St John's Lutheran Church, Woodstock, IL

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The Good Shepherd

Sermon Preached by Rev. Thomas W. Larson
Season of Easter – April 29, 2012
St. John's Lutheran Church, Woodstock, Illinois

Today's text: Based on John 10:11-18

[Jesus said:] "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 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. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the 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. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 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."

Lord God, heavenly Father, thank You so much for Your unfailing love for us, that You send Your Son into our world to be our Good Shepherd, our Good Shepherd who would live a perfect life for us, our Good Shepherd who would die for us on the cross, our Good Shepherd who on Easter morning would rise from the dead proclaiming victory, a victory that by Your grace we claim this day. We ask Your blessing upon this time of meditation. Help us to listen to the voice of our Good Shepherd. In His name we pray. Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied upon you from God our Father and from our Good Shepherd, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text this morning is the Gospel lesson for today from John, chapter ten. The theme verse is verse sixteen, where Jesus says, "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]. Under the theme of the Good Shepherd this morning, I want to talk about listening, listening to the Good Shepherd. There are some automatic questions that we might raise in our minds when we think about listening to the Good Shepherd. First of all, why should we? Secondly, how do we do that? Thirdly, what are we going to gain from it?

We Should Listen to the Good Shepherd Because . . .

Why should we listen to the Good Shepherd? We should listen to the Good Shepherd because, first of all, our Good Shepherd, Jesus, died for us [John 10:11]. If someone is willing to lay down His life for us, doesn't it make sense that He deserves our attention? This is someone, obviously, who cares so very, very much. We know that since He lay down His life for us, our Good Shepherd is someone who has our best interests in mind, who wants what is best for us. So we should listen.

Why should we listen to the Good Shepherd? Because Jesus, as our Good Shepherd, our text tells us, will never leave us [John 10:12]; the NIV uses the phrase "abandon us." Jesus will not abandon us. He will not abandon us in life. We have His Word, we have His promise. In the very last verse of Matthew, at the end of that verse, Jesus says, "And ... I am with you always, to the very end of the age." [Matthew 28:20, NIV] He's made a promise, a promise to you and to me, to all His sheep, to all His lambs. He's not going to abandon us, He's not going to leave us. He will be with us. He's going to be with us in the good times; He's going to be with us in the down times. So we should listen, listen to our Good Shepherd. He's not going to leave us, He's not going to abandon us. He's worth following.

As He will not abandon us in life, He will not abandon us in death [John 10:17-18]. Our text takes place in John, chapter ten; in the next chapter, John, chapter eleven, Jesus goes to a cemetery, if you would, to a gravesite, a tomb where His friend Lazarus has been placed, His friend who has been dead for four days. When Jesus arrives, both Martha and Mary say, "Lord, if you had been here ..." They knew Jesus could heal. They'd seen and heard about it so many, many times. "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" [John 11:21, 32]. In that conversation that Jesus has with Martha, He says, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." [John 11:25-26, NIV] Our Good Shepherd Jesus is not going to abandon us in life, and He's not going to abandon us in death either. He cares. He provides. He deserves our attention. We indeed should listen to Him.

Jesus, as our Good Shepherd, will never flee when the going gets tough because he cares for us [John 10:13]. If you ever question, sometime in your life if you ever question — does the Lord really care? — look at the cross. Does He care? Absolutely He cares. Our text talks about the hired hand. When the wolf comes, the hired hand does what? Exits the other way, because he cares about himself; he's only there because of the paycheck. Not so with Jesus. When Judas and those armed guards came out to the garden that night, Jesus didn't get up and go the other way; He went out to meet them, He went out to face them. He didn't run when the going got tough. He didn't run in the face of the cross. Our Good Shepherd cares. He cares deeply about each and every one of us here this morning. He cares deeply about every person. He doesn't flee when the going gets tough. We should indeed listen to Him.

We should listen to our Good Shepherd because our Good Shepherd knows us. Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me" [John 10:14, NIV]. He knows us. He understands us. He understands our weaknesses. He understands our difficulties. He understands our fears. He's been here in our world. He's faced all kinds of trials, and yet He was always without sin. But He understands where we come from, and He loves and cares for us, and He provides for us.

In John, chapter ten, the verse right after our text this morning, it says, "There was again a division among the Jews because of these words" [John 10:19]. There was a division among the people. Some of them felt that Jesus was insane or that He was a Satan. Others, looking at Jesus and looking at all that He had done, all those wonderful things He had done, His words of grace, knew that there was something very special about Him. They understood that He was a man from God, a very compassionate person. So when we understand who Jesus is, the very Son of God, when we understand He's our Good Shepherd who laid down His life for us and who rose again, it only makes sense that we should listen to Him.

When Do We Listen to the Good Shepherd?

That brings us to the second question. If we're at the point where we want to listen to our Good Shepherd, then it only follows that we should ask the question: how do we do that? Let's go to Jesus for that answer. Here's what Jesus says; He says to His disciples in Luke, chapter ten: "The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me" [Luke 10:16]. In other words, when Jesus sent out His disciples to people to carry a message that sin carries with it wages — "the wages of sin is death" [Romans 6:23a] — but also to carry the message that the gift of God, who comes through the Son of God, who comes through the Good Shepherd, is forgiveness and life and salvation, when they brought that message, that message that Jesus had been proclaiming to them, when they took it out and they proclaimed that message to other people, the people who listened to them were listening to Jesus — "He who hears you, hears me," Jesus says.

So how do we listen to the Good Shepherd? We open our Bibles. We have His Word. We open our Bibles with each other when we come to Bible class and we listen to the Good Shepherd. We listen to the Good Shepherd as His Word is proclaimed to us. As we hear that message over and over about a God of love and grace, about a God of power, and a God of life, we listen to the Good Shepherd. It's so important that we do that. Jesus certainly stressed that at the beginning of the Book of Acts; in fact, the key verse in the Book of Acts is verse eight, where Jesus says to His disciples, right before His ascension, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" [Acts 1:8]. When those disciples went out, they were witnesses, they told people about Jesus, what they had seen, what they had heard. They told people about Jesus, and when the disciples spoke, when the people heard that message, they were hearing Jesus and His message. It's so important that we do that, that we hear Jesus, that we follow His voice.

Listening to Jesus Will . . .

So the third question I want to address this morning: What are the benefits of doing that, what do we get out of it, listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd?

First of all, when we listen to Jesus, it's going save us from a lot of darkness. In John, chapter eight, Jesus says, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness" [John 8:12]. Darkness in the Scriptures is always associated with sin and with the disastrous results of sin. God hates sin. Why? Because He loves people. When we sin, what happens? We get hurt, those around us get hurt. God cares for us, He loves us, He doesn't want us to hurt. So when we listen to the Good Shepherd, when we follow His teaching, it's going to save us from a lot of bad decisions, a lot of bad choices. I always hear my son and my daughter-in-law telling our little grandson, six years old, "Noah, make good decisions, make good choices." We hear Jesus with that message to us: make good choices. He tells us what good choices are: we are to fear and love God, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, mind [Matthew 22:37], and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves [Matthew 22:39]. As we listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd, He guides us in the choices that we make in life so that we're not walking in darkness, so that we're not hurting as much and that others aren't hurt because of what we do.

When we listen to the Good Shepherd, He helps us lead a productive life. In John, chapter fifteen, verse five, Jesus says, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing" [John 15:5, NIV]. So when we listen to the Good Shepherd, when we make the good choices that He guides us to make, we're going to lead productive lives, lives that make a difference in this world. Look around — there's so much hurting, isn't there? There is so much pain in this world. Now, we can make choices that are going to add to the darkness, that are going to add to the pain, that are going to add to the distress of this world; or we can listen to the Good Shepherd, be guided by Him, and make choices that are going to bring light, that are going to bring hope and peace, that are going to bring joy into people's lives. We have a God who indeed wants us to be joyful; that's what His Word says in First Thessalonians, chapter five, verse sixteen. It's one of the shortest verses in the Bible, but a powerful one: "Be joyful always." We have a God who wants us to be joyful, who wants us to have productive lives, lives that make a difference.

And of course, when we listen to the Good Shepherd, He's going to bring us to Heaven [John 10:28], and what good news that is. "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" [Romans 6:23], our Good Shepherd. That's what Easter is all about, isn't it? Easter is all about the fact that Jesus as our Good Shepherd laid down His life for us. In verse eighteen of our text, Jesus talks about laying down His life and He explains to His disciples; He says, "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" [John 10:18]. Jesus laid down His life. No one took it from Him, He laid it down by His choice, by His will. And He rose because He had authority over death and the grave. That authority over death and the grave applies to us as well, because someday our Good Shepherd is going to come again and we're going to rise and we're going to go home. What good news that we share again today on this Good Shepherd Sunday.

King David wrote about the Good Shepherd. He put it in these words:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff
they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life:

— now hear the promise; King David says:

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
for ever.
[Psalm 23, KJV]

Notice, David doesn't say, "Well, you know, I hope to ..." or "I think I will ..." But he says, "I will ..." You and I, who have the Good Shepherd, who know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we can say that with the same kind of confidence: "I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

Alleluia, Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ]]> http://www.stjohnswoodstock.com/s2012/20120429.html http://www.stjohnswoodstock.com/s2012/20120429.html Sun, 29 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT