I Am the Good Shepherd

This morning we're continuing our study through the various statements in the Gospel of John where Jesus says, I am something. In this case, we're going to consider I am the good shepherd. There's a bit of review for those of you who were here last week or if you weren't here last week. This is part of a larger conversation, a larger story in the Gospel of John that begins really in Chapter 8, but especially what's going on in Chapter 10 follows on Chapter 9. John is reporting several conversations that Jesus has that explain what just happened in Chapter 9. So Chapter 9, Jesus heals a man who was born blind. And then this man is called before what amounts to the Jewish Inquisition. The Jewish leaders throw him out of the synagogue. They excommunicate him. This is the first time in the Gospel of John where someone is suffering for following Jesus. The Jewish leaders have opposed Jesus for quite a while, but this is the first time they've been persecuting one of his followers. The Jewish leaders have effectively judged that following Jesus is incompatible with good Jewishness. The blind man followed Jesus anyway. And, you know, we're trying to answer this question that, in fact, the people ask here in chapter 10 and in verse 20. They say, why do you listen to him? Why do we listen to Jesus, especially when it's going to cost so much now? Well, that's what these shepherd conversations are about. These are metaphors, and they are in many layers. So we're going to try and follow along with the text today, and at times we're going to go a little deeper, and at times we're going to back out a little bit and see a bigger picture, depending on the context. The broader context, I think, here concerns Jesus's authority. This question, why do we listen to him? Why do you trust him instead of all of the religious leaders you've ever known, if you're a Jew at the time? John is making the case that Jesus is God. And here, in particular, he's focusing on Jesus's authority that comes from being God. In chapter 10, there are two marks of Jesus' ministry that demonstrate that his authority is actually God's authority. The first is that God's people follow him, even when it costs them. So those who truly follow God follow Jesus. So therefore, Jesus is God. That was last week's sermon. The second reason, or second mark of Jesus' ministry is that Jesus is the good and true shepherd. So we're going to focus on that today. A reminder again about how metaphors work. So, in a metaphor, there's a thing that we're talking about, or the words that we're using, or the picture that we're using. There's a thing we're really talking about, and then there's points of similarity between those two things. We need to make sure we get those right, and we'll come back to that in a little bit. Jesus proves his authority here by his own actions, by being the good shepherd. The Jewish people would have been familiar with the idea that God is the shepherd. In fact, it's not just Jewish people that would be familiar with this. It's very common in the ancient Near East to link kingship with shepherding. The king's authority is like a shepherd's authority. He leads, he protects, he provides for the sheep. As far as we can tell, the link between royal authority and shepherding goes back as far as written language does. We can see it in extremely ancient texts dating from 3,000 years before Jesus' birth. The metaphor would have been very familiar in Palestine long before the Israelites arrived there on their way out of Egypt. The Babylonians, the Akkadians, the Persian kings all referred to themselves as the shepherds of the people. In Egypt, in fact, the hieroglyphs, you know, the Egyptian language uses hieroglyphs for its written language. The hieroglyph for to rule is a shepherd's crook. In Greek literature, the link was present too. Homer, a great classical writer, describes the kings of the various Greek cities as the shepherds of their people. The metaphor continues into the West, perhaps out of the New Testament in part, but the Bible doesn't undermine this metaphor. This is a very common idea. Jewish scriptures actually add further color to it by listing out things that God will do as the shepherd, and especially in contrast to the false shepherds. So, key passages in the Old Testament, which I won't read today, that link God's activity with the shepherd are Psalm 23, which we have read, Isaiah 40, Ezekiel 34, which we read last week, and Zechariah 11, among many others. So we're going to develop a set of contrasts today from chapter 10 in John. Jesus does what good shepherds do. The true sheep follow the true shepherd instead of the false shepherds. The one who acts like the true shepherd is the one who actually has authority. He is the shepherd king. So let's look at these contrasts. If you're listening and noticing this as Melanie was reading through the chapter, Jesus appears to be talking about how good shepherds function in general. It's more about good shepherds as opposed to the good shepherd for a while. Now there are allusions to the Old Testament, which we'll develop in a little bit, but they seem to be reminding the audience about these topics as much as quoting them. So, in the sense he's talking about the difference between good shepherds and bad shepherds rather than just the good shepherd. I think his purpose, John's purpose of including the story in just this way is to draw our attention to this broader concept that the Bible teaches about, according to which the shepherd is linked to one who has benevolent authority. One of the puzzling things about this chapter, too, is that there seems to be lots of different kinds of bad guys. So there's a good shepherd, right, and this character stays basically the same. Then there are strangers, there's thieves, there's robbers, there's wolves, there's hirelings, and so forth. Some people try and parse out who all of these people are supposed to be referring to. I don't think that's all that helpful. I don't think it's necessary. In the first instance, the point is just that there's lots of different ways the sheep could be miscared for, cared for badly. The Good Shepherd is different from all of those. There's lots of other kinds of things you might see around sheep. that aren't good for the sheep. These are in contrast to the good shepherd. In the second instance, as I hope I'll be able to show to you, it seems as if certain characters are supposed to connect to specific examples of bad shepherds in the Old Testament. This link to the Old Testament is key for part of the question is why people would rather listen to Jesus than to their Jewish teachers. The audience includes some of these teachers. Jesus is using their extensive knowledge of the scriptures to say more than is obvious on the surface. So the lesson for the original audience is not, don't be a robber, don't be a wolf, don't be a hireling. That's not our lesson either. It's rather that true shepherds do things that false and bad shepherds don't do. And so we can identify who the true shepherd is. So I'm going to, we're going to say that all of these bad types of people in this story, I'm just going to call them bad shepherds. This includes the thieves, the Roberts, the hirelings, the wolves, whatever it is, I'm going to call them all bad shepherds. And I'm doing that because that's the way Ezekiel 34 talks about them. So there are three contrasts in this chapter. Each of them gives us a way to evaluate who the true shepherds are. What marks out good shepherds from bad shepherds? And they correspond to three sections in the chapter. These three contrasts answer the following questions. Who leads? Who provides? And who protects? who leads, who provides, and who protects. Who leads? Bad shepherds, they drive the sheep, they sneak in, and they steal. Look at verse one. Truly, I tell you, anyone who doesn't enter the sheep pen by the gate but climbs in another way is a thief and a robber. Thief and robber here are ordinary words in the original language for a burglar and a pirate. These people are after plunder. They don't own the sheep and the sheep won't follow them. Now they can get sheep sometimes, but they have to snatch them and carry them off or else they have to drive them along. They have to control the sheep. In contrast, good shepherds lead. Notice the detail here. The shepherd doesn't come to the door and push his sheep out. Rather, he calls them by name and leads them. There's a kind of tenderness to the Good Shepherd. He knows how to appeal to all the different kinds of sheep that he owns. He knows each one of them intimately. Notice, it's not like he's having to persuade the sheep to follow him. The implication is that the true sheep are willing to come just because it's him. They hear their name. They hear their name spoken in the shepherd's voice and they just come. He leads them by speaking to them and by going ahead of them. Think about how this demonstrates the authority of the good shepherd. An authority is someone who can tell you what to do and then you obey, even if you don't understand or agree. Sometimes authorities for us don't tell us what to do exactly. They show us. Here the shepherd is leading the sheep, not explaining to them why it would be a good idea for them to follow, but rather simply going where the sheep need to go. The sheep don't really fight it. They know he's leading them well. He knows them. That's why he uses their names. In contrast, the bad shepherds have to force or drive or steal the sheep. I think that's because the bad shepherds are ultimately interested only in themselves. And this is our second contrast. Who provides? See an answer to this, and especially in verses seven through 10. Jesus said again, truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn't listen to them. I am the gate or the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and come in and out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance or have it abundantly. Bad shepherds make the sheep about them. There's the three reasons the thieves and the robbers come for the sheep. They come to steal, kill, and destroy. Makes sense that a thief or a burglar or a robber or a pirate would not be good for the sheep, right? Notice there's actually two kinds of things they might do. First, they might try to use the sheep for their own purposes. They want to pretend that they own the sheep and thereby get the benefits of having sheep without actually doing all of the work for them. This is what a thief does, right? They try and take something else that someone else has worked for, has earned, and appropriate it for themselves, shortcut the labor. Another activity here I think is more serious. It says they kill and destroy. In this case, they're simply destroying the good that the shepherd has cultivated. Shepherd has done the work for these sheep. And these bad men, these bad shepherds, come along and try to just destroy that goodness. This makes, again, the sheep about the robber. But instead of trying to gain at the owner's expense, they're trying to destroy the owner's goods, to cut him down to size, if you will. In both cases, the bad shepherds are merely using the sheep. They don't care about the sheep, themselves at least. They see them merely as tools to advance their own causes. If you're a sheep, you benefit from being in their possession only as long as you are useful to them. Having sheep is about being good for the shepherd or the false shepherd and nothing else. In contrast, the good shepherds provide for the sheep. The good shepherd cares about the sheep and not just about himself. Notice what he does in verses 9 and 10. He says, the sheep will be saved and will come in and out and find pasture. And then again, I've come so that they may have life and have it abundantly. The sheep are saved. They find pasture. The shepherd ensures their life, a life of abundance. A word for saved can also mean healed. There's just one word there in Greek, the original language here. I think Jesus probably has both senses in mind. So the sheep can find pasture. They have their basic needs met. The sheep won't starve. But it's more than that. Notice too that the purpose of the shepherd differs from the robber. The robber comes for the purpose of destroying sheep. A good shepherd comes for the purpose of giving the sheep life. It's interesting that in all this chapter, these are the only two sentences where the different kinds of shepherds' purposes are described. Occasionally you'll see other kinds of motives for acting, but here's the only place where we see what these two types of leaders, what these two types of shepherds are trying to do. The bad shepherds are coming to steal, kill, and destroy. The good shepherd is coming to give life. So why did Jesus come? He tells us here that at least one main reason was for us, for our sake, the sheep's sake. He came so that we could have life. We should stop for a second here and consider this abundant life, this life that they have abundantly. What is this abundantly? It's actually kind of an unusual word in the New Testament. It roughly just means more. But it's a special way of saying more. It's more than enough. It's excessive in a good way. The Good Shepherd isn't just giving the sheep their basic needs. His care allows them to flourish. To have a good life. Not just a real life, but one that's a good one for them. An abundant, flourishing, excessive, great life. I remember last week it said that one of the marks of skillful authority is the success of those under that leader's care. So when someone, say a team or a group, acts really well, they do their job as they're supposed to, they perform excellently, Or when a garden looks really great or a flock is healthy and flourishing, you don't praise the garden, you don't praise the flock, you praise the one who took care of them. There's actually another contrast here. The bad shepherds are interested in themselves, but Jesus, the good shepherd, values the sheep so much that he will lay down his life for them. You see in verses 15 and 17, sheep are not just tools or resources to further his own needs. Rather, he regards himself as the one who is to be used up, to be dispensable. Of course, Jesus knows there's more to it than mere self-sacrifice. He even says as much in verses 17 and 18. He will lay down his life for the sheep, but he will take it up again. I think this part of the conversation is actually, has another layer to it. And here's a place where we want to dig just a touch deeper. I think it's pretty clearly alluding to Ezekiel 34. I'm going to read a part of that. We read it last week, but I'm going to read a part of it again. And listen for the kinds of things I just said that good shepherds do, that they heal and save the sheep, that they provide for them. Here's what Ezekiel 34 says, and this is God speaking. and I will rescue them from all places where they've been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness, and I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them to their own land, and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the ravines and all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture. On the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost. I will bring back the strayed. I will bind up the injured. I will strengthen the weak and the fat and the strong. I will destroy. I will feed them injustice. You catch that? You see the references to good pasture and grazing? And also the reference to healing and saving the sheep. This is the link to the good shepherd. In fact, later on in that same chapter, God says, I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them, he shall feed them and be their shepherd. So Jesus is saying these things here as part of this conversation. I think he has this in mind, and I think he also expects that his audience will have it in mind. He is saying, I am doing the things that God said he would do for the flock. You do the math, right? So just dug in a little bit more deeply, let's back out again too. Remember, in this chapter, Jesus is explaining why the blind man, like Jesus' other followers, would rather confess Jesus than retain his religious and political heritage. He is defending his own authority over against the religious leaders. Last week we saw that God's people follow Jesus because Jesus is God. Here we get some more detail. Following Jesus is attractive because it's much better than the alternatives. Jesus offers abundant life, exceedingly good life. Not everyone can see this yet, but the blind man has understood it, and eventually many more will as well. This truth can be actually a tricky thing for us. We admit with the blind man that those who commit to Jesus will be opposed by the world, just like the blind man was. Sometimes they will have to suffer because they follow Jesus. We also affirm that committing to Jesus is better. There is something really good about following Jesus. In fact, following him is better than the alternatives. You say, why so? What about the life that Jesus offers is better than the alternatives? Because at least in the moment, in the here and now as it were, it doesn't always look that way. Maybe we can see some more as we look at this third contrast, and that is who protects the sheep? This is roughly verse 12 to the end of the chapter. Notice what happens for the bad shepherds. Bad shepherds flee from the sheep when there's danger. Verse 12, the hired hand, since he is not the shepherd and doesn't own the sheep, leaves them and runs away when he sees a wolf coming. The wolf then snatches and scatters them. This happens because he is a hired hand and doesn't care about the sheep. It's one of the ways that bad shepherds can be bad for the sheep is by exploiting them to satisfy their own desires. It's also bad for the sheep if the shepherds just don't do the job. They just don't do their work. Here the contrast between good shepherds and bad is the bad shepherds just run away at the first sign of danger. Notice the motives here. He runs away because he cares nothing for the sheep. This is in contrast to the true shepherd who owns the sheep. This makes him care about them. Indeed, the good shepherds will protect the sheep even at the cost of their own lives. This is the specific thing that Jesus mentions when he calls himself the good shepherd. Notice 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. When Jesus is specifically saying, I'm the shepherd, the very first thing he comments on is how he will protect the sheep. And it's what he continues to say throughout the rest of these discourses. I think here Jesus is sliding even further away from merely talking about ordinary shepherds and is more clearly linking what he's doing to Old Testament shepherd passages. Here's part of the reason I think that. I think it's not at all obvious that good shepherds would rather die than lose their sheep, right? You might care a lot for your sheep, but we wouldn't automatically think it was a smart shepherd, even a good shepherd, who would give up his own life for the sake of his flock. We might think, surely people are more important than even a lot of animals, right? This contrast between the shepherds who protect and the ones who flee is pretty obvious in the Old Testament. And when we realize that shepherding is an ancient metaphor for kingly rule, I think it's easier to understand. The ruler's job is to protect his people. If we say, the king sacrificed his own life for his people, that doesn't sound weird at all. It might even sound like what you'd expect the king to do, to be the representative of his people and to take the risks instead of them. I think this is how the Old Testament develops this. In Zechariah 11, I think is what Jesus is alluding to at this point. Zechariah 11 specifically mentions that forsaking the flock during danger is a mark of bad shepherds. In fact, the bad shepherds in Zechariah 11, the passage in Zechariah 11 also mentions bad shepherds who exploit the sheep. And so there's lots of ways in which the shepherds are bad here. But one of the key ways in which these are bad shepherds in Zechariah is that they flee when there is danger. Now, Zechariah 11 is a really interesting chapter. There are some, it's a little hard to understand exactly what's going on, but there are some surprising details when it talks about the shepherd there. For example, it talks about the shepherd getting paid. Let me read a couple of verses from this. Zechariah 11, verse 12. They weighed out as my wages 30 pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, throw it to the potter, the lordly price which I was priced by them. So I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter." That sounds like something else that happens, those of you who remember your Bible. How much was Jesus betrayed for? 30 pieces of silver. What happened to those 30 pieces of silver? They were thrown into the temple at the feet of the rulers and used to buy a potter's field. That's surprising, huh? Now obviously that hasn't happened yet. And so the link here is not even complete. Right now, the only link we're getting between the shepherd discussion in Zechariah 11 and what's going on here is that bad shepherds flee in danger. But there's a lot going on here. And I think Jesus is starting to teach them, think of me in these terms. Think of me the way Zechariah talks about. Look for these kinds of things to happen. And that will give you a clue about who you're talking to and who I am. Zechariah 11 also talks about the union of the Jewish nation. It's easier, I think, when we see that to understand some of what Jesus says here in John 10. So it says in verse 16, it says, I have other sheep that are not from this sheep fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. There'll be one flock, one shepherd. If you don't get the connection to Zechariah, it might not be really obvious why Jesus would mention this. What's the important thing about having one flock? Why are we talking about shepherds? I mean, does it make any difference how many flocks there are? Well, in Zechariah 11, the issue is that the nation has been broken apart and scattered. And the promise is going to be that God will return them all into one again. And so Jesus, I think, again, is clearly alluding to that. And his audience knows it. And so they should be thinking, okay, so this is the guy who is not fleeing and who is going to unify the nation again, unify the people. Who might that be? Indeed, Jesus' good shepherding will be the cause for the reunification of Israel and also likely the rest of the flock, including the nations, as his people are scattered throughout all of them. Jesus keeps this going. The third episode here in John 10, which is about seven months later, it starts in verse 22. We know it's about seven months later because it mentions this Feast of the Dedication. The Jews are still asking questions. Jesus responds by recapping many of the previous topics and emphasizing the protection. So notice the repeated topics starting in verse 27. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. So that's the first big thing that's happened in the first part of chapter 10. I give them eternal life and they will never perish. That's the life that he provides. Notice that we have a new detail. We have a new detail about the kind of life that Jesus is offering to the sheep. In the previous conversation, the sheep would have abundant life, an exceptional or excessive or really good kind of life. Here it's clear that at least part of what that means is that the life is eternal. We might have read abundant life earlier on and think that true sheep would have really successful lives or just generally enjoy the kind of life that would be enviable from any casual observer. This is the lie of the prosperity gospel, that all true sheep will enjoy their best life now. This is what people like to peddle these days. Jesus makes it clear, though, that a key part of the life that he means, the abundant life he's talking about, is its duration. How long does it last? Indeed, he repeats this idea in several ways. I'll have to show you in a second here. It's not obvious in our English translations how emphatic he is. He says, I give them eternal life. That's already pretty impressive, right? It says they will never perish. It's not just that it's long lasting, it's that it cannot be threatened. No one can successfully threaten this life. And here's a place where our English translation and just our English grammar makes it difficult to convey just how strongly Jesus is saying this. So in English, when we start adding lots of negatives to the beginning of a statement, they start canceling each other out. So if I say that I'm not not displeased, what does that mean? I'm displeased. So there's three negatives in a row, not, not, and dis. But I only count one of them. In Greek, if you start adding up negatives, you get more and more negative. Or if you start adding positives, you get more and more positive. Here, there's three negatives before perish. Never, never, never perish. Or, it's actually nice to be in the south. And I'm actually from even further south than here. And so, we're creative with English grammar. But in some cases, it's helpful, like right here, where we can actually do triple negatives. So, this is something like, they ain't never gonna perish forever. It's really strong. He's really clear here. And then he goes beyond that. No one is able to snatch them out of my hand. Compare this to the thieves and the robbers who want to snatch the sheep away. No one is able to snatch them out of Jesus's possession. And if that wasn't enough, no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. He's claiming even the Father's protection and the Father's ownership. for these sheep." Now, these good Jewish scholars should be very certain about what Jesus is claiming about himself. He has basically said that he does all of the things that God says he will do in the Old Testament. All of those ways in which God talks about himself as the shepherd, Jesus is saying, I do all of those things. The rest of the conversation here I think makes it quite clear that he has answered their question. They're saying, are you the Messiah? Tell us plainly. Well, he does. Then they think he's blaspheming by calling himself God. It's interesting how he responds to this. I'm not going to read this again for the sake of time, but you can look at it here starting around verse 34. He doesn't deny that he's claimed to be God. In fact, his defense here seems oddly lawyerly, like a bunch of sophistry. He's basically asking why they would object to a person making himself God because of some passage in the Old Testament that looks like he's reading in an odd way. It's almost as if he's playing a game with their words. If that bothers you, consider how much of his strategy in communicating with these religious leaders has had this form. It's kind of funny, right? How often the Jews seem constantly unsure about what he's saying. He just went down this list of things that the good shepherd will do, the shepherd that they know about from the Old Testament and said, I'm doing all of these things. And they're like, who are you? We don't quite get this yet. I actually think this is one of the reasons that Jesus uses these metaphors. He is answering their questions. Elsewhere, the gospel writers say that Jesus used parables in order to obscure the truth from those who won't believe. These shepherd discourses are not parables, but the metaphors in them seem to have the same effect. Let's think about this for a minute, because I think it's a lesson for us. This is a characteristic of metaphors. And metaphors, remember, there's a symbol, there's the reality, and there's points of similarity between them. But you can mess up a metaphor by getting the wrong points of similarity. And this is the key. In order to understand the metaphor, it requires some judgment and understanding in figuring it out. This is why being good at metaphors makes you fluent in a language. You understand what's being communicated, which is beyond what the dictionary meaning of the words is. But when you're understanding a metaphor, there's always some space to say, does it really mean that? I think this is why the Jews want Jesus to tell them plainly. This is the danger for us. We can find ways to wiggle out from under God's commands and his claims while keeping the appearance of biblical faithfulness and care. We can use the metaphors and sort of willfully misunderstand them. so as to excuse our own sin. We are very, very good at self-justification. We are at least very practiced at it. And I think this is as much a danger for us at times as it is for these Jewish leaders. Let's start backing out again to the broader context. The Jewish crowd, they know the link between the shepherding and kingship. It's familiar. It's in the Old Testament. David is the great shepherd king. They get the idea that the Messiah will be David's son. He probably will look like a shepherd king. And that's just what kings are like. They also are looking for a king, right? In some sense, they should be glad to hear Jesus describe himself as the shepherd because this is what they want, a Jewish king who would come and champion their nationality against the Romans. So it's really confusing when Jesus emphasizes the sacrificial aspects of the shepherd, that he would give his life for the sheep. It's not that Jesus is undermining the image of the shepherd. If anything, he's emphasizing the authority of the shepherd, the right to instruct and lead the sheep. Notice how often in chapter 10, the concept of ownership shows up. I'm going to skim through them really quick. The gatekeeper opens to the shepherd, recognizing him as the rightful owner. This is in contrast with the thieves and the robbers. The fact that there are thieves and robbers implies that the shepherd owns the sheep because you can't steal something that isn't owned by somebody else. Note the contrast with the hired hand, which shows that the good shepherd is more than a mere employee, someone retained by the true owner for some task. The good shepherd is the owner. Verse 28, Jesus calls the sheep my sheep. And verse 29, Jesus says the Father has given the sheep to him, another way in which you can acquire true ownership. When we own something, we have a pretty broad right to use it how we want. We have the right to tell others how to use it. So it's as if Jesus is taking the shepherd metaphor in a slightly different direction than they expect. The points of similarity between him and the shepherd aren't the ones that the people are looking for. But it's not like they're picking the wrong comparison. It's that they aren't seeing it broadly enough yet. Jesus is the king, the true shepherd, the owner and ruler of the sheep. But this crowd who knows their Bible should realize that it is not all good for the Jewish nation's true shepherd to appear. Ezekiel 34 and Zechariah 11 and other passages show when the shepherd king comes, he will come in judgment and he will punish those who will not submit to him and who have misused his flock. When we think about the shepherd imagery for Jesus, we tend to think of it in Psalm 23 language, I think. We're the sheep. The Lord is our shepherd. The shepherd is good for us. We like all the things that we get from having the good shepherd leading us. You know what? This is right. The fact that Jesus is our shepherd is a great comfort for we enjoy the guidance and the provision and the safety that we have in him. There are so many wonderful, good things for the people when the shepherd arrives. But not everything, and especially not if you're a bad shepherd. I think in this respect, John 10, these conversations in John 10 is a masterful bit of understatement. It's not just that Jesus is the good shepherd who will take care of his sheep, but that he is also the sovereign judge who will punish the bad shepherds, these religious leaders. Most of the actual conversation is about what the Good Shepherd does and how he cares for them, but he leaves the audience to fill in the blank, to fill in the rest, and perhaps predictably, they fail to do so. He has shown them that he is that king and that someday, actually fairly soon, his judgment will fall on them. So you consider some applications then. Really, I think one of the first and most prominent applications in this passage actually applies to pastors, those who would lead the sheep. In fact, our word pastor is just the Latin word for shepherd. So here's the bad shepherds have been misleading God's sheep and Jesus is coming and calling them on it, reminding them that when God comes, To be the true shepherd, the bad shepherds will be punished. And there are pastors even now who will use the church as a means for financial gain. And when they're caught, they often make the news, and they bring shame upon God's church. But I wonder if it's more common, especially amongst a traditional theological conservatives, is for pastors to use their church as a platform for self-promotion. They aren't in it for the money. They know there isn't any there. They're not going to get rich from the church, but they're using their time and energy to pad their resumes or to increase their influence over their denomination or to boost their political clout or something like that. We shouldn't necessarily think either that just because we don't have an office that we won't be held accountable for our leadership. It's very common in churches for people to crave influence and to try to lead others even without an office. For example, it's been common in Baptist churches, like ours, that women are not allowed to be pastors or deacons. I think Paul pretty clearly forbids them from the office of pastor, at least. But if you think that women have lacked influence in the church, I think you are honestly hopelessly naive, right? Men, too, might have leadership influence with or without the office. But I don't think any of these people would be able to stand before Jesus, the true shepherd, someday and excuse their misuse of other sheep by saying, oh, I didn't really have the office, so it isn't really my fault. If we would lead, we are accountable to God for how we do that, whether we do it with an office or informally. Look, most of us just really are the sheep. We don't have any of these special responsibilities. What does this passage have for us? Let me focus for this on the claims of provision and protection that we get from the Good Shepherd. Do you believe that life following Jesus is actually better? That following Jesus sometimes means that your life now will not look all that appealing to the rest of the world. Are you willing to give up the pleasures of this life in exchange for eternal life? I sometimes worry that our actions show that we care a lot about this life. In fact, too much about this life. I don't think the only thing that you might pursue now at the expense of later is money and possessions. Most of us are aware that the shameless pursuit of wealth isn't a really very Christian thing to do. I think we're much less aware of and less critical of other kinds of things that are also limited to this life. We crave influence and power, even if it brings little wealth to us. Perhaps we simply want to be the best at something. We're willing to sacrifice a lot in order to get there. Perhaps we simply want to be popular or well-liked, whether online or in real life. Sometimes we want to be liked by a very small, distinctive group. Craftsmen of all sorts, including academics, artists, athletes, so forth, they can be like this. Even if virtually no one understands their value, the little group of people in their circle do. And we can spend an enormous amount of time and effort pursuing the approval of a very small group. All these things have something in common. They're all things we're trying to get that will not last past this life. We want an abundant life, but we act as if a half century of abundance will outweigh an eternity of God's pleasure. We betray ourselves showing that we don't really believe that the life Jesus offers us is better. We'd love to say, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want or I shall not lack anything. But then we act as if we have to provide it all for ourselves. A word of encouragement here too. Some of you perhaps have given up things in this life. for the sake of things that are eternal. And perhaps nobody knows that. Or perhaps nobody knows that except Jesus. But he won't forget. Second application, do you really believe that Jesus will protect you? Sometimes this application for us is really simple. For example, will you do what the blind man did and confess Jesus even when it costs you? It may not cost you much, perhaps the approval of some friends or colleagues, but we can care about these things an awful lot. And sometimes confessing Jesus really does cost us truly good things. Do you believe that Jesus will protect you then? Yeah, maybe a bigger application. Do you believe that Jesus will protect his church? There's a recently published book on American evangelicalism that has, I think, persuasively argued that the dominant cultural attitude of American evangelicals for the last few decades has been fear. Fear that their influence over the culture is waning. Fear that sinners are gaining more and more influence. Fear that other religions are becoming more important to the rest of the world. Fear that the world doesn't understand Christianity anymore. It doesn't defer to it the way they used to. These are things that might happen. In fact, perhaps are happening. And we could perhaps agree that they aren't really good things. We would want people to live more like Jesus and less sinfully. The promise of protection here is a sweet and comforting truth for the Christian because the promise is not that everything will be easy, but that nothing, ultimately nothing, will separate you from Jesus's love. The promise of protection is not the promise of physical safety, the absence of difficulty in this life, or having even some kind of internal calmness or certainty. It's the promise that the worst that the world can do to you is to reduce your time in this corrupted creation by a few years. And so maybe that's not quite it then. That's maybe not quite what we're worried about. Perhaps it's more that we're afraid of what the world is going to do to our children. We're afraid of how the culture is going. We make it too difficult to raise godly children in such a secularized world where temptations to fall away are seemingly impossible to avoid. Again, I ask, do you believe that no one is able to take Jesus's sheep out of his hand? It means not even you, certainly not the world. Do you really believe that? We should take care to not confuse our own ease and comfort for Jesus' protection and provision. He will give us what we need. He has given us what we need because he is the Good Shepherd, the loving King of all, and to those who follow him, he gives eternal life. Consider how the writer to Hebrews summarizes these themes of direction, provision, and eternal protection. He says, Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ. To him be glory forever and ever. Let's pray.