One of the great questions of our age, particularly among those who have been taught scientific evolution, is whether or not God is real.  From time to time you will hear someone ask the question, “if God is real, then why doesn’t He show us?  Why doesn’t He reveal Himself?  Why doesn’t God prove that He is real?”  And sometimes, people will ask us that are Christians to prove that God is real.  To prove that He exists.  

But it is noteworthy that Jesus Christ never addressed that question.  He did not defend the existence of God.  In fact, the Bible is not written to prove that God is real.  The Bible does not defend the existence of God or try to prove it or even explain it.  The fact is, that God doesn’t need us to defend Him, but just to declare Him.  That He is. Period.  God’s personal name that He gave Moses out of the burning bush illustrates that fact.  When Moses asked God His name, God said, “I Am that I Am.”  He is.  And you can either accept that, or reject it.  It’s your choice.  But there are consequences to your decision. Eternal consequences.  And consequences you will face in this life as well.  

So we do not need to defend God’s existence, nor define Him.  Our job is to declare Him.  Let the scientist’s expostulate on their theories.  God has declared who He is.  Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”  Science changes it’s mind from day to day, but the truth of God endures forever.  I was telling my kids just this week much of the dietary advice we were given about fats and carbs growing up has now been proven to be completely wrong.  Science can change it’s mind without any problem whatsoever and what had once been proclaimed to be the facts is just conveniently dismissed in favor of new facts.  I saw an interesting quote recently from a man named Werner Heisenberg, who was the father of quantum physics.  He said, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you.”

Nevertheless, on the question of God’s existence skeptics abound.  But God doesn’t need to answer them.  It is foolishness, the existence of God is self evident for those who believe in Him.  Now there was a similar question posed to Jesus by the religious leaders of the Jews.  They had come to ask Him if He was the Messiah.  Christ, by the way, is the Greek word for Messiah.  The Messiah had a pretty broad definition according to popular interpretation.  The limited view which was favored by the Pharisees and scribes and priesthood in Jesus day, was that the Messiah would be a ruler, of the royal line of David, who would restore the throne of Israel, and overturn their enemies.  The Biblical view of the Messiah was quite a bit more expanded than that, however.  Isaiah, for instance, made it clear in Isaiah 9 who the Messiah would be.  It says, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.  There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.”  This prophecy makes it clear that the Messiah who would sit on David’s throne was no less than the Mighty God.  Why the Jewish leaders could not see this from such scriptures is beyond me.  But as with most people, I guess, they heard what they wanted to hear.  And so they had a limited, one dimensional view of the Messiah.

So the Jews come to Jesus as He is walking in the winter time under the portico of Solomon, that is the remnant wall of the original temple of Solomon that was all that had survived the destruction of Solomon’s temple.  And John tells us that it was during the Feast of Dedication.  We call that feast Hanukkah today.  It was a celebration of the rededication of the temple which had happened during the revolt which had been led by Judas Maccabee a couple hundred years earlier.   So perhaps that was the incentive for asking Jesus this question.  Because Judas Maccabee had been the type of revolutionary that they wanted the Messiah to be like.  I think they knew full well that Jesus was the Messiah.  But He wasn’t the kind of Messiah that they wanted.  Jesus was concerned about spiritual things, and they were concerned about earthly things.  They wanted deliverance from Roman oppression, Jesus offered deliverance from their sins.  

I’m afraid that we still have that problem today.  People are always trying to define God according to what they think God should be like.  But God has already declared what He is like.  And so when a preacher like me tries to teach what the Bible says about God and our relationship to Him, we are vilified.  Because the Bible doesn’t square with what a lot of people have decided God should be like.  I had a woman some time ago tell me repeatedly that I could preach about God all that I wanted to, but her God was not the same God that I spoke of.  She said her God was a loving God, and a merciful God.  And every time I tried to speak to her, she just repeated that over and over again, getting louder and louder.  The real problem though with her view of God was that she wanted to be able to deliberately sin and not have a guilty conscience about it.  But whether or not her conscience is bothered is not going to change the fact of who God is.  He is a loving, merciful God.  But He is also holy, righteous and just.  And you cannot limit God to just the characteristics that you like and dismiss the others.  Jesus said, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

So back to our text, Jesus answers their question without seeming to address it directly.  He doesn’t say outright that He is the Messiah because of their misconceptions about the Messiah’s purpose.  He has previously told individual people that He was the Messiah.  And His own disciples had professed that He was the Messiah, the Son of God.  But Jesus knows that what these Jews were attempting to do was not come to an understanding of the truth, but they were trying to find something that would justify them murdering Him.  And so they wanted to accuse Him of blasphemy. The way that they decided to do it, was by getting Him to declare who He was in the temple, in the presence of witnesses.  And so they descend on Him in a pack, and put the question to Him.  Vs. 24, they say “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

But Jesus knows their hearts and their deceit, and so He gives them this answer in vs.25, “I told you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me.”  So Jesus offers two proofs of the fact that He is the Messiah.  First His words show that He is the Messiah.  Over and over again, Jesus had shown by HIs teaching that He spoke the word of God.  For instance, Jesus said in chapter 8 vs 28,  “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.” 

So as He said there in chapter 8, and now again in chapter 10, “I have already told you and you did not believe.”  He offers two evidences; I speak the words of God, and I do the works of God.   And they had not missed either of those proofs either.  Nicodemus, one of their own, and speaking on behalf of the Pharisees,  told Jesus back in chapter 3 that “We know that You have come from God as a teacher, for no one could do the signs that You do unless God is with him.” So by their own testimony they knew that He had come from God and God was with Him, and yet they had rejected Him. 

So Jesus said I have told you, and I have shown you, and yet you do not believe. He said You don’t believe because you are not my sheep.  Now all of chapter 10 is on this theme of Jesus as the Shepherd of His sheep.  And so even though this takes place three months later than the earlier portion of this passage, yet the theme of this passage remains the same.  The theme is that Jesus is the Great Shepherd of the sheep.  Jesus has declared Himself to be the Shepherd of His sheep.  And this idea of a Shepherd was a great Messianic theme throughout the Old Testament.  I don’t have time to take you to all the references for it this morning.  But one example in Micah is quoted in Matthew 2:6, “‘AND YOU, BETHLEHEM, LAND OF JUDAH,

ARE BY NO MEANS LEAST AMONG THE LEADERS OF JUDAH; FOR OUT OF YOU SHALL COME FORTH A RULER WHO WILL SHEPHERD MY PEOPLE ISRAEL.’”  So a shepherd was a common Old Testament picture of the Messiah.

So having already declared Himself to be the good Shepherd in vs.11,  now Jesus delineates those who are His sheep from those that are not His sheep.  Jesus gives three evidences for knowing His sheep.  First of all, He said, His sheep believe Him.   Secondly, His sheep hear His voice.  Thirdly, His sheep follow Him.  

The Pharisees did none of that.  They did not believe His words or His works.  They did not hear His voice, that is HIs call.  And they did not follow Him.  They were not interested in becoming disciples.  Here is the crux of it, I think.  They didn’t want a shepherd.  They didn’t think that they needed a shepherd.  And I think that is the state of most people today.  They don’t see themselves as needing a shepherd.  They don’t see themselves as needing a Savior.  They don’t see themselves as foolish, wayward sheep who are always going astray, who are always wandering off, who are always prone to get in trouble from predators.  People today see going to church as adding some degree of religion, or some degree of respectability to their lives.  They acknowledge certain facts of the Bible, they acknowledge the existence of God, they are even willing to accept the premise of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, but they do not see themselves as needing a Shepherd of their souls.  People want God to be like a genie, that sits on a shelf somewhere out of the way until we want our wishes granted, then we come to Him and rub the statue just so, and say some prayer like abracadabra, and poof, God gives you what you want.  We want a god like that.  But we don’t need a Shepherd.  I can decide for myself what I need to do, where I want to go, how I want to live.  A Shepherd is too restricting.  A Shepherd leads the sheep, guides the sheep, controls the sheep.  So we don’t really want a Shepherd. We’ll take a genie though, thank you very much.  

But if you have that attitude, then there is a very good chance you are not one of His sheep.  You can’t be His sheep unless you accept Him as your Shepherd.  Personally, I had to come to the place where I finally realized I couldn’t make it on my own.  I wasn’t able to manage things on my terms.  When my life finally got so messed up I couldn’t stand it anymore, then I knew I needed a Shepherd to save me, to restore me,  to make me one of HIs flock and to lead me and guide me.  And I can tell you this, there is no greater comfort or peace that can be found, than knowing that Jesus is my Shepherd and I am HIs sheep.  I have a confidence that nothing else can provide, because I know that He knows me, because I am His.

That’s why Jesus said that He came to seek and to save those that were lost.  When you come to the point of realizing that you are lost, then you will welcome a Shepherd, who will save you and lead you and guide you.  There is a popular slogan out there you see on bumper stickers which says, “not all who wander are lost.”  But the fact is, we are all lost.  Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  And until you realize that you are lost, you cannot be saved.

So Jesus says His sheep follow Him, and obey Him because they are His.  1Cor. 6:19-20 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?  For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”  Some people see obedience as a limitation, but I think that it is a great benefit.  I just follow Him, and know He will take care of the details.  He will take care of me.  And that is such a great relief.  None of us knows the future.  None of us know what tomorrow holds.  But Jesus sees tomorrow.  He has a plan for me, and I can trust His plan.  That’s the benefit of being His sheep and following Him.  

But the benefits don’t stop there.  Jesus said in vs.27, “I give eternal life to them and they will never perish, and no one can snatch them out of My hand.  My Father who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”  

Now there are three benefits to the life we have been given by Christ.  First of all, He says He gives them eternal life.  Some people think that eternal life is something that we get when we get to heaven.  But eternal life, or everlasting life, is given to you at the new birth.  When you are born again, by the Spirit of God, then you receive eternal life. It begins at conversion.  And it continues forever.  

Back in chapter 10 vs.10, Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”  It’s a never ending stream of life.  Back in chapter 7:37, Jesus said, “]If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”  He was speaking of the Spirit which those who believed in Him were to receive.  Going back to that conversation with Nicodemus in chapter 3, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”  

So in conversion when we are born again, we are born by the Spirit, and as such we become spiritual beings, and as spiritual beings we have spiritual life, which is eternal life.  It’s an abundant life, springing up in our soul which will never run dry because it comes from the Spirit of God within us.  And then Jesus says they will never perish.  Listen, this body will die but our spirit will never die.  In the next chapter, Jesus said in 11:25-26 “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,  and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.  And when we believe that, we can live victoriously in this life.  We don’t need to fear those who can kill the body but do nothing more to you after that.  Because we can know that we will never die.  In fact, we can even start to look forward to that day when this old body is cast off, and we receive a new body which is not weighed down by sin, which is not weak, which is not corruptible. 

And then the last aspect of our eternal life that Jesus is teaching is that it is eternally secure.  It’s what the Reformers called  the perseverance of the saints.  It is the triple guarantee of our eternal life.  First of all, Jesus said we are in HIs hand and the Father has given us to Him.  So that is our first guarantee, and then the next guarantee is that we are in the Father’s hand, and no one is able to snatch them out of HIs hand.  And in Ephesians 4:3, Paul says we are sealed by the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption.  So we have a triple guarantee.  

I’ve used the illustration many times of my kids when they were little, and we would have to cross a road or a parking lot.  And I would tell my child, “hold onto my hand.”  And usually they would grab hold of my hand.  But though I told them to hold onto my hand, I did not rely on their strength to hold onto my hand. Neither did I rely on their obedience.  I’ve seen them suddenly try to let go and do something silly like pick up something, or turn around, right at the worst possible moment. So rather, I held onto their hand.  I wanted them to obey me.  But I made sure that I kept them firmly in my grip.  Their security was up to me.  

So it is with God and His children.  All of us like sheep are prone to wander.  But though God wants us to obey Him, He keeps us by His sovereign power.  We are not kept by our power.  No one, Jesus said is able to take them from the hand of God.  No one.  That includes you and I.  Just as my child could not escape from my hand, we cannot take ourselves out of God’s hand. Romans 8:30 says, “and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” God will keep us from the cradle to the grave and on through eternity.

And then Jesus concludes His answer to their question in vs.30, in the most dramatic way possible, saying, “I and the Father are One.”  Not only that He is the Messiah, but that He is the Messiah promised in scripture, the very God  in flesh.  Now He is saying two things in that tremendous statement. First of all, He is saying He and God have one purpose. That is the context of vs.28 and 29.  Both Jesus and God are agreed in their purpose to keep HIs sheep.  And this is consistent to what I read earlier from chapter 8 vs 28,  “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.”   So they were in agreement in all that Jesus did and said.  He spoke the words of God and did the deeds of God.  So they are One in purpose.

Secondly, they are One in essence.  They are One God.  Isaiah 9 which I quoted from earlier made that clear.  The Messiah was called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father.  Now they are two persons, the Father and the Son.  But they are One essence.   In the great high priestly prayer of John 17, when Jesus is in the upper room on the night before His crucifixion, He is praying with HIs disciples, and He prays to God saying, that they may all be one, “even as You, Father are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us so that the world may believe that you sent Me.”  So this statement that “I and the Father are One” is the greatest self declaration of His deity.  He makes Himself equal with God. 

Well, we read in the next verse that they didn’t like the answer to their question.  They had wanted Jesus to tell them plainly if He was the Messiah.  And Jesus answered that, but according to HIs interpretation of who the Messiah is.  He says clearly that He is One with God.  And the rulers know that is what He means because they say it in vs. 33.  They say we are going to stone you to death, because you being a man make yourself out to be God.  They know full well what He is saying.  But they don’t want the Messiah to be God.  They want a revolutionary.  They want freedom from Rome. They want to be the rulers of Israel, and rulers of the world, and the Messiah that they wanted they thought could provide that.  Jesus on the other hand, made them feel guilty.  He made them realize that they needed a Shepherd. That they needed to follow someone.  They rejected that idea.  And so they picked up stones to kill Him.  

No one here today I am sure would admit that you would like to kill Christ.  But I wonder how many of you have rejected the notion that you need a Shepherd?  How many of you reject the idea that you need to follow Him, and obey Him, if you are going to have abundant life?  I believe that the Jews that day knew that Jesus was the Messiah.  But they rejected Him and chose to live their lives their way, and rejected the notion of a Shepherd. And I believe some here today may have the same response.  You don’t want to be under the authority of a Shepherd, you don’t want to submit to a Shepherd.  And as such you reject Christ.  

But I hope that is not your decision.  Today you have heard the truth.  Today the invitation is being extended to you to believe in Him, to hear His voice, and to follow Him.  If you will do that then you will be HIs sheep, and He will know you, and He will give eternal life to you.  And no one can snatch you out of His hand.  You can face life with the confidence that you will never perish but have everlasting life with God, and He will be with you, today and forever.  I pray that today is the day of your salvation.  Answer His call and come to Christ, believe and follow Him, that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.

From the very earliest examples of literature, we find the use of anthropomorphic allegories or similitudes used to illustrate various types of human behavior.  Even today, much of our perceptions of human behavior is influenced by tales of animals who talk, and think as we do.  And so it is not surprising that  we find the scriptures uses such analogies from time to time as a means of teaching certain principles.  

Today we come to one such allegory, that of the church, or the people of God, presented as sheep, and Christ as the shepherd of the sheep.  Also in this allegory, Christ portrays false religious leaders as wolves who prey on the sheep.  Most of us can appreciate this type of teaching mechanism.  We understand, at least to some degree, the picture of a shepherd and his sheep.

But I suppose that this allegory is not as clear to living in a modern industrialized world as it would have been to listeners in Jesus’ day.  Because even though we are familiar with the idea of shepherding, most of us probably have never spent much time around sheep.  The Israelites though were sheepherders by heritage, going back to the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  When the Israelites moved into Egypt during the time of Joseph they settled in the land of Goshen.  They lived separately from the Egyptians because they were shepherds, and that was a loathsome profession to the Egyptians.  So historically, the Israelites were shepherds, and as such the people listening in Jesus’ day would have been very familiar with this type of allegory.

However for most of us today, we may have a vague picture of Jesus carrying a lamb on His shoulders tucked away somewhere in the photo bank of our memory, but that’s about the extent of our knowledge about the subject.  Such anthropomorphic  stories might be much more understandable for us if they were about dogs.  My kids grew up watching Disney movies like 101 Dalmatians, or the Fox and the Hound.  We have had several dogs as pets at our house.  So most of us can relate to dogs.  We like to imagine that they have certain human attributes.  Some of us even treat our dogs like humans, sometimes we treat them better than humans.  

But Jesus in His wisdom did not use dogs in allegories as teaching entities.  Actually, dogs are much more intelligent than sheep.  In fact, in some cases, dogs seem to be more intelligent than people sometimes.  But to illustrate humans, Jesus used sheep.  And before we can really appreciate this passage, I think we need to first of all recognize that Jesus is symbolizing His people as sheep.

Popular perceptions about sheep are actually not all that accurate. Sheep are often considered symbols of innocence, meekness, submission, and patience.  Or at least that’s the common perception.  But I read a number of articles written by experts on sheep and shepherding, and I have to say that those attributes were not really highlighted.  What we perceive to be innocence or meekness or patience they call just being dumb.  Sheep are actually said to be very stupid creatures.  One writer listed 12 characteristics of sheep that I will just briefly run through, just so that we might get a more accurate picture of what the Bible says we are like. 

First of all, this writer said sheep are very foolish. Out of all animal IQ’s, sheep would have to be at the bottom of the list. 2. Sheep are slow to learn. You don’t see sheep performing tricks in a circus for good reason. 3. Contrary to idyllic pictures that we might have seen somewhere, sheep aren’t all that attractive.  They are dirty, smelly, actually kind of ugly up close. 4. Sheep are demanding. They always want to eat, and will turn a grassy field into a mud patch in no time, eating the even the roots of the plants. They constantly need new pastures to satisfy their insatiable appetites. 5. They are extremely stubborn.  They are almost impossible to herd.  Perhaps that’s why shepherds are described as leading the sheep. Because if sheep don’t want to go somewhere, you can’t hardly make them. 6. Sheep are stronger than they look.  They are physically strong. 7. Sheep are prone to straying. They have little sense of direction.  They get lost easily. They will wander away and get lost without supervision. 8. Sheep are unpredictable. They do foolish things without any sense of reason. 9. Sheep are followers.  If one starts running, others will run as well.  If one wanders away, others will follow them. 10. Sheep are restless.  For sheep to lie down they need freedom from fear, freedom from friction with others, freedom from hunger, and freedom from pests and parasites.  That is a rare combination. 11.  Sheep are dependent.  Without a shepherd for protection, sheep would die from starvation, from thirst or from predators. 12. Though sheep may look differently in different countries, in nature all sheep are the same.  That’s an unflattering picture of sheep, and yet that is the picture of sheep that those Jews listening to Jesus would have had.

Now to be fair, the Bible does not paint quite such a dismal picture of sheep.  But it does emphasize their nature to stray as their primary characteristic.  One of the best known verses is Isaiah 53:6, which says, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, but the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”  That verse emphasizes the nature of sheep to go astray, to wander from the fold, to become ensnared in trouble.  

You will remember the parable that Jesus told about a lost sheep who went astray in Matthew 18:12-14.   “What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying? If it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray. So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish.”  

So it’s important then that we understand what Jesus is talking about when He speaks in this passage to the religious leaders of the Jews and says that He is the Shepherd of the sheep.  We cannot understand this allegory while holding onto some idealistic picture of sheep, if we are to understand the simile correctly.  Sheep are a picture of people, of the human condition, and His sheep represents those sheep that belong to Christ.  That means they are the church.  They are followers of Christ.  As Jesus said in verse 9, “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”  He said in vs.4, “the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”  And in vs.10, He said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  So to be the sheep of Christ is to be the church of Christ.  We are the ones who go astray, we’re the ones who are foolish, who follow our appetites to the point of ruining our life, who will perish at the hands of false teachers if not for our shepherd who defends us.  Our well being is completely dependent upon Him and His under shepherds. 

So that’s our characteristics as sheep.  Now let’s look at the characteristics of the good Shepherd for a moment.  Jesus said in vs.11, “I am the good Shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”  Jesus describes first His nature, and then His purpose.  First let’s consider His nature.  The word Jesus uses for good is the Greek word “kalos”.  There is another Greek word commonly used for good.  That’s the word “agathos”.  That word means morally good.  But the word “kalos” is different.  It literally means beautiful.  But it’s not referring to physical beauty, but to being excellent, magnificent, admirable, noble, praiseworthy.   

Not only is He presenting the nobility of His character, but He is contrasting between Himself and the previously mentioned thieves and robbers who enter into the fold to take advantage of the sheep.  He is the Shepherd of excellent character.  One who comes with a noble calling to take care of the sheep, to give the sheep abundant life, to lead them to pasture.  So He is making a contrast between the true shepherd and the hirelings of verse 12, who haven’t got the best interests of the sheep in mind, but are in it for money.  We can trust that the Lord is good, that His desire for us is for our best interests. This is the failure of our faith many times, that we doubt the Lord’s goodness.  We don’t surrender our will to Him because we doubt that His will is for our best.   We need to trust in the Lord’s goodness towards us and follow Him.

And then He presents His purpose as evidence of His goodness.  He said He gives His life for the sheep. Four times Jesus repeats this phrase that He lays down HIs life for the sheep.  This willingness to give His life for the sheep is the ultimate attestation of the nobility of His character.  It shows His love for the sheep.  Jesus said in John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”  That’s the standard of love that God has given to us to emulate.  But I dare say Jesus went even beyond this exalted standard.  Because Jesus did not just die for those who were His friends, but for those who were HIs enemies.  Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Even when we were in rebellion against God, Christ laid down His life for us.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, I would remind you that the book of John does not have a birth story of Jesus Christ.  We are introduced to Jesus as God in heaven, in the beginning with God. And then John says He became flesh. John the Baptist introduces Jesus to the world saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”  John doesn’t describe for us the birth of Christ, but the purpose of His coming, to be the sacrificial lamb that was the substitute who died in the place of lost sheep.

This is the reason that Christ came to earth; to give His life as a ransom for sinners.  He says in another place, that He came to seek and to save those that were lost.  And the only way that God could bring about the salvation of lost sheep, to save sinners, of which we all are partakers, is by dying in our place.  Because God’s law said the penalty for sin was death.  In the Garden of Eden God declared that if you eat of the tree you will die.  Death is the divine punishment for sin that passed from Adam to all men because all have sinned.  Romans 3:23 says, the wages of sin is death.  But God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son to be our substitute.  The Shepherd offers His life in exchange for the sheep.  This is the doctrine of atonement; that Jesus paid the penalty that we deserved, by offering Himself as our substitute.  

2 Cor.5:21 says that God made Jesus who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.  That is why Jesus came. Not just to be an innocent baby in a manger, nor to be a great teacher about life, not just to be the supreme example of how we are to live.  Those things are true, but secondary to the primary reason which is to save us from the penalty of death by offering up Himself as our substitute.

Then in verses 12 and 13, Jesus further defines His ministry by contrasting that of the hirelings.  These are those false shepherds who are only doing it for the monetary or political gain or social gain that they might get from their position.  When trouble comes, when the wolf comes, they flee and leave the sheep to fend for themselves.  The point being that the distinguishing feature of a true shepherd as opposed to a false one is that he loves the sheep enough to lay down his life for them.  That’s a distinguishing feature of a true under shepherd as well.  He may not become a literal martyr for the sheep, but he will give up his life for the sake of the sheep.  A true pastor will give up his life for the sake of the church.  He will make sacrifices for the sake of the church.  That’s why when I see these television evangelists sitting in lavish studios wearing $2000 dollar suits, and flying around the country in their private jets, I am skeptical of whether or not they are true shepherds.  A hireling is someone who assumes the position of a shepherd but is only interested in the financial rewards.

The next point that Jesus makes in this allegory is the relationship between the true Shepherd and His sheep. In vs.14-15 Jesus says,   “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me,  even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.” Notice that Jesus says that the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep is the same as the relationship between the Father and the Son. That is a significant statement.  The relationship between the church and Jesus, is the same as the relationship between the Father and Christ.  Now what kind of relationship is that?  Well, I would suggest that it’s a relationship of intimacy, of fellowship, of communion.  We could summarize it by saying it is a relationship based on love.

Now when you look at the text you don’t see the word love mentioned anywhere in it.  But love we have already determined was the reason that Christ gave HIs life for the church.  We know that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to save them, to become His church.  But the word that Jesus uses in the Greek is “ginōskō”, which is translated “know”.  But He isn’t talking about knowing as just knowing information.  He is using a term that indicated intimacy.  Sometimes it was used to indicate sexual intimacy.  In Jewish terminology, they spoke of sexual intimacy as to know one’s wife as in Genesis 4:1 when Adam knew Eve or Matthew 1:25 where Joseph did not know Mary when she was with child.

And notice that further proof of that is that the word “knows” of vs. 15 is explained in vs.17 as  “loves”. God knows Christ in vs.15, and that is explained in vs.17 as God loves Christ.  That same type of relationship between God and the Son is to also be between Christ and the church.  That love that we have with Christ is the love of intimacy pictured in Ephesians as the love of Christ for His church.  Listen to Ephesians 5:25, “ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”  Here it is again, this concept of love being that Christ gave Himself up, that is, He gave up His life for the church.  And that love consummated becomes the basis for a communion that can best be illustrated by the marriage of a husband and wife.  Ephesians 5:31-32 “FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.  This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.”

This relationship between the church and Christ is based on the same love between the Father and the Son.  Jesus said in John 3:35 “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.”  And in John 5:20 “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing.”  So that intimate relationship between the Father and the Son is to be mirrored between Christ and His bride, that is the church. 

Then notice how that love is manifested between Christ and the Father.  Jesus said in vs. 18, “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”  So that love between the Father and the Son is characterized by the Son’s obedience to the Father. He was obedient to the Father’s command.  Phil. 2:8 says concerning Christ, “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”  And also look at Heb. 5:8 “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.”  So though Jesus was the Son of God, the very God in flesh, yet He humbled Himself to be obedient to the Father because He loved the Father.  

Now as Christ was obedient to the Father as evidence of His love, so also Jesus said we are to be to Him.  We are to know Him even as He knows the Father.  So our relationship to Christ then is based on love, which is based on obedience, even as was Christ to the Father.  Let’s look again at that reference which we quoted earlier,  John 15:13, Jesus said “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”  But what’s the next verse say?  “You are My friends if you do what I command you.”  There it is.  The correlation of love to obedience.  You cannot have one without the other.  

Jesus said in John 14:15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”  That is the way love is manifested.  That is the way love is expressed by Christ to God, and that is the way we as the church express our love to Christ. That’s the way the sheep show that they know the good Shepherd.  They follow Him.  They go where He tells them to go.  They answer Him when He calls.  In Luke 6:46 Jesus asked, Why do you say to Me “Lord, Lord,” and don’t do the things which I say?  But the one who hears HIs word and acts on His word will show that He knows the Lord.

And then that obedience brings about the next characteristic that Jesus teaches, and that is the unity of the church is mirrored by the unity of the Father and the Son. Jesus says in John 10:16-18 “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

Those other sheep that Jesus had which are not of this fold are none other than the Gentiles, that is you and I.  We were not a part of the fold of the Israelites.  But Jesus came to save the world, all nations, all tribes, of all tongues.  The fact that He is the Savior of the world means that He draws all men to Himself.  Where there was once division between the Jews and the Gentiles, He has made into one church, one kingdom, one people.  

In Jesus’ high priestly prayer, He prays for the unity of the church to be even as the unity that He had with the Father.  I’ll give you just a few verses from His prayer which illustrate that.  In John 17:11, 20-23  Jesus prayed, “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. … 20 “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;  I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”  

Why is that unity so important?  So that the world might know who Jesus is. The church is to be unified by the Spirit of Christ dwelling in them, that they may do the works of Christ. We can know Him intimately because He is in us.  And because He is in us, we do HIs work.  So that the world might know Him as they see Him operating in us.  So then the gospel is not the exclusive domain of Christians in America.  The gospel is not the exclusive domain of the nation of Israel.  But it is the domain of Christ, the Savior of the world, who desires all men to be saved and to know the truth of salvation.  That can only be realized when the church goes into all the world and preaches the gospel to every living creature.  

Now there is a final aspect of that relationship with Christ to the world.  And that is found in the last three verses we are looking at this morning.  Vs.19-21 “A division occurred again among the Jews because of these words. Many of them were saying, “He has a demon and is insane. Why do you listen to Him?”  Others were saying, “These are not the sayings of one demon-possessed. A demon cannot open the eyes of the blind, can he?’”

So the relationship with the world will be characterized not only by unity with His church, but by division.  He came He said in Matt. 10:34  “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. He said in Luke 12:51 “Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division.”  Listen, the truth of God is dividing.  It causes division on purpose.  He came to divide between the sheep and the goats.  Between the light and the darkness.  Between truth and a lie.  Between life and death.  The gospel of Jesus Christ brings division.  Unity is to be unified to the truth.  We are not to be unified to the world.  James 4:4 You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”

This division that Jesus brings causes people to have to make a decision.  Will they listen to the voice of Christ?  Will they recognize the truth of God?  And then what will be their response to it?  How about you?  You have heard the voice of the good Shepherd today.  Is there a response in your soul to the truth?  Do you recognize that you are a sheep that has gone astray, and you’re in need of the shepherd of your soul?  If the Holy Spirit has so convicted you and called you today, I pray that you will heed the voice of the Shepherd and answer Him, and follow Him.  He has paid the penalty for your sin and if you will but surrender to Him as Lord, He promises to be your Shepherd and to lead you into the path of  life.   I pray that today you will answer that call.  

This passage we are looking at today is the first part of a discourse that Jesus gave shortly after healing a man who had been blind from birth.  If you look back at chapters 8 and 9, you will remember that Jesus had been teaching in the temple and said some things regarding His deity to the Jewish religious leaders which infuriated them, and so they took up stones in order to stone Him to death.  But Jesus disappeared into the crowd and escaped.  Then on the way out of the temple, He and his disciples saw a man who John tells us who had been born blind.  And so Jesus spat on the ground, made clay and rubbed it on his eyes, and told the man to go wash in the pool of Siloam.  The blind man believed Jesus, and obeyed by going and washing, and John says he came back to the temple seeing.  

He eventually finds himself in front of the Pharisees, the religious rulers of Israel, and they interrogate him, trying to find information that they can use to discredit this miracle of Jesus.  But they cannot.  They can’t dismiss the irrefutable fact that he who was born blind can now see.  But their anger so burns against Christ, that they take it out on this man, and so they excommunicate him from the temple. That meant that not only was he now a religious outcast, but a social outcast as well.  But Jesus comes later on that day and finds him, and reveals Himself fully to him as the Son of God, the Messiah, the Lord Jehovah.  And so it says that this formerly blind man worshipped Him.  Worship is reserved for God.  Not for prophets, not for great teachers.  But this man worshipped Jesus as Lord God, and He accepted that worship.

Shortly after that, Jesus declares to the Pharisees in 9:39, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”  In other words, Jesus is saying that He came to separate those who are in the kingdom of Light, from those who in the kingdom of darkness.  That is the judgment that Jesus said He brought to the world.  Jesus said in  John 3:19, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.”  So the judgment Jesus brings is to make a distinction between light and darkness, truth and error, and life and death.  This is the judgment that comes through Christ on the world.

Now as we come to chapter 10, Jesus continues to teach that principle even further by use of an allegory.  The first part of this allegory which He speaks of is that of sheep which belong to a shepherd, which are kept in a sheep fold, and the nature of true shepherds and false shepherds.  And this allegory is expanding upon and illustrating the nature of the people who belong to God, which Jesus likens to sheep belonging to a shepherd.  This is a recurring theme we see throughout the Old Testament, that of God as the Shepherd of His people. 

For instance, one of my favorite psalms is Psalm 23.  When we studied through the Psalms some time ago in our Wednesday night Bible studies, we memorized the 23rd Psalm. But right now I don’t trust my memory. So I am going  to read it for you, because I think it sets the stage for this allegory that Jesus was teaching.  Psalm 23 says, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”

Now that is a beautiful Psalm. And we hear it used to speak to lots of different situations or circumstances in our lives. But it’s important to realize that the primary interpretation of this Psalm is painting a picture of salvation. And as we look at it through the template of salvation, we see first of all that the Shepherd satisfies our need for salvation, as He gives us rest from our attempts at our own works of righteousness, He saves our soul, He leads us into the path of righteousness which is the process of sanctification, He delivers us from the penalty of death, He provides blessing for us even though we live in the midst of a perverse world, He leads us and corrects us through the Word, He anoints us with the Spirit of God, He gives us all spiritual blessings, He will never leave us or forsake us, and we will live forever with the Lord.  That is the picture presented in Psalm 23, the picture of those in the church, who are saved, who are born again into the family of God, and are of the body of Christ.  

Psalm 23 shows the relationship between the Shepherd and his sheep when one is saved by repentance and faith in Christ. The natural state of all men is like that of a lost sheep.  Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him (that is upon Christ) the iniquity of us all.”  So those who hear the call of God and  turn to Jesus as their Shepherd, by repentance from their sins and faith in Him as Lord who is able to save them from their sins, God lays their iniquity on Christ, and as they follow Him as their Shepherd, they are made part of His flock.  That means that they become part of His church, His body.  

That method of salvation was true in the Old Testament times and it is true in the New Testament times.  That  principle of the church is important for us to understand.  Jesus was the Great Shepherd of the church of Israel, and He is the Great Shepherd of the New Testament church.  In the Old Testament, the church was limited to being or becoming an Israelite, either by birth or by becoming a proselyte. But in the New Testament church there is no more Jew and Gentile,  but we are all baptized into one faith, as one new race, a new people, the people of God. But God’s people were always His church.

So Jesus illustrates that relationship through a very familiar allegory in those days, that being the picture of a shepherd and his sheep.  Now that was a familiar subject to an agrarian community such as was common to the Jews in Jesus day, but it is not so familiar to us today I suppose. And I won’t pretend to be an expert on sheep either.  But I have read some accounts from those who are.  So I think it’s helpful to our understanding if we explain what these experts have written concerning shepherds and their sheep.

In those days, there was usually a community sheepfold near a village or town which would have been used by several different shepherds.  This would be a large pen or fenced enclosure on the outskirts of the village.  And during the day each individual  shepherd would lead his own flock out to pasture and watch over them and care for them.  But in the evening, all the shepherds would lead their flocks back to the common sheepfold where they would be kept for the night.  The shepherd would turn over responsibility to a doorkeeper, or porter, who would guard the door of the fold all night.  And from what we are told, this door would be a narrow opening in the fence, which only one sheep at a time could pass in and out of.  And so once all the sheep were safely inside the fence, the doorkeeper would lie across the gate, or door so that none could enter or go out. There was no other door. 

In the morning, the shepherds would come back to the sheepfold to gather their sheep again in order to pasture them.  And the way this was done was each shepherd in turn would call his sheep.  In some cases he would call them by name.  Names that he had given them.  And as his sheep recognized his voice they would come to him and he would lead them out to pasture and tend to them all day, leading them to water, leading them to rest, leading them to green pastures.  Now that is a beautiful picture, not unlike that of Psalm 23, but note that  it is only true for those sheep that belong to that particular shepherd.  There are other sheep that belong to other shepherds, and they do not recognize the shepherd’s voice, and so they do not follow him.

Now that is a simple illustration which shows as I said the relationship of the Lord with His church.  And Jesus uses this not only to illustrate that, but to rebuke the Pharisees and expose them as false shepherds.  Look at vs.1, Jesus says that “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, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

So the contrast is very clear.  There are some who enter the sheepfold who are not the true shepherd.  They do not enter through the door but climb over some other way under cover of darkness, to steal and rob the sheep. Now this is a pointed reference to the Jewish religious leaders.  They attempt to rob from the church of God by climbing up some other way.  They do not come through the door, who is Christ.  They seek to defraud the church for their own advantage.  He explains further in vs.10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”  False teachers, false shepherds have the same agenda as Satan.  Jesus said in chapter 8:44 to these false religious leaders, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  

That’s why in this allegory they come under cover of darkness.  Jesus is called in chapter one the Word, and it says the Word was Light.  And the Light shines in darkness.  That is how we know the truth, because the truth is light. So the characteristic of false teachers is that they don’t come with the truth, they don’t teach the word of God, they come with lies, with half truths, with silly stories, with philosophy, with human reason, with entertainment, tickling the ears of their listeners to deceive them, to defraud them of the truth, which leaves them in darkness and ultimately destroys those who are deceived.  It destroys them because it blinds them to the truth, and Jesus said in 8:32 that only the truth can make you free.  Only the truth of God can make your free from the power of death and the  penalty of death.

And that is what the Pharisees, the priests, the scribes and lawyers, the religious teachers of the Jews were; false shepherds, defrauders of the church by their false teachings which leave people in darkness.  Jesus said in vs. 8, “All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.”  He is speaking of the priesthood and the rabbis and Pharisees that had come to take advantage of the sheep.  They are thieves and robbers.  They are not serving the sheep, but serving themselves.  They do not come through Jesus Christ.

Here is the thing. Though God had appointed the Levitical priesthood to conduct the services in the temple, and to teach the word of God, they had become apostate.  They still intoned the name of God, they still conducted the services and ceremonies and rituals, but they had departed from the truth.  And the other religious leaders in Judaism were apostate as well.  They gave precedence to the traditions of their forefathers.  They observed their ordinances and traditions, but they had long since lost sight of any application to their hearts.  Furthermore, many of their offices were appointed by politics, not by God. Much of the leadership that was controlling and influencing the church of Israel such as the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees had never really been appointed by God.  And so they were in it for the political power that it gave them, and for the financial opportunity it provided as rulers of Israel.  Jesus says they were thieves and robbers. However, God did use men to be His spokesmen.  He appointed prophets such as John the Baptist or Elijah, who would faithfully call His people to repentance. But for the most part the religious leadership of Judaism was apostate.

I believe that has a lot of similarity with the situation in the church today.  I would dare say that a large percentage of pastors and priests in churches today are not really called by God to preach His word, but are nominated by men, by denominational boards, by countless human mechanisms, but they are not sent by God, and as such they are not true shepherds or doorkeepers.  They have climbed in some other way.  They did not come through Jesus Christ.  God didn’t call them or appoint them.  They are man appointed.  But just as in times past, God still speaks through His appointed prophets.  Not fortune tellers, not future tellers.  That’s not what it means to be a prophet of God.  But prophets who are forth tellers.  Men who will faithfully proclaim forth the truth of God’s word without adulteration or hesitation. 

By the way, let me make something clear that has been on my mind lately.  As the church, we need to understand that God has chosen people to be His instruments here on earth. To be His ambassadors, His ministers.  We are not all called to be pastor’s or preachers, but we are all called to be ministers, to be workers in the kingdom.  God has always chosen to use men to perform His works here on earth.  God divided the Red Sea, but He told Moses to strike it with His rod.  God raised the widow’s son, but He used Elijah to do it. God is the author of His word, but He used men to write it down as the scriptures.  Even when it came to providing salvation for the world, God did not act without incorporating man in that salvation.  Jesus not only was God, but He also became a man in order to effect our salvation.  

So I say that to emphasize that if there is a work here on earth that God has determined to do, then He will usually use the people of His church to do it.  That is the purpose of the body of Christ.  To be His hands and His feet.  This idea that all we have to do is say a quick prayer and then go back to our regularly scheduled programming on television – believing that if it’s going to be done then God will have to do it, and that means we do nothing – is bogus.  That isn’t taught in the Bible.  Jesus gave us the example of the good Samaritan so that we might learn that if we say we love God, then we need to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  And that means we don’t pass by a situation and say, “My, my.  I pray that God helps that person.” But just keep on going on by.  No, Jesus said if you love your neighbor as yourself you will get down off your high horse and spend whatever time and resources necessary to help that person.  To be the hands and feet of God.  To display the mercy and love of God.  

James said the same thing in James 2:14, “What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.”  Notice that James refers to fellow believers in the church as brothers and sisters. That sounds old fashioned, I know.  But the reality of our salvation is that we are born into the family of God.  So the church is our new family.  And we are to love one another like we would love our human family.

Now we do those things by the strength which God supplies, but we do them.  This idea that we need to just give everything up to God and leave the lost or hurting or destitute to somehow discover the love of God on their own is a travesty of what God has designed the church to do.  I’m not suggesting the church is to be about a social gospel either, where we just focus on meals and water and material things.  I’m talking primarily about providing for spiritual needs while not neglecting physical needs.  Usually both are needed, and God has designed the church to perform His will here on earth in both of those areas conjointly.  And there is a reward James said in chapter 5, to those that do so. James 5:19 says “My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

Oh well, I digress.  But I believe it needs to be made clear that God has not given us a commission to be passive, but to go into a hurting, dying world and share the gospel. And to love one another in the family of God. Well, in spite of His allegory, the Pharisees fail to understand what He is saying.  So Jesus expounds upon it starting in vs.7, saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.”  Jesus will say later, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except by Me.”  So when Jesus says He is the door, He means He is the only door.  There is no other name given among men by which we may be saved.  John said in 1John 4:3, “every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.” These cults that say that Jesus was not God in the flesh are antiChrist.  The new emergent churches that are espousing that all religions lead to God are antiChrist.  

So notice that Jesus is not only the Shepherd, but He is the Door.  By Him only is entrance gained into the church of God.  He lays down His life for the sheep. But He is not speaking of Himself in this allegory as the doorkeeper.  I would suggest that the doorkeepers are the men that Christ has called to be His pastors. The word pastor comes from the idea of a shepherd.  Peter tells the elders to shepherd the flock among you.  So a pastor is an under shepherd.  He is a doorkeeper.  When the Great Shepherd of our souls ascended into heaven, Paul said in Eph. 4:11 that “He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.”  So the pastors/teachers are to shepherd the flock.  We are the doorkeepers.  We are guardians of the flock while living in this present darkness.  We don’t save people, God saves people. But we guard the flock, we guard His word, we guard the church and we guard the door.  

In vs.9, Jesus again reiterates that He is the door saying “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”  He will be saved.  What does that mean?  That word “saved” has fallen out of favor in many churches today, but to their own detriment.  Because the Bible speaks of those that believe in Christ unto salvation as being saved.  Saved from what, you might ask?  Saved from the penalty of death.  Saved from destruction.  Saved out of darkness into light.  And I will add, saved not only from the penalty of sin, but from the power of sin.  Saved from enslavement to sin.  Jesus quoting from Isaiah 61 when He was in Galilee said that He came to proclaim liberty to the captives and set the prisoners free.  What He was talking about was setting them free from the enslavement to sin and the trap of Satan.  That’s what it means to be saved.  To be set free from sin and death.

And yet salvation doesn’t stop there.  Salvation is only the beginning of following Jesus. It is the first step. It is new birth. Jesus said in vs.9, not only will they be saved, but “they will go in and out and find pasture.”  Why does the shepherd take the sheep in and out to pasture?  Obviously, it is to feed the sheep.  This is the duty of the shepherd to feed the sheep.  And we too need to be fed spiritually through the word of God. This is how we grow and mature.   Hebrews 5:12 tells us, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”  This is the job of the shepherd of the flock, to feed the sheep.  To grow them to maturity, to edify them, build them up, so that they can do the work of service that the church has been commissioned to do.  

Then the in the last verse that we will look at this morning, Jesus presents a final contrast between His ministry and the ministry of the false shepherds.  Vs.10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  Now earlier I already talked about the characteristics of false teachers.  They share the same characteristics with their father the devil as we talked about earlier when I quoted John 8:44: Jesus said, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”   

That’s the tragedy of false doctrine.  If we condemn false teachers we are told we need to be more loving, more tolerant of other viewpoints.  But the fact is that nothing short of the truth will save you.  Watered down or diluted doctrine cannot set you free.  It will not save.  Half of the gospel is not the full counsel of God.  So that’s why Jesus was so intolerant of false teachers.  That’s why He gives us this allegory, because it’s a rebuke to those false shepherds who continue to keep the people enslaved to their captivity even when faced with a true miracle of God as in the case of the blind man, and then have the audacity to excommunicate this man from the church because they hate the truth so much.  They end up killing and destroying with their lies those that Christ came to save with the truth.

But then Christ contrasts their ministry with His own saying “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  See, here is the hope of the gospel; it is not only what you are saved from something, but you are saved for something.  We are saved from condemnation.  We are saved from the wrath to come.  But Jesus says we are saved for an abundant life.  What that means literally is exceedingly abundant life.  Now that doesn’t mean what the prosperity preachers say it means.  Jesus isn’t promising you a new Ferrari if you follow Him.  But what He is offering is a surplus of life that will not fade away.  He is offering everlasting life that will never die.  He is offering a life that is filled with the source of all life bubbling up within us.  Remember what Jesus had just cried out in the temple a few days earlier?  In chapter 7 vs.38 Jesus cried out in the middle of this ceremony, ““He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’ But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive.”  That is the promise to us, that we who believe in Him will have the Holy Spirit in us, like a spring of living water springing up in our soul that will never fail.  The promise is that God will lead us and guide us, not only in this life, but in the life to come, and in the ages of eternity forever and ever.  As Psalm 23 said, God will anoint my head with the oil of the Holy Spirit until  my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”

I hope that you will hear the voice of the Shepherd today and you recognize His voice as the word of God.  And you will believe in Him, and follow Him with all your heart.  Jesus said, “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” The invitation is extended to you today to enter into new life through faith in Jesus Christ and be saved.  I pray that you will.  

I am going to put to the test your spiritual acumen this morning.  I know it’s early, and maybe you can’t think all that well first thing in the morning.  Todays message is not a story, maybe not so easy to understand, but nevertheless it is essential doctrine that must be understood and followed if we are going to be true disciples of Christ.  So consequently, I am not going to approach this text today in my typical fashion of exegeting each verse line by line, but I’m going to expound on a few verses from the text, not focusing so much on the historical content but hoping to bring us to a deeper understanding of the underlying spiritual principles found here.

I hope that most of you here today would already be familiar with the fundamental doctrine that salvation is by faith.  Ephesians 2:8-9 says “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;  not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” So salvation is by faith.  But what is faith?  That is the $10000 question.  Well, we have the Biblical definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  So you can combine those truths by saying that salvation is by faith in what is not seen, but believed to be true and evidenced by my life.

Now that is the essence of what Jesus said in John 7:17.  He said, “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.”  So what Jesus is saying is believe in Me, and believe that My words are the Word of God, and then be willing to do what I say, and when you do that the truth will be evidenced.  Now that is counter intuitive, isn’t it?  Be willing to obey what God tells you, and when you do His will, the truth will be evident. That’s contrary to the way we normally do things.  We want to see the evidence, the proof before we commit to anything.  But Jesus says My words are truth, and when you are willing to believe that and do it, then you will know the truth.

Now that segues into another important statement of Jesus, which is found in the next chapter,  8:31, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”   See, freedom doesn’t just come from accepting that Jesus lived on earth, or that God exists, or even from knowing that the Bible contains truth.  True freedom comes from knowing and then following the truth. That means that you submit to it, and obey it, and act on it, even though all the evidence may not be apparent when you start to do it.  That means that our faith which saves us is not just an intellectual assent, but trusting in what God has said, even when we can’t see the proof of it.

Jesus says you must continue in My word, if you are truly disciples of mine.  Continue means to keep on being obedient, to keep following His commands, to keep walking by faith in the light of God’s truth.  That continuance proves that His word is truth.  As we continue in it, we prove it, and as such we know it. So faith is action. Acting on what you believe to be true. It’s so important to recognize the difference between accepting something is truth with a detached sort of intellectualism, and appropriating that truth to the point of trusting in it for yourself and committing yourself to it.  When you trust in God’s truth, and act upon it, you know it is true, THEN the truth will set you free.  A lot of people believe in a kind of intellectual way that God’s word is true, or that it contains the truth, but they have never acted upon it, and as such they have never been set free.

But being set free, what does that mean?  What does it mean for the truth to set you free? Free from what?  Well, Jesus makes it clear that you are set free from the bondage of sin and death. Jesus said in 8:34, that “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.”  But the Son will make you free indeed.  And so freedom comes from doing the will of God, even when that means not relying upon the natural senses for evidence, or upon your common sense, or even academic evidence, but believing what God says is truth, and acting upon it.  Being set free also means being set free from the restraints of the ceremonial law.  That’s why I believe Jesus picked the law of the Sabbath as well as the law of circumcision as a point of contention with the Jews. But that freedom will not become evident until they surrender to Christ as Lord.

Now let’s look at the next statement of Jesus which will help us to see how this is acted out and applied in our walk. Jesus claimed righteousness, while He accused the Jews of breaking the law of Moses which they claimed to be upholding, because they were trying to kill Him.  And of course, they deny it.  So in vs. 22 Jesus said, ”For this reason Moses has given you circumcision (not because it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and on the Sabbath you circumcise a man. If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the Law of Moses will not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made an entire man well on the Sabbath?”  

Now first we need to understand circumcision in order to understand the text. He said circumcision came from the fathers – that is, through Abraham. Now I’m sure everyone here thankfully has a general idea of what circumcision is without me having to go into detail. But do you know what circumcision symbolizes?  It represents the cutting away of sinful flesh, so that you might live in the Spirit.  It was a  picture of  man’s sinful nature which is passed on from generation to generation, and which needs to be cut away in order for the promise of new life to come from God.  

Jesus is referencing circumcision because it was routinely performed on the Sabbath when the eight day after a child’s birth fell on a Saturday, and even though it was considered work it was acceptable because it was mandated through the law.  Jesus, on the other hand, was being condemned for HIs work of healing the lame man on the Sabbath.  So what Jesus points out is the hypocrisy of saying that it was ok to cut away the flesh through circumcision on the Sabbath and yet condemn Him for freeing a man from the enslavement of the flesh on a Sabbath.

See, when Jesus healed the lame man at the pool of Bethesda back in chapter 5, He not only removed the impediment of the flesh, but He gave him life in the Spirit.  The lame man, you will remember, later encountered Jesus in the temple, and Jesus revealed Himself to Him, resulting in salvation; new life in the Spirit.  So that this man was able not just to walk physically, but to walk in the Spirit, to walk as a new creation in a new life.  This is a picture of salvation for us. The Sabbath then, argues Jesus, should be a day for freeing men from enslavement to the flesh so that they can walk in the Spirit. Furthermore, the Sabbath was a picture of resting from our works, and reliance upon the work of God.  Again, the Sabbath is a picture of our salvation, and our salvation fulfills the law of the Sabbath.

Now let’s make sure we understand all that is implied by  this new life in the Spirit.  First of all, when you are given new life through salvation, you are given a new nature.  That’s the good news.  But the bad news is that you still have the old nature. So now there are two natures in you warring against one another. Rom. 7:22-23 “For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,  but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.”

So there is within us a war between the old man and the new man, or the physical versus the spiritual.  Which one wins is up to you.  Which one becomes dominant depends upon which one you listen to, the one you are obedient to, the One you follow. The way of faith is to cut away the old nature. Or to look at it another way, to starve the old nature. To ignore it’s cries for the lusts and passions that it craves. In effect we put to death the old man, or as Paul said,  we “crucify the flesh” and walk in accordance to the Spirit. That is the way of sanctification, and the way of a true disciple.  That’s the way to have fellowship with God, to love God, and to know the truth of God experientially in your life. This is the path to freedom, to put away the old nature, and put on the new nature.

I was trying to explain this to a Christian the other day who had backslidden and fallen back into sin.  And so I likened it to waking a sleeping dragon.  There should be a sign posted in your soul somewhere which says, “don’t feed the dragon.”  Because when you wake him up, and then feed him, he is going to want more, to take over your life again.  The only way to deal with him at that point is to starve him to death until he becomes too weak to roar any more and eventually becomes dormant.  So Paul says we wait eagerly for the final redemption of our body when this natural man is exchanged for a glorified, sinless body.

Unfortunately, so many Christians miss out on true freedom because they are looking for some sort of experience or feeling or emotion as a shortcut to sanctification.  But there are no shortcuts.  God works through our sufferings to sanctify us.  Even Jesus, the Bible says in Hebrews 5:8 “leaned obedience from the things which He suffered.”

Sometimes you may not feel close to the Lord.  But the way that fellowship happens is the result of hearing the truth, then obeying the truth, and then the feelings will come as you are being obedient.  But don’t rely on feelings.  But as you draw near to God, He will draw near to you and as you trust the Lord, and rely on the Lord, and have fellowship with the Lord, then you will experience the joy of the Lord.

So this new life in Christ requires that we put to death the old nature, and live according to the new nature.  Or to say it another way, to turn away from the old paths, renounce the old lies of the world, and walk after the Spirit, according to the truth of God’s word. Ephesians 4:21 tells us to do that very thing.  “if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus,  that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,  and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind,  and put on the new self, which in [the likeness of] God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Listen to what Paul says about this new nature in Romans 8:4, I’m going to read from the New Living Translation;  now that we are in Christ we  “…no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.  Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.  So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.  For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will.  That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.  But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.)  And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God.  The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.  Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do.  For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live.  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”  For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.  And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.  Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.”

Now that is the practical application of what is pictured by cutting away the flesh through circumcision.  What Paul calls having been circumcised in our hearts. This is the practical application of what it means to walk by faith and not by sight, to walk in the Spirit and not according to the flesh. It is living according to the new nature, and putting to death the old nature. Letting go of the things of the flesh which are our security, in which we put our hope, and trusting in that which is unseen, yet true, things of the Spirit.

Then notice the next statement of Christ which I want to capitalize on, verse 24; “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”  Now I don’t want to go sailing off on a different tack with this verse, but I can’t help but point out this verse to those people who like to quote “judge not, lest you be judged.” Here it says we are to judge, but to judge with righteous judgment.  Now I will let you figure out what that means in that context.  

But to stay within the context of my message this morning, I would just say that this statement is really the culmination of all  I have been trying to say to you.  And that is, that we cannot depend on our natural sight, but we must use spiritual discernment if we are going to know the truth so that the truth will set us free.  But unfortunately as Christians, I think far too often we hold onto a token amount of what we think is the truth of God, presumably to secure our salvation, but we still hold onto, and trust the great variety of lies from the world and the devil.  

In other words, we claim Christianity for the hope of heaven, but we live as if it’s all about the here and now.  We say we trust God, but in reality we trust what we can taste, touch, or feel.  And that is not exactly the life of faith, is it?  Not according to the definition of Hebrews 11:1 – “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  

Now Jesus rebukes these Jewish leaders because they were judging, or looking at things as they appeared outwardly.  They did not have spiritual discernment because they were not spiritual – they were still fleshly. They had not been born again by the Spirit of God. They did not have the Spirit of God in them, so their spirit was dead.  As 1Cor. 2:14 says the “natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”

Listen, these Jewish leaders show that it is possible to be very religious, to be knowledgeable about the Bible, to claim Jehovah God as your God, and still be spiritually dead, and as a result, spiritually blind.  I worry about some people that attend our church from time to time.  If you asked them, I’m sure they would claim to be a Christian, and yet they do not understand the kind of things that I am talking about today.  And even more to the point, they live very obviously in the here and now, as a citizen of the world, entranced by the things of the world, and perhaps unbeknownst  to them, enslaved by the world.  

This statement of Christ could be said differently and still, I think, retain the principle that Jesus is teaching.  We could say, “don’t look at things as they appear externally, and be attracted to them or believe in them.  But look at things spiritually, and be attracted to the things unseen.  That is spiritual discernment so that you might know the truth.

That is what Jesus means when He said, “judge with righteous judgment.” He’s not necessarily talking about judging people, He is talking about spiritual discernment. Having eyes that have been opened spiritually, so that you might know spiritual truth. Spiritual discernment is being able to know truth from error, to recognize the lie of this world, and believe the truth of God’s word.  

Now these Jewish leaders missed the truth that would have set them free because they were looking at external things, and depending upon external appearances.  They loved the externals.  They loved banging a gong or blowing a horn to announce their good deeds.  They loved the chief seats in the synagogues, the seats of prestige and power.  They loved parading their good works and claiming their righteousness based on the law.  They loved their long robes and funny hats and all the bells and whistles which showed their religious pedigree.  

Jesus did none of that.  I don’t think you could have picked Jesus out of a crowd and said anything special about Him.  Isaiah 53:2 says, “He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should ]be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face. He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”  

So the Jews scorned Him because He came from Galilee where they believed the second class citizens lived.  They scorned Him because they didn’t think that He had the right credentials to be a teacher. They derided Him because He hadn’t graduated from the right rabbinical schools.  They scorned Him because they were jealous of the authority with which He taught, and the power that He had.  They looked at Him in derision because they didn’t think that He had the right kind of evidence for being the Messiah that they considered important. Ultimately, they thought that IF they needed a Savior, it would have to be someone more important looking than He was in order to be of any use to them.  So they rejected Him on the grounds that He didn’t meet their expectations, and also I think because they were afraid that the kind of kingdom He was espousing would result in them losing their power and position as the religious authorities.  

And as a consequence they did not believe His teaching.  And because they didn’t believe His words then of course they would not do His will, and because they would not do His will, they would not know the truth, and because they did not know the truth, they were not set free from their sins.  

I’m afraid a lot of people are like the Jewish leaders.  They are happy with a form of religion, which is a religion made up of half truths.  And they are happy there, perched upon their thrones, in which they judge truth based on their criteria. From the throne of their self rule they live as they want to live, and do as they want to do.  And as such they reject the will of God, living in the natural world, while claiming to belong to the spiritual. 

But that is not the way of the new life.  We must cut away the old nature if we are going to be set free from sin and live in the new life. And that happens through true repentance.  That is really what Jesus is saying in vs.17.  If you are willing to submit to do God’s will – that is repentance, you give up your will in exchange for God’s will.   If you repent, then God will give you His Spirit, and having spiritual discernment,  you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.  

I hope that you will examine yourself today in light of God’s word and see if you are really of the faith, or if you have never actually renounced the world, put away the old nature and lived by faith in the new nature.  True discipleship is simply recognizing truth from God,  then submitting your will to obey the truth, and asking God to help you be obedient to the truth. I pray that you will believe the truth, and that the truth will make you free.  

Though millions of people today claim to believe in Jesus, who are attracted to Jesus, yet Jesus Himself said that many are called but few are chosen, that many will seek to enter His kingdom but will not be able. Though many claim to be Christians, there is a tremendous difference between true and false disciples.  Two thousand years ago, even Jesus’ own family did not believe in Him and his own nation rejected Him and put Him to  death.  Even after feeding 15000 people and healing many of the sick in attendance, when He began to preach His gospel many of His disciples stopped following Him. John 6:66 says,“As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.”

Those fair weather disciples who came for the miracles but left after the message were obviously superficial. They were disciples or followers in name only.  There were still the 12 however.  Christ’s inner circle.  And when the others left Him, Jesus turned to them and said, “You do not want to go away also, do you?”  Peter, acting as spokesman answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”  But even within the 12, Jesus said that one of them had a devil and would betray Him. 

So Jesus ministry was characterized by true and false disciples.  I believe much of Jesus’ teaching was to show a distinction between His followers, to separate those that followed Him for superficial reasons, and to develop true discipleship. Jesus seems to almost go out of HIs way to talk people out of following Him.  Let me give you just a few examples.  

To the 15000 people that had eaten the loaves and fishes that He had miraculously provided, Jesus said that they had to eat His flesh and drink His blood. At another time Jesus told those who wished to follow Him to let the dead bury the dead, and not even go to their father’s funeral.  He told a rich young ruler to sell everything he had and give it to the poor and then to follow Him. At another time He told a crowd that unless they hated their father and mother and family, and even one’s own life, they could not be His disciple.  Then He told them to pick up their cross and follow Him. He said in Luke 14:33  “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” Jesus told others to leave their nets, their professions as fishermen, and He would make them fishers of men. 

I could go on and on. Jesus called disciples to abandon all that they held dear in the world for the sake of knowing Him.   I’m sure most of us would have responded to this call for drastic abandonment  with the response; “you lost me at hello.”  Unfortunately, this call to forsake all for Christ is not the gospel message of the modern church today.  We have changed the message to be as accommodating and appealing as possible.  We don’t ask for anyone to leave anything, but to come as you are.  We don’t ask for any sort of personal sacrifice; but say all God wants is a relationship with you because He loves you so much.  

If we are not careful, we find that we have redefined discipleship, if not even salvation.  We are guilty of twisting the Jesus of the Bible into a 21st century hipster Christ that people are more comfortable with.  Jesus becomes a non-condemning, non-controversial genie who is able to grant wishes upon our command and more importantly, places no demands upon us.  

But that is not the Jesus of the Bible. Jesus never presented discipleship as being easy.  The Jesus of the Bible talked about offering Himself as a human sacrifice for sin, and man’s need to repent for the forgiveness of their sins, and the people rejected Him.  When He condemned religious leaders of His day as hypocrites, in response they hated Him and plotted to kill Him.  So it says in 7:1 that Jesus avoided going to Judea, which was the seat of religious authority in Israel, because He knew that they wanted Him dead.  

His home by the way was in a small city called Capernaum, in Galilee, which had a population of about 1500 people.  We can assume that  it was the family home.  And so about six months after the feeding of the multitudes on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, His brothers come to Him and said, “Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.”

From a logical perspective, what they said seemed to make sense.  It seemed to be good advice for how to raise up a ministry, or in Jesus’ case, how to get everyone to believe that you are the Messiah. But their motive was not really in the best interests of the kingdom of God.  The underlying motivation for their comments is found in vs.5, “For not even His brothers were believing in Him.” So at this point,  even His own brothers were not true disciples.  They were perhaps willing to benefit from their relationship with Him if in fact He could pull off some sort of coup in the geopolitical realm.  But in fact they did not really believe that their own brother was the Messiah, much less the Son of God.

In chapter 6, you will remember, the crowds were taken back by Jesus claiming to have come down out of heaven, and they said in vs. 42, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?”  And now in chapter 7, you have His brother’s agreeing with the crowd.  After all, they had grown up in the same house with Him.  They shared the same parents, or so they thought.  How could He have come down from heaven? 

Matthew’s gospel identifies His brothers. Matt. 13:54-58 “He came to His hometown and began teaching them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things?”  And they took offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household. And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.”

So from that text we know that the people in Jesus’ hometown didn’t believe He was the Messiah. And in John 7 we learn that even His brothers didn’t believe in Him.  That explains why they say, “IF you do these things show them to the world.”  They didn’t even believe that He had done any real miracles. 

There is a parallel here in the life of Joseph from the Old Testament.  Joseph was hated by his brothers, because they were jealous of him.  And so they scorned him and eventually plotted for his death.  Jesus’ brothers did not actually kill him, but they did reject Him and really wanted Him to get out of their lives.  He was an irratation to them.  And in like manner, Jesus’ greater brethren, meaning the family of the Jewish nation plotted His death.

But the Bible does indicate that Jesus’ actual brothers did eventually come to believe in Him, even as Joseph’s brothers eventually came to bow down before him.  But it was not until after Christ’s resurrection according to Acts 1:14.  Tradition tells us that Simon became a servant of the church for many years.  And James became the author of the book of James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and a martyr for the faith.  He describes himself in his epistle as “James a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ,” establishing Jesus as Lord, Messiah and equal with God.  Jude, the author of the book of Jude, describes himself also as a servant of Jesus Christ. And he writes about looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life.  So His brothers eventually come to recognize Him as the Son of God, but at this stage they are filled with contempt and scorn for Him. Though they could claim to have a relationship with Him, yet they could not claim true discipleship.

Their suggestions are indicative of false disciples as well.  They basically are espousing the dogma of modern Christian evangelism; that if you are successful, if you have a big crowd, then you must be doing something right.  That’s why they wanted Him to go to Judea.  Why hide out in the backwoods of Galilee when the big crowds and the success was in Judea. If you’re really the Messiah you are going to have to become popular with the multitudes and accepted by everyone. But notice that’s not Jesus’ plan for taking over the world.  In chapter 6 Jesus spent about 2 days teaching the 15000 people.  But many of them deserted Him afterwards when they found out the cost of discipleship.  So for the next 6 months Jesus spent all His time primarily with just 12 guys – discipling them.  That was His plan for establishing the kingdom of God in the world.

Jesus’ commission is the same for us today; Matt. 28:19-20 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” The command is not go into football stadiums and attract a huge crowd.  Nor to organize giant crusades and get a lot of people to walk the aisle and repeat a prayer.  But to make disciples, and teach them, notice that, teach them, to observe all that I commanded you.  Attracting a crowd is easy if you have enough money.  But making disciples is hard work.  It takes time.  It’s not done in a single outreach.  It’s not done in a short term mission trip.  It’s a long term affair. It’s teaching disciples to be doers of the word and not just hearers, not just superficial disciples.

Now the reason for His brother’s suggestion to go to Judea is because it was the time of the Feast of  booths, or feast of tabernacles.  There were three feasts which Jewish men were required to go to Jerusalem to celebrate.  The feast of tabernacles was one of those feasts, which lasted 7 days.  From a human perspective, it would have been a great opportunity for Jesus to appear before every able bodied man in Israel and start doing some miracles and show everyone that He was indeed the Messiah.  

That’s another indication of false disciples, by the way.  They are attracted by signs and wonders.  Great crusades happen in our country all the time which claim to be visited by signs and wonders.  One happened a few years ago in Los Angeles, the city of the angels.  And one of the organizers of that event claimed to see a giant golden angel up in the sky above the stadium as he was driving in on the freeway.  Their whole program was about signs and wonders.  One speaker proclaimed that everyone there was going to be able to walk behind someone afterwards and know everything about that person.  I guess that is what they consider a word of knowledge.  There were people who were acting “drunk in spirit” all over the auditorium, falling down and laughing uncontrollably.  

But the Bible warns about such signs and wonders as a means of leading people into a false discipleship.  Matt. 24:24 says, “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.”  Jesus rebuked others who followed Him for seeking signs and wonders in John 4:48  Jesus said, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.”  And Paul warned in 2 Thess. 2:9 about “the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.”

Jesus is not interested in accommodating man’s agenda, even if it’s His own family members who are pushing it.  So He responds, “My time is not yet here, but your time is always opportune. The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil. Go up to the feast yourselves; I do not go up to this feast because My time has not yet fully come.”

There are a couple of points that need to be made concerning this important statement.  First of all, God has His own timetable and agenda, and we need to be aligned with it, rather than trying to get God to accommodate ours.  Jesus had an appointed time that He was going to go into Jerusalem and present Himself as the Messiah.  It would be 6 months later at the Passover Feast.  At that time, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey and the crowds celebrate His coming as the Messiah, the son of David.  A week later, He is crucified as the lamb slain for the salvation of the world.  That is the timing of God, and Jesus is in full agreement with that plan.  This was the plan of God before the foundation of the world.  And though it doesn’t look like it to His brothers or His disciples, all is going according to God’s plan.

Listen, I’ve said before that there is no safer place to be than in the will of God, and there is no safe place outside of the will of God.  It should be a great comfort to us to know that we are in the will of God, so that even when it seems like everything is going wrong, we can trust that God is in control, and He has a plan and things are going according to His plan.  If you are going to be a disciple of Christ, then you have to get in tune with the timing of God, and then trust in His sovereignty to accomplish His will in HIs time.  All our anxiety is usually because we have a different timetable and different expectations than God has.

Trusting God is hard work. Faith is hard work. The idea that faith is easy is contrary to scripture. It’s hard to walk by faith and not by sight.  I heard a story that illustrates trust.  It’s setting is back in the day when televisions still required antennas on rooftops.  Something that has gone by the wayside in the digital age.  But this man was up on his roof fixing his television antenna when he slipped and began to slide down toward the gutters. He tried to catch himself, but he went over the edge. He managed to grab hold of the rain gutter as he dropped, and he hung there, suspended two stories in the air. He didn’t want to look down, and in his desperation he cried out. “Oh, God help me!” And a voice replied, “I am ready to help you.” And he said, “Tell me what to do.” The voice asked. “Do you trust me?” He said, “Yes, I trust you.” The voice said. “All right then. Let go.” And the man asked, “Is there anybody else up there who can help me?”  Trusting God isn’t always easy.  Letting go of things we depend upon though is fundamental to really trusting in God.

Secondly, if you are on God’s timetable, doing God’s will, then you are in opposition to the world, and the world is going to hate you.  True disciples are hated by the world.  But contrarily, false disciples love the world, and so the world does not hate them.  Now why is this true?  Well, because if you are a true disciple, then you are in agreement with what Jesus said, “it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.”  That’s it.  We call sin, evil.  And we testify that their deeds are evil.  

Let me tell you something that you need to really understand.  This is the defining point of true disciples versus false disciples.  The defining point between true and false disciples is their deeds.  Don’t get me wrong.  You are not saved by works, you are saved by grace.  But don’t get Jesus wrong either.  He said, you shall know them by their fruits.  The most damning statement of Jesus was toward false disciples, found in Matthew 7:20-23  “So then, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”  

So their fruits are the deeds that they did.  But notice that they did signs and wonders.  They even cast out demons and performed many miracles.  They named the name of Jesus.  And yet they were not true disciples because they practiced sin.

Now that is exactly what Jesus accused the Jews of in vs.19.  He said to them,  “Did not Moses give you the Law, and yet none of you carries out the Law? Why do you seek to kill Me?” They claimed the righteousness of the law, but they did not carry out the law.  They sought to kill Him, in opposition to the law.

Their hatred of Jesus was equal to murder, and so it beget a plot to murder Him, which was eventually fulfilled.  So if you are a true disciple of Christ, then the world will hate you.  That really is the irony of the seeker friendly church model, isn’t it?  That we would try  to ingratiate ourselves to those who really hate what we stand for.  Because what we stand for is the truth of God’s Word which declares sin as evil, and defines it by God’s law.

So Jesus did eventually go up to the Feast of Tabernacles, but secretly.  That means that He did not enter into Jerusalem with a big fanfare.  His family would have been part of a large caravan, and His coming would have been with thousands of pilgrims, which would have probably instigated some sort of great political, religious rally to make Him King.  But He was not interested in their agenda, He was interested in fulfilling God’s agenda. So He shows up midweek, without fanfare, and when they find Him, He is teaching in the temple.

But notice that there was grumbling going on amongst the people concerning Him.  Vs.12, ‘There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, “He is a good man’; others were saying, ‘No, on the contrary, He leads the people astray.’ Yet no one was speaking openly of Him for fear of the Jews.”

Notice that neither of those comments are the marks of true disciples.  Jesus was not just a good man.  Either He was God incarnate, or He was a lunatic.  Most of the world’s false religions say that Jesus was a good man.  But they fail to believe that He is God.  That He is alive, having risen from the dead and ascended into heaven.  And as such their belief is of no avail.  Believing that Jesus is a good man will not save you.  Of course, the other half of the people were under the influence of the religious leaders who were saying that He was a deceiver.  But neither group were professing saving faith, and neither group spoke openly about Him for fear of the Jews.  That word Jews is used of the religious Jewish leaders.  They feared being ostracized, or kicked out of the temple because of any allegiance to Christ.  

I believe the day is already here when being a true disciple of Christ will bring persecution in the social arena, when saying that certain deeds are sinful will cost you your job, or mean you are sued for everything you have and then some, or even thrown in jail.  That day is here.

So Jesus starts teaching in the temple.  And the Jews hearing Him, ask in astonishment, “How has this man become learned, having never been educated?”  This is the great thing about preaching the Word of God.  It’s the wisdom of God. The Holy Spirit working in us, in conjunction with the Word of God, teaches us the things of God, so that we have the wisdom of God.  You want wisdom?  Read the Word of God.  1Cor. 1:25 says, “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Notice Jesus says in John 7:16-17 “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me.  If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.”  Jesus spoke the words of God.  When He rebuked the devil in the wilderness, He quoted from the Word of God.  This is the habit of Jesus when He preached.  And in the same manner I believe it’s a good idea for preachers to preach the Word of God.  Jesus goes on to say, “He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”  We have a lot of glory seeking preachers out there today who speak in order to glorify themselves.  They speak to gain a crowd, to please people, to entertain people.  And they fail to preach the full counsel of God.  Jesus testified that people’s sin was evil.  He preached the Word of God in it’s fullness.  Only when man is convinced of His sin does he come to know his need for a Savior.  And only when man has come to know Jesus as His Savior will he come to serve Jesus as Lord.

But here is the key Jesus gives us in those passages regarding true discipleship.  He says, “If anyone is willing to do His will, that is the Father’s will, he will recognize the teaching is of God.”  (my paraphrase) Here is the key to true discipleship.  You first have to come to a point of being willing to submit and obey the will of God, and when you do that, when you obey, then God will reveal more truth to you.  This is the principle I have mentioned so many times, that of progressive revelation.  When you are obedient to the light God has shown you thus far, then He will reveal more to you.  God’s word is a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.  That means it’s walking revelation.  As you walk out the truth in obedience, God will continue to lead you.  Too many people want to see the light at the end of the tunnel before they start to walk.  That’s not discipleship.  Believe and obey.  Trust and obey, for there’s no other way. 

Well, there is more to this message that Jesus gives during the Feast, but it will have to wait for next Sunday.  In the meantime, I believe that you have been given enough light to start to be obedient to the light you have.  I hope that you will prove to be a disciple this week by your deeds and not just your claims on Christianity.  I hope that you are indeed a true disciple.  If not, then today is the appointed day of salvation.  Salvation is simply believing all that Jesus claimed He was, that He was the bread of life which came down out of heaven, that men might eat of Him and receive eternal life.  To eat of Him is to receive Him, as Savior and Lord.  To be willing to forsake the world, even all that life offers, in exchange for eternal life.  To be willing to take up your cross and follow Him.  True discipleship is not without a cost.  But the reward is worth it all. As Jesus said later in this sermon, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”

We are considering today one of the great sermons of Christ. This message marks a turning point in the ministry of Jesus.  It reveals the moment when the multitudes that initially followed Him in response to His miracles, turned away and rejected Him when confronted with the truth of the gospel. Jesus was speaking to a large group of disciples, or followers, which included the twelve.  As verse 66 indicates, there were a large number of superficial disciples there, as well as His inner circle.  We know from studying the gospels that in most cases Jesus taught by using parables or metaphors, to illustrate spiritual principles.  For purposes known only to God, He said in Matt.11:25 that He spoke in such a way as to hide things from the wise and reveal things to infants.  And He does so in this sermon as well, especially by using the metaphor of the bread of heaven. 

So as we consider this sermon of Christ, we are going to break it down into 6 courses, in hope of helping us to better digest it.  We will look at the picture that Christ presents, the provision of God, the predicament of the people, the principle of salvation, the proposal to believe, and the profession of faith.  That’s our outline of Jesus’ sermon.

First then, notice the picture that Christ presents. Before we can go too far in the text we must recognize that Jesus is speaking metaphorically.  He is using a picture from the physical realm to illustrate a spiritual principle.  He did that also when He healed.  It was not simply to provide  physical healing, but to illustrate a spiritual principle.  So when He says He is the bread of life, we must understand that He is speaking metaphorically.  He obviously did not look like bread, His body was not actually made up of bread, and people were not being told to physically eat His body.  You would think it would be unnecessary to have to say that, but unfortunately, there are those who have misapplied certain verses in this passage as a result of a misunderstanding of the nature of a metaphor.

In this message is the first of seven “I AM” statements of Jesus given to us in the book of John.  The purpose of course is to identify Christ as the Lord who appeared to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3:14, when the Lord answered Moses’ question of what is His name by saying “I AM Who I AM.”  There are seven of these I AM statements in the gospel of John, this being the first in vs.35, “I am the bread of life.” Then in John 8:12 Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.”  In John 10:9, “I am the door.”  In John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd.”  In John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life.” John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  And 7, in John 15:1, “I am the true vine.” 

Now in all those I AM statements Jesus uses metaphors to illustrate His divine character and purpose.  He was not literally a door, He was not literally a vine, not physically a light.  He is speaking metaphorically in all of these statements.  To say that He is bread is to use what is called a metonym for food, bread being the staple of man’s diet, which sustains life. Jesus is basically saying that I am the spiritual bread that gives spiritual life, which sustains all life.  

But the people continually seem to misunderstand  what He is saying.  The day before they had eaten bread that He manufactured out of His hands at the feeding of the 5000, and as a result they can’t seem to get beyond  physical bread. In fact, back in the 31st verse, we see them speaking of the manna, or bread, from heaven which Moses had given them for 40 years in the wilderness. In the same manner, they wanted Jesus to give them bread which they could eat for physical nourishment. We need to be careful we don’t make the same mistake and misunderstand the spiritual principle which was being taught.  We need to understand the picture that Christ presents; Christ is the bread which comes down from heaven, in that He is the source and sustainer of spiritual life which is given for men.  

Next, let’s look at the provision of God. Jesus is the bread of life which came down out of heaven. He came to be broken for man.  Notice how many times Jesus states this in His sermon.  He starts by clarifying  their comment regarding manna in vs. 32; “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.”  But they still don’t get it.  So He continues to stress that He is the bread of life which has come down out of heaven.  Verse 38, “I have come down from heaven.” Verse 46, He says, “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the One who is from God.”  He is saying He has come from heaven.  Verse 50, “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven.”  Verse 51, “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven.”  Verse 58, “This is the bread which came down out of heaven.”  

The bread of heaven then is is the provision of God. God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, the bread of heaven, to the world, so that the world might have life by receiving Jesus.  Jesus is emphasizing what John said in his opening remarks in chapter one, that the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and in Him was life.  The plan of God from before creation was to select a people from the face of the earth to be HIs bride, and in order to accomplish that, it was determined through the foreknowledge of God to send Jesus from heaven to man, to offer Himself as an atonement for their sins, that they might be joined to God.  

So in the provision of God, the disciples were challenged to believe in the preexistence of Christ, having been in heaven, being One with God, and now coming down out of heaven to mankind.  And we also see the purpose of God, in sending Christ to be the provision by which man is reconciled to God. 

Notice the purpose of God in verse 32, “It is my Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.”  Verse 33, “The bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven.”  Verse 38, “I have come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”  Verse 39, “This is the will of Him who sent Me.”  Verse 40, “This is the will of My Father.”  And again in verse 57, “As the living Father sent Me.”  So you have here divine preexistence and divine purpose.  The Father sending the Son and the Son’s obedience to the predetermined will of God.

Then there is the predicament of the people.  This is really a two fold problem.  The first predicament is that they cannot understand how Jesus can say that He has come down out of heaven.  After all, they say in vs.42, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?”  Don’t forget that Jesus had grown up in this area.  Most of those people came from small villages, and so they would have known Him, seen Him grow up, known His brothers and His family members.  Remember we said that at the wedding in Cana it was probable that one of Jesus’ family was married there that day.  So He was already known prior to His ministry, and now to suddenly declare Himself to be  the Messiah, the Savior of the world, to have come down from heaven, to have seen God, and to be sent from God, would have been a pretty big stretch for their imaginations.  It wasn’t a logical conclusion for those people, in spite of all that Jesus had done.  

So how did Jesus answer that criticism?  Why not perform some undeniable sign? Why not call down fire from heaven?  That would probably at least scare them into obeisance.  Instead, Jesus tells them to stop grumbling.   Notice He says do not grumble among yourselves.  But who are they grumbling against?  I would suggest that it is Jesus they are grumbling against.  I think in effect they are saying, “Who does He think He is?  He puts His pants on the same way we do.  We know where He is from.  We know HIs family.  He is not better than we are.”  Right there, even before they walk away at the difficult statement about eating and drinking His blood they are already turning on Him.

So Jesus says, ““No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me.”  Now a lot of preachers want to get off the train right there and preach a series of messages on election.  And I could do that as well.  But Jesus is not necessarily presenting a side message here about predestination.  What He is doing is deflecting their criticism.  He is saying in effect; you cannot believe Me because you have not been taught of God about Me.  You don’t know what the Father has said about Me, and so you cannot come to Me. That’s a backhanded rebuke right there.  Because they thought they knew about God.  They thought they knew what the scriptures said about the Messiah.  But Jesus is saying they are ignorant of both.

I find that true today.  People think that they know about God.  They think that they know about Christianity.  But the truth is they have created a god out of their own imagination, which is subservient to what they think God should be like. They’ve substituted a different gospel according to their desires. And when a preacher such as I challenge those assumptions that they hold so dear, I become the object of their grumbling.  Their criticisms.  But as Jesus said, a servant is not greater than his master.  If Jesus suffered that criticism, then so will I.

The other predicament of the people is found in vs.52.  Their predicament is characterized by grumbling and now by arguing. “Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat?’” Now here is what Jesus had said which prompted this debate.  He said “I am the bread of life, I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”  And so their question is based in a literal interpretation of Christ’s words.  “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” 

Notice how Jesus emphasizes this truth over and over again.  Verse 53, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourself.”  Vs.54, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life.”  Vs. 55, “For My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink.”  Vs. 56, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me in and I in him.”  

Now it’s apparent that the Jews stumbled over this saying.  From the perspective of the law, what Christ was asking them to do, even if it were possible, was reprehensible.  It was against the law.  What they were arguing about then is the same thing we might argue about.  In fact, I would suggest that the church has been arguing about the correct interpretation of this since the Middle Ages.  One of the main arguments of the Reformation was against the doctrine of transubstantiation which was and is practiced by the Catholic church, in which they believe the elements of communion literally become His flesh and blood, and by eating it, you receive remission of sin.  However, I don’t believe that this is a statement about communion, but it has been incorrectly interpreted that way for centuries, and consequently has given rise to the view  that when you eat the bread and drinking the wine of communion, you are actually eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus Christ.  

But my answer to that is to remind you of my first point; the metaphor of bread is the means by which Jesus  illustrates Himself as being offered by God to man to give life to the world.  It is a picture, a symbol, the same as the door, the vine, or the light was a symbol.  But the Jews miss the symbolism and are fixated on the literal, physical bread and blood, and consequently miss the truth in what Jesus is saying. And in like manner, those who misconstrue the physical eating and drinking as a means of the remission of sins are in error as well. So after hearing Jesus present the sermon, the people say, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?”

And that leads us to the principle of salvation which Christ is declaring. Vs.61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble?” Notice that the disciples are still grumbling.  They are grumbling at the dual predicament that Jesus has generated by His message.  And so Jesus answers the first predicament, the one of His coming down from heaven, of His preexistence. He says in vs. 62, “What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?”  He is saying, “Look guys, you have a problem with Me saying that I came down from heaven?  What are you going to do when you see Me going back up into heaven? Is that going to be a problem for you too?”  Of course, Jesus knew that He was going to ascend again into heaven after His resurrection.  The problem for those that rejected Him now would be that they would not be there to witness the ascension.  That speaks to the progressive nature of revelation, by the way.  To those that are obedient to the light that they have, God will give more light.  But if you reject the light God has given you, then you will not receive more.  God gives progressive revelation to those that are obedient, as they are being obedient.  What God had revealed to these disciples up to this point should have been enough to believe.  But since they don’t believe HIs words, and the signs which accompanied His message, they would not be given more.  

The answer to the second part of the predicament, that of eating flesh and blood is found in the next verse, 63: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” This verse is the key to understanding the symbolism of what Jesus was preaching.  Eating bread, even eating His flesh, profits nothing.  He isn’t speaking of eating literal flesh and drinking literal blood.  That has no benefit whatsoever.  Rather, it is the Spirit who gives life.  If you want spiritual life, then it must come from the Spirit of God.  It cannot come from physical things, it cannot come from physical effort, but it must come from the Spirit of God.  So obviously what Jesus is offering is not to eat of His physical flesh or to drink His literal blood, but spiritual life through the Spirit of God.

And what does that Spirit filled life look like?  Is it getting goosebumps and chills?  It is characterized by animal sounds, or speaking in tongues, or writhing in convulsions?  What constitutes the Spirit given life?  Listen to this: “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”  Man!  I hope you get that folks.  I hope you are not duped into thinking that the Holy Spirit gives life through physical convulsions or expressions.  But the word of God is Spirit and life.  That principle is stated by Paul to Timothy in 2 Tim. 3:14-17 “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them,  and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;  so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”  The word is life from God, the scriptures are God breathed, able to produce salvation which is spiritual life, and able to sustain that life by training us in righteousness, so that we might be equipped to live as God would have us live.  The word life there which Jesus uses is zoe in the Greek, not bios, which means organic life, but zoe which refers to the vitality of the soul, an abundant life in the spirit. So that is the principle of salvation: the Spirit gives life, and the words of Christ are spirit and they are life. 

Now then the fifth course; the proposal to believe. There are multiple aspects of what it means to believe in Christ. First in verse 35, He says, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to Me…” Listen, don’t get so hung up on the election of God that you neglect your responsibility in the matter. I don’t think we can fully understand the predestination and election of God.  That doesn’t mean we don’t accept it, it just means it’s above our pay grade.  But what we should understand is our responsibility.  So the first requirement is to come.  Verse 37 joins those two principles together saying, “All that the Father gives Me will come, and the one who comes to me, I will not reject.” So you don’t have to worry about whether or not you were elected for salvation.  If you come to Christ, He will not reject you. Period. Let God worry about God’s responsibility of divine appointment, and you just worry about your responsibility.  Come to Jesus. That is the invitation of Christ.  Come to Me.  All come.  The invitation is open to all who hear.

The second aspect of believing is to look.  Notice verse 40, “This is the will of My Father that everyone who beholds the Son…” Notice the word “everyone.”  There aren’t limitations here based upon our understanding of the doctrine of election.  All who come,  anyone who comes, I will not reject.  Everyone who beholds. He’s not talking about a cursory glance. I really think it’s similar to the idea found in Hebrews 12:2, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.”  The word behold in the Greek means to look at intently, to examine, to study, to gaze on. Jesus is saying, look closely at Me.  Examine Me in the light of the scriptures.  He can accept that kind of scrutiny, in fact He desires it, because He knows it will produce faith in Him.

There’s another phrase that’s really critical as well.  Look at verse 35, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to Me will not hunger and he who believes in Me…”  He who believes in Me.  Verse 40, “This is the will of my Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life.”  Verse 47, “I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.”  John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 20:31 says the same thing. The theme verse for the whole gospel of John, “These things are written that you may know that Jesus is the Christ, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing have life in His name.”  Salvation is about believing.   Another way to understand it would be John 1:12, “As many as received Him.”  You have to come.  You have to look.  You have to be exposed to the truth, but you must believe. 

Going back to the metaphor of the bread, go to verse 50, and from verse 50 on is really the proposal to believe unto salvation from Jesus. “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven so that one may eat,”   Believing is eating.  Taking in, receiving, appropriating.  Verse 51, “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.”  Verse 57, “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.”  Again, verse 58, the end of the verse, “He who eats this bread will live forever.”  Eating the bread is a powerful metaphor that everyone should understand as believing or receiving who Jesus is and what He came to do.  You have to receive the truth about Christ.  It’s not enough to just believe He existed.  It’s not enough to just come to church  and listen.  You have to eat.  You have to appropriate. That’s what it means to believe.  You have to receive Christ as your Lord and Savior.  That’s our responsibility.

You not only have to believe in Him as living bread, you have to believe in Him as dying, which is represented by blood.  Verse 51, “I am the living bread.  I came down out of heaven.  If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever.  And the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”  There He’s talking about giving up His life so that we might have life. But listen to what He says in verse 53, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourself.”  54, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life.”  Verse 55, “For My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink.”  Verse 56, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me in and I in him.” 

Blood is simply a metonym for His death, as it is throughout the New Testament. You must believe in Jesus as the preexistent Son of God who came into the world and is the source of spiritual life, eternal life, and you must believe in His sacrificial death in order to be saved.  As bread, He gives life.  As blood, He cleanses us from all unrighteousness.  Blood, then, speaks of His death by which He makes a sacrifice for our sin.  

That brings us to the last point, the profession of faith. When the disciples hear the words that Jesus says, they do not accept it.  They say this is too difficult for us to accept. Vs.66, “As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.” So Jesus turns to the 12 and says, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” And Simon Peter, speaking on behalf of the 12 gives the quintessential profession of faith in vs.68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”

What a great profession of faith! First of all, note that even though it was a difficult statement, Peter recognizes that there is no where else to go because these are the words of eternal life. I find that so many people today are seeking for a more palatable gospel.  And so when you speak of judgement, of sin, of the wrath of God, of repentance, of obedience, they don’t like the sound of those types of doctrine.  So they turn away.  They walk away, looking for something more palatable, something that is more appealing to the flesh. They want a taste of religion but still to be able to satisfy the lusts of the flesh. But the fact is, that the truth is life, and anything less than the truth is a lie.  It’s like taking your prescription if you are seriously ill.  You have to take it all, if it is going to have the desired cure.  I will admit, there are some difficult things in the gospel.  It’s not easy to renounce the world, to give up sinful habits that you enjoy.  It’s not easy to let go of the pursuit of fame or wealth in exchange for life in the Spirit.  But death to the flesh is the way to life.  And if you don’t accept it all, then it’s not going to be effective.  There is no half truth and no half gospel.

And notice also that Peter capitalizes on what Jesus said earlier in vs.63 which says, “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” Peter reiterates that in his profession; “You have the words of eternal life.”  He believes the word of Christ.  Secondly, he believes in Christ.  And what exactly does He believe?  He believes and has come to know that Jesus is the Holy One of God.  That’s a tremendous statement of faith.  That is saving faith.  That is faith whereby God imputes righteousness to our account.  

Peter and the disciples don’t know everything yet.  But as I said the gospel is progressive.  God is willing to take the faith of a child and develop it to mature faith.  But we start with what light we have been shown.  And as we are obedient in faith to that light, then He will show us more light.  Sometimes we have to believe what we don’t understand in order to gain understanding.  In due time, Peter and the apostles would see everything clearly.  But for now, they understand enough.  They understand that Jesus is holy, that He is from God, that He preexisted with God, and that God had sent Him to earth so that we might have eternal life.  They believed that He was the source of life, and that His word was the bread of heaven by which life is sustained.

Listen, Jesus spoke this sermon 2000 years ago, but today I believe God has spoken to you through His word, and as a result, God has given you a proposal; to believe in Christ, to receive Him as your Savior and Lord.  I trust that you have made a profession of your faith in response to that proposal; That He is the Holy One of God, that He is the source of life, even eternal life, and that believing in Him, you will trust Him for the salvation of your soul.  That is only made possible by the fact that Jesus offered Himself as our substitute, bearing our sins upon the cross, so that God might transfer our sins to Him, and Christ’s righteousness to us.  If you believe that, and receive that, then you have eternal life.  Note that vs.54, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, HAS eternal life.  Not will have, but has now.  It is the present reality of your salvation. Eternal life begins today if you receive Him today.  I trust that today is the day of your salvation.