Reference

John 10:16-30

Sermon Discussion Questions:

1. Read John 10:16-21. As you read, ask yourself: "Why is this in the Bible?" What essential truths do you learn about Jesus, yourself, and the world from these verses? What would we lose if we didn't have them?
2. What would be different about the story of the gospel if vs. 17-18 were not true? If Jesus didn't willingly lay down His life, but if it was taken from Him?
3. Read Col 2:12-13, and then 3:1-2. How does the resurrection of Jesus provide present help, not only future hope?
4. Read John 10:16. What does this mean? How does it affect us today?

One of the refreshing things about studying the life of Jesus is you find a man of integrity, who does what He says.

Promises are easy to make, hard to keep. Talk is cheap, and trust that is lost is hard to regain. And the more fantastic the promise, the more our suspicions are raised.

My three-year-old has recently taken to using the phrase “I’ll do anything for you,” when asking for something. We will be eating ice cream and he, having polished his own off, will look at you with the most sincere look of impassioned concern, and will make a vow: “I’ll do anything for you”—if you give him a bite of your ice cream. It usually works on his parents. It always works on his grandparents. But it rarely works on his brothers. The parents and grandparents are big softies who find him so cute they can’t help themselves. But the brothers are more interested in the exchange of goods taking place with the deal.

They have learned that a toddler is not very reliable for following through on promises, and once he is gotten what he wanted, his motivation to keep up his end of the deal pretty seriously falters. Owen has the power and integrity of…well, a three-year-old.

They are learning that fantastic promises are only fantastic to the degree that the person has the integrity required to follow through on those promises. And as we grow up and encounter friends, spouses, co-workers, doctors, politicians—we realize how valuable integrity is, and how cautious we should be when someone is making incredible promises to us.

Which is why the life of Jesus is so captivating. Here we find a man who makes promises that would make any political candidate blush in their staggering scope. Here is a man who isn’t promising to balance a budget or lower gas-prices—Jesus is promising to remake this entire world, to overcome death, to give you eternal life. But how do we know that He will keep His promises?

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7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” 19 There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. 20 Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” 21 Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

John 10:7-21

Jesus Will Die for His Sheep

Of all the things that highlight the power and authority of Jesus most clearly, it is His emphasis on His authority over His own death and resurrection.

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” - John 10:17-18

Jesus’ Death Was not an Accident

If you have been in a car accident before, whatever kind, usually one essential factor of the accident was you didn’t see it coming. That car came out of nowhere! If you saw it coming, you would have prevented the accident! In a way, that’s how death comes to us. Of course, we all know, theoretically, that we will die, that we get old, that we slow down. But it isn’t until we have that moment that we didn’t expect, that came out of nowhere, and we are suddenly left with the ugly brute fact of our mortality. Terry Pratchett writes that inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

And Jesus, our sympathetic high priest, knows what it is like to walk down the dark hallway of death. He can relate to your pain, your fear. But His experience is very different than our own. Our deaths are an inevitability. His was not. Jesus is the Son of God, fully divine; but He also was truly a man, truly born of a woman. But Death is not a natural part of being a human. It is a toxic consequence of sin. In Eden, God warned Adam and Eve that sin brings death; if they were to rupture their union with the Source of Life, it would bring Death. And they did. And they died. And so do we. The wages of sin is death, Paul says. Death is a paycheck that sin earns, and you and I and everyone else have put in the shifts, worked overtime, and even have a sizable pension awaiting us. And our physical death is the first step on a long, dark voyage of an eternity of that miserable trajectory. Hell is the Bible’s description of that eternal death—the place where everyone (myself included) deserves to go.

But Jesus? He never sinned. He did not tell the Father “No, my plans, not yours; I’m in charge, you’re not; my way, not your way.” So death had no rightful claim on Him, no authority over Him. The Shade of the Years, so terrifying and final to all of us, cannot intimidate Jesus. To Jesus, Death was housefly in a windstorm; a snowball on August asphalt; a bullet made of soap bubbles. Were His life to continue for decades and decades He would not have sunk under arthritis and cancer and cataracts and taking several minutes to get back up out of his chair until he eventually never gets up again. Life, eternal life, pulsed through Jesus’ veins. Which means that His death was not an accident.

Jesus says: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” His death was something He chose to participate in.

If Jesus’ death was not inevitable, but chosen, then that leads us to wonder: Why?

Jesus’ Death Was Intentional

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” (John 10:11; see also 10:15).

Jesus’ chooses to lay down His life for His sheep. Jesus’ death, abstractly, doesn’t mean anything. If Jesus ran and jumped off a cliff and yelled, “See how much I love yooouuuu….” We wouldn’t be moved to trust Him or even discern what He was doing. But if you are being led to the guillotine to be executed for your crimes, but Jesus stops you on the way and says, “I will take your place,” we understand. He is dying for me.

Jesus Will Resurrect for His Sheep

And His resurrection was something He chose as well.

We see here that Jesus is not like other men—dead men don’t make choices. But Jesus says, “I will choose to lay my life down, and then (after I am dead) I will choose to take it back up.” The icy wave of death washes over Christ and the candle of His eternal Life is not extinguished. It persists. In fact, it banishes the very wave itself!

Earlier, Jesus told us in John’s gospel: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death,” (John 8:51).

Christians die. But we don’t die. We sleep.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. - 1 Cor 15:20

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. - 1 Cor 15:56-57

Experience

How do we know that we can approach death without fear? Jesus rose from the dead.

“Fear not, I am the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. - Rev 1:17-18

Our own spiritual deadness will be, and currently is being overwhelmed by Christ’s resurrection life:

having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, - Col 2:12-13

Jesus Will Call His Sheep

And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. - John 10:16

What does that mean?

Jesus has been using an extended metaphor of sheep and a shepherd. The sheep are God’s people, and shepherds are leaders of God’s people.

In Jesus’ use of this image, He stylizes the Pharisees as false shepherds—hired hands, thieves, and robbers—who fail the sheep. In contrast, Jesus presents Himself as the Good Shepherd who will lead the sheep to abundant life, who will lay down His own life for them, and who knows the sheep (and the sheep know Him). But then He turns and claims: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.”

Who is that?

“This fold” refers to the sheep of Judaism, the sheep within Israel. In vs 1-5 Jesus spoke about a flock of sheep in a sheep pen whom He calls out of the sheep pen to follow Him.
“other sheep” then refer to the elect outside of Israel, outside of the ethnic group of Jews: the Gentiles. Think of the Samaritan woman in John 4—she is outside of Israel, not a Jew, yet she exhibits faith in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. Jesus is claiming that there are more people like that scattered abroad throughout the world and they must be brought in so that there will be “one flock, one shepherd. The Israel-sheep and the Gentile-sheep do not remain divided, but meld together into one flock.
This emphasis on the unity of Jew-Gentile is brought up again later in John, when the high priest accidentally prophesies about how Jesus will die for His people: “He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. (John 11:51-52)
And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. - Acts 10:28
- …45 And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. - Acts 10:45
God’s plan from the very beginning was never limited to Israel alone. To the patriarch of Israel, Abraham, God promises: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” (Gen 12:3).
And we see this repeatedly throughout the Old Testament as we see non-Jews who are brought into the people of Israel, like the whole mass of Egyptians that joined Israel during the Exodus (Ex 12:38), Jethro (Moses’ father-in-law), Rahab, Ruth, Caleb.
We see Isaiah tell us that Israel is to be a light to the nations: (Isa 49:6) “I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
And Jesus is now fulfilling this through His work as the Good Shepherd—He has come to seek out His sheep, and not just the sheep of Israel, but all of God’s elect scattered abroad.

This has two major implications for us:

Unity. Because of the ministry of Christ to fulfill the old covenant and establish the new, the distinction between Israel and non-Israel is abolished among God’s family. Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus:
- 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, - Eph 2:14-15
- This means that there are not two people of God, nor are there two plans of salvation, nor are there two different plans for the restoration of God’s people. Paul tells us repeatedly in Romans and Galatians, that it is those who exercise faith who are the children of Abraham and that Jew is not one outwardly who adopts circumcision, but one who has their hearts circumcised (Gal 3:7, 9, 29; Rom 2:29; 4:12; 9:6-8; Phil 3:3). The multi-ethnic, New Covenant people of God—the Church—is not the replacement of Israel, but the blossoming and full-flowering of the Old Covenant people of God. This was God’s plan all along. Which means that the promises and privileges made to the people of Israel we become inheritors of as the new Israel, the Church. We are “grafted in” to the tree of Israel (cf. Rom 11).
- “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, 10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
- Rev 6:9-10 (cf. Ex 19:6 and 1 Pet 2:9)
- Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. - Col 3:11
Missions. Israel’s missions strategy in the Old Testament was a “come and see” approach. When Jesus arrives and inaugurates the New Covenant, God’s people adopt a “go and tell” approach.
- The Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” - Matt 28:18-20
  - Notice: Jesus promised us in John 10:16 that He is the one who brings His sheep in. Connection here with His presence amidst the mission. He is with us always as we go and make disciples. So we must go, but we trust that He is with us as we work.
- This is why Christianity has been a missionary religion from the get-go. God’s sheep are scattered abroad, and His desire is for them to be saved.
  - Why we support missionaries around the world, like the Gabriels in Ireland and the Solano’s in Nicaragua.
  - Why we evangelize those around us.
    - JD Vance and his Hindu wife and the scandal of “converting” someone. What Vance said:
      - “…do I hope, eventually, that she is somehow moved by the same thing I was moved by in church? Yes. I honestly do wish that, because I believe in the Christian gospel and I hope that eventually my wife comes to see it the same way. “But if she doesn’t,” Vance went on to say, “God says that everybody has free will, so that doesn’t cause a problem with me. That’s something that you work out with your friends, your family, the person you most love.”
    - Most news outlets when they heard about this were scandalized that Vance would assume that his wife's religion (Hinduism) would be something he'd wish to change. It sounds arrogant and bigoted to claim that your perspective is the one true one while everybody else's is wrong, to assert that there is one true path. And that is arrogant...unless...it is true. And if it is true, if Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and none come to the Father except through Him...then it isn't arrogant to want others to believe in that, but it is the height of love.