In the last blog, message #1 of The Shepherd and the Sheep, “The True and The False Shepherds”, we learned that in John 10 there is a contrast between the real shepherd and all those who come up another way called “strangers”, the false shepherds/teachers/hirelings. The confusion comes because God sometimes uses the word shepherd for his instruments, his people. Pastors and elders are called shepherds. 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. A true under-shepherd always knows they are nothing but a sheep, who are always only to follow the voice of the true Shepherd.
I was saved in 1981, and I was fortunate enough to have learned early on about my life that was in union with the Lord’s through Clara, my dear sister in the Lord.* However, it has taken these past forty-three years for the Holy Spirit to finally bring me to an absolute closure about trying to live/control my life and others and letting Him live as preeminent in and through me. It was a silly little struggle that the Lord sent between my friend and her dog that finally sealed in my heart His complete sovereignty in all things, taking me beyond just knowing it intellectually.**
As we saw in message #1, the only way to be a real shepherd is to be a real sheep and to live in reality in union with the Lord, and not just in “head knowledge”. 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 lent to us the title shepherd, but He’s the true Shepherd, and He has designated us, when we’re ready in our maturity, to be under-shepherds.
The Lord used Ed Miller’s messages on “Christ Formed in You”, which is also available as a book,*** to reveal to me that maturing in Him is a process, and it’s done in His perfect time and perfect way, which is unique for each and every one of us. It took Jesus 30 years to, “…grow in wisdom and stature,” Luke 2:52, before He finally began His ministry at the wedding of Cana; “His hour” had come.
Jesus comes into us at salvation as a seed/fetus, and continues to grow in us over a period of time, becoming a baby, a child, a young adult, and then, finally a full grown adult, just as He grew over two thousand years ago. Now I can see that what I used to consider “helping God”, most likely was hindering Him. I wasn’t really ready for ministry, the kind where He was doing it through me by His grace, Him as the true fruit bearer of the Spirit.
The sheepfold that is described in John 10, the sheep that hear is voice and follow Him, are those who are the remnant, those who have experienced full maturity through letting Him be their life – the exchanged life. He’s describing the sheep that are in union with the shepherd. Now, there is no doubt that He must have other sheep, “another fold”, because they’ve gone astray, and are not fully following the shepherd, but are following “strangers” who are “hired hands”…
“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.” (John 10:12)
But He’s addressing these sheep who get it and who are in union with the Lord, and they’re living contrary to their natural inclination of listening to and following other voices, by listening to and only following His voice…
“All we like sheep have gone astray,” Isaiah 53:6.
In the context of John 10, I see the “doorkeeper” as being Him through His Holy Spirit, the One who brings us to that sheepfold where He then reveals Himself, the door, opened in reality as the exchanged life. Thereafter, the Lord brings us faithfully in and out of His fold in Him, following His voice, to feed on Him as the pasture, while in union together ministering to others. This, then, is His/our testimony, as others, believers/sheep and unbelievers alike, watch and say, “What a wonderful Shepherd they have!”
“To him the doorkeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls them out, his own sheep by name, and leads them out.” (John 10:3)
I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. (John 10:9)
In the context of John 10, Jesus is the sheep,
“…the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world.” (Revelation 13:8)
“I and the Father are one; I and My sheep are one.” (John 10:30)
In the fullness of time, through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, I can now truly say that, “His yoke is easy and His burden is light,” as I walk with intimate assurance in the exchanged life.
The Lord points out that there are other sheep not of this John 10 fold, and they are the ones who are still in the process of growing, as they still tend to follow other voices/strangers, whether through academics or self effort or their own good works, or through strange voices not teaching the preeminence of Jesus and the exchanged life, etc. It’s the difference between having Jesus as prominent in our lives, at best, to having Him as preeminent and our all in all. Only the Holy Spirit, in his wisdom and eternal plan, can bring us through that process in His perfect way and time; He knows “the hour” for us in that; “I must bring them, also,”…
“I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. (John 10:16)”
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 us, and He wants to be the Shepherd through us. John 10 is about the Shepherd, and it’s in contrast with those who are, or who tend to be, false shepherds, not necessarily rejecting Jesus, but perhaps neglecting Him through, at best, a mixture of natural worldly wisdom and His Godly wisdom.
I’m an under shepherd when I’m reckoned dead, and the true Shepherd manifests Himself as preeminent through me, imparting His wisdom. That’s how He/I bear the fruit of true ministry; my only gospel “duty” is to continue turning to, and ultimately resting and abiding in a Person – Jesus. That’s my understanding of the John 10, so far. Now, for the next Bible study message…
“THE WONDERFUL SHEPHERD” FROM BIBLE STUDY MESSAGE #32 JOHN 10 EDITED AND CONDENSED
In the Bible study message last time we saw the ones to which Jesus was speaking to in John 10, the Pharisees and false shepherds. Now, let’s begin this awesome record of who He was speaking about. We need to be glad that He addressed those false shepherds, so that we now have all this wonderful truth about the Good Shepherd. It’s to them but it’s about us, and we need to look at that.
“When he puts forth his own, he goes ahead of them. The sheep follow Him because they know His voice.” (John 10:14)
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.”
“A stranger they simply will not follow; they’ll flee from him; they do not know the voice of the stranger.” (John 10:5)
So, John 10 is not how dumb sheep are; it’s how wonderful the Shepherd is, and that’s how we’re going to look at it. This chapter is so far from describing wayward sheep; it’s teaching us the wonder of the Shepherd. We’ll start with the first question, “How does this chapter shed light on our great Shepherd so that we might know Him more intimately?”
“I’m the good shepherd and I know My own and My own know me.” (John 10:14)
Don’t think when we say, “The Lord knows me and I know the Lord,” that it’s in a casual way, like I know my neighbor. It’s not even a conviction, “I know in my heart that it’s true.” Wuest translates John 10:14, “I know My sheep by experience, and My sheep know Me.” It’s more like,
“Adam knew Eve, and she conceived.” (Genesis 4:1)
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. With Paul, that was his whole life…
“That I might know Him.” (Philippians 3:10)
After thirty years, that was still Paul’s 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.
Here is 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. We’re 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, some of you may 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.
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 we’d say, “It’s like the relationship with a person and an animal, and is 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. 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.
“To him the doorkeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls them out, his own sheep by name, and leads them out.” (John 10:3)
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 is much better. 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. 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.
“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 100:3)
“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.” (Psalm 95:7)
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. Infinitely greater is the reality from the picture. What we’ll do is to take the picture, the truth He’s illustrating, but then 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!
God’s picture of the shepherd, sheep, oriental shepherd, close bond is found in Matthew:
“The very hairs of your head are numbered.” (Matthew 10:30)
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.
“To him the doorkeeper opens. His sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” (John 10:3)
That’s just a picture, that the shepherd knew all the names. Here’s another picture,
“He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.” (Psalm 147:4)
He counts the number of stars. Do you catch the reality and the wonder of that? It is said 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. 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? There is perhaps sextillion stars in the universe. That’s a one followed by twenty-four zeros. He knows every one and 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. Here is another picture which may be stronger…
“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.” (Psalm 139:17&18)
Are you kidding? That God would think about us more than the grains of sand that are on the earth? He’s not just talking about beaches. He’s also talking about deserts.
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?
“I’m the Good Shepherd and I know My own, and My own know Me.” (John 10:14&15)
Underscore this, please. Even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father, that is not a figure of speech. That’s the reality.
“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.” (Matthew 11:27)
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,
“I and the Father are one; I and My sheep are one.” (John 10:30)
You’ll never get lost in the crowd; I’ll never get lost in the crowd. The Lord knows you so intimately. 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, the exchanged life.
How does John 10 help me enter into knowing the Lord in this way? The first way is to see how much He is in union with me, and the figures of speech. There’s another way:
“To Him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name.” (John 10:3)
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.” (John 10:12)
Again, who is not the owner of the sheep? How close is this union? The answer is that He not only is one with us but He owns us; we are His property, and we are His inheritance.
“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.” (1 Corinthians 6:19&20)
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…
“To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep out and leads them out. 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.” (John 10:3-5)
Let’s focus 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 we are born again doesn’t mean that we’re not going to ever be deceived.
If we take our eyes off Jesus, we are capable of anything any unsaved person on this planet is capable of. We’ve got to keep our eyes on the Lord.
“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.” (2 Corinthians 11:3)
If we are not living 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…
“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?” (Luke 15:5)
We know a little bit about the Shepherd, and we also know a little bit about…
“He restoreth my soul.” (Psalm 23:3)
There are times when we take our eyes off the Lord and need to be restored, but that’s not what he’s talking about here, otherwise the promise in Ezekiel wouldn’t be true:
“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.” (Ezekiel 34:11)
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.
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them and they follow Me.” (John 10:27)
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…
“A stranger they simply will not follow.” (John 10:4&5)
We’ll share these couple of verses…
“If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching.” (1 John 7:17)
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, “Well, to know the voice of strangers 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, and 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. You’ve got to study error in order to know.”
I want to give two verses, one from the Old and then one from the New. Psalm 23 is about the Good Shepherd and Jeremiah 23 is about the false shepherd.
“’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.” (Jeremiah 23:28)
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,
“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.” (1 John 2:27)
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…
“You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know.” (1 John 2:20)
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,
“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.” (1 John 5:21)
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.
In the next message we’re going to go into 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.” For now, just follow the Lord’s Shepherd. All we ever need is Him. That’s not saying if we follow the Shepherd that we are infallible. It’s saying that if we follow the Shepherd, we are safe.
***CLICK HERE FOR FREE ONLINE BOOK “CHRIST FORMED IN YOU” BY ED MILLER
*CLICK HERE FOR MY TESTIMONY ABOUT MY DEAR SISTER IN THE LORD, CLARA…
**CLICK HERE FOR MY TESTIMONY ON THE SILLY INCIDENT THAT BROUGHT ME TO THE EXCHANGED LIFE
(the unedited uncondensed audios and transcripts of Ed Miller’s Bible study messages # 31-37 in John 10 can be accessed and/or downloaded at www.biblestudyministriesinc.com)