll have a peace you can’t find anywhere else, resting in the arms of the Good Shepherd Jesus, and listening to His voice. Amen.
