Christ the Good Shepherd | Sermon 07/16/2023

John 10:11-21

All that Jesus was alluding to in our passage last week He now declares plainly. He will identify the Shepherd He was describing. He is not just the ultimate example of the Hebrew shepherd on the plains and mountainsides of Israel. He is the cosmological I AM who has come to shepherd His people. And for the first time in history, to save the flock from predators and death He himself must die so they survive. A hired hand is only concerned with himself and at the first sight of danger, the time when he is needed most, he abandons what he considers not his responsibility. A true shepherd is like David who ran towards the lion and bear, slayed them and pried open its jaw to remove the lamb from its mouth.

There is a mutual knowledge and intimacy between the Good Shepherd and His sheep. And that is bound in the triune relationship between the Father and the Son. It’s as if Jesus is demonstrating to us, as He in no way neglects the Father, He will in no way neglect us. Christ has come to His sheep among the Jews and He will remove them from the flocks of the false shepherds. But this is also the point to which all the prophecies of the Gentiles’ salvation will be fulfilled. He has other sheep, not of this Jewish fold that He will take to the rest of the sheep. Making one flock is not even just about putting them together but unifying them in Himself. Christ and Christ alone is our new identity. The Father loves the Son for carrying out their long-planned act of redemption.

And in this redemption His resurrection will be as important as His death. His life means we have life. Jesus then finishes this first discourse by establishing that despite all the murder and capture attempts, despite how He will die in the future, He willingly lays down His own life and in His own control. He is the active initiator and not an inactive receiver. This is the plan of God and no one else’s. And it will be the divine power of God, in His own self, that will raise Him up again. The Jews listening became divided again. Those who seem to hear and those who seem to be deaf. The question is: who among them heard their Shepherd’s voice?