Last week we saw Jesus say, “I am the door to the sheep…I am the Way…All that came before Me are thieves and robbers.”  All that ever came to take My people, My creation…out to pasture, all of them…thieves and robbers…Plato, Buddha, Mohammad, Joseph Smith, Confucius…all of these men had wise things to say… seemingly…all claimed to be divine or at least have a direct connection to the divine…Confucius…you know the one who said…Man who run behind car get exhausted!  Man who run in front of car get tired…

 

All the wisdom, all the philosophy of these, all of the mysticism offered by these…all gave great points and even wise direction, good principles but none offered the power to actually do the things that they said.  If you buy into that, if you follow after that, you are going to get ripped off!  None actually set lives eternally free!  And so even as good as it all sounded, as wise as it all was and maybe even is…at its root…hollow and ultimately disastrous.

 

You see it’s a question of destination.  Jesus said that in Him is life and that He was sent to give life to the world and so if your program, your wisdom, your aim…if it doesn’t destinate, if it doesn’t ultimately arrive at the person of Jesus Christ, then it indeed does not arrive.

 

Jesus said I have come…I alone…don’t get pulled away!  Don’t get got!  I have come…that you, My sheep, My creation…may have life and have it more abundantly…and so we pick it up today as Jesus continues His teaching…

 

 

John Chapter 10, Verse 11.  I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.  So He’s there with the man that was born blind, who was just cast out of the Synagogue by the Pharisees who, at this time, were the shepherds of Israel…and notice when this man was cast out, it was Jesus who sought for him…and came to him…and now he says in the presence of those false, self-righteous shepherds.  I am the good shepherd. 

 

I don’t cast ‘em out…I don’t use them for what I can get and then expel them!  No, I lay my life down to protect them!  Now understand the Jews most likely heard something different here because literally in the Greek what Jesus said is, “I am the shepherd, the good.”  And so as they claim Jehovah as their shepherd, they would have, they could have, they more than likely heard this as Jesus’ claiming full deity.  I am the shepherd, the good.   

 

Verse 12, But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.  It’s interesting to me that over the years I have seen ads in the paper or classifieds on Craigslist of churches seeking to hire a pastor.  And I wonder to myself, have they not read these words of Jesus?  A hireling, one who shepherds the flock for personal gain, is not a shepherd at all.  I always want to just call them or respond to their ad and tell them…wait on the Lord!  God will raise one up from among you!  And if not, if you go a Sunday waiting on the Lord, pray!  Your pastor, Jesus Christ, He is there with you…(story of CCA – they prayed for over a year…and now look at what God has done!)

 

But truly, one who is attracted by the pay…one who is brought in by the position, Jesus says it here…is not a shepherd but a mercenary and the wolf will have his way in that flock…and the mercenary will flee…which doesn’t necessarily mean he will leave…run away…but that he won’t care to be involved…to correct, to rebuke, and to exhort upon the authority of the Word of God…that might endanger his pay you see…

 

Jesus says in the next verse, verse 13, The hireling flees because he is a hireling, and does not care about the sheep…you see he has been hired…and who hired him?  Who is his employer?  Ah, the people.  And so he will seek to please his employer, the people…and the people will be scattered.  

 

Listen, I know and I am committed to the fact that the best thing that I can do for this flock, this church, is stand very firm upon the Word of God.  Even if sometimes it means people will not want me involved…they won’t want to hear what I have to say…it doesn’t matter…the shepherd lays his life down Jesus says…it’s not about me, it’s not about you, it’s about Jesus Christ.  But the hireling won’t go there…

 

Now of course Jesus here is speaking in the presence of the Pharisees but what He’s saying is directly applicable to the modern construct of the church, He is drawing a stark contrast between the religious elite and Himself…the self righteous, and the truly righteous.  They had just cast out this man from the synagogue…Jesus had come to him…and so verse 14…

 

I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.  And so Jesus, our good shepherd.  The one who will and did lay His life down for the flock…and I think something that is pretty cool is the fact that a shepherd would never leave his flock…except at one time…when he commits them into the care of the “porter” of the sheepfold; and that is at night-fall.  So why is this neat?  Because when Jesus ascended unto His Father in heaven after the resurrection, the porter came…the Holy Spirit who now has charge of the flock until the good Shepherd returns.  Jesus is the good shepherd!

 

Verse 15, As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.  So the eternal union between Father and Son seen here in the plan and purpose of the Christ.  The plan of mankinds’ redemption.  That God Himself would set right what we have so messed up.  But even in that, the fact that God has rescued us, Man has yet messed it up again and set up man made religious systems and drafted man made traditions and procedures that they believe in some way will accomplish what Jesus has already done…what He and the Father had planned from the foundations of the world.

 

Religion and all of the various religious systems are mans’ attempt to reach up to heaven and reach God…Christianity is God reaching down to man.  The finite cannot reach the infinite…it’s not a possibility…and so all, yes ALL religious systems are absolutely disastrous at their core…the One way is Jesus Christ…He has laid His life down for the sheep and therefore it is only through a real life relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ that the finite and infinite are complete reconciled!  So don’t get it twisted!  Seek God, call out to Him with a humble and contrite heart…understand what He has done for you…and the Word promises that you will find Him.  You will glimpse the person of the infinite…(look at 2 Chron 30?)

 

Verse 16, And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.  Some have suggested that this is biblical evidence for aliens…and I would agree…aliens called gentiles!  HA!  Because in the family of God, we are all one flock.  There is neither Jew not gentile, black or white, poor or rich, cool of nerdy….we are all one in Christ. 

 

Verse 17, Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.  No one had the power to kill Jesus.  Have you ever thought of that?  The wages of sin are death, the Bible says…yet Jesus was without sin.  And so death had no charge over Jesus…but on the cross He cried out, “Father, into Your hands I COMMIT my Spirit!”  Jesus killed Jesus.  People say, oh well the Jews killed Him…oh no it was the Romans…neither ya’ll…Jesus killed Jesus…willingly laying His life down so that we may be set free from the power and penalty of sin.  

 

We see this in verse 18, No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down Myself.  I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.  This command I have received from My Father.  It’s so amazing to think that with all that Jesus went through, He was not a captive of man…but man was a captive of Him…of His will…of His love and God’s grace…

 

The treachery of Judas, the arrest in the Garden, the unlawful arraignment before Caiaphas, the insults from the soldiers, the betrayal by Peter, the trial before Pilate, the submission to the unjust sentence, the scouraging, the journey to Calvary, the nailing of His hands and His feet to the  cross…all of these He voluntarily endured.

 

We see a powerful type of this in Genesis Chapter 22 where we read that the ram, which Abraham placed on the altar as a substitute for Isaac, was “caught in the thicket by his horns.”  The “horns” speak of strength and power…and so how is that a type of Jesus?  That shows us that Christ did not succumb to death through weakness, but that He gave up His life in the full vigor of His strength!  It was not the sentence of death pronounced on Him by Pilate that held Him there on that cross…it was not the power of the nails that held Him there on the cross…it was the strength of His love that held Him there!

 

He says here in verse 18 that his death was in power.  “I have the power to lay it down!”  And because He was and is full deity, was and is perfect, was and is infinite, He also had the power to take it again…and he did…after three days!  Notice He says that He and His Father are in on this together…and again, referring to God, Jehovah, Yahweh as His Father…enraged the Jews…

 

Verse 19, Therefore there was a division again among the Jews because of these sayings.  And many of them said, “He has a demon and is mad.  Why do you listen to Him?”  Others said, These are not the words of one who has a demon.  Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

Notice it was “many” who called the Him a demon.  It was “many” who rejected Christ.  Yet John simply says “others” did not.  I love that word “other.”  Because here Jesus is, standing among them, yet other.  Here Jesus is talking with them, yet other.  Here Jesus is, God Himself in the flesh, here he is reaching down from heaven to them…offering something other than false religion, fake human righteousness…busted mechanical motions of false humility and false service…something completely other…a relationship and life.

 

God is “other.”  He is higher!  His ways are past finding out but He has made it so He Himself is not past finding out!  How amazing!? 

 

This is the God that numbered the stars and calls them by name.  This is the God that has numbered the sands of the sea.  The God who spoke all that we know and see into being.  The God who is completely pure…completely good…completely complete…

 

And it’s a curious thing: when we accept Jesus as the Savior and Lord of our lives and we evict ourselves from the throne seat of our lives…we grow in His word and see Him faithful…as we glimpse that He indeed is "Other," we transform, we become "other" than what we were. The Old Man dead…the old woman dead…the New Man, the new woman in relationship with Christ and even in His very image…arises in us. We stop living an inauthentic life, which we live not as ourselves, but as what others makes us be, what the culture wants us to be and then we wade in frustration for not attaining the earthly ideals the world imposes upon us.

 

But in God, as we follow Jesus, as we draw near to Him, as we bat left handed, as we do what’s right…dying to ourselves and the dying to the essesence of inauthenticiy…we become who we are meant to be.

And therefore, "to be" is better than "to aspire" and "to aspire" becomes better than blind conformity with "values" that are not from the "Other" but that are alien to Him.  The false ‘values’ of this world system…that at their core…nothingness…great loss.

 

God has so much more for you…God has such life for you! 

 

As we become more and more who Go has created us to be, we become more and more “other”…more and more like Him, increasing in grace and virtue and love and truth and power and purpose and vision…And the cool thing is that as we allow God to do that work in our lives…sanctification…making us other, we become ourselves.

 

Who we were meant to be…who we know under all this…we truly are….and then opened to us is  Life, and Life abundantly.  May the Lord bless.