Thank you, music ministers.
Have your Bibles turn with me to John.
Chapter 10.
Verse number one.
And as we bounce back and forth between expositions of John
and Ephesians here in John, we turn to
a new chapter today, and
as we do, we come into
a text with a word picture.
And this word picture that Jesus is going to unveil
for us here today is very deep in its meaning.
So often, when I come across a text, a familiar
text, familiar words, these words are going to be familiar to
you, that I really previously
never looked really, very closely into until
I had to preach it, and then I had to unpack it and study it and prepare it.
I get surprised by the depth
of meaning that I never realized before,
studying it.
And, um, that happened
again this week to me, as I spent a lot more time,
uh, than I normally do on, uh,
redoing this, because I always go back and...
This is supposed to be to help me, but I wind up spending a lot
more time revamping these than I probably should.
But I want you to know, this is not a parable.
What we're going to read here today.
Because, for one thing, it doesn't start with
Jesus saying, the kingdom of God is like,
like he does in the parables.
So I said, this is an
incredible word picture.
And we have to 1st take note of the fact that there is not,
I want you to, if you have your Bibles especially open, there's
not a real break in between
chapter 9 and chapter 10 here.
What we have here in chapter 10, verse one,
is Jesus just continuing to
talk after his last sentence in
the last chapter, verse of chapter 9.
So this is what that means.
And this is critical for us to understand if
we're going to understand what he's saying in this text.
This is from chapter 9,
the same day, the same scene,
the same people, the same
conversation, Jesus is responding to the
same event that we studied last
time when we were here in the Gospel of John, and I'll
give you just a reminder, and you're going to remember this as soon as I say it, remember?
The man born Brian, right?
And remember what happened?
The Pharisees had thrown him out.
They couldn't handle what had happened.
And then, remember, they intended to kill Jesus at this point.
Jesus finds the man.
The man is miraculously saved
spiritually as well, along with his physical sight.
And then the Pharisees come back into the
picture there at the end of chapter 9, you
can just glance at that real quick.
And we're
now just still in the flow.
No break.
The chapter break is unfortunate here in the
translation, but what we want to do is
just keep that in our mind, and we're going to continue
in the same context in the flow
of reading verses one to 10 together.
Jesus goes on.
Well let me just back it up real quick.
Verse 41 of chapter 9.
Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would have no sin, but since you
say, we see, your sin remains.
So remember, we exposited that.
Well, the very next thing he says, 10 one, truly, truly, I say to you.
He who does not enter by the door, into the
fold of the sheep, but climbs
up some other way, he is a thief,
and a rubber.
But he who enters by the door is
a shepherd of the sheep.
To him, the doorkeeper opens, and
the sheep hear his voice.
And he calls his own sheep by
name, and leads them out.
Very important out.
We'll see that in a minute.
When he puts forth all his own,
he goes ahead of them.
And the sheep follow him.
Because they know his voice.
A stranger, they simply will
not follow, but will flee from him because
they do not know the voice of a stranger.
The figure of speech Jesus spoke to them,
this figure of speech, but they did not understand the
things which were he had been saying to them.
So Jesus said to them again.
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 hear them.
I am the door.
If anyone enters through me, he
will be saved and will go in and out, important
to remember, and find pasture.
The thief comes only to
steal and kill and destroy.
I came, that they may have life,
and have it abundantly.
Now, there's a whole lot going on in that text.
So this is one of those sermons, where you're
going to have to exercise your cranium to keep up with what I'm saying to you.
The first thing we need to know is
that within the context of this conversation,
those who are described by
Jesus as a thief, and
a robber there in verse one, are the Pharisees.
Remember, we're still in the flow here.
The leaders of Israel, are thieves,
and they're robbers.
We've studied this.
They have no authority, they have
no ownership over the sheep, of
Jesus, that they seek to fleece.
that they seek to destroy, Jesus is
the true shepherd.
He came to give life, he says.
So, the picture of the
shepherd is simply a
word picture, as I said.
Now, Jesus doesn't identify
himself as the shepherd until we get to verse 11.
We're not going to look at verse 11 today.
And there are 2 elements in this word picture,
that would have been very familiar
to everybody standing there in the conversation that
day, because they're standing there in 1st century Israel.
And they all understood.
The reality of the vocation
of shepherding.
They all understood what it meant to care for a flock.
And they also knew very well
that in the Old Testament,
over and over again, God himself is
presented as a shepherd.
Now first, on the human side.
We need to know a little bit about literal shepherding
to get the meaning to get
down into the meaning of this great word picture.
The main part of Judea is a central
plateau, and it's very rocky.
It's not good for crops.
But it is a place where sheep
would go, graze, the ground's rough, stony,
grass sparse, but still, that's where
they would normally, the shepherds would take their sheep to graze.
The shepherd was a constant, familiar
figure to everybody who lived in Israel in the Judean heels.
Everybody knew the shepherds.
The life of a shepherd was extremely hard.
He's outside all the time, against all
the elements every day of the heat and the cold.
It even gets cold over there.
With little grass, the sheep
would tend to wander off, and he'd have to go get them.
There was no pin, wall, protective
wall up there on the hillsides.
They didn't have any barbed wire fence to keep them in.
There was all kind of crevices and places down
into which the sheep could fall, if you ever seen that funny meme
on the internet, the Christian life, and the little sheep goes
down in the crevice, and he gets stuck, and his little legs were wiggling.
It was easy for the sheep to get lost.
And it was easy for predators to sneak up and assault the sheep.
So think about the task of a
shepherd and his work, his daily work, it was relentless, vigilance,
constant attention, danger all around.
There was danger from wild animals.
There was also danger from thieves and
robbers who came to steal the sheep.
They would want to steal the sheep for the wool.
They would want to steal the sheep for the meat.
And so every day, and the life of a
shepherd was a long, hard, arduous day.
And there were
some shepherds in the Old Testament who were
very familiar to all the Jewish people.
Abraham was a shepherd.
How about Isaac and Jacob?
They were both shepherds.
Even Moses was a shepherd, right,
when he was in Midian, remember?
David was a shepherd boy before he was a king.
So, very familiar to these people standing in
this conversation with Jesus was the vocation of Shepherd
required constant vigilance, fearless courage, patient
love for the flock.
If you had all that going, you were one of the best shepherds, right?
But the most well known shepherd,
in all of the Old Testament, is God.
Let me give you some examples.
Psalm 23, 1, you can look on the screen.
The Lord is my way.
Shepherd.
Psalm 7720 says, You
led your people like a flock.
Psalm 79, 13.
So we, your people, and the sheep of
your pasture, will give thanks to you.
Psalm 80, verse one.
Oh, give ear, shepherd of Israel, you
who leave Joseph, like a fox, you who
are enthroned above the cherubim shine forth.
How about Psalm 95, verse 7?
For he is our God, and we
are the people of his pasture and the
sheep of his hand.
Do I need to go on?
There's more.
So, it's clear that God
is the most well known shepherd in
the Old Testament, and it was clear to the Jews that were standing there
in front of Jesus in this conversation that day.
We'll get to the New Testament.
There are a number of places where Jesus
is referred to as a shepherd.
For reasons, not the least of which is, He's God, okay?
Same God, from the Old Testament, is Jesus is God.
I digress.
In Matthew 18, he is the shepherd who will
risk his life to save the sheep.
And Matthew 9, he's the shepherd who has pity
on the people because they are like sheep without a shepherd.
In 1st Peter, Peter calls Jesus the
shepherd of our souls.
So that's just a little background to
get us ready to study this text.
Jesus is totally
and completely unlike the Pharisees, the false shepherds.
They fleece the sheep, as I said, but Jesus comes
onto the scene, here in Israel,
as the true shepherd, not only that,
they're Messiah, that they rejected.
So let's get into the text starting in verse one.
Notice how it starts out with one of those truly, truly.
You remember, that means, hey,
everything Jesus says is important, but right here, you need to sit up and
take notice, this is serious.
This is new, what I'm fixing to say, so pay attention.
That's what truly, truly is.
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who
does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheet.
Now stop right there.
What's a fold?
Anybody not know what a fold is?
Well, every village had right next to it, a
sheepfold in Israel, which was simply
a pin to put the sheep in.
The ball was the place where the sheep
would be brought at night for their safety.
After grazing out there in the fields all
of day, the shepherd would lead the sheep, in
every village, into the sheepfold, and all
the village shepherds would put their sheep, into
one fold, kind of like, you call it, the village fold, if you would.
Because, again, that was a place of protection at night.
So there were always, all these mixed, different sheep
from the different shepherds in the fold, and they
would enter one at a time.
And each shepherd would stop each of
his sheep before they went into the fold at
the end of the day to check them for wounds, or
anything that might be of any kind of concern, just to make sure they were okay.
They would stop each sheep with
his rod, or his staff, the same thing.
And they would check them from front to back.
This was a messy, dirty, smelly job.
But that was the shepherd's role.
So the simple enclosure was surrounded
by some form of wall.
It was great protection.
Villages had many shepherds, they were not wealthy.
They didn't each have massive amounts of sheep.
They each had small amounts of sheep, so they
knew their sheep, really, really well.
And then the night shift would come after they
got all these sheep into the pin, and they would hire a
porter, so that the shepherds would be able to go
sleep, after a long day of shepherding out in the fields.
Now, notice down in verse 12, it refers
to a hired hand and
not a shepherd.
That's the same in look in verse three.
That's the same as the door keeper, okay?
same guy.
And his job was to close the
door at night on the fold when all the sheep
got in after all the shepherds were checking their sheep.
Shepherds go on to the house to get some rest, and
then he acted as a guard for the night.
So he was the night shift, to watch over him in this village foal.
In the morning, sun came up.
The shepherds were right back out there, and called their
sheep out of the fold, and
lead them back out there to the pasture once again.
Only the shepherd were allowed
by the hired hand to
come and do that, the doorkeeper.
If thieves and robbers came in over the night,
You know what they'd have to do?
They would have to sneak and climb over the wall.
And that's what we're talking about here in
verse one with the thieves and the robbers that climb up some other way.
So, that's the
literal historical background for a
really vivid word picture that we're fixing to get into.
But we have to dig down, now, into
exactly what is Jesus trying
to convey with this word picture.
What is the imagery here?
Jesus does it?
again, Jesus doesn't actually say he's the good shepherd until
verse 11, So what is the picture?
Well, some have suggested that the
sheepfold is the church.
I disagree with that.
I can't be right, because the shepherd
in this word picture leads people out of the fold.
So the true Good Shepherd doesn't lead people
out of the church, you get me?
So what we're dealing with here, and I want
you to think this is where you got to think hard about the context of
where we are in this text, who Jesus
has been dealing with, the leaders of Israel, right
here, the sheepfold, is Israel.
who Jesus has come to as the Messiah.
And more specifically, if we could just drill it
down, Judaism, really, the religion of Judaism.
The sheep right here, or the Jewish people, the
true shepherd, comes to the fold of
Israel, and the true Messiah, here
is a picture of the Messiah calling
his true sheep out of Judaism.
They got some in there.
Not only that, go down to verse 16, real quick.
And this is going to help you to understand why
I'm saying this is Israel right here.
Notice what Jesus says in verse 16.
I have 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.
What's the other fold?
Gentiles.
That's us.
Okay?
And also, now,
in the new covenant, Jewish people from other nations,
right, ethnic Jewish people from other nations, countries of the world.
Interestingly, as an aside, the Mormons say, this is the
Indians down there that Jesus supposedly went to, not true.
But this picture starts to become a little clearer, right?
There is one shepherd for both
Jew and Gentile, who now,
in the new covenant, become one flock in Christ.
All right?
So now there's no Jew, no Greek, everybody's
level at the foot of the cross.
All that goes aside.
The Old Testament promises that God
would gather his flock from all of the nations of the world.
And then Pharisees knew that.
So broaden this out a little bit.
The fold now, in totality,
in the new covenant, is whatever
it is that temporarily holds
the sheep back, that belong to God, whether
it's Judaism for the Jews, or pagan religion, or
any worldly thing for the Gentiles.
Okay?
You ripped me so far.
All right, let's keep going.
What is the door?
Verse two.
But he who enters by the door is a
shepherd of the sheep.
So the shepherd of the sheep is
allowed to come in the door and watch the door.
The door is the right.
The door is the authority, the door is the ownership.
Remember I told you?
And the literal shepherds, only the shepherds would be allowed in by
the doorkeeper to get in there.
Nobody else.
And this indicates to us that Christ alone
is the rightful shepherd of his sheep.
He has fulfilled all messianic
prophecy in his life from the Old Testament.
He has demonstrated over and over in
three years of ministry by his words and his works
that he is the Messiah, the Son of God.
He is the rightful shepherd sent
by the Father to lead the elect of
Israel out of Judaism and
the Gentiles out of the world into
the green pastures and still waters of salvation.
You with me?
All right.
And again, who are the thieves and robbers who climb up some other way?
They are, let's broaden it all the way out.
Any false shepherds.
Now, eating false shepherds.
And in this case, here in our text, specifically, it's
the scribes and the Pharisees.
They are the self appointed,
self glorified, false shepherds.
All they want to do is fleece and slaughter the sheep.
Jesus, what did he call them?
Hypocrites, who make twofold sons
of hell out of their converts.
That's what he had to say about them, stealing and
slaughtering with their false doctrine.
As you know, we today have false shepherds everywhere.
They're everywhere all the time.
And they always have been all through human history,
and they will be all the way to the end.
So Jesus, in contrast to the false shepherds of
the past, the false shepherds in the future, he
is the true and good shepherd.
He doesn't take life.
He gives life.
And abundantly.
So.
So picture this scene that we're in this conversation.
There he stands.
King Jesus.
And he's looking right in the eyes of those false
shepherds that are gathered around him that day, and
the blind beggar is still there, too.
And the disciples are there.
And others are there that he
has come to lead out of
this false works based system of
Judaism, and he knows them by name.
And he's going to lead them out of the old covenant, into the
new covenant, and the blessing that God provides,
through salvation by grace through faith and long in Christ, alone.
There he stands, right there, in the midst
of these false religious leaders, in stark contrast,
just think about the contrast between him
and the leaders of the religion
in Israel.
Now, go to verse three.
The doorkeeper opens because he has the authority
Jesus does, and the right.
He opens to the true shepherd to come and
to take his sheep.
Look next in verse three, and the sheep, hear his
voice, and he calls his own sheep
by name, and leads them out.
This is an incredible picture.
Sheep know their master's voice.
Just like a pet does.
A dog, not necessarily a cat, but
sometimes maybe.
I think Frank knows my name by now, by my
voice, because I actually feed Frank every morning.
I'm the reason he exists.
But the shepherds
in Israel, they named their sheep,
just like we name our pets.
I'm telling you, they didn't have a whole lot of them, and they knew each one of them.
The sheep knew the shepherd's voice because
they're hearing it all the time, every day.
It was very familiar to them.
The shepherd always knew all of his sheep.
Think about it.
He's sitting there examining them every day when they're going in a sheep bowl.
He's checking them out, checking them over.
He spent every single day with them.
He knew every little mark that they might have had.
The shepherd always knows his sheep.
He calls them by their name, and the
sheep follow him, because they know
his voice.
Skip to verse five.
A stranger, they simply will not follow, but
will flee from him, because they do not
know the voice of strangers.
Jesus was a storyteller.
The master storyteller.
His parables and his word pictures,
they were really simple in themselves,
but in their fullness like this here today.
They were so profound.
There is just no way that a natural man
could have come up just with this text and put
all this together, there's just no way possible, and
have it fit with everything else in the Bible.
And it starts out simple here.
But the deeper you study this text, the more profoundly
theological ipecomes.
And you're probably starting to feel this already with what I've said so far.
There is some serious theology in this word picture.
In this work picture, there's divine sovereignty,
there is irresistible grace in this
word picture, there is effectual
calling in this word picture that we're studying.
This is all profoundly theological
what Jesus is saying here.
And what is he saying?
He's giving us the theology of
salvation itself.
The Good Shepherd, guess what?
has already chosen his sheep.
It's a done deal.
He's already named them.
He knows every single one of them personally,
and he alone possesses
full authority and sole authority that
day to come into Judaism, and later
into the nations of the world to find his sheep.
He knows them.
He calls them out by name, and when
he does, they recognize his voice, instantly,
and they follow him.
Was that what happened to you?
When God regenerated you, did you
recognize his voice?
And did you follow him?
I did.
And 29 years later.
I'm still here doing the same thing.
Charlie Kirk, I retweeted
a post from this morning.
He said, All religions are not the same.
He said, all religions except one are,
are you trying to get close to God,
through some type of works, only Christianity
is God coming to you.
Only Christianity.
And as an aside, I'm going to tell you.
If he could come back and see what they're trying to do
to his wife, that would be a man on fire right now.
It's terrible what's happening to that girl.
But let's move on.
They will not follow a stranger.
The sheep will not.
That ought to encourage us to witness to people, right?
When he calls you out by name, and you hear
his voice, when you hear his voice,
what has happened to you is the miracle
of regeneration.
That's something that God initiates.
That's something that happens to you.
That's the grace of God invading your life.
And it totally changes you for the rest of your life.
So many preachers today want to, they
just want to keep things so simple.
and tell their stories, that are
really so shallow.
They really don't want to have any kind of controversial, anything, 'cause
there's whatever mini reasons.
And one is, they don't think folks can handle things with any depth to them.
But God created us to be able to handle some things with depth
in his word, especially his people.
And here's Jesus.
And he's talking to these unbelievers.
These religious leaders, with their false
doctrine and these disciples, who are hard to
teach at this point, because they seem to miss the point of
so much of what he said during this part of his ministry.
And today, many people would say, hey, don't
introduce any complexity of theology to the folks, just keep everything simple.
Not Jesus.
This word picture is so
incredibly profound.
This fulfills the promise of the Old Testament that
God would gather a flock from all around this world and
bring that flock, Jew and Gentile together
into one church and to the glory of his kingdom.
This is the plan of God that Jesus is giving us here.
So here is Jesus.
He calls them by name.
They know his voice, and they follow him,
and he noticed, leads them out.
And then verse four, when he
puts forth all his own, he
goes ahead of them, and the
sheep, follow him because they know his voice.
Now, this is so interesting.
In the sheep, in Jesus' day,
shepherds in the West.
drove their sheep from behind, or
from the side, and a lot of times they use sheep dogs.
But in the east, and here
in Israel, the shepherds led
their flocks from ahead of them with
their voice, calling out the names of the
sheep, and the sheep would follow.
So notice in this text in the same way, once Jesus puts
us forth, through the miracle of regeneration,
he leads us, and we follow why?
Because we know his voice when we hear it.
It's clear.
His voice is unmistakable to us.
This is the amazing picture of
the master disciple relationship here.
The shepherds of Jesus' day led their sheep, and went ahead of
them to clear the way of danger.
to find water, to find
a pasture with some grass, and in the same way, think
about what Jesus does.
He leads us through the process of sanctification in
our life to the security and the protection and the provision.
of eternal glory one day.
When we die, heavenly blessing.
Jesus here, in this text, is unpacking
this deep theology to these people standing
around him who have no understanding, as verse 6 is fixing to make clear.
But now, now, in
2026, in our generation,
with a Bible, and a clear understanding,
I'm telling you, these are truths that we have to know.
as Christians, and we can understand.
Let me give you one more thought about verse five.
Again, look at how, stranger, they simply will not follow, out, will flee from him.
No, I'm sorry, but will flee from him, because they
do not know the voice of strangers.
It's a hard, but it's a simple conclusion.
People who are loyal.
loyal to false shepherds, they
don't know the true shepherd, if they're loyal to a false one.
Now, there are people trapped and deceived, and if
God is the true shepherds calling them, they come out, but
if they're loyal, they don't know him.
Once he's put us forth.
Out of the fold of the sin and death and judgment,
we follow, and when we follow, we do not listen to a stranger.
For example, I don't listen to anything
that Kenneth Copeland has to say.
Nothing.
He's a false shepherd.
And you can go down the familiar list.
Right, that you all know of
our day, because we hold the sound doctrine here, so
we can spot them pretty easily.
We follow the true shepherd
faithfully, not perfectly.
And I'm just the lowly undership, as your pastor.
I'm following the true shepherd law, right along with you.
I just have the job of communicating his word to you.
By the way, there's a double negative in verse 5.
Notice, a stranger, they simply will not follow,
and but will flee from him.
See, even if they get wrapped up with one.
Bam, we're getting out of there.
Matthew 2424, for false Christ and
false prophets will arise and will show great signs
and wonders, so as to mislead,
if possible, even the elect.
But is it possible?
No!
That's why it says, if possible because it's not possible.
Now, this should be a huge encouragement to all of us.
Those of us who belong to the true shepherd hear his voice and follow
him, and we're never going to follow a stranger.
Nothing can break the bond
between the true sheep and the true shepherd.
Remember, we looked into it last week.
John 6, no one can come
unless the Father draws him.
No one can come unless it's been granted by the Father, and
all that the Father draws and grants will
absolutely come to Christ, and he will raise them on the last day.
Those are promises from Jesus himself.
And so, The thieves and
the robbers, they couldn't understand this.
Look at verse 6, this figure of speech, Jesus spoke to
them, but they did not understand what
those things were, what he had been saying to them.
Now next, starting in verse 7.
Jesus adds another word picture
and watch this.
It's like a picture.
He's doing a change up.
He changes things up a little bit right here.
Verse 7.
So Jesus 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 hear them.
I am the door.
If anyone enters through me, he will be
saved, and will go in and out, and find pasture.
Now, for one thing here, we have another I M statement, right?
And notice, Jesus enters
a second metaphor here.
He's not only the shepherd that comes in to take the sheep,
now we see he's also the door.
He's also the way out.
The most important reality is about going out.
But included here.
Think of this.
Included here is the idea of going in and
out, which means freedom for the Christian.
When he's led out of the fold.
And it's only through him.
He alone is the door.
And he repeats that in verse 9.
He leads us out, and there is a freedom that
exists, a freedom from bondage to
our natural, sinful condition.
And he says in verse 9, if anyone enters
through me, he will be saved.
Mark that.
Underline that in your Bible.
That is the first time in this text that we move from the word
picture from the metaphor to reality.
A straight ahead statement of fact.
He will be saved if he enters through me.
Folks, this text is about being saved.
About salvation, being saved, by God,
from God to God.
And we also interwoven in this, is
this is about the liberty that we enjoy as Christians.
When we come out of the fold, we are
free in a way like we've never been free before.
We can now freely enjoy all of the common grace
of God that spread throughout the world.
Guess what?
With no fear of condemnation.
We saw it last week.
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
What can possibly separate us
from the love of God in Christ?
Romans 8, absolutely nothing.
So, the picture here is we go in and out, freely.
There's no enemy, who can ultimately destroy us?
We have nothing to fear.
We are free!
We should read that passage from Romans 8 on
a regular basis, because it's intended, by
the use of hyperbole, from the Apostle Paul, to
show us the protection that every believer has,
what shall separate us from the love of the true shepherd,
Romans 8:35, ask the question, Will
tribulation, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
No, verse 38, for I am convinced that neither death,
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things
to come, nor powers, verse 39, nor height, nor
depth, nor any other created thing will be
able to separate us from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord, our true shepherd.
I'm here to tell you, Christian.
This morning, we have a bond.
With our shepherd.
That will continue into the
kingdom of glory when we die.
All the way through eternity.
So Jesus is the shepherd?
And Jesus is the door.
And God feeds us and sustains us
with green pastures through our whole spiritual life.
And what is it that's our food?
What is that pasture?
The word of God.
Jeremiah said, your word was found and that's what becomes my food.
We hear his voice.
We know his voice.
And where does his voice come
to us through his word alone?
I'm standing right behind this pulpit.
And I'm looking at what Austin S. Dave engraved
in my pulpit right here, it says, so la scriptura.
Whenever the visiting preachers come here, for the men's
meeting once a month, every one of them is required to come up
here, and for me to point to this, and I tell them, everyone,
I say, this is up here, that
if the thought of you saying the words, God told
me comes into your brain,
this is looking at you right here, because God only speaks in his word.
Period.
And then I tell him, you wouldn't even be up here if I thought that
would happen, but just in case.
Just in case, it's here.
It's carved into this pulpit.
His word alone.
Guess what?
You're hearing his voice today, out
of this text, out of the word preached, and
the spirit gives life to the word,
and illumines the word, and we follow the scripture.
Now, the contrast ends
in our text for today in verse 10.
And the conversation doesn't, but the contrast is stark.
Look at verse 10.
The thief comes only to steal and kill
and destroy.
Now, that's the false shepherds of every generation backed
up by our adversary himself, as we've been learning in Ephesians chapter 6.
I'm going to tell you, there's not many things.
that get more underneath my
skin cells.
Then seeing men, who profess to
be Christian preachers, that have
been allowed by God to have massive
influence, radio, television, internet.
They have thousands of people in their churches.
And they use the opportunity, and the
platform they've been given.
In the name of Jesus, to
act as thieves and robbers,
that fleece the sheep, that
slaughter the sheep.
Let me tell you, no serial killer ever will have
as worse a judgment day than a man like that on Judgment Day.
I promise you.
The thief comes to kill the sheep.
In Jesus day, if a thief came at night, and
he climbed over the wall, it will,
it would be real difficult for him to get that sheep out willingly.
Why?
Well, we've already learned.
They don't know the thief's voice, right?
So you know what they would do?
When the thieves would sneak in,
and the porter wasn't seeing it happen, they would
slit the throat of the sheep while
they were in the fold, and they would throw the sheep over the wall.
And then they would take the wool and eat the meat.
That's how they operated.
So the thief comes to kill and
destroy after he has stolen, on the other hand,
in stark contrast, verse 10,
Jesus says, I came.
that they might have life, and have it abundantly.
Now, sum this up as we land this plane.
The Messiah comes to the fold
of Judaism and the fold of the Gentile world
in his earthly ministry.
His sheep are already known to him,
because the Father has identified them and given
them a name, and has written that name down before the
foundation of the world.
So Jesus knows who they are.
And only he has the right and the authority
to enter through the door, and out of the world, and
out of Judaism, he calls his own out by name.
This is irresistible grace.
This is the effectual call, which leads to regeneration.
And once that happens.
They follow every single time.
And they go out, and they are free to roam this
world and enjoy all the rich provisions and protection
that the shepherd provides us with.
That's salvation, folks.
Again, can you imagine a natural man coming up with
this kind of word picture that is so perfectly consistent with
everything else pertaining to salvation and scripture, no way possible.
The Lord knows his sheep.
He's chosen them.
He's named them.
He alone possesses the full authority to come into this
world and call his sheep out of this world, calls them
to himself, calls them by name, and we
all willingly follow.
They will not ever follow anyone else.
He leads them from the fold of this world into the
blessings of salvation, not only in this age.
But in the age to come, that's the
helmet of salvation, remember, that we put on that future glory
that we know this coming.
Church, what security is ours
in Christ?
Think about it.
What promises are ours in Christ.
What future is ours in Christ?
But that's only if, you truly are in Christ.
Let him who has ears to hear, hear the
word of God this day.
Let's pray together, Father, we.
Thank you, Lord, for the incredible text.
Feel like a little grub worm trying to
explain this, but I pray and hope that I've
explained it enough to where your people can understand and be
edified by it.
And so, Lord, we pray, as always, that
we know your word never could void.
It always does what it's intended to do.
Just pray for us to deeply understand.
Out of this text, how thankful, how
very thankful of all the people in the world, far above all.
We should be the most thankful people, every second of
every day, on the face of the earth, because of who Jesus
is and what he has done for us.
We pray that everything we've done here today.
has brought you glory.
Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.