The Characteristics of True Sheep

Scripture says, truly, truly,
I say to you, this is John 10 verse one. He who does not enter
the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up in another way, that
man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door
is the shepherd of the sheep. To him, the gatekeeper opens,
the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name
and leads them out. When he has brought all out,
brought out all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow
him and they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow,
they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of
strangers, this figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they
did not understand what he was saying to them. And that’s the
text from which we draw the message today. But I want to begin by
just bringing us up to date on where we are in the church in
America. And I want you to keep in mind
when I talk about the church, I’m not necessarily talking about
this specific local church. I’m talking in very general terms
about the church across the United States. And the church in America
today is prospering. At least it seems like the church
is prospering. For example, and these statistics
are pre covid. So you’ll forgive me for that
because I don’t know what the case is now. But In the state
of Michigan alone, where we used to serve, there were 46 megachurches
that were recorded in the state, and a megachurch was defined
by churches that have over 2,000 people per Sunday attending the
church. The total number of these, the
average was 3,769 in each of those gatherings. 173,374 people in 49 churches. Those
are large congregations. In Texas, the numbers are greatly
increased from that. There are 191 megachurches or
were just a few years ago in the state of Texas, one of which,
one single church of which some of you will even know the pastor’s
name when I mentioned the number of people who go there. touts
43,500 per Sunday. They meet where some sports team
used to play. Sadly, however, as one examines
more closely the realities of many of these churches and churches
throughout the United States, when you think about where they
are, it becomes clear that many are attending services But many
fewer are greatly influenced by the truth of the gospel. And in many of those churches,
the gospel has disappeared altogether. When the Lord views the church
as a whole in America, I wonder if he might condemn it with a
condemnation similar to that pronounced on the nation of Israel
by Isaiah in Isaiah chapter one. And if you recall anything about
that chapter, you’ll remember that that Isaiah basically says
to the people, God says to the people that he is done with their
sacrifices and he longs to give them a new heart. Though your
sins be as scarlet, they can be made white as snow. Though they be red like crimson,
they will be as wool. They needed a cleansing. They
needed to be renewed. They needed to be redeemed, actually. Because not every person in God’s
chosen nation was chosen to salvation. Beyond that, the words of the
Lord to the church in Laodicea come to mind. The Lord said to
the church in Laodicea in Revelation 3 and to the angel of the church
in Laodicea, write the words of the Amen, the faithful and
true witness, the beginning of God’s creation. I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot.
Would you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm
and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. And
there is really nothing very kind that the Savior has to say
to the church at Laodicea except that he stands at the door and
knocks. And if anybody will open to him, he will come in to them. The church in Laodicea looked
prosperous, too, by the way, and they thought they were prosperous. But they were a spiritual shipwreck.
a disaster area, and I fear that that is characteristic of much
that calls itself Christianity in our country today. Now, why
is it that so much of the church in America today seems so outwardly
prosperous while the culture continues to slide towards Sodom?
Why is that? If the church is really as prosperous
as it says it is, as it seems to be in so many circles, why
is it that the culture as a whole continues to deteriorate? Because the church should have
an influence in the world. The church should make an impact
on the world. I can think of one church in
the greater Chicago, Illinois area, actually over on the edge
of Indiana, but in that area that in the last 50 years or
so has touted some 5 to 12 million professions of faith. And I ask you, even with some
people dying and some others moving away, if I drop 5 to 10
million truly converted people in Chicago, Illinois, Do you
think the city might change just a little? Do you think that it
might not be the murder capital of America like it is today? I think so. What is wrong? Well, I think
Jesus gives us an idea here in John chapter 10 when he deals
with what true sheep look like. In verse four, for example, he
said. When he is brought out all his own, he goes before them
and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Here is
the overwhelming characteristic of a true sheep of Christ, and
it is this he or she follows the good shepherd. That is the
overwhelming characteristic of a true sheep. He or she follows
the shepherd. One cannot rightly claim to be
a sheep of Christ while refusing to follow him. Some of you are
perhaps familiar with Philip Keller’s writings. Philip Keller
wrote a book on Psalm 23, the Shepherd’s Psalm. He’s written
a lot of things about sheep. He’s made a real study of sheep
and sheep in the Middle East. And he said this, it’s a rather
long quote, so hang with me for just a minute. He said, Jesus
made it clear when he stated emphatically, if any man would
be my disciple or follower, let him deny himself and take up
his cross daily and follow me. Basically, what it amounts to
is this, a person exchanges the fickle fortunes of living life
by sheer whimsy for the more productive and satisfying adventure
of being guided by God. It is a tragic truth that many
people who really have never come under his direction or management
claim that the Lord is my shepherd. They seem to hope that by merely
admitting that he is their shepherd, somehow they will enjoy the benefits
of his care and management without paying the price of forfeiting
their own fickle and foolish way of life. One cannot have
it both ways, says Keller. Either we belong or we don’t.
Jesus himself warned us that there would come a day when many
would say, Lord, in your name, we did many wonderful things,
but he will retort that he never knew us as his own. It is a most
serious and sobering thought, which should make us search our
own hearts and motives and personal relationship to himself. And
then he asked these questions. Do you really do you really belong
to him? Do you really recognize his right
to me? Or do I do that? Do I respond
to his authority and acknowledge his ownership? Do I find freedom
and complete fulfillment in this arrangement? Do I sense a purpose
and deep contentment because I am under his direction? Do
I know rest and repose besides a definite sense of exciting
adventure in belonging to him? Keep in mind that the Lord Jesus
knew that there would be those who would be false sheep. And that those false sheep would
even infiltrate the gatherings of the true sheep. Jesus said
in Matthew 13, 24 to 30, that the kingdom of heaven may be
compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while
his men were sleeping, His enemy came and sowed tares among the
wheat and went away. And then Christ went on in that
parable and talked about the fact that the tares grow up and
this particular kind of weed in the Middle East looks a lot
like wheat. You can’t really tell it apart till it’s too firmly
rooted to tear it out of the ground without tearing the wheat
up as well. And so when His servants asked, do you want us to tear
it out? He said, no, you’ve got to let both of them continue
until the harvest, and in the harvest we’ll separate them out. And Jesus used that parable to
illustrate the fact that even in his church there would be
tears, and what better thing to do If you’re the enemy of
the church and the enemy of Christ, then so tears within the church
so that they can disrupt what God is doing in the church. These
would be then false sheep. Who do not really follow the
shepherd, but rather tried to hinder. True sheep from following
the shepherd. By the way, in his parable, or
prior to this parable in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord
had already said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will
enter the kingdom, but the one who does the will of my father
who is in heaven. Notice what Christ says. Christ
is not saying that you get to heaven by work, but he is saying
that if you become a true sheep of his, you will follow. He is
not saying that you can some way just decide one day, well,
I’m going to start following the shepherd without a work of
God in your heart or anything else and just suddenly you’re
fine. What he is saying is that if
you are regenerated, if you come to Christ in faith, you will
then begin to follow the good shepherd. And if you don’t. Then you must at the very least
question whether you are a true sheep or not. Whether you really
belong to Christ or not. If it is true that many will
think themselves to be among Christ’s sheep, when in reality
they are not among Christ’s sheep, what are the characteristics
of being a true sheep? We’ve given you the overall most
important thing. We’ll come back to it in a little
bit, but I want to give you four characteristics of the true sheep,
and I want to begin with something that on first initial coming
into contact with this idea, I was a little squeamish about,
but I’ve come to believe this is true. I’m going to word it
this way, the true sheep of the shepherd are in fact sheep, but
I want to go back to before we would think of ourselves as sheep.
All right? And by the way, of all the creatures
to be compared to, sheep is not the most flattering. With few exceptions, being compared
to sheep is just Not flattering at all. Unsheared sheep. And
by the way, I don’t know if you’ve ever been around the sheep much,
but we used to have some folks in a church where I pastored
who I mentioned last week, ewed about or lambed about 2,000 ewes
a year. So they had sheep everywhere. And unsheared sheep can get incredibly
dirty. Keller again spoke of the fact
that unsheared unsheared sheep can get so dirty that they can
lay down. And if they get kind of toward
their back, they literally can’t get off the ground again. They
cannot get up. Their wool can get so full of mud and filth
and insects and whatever that they literally can’t rise from
the ground and can die as a result. What a picture that is of Christ’s
sheep before we would think of them as sheep. But I want you to notice something
very interesting in the way this is worded. Notice in verse 2,
he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To
him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice and
he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. He calls
his own sheep by name. and leads them out. Now, this
is like Christ calling out Matthew, we talked about last week, comes
to the tax tables, the money exchanging going on there. And
he says, Matthew, follow me. And Zacchaeus, this is a call
to salvation. This is a call to come to faith
in Christ, and he calls his own sheep by name. Notice again in
verse 25 of this chapter, if you’ll look over there. Jesus
answered them, I told you and you do not believe. They were
asking if he was the Christ and demanding that he tell them plainly.
And he says the works that I do in my father’s name bear witness
about me. But you do not believe because you are not among my
sheep. My sheep hear my voice and I
know them and they follow me. Christ is speaking of people
being his sheep before we would normally think of ourselves as
being a follower of Christ or a sheep. John MacArthur even
says in his little note in his study Bible, Jesus point is that
he comes to the fold of Israel and calls out those who belong
to him in some way. They are already his sheep before
he calls them by name. Now, by the way, that’s one of
the most comforting truths that I’ve ever found in scripture.
There is a sense in which all who are elect are Christ’s sheep
from before time began. Because they will come to faith
in Christ, they will come to know the Lord Jesus. And so he
calls his own sheep by name. That means that this illustration
really does work, doesn’t it? Because that’s you and me. We
were so vile, so filled our fleece, our wool was so filled with the
filth and the scum and the dirt and the garbage of the world
and the sin of our own hearts that we couldn’t do anything
for ourselves. We were dead in those trespasses
and sins. And that is the place of every
unredeemed, unsaved individual on earth today. Now, is it not amazing to think
about the depths of sin into which our world can go and has
gone and individuals go within our world? We have a world that says Poverty
causes sin? I will tell you this, I worked
in rescue missions and other places and what causes poverty
is sin. Poverty doesn’t cause sin, sin
causes poverty. I can illustrate that for you
really quickly with one man who came through the rescue mission
where I was working several years ago and we had a VA detox center
in town so we got people coming in all the time. And this man,
this was in the 1980s before several of you were born. Some
of you who remember what Payscale was in the 80s will understand
this better than others. This man was an engineer from
somewhere in Pennsylvania. He was making six figures a year. That’s before the decimal point,
you know, to the left side of the decimal. Six figures a year
in the 1980s. And because of his own drunkenness,
he lost his life. He lost his cars. He lost his
house. He lost everything. And he came
to Johnson City, Tennessee to the V. A. Detox Center and had
to stay in a rescue mission because he couldn’t afford a motel until
he could get into the detox center. Sin impoverished him. Sin destroyed
him. By the way, one other quick story
from that time at the rescue mission. We had a younger man
come in one time who had literally fried his brain on drugs. Some of you remember the old
commercial where they took a hot skillet and said, and then held
up an egg and said, this is an egg. And they cracked it and
put it in the skillet and said, this is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.
That was that guy. And I saw the wonder, and we
didn’t see a lot of successes all the time at the mission,
but I saw the wonder of God regenerating that man some way. God allowed
his mind to conceive, to understand the gospel, and he trusted Christ. And we watched God reestablish
that man’s ability to think. It was one of the most miraculous
things I ever watched in my life. But sin drives one down and every
single human being is a sinner and Christ gave his life to redeem
sinners. By the way, it’s the fool. It’s
the it’s the The person who is is foolish in its thinking or
her thinking that says there is no God. And that’s our world. And that world is corrupt. It
does abominable deeds. There is none who does good.
No, not one. Paul quotes that in Romans three,
but that’s actually from Psalm 14. Solomon wrote of the disastrous
effects of immorality in Proverbs and and ended that was saying
that the way of the wicked woman is the way to death. That is every believer. Before they come to Christ. And
even after we come to Christ. We’re tempted in our own flesh
to do things that are sinful and foolish. And so not only
do we need the good shepherd to redeem us, we need the good
shepherd to lead us. Now, that brings me to a second
characteristic of true sheep. The first one is that they’re
sheep and left without. Any work of God, they die in
their filth, they die in their sin. The second one is this,
true sheep respond to the true shepherd’s call. That’s the first
part of verse three. To him gatekeeper opens, the
sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name. The sheep
hear his voice. Several years ago, another pastor
related to me that he’d had a man in his church that came every
week for years. and would sit in the kind of
toward the back on the right side and would sit there and
the man was lost his wife was saved but he would sit there
and he would sit there and he would sit there and he would
hear the truth of the word of God preached and he would hear
the gospel and he would sit there and this went on for months and
years and one Sunday night the end of the service the man came
to him and said I just want you to know that
I just trusted Christ. The pastor said, well, why did
it take so long? You’ve heard the gospel over
and over again. And you know what the man’s response was?
I never heard it before. That’s an exact quote, he said,
I never heard it before, and the pastor said, I’ve preached
it over and over and over again for years. Why? You never heard
it before? No, I never heard it before.
But you have heard it. But no, you don’t understand.
I never heard it before. What was he expressing? He was
expressing that for the first time he had not just heard the
general call of God to the world, but the effectual call that leads
to salvation. He was just for the first time
in his life hearing the voice of God speak to him. Because
the Holy Spirit regenerated his heart. And the true sheep is one who
is redeemed, the one who is regenerated, the one who comes to faith then
in Christ. And by the way, we have biblical
evidence of this in lots of places, but let me remind you of something
that happened in Acts chapter 16, verse 14, with a woman named
Lydia. Here’s what the Word of God says
about her. One who heard, and the apostle Paul was preaching,
was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller
of purple goods who was a worshiper of God. And then this, the Lord
opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. The
Lord opened her heart. True sheep. have their heart
opened by God and are regenerated. And it is at that point that
they begin to follow the good shepherd. And that brings me
to a third thing. True sheep are sheep. That’s true. They respond to the shepherd’s
call and then true sheep follow the shepherd. Verse four. When
he has brought out his own sheep, he goes before them and the sheep
follow him for they know his voice. They know his voice. They follow him. The leadership
of the shepherd and the followership of the sheep is emphasized here
in verse four. There is an emphasis in Jesus
teaching that assures us that he leads only his own sheep and
not is not obligated, nor does he lead someone else’s sheep.
He brings out his own sheep and no more. The current context
would have this have laid this stress upon the fact that he
let out the man who had been born blind. That’s chapter nine,
and that he would not lead out the Pharisees who were so violently
opposing him. And in so doing, the man who
was born blind not only gained physical sight, but spiritual
insight, and the Pharisees who thought they saw remained blind. They simply would not and could
not follow the shepherd. And let me point out three things
here very quickly about this. The first is that following is
not always natural, but it is something that happens with the
regenerate. Marvin Vincent quoted a man named Thompson who said
this, it is necessary that they should be taught to follow and
not to stray away into the unfenced fields of wheat which lie so
temptingly on either side. The shepherd calls from time
to time to remind them of his presence. They know his voice
and follow on. But if a stranger call, they
stop, lift up their heads in alarm. And if the call is repeated,
they run and flee from him for they know not the voice of strangers.
This is not the fanciful costume of a parable. It is simple fact
I have made the experiment often. Believer, your flesh will seek
to draw you back into paths that are corrupt, but Christ will
always lead you in the pure paths. And if you’re a true sheep, you
may fall from time to time, but the characteristic of your life
will be to follow the shepherd. A second thing is this. The sheep
of the true shepherd learn to discern his voice. They learn
to discern his voice. They discriminate between the
voice of Christ and others. How do they do that? They do
that in accordance with the word of God. That’s how you’re going to learn
to discern. And by the way, the ability to discern and being
mature Christian go hand in hand. If you can’t discern, you’re
not mature. If you can discern, there is
an element of maturity that has come into your life. We don’t
want to stop there. We don’t want to think, well,
I discerned this, so I’m okay. No, we continue to learn and
grow. Third, notice this, true sheep
are led by the shepherd’s voice. And again, they follow the word
of God. That is so important. I cannot emphasize that enough.
The diligent Bible study class that I kind of, you know, listened
in on and joined in a little bit. I didn’t say much because
it was really yours, but just kind of to hear what was going
on and everything and enjoyed and was reminded of some things.
The word that’s preached from the pulpit, the Sunday school
teachers that strive to understand the word and teach it appropriately.
All of that is designed to encourage you to follow the shepherd because
it is the word of God, the voice of God that is going to lead
you. So true sheep are led by the
shepherd’s voice. And again, that’s not sitting
alone someplace with your legs crossed and your arms crossed
and humming to yourself and listening for the voice of God or something.
No, it is I said it last week, I’ll say it again. It is the
Word of God. If you want to hear the voice
of God, dig deeply into this book. That’s where you’re going
to find it. Now one other thing I want to
emphasize, and it is this. True sheep are still sheep and
they need to be led. True sheep respond to the true
shepherd’s call. True sheep follow the true shepherd.
And then this true sheep will not be fooled by false shepherds.
True sheep will not be fooled by false shepherds. Those who claim to be the sheep
of Christ but who follow false shepherds are in reality not
sheep at all. Christ’s sheep simply will not
follow a stranger who leads them away from Christ. No matter how
deceptive a false shepherd is, sooner or later, the deception
is going to be understood. And I want you to notice what
the Lord does here. He says in verse five, a stranger
they will not follow, but will flee from him for they do not
know the voice of strangers. When it says they will not follow,
that is really weak in English. And I don’t know how to make
it stronger in English, because Greek had this wonderful thing.
In English, if you put two negatives in a sentence, it makes it a
positive, which is OK. But in Greek, if you put two
negatives in the same sentence or side by side, it just emphasizes
the negative. So let me read this how it would
be. It’s unmei for all the Greek scholars in here. Let me read
this how it would literally read. will not never follow a stranger. That’s the emphasis of the Greek.
It multiplies negatives to emphasize to a greater extent that they
simply will not follow a false shepherd. By the way, I look around at
America today. We started out with the situation
of the church in America today, and I see a lot of false shepherds
leading a lot of these mega churches, not all of them, but a lot of
these mega churches and a lot of false shepherds. And I see
people following them and continuing to follow them and never figuring
them out. And I start to wonder if these
are not false sheep following false shepherds. These are people
who have itching ears that want them tickled. And God’s judgment
on them is providing these false shepherds that lead them down
paths that lead to hell. Now, again, a couple of things
about this. Even a true sheep can be fooled
for a little while. And I don’t have time to go into
this point to a great extent, but you’ll remember in Galatians,
the Apostle Paul speaks of even having to rebuke Peter who started
down the wrong path for a little while. Fortunately, everything
in scripture points to Peter having repented of that sin and
following Christ as he should. So I don’t want you to think
that that can never happen. And again, I knew a man years
ago who used to give money to a well-known, now deceased, prosperity
gospel guy. And he would give him money on
a fairly routine basis. And he looked at me one day and
said, I’m not going to send money down there anymore because that
ministry just doesn’t ring true. I said, you’re right. It doesn’t
ring true. It’s not of God. Took him a little
while to do it, but by God’s grace, he finally figured it
out and didn’t support that anymore. So you might get fooled for a
little while, but it won’t continue forever. Another thing that we
need to realize here is that true sheep will again Not just not follow
false shepherds, but I just reemphasize in not following the false shepherds,
they will come back to the true shepherd, to the good shepherd,
and they’ll follow him. One man said this, they will
flee as if from a wolf or from the plague from a false shepherd.
Alas and alas, if only our modern pastors had the sheep so trained
that they would run away from and not run after the strange
voices that call them to false philosophy, false psychology,
false ethics, false religion, false life. And here’s what John
MacArthur had to say. He said, no one who is genuinely
saved will finally and completely turn away from Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ warning that false Christ and false prophets will arise
and will show great signs and wonders so as to mislead, if
possible, even the elect clearly implies that such deception is
impossible. Those who abandoned their profession
of faith in the truth prove that they neither that that neither
their faith nor their salvation was ever genuine. True sheep
do not follow false shepherds. They flee from them. And I guess
as we close here, are you a true sheep of the Lord Jesus Christ?
When you look at your life, are you really following after Christ
or are you following after your own ways? Are you following after
some false teacher? If you’re not following the Lamb
of God, if you’re not following the Lord Jesus Christ, if you’re
following your own whims, You’re headed for trouble. And it’s
indicative of the fact that you’re not saved, that you’re not redeemed,
that you don’t know the good shepherd. Are you a true sheep
or a false sheep? Are you following Christ or are
you listening to and following false shepherds who tell you
what you want to know? I’ve been around too many people
in my lifetime. who get some totally unbiblical
idea and then run to the internet or somewhere to find somebody
who will preach what they want to hear. That’s not characteristic of
a true sheik. Now, let me ask you this. Does that mean that you’re always
going to like what you hear or what you read? or what you see
in this book, which is God’s word to us, which is the book
through which Christ leads us through the word in his spirit.
Well, if you always like it. I want you to explain to me how
you do that, because I don’t always like it. In fact, sometimes
I don’t like it at all. Because it reminds me of how
much I fail. It reminds me of how shallow
my understanding really is sometimes. Any of you ever do like me and
you do something and you know it’s sinful and you think, what
is the deal that I can’t overcome this? Besetting sins? We don’t like
to talk about that. But we all have them. We just
like to sweep that under the rug. Oh, really? That’s why we need a shepherd. Because we’re sheep and left
to ourselves, we will always stray. Are you following the good shepherd
or not? And if not, come to him today. Forsake your sin and trust him.