I Am the Door

One of the most influential Bible scholars in church history is a man named Stephen Langton. He probably did more than maybe just a couple of other people to influence how we understand our Bible. By a quick show of hands, how many of you have heard of Stephen Langton? A few? You say, okay, who was Stephen Langton? Well, Stephen Langton was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1200s. In fact, he's important in a number of historical reasons. He was an archbishop. The controversy over him actually is what caused King John to get into trouble with his nobility. And the nobility dragged King John to Hampton Court and made him sign a big piece of paper that was called the Great Charter, or what we would now call the Magna Carta. And so that was over the appointment of Stephen Langton to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. That's not what he did that influences our way of understanding the Bible. His influence in that way is that he is responsible for the chapter divisions in our Bible in the West. So the chapter divisions are useful for referencing the Bible. We can talk about how to find a verse very quickly using them, but they can also hinder our understanding by making it harder for us to follow a story, so we don't see the connections between these stories. If you're into the habit of, say, reading a chapter a day, you could miss a flow of argument and a flow of narrative by skipping parts of it and not seeing how they all fit together. The shepherd metaphors in John 10 follow immediately on the events of John 9, which you've just heard read. And it's actually important for us to see this connection in order to understand the purpose of the shepherd imagery. So we've been doing this series of I am statements in the Gospel of John. In each case, except for John 858, which we started with, each of these I am statements is a metaphor. So what is a metaphor? Maybe you remember a couple of weeks ago when Chris talked about this. We'll review very briefly. A metaphor is a feature of language in which we talk about one thing. by using the words for something else. So there's lots of ways of doing this. And being fluent in these metaphors is a mark of being fluent in a particular language. So here's some examples. We could talk about someone having a heart of stone. This is a biblical image. Or you might, if you're a parent, you might say to your child someday, your room is a disaster area. Or we might talk about being on an emotional roller coaster. And metaphors can be a little tricky to interpret, even as they're very common. Because in a metaphor, there's three key parts. First is the word or the image that we're using. It's the actual words we say. The second is what we're really talking about. And the third is that there is some point of similarity between those two things. And this third element is really important, because if we miss that, we're going to miss the whole thing. So here's an example using a couple of examples we just talked about. So if I say, yeah, this person is on an emotional roller coaster, you might say, hey, I like roller coasters. That sounds like fun. Yeah, you missed the point. That's not what they're saying. Or if your kid responds to you and says, well, if my room is a disaster area, then we should block it off and get some professionals to clean it. Yeah, that's not the point either. So the danger in understanding, especially these biblical metaphors, is that we try to make them say more than they're supposed to. We incorrectly add details to the image or overstate it. Here's another example from the Bible. In Isaiah 1, Isaiah writes that all flesh is like grass. So does that mean that the Bible is teaching that people are tall, skinny, green, and grow in the presence of occasional rain and lots of sunlight? Obviously not. The point in Isaiah is that human beings do not flourish for a long time. Like the grass, they quickly spring up and then fade away just as quickly. Or Jesus says to the Pharisees, you brood of vipers. Do they literally have no legs, scaly skin, poisonous teeth, and need to sun themselves for a while before they can move? Clearly not. They're dangerous and their teaching is deadly, but they're also sneaky and self-interested. That's the relevant similarity in that metaphor. So how do we avoid making that kind of a mistake? Well, a good bet is actually to look at the context, not just to see who the speaker is and who the audience is, but also to think about what the purpose of the metaphor would be. What's being communicated? What would make sense in the story or in the argument? If we only ever look at small chunks of the Bible, we'll risk missing the point and especially risk over-interpreting the imagery. So let's look at the broader context for John 10. You just heard John 9 read, and John 10 is clearly part of the same story. But in general, the book of John has been pressing a question to this point, and that is, who is Jesus? Now, one important aspect of that question concerns Jesus' authority. The question there is, why should we listen to this guy? And in particular, why should we listen to this guy instead of all of our religious leaders? In this respect, Jesus is the opponent of the religious leaders, for he is challenging their authority in two ways. First, he just simply asserts that they're bad leaders, that they twist the scriptures and that they refuse to believe them. The second, he also has a really large following of mostly Galileans at this point, and they are learning from him to mistrust the religious establishment, and for good reason. We can't miss this. The religious leaders hate Jesus in part because he is undermining their influence over the people. And by the time we get to John 10, the conflict between Jesus and the establishment is pretty sharp and it's intractable. It's pretty clearly Jesus or them, and there's no longer any chance of a friendly middle ground. But it isn't really always this way. The divide has been growing for a while, and John actually makes a point of showing how it develops. So you don't have to turn to these passages, but let me give you a quick survey of what's been happening in John. So in John 2, Jesus comes in at the beginning of his ministry and cleans out the temple, throws out the money changers and so forth. The religious leaders at this point don't seem to object, but they do ask for a sign to demonstrate Jesus' authority to do what he just did. If you're reading through John, I would encourage you to do. If you can do it all at one chunk, even better. In John, there's a little phrase that shows the passage of time, and it's after this. It shows up in several places in John 2, John 5-1, John 6-1, John 7-1. John is supplying us a roughly linear story. It's all in order, but there are gaps. Since he's emphasizing specific events, John must regard these events as especially important. So in each story that he tells, Jesus does something miraculous and also something divisive. Often the division is between him and the religious leaders, but sometimes it's between him and the people. For example, in John 6, which Chris preached a few weeks ago, when he's feeding the multitude. In a sense, Jesus is constantly disappointing people. He's failing, or perhaps more accurately, refusing to conform to their expectations or to give in to their misplaced desires. So as we continue through the narrative, we see other places where this divide shows up. In John 5, Jesus heals a lame man on the Sabbath. This story is really important because in verse 16, it's at this point that the religious leaders begin to oppose Jesus. They move from skepticism to outright hostility. In chapter six, there's a different split. This time, Jesus disappoints the people, or at least those of the people who merely want prosperity and material success. Jesus is not merely a populist. He's not, as if Jesus is the champion of the little guy and against the establishment. It's not that simple. The last time the after this phrase shows up is at the beginning of chapter 7. There's actually going to be one more year of Jesus's ministry. The final Passover begins at chapter 11. The gap of time here is actually represented in our passage today in chapter 10 and verse 40. We can tell this by the named feast. So, this is the sequence of how things have been going. Jesus is starting to show how he and the religious leaders are not getting along, that they are teaching different stuff. So, it's going to be important to pay attention to this particular conversation. The conversation or the story that we're looking at here is at the end of three chapters all about the same time. So chapter 8 through the end of chapter 10 is all kind of one big story. Actually at the beginning of 7 through the end of 10. The Jews are arguing amongst themselves about how to view Jesus. This happens in chapter 7 in a couple of places. Chapter 8, where Ben preached a few weeks ago, there's still more controversy. People are saying, who is this guy? Should we believe? Should we not believe? And they're very confused. In fact, they finally come out in chapter 8 and say, who are you? And he says, I am. Well, the Jews get it because they pick up stones. They're going to stone him. They understand what he is saying, finally. And we get chapter nine. I think John isn't just telling us this story for the sake of continuing the narrative. There are two really important things that happen in chapter nine. First, Jesus does a sign that unambiguously links him with the promised Messiah. So in Isaiah 42, there's one of what we call the servant songs. It's a prophecy about the coming Messiah. All the Jews would recognize it as this. One of the things that the servant does in Isaiah 42, in verse 7, is open the eyes of the blind. So when this formerly blind man says to the leaders, you don't know where he's from, and yet he opened my eyes, basically he's saying, you guys taught me to look for someone who would make me see. Because that one would be the Messiah. So what's the problem? See how this plays on the question of Jesus' authority. Even if the people believe what they've been taught by the religious leaders, they should accept Jesus. If the leaders would merely believe their own teaching, they would accept Jesus. They don't. In fact, this is the second thing that we see in John 9. This is the first time in the story where someone is harshly persecuted for following Jesus. They've been opposed to Jesus since chapter 5 at least, but now they're opposed to his followers. Obviously, this is only going to ramp up for the next several years, but this is the first time when following Jesus is judged to be incompatible with good Jewishness. The people are going to have to decide. It's going to cost them one way or the other, but they cannot sit on the fence. Think about this. Why is there this controversy at all? We maintain in this church, as have all of Jesus' disciples, that Jesus wasn't undermining the Old Testament. He was teaching the people God's truth and so forth. Why is there any disagreement amongst God's people at all? I think this makes a lot more sense if we recognize that the religious leaders here actually weren't teaching people the law, at least not properly. Jesus comes and he corrects them, and the people are confused. They recognize that Jesus has authority, and I think about all the times where they say, we've never heard anyone teach like this, this guy teaches with authority. But now it seems like Jesus is disagreeing with their teachers. Imagine how you would think if someone came into this church and powerfully, though gently and graciously, showed how many of the things that you believe that God requires of you are in fact wrong. I suspect it would cause some confusion on your part. In fact, I'm not even sure that we should assume that we would end up on the right side of that. So we come close to our text in chapter 10. We look at the end of chapter 9 where Sarah read, notice this detail in verse 40. It says, some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and asked him, we aren't blind too, are we? At this point, everywhere Jesus goes, he attracts a crowd, and it's not always a sympathetic one. It's this establishment types who ask a question that Jesus is going to answer in chapter 10. The Pharisees here are the religious conservatives. They are a minority amongst the religious leaders of Israel, but they are theologically conservative. They're very influential, but they're not really pulling the political levers. They are respected for their ability to teach the Bible. That's what they are praised for. How does Jesus respond to their question? He says, if you were blind, you wouldn't have sinned, but now that you say, we see, your sin remains. The problem with these guys is that they claim they have authority that they don't actually have. They think they're right, but they're not. We do all this context because in chapter 10, Jesus seems to be mixing metaphors all over the place. He talks about being the door, and there's these different discussions about different people around the sheepfold, and he's going to be the good shepherd. He's like, what is going on here? I think what's going on is that John is actually reporting several different conversations that Jesus has over perhaps some amount of time. The metaphor of the sheep unifies at least these several conversations. Now the sheepfold would be a familiar metaphor to the Jewish people because sheep are both common in their culture and the Old Testament frequently refers to God as the shepherd of the people. So we might ask, why does John present these three conversations together, even though they seem to span a considerable amount of time? Is it just, you know, here's a convenient way to move the narrative along? I think it's more than that. John is showing how the division between Jesus and the religious leaders is hardening, but more importantly, John is using the words of Jesus to explain what just happened in chapter nine. How is it possible that a good Jewish man would rather be thrown out of the synagogue than to reject Jesus? What about Jesus makes him so compelling that people will leave everything they've ever known about the true religion in order to follow him? I think there's two main arguments by which Jesus explains how his authority overcomes the religious establishment. And these actually correspond to the two I am statements. So we're going to do I am the door this week and next week we're going to do I am the good shepherd, which is part of the same topic. Jesus is demonstrating his authority and thereby his divinity. He's showing that he is God because he has the right to tell them what to do. The two marks of his ministry reveal him to be the Son of God and thus, as the Son of God, carrying God's authority. The first that we're going to talk about this week is that God's people recognize Jesus' authority. And then the second is that Jesus is the true and good shepherd which makes him equal with God. There's actually three main phases, I think, in Chapter 10, in the conversations in Chapter 10. And metaphors overlap, as we've seen. Everything is about sheep and shepherding, but there's slightly different emphases. And so there's three basic topics. The first is that Jesus speaks. That's 1 through 6. Jesus leads. That's 7 through, let's say, about 21. And then Jesus protects, which is 22 through the rest of the chapter. These kind of bleed into each other a little bit, so we won't take them sequentially. And in fact, we're going to consider this for two weeks because there's so much here. And next week, we're actually going to focus on what Jesus does and then also to some degree what he doesn't do. We'll see that he is a good shepherd. But this week, we're considering how the sheep respond to Jesus. what they do when he speaks, leads, and protects, and how that proves that he is the true and good shepherd. In a sense, the point that Jesus makes, I think, several times in chapter 10 is kind of remarkable. How do we know that Jesus is God? Well, it's because God's people follow him. Part of the evidence for Jesus's authority is the conduct of his people. This should be fairly familiar to us. If you're gonna view a group of people and you wonder who's in charge, how would you find out? You can go ask them, they might be able to tell you. One of the best ways to figure out who's in charge of the group is to see who speaks and then everyone else does what that one says, right? So how do you figure out whose kids belong to which parents? You wait for the parents to talk and see which kids look, right? At least you hope, right? So one of the ways that we can see that someone has authority is by seeing how the people who are supposed to be under that authority respond to it. So we can see here in chapter 10 there's three actions that Jesus does and then responses by God's people. The first is this, that Jesus speaks and the sheep hear his voice. This activity of the sheep is actually the one that's mentioned the most. The sheep know their shepherd and they will listen to his voice. So look in verses three and four. As the gatekeeper opens for him, the shepherd, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought his own outside, he goes ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they know his voice. There's a mini story here. The shepherd comes to the gatekeeper, he identifies himself, the gatekeeper knows him, and he opens the gate. Not here, actually, for the shepherd to go in, but for the sheep to come out. It turns out there's two ways for the sheep to leave the sheepfold. They can either hear the shepherd, or they can be stolen by thieves and robbers. The point in this little section seems to be that the sheep recognize who the true shepherd is. He can come to the sheep in the ordinary way, by the door, without the sheep running away, because first he's acknowledged by the other shepherds as their owner, and because the sheep also acknowledge this. They won't run away from him. Robbers have to come in some other way, not just for secrecy, but because the sheep won't follow them. The robbers and the thieves can't lead the sheep because they don't own them and the sheep don't recognize them. So notice there's actually two responses to the shepherd already. The first is the response of the sheep themselves. But there's also the response of the other shepherds. True undershepherds recognize that their work does not make them the owners of the sheep. So when the chief shepherd appears, they willingly surrender the sheep that are in their care. This is unlike the Pharisees, who are concerned to preserve their own ministry even though their superior, God himself, is now with them. As far as the sheep go, there's actually an interesting feature of the Greek grammar in this passage, all of chapter 10, actually. For you grammar nerds, you note the sentence here, the sheep hear the shepherd's voice. The word voice is what we would call the direct object, right? If you remember some grammar, you can nod if it makes sense to you. The sheep hear the shepherd's voice. Okay, good. In Greek, you make a word the direct object by spelling it a little differently. You give it this distinctive spelling that makes it the direct object. But in both places in this passage where the sheep hear the shepherd's voice, the spelling is not the right way to make it the direct object. It's actually the way you'd make something possessive. So we could phrase it more like this, the sheep hear of the shepherd's voice. Or perhaps better, the sheep hear the shepherd's kind of voice. Ordinarily when you say that someone hears a voice, the emphasis is on what the voice is saying. But here it's not a matter of what the shepherd is saying. The sheep don't know Hebrew or Greek or English or Aramaic or whatever other language. They just recognize that it's the master talking. And much as your pet, for example, knows that it's you, even if they don't understand what you're saying, the sheep don't understand much about the shepherd's talk. All they hear is their name spoken with the shepherd's voice. Sheep don't need to understand the shepherd in order to follow him. This is about recognizing the shepherd's voice more than understanding the shepherd's voice. And so the sheep can tell whether the one speaking is the shepherd or not, even if they can't always tell exactly what the shepherd is saying. Jesus actually reiterates this point later, verse 16. He says, there are other sheep not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. Jewish audience would have been familiar, as I noted a minute ago, with the idea that the nation of Israel is God's sheepfold. Now there's some questions here in this passage about who the other sheep are, but it's common to regard them at least as the Samaritans, which would be scandalous in its own right, but possibly the Gentiles, which is good for us and even more scandalous. Jesus is going to call people from other nations and they will hear and they will follow him. Again in verse 27, the sheep hear Jesus's voice. They recognize the shepherd. The religious leaders don't get this because they aren't part of the sheep. They don't believe because Jesus is not calling them. Because they don't recognize the shepherd, they cannot figure out why some people do. The second thing that Jesus does is that Jesus leads the sheep, and the sheep follow him. Notice the sheep follow the shepherd because they know his voice, as we see in verse four. Sheep are not dumb animals. They may not understand everything, but they know who they belong to. Jesus actually emphasizes this following aspect in verse four. He says that the shepherd goes in front of them. Did you catch that? Here's the contrast to the thieves and the robbers. They can get cheap, but they have to do so by snatching them or by driving them. Instead, the shepherd can walk in front, confident that the sheep will go where he does. Jesus says that the sheep will never follow a stranger. I think his choice of verb here is important. It's not that you never see sheep with some other shepherd or with a robber. It's that if you see them there, it's not because they're following. They're being coerced or perhaps being deceived. Verse 27 we see this again, that my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. Remember this part of the story happens several months later so you can see in verse 22 it says, then the festival of dedication took place in Jerusalem. and it was winter. So this is probably seven months later. Jesus is still on this topic. He's still talking about it, that the sheep will follow the true shepherd. Apparently this needs to be repeated to them. The sheep want to go where the shepherd goes. So the sheep aren't just registering the presence of the shepherd. It's more than just hearing the voice. They're doing what he wants them to do. They're going where he goes. We might even say that they obey the shepherd. And this is the second mark of Jesus's authority, that God's people obey him. and disobedience is good for them. We're gonna talk about this more next week, but notice in verse 10 of chapter 10 that Jesus says that the sheep that he leads will have life and will have it abundantly. Flourishing sheep bring praise to their shepherd. You think about it, you go to somebody's farm or even maybe somebody's yard and look at their garden, here's this beautiful garden. Or here's this maybe small or maybe a large group of animals that they're responsible for and all the animals are healthy, the garden is growing, it's free of weeds, there's lots of produce there. Do you think, wow, that's an amazing garden, so good for the garden to be like that. I know, you think, who's the gardener? Can he teach me? What did you do? The success in this agricultural endeavor brings praise to the person who's doing it. The third thing that Jesus does, Jesus protects the sheep. The response of the sheep here is that the sheep run away from strangers. Jesus is not content here merely to explain why the people are following him. In fact, he's not even denying that there's conflict between his teaching and the ruler's teaching. He's actually conceding that his teaching will draw people away from the religious establishment. This has been a point of controversy for his ministry. They are determined to kill him. And he's basically saying, at least you recognize the implications of our disagreement. If he lives and continues to teach, they will lose their power. But the sheep follow him instead of the religious leaders because they recognize Jesus and they resist the Pharisees. So verse 5 says, they will never follow a stranger, instead they will run away from him because they don't know the voice of strangers. Again in verse 8, all who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn't listen to them. Jesus is basically telling these religious leaders, the reason these people like me instead of you is that they are actually God's people, so they recognize when God is with them. The implication, of course, is that the leaders are the ones who are the thieves and the robbers, the ones who wish to use their sheep for their own purposes without actually having a right to them. So it's not hard to see why they dislike him, right? He's basically telling them, you all are the thieves here. The metaphor of the door actually heightens this divide. Jesus isn't just the shepherd. He is the only legitimate way into the sheepfold. The only way the sheep go in and out is through the door when led by the shepherd. If there are things inside that came in over the wall or tried to sneak past the gate, they might look like sheep. They're actually robbers. Elsewhere, they might be called wolves. They are there to steal and to kill and destroy. As we've said, the sheepfold is a classic Jewish metaphor for the people of God. Jesus is claiming that he is the only way into that fellowship. If you want to be one of God's sheep, you have to go through him and recognize his authority as the shepherd. You cannot sneak in a different way. Further, Jesus is not just one option amongst many. You're either in through him or you're not in at all. It's not merely that you can acknowledge that Jesus is wise or has a good character. You can't regard him as a special, remarkable man, but not what he claims to be. Jesus will not join your museum of famous people or even your pantheon. He will not stand idly by and let you mislead sheep in his name. He is ultimately opposed to anyone who would try to usurp or borrow his authority. Others who may appear to be caring for the sheep are actually bent on harming them or merely using them. Jesus has his own and he will take care of them. So, in a sense, the precise metaphor of the door is not all that hard to understand. Jesus is saying he is the way in and out. This is how you become one of God's people, is through Jesus. What's puzzling is why it makes sense as part of this conversation. I think it makes more sense if we realize that Jesus is affirming a choice. Imagine that you're a good Jewish resident of Jerusalem at this time. You know about this Jesus guy. You're kind of intrigued by him. He looks pretty amazing. He does all these cool signs. Something special about this guy. In fact, you might even think you'd want to listen to him a little bit. But over time, you realize that all of the religious authorities you've ever known are opposed to him. They're convinced this guy is bad news. They're trying to silence him. They're trying to steer people away from him. If you listen carefully, you might even realize they're trying to kill him. They want him out. I suspect this would cause some uncertainty for you. You might be tempted to say, you know, I think I'll just take what seems right about Jesus, try and keep myself in good standing with the religious leaders. I kind of like Jesus, but I like my country, I like my religious traditions, too. Maybe I can keep both. This whole story is about how that isn't possible. It's why it starts with the story of the blind man who is cast out of the synagogue. We would use the phrase excommunicated. for believing in Jesus. But Jesus reiterates again and again that this is the choice. You can't play both sides. You're either in the fellowship through Jesus or you're not in at all. You cannot participate in the blessings of Jesus's ministry without accepting all of his claims, including his claim to authority. So how does this apply to us, not residents of first century Jerusalem? Here's one question for you. Have you joined the fellowship in the proper way? Not everybody who is in church is actually part of the church. Jesus is the only way in. You say, okay, how do you know if you've entered the right way? Notice how Jesus describes the sheep. They're the ones who recognize him, who hear his voice, follow his leading, and they turn away from strangers or people who would mislead them. You say, okay, there's still a lot of metaphors here. How do you know? How do you know when Jesus is calling you by name? John later writes in one of his epistles in 1 John about this. He basically gives three big criteria. First, you obey God. Do you obey God? Do you want to follow him? Second, do you love the other sheep? That is a mark of true belief, of true fellowship. And third, you're not ultimately deceived by error. You can tell the difference between what is true and what isn't. It doesn't mean that you can explain it. It doesn't mean that you can win an argument about it, but you can tell. Let's extend this a little bit more. Are you just doing the parts of church that you like? Are you accepting Jesus' authority only when it doesn't conflict with some other rule or when it affirms your own opinions? Are you giving up anything in order to be completely committed to him? For example, is there anyone who, if they really knew what you believed and what you were really committed to, would oppose you and make things difficult for you? Or are you effectively trying to play both sides? Friendly enough with the world that it doesn't bite you, but holding on to enough of the true religion to ease your conscience. Jesus makes you choose. That's what it means to be going in through the door. Second application. How do you know whether one of your leaders is following the true shepherd or leading you astray? This is perhaps a harder one because we can find ourselves in a place much like these first century Israelites. Different people are calling for allegiance, claiming their authority, often in Jesus' name or in God's name at least. How do we know which ones are actually his voice and not a stranger's? In our society, this might be even more difficult because it's easy for us to have a constant chatter of other voices, religious and not obviously religious, telling us what to do. And in fact, being aware of this wide range of opinions can make us feel sophisticated and well-informed. We feel like we should be free to select from a buffet of life decisions, often ones whose consequences, if they are obvious at all, are at least delayed long enough to ignore in the moment. We can sin or even be foolish and yet for a while we can avoid the suffering that that brings. Everything feels possible. All these choices can rob us of certainty and leave us with so many options that we don't know what to think. Who do I follow? Perhaps our greatest modern danger is thinking that there is no right answer. We think that by not believing anything deeply, we might at least avoid following the wrong shepherd. But this is not the mark of God's sheep. The sheep don't necessarily know everything the shepherd is saying, but that doesn't mean that they just follow anyone. They follow the shepherd. There are a couple of different ways that we might be misled. Sometimes the people themselves are trying to lead you astray. They are trying to manipulate you or use you. But sometimes people can be well-meaning and they can lead you astray by directing you to bad ideas. I'll give you an example of this. If you had lived in the American South and attended the biggest churches until about 40 years ago, you very likely would have been taught all kinds of racist ideas. There'd be all kinds of Bible verses leveraged to show this and combined with other claims about obedience to civil authorities, the necessity of peace, even the sovereignty of God. If you're just a regular Christian in the pew, this is what your religious authorities are saying. Someone comes along and says, they're all wrong. They're denying the gospel, or at least they're seriously distorting it. I mean, you'd probably be kind of skeptical, right? Southern religious leaders were at least peddling false ideas, and I suspect that some of them were in fact not true undershepherds, but rather the thieves and the robbers. Far too often, some of the sheep enjoyed the perks that came with seeing other sheep harmed or stolen away. How would you know that they were wrong? How could you have found out that that voice wasn't actually Jesus's voice? Some people did. The abolitionist movement in our country and in others was largely populated by Christians. But Christians have generally opposed slavery and racism. In the fourth and fifth centuries, Patrick in Ireland and Augustine in North Africa preached against slavery and in fact used church resources to free slaves. You can even go back into the New Testament and look in the book of Philemon where Paul is wonderfully cagey about exactly how one should regard one's own slaves. In the Middle Ages, theologians such as Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Anselm argued that no one could justly be enslaved because of their race or religion, only as punishment for a crime. And the church throughout the era worked to free the slaves that they found and insisted on the shared faith that these people had. Even in the 19th century, Charles Spurgeon refused to give communion to slaveholders and was so hated by the Southern Baptists that he did not think he could safely speak in America. You could know because God's people follow his voice. The history of the church has abundant evidence against racism and slavery. God's people have consistently opposed these things throughout all of the church's history. We would expect this because God's people can distinguish between the voice of the true shepherd and the thieves and robbers. In this case, almost literally thieves and robbers. In general, I think thinking about a question this way is a good strategy to try and figure out which voice is Jesus' voice. Suppose we want to have a question about ethics or politics or something like this. If the view you think sounds right would imply that the church has for 2,000 years gotten it wrong, then I think it is very, very likely that you're the one who's wrong. God's people follow him. They obey. So for example, in our culture, sometimes even people within the church want to justify and normalize all kinds of sexual sins, ranging from typical immorality to gross perversions. If they're right, if they're right that this is actually okay, that would mean that millions of Jesus' followers over centuries of faithful worship have made a gigantic error by following their society instead of the true shepherd. I think it is far more likely that the contemporary crowd is the one following the wrong voice, and I think it may be very soon it will be easy to tell that. Now, this application doesn't necessarily mean that you should go with whatever the majority opinion is amongst professing Christians that you happen to know. Even the crowd in Jesus' day was mostly wrong. Indeed, within 18 months, they would crucify him. But the true church is not easily wrong. How do you know who the true church is? Well, you look for those who are actually following Jesus, ones who are obeying him, even when it costs them something. The majority that you need to look for might not be the people that you know most closely. It might not be your immediate peer group. It's useful to look at the history of the church. Or if that's difficult, just ask believers from other cultures. It's very hard for us in our society to see our blind spots. Those places where we're trying to keep our foot in the world while also being part of the sheepfold. Another example, one particularly common way this mistaken following happens in our society is when professing believers seek political influence. As we saw a few minutes ago, Jesus is going to ultimately disappoint all kinds of people. He is not merely a champion of the little guy, but he also opposes the rich and the powerful. This should look confusing to those who don't understand Christianity. Some of us may be tempted to link Christianity with American patriotism, where we confuse the American civil religion with the gospel and forget how Jesus opposed those who oppressed the weak and vulnerable. Others can be tempted to downplay God's demands of personal holiness and the certainty of his judgment in order to maintain the appearance of influence over the culture, as if being uncontroversial and inoffensive is somehow more genuinely Christian. The fact is, if you're following Jesus, eventually you'll get to a point where you'll have to choose between him and some part of the world. If you choose Jesus, the world will hate you for it. So whether you want to join them in excusing the government for its wickedness or you want to join the world in being blandly nice or reasonable, these are both ways to not follow the true shepherd. Third example, a thing that Pharisees were famous for was adding ethical rules to God's laws and enforcing those rules on others in ways that they would excuse in themselves. All of us have a little bit of Pharisee in us, sometimes more than a little. We find it frustrating when other believers won't conform to our standards, won't share our cultural and political agendas, or won't enforce God's laws as strictly as we would. It's tempting to think that these are less spiritually mature or less acceptable to God. But honestly, sometimes the reason they won't listen to you is that you are not God, and you're not actually leading them to follow Jesus. They're going to follow the true shepherd, and that's not you. This can show up with your kids. Someone has said that the real problem with parenting is that your kids won't worship your idols. Sometimes what may feel to a parent like disrespect or dishonor is actually a child who thinks that he or she has to choose Jesus over you. Paul warns us not to exasperate our children. How much worse would it be to lead them away from the true shepherd or to drown out his voice with our own so that our kids don't know what to listen for? As we finish up here, we can look at verse 24. The Jews surround him again and say, how long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you're the Messiah, tell us plainly. This persistent confusion is a sign that these folks are not actually part of the flock. Compare it to the blind man who will follow Jesus even when it costs him in his society. And even when he doesn't really know who Jesus is, Did you catch that when Sarah was reading it in verse 36 of chapter 9? Jesus finds him and now he can see. He says, do you believe in the Son of Man? And the man replies, who is he, sir, that I may believe in him? This one is a true sheep because he knows it's God that's calling him even though he doesn't know what he looks like yet. Or consider Peter, whose reliability wavered quite a bit, but ultimately he followed Jesus. This is the mark, not that we can look inside ourselves and see enough faith, but that when that faith is questioned or threatened, we get it right. We follow the true shepherd. So this faithfulness on the part of Jesus' followers is a distinctive mark of Jesus' authority. God's people follow him even when it costs them something. They do so because they recognize that he is God, the covenant-making king of the world. Now, the sheep get something from this too because Jesus is the good shepherd and he provides for and protects the sheep. But you'll have to wait till next week to hear about that. Let's pray together. Father, we praise you for sending your son Jesus to shepherd his people. We pray that you would help us as we seek to follow you, that we would do so wisely, that we would hear your voice, and that we would obey and follow you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.