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John 10
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. 2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 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. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 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. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 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.”
19 There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. 20 Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” 21 Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”
22 At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. 24 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.” 25 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, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me,1 is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 33 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.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—36 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’? 37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 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.” 39 Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.
40 He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. 41 And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” 42 And many believed in him there.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Invite you to open your bibles to John chapter 9. We're actually gonna be looking mostly at chapter 10. I'm gonna spend the next couple of weeks there. I'm already looking forward to the next couple weeks. We'll be looking at the resurrection next week and the week after.
Joel Brooks:But tonight we're in John, a familiar story about Jesus being the good shepherd. I'll begin reading in chapter 9 verse 40. Some of the Pharisees near Him heard these things and said to Him, are we also blind? Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would have no guilt. But now that you say we see, your guilt remains.
Joel Brooks: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. 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 of his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice.
Joel Brooks: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. 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.
Joel Brooks:I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd.
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks:Just as the father knows me, and I know the father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not in this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks: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?
Joel Brooks:This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Our father, we ask that in this time you would indeed open up blind eyes. You would open up our eyes to see your truth that is before us. You would open up calloused hearts, hard heads, And may your truth penetrate deeply within and bring life.
Joel Brooks:Father, my words are death. Your words are life. And we need life. So I pray in this moment that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus, Amen. By all accounts, if you study the life of Jacob the patriarch, who's in Genesis, by by all accounts, his life was miserable. When you read through Genesis and you study his life, you're gonna realize that over and over again, terrible things would happen to them. Many of them, he deserved. As a child, he longed for affection from his dad, but he never received it.
Joel Brooks:He did get affection from his mom, but then he had to flee from her. He had a brother who wanted to kill him. At times, he was on the run and he would be penniless. He'd be exhausted. He would be alone.
Joel Brooks:He had to go work for an uncle, uncle Laban, who deceived him. He married a woman he didn't love. He walked with a limp for the second half of his life, because God attacked him and dislocated his hip. His own sons hated him. They lied to him and said, the son that you actually like, Joseph, he was killed by a wild animal.
Joel Brooks:But they just sold Joseph, their own brother, to slavery. So you if you look at Jacob's life, his whole life was miserable. And and there's only one time, actually, somewhat towards the end, that he ever even prays. And so when you come to Genesis 48 and and you read read the words that are there, it they come to you as a shock because he says these words to his son, Joseph. He says, God has been my shepherd all my life long to this day.
Joel Brooks:I mean, these words are stunning, because Jacob never really sought the Lord. His life was completely miserable. It was just suffering after suffering after suffering. But now towards the end, as his life is coming to a close, he tells his son, Joseph, he goes, you know what? God has been my shepherd all of my days.
Joel Brooks:As I look back in my life, I see it was a meaningless suffering. I see that God was actually using that in my life. He was bringing me to a point of faith. And I could see that God cared for me. He protected me.
Joel Brooks:And he guided me all of my life, whether I recognized it or not. That's something about the image of God as a shepherd that we find very comforting as we get older, or as we go through a time of suffering. And every funeral that I've ever preached at, I will usually meet with the family beforehand and ask them if there's any passages that they would like read. And I might suggest some. I'll suggest, you know, Romans 8 or John 11.
Joel Brooks:Passages that center on the resurrection of Jesus. Maybe a 1st Corinthians 15. And they usually say, well that's okay, but what we really would like is for you to read Psalm 23. God is my shepherd, I shall not want. There's something about God being a shepherd to us that is an extraordinary comfort.
Joel Brooks:God protecting us, guiding us. God walking through the valley of the shadow of death with us. But what does it mean when we say God is our shepherd and why is it our comfort? I think there's a danger, especially when studying the 23rd Psalm. We love it because it's nostalgic.
Joel Brooks:Maybe it reminds us of childhood or the church that we grew up in and it's kind of a comfort to us in that way. Not even so much for what it is saying, but just because it kinda reminds us of maybe the people who we belong with. But there are some clear implications of God being our shepherd. Implicate implications both to who Jesus is and who we are. And that's what I want us to take a look at, who Jesus is declaring to be and who we are.
Joel Brooks:Now it's crucial when understanding chapter 10 to see it as connected with chapter 9. Remember, when the bible was written, they didn't have chapter breaks. Alright? That was a later assertion. So this is one unbroken story here.
Joel Brooks:And so Jesus is continuing the conversation that he had with the Pharisees. If you remember, the Pharisees were ticked off at Jesus because how dare he heal somebody who had been born blind. Because He had to do it on the Sabbath. And so they were angry at Him because of this. And so it's in response to these pharisees in the middle of this conversation that Jesus says these words in verse 1, truly, truly, or listen up, listen up, this is absolutely true.
Joel Brooks: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. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. So Jesus is calling these Pharisees, thieves and robbers. In this day, when shepherds were watching their flocks at night, they had to be on the alert for any thieves who might break in or any wild animals that might come in. And so what they would do is is they would set up a pin.
Joel Brooks:And the pin would have 3 different sides to it, but the front would be open. And the shepherd would then lay across that and act as the door or the gate. And so, no sheep could leave unless they went through him. And no robbers or or no no wild animals could come in and get the sheep unless they went through the door. We don't I mean, I'm looking out here.
Joel Brooks:I don't think there's any shepherds. Are there any shepherds here? I don't wanna speak out of turn. Okay. You don't look like shepherds and so this language is kinda lost on us.
Joel Brooks:So if Jesus was using contemporary language, He would say, I am the bouncer, when He was saying like, I am the gate. That's what Jesus would say, is Jesus is the one standing at the door and he's saying, nobody gets in or out unless they come through me. He's the security. He's the one who guards. He acts as the gate, protecting the sheep from the Pharisees who wanna come in.
Joel Brooks:And so, in this allegory that Jesus is setting up, we see that we have a gate. We have some sheep, and we have some thieves. Jesus says that He is the gate and the gate is also the shepherd. The blind man who He just healed is obviously the sheep in this story. And the Pharisees are the thieves.
Joel Brooks:But they're not just any thieves. Verse 10 says that they are thieves whose intent is to steal and to kill and to destroy. This seems pretty harsh that Jesus would accuse the Pharisees of this because how exactly were they trying to steal and to kill and destroy this man who was born blind? And certainly, people wouldn't have thought that the Pharisees were like that because the Pharisees had a great reputation. They were the good moral people.
Joel Brooks:Actually, you would look at a Pharisee and they were the ones who set the moral compass for the day. If you wanted to know how to live a good life, look at a Pharisee. If you wanted to know what it meant to be a good Jew and to follow God, look at a Pharisee. These Pharisees were people who were greatly admired and respected. People looked up to them as the ones who set the standard for what a person should strive to become.
Joel Brooks:And yet, Jesus looks at them and says, you are thieves. You are killers. You are destroyers. So so how is it that Jesus can say this about them? It's a pretty huge accusation.
Joel Brooks:And I don't even I don't think the Pharisees would view themselves as this. I think they would think we are helpers. We're trying to point people how to live a good life. We're telling them how to be a moral person. We're telling them how to follow God.
Joel Brooks:And yet Jesus says, no. You are destroying people. It's a huge accusation that Jesus would make. And he says this because although they are telling people how to live a moral life and how to follow God, they're doing it trying to get around instead of through Jesus. And doing that will result in their destruction.
Joel Brooks:Although they tried to point people to God, they refused to point people to Jesus. And Jesus was the only way that people might ever ever know God. Jesus is saying that if you attempt to point anybody to God without pointing to him, you will result in their death. If you point anybody towards how to live a moral life, and yet Jesus isn't central to it, it will result in their destruction. You will actually rob people of their joy as they go about trying to live good moral lives.
Joel Brooks:Listen. Anytime you try to find greener pastures apart from Jesus, know that you are actually destroying yourself. Anytime you try to counsel someone as to how they can find greener pastures, maybe find a more meaningful job, find a better place to live, maybe even how to have a deeper faith in God and you try to do those things apart from seeing Jesus as central, you are teaching and leading these people into destruction. And I know some of you have felt this your whole life because maybe you have had pastors from the pulpit telling you all the things you needed to be doing. How you needed to be giving more.
Joel Brooks:How you needed to be serving more. How you needed to be sharing your faith more. And they're just pounding the pulpit and they're telling you all these things, but Jesus isn't central to it. So works based righteousness that they're giving you. And Jesus says, anybody who is telling you to do these things, or is promising you promising you green pastures apart from me, that person is a thief, a killer, and a destroyer.
Joel Brooks:Any religion that says you can find God, go to heaven, and do it apart from Jesus will result in your destruction. Our church often uses the phrase, the words gospel centered. It's in a lot of our literature and a lot of things we teach. We might say we want to teach a we want you to have a gospel centered marriage. Gospel centered parenting, gospel centered preaching.
Joel Brooks:And this is what we mean by this. What we're saying is in all these things, Jesus is the door. As a pastor, I realize I've got to be careful, so careful to remember this. Because I'm often in danger. It's easy to appeal to emotions.
Joel Brooks:It's easy to just come up and give you a, you know, a morality pep talk, all the while preaching death to you. Uh-oh. You might have heard this phrase, moral therapeutic deism. Just telling you in generic terms what God wants you to do, but all the while going around Jesus in the centrality of the gospel. As I was reading this this week, a passage kept coming to my mind over and over and it's actually from the end of John.
Joel Brooks:And it's Jesus' last conversation with Peter. Jesus has risen and he is talking with Peter. It's one of the last things we have in the book of John. If you remember that conversation, Jesus asked Peter 3 questions and they were the same question. Peter, do you love me?
Joel Brooks:Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? And every time Peter says yes, Jesus responded with, feed my sheep. Tend my lambs. Feed my sheep.
Joel Brooks:And what he is saying is, Peter, you wanna be a shepherd? One thing is required of you. Love me. Love me. Make the love of me absolutely central.
Joel Brooks:And you can be a shepherd and I want you to feed my sheep. We have to always remember that in all the things we teach and preach and we point people to, that Jesus must be the gate. After Jesus accuses the Pharisees here of being evil shepherds, He goes on in verse 11 to says that He is the good shepherd. When I was in college ministry, I spent a lot of time in Ireland. I would go there for the summers.
Joel Brooks:We had an internship program there. I've I've probably been there 14, 15 times and I can just tell you, Ireland has a lot of sheep. There's actually more sheep than people. And so I don't know if you have gotten a close look, you know, in front of a sheep and looked in their eyes. I actually have.
Joel Brooks:And there is nothing there. You are staring into the void, when you stare into a sheep's eyes. They're the dumbest animals on the planet. They're also the most defenseless. I want you to search the world over and you're never gonna find a wild sheep.
Joel Brooks:You're just not gonna find one. A lot of summers, my family, we go to Montana and we'll go hiking in the mountains and I have to warn them about different you know, animals but I've never had to say look out for the wild sheep. You know, like, just watch out and if you come, don't establish eye contact. Back away slowly. You know, You don't have to worry about wild sheep.
Joel Brooks:They don't have ferocious teeth. They don't have claws. Actually, if you tip over a sheep, many of them can't get up. They're they're pretty much just white fluffy food for wolves. That that is why they exist.
Joel Brooks:They cannot find their own food. They easily get lost. They can never find their way back home. And Jesus says that is a perfect image for you. And so before we look at what it means for Jesus to call Himself the good shepherd, I want you to first look in the mirror and see what He's saying about you.
Joel Brooks:When he calls himself the shepherd. He is saying that you absolutely cannot make it on your own. Sheep need a shepherd for food, for water, for guidance, for protection. Sheep need a shepherd for absolutely everything. So when Jesus says that he is the good shepherd, he is saying that that we are his sheep.
Joel Brooks:And that means that there is absolutely nothing, nothing that you can do apart from him. We just sang about that when we sang abide with me. We're gonna hit it in John 15. Abide with me and Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing because you're sheep. Let me just say that in this life, you do not need to spend all of your time and all of your energy looking for that good spouse.
Joel Brooks:Spending all your time and your energy looking for that that good job, for that good home, for those good comforts. What you need to spend all your time and energy is looking for the good shepherd. Because if you have the good shepherd, he will lead you to every one of His good gifts that He says is absolutely necessary for you. He will deny you nothing that is for your good. Jesus had a lot of other images ready at his disposal, and he chose not to use them.
Joel Brooks:He could have said, I am the good warrior. And that would have been true. But then we would have thought we only needed Jesus for a certain part of our life. Whenever we need a protector, we could call on the good warrior. He could have said, I am the good counselor, and that would have been true.
Joel Brooks:But then we would have only called out to Jesus when we needed guidance. He could have said, I am the good provider. And that would have been true. But then we would only called out to Him when we needed a certain provision or we had something lacking. But when Jesus says I am the good shepherd, He is saying there is nothing.
Joel Brooks:There is nothing you could do apart from me. You need me at all times. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Now your bibles here, they they read that Jesus is the good shepherd. That word good is a it's a it's a good translation.
Joel Brooks:It's it's correct, but it's somewhat incomplete. Because it's not the most common word for good, which is agathos. It's the word kalos, which can be also translated as beautiful. Beautiful. Jesus is the beautiful Shepherd.
Joel Brooks:He's the beautifully good Shepherd. You need to see that there is a beauty in His goodness towards us. There's something about Jesus that the closer we look at him, the more irresistible he becomes. That's what Jesus is talking about here. Let's look at how Jesus is irresistibly beautiful.
Joel Brooks:The first one might throw you off for just a little bit, but the first reason he's irresistibly beautiful is because he owns you. He owns you. Look again at verse 11. I know I keep pointing us back to scripture. We keep reading the same things over and over again.
Joel Brooks:I do that for a reason. I don't want you ever to walk away from here and just kinda say Joel said something. I want you to be able to point to your Bibles and say look what scripture, look what God says here. And so we're always gonna keep going back to His word. I am the good shepherd.
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks:Jesus owns us. And he's not saying this, you know, like we say I own you in some domineering sense. You know, you hit a guy hard in football or something like I own you. I mean, that's not what he is saying here. The image is this.
Joel Brooks:That a shepherd's wealth, a shepherd's wealth is tied up completely in his sheep. He owns the sheep. And what he is saying is, like, you are my treasured possession. You are my wealth. It's it's you.
Joel Brooks:It's it's very similar to what Paul says in Ephesians 1, when he says that the church is the fullness of Christ, that we are the fullness of Christ, that fullness is like the splendor or the glory of Christ. Jesus is saying that He made us sheep, He made us His treasure. And He could have diversified His portfolio, He he could have put his wealth in other areas, but he invested completely in sheep. And what that means is he has wrapped up his wealth, his joy in us. That is stunning.
Joel Brooks:It's one of the reasons he says, not one of you will perish. Because if one of you perishes, it diminishes his joy. And he has wrapped up for all of eternity his wealth, his glory, his joy. He has put it in his sheep. That means he is absolutely devoted to your joy every time Jesus asks you to do something, every time you come across something hard in his word, remind yourself that Jesus is actually calling for my joy when I obey this.
Joel Brooks:I am so much his own. He has literally engraved me in the palm of his hands. I am his for eternity. So his owning of us is a beautiful thing. He owns us.
Joel Brooks:And then he also knows us and he loves us. In verse 14, Jesus says that He knows His own. He knows us. He he knows us better than we know ourself. He he knows what our personality is because he's the one who gave us our personality.
Joel Brooks:He knows what makes us tick. He knows our thoughts. He even knows all of our sins. The sins that we are so good from hiding from others, they are plain as day to Jesus. He knows us, and yet he doesn't run away.
Joel Brooks:He loves us. Look at verse 13. Verse 13, Jesus says that he lays down his life for his sheep. Lays down his life for his sheep. You could actually translate this as he lays down his life instead of his sheep.
Joel Brooks:This is talking about substitution here. Jesus is saying that He loves us so much, he will be sacrificed in our place. He lays out his life for us instead of us. He's talking about the cross here, saying ever since birth, you've been you've been hell bent on destruction. You deserve death, but we're gonna have a switch and I will be destroyed for you.
Joel Brooks:Because I'm the good shepherd and my joy is bound up in you, I will lay down my life for my sheep. I hope this helps you see Jesus not just as the good shepherd, but as the good and the beautiful shepherd. He knows us. He treasures us. He gives us life.
Joel Brooks:And even when we run away, He pulls us to Himself and He changes us in a way that no law can. Now I believe that the human heart has 2 fundamental needs and Jesus is speaking to them here. We have the need to be known and we have the need to be loved. These are the 2 fundamental needs of the human heart. The problem is, we think they're opposed to one another and they often are.
Joel Brooks:We really want people to know us. That's why one of the most frustrating things in the world is when you're misunderstood, when you simply cannot get a person to understand you. Because you just want to be known and you want to be known fully. But then, you also wanna be loved and loved unconditionally. But there's always conditions to an earthly love.
Joel Brooks:And so you think if people knew me fully, then they would not love me completely. And so we see those things at odds. And so what we do is we have to put on a front. We can't fully reveal ourselves because we want love. But then when we get that love, it's an empty love because it's a love that does not know us completely.
Joel Brooks:And Jesus here is saying, I know you completely, and I love you fully. You can rest in that love. I'm still trying to get my head around verses 14 and 15 When he's talking about this love and the way that he knows us, and that's an intimate term that he knows us. When he says, 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.
Joel Brooks:Did you get that right there? How much does Jesus know you? He says, well, look at the Trinity. Look at my relationship with my father that has gone for all of eternity. We have never known separation.
Joel Brooks:That's how much I know you. And then here's the thing I can't get my head around. This is when the bottom drops out and you're in a depth that you just can't fathom. Because he says, and my sheep know me the same way. This is what we're gonna hit in John 17.
Joel Brooks:We're probably gonna camp out for 1 year in John 17, but but when John 17, Jesus is praying for this. He's praying for the same oneness, the same unity, the same way they know each other, for us to have with him as as he has with his father. But it's such a reality to him. He says it as it as if it has happened. My sheep know me just as I know the father and the father knows me.
Joel Brooks:I can't land at John 17. Give me a year. Where does this leave us? Where does this leave us? What are we supposed to do with this?
Joel Brooks:Jesus telling us he's our shepherd, that he must be absolutely everything to us. But what are we supposed to do now? The answer is simple. We are to listen and we are to follow. We're to listen for his voice and to follow him.
Joel Brooks:Look at verse 3. The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all of his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him for they know his voice. Jesus still speaks to us through his word. Still speaks to us through prayer.
Joel Brooks:He still tells us to listen to his voice and to follow him. And he's telling us to trust him for everything. Even when we come to things that are so clear in scripture that might be abrasive to us, we are to listen and we are to follow. So the question is, are we doing this? Are we listening and following?
Joel Brooks:Because let me tell you, that is the evidence of being one of his sheep. Now I kept trying as I was going through this to think of, you know, some kind of closing illustration to bring this home. I promise you I'll never do a poem. I'll never do anything like that. But I was trying to think of an illustration to talk about what is listening to the voice of God and obeying him look like?
Joel Brooks:And then I just realized it's actually right here in this text. It's obvious. I don't know how I have read John my whole life and missed this. Remember, Jesus has just healed the blind man And now he's teaching about sheep hearing his voice. And these aren't 2 separate stories.
Joel Brooks:These stories are connected. And so what we really need to do is to see this story through the eyes of this blind man. Just as the sheep are asked to distinguish between a shepherd's voice and a stranger's voice, this blind man literally had to distinguish between voices until he came and recognized Jesus'. He had to. Remember, this man never actually saw Jesus.
Joel Brooks:He had only heard his voice. And since he was healed, since he heard those words, go wash in the pool of Siloam. Since he's been healed, he has been hearing lots and lots of voices. And he's been listening carefully to see if that voice matches the one that said, go and wash in the pool of Siloam. So he's hearing all types of voices.
Joel Brooks:He's been told many things, told to believe that Jesus was a sinner. One voice told him that. Another voice told him that Jesus couldn't have done this, that he wasn't born blind. Another voice said, you know, you're breaking the Sabbath and the person who may be healed you, he broke on the Sabbath as well. Another voice told him, hey, give glory to God, alright?
Joel Brooks:And just say, Jesus wasn't perfect. Other voices would come to him and remind him to listen to Moses and the law. Other voices would come and to say, hey, do you know what following Jesus is going to cost you? And he's listening to all of these voices and 1 by 1 he's like, that's not the voice of the one who healed me. That's not the voice of the one who healed me.
Joel Brooks:And finally, he hears somebody come up to him and say, do you believe in the son of man? That's the voice that healed me. And he says, I I I I believe. Tell me more about it. And he goes, it is the one speaking to you.
Joel Brooks:And it says he worshiped him. That is listening intently to the voice of the one who spoke life into you. You listen then and you never stop listening to his words your whole life. You put aside all those other voices and trust me you're being bomb barded with voices. And you put those aside and you're to listen to the voice of the one who has healed you.
Joel Brooks:Listen to your shepherd calling you to follow him. Jesus is the good and the beautiful shepherd. He's the one who delights in his sheep. He is the one who has wrapped up his joy with yours. And now he is saying, listen and follow me.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Lord, as I read and studied this, I hardly even knew we're to pray, what to pray for because of the stunning words that were before me. And I pray for all of us that these words would hit us and we would ponder them. We'd be shaped by them, shaped by the fact that you own us, that you see us as your wealth, that you're absolutely committed to our joy for your glory. I pray for every person here.
Joel Brooks:Maybe maybe somebody who has never listened to you. Right now, may you call them. May they hear their name called and may they follow. For the sheep here who have heard your voice, may they not listen to the voice of strangers no matter how appealing. May they only listen to your voice and follow you.
Joel Brooks:May they never try to go over offense, but may they always try to go through the gate of you. May they never try to do anything on their own because they are just sheep. May they trust you in all things. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.