Who is Jesus? All through our study of the
Gospel of John we have met person after person who look Jesus in the eye and
say, “Who are you?” Their jaw is wide open in amazement at some miracle He
has just performed and they ask, “Where did you come from?”
Their eyes are as big as saucers as they listen to Him
teach and at the end they say, “Who sent you?”
Everyone wants to know who Jesus is. And again and
again Jesus responds to them – He tells them again and again, “My heavenly
Father sent me. I came from above.” And to the question “Who are you?” He
responds, “I am.” Using the same name that God used when Moses asked, “What
shall I call you?” And God says, ‘Tell them I am sent you.”
So throughout this gospel Jesus says, “I am the door; I
am the vine; I am the light of the world; I am the way the truth and the
life; I am the resurrection and the life; I am the bread of life.” And in
our text, “I am the good Shepherd.” Seven times Jesus tells us plainly who
He is.
And I pray that as we have been studying the book of
John that you are discovering again, or maybe even for the first time that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
Who is Jesus? It is a vitally important question – for
how you answer it will influence your level of commitment to Him – your
willingness to give Him your whole life. If you think He is merely a nice
man with a toga and sandals, there isn’t much incentive there to give your
life to Him. But if you realize that He is the Messiah, the Saviour, the
Son of God, then He is worthy to give your life to Him.
So it is vitally important that we understand who Jesus
is. Certainly of all His given names, of all His titles, there is one that
speaks so mightily of His tenderness, so magnificently of His compassion, so
marvellously of His selflessness - and that is the title of Good Shepherd.
Years ago when the Israelites tried to communicate
their understating of who God was and what He was, they would use picture
language. They would talk about God as being a fortress, a rock, a shield,
or one of their favorites - a Shepherd.
“The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want ….”
The Shepherd was a familiar image to the Israelites because the geography of
Palestine lent itself to the raising and herding of sheep. Shepherds and
sheep were a constant fixture in the society and culture of ancient Israel.
And good shepherds were known for their constant care
and their fearless courage, patient love for their flock. So as the ancient
Israelites looked for language and images to describe their God, it is
little wonder that they turned to the image of the shepherd.
But above all, the name Good Shepherd speaks of
relationship. And for this reason it remains one of my favorites. For as
much as I need to know about His grandeur, as much as we need to recognize
His power and authority, as much as I need to realize that the Lord is
active and responsible for my salvation – all that means little to me if I
do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ. He remains distant and cold -
a subject for wonderful academic study but that’s all.
This name, “Good Shepherd” speaks of relationship.
Think of the wonder of this relationship. It is the wonder of a
relationship with God Himself. That is part of what Jesus is saying He is
saying, I am God in the flesh.
All through the Old Testament
God is referred to as the Shepherd who cares for the people of Israel. Jacob
(Genesis 49:24), Isaiah (40:11), Micah (7:14) and of course David all refer
to God as their Shepherd. So when Jesus says, “I Am the good Shepherd,”
He is identifying Himself as divine. It is tantamount to saying, “I am God,
the Shepherd.”
And so our relationship with
Jesus Christ is one filled with wonder, the wonder of actually being able to
relate to the one who set the stars in space and calls them each by name.
The wonder of actually belonging to the one who has ownership and authority
over all of creation. The wonder of it all, that we are actually able to
say, “I know Him. And He knows me.”
And it is this relationship
that is at the heart of Christianity. It is what sets our faith apart from
the rest of the world religions. Some people say, “All faiths are basically
the same – they all teach the same thing - obey God, do the right thing,
treat your neighbour with respect, live at peace with one another and all
will go well with you.”
No, no, no - Christianity is
so much more than all of that. It is at its heart the good news that a
relationship can now be had with almighty God, because the Good Shepherd has
come in the flesh and has revealed Himself to us and called us His own.
There is no longer a distance between ourselves and God – Jesus the Good
Shepherd has bridged it for us and now in the words of that great old hymn,
“He walks with me and talks with me and he tells me I am his own.” The
wonder of it all - that we can actually be in relationship with the Lord!
Think next of the cost of
that relationship. Jesus says in verse 11, “I am the good shepherd. The
good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
We are in relationship with
Jesus Christ because He has paid the price for us with His own life - He has
laid down His life for us. And I pray that if you don’t know this to be true
in your life that your eyes would be opened to the fact that we are great
sinners who have a great Saviour.
But there is more here and
that is the fact that Jesus Christ, as our Shepherd, did not lay His life
down for us once but He continually lays down His life for us. You see, it
cost Jesus Christ to be our Shepherd. Once He bought you and me through His
death, it wasn’t the end - we are sheep after all. You go buy yourself a
herd of sheep and do you think that after you’ve made the purchase, that’s
the end of it? No. There’s the need for constant feeding, constant guidance,
endless attention and care.
And Jesus as our Good
Shepherd does not simply purchase us with His life, but continually gives
Himself to us, constantly lays Himself down for us. Scripture says He is
constantly making intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25). And don’t we know it
to be true in our relationship with Christ? Don’t we know Him to be
generous? Giving far more than we ever ask, always willing to help us in our
journey through life far more eagerly than we are to receive His help?
Is there a habit you need help to overcome?
Is there an anxiety you are facing? Is there a difficulty that we are facing
at work or at home? My friends, you and I have a good shepherd who has
purchased us and now through faith we are His. And my friends, like a
shepherd cares for his sheep, so Jesus seeks to care for you. Give Him that
habit, give Him that anxiety, give Him that difficulty – go to Him in prayer
– you have a relationship with Him and He knows you and seeks to care for
you. He lays down His life for you. He’s the Good Shepherd.
He is so different from the hired hand that
Jesus speaks about in our text, who the first sign of trouble is out of
there. In the immediate context Jesus is speaking of the Pharisees who, in
their conversation with the blind man, demonstrate they have no care for the
people – but surely we could take this to mean the world or any world
system.
Phillip Keller in his book
entitled, “A Shepherd looks at Psalm 23” tells of how on a ranch next to him
there was a tenant sheepman who was the most indifferent manager he had ever
met. He was not concerned about the condition of his sheep. His land was
neglected. He gave little or no time to his flock, letting them pretty well
forage for themselves as best they could, both summer and winter. They fell
prey to dogs cougars and rustlers.
Every year those poor
creatures were forced to gnaw away at bare brown fields and impoverished
pastures. Every winter there was a shortage of nourishing hay and wholesome
grain to feed the hungry ewes. Shelter and safeguard and protect the
suffering sheep from storms and blizzards are inadequate.
They had only polluted muddy
water to drink. There had been a lack of salt and other trace minerals
needed to offset their sickly pastures. In their thin, weak and diseased
condition these poor sheep were a pathetic sight.
And Phillip Keller says, “In
my mind’s eye I can still see them standing at the fence, huddled sadly in
their little knots staring wistfully through the wires at the rich pastures
on the other side. To all their distress, the selfish owner seemed utterly
callous and indifferent. He simply did not care. What if his sheep did
want green grass; fresh water, shade, safety or shelter from the storms?
What if they did want relief from wounds, bruises, disease and parasites?
“He ignored their needs, he
couldn’t care less. Why should he – they were just sheep. Fit only for the
slaughter house. I never looked at those poor sheep without an acute
awareness that this was a precise picture of those wretched old taskmasters,
sin and Satan on their derelict ranch. Scoffing at the plight of those
within their power.”1
As F.B. Meyer points out that
our Lord has the “Shepherd’s heart beating with pure and generous love” for
you and for me. He has the “shepherd’s eye that takes in the whole flock” so
that not one of His lambs is overlooked. He has the shepherd’s faithfulness
“which will never fail or forsake”. He has the shepherd’s “strength so that
he is able to deliver us from the jaw of the lion, and the paw of the bear”
. He has “the shepherd’s tenderness” so that even the tiniest lamb can know
His care and the weakest saint will be gently led and be given strength.2
Then think of the intimacy of
this relationship. Look how Jesus describes the relationship between
yourself and Him. At verse 14 He says, “I am the good shepherd; I know my
sheep and my sheep know me.” And then look how close He describes this
relationship – “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.”
It is that close, it is that intimate - as close as the Son is to the
Father. So our relationship with Christ is that close and intimate.
And is this not the basis and
foundation of our testimony? It’s not that we know about God. James says
that even the demons acknowledge that there is a God (James 2:19) and
shudder. It’s not that we know about God – that’s not the basis of a living
testimony. It is that we actually know God and are known by Him. And Jesus
says that this intimate relationship is possible.
I remember during my
undergraduate work being challenged by fellow students in philosophy. And
they would present well-documented arguments against the existence of God.
They would argue persuasively, “There is no God and your faith is a sham.”
And I was shaken in my faith. I had grown up in a Christian cocoon. I had
grown up in a Christian family, went to church every Sunday, youth group on
the weekends, and the summer I went to a Christian camp. After high school I
went to Bible School and then to university for undergraduate work and there
I met people who believed in their faith, which was against my faith as
strongly as I believed in my faith.
It was a time of testing for
me, and I remember thinking – you can present all the so-called logical
arguments against Christianity you like (I was later to discover that
Christianity is indeed a very logical faith) but at the time I thought,
argue all you like, because there is one thing they cannot take away and
that is my experience of God’s love, my experience of the grace of Christ in
my life. Argue all you like against the existence of God, but I know He is
real - I have a relationship with Him. And so with John in his first letter
we are able to say, “That which was from the beginning, which we have
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our
hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” (1
John 1:1)
We have experienced God
intimately in the person of Jesus Christ who is the Good Shepherd. And our
ears are attuned to His voice. Jesus makes this point again and again in our
text. The sheep know the voice of their shepherd (verses 4,5,14). This is a
well-documented phenomenon among the sheep of Palestine. An Arab shepherd
can separate personal sheep from larger flocks by using a particular whistle
or call.
The relationship between
Jesus the Good Shepherd and ourselves is that close, that intimate - when we
hear His voice, we follow. It takes some work – we need to listen intently,
we need to practice listening, read His Word, be familiar with the lilt of
His voice, so that when we hear it in our conscience, when we hear it
through brothers and sisters in Christ, we can recognize His voice and say,
“That is my Lord speaking,” allowing His voice to break in on us through the
din and clatter of this world. That’s why it’s so important for us to have a
daily quiet time, when we are reading His Word, and praying, listening to
His voice.
Can you see why this name is
cherished? It speaks of relationship. The wonder of our relationship with
the Creator of the universe, the cost of this relationship – He laid down
His life for us so that we can have this relationship. The intimacy of
this relationship is so close that we can actually hear His voice.
Do you feel the pull of that? Earlier in this chapter
Jesus said, “when he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of
them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.” But they
will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because
they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.
Malcolm Muggeridge said that a very interesting book
could be written how unbelievers tried to explain away conversion to
Christ. For instance, when Charles Colson, one of the primary players in
the Watergate scandal, was converted, people couldn’t believe it. They said
it was a gimmick. They couldn’t believe that he would become a magnificent
man of God who is doing a great work in the name of Jesus Christ today.
When Malcolm Muggeridge became a Christian, they
couldn’t believe it. They gave all sorts of reasons. They said he is an old
clown who needs a new act. He is a man who committed all sorts of sins in
his youth and now he is not longer capable of committing them he has started
to condemn them and so on.
And Malcolm Muggeridge said that the only reason they
didn’t give for my conversion was the one true one, “I’ve fallen in love
with Christ and felt the commanding power of Christ which was totally
irresistible.” The truth of God in Christ gripped him.
Copyright MBC and Rev. Dr. Tom Cullen -
March 2009
