The True Shepherd

We’ll get to John 10, 1 to 5,
where we’ll spend about all of our time this morning in just
a moment, but I want to begin by turning your attention to
a passage in the book of Zechariah, chapter 10, verse 2. You don’t
have to turn there if you don’t want. I’ll just read it. It says,
For the household gods utter nonsense, and the diviners see
lies. They tell false dreams and give
empty consolation. The people wonder like sheep,
they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd. Now, we are called
sheep if we know Christ, we are his sheep. This is not, however, a reference concerning sheep that
is very good. This is one of those bad characteristics
of sheep that if you don’t lead them properly, they just wander
around everywhere and have no clue where they’re going, how
to get where they need to be, or anything else. And I can vouch
for that, having dealt with sheep, son. Not human sheep, either. Sheep. I can remember one time,
we had a family in the church where we were in Missouri that
lambed about 2,000 ewes a year. So they had sheep. I can remember
one day that the fence got down somehow, and the fence down was
about as wide as this church building is on the inside. And
when we tried to get them back in the field, they couldn’t find
the hole. They were scared to death they
were going to run into the barbed wire, and the barbed wire was gone.
It was just empty. We were going to put them back
in and make shift, close everything up as fast as we could. And that’s
what happens to people when they have no leadership, when they
have no shepherd. Was the Lord saying here that
there were no shepherds at all for the people? Well, that’s
not really what he was saying. Rather, the Lord was saying that
there were no true shepherds. There were no shepherds who truly
sought the glory of the Lord and the well-being of the people.
We know that this is the case when we continue in the passage
in verse 3, where Zechariah said, My anger, and the Lord is speaking
here, is hot against the shepherds, and I will punish the leaders,
for the Lord of hosts cares for his flock, the house of Judah,
and will make them like his majestic steed in battle. Sadly, The people
of Judah had no true shepherds who cared for their souls before
a holy and righteous God. By the way, Brother Ron said
something about me a little bit ago. I am very thankful. He said something about the church
growth and but I called a couple of three churches out in this
area because I was asked to do so and kids were coming out this
way for school. And I wanted to know if there
was anybody that held to good solid biblical doctrine and tried
to practice church in a biblical fashion. And it was a blessing
when they first moved. It was a mile to church is all. And it was such a blessing to
have a church close where they could come And I am thankful
for a situation where there is a church
that my kids and my grandchildren can come to where there is a
shepherd who truly desires to follow the scriptures and to
learn the scriptures himself and to teach the scriptures to
the people who sit before him on a given Sunday. And so, Brother
Ron, I am very thankful for your ministry here. That has been
a blessing to my family, as well by God’s grace to you. Now, we’re
going to look, I said, at John 10. But I’ve started in Zechariah
because there is that situation where they did not have true
shepherds. They were false shepherds. They
were shepherds that were encouraging the wandering of the sheep, not
the following of the sheep. And so when we come to verse
one in chapter 10, we are drawn into a conflict between false
shepherds and the true shepherd. We’re drawn into a conflict between
the Pharisees and the Lord Jesus Christ. And we need to couch
what we’re going to say in this conflict. Normally we read John
10 and it’s just like a lot of other things. We read it and
we read about the good shepherd and the good shepherd giving
his life for the sheep and all of those kind of things. And
we kind of forget what came just before that. I want to put it
in context this morning so that we’ll understand. Not only the
comfort of having the good shepherd as the leader of our life, as
the Lord of our life, as the savior of our souls. But the condemnation. Of the
Pharisees that comes in this passage. So let’s go back to
Chapter 9 for just a minute. What happens in Chapter 9? Well,
let me try to summarize that for you very quickly. In chapter
9, from the very beginning of the chapter, you run into a man
who was born blind. As he passed by, the Lord is
passing by, he saw a man blind from birth. The disciples asked
the question, Rabbi, whose sin? This man or his parents? And
Jesus’ response, I’m sure, stunned them when he said, neither of
them. This is not caused by the sin
of the parents. It is not caused by some foreknown
sin that this young man would would commit. This is something
that was done for the glory of God. God intended this God in
his providence brought this to be for this very purpose that
we’re going to see this morning. And so God is at work here. And
Christ does something that was heretofore unheard of. He heals
a man who was born blind. He gives him sight. That was disrupting to the Pharisees. They didn’t like this at all.
And they didn’t like it for a multitude of reasons. Let me give you two
real quickly. The one that they really use
as the excuse for not liking is that this was done on the
Sabbath. And, oh, you just didn’t do anything like this on the
Sabbath. That was work. It’s interesting in another place,
Jesus told him, look, the father works on the Sabbath. Why shouldn’t
the son? Claiming deity, by the way. And the father always works on
the Sabbath and the son works on the Sabbath. And by the way,
we can all be thankful for the fact that the father and the
son both work on the Sabbath or not. If not, the world would
just explode. I mean, it would just be gone.
He holds it together. And so Christ does this on the
Sabbath. It’s a little bit of an unusual
miracle. He doesn’t just pray for the
man. He doesn’t just touch the man or anything else. He makes
mud and puts it on his eyes and tells him to go and wash. And
he goes and washes. And of course, that was a breaking of the Sabbath
in the mind of the Pharisees, who would have, by the way, argued
for the provision of pulling a donkey out of the ditch if
it got in the ditch and couldn’t get out. But men could continue
in blindness inevitably. for decades rather than be healed
on the Sabbath. The other thing is that they
feared that Christ was going to become so popular they were
just going to lose their power. I think that underlies a lot
of this as you see this conflict between Christ and the Pharisees.
But notice what they do in verse 34. They answered him, you were
born in utter sin. And would you teach us? This
is very sarcastically said. By the way, I’m not against sarcasm.
In fact, I probably use it more than I should. But this is bad
sarcasm right here. They look at this man and they
speak to him very condescendingly, and then they cast him out. They
cast him out of the synagogue. What kind of shepherds are these
men? What kind of shepherd is it who takes a man who was born
blind and for the first time in his life he can see? And the
immediate response is to confront him, condemn him and kick him
out of the synagogue. What miserable shepherds these
are. There is no love here. There
is no true concern for the soul of an individual here or even
the physical well-being of an individual here. Could they not rejoice that a
man who could not see had been made to see? Well, evidently
not. It is also really telling that
this uneducated man and they They speak of that in verse 34
when they utter, they tell him that he is born utterly in sin. And would you teach us like we’re
the educated people around here, not you. And just prior to this,
he had said to them, why, this is an amazing thing. You do not
know where he comes from. And yet he opens my eyes. We
know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is
a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has
it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind.
If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. That was really embarrassing
for the Pharisees to hear. This uneducated blind man scolded
them. And they have to get rid of him.
So they kick him out of the synagogue. It is into that setting that
we come to John 10. These men were supposedly fiercely
defending the Sabbath law. And and yet they were severely
reprimanded by the man they were kicking out of the synagogue.
And then Christ speaks. And in verse one, he says, truly,
truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the
door, but climbs up by another way, that man is a thief and
a robber. Who were these individuals, they
were the Pharisees. He hasn’t said that specifically
yet, but he’s going to contrast the one who has legitimate interest
in the sheepfold, which is him. And in a sense, he doesn’t say
just him at this point. True shepherds, under-shepherds,
under Christ, have this ability of somewhat leading the sheep. And the Pharisees, who were the
ones that really couldn’t get in, because God the Father wasn’t
going to let them mess with the sheep. They were trying to climb
over the wall. And what Christ says to them,
what he calls them, is interesting. In a closer examination, he calls
them thieves and robbers here. Let’s think about that a little
closer. The first word that Christ uses
is the word kleptice. Some of you have heard of a kleptomaniac.
It’s where we get that word. Kleptomaniac is somebody that
just can’t help stealing. You know, every time they walk
into the store, they grab something and stick it in their purse.
you know, grab it and stick it in their pocket or whatever. That word carries with it no
idea of violence, however. It is a word that doesn’t speak
to violence at all. It’s just a thief. But then he
uses a different word, laestes, which is a word that speaks of
violent theft. He says, you are You know, he
said these people who are trying to climb over the walls or get
in by some other way. They are thieves and robbers,
and if necessary, they will use violence to rob somebody else. And I think in the Pharisees’
case in particular, that probably wasn’t a physical violence. It
was probably more a violence that would be associated with
something like indulgences in the Catholic Church, where you
frighten people into, well, if you don’t do this, then this
is going to happen to you. And so Christ even accuses them of robbing
widows’ houses at a later time. Again, since the passage deals
with the great contrast between false shepherds and the true
shepherd, and all who minister to the chief in a proper manner
under the leadership of a true shepherd, It’ll be good to consider
a couple of characteristics of these false shepherds. What were
they really like? Well, first, according to the words of Jesus,
false shepherds pretend to care for the sheep, but they actually
devour them. Matthew chapter 7, verse 15,
beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing,
but inwardly are ravenous wolves. So they appear like they’re shepherds,
but they’re really wolves You will recognize them by their
fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
So every healthy tree bears good fruit. A healthy tree cannot
bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree
that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the
fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruit. These false prophets and false
teachers and false shepherds were of the worst type. They
feigned friendship with the sheep while actually fleecing them
and finally devouring them. We see, then, that false shepherds
often treat the sheep with violence, a violence that is regularly
not recognized by the sheep who are being fooled by the false
shepherd. So there’s something subtle about
that as well. Most of the time the sheep don’t
even realize they’re being fleeced while they are in fact being
fleeced. Now I could stop here and take some time and develop
that into some of the things that I see going on in the broader
church today, but I won’t do that. I’ll let your mind wander
a little bit to some of those things yourself. A second characteristic
of a false shepherd is that the false shepherd is greedy. Christ
spoke of shepherds that had invaded the church in Pergamos saying,
I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold
the teaching of Balaam. What was the teaching of Balaam?
Well, if you were to look in Numbers 31 16, behold, these
on Balaam’s advice caused the people of Israel to act treacherously
against the Lord in the incident of Peor. And so the plague came
upon the congregation of the Lord. If you go back to that
story, Balaam is not allowed to go. And then Balaam does go
to try to curse the people of God. And God won’t let Balaam
curse the people of God. And he still wants the money
from Balak. And so how does he get it? He
says, well, Why don’t you just try to mix with them and get
them to start worshiping the false god and then God will curse
them. And God did judge them mightily
for that. But Balaam did everything that
he did for money. And that’s characteristic of
a false prophet or a false teacher. In fact, Isaiah said in chapter
10 verses 1 and 2, Woe to those who decree iniquitous degrees
decrees and the writers who keep writing oppression to turn aside
the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of
their right, that widows may be their spoil. I think that’s
interesting that widows may be their spoil and that they may
make the fatherless their prey. And this then turns into the
Lord saying in his dealing with the Pharisees
and the scribes, And he said, beware of the scribes who like
to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces
and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of
honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses for a pretense, make long
prayers, they will receive the greater condemnation. Christ
goes to the Word of God. Really, he’s basically saying
that the Pharisees are guilty of of breaking what God had said
or doing what God had said in Isaiah 10, 1 and 2, they were
spoiling widows’ houses, they were robbing widows’ houses to
line their own pockets. and that is characteristic of
someone who is a false shepherd. Peter describes them as well
in 2 Peter 2, verse 12 to 17, when he said, But these, like
irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught
and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant,
will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong
as the wage of their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel
in the daytime, They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their
deceptions while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery,
insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They
have hearts trained in greed. And he goes on to talk about
that even more. False shepherds, like the Pharisees, pretend to
be interested in the well-being of the flock, but in reality
they are interested in lining their own coffers. That is what
false shepherds tend to do. They seek to live gloriously
while denying the glory of God. And so we need to be careful
that we do not follow false shepherds. And with that description of
the false shepherd in mind, we’re finally ready to look at chapter
10, verses 1 to 5. These six verses, the first six
verses of the chapter actually, assure us that Jesus is using
an illustration as he deals with this. It is an illustration that
is not understood by the Pharisees. For now, let us consider the
first of these verses more carefully In them, we have stressed the
character of a true shepherd and the character of true sheep.
Jesus said, and I’ll quote from the New American, I know that’s
what is used here. It says, truly, truly, I say
to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of
the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and
a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the
sheep. To him, the doorkeeper opens and the sheep hear his
voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When
he puts forth all his own sheep, he goes before them and the sheep
follow him because they know his voice. And a stranger they
simply will not follow but will flee from him because they do
not know the voice of strangers. In these verses, we have six
characteristics of a true shepherd, four characteristics of true
sheep that I want to bring out to you. And this morning, we’re
only going to do the six, and we’ll do these very quickly at
this point. Six characteristics of the true shepherd. Later,
Jesus would say that he is the good shepherd. He gives his life
for the sheep. He said, I am the good shepherd. I know my
own and my own know me. Ultimately, Christ is the shepherd
who is in view here. And yet he does not directly
state that in the illustration. I think we learned that the Lord
Jesus is the good and the great shepherd, but all those who are
called the sheep of his flock, the church, are described to
have similar characteristics. And certainly those who are under
shepherds ought to have these characteristics in our lives.
Now, note the following six characteristics. The first is this. The true shepherd
has the right to enter the door. Very simple. And I’m not going
to wow you with any of this this morning, but just very simple.
The true shepherd has the right to enter the door. Jesus said
he who enters the door is the shepherd of the sheep. Everyone
in Jesus’ audience had seen early in the morning hours the shepherds
arrive one by one at a common fold. They could almost hear
the voice of each shepherd as he called out to his own flock
in order to lead them out to pasture for the day. They knew
that the doorkeeper would only allow those in who were actually
the shepherds of those sheep. He wouldn’t just let anybody
in. And so they had seen this, and Jesus uses this illustration
from their lives, and he says that the shepherd comes. These
who try to climb up another way don’t, but he who enters by the
door is the shepherd. He told this parable, by the
way, much the way Nathan told King David the story of the rich
man who stole the sheep from the one who was poor, though
he was wealthy and had lots of sheep. Let me kind of show you
how that works. Nathan would tell the story,
elicit a reaction from the king, and then pointedly condemn the
king for his much greater sin of taking another man’s wife.
Jesus here would bring the minds of the Pharisees to the minds
of the Pharisees, the picture of contentment and trust that
the shepherd had in there, or that the sheep had in their shepherd,
the proper care the shepherd would have for his sheep, and
then he would crush them with the reality that they, the false
shepherds, had cast one of the sheep out of the synagogue. It’s a very similar scenario
here. And again, we need to see this
in the contrast in which it lies. Christ is comforting the sheep,
but he is condemning the false shepherds. The man who had been born blind
upon examination by the Pharisees had been cast out. These should
have been people who would have been thrilled by the healing
and should have lavished encouragement on him as he began a new life.
And instead, they were condemning him along with their common condemnation
of the one who healed him. They were not revealing themselves
to be true shepherds of this man who was formerly blind. And
that failure was sadly illustrative of the fact that they were not
true shepherds of God’s chosen nation, not at all. The one who
would be able to enter through the door, however, that is the
true shepherd, would be heard by the man born blind and by
many others who would follow him. True shepherd would be accepted
and allowed to enter through the door of the fold. But unlike
him, the false shepherds would not be allowed entrance. How
sad it is that often false religious shepherds are more zealous in
their activities than are the true children of God. They strive to get in but are
not allowed entrance in. A second characteristic of the
true shepherd is that he is recognized by the doorkeeper. John Calvin
gave the idea that the doorkeeper here in this illustration represents
God himself and that Jesus then would be allowed entrance in
because God the Father approved of Christ. Now, whether that’s
the proper understanding of the doorkeeper or not, the fact is,
I think, that Jesus was contrasting his and his undershepherd’s acceptance
by the doorkeeper. At the very least, then, that
doorkeeper would have been a representative of God in the parable. And so
we conclude that Jesus and those who are true shepherds under
him are accepted by the Father as they seek to lead the flock.
Here’s the point. The true shepherd has God’s approval
on his ministry. The true shepherd has God’s approval
on his ministry. That, by the way, should be very
comforting to those of us who seek to have God’s approval on
our ministry and who try to It would be nice to know that God
can actually approve of what we’re striving to do. We will
not do it perfectly, but God will approve of that and God
fully, completely, totally approved of Christ and his ministry to
the sheep. A third characteristic of the
true shepherd is this. The true shepherd calls out his
own sheep. He calls out his own sheep. Jesus
made this fact clear, saying to him, the gatekeeper opens,
the sheep hear his voice. When Christ calls, his sheep
respond to that call. We’ll say more about that later.
But John MacArthur rightly said this concerning these sheep and
this call. He said, continuing with the
figure of speech, Christ said that his sheep hear his voice
when he calls them out of Israel and into his messianic fold.
His imagery pictures the human response to the effectual call. Jesus calls his own sheep by
name because they are his. Their names were written from
the foundation of the world in the book of life of the lamb
who has been slain and they have been given to him by the father.
The man born blind was born so for the glory of God. And that
glory was manifested not only in the granting of physical sight,
but even more in the granting of spiritual sight and eternal
life through the son of God who healed him. It’s true that the Pharisees
had cast him out of his former flock, but Christ readily received
him into his flock. and led him to find rich, green
pastures of a life lived under the blessing of the Almighty.
The true shepherd will be heard and heeded when he calls his
sheep. So the true shepherd has the right to enter, is recognized
by the doorkeeper, calls out his own sheep, and fourth, the
true shepherd has an intimate relationship with his sheep.
The true shepherd calls out his own sheep by name. And I think
here we have not so much that the shepherd knows the most minute
details of our lives as his sheep, which he does, by the way. But
that the shepherd gives a specific call to those who are his own. For example, when passing by
the tables of the tax collectors, Jesus spoke specifically to Matthew,
follow me. Matthew 9 9. And later we find
Jesus targeting another tax collector. Luke tells us about this. His
name was Zacchaeus, the most, perhaps the most unlikely convert
in all the Gospels. Says Christ entered Jericho and
was passing through and behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus.
He was a chief tax collector. He was the head mokesh. He was
the guy that had a a part of every other tax collector’s income.
He kind of was the head honcho in that whole thing. And he was
the most hated man in Jericho. And we shouldn’t be surprised
when people were shocked that Jesus called his name and said,
I must go to your house today. And you remember the story and
kids sing the little song about Zacchaeus climbing up in the
sycamore tree and all of those things. And I don’t know if Zacchaeus
climbed down out of the tree or if he fell out of the tree.
He had to be so shocked that Jesus would look up, stop with
all his crowd around him and call him by name. And this Jewish
man who basically sold his soul to enrich himself financially
and to the Roman authorities comes out of this meal with Christ,
giving all his money away. I heard Your pastor and I both
have a love for John MacArthur. I heard John MacArthur look one
time and say, what is that in that white space? Where Christ goes in, Zacchaeus
comes out, and this Jew who gave his soul away almost to gain
money is giving his money away. What happened in that white space?
What happened is what Jesus said, that salvation had come to his
life. He was one of Abraham’s children
and not Abraham’s child by physical descent, only Abraham’s child
by faith. And it totally transformed Zacchaeus. And of all the men in Jericho
that one might have thought Jesus would never call, Zacchaeus would
have topped the list. We know that he has an intimate
relationship with his sheep and that he calls his sheep out by
name. And it is illustrated for us in the case of Matthew and
Zacchaeus in particular, who no one would have thought could
have ever come to faith in Christ. And one of the great examples
of the unity that can come in the church is that in Christ’s
disciples, you have Matthew, the task collector, and Simon,
the zealot. Two men who would have killed
each other outside of Christ. In Christ, they come together
in this beautiful union. That brings us to a fifth characteristic,
and we can’t spend long on any of these, but the true shepherd
leads his own sheep. The end of verse three. To him,
the gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice and he calls his
own sheep by name and he leads them out. This fact assumes that
he has authority to do so. He has authority to do so. Christ
is the Good Shepherd, has the right from the fact that it has
been granted to him by the Father. For example, John the Baptist
said of Christ, the Father loves the Son and has given all things
into his hand. That authority, we also would
know, comes from the fact that Jesus himself is very God of
very God. The true shepherd leads his own
sheep. That authority is confirmed through the affirmation of the
father, through his personal deity and also through his perfect
life. His complete obedience to the
law of God, Jesus Christ, the shepherd, has the authority to
lead us. And you and I could never ask
for a better leader. He cares for his sheep. He leads us into green pastures. He leads us beside still waters.
He provides for us all that is necessary for life and godliness.
What a shepherd we have. So the true shepherd has the
right to enter through the door. is recognized by the doorkeeper,
calls out his own sheep, has an intimate relationship with
the sheep, leads his own sheep, and finally, the true shepherd
leads his sheep by his word. That’s where I want to leave
you today. Herein is one of the most important aspects of the
characteristic of the good shepherd, the Lord Jesus and all true under
shepherds who seek Christ leading in the manner of the church.
Jesus said when he has brought out all his own, he goes before
them and the sheep follow him for they know his voice. That
the sheep know the voice of the shepherd is an indication that
he leads them through his word. Surely the sheep of the Lord
Jesus need to realize that the great shepherd of the sheep leads
us through the word of God. Do you seek leading from the
Lord? If you do, you will find it in scripture. You will find
it in the word of God. That’s where you’re going to
find leading from the Lord. The Bible, the scriptures recorded
by some 40 men who were inspired in their writings by the Holy
Spirit. Gave us the word of God. And
that spirit who gave it to them leads us in the paths down which
the Lord desires to take us. Christ leads us by the word.
I know we’re living in a day and age when there’s a lot said
about listen for the voice of God. Listen for the voice of
God. God’s going to some mysteriously
way speak to you. You know, I, I’m not going to
disagree with that. Totally listen for the voice
of God. You know where you’re going to find it. You’re going to find
it in scripture. And I’ll never forget Stephen Lawson saying,
you want to hear the voice of God, read the word. You want
to hear the voice of God. Audibly, read the word of God
out loud. Christ leads us through his word.
One of the real blessings, and it’s not that I hadn’t gone through
studies and things, but on this diligent Bible study thing that
you’ve been doing, they were just reminders to me. And I hardly
ever say anything if you are part of that, because this is
for you, not really for me. This is your thing. And I might
have way too much to say. But you need the Word. And the
Lamb of God, who loved you enough to die for you, leads you through
His Word. Learn the Word of God, for in
it you will know the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of
the world. That is the true shepherd.