John Message #32 “The Wonderful Shepherd” Ed Miller, Nov. 2, 2024

Listen to the audio above while following along in the transcript below which is also available for download at www.biblestudyministriesinc.com

As we come to look in the precious word of the Lord, I want to share this verse from Psalm 119:89&90, “Forever, oh Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven, and Thy faithfulness continues throughout all generations.”  God’s word is settled, and they’ve been studying for generations.  If the grace of the Lord continues, they’ll be studying it long after we’re gone.  We’re not looking at anything new.  It’s only new in the sense of fresh.  So, let’s ask the Lord to make it new in the sense of making it fresh.

Heavenly Father, thank You for Your precious word which You’ve given us in every generation.  Your faithfulness continues forever, and we just praise You that in this little slice of time we can pause and trust the Holy Spirit that lives in our heart to point our eyes to Jesus all over again.  So, we thank You and we expect that You will over answer our request because we claim it in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

We welcome you again to our fellowship and our meditation on the Lord Jesus from the gospel of John.  I want to begin as we begin every lesson in this gospel by stating the Holy Spirit’s reason for inspiring John to write this book.  He writes it in John 20:31, “These have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you may have life in His name.”  That one verse tells us the three reasons God gave us this book—to know the Lord, to trust the Lord, and to enjoy the Lord.  Everything in this book just enforces that. 

In our meditation we’ve come to John 10, and last week we sort of introduced that chapter.  We didn’t actually begin to study it; we just introduced that.  I want to just review a little of that and then we’ll get into the chapter.  John 10:6, “This figure of speech Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which He had been saying to them.”  This figure of speech He said was spoken to them; this allegory, this illustration, and it goes on for thirty verses.  This figure of speech was spoken to somebody; this He spoke to them.  We need to know who the “them” were.  But it was also spoken about somebody.  It was spoken to the Jews, the Pharisees, the religious leaders who thought they were the shepherds, but they were false shepherds.  So, He addressed it to them, but because He was contrasting the false with the true, this is also a chapter about His sheep; it’s about you and it’s about me.  What He said about us is so tremendous, that it has been completely overshadowed by the ones it was spoken to.  It’s so great, we come to this and say, “Let’s study about the shepherd and His sheep, but it wasn’t addressed to us.  It includes that but it was not addressed to us, and sometimes we forget that it was addressed to the Pharisees. 

I think if you talked to 99 out of 100 Christians about this chapter, they wouldn’t know that it was addressed to them.  It’s so precious about the shepherd and about the sheep.  This is one of the grand chapters in the Bible in the New Testament, about the shepherd’s love for us and His care for us and how He provides and secures us, and so on.  Any Christians who have received God’s revelation, that he is in the fold, that he’s a sheep, they gravitate to this chapter.  It’s a very wonderful chapter.  But again, it wasn’t written primarily for us.  The whole allegory, the whole figure of speech was to expose false shepherds, and they got it. 

I’m going to quote several verses to show that they got it.  These verses are in chapter 10.  John 10:19, “A division occurred among the Jews because of these words.”  John 10:31, “The Jews picked up stones to stone Him.”  John 10:39, “They were seeking to seize Him, but He illuded their grasp.”  John 10:20, “Many of them were saying, ‘He has a demon; He’s insane and why do you listen to Him?’”  John 10:33, “The Jews answered, ‘For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy because you being a man make yourself to be God.’”  Christians, when they come to this chapter, they don’t know it was written to those false teachers, but they knew it, and you can see from those verses.

How did the Pharisees conclude that Jesus, or think they knew, that He was a blasphemer?  Of course, in verse 36, “Do you say of Him who the Father sanctified and sent into the world you are blaspheming because I said that I am the Son of God?”  That’s one reason that they accused Him of blasphemy, but the very allegory, the figure of speech where He claimed to be the shepherd, listen to verse 14, “I’m the good shepherd; I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father.  I lay down My life for the sheep.”  The Jews, the Pharisees, were very familiar with that word “shepherd”.  That wasn’t new to the Jews; they knew that, and they loved David, the sweet Psalmist, and they knew about Psalm 23:1, “The Lord is my shepherd.”  In your English Bible you’ll notice that it’s capitalized, LORD.  That’s the word “Jehovah”, and when Jesus said, “I am the shepherd,” he was claiming to be the Jehovah of the Old Testament.  Well, that got under their skin.  They did not want that to be true, so they accused Him of blasphemy.

The chapter is a contrast between the real shepherd and all those who came up another way called “strangers”, the false teachers.  The confusion comes because God sometimes uses the word shepherd for his instruments, his people.  Pastors are called shepherds.  Prophets and priests in the Old Testament were called shepherds.  Listen to 1 Peter 5:2&3, Peter is encouraging the elders, “Shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily according to the will of God, not for sordid gain, but with eagerness, nor as yet lording it over those allotted to your charge, proving yourselves examples to the flock.”  They’ve been given the title “shepherd”.  We call them under-shepherds, but that doesn’t make them what the title suggests.  Just because God calls a pastor a shepherd, doesn’t rule out the fact that He’s the shepherd.  They’re just instruments through which He speaks.  Jesus, in the Old Testament, used the word “god” and “You are the sons of the most high,” and He referred it to men.  They had no problem when the word “God” referred to them, and they had no problem when He said, “You are sons of the most high,” but when Jesus said, “I’m God and I’m the Son of the Most High,” that gave them a problem.  Listen to verse 35 & 36, “Jesus answered them, ‘Has it not been 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 sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said I am the Son of God?”

He used that title for designated authorities.  He hasn’t called us to be the shepherd; He is the shepherd, and He is the only shepherd.  He gives us that title.  I don’t have to study the role of a shepherd to learn how to help God’s people and feed God’s people.  In fact, as we saw last week, the only way to be a real shepherd is to be a real sheep and live in union with the Lord.  Since shepherd, shepherd works, ministry comes and He uses us, we get this idea, “He calls me a shepherd, and I’m the shepherd.”  No, no, no; He lent His title to us, and you’ll see it all through the Bible.  He uses the title “king”, but He’s the King.  He uses the title “father”, but He’s the Father.  He uses the title “husband”, but He’s the Husband.  He uses the title “son of man”, but He’s the Son of Man.  He calls men “priests” by He’s the priest.  Do you see what I’m saying?  He didn’t look down and say, “Oh, look, there’s a mother giving birth to a baby; I think I’ll use that as an illustration to illustrate the new birth.”  He lent that to man.  He was first; He had a family before He created family.  He lent His titles to us.  He didn’t borrow any titles from us.  When He calls us shepherds, He’s lending us His title; He is the shepherd.  That’s where we left off, on the exchanged life.  The real under-shepherd is not one who lives for Jesus; He’s one who let’s Jesus live for Himself.  Jesus lives inside of you, and He wants to be the shepherd through you; He wants to be the shepherd through me.  John 10 is about the shepherd, and it’s in contrast with those false shepherds.  I’m a shepherd when I reckon myself dead, and let the true Shepherd manifest Himself through me.  That’s how we minister.  Anyway, that’s where we left off last time. 

I want to return to the observation that I made earlier in John 10 that He was speaking to someone, but also about someone.  Last week we talked about the ones He was speaking to.  Now, I’d like to begin this awesome record of who He was speaking about.  I’m so glad that He addressed those false shepherds, so that I have all this wonderful truth about the shepherd.  It’s breathtaking.  It would be criminal if I just jumped over it and said, “That chapter is to the false teachers.  Let’s move on.”  No, no.  It’s to them but it’s about us, and we need to look at that.  I’m so thankful that He exposed them, or I wouldn’t have all of this. 

Before we begin chapter 10, I want to make a final introductory comment about the chapter as a whole.  Almost always when somebody begins to say, “I’m going to do a series on the shepherd and the sheep,” the first thing I think they do, and I’ve seen it in all my books and commentaries, is they say, “We need to study sheep, and we need to know the character of sheep and the characteristics, and how they live and what they do.”  So, they go to the computer these days and they google “sheep” or they figure it out some other way, and then they say, “Well, the sheep is somebody that’s pretty dumb, and doesn’t have any sense of direction and doesn’t know what he’s doing,” even though is not as dumb as people make them out to be.  They have memories; they remember faces, and they can discern colors.  They put food in certain colored dishes, and after a while they’ll go straight to the one with the food in it.  They tried it with different shapes, and after a while they’ll remember the shapes, and so on.  It’s true, though, that sheep do some dumb things.  They’ll follow a leader and jump off a cliff, and all that kind of stuff.

Usually, they run right to Isaiah 53:6, “All of us like sheep have gone astray; we’ve returned each of us to his own way.”  I don’t know if you’re familiar with that hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, and in there is a little line, “prone to wander, Lord I feel it.”  That was written a long time ago by Robert Robertson, and he was prone to wander.  He was a Baptist, but he said, “No, no, no; I’ll be a Methodist.”  So, he became a Methodist.  And then he said, “No, I’m going back to Baptist.”  He went back to Baptist.  Then he said, “I think Unitarian is the way to go,” and then he became a Unitarian.  He was prone to wander, but the point is, sheep do wander.  Sometimes they don’t pay attention, and they’re just looking for a greener pasture, and off they go.  Sometimes they get spooked, and then they’ll run away; they’ll flee.  Sometimes if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, then they’ll just try to avoid the wind, and so on. That’s the idea; the more we know about sheep, the more we know about ourselves because we’re sheep, and then we’ll appreciate what God says about the shepherd. 

That’s true in the Bible, but it’s not true in John 10.  You don’t need to study about sheep to know and understand John 10.  It’s true that the sheep are defenseless, and God didn’t give them claws and He didn’t give them fangs, and they have no venom inside of them, they don’t have spines and they don’t have quills, they don’t have talons, they don’t have wings.  They have little horns, but they’re more like shovels to get the snow away so they can find the food.  When they’re mating, they use their horns against each other, and so on, but they don’t bark and they don’t growl and they don’t stand up tall and they don’t squirt ink.  They have no defense mechanism.  They aren’t very fast.  They flee but they’re not very fast.  God did give them eyes on the side of their head to alert them when there is danger, but this chapter is not about those kind of sheep, and it’s not going to help you to go there when you are studying John 10, or you are studying something else, you might want to do that.

Before I start, actually, I want to give a little testimony that my Lillian and I experienced.  We had the privilege of visiting a home in Easton, Md., the home of a shepherd.  His name is Herb Goran and his wife, Laura.  He shared many things about the sheep in terms of how they act, and so on.  One was about their natural instinct to flock together in the time of danger.  Here is a story he told us; I’ll never forget it.  One night he heard a noise in the fold, so he grabbed his rifle because he was having trouble with fox; the fox were coming after the sheep.  He described the scene, and I’ll never forget it.  The sheep had all come together in such a way that he could not see the face of the sheep, and he could not see the hoof of the sheep; they were in a big ball and he said that when he went out, all that he could see was a ball of wool and a fox reaching out and just getting a mouth full of the wool.  Of course, he shot the fox.  The point that he was making is, “I was a dentist and I became a shepherd in retirement because I wanted to learn my relationship with the Lord.”  So, he was applying everything, and he was quick to apply this.  He said, “Do you see how important it is for Christians to stay together, and to flock together, especially in the time of danger?  If someone is wandering off or doesn’t go with the body, they are in a special place of vulnerability,” and so on.  He gave us that wonderful story. 

As I said, John 10, has nothing about a bewildered sheep.  There’s nothing about the nature of sheep, so that we can say, “Alright, now I see how dumb they are, and I know how dumb I am, and how helpless I am.”  Not in this chapter.  If you are in another chapter, okay.  Listen to John 10:4, “When he puts forth his own, he goes ahead of them.  The sheep follow Him because they know His voice.  A stranger they simply will not follow and will flee from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.  This isn’t a sheep that’s going astray; not in this chapter, “My sheep follow Me.”  John 10:5, “A stranger they simply will not follow; they’ll flee from him; they do not know the voice of the stranger.”  So, John 10 is not how dumb are sheep; it’s how wonderful is the shepherd, and that’s how we’re going to look at it—how wonderful is the shepherd.  This chapter is so far from describing wayward sheep.  It’s teaching us the wonder of the shepherd. 

Here is how I’m going to look at it.  There is so much in here; you could go anywhere with chapter 10, but I thought I would just stick to John’s reason for writing the gospel, that we might know Him, that we might trust Him and that we might enjoy Him.  What does John 10 say about our wonderful shepherd that helps me know Him more intimately?  What does John 10 say about our wonderful shepherd that encourages me to trust Him more thoroughly?  What does John 10 say about our wonderful shepherd that enables me to enjoy Him and live the abundant life that He came to give?  So, that’s how we’re going to look at this chapter; that we might know Him, and He gives us the union with the sheep; that we might trust Him, and He reveal His heart on how He provides and watches over the sheep; and that we might enjoy him, and He reveals the abundant life, the green pastures, and so on, that He gives to the sheep.  We’re going to begin this morning, but we’re not going to get anywhere near finishing.  I’d like to start with the first question, “How does this chapter shed light on our great shepherd so that we might know Him more intimately?”

I want to begin with verse 14, “I’m the good shepherd and I know My own and My own know me.”  I want to talk about knowing the shepherd.  How does John 10 really underscore that?  We’re touching very precious things here.  Don’t think when we say, “The Lord knows me and I know the Lord,” that it’s in a casual way.  The way the Bible and John 10 uses the word “know” is not just a casual acquaintance.  I know my neighbor.  That is, when they moved in, Lillian made them a little cake and we got to meet them.  I think that’s the last time I talked to them.  I know my neighbor.  It’s not information; it’s not academics, like you’re studying it, like I know the facts of Abraham’s life, and I know how he lived and I know how he died, and I know how to fish and I know how to golf and I know calculus (no I don’t!), but it’s not knowing it like that.  It’s not even a conviction, “I know in my heart that it’s true.”  It’s not that.  Wuest translates John 10:14, “I know My sheep by experience, and My sheep know Me,” and he translates the word “know” by experience.

It’s more like Genesis 4:1, listen carefully as I read this, “Adam knew Eve, and she conceived.”  What does the word “know” mean?  Adam knew Eve; it’s talking about the intimacies of the marriage bond, knowing in that sense.  If you are familiar with the prophet Hosea, you know that the whole message has to do with a broken-hearted love of God because His people committed spiritual adultery.  The closer you come to understand the word “know”, you’ll enter into Hosea 6:3, “Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord,” knowing intimately in the union, the close union of the marriage bond.  Paul, that was his whole life.  He was thirty years in Christ Jesus when he wrote Philippians 3:10, “That I might know Him.”  After thirty years, that was still his goal, to know the Lord.  It’s in that sense that we read verse 14, “I’m the good shepherd and I know My own,” intimately, by experience, “and My own know Me,” intimately, by experience, in the sense of oneness, relationship.

I want to give you a Bible principle because what God does in chapter 10 is that He gives us a figure of speech, and then in John 10 he jumps quickly to the reality: the figure/the reality.  I’m going to alter that just a little bit.  Here’s the Bible principle; the reality is always greater than the picture that pictures the reality.  That seems simple enough but Christians forget it, and when we go through this, I think some of you are going to say, “That can’t be true.”  Well, may God help us! 

The picture falls short.  For example, in the picture of Christ in the Bible, He’s the lamb of God.  That’s a picture, an animal.  The reality, He’s the lamb of God, how much greater is the reality than the picture?  All the types and ceremonies in the Old Testament, they fall short, infinitely short of the reality that they are picturing.  In the Old Testament, fire consumed the lamb.  In the New Testament, the lamb consumed the fire, the fires of hell.  It’s amazing that the reality is so much greater. 

Some quarrel with figures.  They say, “Come on, you don’t really believe that there is a street of gold in heaven?”  It’s that or better.  If that’s just a picture, then the reality is greater.  And someone comes on the other side and says, “You can’t believe there’s a literal fire in hell, because it talks about outer darkness.  How can it be fire?”  Well, I’ll tell you, they’re trying to get out of the reality, but if that’s just a picture, then the reality is greater.  It’s a picture or better or it’s a picture or worse, and you are not going to get out of it by saying, “That’s just a figure of speech.” 

I say that because John 10 gives us this wonderful picture, the union of the oriental shepherd with the sheep.  That’s the picture, and then He moves to the reality.  The oriental shepherd and sheep have a much closer relationship than the occidental shepherd and sheep.  Occidental is just the western hemisphere.  Sometimes the shepherds were with the sheep for many months, and never saw a human being.  They just lived with the sheep; they got to know the sheep.  In our society I think we’d say, “The relationship with a person and an animal, maybe a boy and his dog, or even an adult and their dog, or some people are cat lovers.  It doesn’t matter what the pet is.  It could be a parrot or a spider monkey or a gerbil or whatever you like as a pet, a rabbit, a squirrel; I don’t know.  But sheep not so much in our western society. 

Our flocks are maybe fifty or maybe a hundred.  Sometimes their flocks were thousands of sheep and one shepherd over a couple of thousand sheep.  It said in verse 3, “To him the doorkeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls them out, his own sheep by name, and leads them out.”  I’ve read that a Syrian shepherd, even if you blindfolded him, would be able to identify each of his sheep by their cry and by their smell, and he knew each one by name.  That’s an amazing thing. 

The picture of the Oriental shepherd in union with his sheep is only a figure of speech.  God uses that but the reality that He’s the shepherd, and so on, is much better.  The shepherd and the sheep in the Old Testament, they revered shepherds.  Abraham was a shepherd, and Jacob was a shepherd and Moses was a shepherd and David was a shepherd.  It’s true that the Egyptians hated the shepherds.  In Genesis 46:34, “Every shepherd is loathsome to the Egyptians.”  But that idea doesn’t come from the Bible.  That idea comes from Aristotle and the Babylonian Talmud, and so on.  In the Bible, the shepherds and relationship with their flocks is represented as a humble profession.  It was just a very simple lifestyle, an apt picture, I think, of the Lord with His children.  Psalm 100:3, “Know that the Lord Himself is God.  It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.”  Psalm 95:7, “Come, let us worship and bow down, and let us kneel before the Lord, our maker; He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand.”

What I’d like to do now is go back to the figure and show you how much greater than the picture is the reality.  Is it ten times greater?  Is the reality one hundred times greater?  Is it a thousand times greater?  Infinitely greater is the reality from the picture.  The figure God gives in John 10 is that Oriental shepherd and his close bond with his flock, but that falls very far short.  Here is what John 10 does.  He gives you this picture, the shepherd with His sheep, and then He jumps to the reality.  What I want to do is to take the picture, the truth He’s illustrating, but then I want to fill it in with three more pictures.  Each one is stronger but still a picture, stronger but still a picture, stronger but still a picture, and then we’ll go to the reality in John 10.  May God help us!

My first insertion, God’s picture–shepherd, sheep, oriental shepherd, close bond; Matthew 10:30, “The very hairs of your head are numbered.”  Some of us, maybe that’s not as much of a challenge to the Lord, but we keep losing it, so He’s got to keep records.  That’s only an illustration.  I don’t know how the Lord can keep track of that, but we just say, “Come on; you’ve got to be kidding.  The very hairs of your head are numbered; is that literal?  That’s just a figure of speech.”  Yeah, but the reality is greater.  How much greater?  Ten times greater?  A hundred times greater?  Don’t just say, “Oh, he’s just using a figure of speech.”  He is, but it’s designed to take you to the reality.  Verse 3, “To him the doorkeeper opens.  His sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”  That’s just a picture, that the shepherd knew all the names. 

Listen to Psalm 147:4 as I insert another picture, “He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.”  He counts the number of stars.  Do you catch the reality and the wonder of that?  I don’t know anything about astrology, but I read that there could be at least two trillion galaxies.  That’s a lot of galaxies.  In each one, like in our Milky Way, more than a billion stars.  I read that some galaxies have more than a hundred million stars.  We read Psalm 147, and He names every star; He calls them all by name; He numbers them.  He knows how many.  You say, “That can’t be literal.”  No, it’s not.  It’s just a picture, and the picture is always shorter than the reality.  If that’s just a picture, what in the world is the reality?

I looked up Dr. Google and I asked him, “How many stars are in the universe.”  The answer was, “Perhaps a sextillion.”  So, I had to look up what is a sextillion.  That’s a one followed by twenty-four zeros.  That’s how many.  He knows every one.  He’s named them all.  You think it’s impressive that He knows your name?  He’s named every star, and that’s just a picture.  That is not the reality.

Alright, let me insert another picture which I think is stronger.  Psalm 139:17&18, “How precious are your thoughts to me, oh God.  How vast is the sum of them.  If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.”  Are you kidding me?  That God would think about me more than the grains of sand that are on the earth?  He’s not just talking about beaches.  He’s talking about deserts.  All the sand that’s on the earth.  I don’t even know in Rhode Island where I lived, our beaches, I don’t even know if I could pick up a grain of sand.  It’s so like powder, and it’s an amazing beach.  If I were to fill a teaspoon with sand, I don’t think the proudest one in this room would be able to have as many thoughts of themselves as there are grains of sand in that teaspoon.

Some of you might be feeling like, “Nobody loves me, and everybody hates me, sittin’ in the garden eaten worms, worms, worms.”  Listen, God thinks about you more than the grains of sand that are on the earth, and that’s just a picture.  That is not the reality.  How much greater is the reality than the picture?  Is it ten times greater, a hundred times greater?  I hope God burns this into your heart.  Don’t just say, “Oh, yeah, I can’t really believe that, that He thinks of me that much.  That’s just a picture.”  Yes, that’s just a picture and that’s the point; that’s all it is.  It’s not the reality.  May God begin to take us to the reality.  It’s a wonder to say, “My relationship with the Lord is like the shepherd, the oriental shepherd and his sheep, that He’s got the hairs of my head numbered, that He knows my name like He knows the names of the stars, that He thinks about me more than the grains of sand that’s on the earth.  What can the reality be?” 

John 10:14&15, “I’m the good shepherd and I know My own, and My own know Me.”  Underscore this, please.  “Even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father, I lay down My life for the sheep.”  Even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father, that is not a figure of speech.  That’s the reality.  Matthew 11:27, “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”  The Lord’s knowledge of you and your situation and all you’re facing and all you’re going through, here is the reality; He knows that situation as much as He knows the Father and the Father knows Him.  Verse 30, “I and the Father are one; I and My sheep are one.”  You’ll never get lost in the crowd; I’ll never get lost in the crowd.  The Lord knows you so intimately.  I would feel arrogant and proud if someone asks me, “How well do you know the Lord?”  If I were to answer, “I know the Lord as much as Jesus knows His holy Father God.  I know the Lord as much as God the Father knows the Son,” you would think I was the most arrogant man on the earth, but that’s the reality.  That’s why he puts in John 10.  He pictures our union with Him so close.  When you get to John 17, you’ll see that’s what He’s praying for, that we would know that reality, the union that I’m as one with Him as He is with His holy Father God.

How does John 10 help me enter into knowing the Lord?  The first way is to see how much He is in union with me, and the figures of speech.  There’s another way, and that’s in John 10:3, “To Him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name.”  I want you to underscore in your heart or your Bible, “His own sheep.”  In verse 12, speaking of the false shepherd, “He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees.  The wolf snatches and scatters them.”  Again, who is not the owner of the sheep?  How close is this union?  The answer is that He not only is one with you; He owns you; you are His property, I am His property, and we are His inheritance.  1 Corinthians 6:19&20, “Do you not know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God.  You are not your own, and you’ve been bought with a price.  Glorify God in your body.”  When we come to the verse, He lays down His life for the sheep, we’ll enlarge on that, “You are bought with a price,” but for now just know that He owns you.

Let me give another illustration.  He not only is one with you, He not only owns you, verse 3, “To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep out and leads them out.”  Verse 4&5, “When he puts forth his own, he goes ahead of them.” The sheep follow him because they know his voice; a stranger they will simply not follow, but will flee from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”  I want to focus the end of this message, and a good part of the next message, on the voice of the Lord, His voice and the voice of strangers.  It goes back to an observation we made earlier that He’s not describing every sheep.  When you say, “The sheep know his voice and they aren’t going to follow strangers,” you say, “Wait a minute.  I know some sheep that went astray and that followed strangers.  How come this Bible verse says that the sheep hear His voice?”  It’s not every sheep.  These are remnant sheep; these are sheep that follow Him and these are sheep that know His voice and these are sheep that are in union with Him.  He’s not describing every Christian, otherwise you would say, “No Christian can ever be deceived,” but he’s not teaching that.  “They hear his voice,” in verse 3, “they follow him,’ in verse 4, “they flee from strangers,” in verse 5.  That’s the sheep he’s describing.  If you don’t see that focus on the sheep, you’ll think that no Christian will ever be deceived, and they’ll always run from the false teacher.  That’s not true.  Just because you are born again and just because I’m born again doesn’t mean that I’m not going to ever be deceived. 

If I take my eyes off Jesus, I am capable of anything any unsaved in this planet is capable of.  We’ve got to keep our eyes on the Lord.  2 Corinthians 11:3, “I’m afraid, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”  If we are not living like that, in the simplicity of purity and devotion to Christ, then we’re vulnerable.  If a sheep never went astray, we’d lose the wonderful truth of Luke 15:5, “He told them this parable, ‘What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and lost one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the open pasture and go after the one which was lost, until he found it?” 

I know a little bit about the shepherd, and I also know a little bit about verse 3, “He restoreth my soul.”  There are times when you take your eyes off the Lord, you need to be restored, but that’s not what he’s talking about here, otherwise the promise in Ezekiel wouldn’t be true.  Ezekiel 34:11, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out, as a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he’s among the scattered sheep.  I will care for My sheep and I will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on the cloudy and gloomy day.”  But in John 10 we’re reading about the remnant sheep.  These are the ones that have come through the door, and these are the ones that know his voice and these are the ones that follow him, and these are the ones that are being led in and out and finding pasture.  Verse 27, “My sheep hear My voice, and I now them and they follow Me.”  It’s those sheep, and this is how we know Him more intimately, it’s those sheep to whom the Lord has promised discernment.  They’ll be able to discern between the true and the false, the voice of the Lord and the voice of a stranger.  Verse 4&5, “A stranger they simply will not follow.”

I want to share a couple of verses.  1 John 7:17, “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching.”  Notice the relationship there, whether it’s of God or whether I speak from myself.  “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know…”  Now, we say, “We think, on the level of earth, if you talk about knowing, you are talking about the brain and knowing, academics, and if I want to know, I’ve got to study, and if I want to know, I’ve got to search, and if I want to know, I need some empirical evidence.  I need to know.”  But here’s what He said, “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know.”  Knowledge is not a matter of the mind; knowledge is a matter of the will; it’s a matter of the heart; it’s a matter of the direction of the heart.  Some people just say, “How am I going to know the voice of strangers?”  “Well, you’ve got to check it out and you’ve got to compare it with scripture and you’ve got to go to some counselors and see what they think, ‘I heard such and such.  Is this true?’  We’ve got to study error.’”

When I was at Bible school I was required, I resisted, but I had to do it.  I had to take a course called “cults”.  I had to study the cults.  “You are not going to be able to minister to them unless you know what they believe.  What do the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe?  Compare it to what you believe.  What do the Mormons believe?  What do the Seventh Day Adventists believe?  What do Christian Scientists believe?  You’ve got to study error in order to know.”  I have a friend, dear friend, Michael.  He came to me one day and knocked at my door and he had a book and the name of the book was, “Jesus is not God,” and he said, “They’ve got all kinds of proofs here.  I want you to take this book and go through each one and show verses to show that they’re wrong.”  I said, “I can’t do that.  I don’t want to do that.  I will not do that.”  “You won’t help me?”  I said, “You’ve got a low view of the Lord; He’s got to reveal it to you.”  A long story in between, when he came back to my door, and he was in tears, and he said, “I want you to know Jesus is God.”  The Lord showed him.  He used another instrument, but the Lord showed him that Jesus was God, and then he said, “I have an advantage over you because I came to know Jesus before He was God.”  Which, of course, wasn’t true, but you see the point.  We don’t have to study humanism in order to know the voice of the Lord.  We don’t have to study New Age theology to know the voice of the Lord.  We don’t need to study Lordship theology in order to know the voice of the Lord.  Matthew 7:15, “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing.  Inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”

I got a call from a dear brother.  When I was in Rhode Island, our church was a navy church, and so we had a lot of sailors.  That’s like preaching to a parade because they’d come in and they’d go out again.  We had quite a thriving church until President Nixon decided to close the Navy base, and we went from three hundred to thirty in a week because they left.  There’s a long story there, but one of them called me up from California and he said, “I want to thank you because you warned me that there are some in sheep’s clothing who are wolves, but you didn’t tell me is that there are some false shepherds in sheep’s clothing.  My pastor ran away with my wife.”  Can you imagine that?  How are we going to know the voice of the Lord and the voice of strangers?

I want to give two verses, one from the Old and then we’ll wrap it up, and then one from the New.  Jeremiah 23:28, by the way Jeremiah is over against Psalm 23.  Psalm 23 is the Good Shepherd and Jeremiah 23 is the false shepherd.  Jeremiah 23:28, “’The prophet who has a dream may relate his dream.  Let him who has My word speak My word in truth.  What does straw have in common with grain?’ declares the Lord.”  The sheep that is in union with Christ, the sheep that’s walking with the Lord and following the Lord knows the difference between straw and grain.   What has straw in common with grain?  If you’ve been feeding on the Lord Jesus, and then you go somewhere and you hear somebody, and your mouth is filled with straw, you know the difference.  It’s intuition because you have the Lord.  You know as soon as you hear it.  In your heart you are just saying, “Ah, that’s not right.  That’s not food, and that’s not nourishing.”  That’s the first part, it’s intuition and you’re going to know.  Here is the New Testament verse, 1 John 2:27, “As for you, the anointing which you’ve received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you, as His anointing teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.” 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit living in your heart.  You have the life of God, and you’re going to know because He’s going to teach you.  You don’t need anybody to tell you, “That’s not true and that’s wrong.  Here are ten texts to show you that.”  You don’t need that.  1 John 2:20, “You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know.”  If you are in union with the Lord, you know.  If you are in union with the Lord, you are going to spit the straw out, and you aren’t going to eat straw; you are going to eat food.  1 John ends in 5:21, “And we know the Son of God is come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true.  We are in Him who is true and His Son Jesus Christ; this is the true God, and eternal life.  Little children, guard yourself from idols.”  He wrote this so that we might know Him.  How does John 10 teach you to know Him?  It’s by the union you have with Him, by the fact that you are His property, and by the fact you have discernment, you know His voice. 

Pray for us, because next week we’re going to go into quite a bit of detail on the voice of the Lord.  “God told me, God spoke to me, I had a dream, I had a vision, I have the oracle.”  We’re going to go into all of that, and pray for me, please, that we might have God’s heart.  For now, just follow the Lord’s Shepherd.  All you ever need is Him; all I ever need is Him.  I’m not saying if you follow the Shepherd that you are infallible.  I’m saying that if you follow the Shepherd, you are safe.

Father, thank You for Your precious word, and Lord, especially  for any of your children that may feel discouraged and even unloved and neglected, let them know those figures of speech are only figures, that You do know the numbers of our head, the hair, that You do know us by our name, and that You do think of us, each one, more than the grains of sand that are on the earth.  Take us from the picture to the reality, that we know You as much as You know the Father, and the Father knows You.  Will You work that in our hearts?  We ask in Jesus’ name.  Amen.