Sorry for not getting this out on time. We have to read today’s passage in light of what has been going on in chapter 9.
click here for an online Bible John 10:1-6
The mood toward Jesus from the religious leaders has been hostility. Many of them have been wanting to kill Jesus for some time. A group of them actually took up stones to kill him earlier. Now the hostility is directed toward Jesus’ followers as well. The blind man’s parents were afraid to say what they knew to be true because of the threats. The blind man was excommunicated from the synagogue.
Jesus paints a word-picture of a shepherd with a flock to describe his relationship with his followers. It’s a tough world for a sheep. Wolves want to eat you. Thieves want to steal you. Left on your own you would fall off of a cliff, drown in a river, or starve to death. The sheep were left in a community holding pen overnight. A watchman guarded the pen at night. In the morning, the shepherd came to the gate and called for his sheep. Those that were his came to his call. The others ignored him. He saw that all of his sheep were present and took them out to the pastures. The only hope for the sheep was their shepherd.
Our only hope is Christ. The world wants to consume you and Satan wants to destroy you. Christ is our protection and our guide. The key is recognizing his voice. So, how do we “hear” Christ? First, we have to be part of his flock. That means we have to turn to him in faith and make him the Lord of our lives. His voice will always agree with his written word. We have to know our Bible. He speaks to individual sheep but also to the whole flock. We have to be in a healthy relationship with a biblical local church. There are no “lone ranger” sheep. Any sheep separated from the church is in dire danger.
As I look at this passage, I have to ask myself, “Am I even listening for the shepherd’s voice?” I get so busy doing things and am capable of doing it on my own that I can forget about the shepherd. I am munching on grass and looking at my reflection in the water, then another sheep elbows me in the ribs and points out that the shepherd is moving the flock and I need to get with the program.
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2 comments:
Thank you for the overview. Much more pulled from the scripture than just what I read in the passage. Three things I would like to share: 1) testimony my son gave to me yesterday; 2) lone rangers defense and knowing the Bible; 3) application for ministering. None of these topics are all that related, so I will try to use paragraph markers.
I will start with Mathew 18:11. So, I read all but the last word of this verse from the KJV to my son and asked him to fill in the blank. After much toil he gave me the correct answer. His first response was "a boy." I said, "No no. Let's take a look at it. What do you know about the Son of man, who is that?" He said "Jesus." response "Very good. So, what did Jesus come for?" He said, "to save us from our sin." "Hmm, what is sin "Sin is when you do bad." "Bad according to who -- I mean what is it that makes it bad?" This was the perfect response: with hand movement like karate chops against the air, "Well, its like this, let me give you an example: when a man takes something... lets say we are not home and a man breaks into the house and steals something... that is bad." "Well, what makes that bad?" "When I come home I would be sad." "Thats Right! something was done to hurt you that you had no control over. So, let's look at the situation, what would you say when you got home?" "... someone stole something..." "Well you would not immediately say it was stolen, you'd say..." "It was lost." "BINGO! that's right. so let's see if we can't fill in the blank now..." So, thats the first thing I wanted to share. I was really happy about that. I later was amazed that it paralleled with Saturday's reading.
Let's try defending the lone ranger approach, with the understanding that we cannot completely be lone rangers, I think there is enough gray to warrant at least a little explanation. Christ was a lone ranger -- and we have to agree that our goal is to be Christ above all else in our lives. When we strive for this we find that a group once grown to a large size becomes to unyielding to the woes of the Spirit. The problem with lone rangers is that often times they go to far out and start blowing things up -- you see the wolf. We all have a natural tendency to become the wolf, we must be careful that we do not do things that harm others like my son said when he came back home he was sad. We also need to be human and realize when we make a mistake, when we realize our offense to take action to fix ourselves that we do not cause that harm again. We must be sensitive to the pain of others and seek to understand the root cause of the pain. If we do not follow Christ, but instead use Christ's teachings to lure others into a pit then we are wolves in sheep's clothings. We must be studying to show ourselves approved by God, a workman that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. You see the devil probably knows scripture better than any of us, but Christ knows more and the Holy Spirit will guide us to the truth that is known in Christ. Those guided by this voice is the Church. The important thing to ask: is the lone ranger guided by the Word of God or by his own agenda.
I want to ask now, before it comes what do you make of verse 16? Certainly he draws all men via the Holy Spirit, but could there be a more direct bringing, maybe the great flood? Looking for your thoughts...
So the last part, application for today. Like we've seen so directly in previous chapters there are two camps, those who believe and those who do not. The biggest thing I want to say is to be careful when judging weather or not someone is in your camp... be careful that you do not exclude yourself from the camp you desire. Today, many people look like they belong to Christ, to me, but we can not see the heart and we must leave the judgment of someone's intent to Him who can see it for what it really is. This does not mean reject the person, but accept and receive what you can to draw closer to Christ. We must judge the messages that we receive to be of the light or darkness. Just because we do not accept or receive a message does not mean we reject or condemn the message. We can be undecided and in such cases we sit on our hands, but at some point we may find that we need to decide without enough information, pray and ask God to show you the path to take. I like to give a week in such situations to look for His answer, but I can not be dogmatic about that either. Amen.
Love,
ej
I've read this parable many times and each time I read it before I somehow thought there were two herds of sheep (people) in the pen - one saved and the other unsaved, but today I saw something different.
While reading the Contemporary English Version for a change I noticed that there was no mention of combined flocks in the pen. All of the sheep in the pen are the Lord's sheep - that He created every single sheep in that pen - they are all unsaved and are equally waiting in the pen until Jesus comes and calls their name.
Then recognizing the Lord's voice, we respond by following out behind Christ as our leader. And the ones that don't follow Christ out the gate are those who were stolen by the Devil for his purposes.
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