I See Jesus the Good Shepherd

 March 13 2022

John 10:1-18

There is no other more sentimental symbol of God than perhaps that of him being our good Shepherd. Most all of us have heard the twenty-third Psalm with its beautiful imagery which gives us great peace at those distressing times of our life. It is easy to imagine that there we are, Jesus our shepherd and we are tagging along at his side, walking through the green pastures, drinking from the still waters just us and Jesus going through life, side by side. Yet to do so, I believe, is to miss a very important aspect of this idea of having Jesus as our shepherd and that is that he is the shepherd of a flock not just one little old sheep who is us. We can never forget that when Jesus finds the one he doesn’t just head out on great adventures with this one sheep but rather Jesus brings this sheep back to the flock, to the ninety-nine. In doing so, Jesus is stating a very important yet subtle fact of his ministry which is that he is taking a bunch of lost people and bringing them together into one flock under his watch and care.

Now when we understand that what Jesus is bringing about is a unified group of people we begin to also understand the enormous work that he is attempting to do. I mean, can you imagine what it must take to round up a bunch of head strong individuals and get them to put the needs of the group over the needs of themselves? Most of us are thinking, good luck with that! We all know that division is pretty easy to achieve; just look around, it’s everywhere you look. Getting a group of people to be all on the same page, well that’s a whole different ballgame. Getting people to be unified about anything may seem to be an impossibility for us but let us not forget that what is impossible for us is very much possible for God. This is perhaps why Jesus is not just the Shepherd but he is instead the Good Shepherd, remembering that God alone is good. We might say then that Jesus is the God Shepherd because he is the one creating a unity that points to the greatness of God. The question that we must ask ourselves during this Lenten journey we are on to Calvary is this: Do we see Jesus as the Good Shepherd? Do we see Jesus as the one who is great enough to overcome the divisions that threaten to tear us apart, the one who is great enough to gather us all into one life?

Our story in John concerning Jesus as the Good Shepherd actually begins in the ninth chapter of John where Jesus heals the man born blind. Through this man’s encounter with Jesus he is healed with his blindness but more than this this man has an experience of faith where he goes from seeing Jesus as a mere man, to seeing Jesus as a prophet and finally, he comes to believe that Jesus is the Son of Man, one who has opened heaven so that the presence of God can come close at last. This man who testified that once he was blind but now he could see, this man is the first one in the gospel of John to worship at the feet of Jesus. It is this act which infuriates the religious power figures and they throw him out of the Jewish community. So, here he is, a man who is alone, torn from the ties of his past wondering nervously about his future. He is the one lost sheep that is written about in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew that Jesus finds far from the fold. He is the lost lamb that Jesus finds and places upon his shoulders and runs home with that sheep, rejoicing. So, it just makes sense that as this man who was born blind has now found himself cast out of his community on account of Jesus that Jesus would begin to tell this man of a new community where he would indeed belong.

Jesus begins by teaching us about how one goes about entering this community and in doing so gives us clues to the identity of the community that he is speaking about. John in writing his gospel account is a master of using the well known scriptures of the people of his day and taking them and subtly placing them within his account. We see this very much here in the story of the Good Shepherd where Jesus tells us that because he enters by the door, this is why he is the shepherd of the sheep. So, we are left wondering, just what is this door, that Jesus is entering? The answer is found in a well known Psalm found in all four gospel accounts, the one-hundredth and eighteenth Psalm. This is the Psalm that was sung as Jesus entered Jerusalem, what we know as Palm Sunday. Now, this was sung as Jesus entered because this song is about the people needing God to send them a Savior. The loud cry’s of Hosanna, that are so familiar to us, are the words of the twenty fifth verse of the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm which is translated as being “Save us we pray, O Lord! O Lord, give us success! The people who sung these words though believed that their salvation was to be found in a king who would destroy their enemies, the Romans. In their mad desire for a king though these who cheered for Jesus had sadly misunderstood the real beauty of the Psalm that they had sung. This is what John is attempting to point out here in this teaching of the Good Shepherd. You see, if you read through the entire one hundredth and eighteenth Psalm, you come to the nineteenth and twentieth verses which read, “Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate or the door of the Lord that the righteous shall enter it.” Here the Psalmist is speaking about the gates of the Temple, the holy place into which only the righteous can enter. So, when John states that Jesus enters by the gate or the door he is saying that Jesus is the righteous one who is able to enter through the gate or the door into the Temple. The gatekeeper of the door is the Father, because as we learn in the later verses of the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm, the place that is entered is the house of the Lord, the place Jesus calls his Father’s house. 

So, this is where Jesus, our Good Shepherd is taking us, into the Fathers house. As we continue to follow what Jesus is saying he tells us that the sheep hear his voice. Jesus tells us that he calls his sheep by their name which means that he knows us intimately. As we hear the voice of Jesus calling out to us then we are led out. Here once again, we must stop and ask, out of where? The answer is that we are led out of the world, out of the realm where people do not know God as we learned in the first chapter of John. We come out of the world and we follow Jesus because we know his voice.Well, just what does this mean? I mean what does the voice of Jesus even sound like? I believe that right here John is once again pointing us back to something Jesus has said previously, in the fifth chapter where we heard Jesus tell us, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live”. The voice of the Shepherd then is the voice who commands us to love one another as Jesus has first loved us.  So, it is those who hear this command to love and follow Jesus’s lead in loving others these are the ones Jesus opens the way to enter into the Father’s house. Jesus goes on to say that those who follow Jesus will refuse to listen to strangers. The word “strangers” means those who belong to another. This also points us back to something Jesus has previously taught us in the eighth chapter where he states that whoever is of God, whoever belongs to God hears the words of God. The reason people do not hear the words of God is that they belong to another and that other that people belong to is Satan, the one who wants nothing to do with the truth because the truth is not in him. This truth that those who know Jesus have experienced for themselves is the truth of his love for them. They know the love that Jesus has for them because when they found themselves lost and alone, far from where they should have been, this is where Jesus found them. This is where Jesus loved on them, showed them his favor and grace and it is the truth of this love, this is why they belong to Jesus and no other. It is this love of Jesus, this love we know to be true because we have experienced it, this love is the love we want to show to others because we know what this love has done for us.

It is this love of Jesus, this is what has opened the door for us to enter into our Father’s house. Yet, as Jesus goes on to explain not everyone understands that love is the way that leads into the Father’s presence.  Jesus speaks of those who had come before him that were nothing but thieves and robbers, those that the sheep refused to listen to. This quote about thieves and robbers is from one of the favorite chapters of  Jesus from all of the Old Testament scriptures, the sixth chapter of the book of Hosea. There, in the eighth and ninth verses we read, “Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests band together; they murder on the way to Shechem; they commit shameful crimes…” What’s going on here is that priests, the very servants of God, had no problem with committing serious crimes against people. You see, there was a disconnect within their heart. They thought they could love God, bring him the sacrifices he required and in the same breath be very unloving toward people in general. This is why in the verse that comes before in this chapter of Hosea we hear God proclaim that he desires steadfast love and not sacrifice; the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Its not enough to say, hey, I love you God, I give sacrificially, I offer up everything I have to show you just how much I love you God and then in our dealings with the people around us be a horrible person full of hatred, refusing to be merciful to others. What God commands is that his people love him with his whole heart, a heart that loves God and loves others. God will accept nothing less. Those who enter into the presence of their Heavenly Father with a heart united in their love of Jesus, perfectly God and perfectly human, these are the ones who will find safety in their Father’s house.

Well, Jesus goes on to say that the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. Here the central idea Jesus is addressing is life; are you one who takes life or gives life? To steal is to take what another person needs to live. To kill is take another’s life outright and to destroy references the union of two becoming one, such as in marriage but in this instance it also refers to the union of God, who is life, with his people. Those who do not trust God to provide and give them life will believe that the only way to have life is to take life from others. How very different is Jesus who assures us that he came that those who are united with him will have life and not just any life but a life pressed down and overflowing. This life Jesus offers us is a life so secure that it can be given away, all of it can be laid down for the sake of others. This is how one is to love God with all of their soul or life as God commands.

This generous act of Jesus, to give up his life so that those he loves might have life, how very different his actions are from those who seek to control others in their quest for fame and fortune. Jesus calls these people who only act to receive power over others, “hirelings”, people who only watch over others if there’s something in it for them. These are the one’s who want to lord it over others, to feed their lust for power. Their true motives become oh, so evident though the minute that danger arises because it is then that they look out for number one, leaving those under their watch to fend for themselves. These guns-for-hire know nothing of real power which is the power to lay down ones life in the service of others. Jesus, in contrast to these hirelings, says that he knows us, he has a bond with us that cannot be broken. This bond with us is just like the bond that Jesus has with his Heavenly Father. In other words, as Jesus and the Father are one so Jesus is united with us. He is not going anywhere when trouble comes; no, he is going to stick around and destroy trouble even if to do so means letting that trouble destroy him. This is what it means to love God with all of your strength. It means to use all the power you have to serve the ones God loves.

So, have you figured out the way Jesus our good Shepherd is uniting us into one? He is doing it the way that God always expected his people to be unified and that is through their love of him. Everyday when God’s people would wake up what was supposed to be on their lips was this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God , the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your soul or life; you are to love the Lord your God with all of your might. This is the way of unity because as there is one God there will be one people, one flock. When Jesus says that we are to follow him he doesn’t mean that we are to just wander around after Jesus; no, he is saying that now that he has loved God with all that he is so also we are to do likewise. As Jesus loved God with all of his heart, loving God by loving others so that those in his care could find safety and security in his presence so too we are to hear the voice of Jesus and create safe places for others through our love for them. As Jesus loved God with all of his soul or life we too are to hear the voice of Jesus and do likewise. We are to know that we have life, an abundant life, a life overflowing with goodness therefore we do not have to take more than we need, we do not have to take another’s life or destroy another’s life in order to keep the life we have been given. No, like Jesus we can take this life we have been given and give it for the sake of all. As Jesus loved God with all of his strength and power we too are to hear the voice of Jesus and do likewise. We are to not lord ourselves over others for the power and strength we may receive but rather we are to remember that just as Jesus is united with his Heavenly Father we too are to be just as united in service and love to one another. We are to use all of our strength and power to hold the unity together even using our power to lay down our life for the sake of the unity if the need arises.

Jesus is the good Shepherd. Is this the way that you know Jesus, is he your good Shepherd? If you see Jesus as your good Shepherd then you will also know that it is his voice that we are to be listening for when our eyes open and our feet hit the floor. Jesus, our good Shepherd, is telling us, hear me, listen to me. Jesus calls us to remember that as we love the God who is one so also we as his people are to be one as well. Jesus our good Shepherd is speaking, telling us to love God with all that we are. Yet, as we well know, there are many voices that speak to us everyday, just why should we hear the voice of Jesus speaking to us above all the noise that rushes at us? The answer is that we are to lean in to hear Jesus because we remember that when we were so very lost, so alone and scared having no one but ourselves to rely upon, in our desperation we lifted our voice in despair. Jesus heard our voice. Jesus heard us and Jesus listened to us because Jesus knows us. There we realized that Jesus, better than anyone else, understood our longings, our hurts and our fears and he came to lift us up and carry us into a place of safety, security and abundance. This is why we listen because Jesus first listened to us. This is why we love because when we wondered if we were even lovable at all, there was Jesus and in his arms we experienced the truth of his love, a love that transformed our hearts. It is the love of Jesus that creates in us a listening heart, a loving heart, a heart willing to follow him all the way to Calvary. To God be the glory! Amen!