These are glorious words and
I don't want to rush over them without trying to establish something
of the glories of our great I love the fact that Pilate was led
to write above the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, King
of the Jews. And here in these verses before
us we have that kingship being declared in the most wonderful
form, and the Jews were really offended by it. And he wrote
it. It was written in Hebrew, the
language of religion, and it was written in Latin, the language
of the scholars, and it was written in Greek, the language of the
common man, and they were offended by it. They said to him, Don't
write King of the Jews, but write that he said, I am King of the
Jews. And don't you love Pilate's answer,
what I have written, I have written. What wonderful words God puts
into this pagan man who was there with extraordinary hypocrisy
and duplicity and deceit and knowing that they just brought
the Lord Jesus Christ there as being envious of him. But I want
us to look at what it is to him to be the king. He says in verse
36 of this passage we're looking at, My kingdom is not from this
world. And so you cannot understand
the kingdom of God by looking at the things of this world.
It's not from here. It's a spiritual kingdom that
this king works spiritually in the hearts of his people. And
he said, if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants
fight? He's a king with a kingdom and
he's a king with servants, he's a king with subjects, he's a
king with those who follow his dictates. That I should not be
delivered from the Jews, but now is my kingdom. He has a kingdom that is an eternally
now is kingdom. He is a king that reigns and
rules. And Pilate asked him, are you
a king? And he says, Thou sayest that
I am a king, verse 37, to this end was I born and for this cause
came I unto the world that I should bear witness unto the truth. causes his word to be heard and
believed by his servants. Don't you love that? He's not
trying. Listen to what he says. Everyone,
at the end of verse 37, everyone that is of the truth heareth
my voice. Everyone that is of the truth
heareth my voice. You might recall what is, turn
with me back to John chapter 10, and I just love the fact
that this king is not just a king who sits out there, he's a king
who operates in the hearts and the lives and the minds of his
people. He's a king that reveals himself
to them, he's a king that is not just, we have a king who's
not very well at the moment, that king has absolutely no bearing
on my life whatsoever. This is not a king. This is not
that sort of a king. This is a king whose will is
done, always. A king who makes promises to
apply the fruit of his work into the hearts of his people. He
promises to draw these people to himself. He promises to teach
these people. He promises to keep these people
close to him. He promises to protect them from
Satan and from themselves and from the evil of this world.
He's not an absent king. He's not a king who tries. He says, my kingdom is. He's
not a king who wants to be king. He's a king who really rules. And if you are a believer and
you look back on your life, you will see the sovereign hand of
a king directing and ordering your steps. in the most extraordinary
ways that only the children of God would bear witness to. And
the end result of it is that they're drawn to Him. So let's
turn with me into John chapter 10. He says, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold,
but climbeth in some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.
But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth, and
the sheep hear his voice. That's exactly what he's saying
to Pilate, isn't he, at the end of his life as he goes to the
cross. They're going to hear his voice about who he is as
the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. I just
love what he says. He goeth before them and the
sheep follow him for they know his voice. Back to verse three,
sorry. The porter and the sheep hear
his voice and he calleth his own sheep by name. There is a time called the time
of love when this king will come to his people and they will hear
the voice of the king. And it'll be a voice like no
other voice. It'll be calling them out of
this world and calling them unto him. He calls them by name. Don't you love how personal he
is with all of his people in the scriptures? He's intimately
personal. He was so personal and so, so,
were they so familiar with his presence that John Adam Neal
could just lean back on his breast and feel his heartbeat and know
the strength of his arm there. Listen to what he goes on to
say in John Chapter 10, That's exactly what he's saying to Pilate,
isn't it? I want to hear the voice of God. We don't hear the
voice of God audibly, nor should we seek to hear the voice of
God audibly. But we hear the voice of God.
We hear the voice of God, the shepherd, through the preaching
of the gospel. We hear the voice of God powerfully
when the Holy Spirit takes the things of the Lord Jesus Christ
and He reveals them to us. And He's only ever going to reveal
to us the truth of who He is and the truth of what the scriptures
say about Him. Listen to what he goes on to
say about his protection of them in verse 5 of John chapter 10. He will do that in the lives
of people. If they've heard His voice, then they will hear the
voice of a stranger. They'll hear an unclear sound
and they may not be able to articulate all of the faults in what they've
heard, but they will say, that's not the sound, that's not the
sound of the Gospel, that's not the sound of the Lord Jesus Christ. We had someone here many years
ago and he was preaching progressive sanctification And the Lord stopped
him at the end of his message. And 14 people came up to me after
that message and said, that wasn't right. Something's not right.
What wasn't right is that they weren't hearing that the Lord
Jesus Christ is the King who does all of these things that
we're reading about in the scriptures for His people, that there's
something left up to us to do and somehow we can climb the
ladder of religious respectability and somehow we can climb the
ladder of works and somehow we can get ourselves closer to God
and more worthy of His affirmation on us. He says, let's go on down,
verse 6, And this parable spake Jesus unto them, but they understood
not what things they were which he spake unto them. Then Jesus
said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door
of the sheep. All that ever came before me
are thieves and robbers. I just love that. Everything
that comes before the Lord Jesus Christ is a thief and a robber. Everything that comes before
us. everything that comes, sorry,
before Him, everything that gets between Him and us, Him embracing
who He is and what He's done and what He did on the cross,
anything that puts man doing something rather than Christ
doing it all and then applying it to the hearts of His people,
they're thieves. They rob us of our glory. They rob Him of His glory. They
rob us of our comfort and our joy and our peace. What's the
only comfort you have? The only comfort I have is that
God the Father, now in heaven, sees his son and everything that
he requires of me, he looks to his son for. All of it. Everything that God
requires of me, his son has provided for me. We have. The commands of God
are so simple, aren't they? Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength.
How can you do that? Love your neighbour as yourself. How can
you do that? One of the problems of works righteousness and one
of the problems of legalism is that they lower the bar, they
lower the standard of God's acceptance to something that they can actually
do themselves. As a friend of mine said, I can
jump over a barn if I'm allowed to build it myself. And so they
lower the standard of God's holiness down to something that's actually
attainable by the hands of men. That's why they all come before
him. There are so many false teachers and they come before
him. They come and they're thieves and robbers. But listen to what
he does in terms of his preservation of his sheep. I want us to get
the fact that the sheep will hear this voice and they will
come to this shepherd. He said, all that come before
me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.
Why did they not hear them? because he preserves and protects
his own. He is the Good Shepherd. He's
not a trying to be Good Shepherd. He is the Good Shepherd. He said,
I am the door, and by me, if any man enter in, he shall be
saved, and he shall go in and out and find pasture. The thief
cometh not, but to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am
come that they might have life, and they might have it more abundantly. I want to live abundantly. I
want to live abundantly in faith. I want to live abundantly in
joy. I want to live abundantly in love. I want to live abundantly
in peace. I want to live abundantly in
resting in what is done. Listen to what he goes on to
say. Verse 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth
his life for the sheep. giveth his life on behalf of
the sheep. And therefore, that is the truth
of God, and anything that denies that truth, anything that purports
to say that somehow the Lord Jesus Christ gave his life in
some measure whatsoever that all of the world might be saved
if they believed. Or somehow it's an offering.
A king doesn't offer. A king commands. This king commands
and does. As we've seen, he has the power
to work in the hearts of his people so that they will hear
one voice and they won't follow another voice. They won't follow
the thieves and robbers. I am the Good Shepherd. The Good
Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. Verse 14. I am the
Good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and no one of mine. He knows them. To know in the
Scriptures is much more than an intellectual knowledge. It's
to know with love. He has this love relationship
for them. And as the Father knoweth me,
even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. I lay down my life for the sheep,
and here he describes us in verse 16, and other sheep have I. When did he have them? When were
they given to him? John 17 makes it very, very clear
that they were given to him by the Father from the foundation
of the world. That's when they were given to
him. Other sheep have I, which are
not of this fold, not of this Jewish fold, them also must I
bring. And they shall hear my voice. He's not trying, our God is not
trying. And he calls his sheep. There is a powerful call, as
powerful as when he said, Lazarus, come forth. But listen to the
end result of it. This is talking, this is to go
back to our verse in John 18. It's talking about this kingdom
that he has. And there shall be one fold and one shepherd. Therefore doth my Father love
me because I lay down my life that I might take it again. Here
he is at the point of his death, at the point of his crucifixion,
with Pilate thinking that he has power over him to put him
to death, with the Jews thinking that they can stir up a crowd
to crucify him, and he's saying again, I'm the king. I'm in sovereign
control of all of these events. It is for this reason and purpose
that I am here. This is the cause for which I
came into this world. This is the end for which I was
born. The universe exists so that the
Lord Jesus Christ could be crucified on a cross. That's how critical
it is. The universe still exists because
of what happened on the cross. And when the last one that fills
up that fold that he spoke of there, and the last one that
hears the shepherd's voice and comes to him, there is no reason
for this creation to continue. The body of the Lord Jesus Christ
will be perfectly complete. There will be one foal and one
shepherd. Therefore does my Father love
me. hear my voice and I know them
and they follow me and I give unto them eternal life and they
shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my
hand." That's the truth speaking the truth about the security
of all of his people who hear the Shepherd's voice. That's
what church exists for, not to be a social welfare program. The church exists to say, this
is the shepherd's voice, to declare the shepherd's voice. For you
not to hear the voice of a man, but to hear the shepherd's voice
calling you, calling you to himself. To hear the promises that the
shepherd made, the shepherd makes. To hear the promises that the
shepherd sealed with his own life's blood on the cross of
Calvary. I give unto them eternal life. Aren't you thankful that eternal
life is a gift? Aren't you thankful that eternal
life is not something that I have to earn or keep for myself? We
lay hold on eternal life, as we read last week in 1 Timothy
chapter 6. We lay hold of it. We keep our
eyes fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ. I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. My Father which gave them me
is greater than all. No man is able to pluck them
out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one. Here is our glorious King, here
is our glorious Prophet speaking, and here is our glorious Priest,
entering into the Holy of Holies with his own blood. We have a gospel. I had someone
come to my place the other day and he asked me, what's the difference
and what's the issue? And he's someone that knows what
the difference is and has heard what the issue is, but he went
away and he came back and I was so pleased to see him came back.
He came back after five years of not seeing again. He said,
what's the big issue? Don't you think that's a wonderful
thing to ask? And I said, the big issue, there's
just one issue, and that's the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. What happened on the cross? Who
it was that was crucified? What was going on in that amazing
transaction between the Lord Jesus Christ and his father?
And him as the great high priest, and him as the great sacrifice,
and him as the altar upon which the sacrifice is made. One of
the things that's lovely about the truth is that I then went
on to say that all of the character of God is revealed in the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the wonderful things about
the truth of the Gospel, the Gospel of the truth of the glory
of God, is that in declaring it, again and again, you keep
saying, isn't this amazing? I was excited in just declaring
the gospel to him so I could hear the gospel myself again.
And I pray he went away and said he was going to look into things
again, and I pleaded with him to read John chapter 17. But
I love the fact that maybe, maybe, just maybe he heard the shepherd's
voice that day. And maybe, just maybe, in the
time of love, he will come. He will be drawn by that shepherd's
voice and he'll come and come to the foot of the cross and
he will look upon our glorious Saviour. The Lord Jesus Christ
is declaring before us in John Chapter 18 that He is a King
on a throne right now. And He's a King who is able to
apply all of the glorious things that He's won and done for His
people to the hearts of His people. And he's able to come to the
chief of sinners and draw them to himself. And I just love the
fact that in his last saving act on this earth was there was
that thief on the cross. And he shows his absolute sovereignty
in his deity, in his lordship, isn't it? That he, that man was
born again on the cross next to the Lord Jesus Christ. And
he was given new sight. And what's the first thing that
he says? remember me. He's acknowledging
through a spiritual revelation that what anyone else was seeing
through physical eyes had no clue whatsoever was going on.
There's not a single human being who looked at the Lord Jesus
Christ hanging there on the cross, bleeding and dying and groaning
and sighing, and thought, this is the Lord. And yet that man
said, this is the Lord. Lord, remember me. He heard the
shepherd's voice. He had life from above. In the words of the Lord to Pilate just a few
hours before, I'm a king. To this end was I born. I'm born
as a king. He's a born king. And for this
cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto
the truth, and every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."
The truth is the truth of what happened on that cross that next
day. The truth that's revealed is
all of God's eternal purpose, that God is a God of purpose. Nothing is happening by accident.
He's the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He's
the Good Shepherd who came. He came that he might glorify
all of the attributes of God through the cross of the Lord
Jesus Christ. On the cross we see, and in Pilate's
judgment hall, we see all of the attributes of men revealed,
and we see what men are when they are left to themselves.
That is what is in the heart of all of Adam's race. If they
could get their hands on God Almighty, they'd put him to death. And they'd put him to death in
the most cruel and heartless way. They hate the notion of
his kingship. They hate the notion of his holiness. They hate the notions of his
claim, his claim to absolute sovereignty. The natural mind
is enmity against God. And it takes nothing other than
the power of Almighty God to turn that natural mind to Him. But I just love the fact that
we see on the cross the true character of God. I love the
fact that Pilate asked that question, what is truth? What is truth? All the attributes of God on
the cross. His hatred of sin, His absolute
justice, The guilty must be punished. When he found sin on his son,
he must be punished. We see the love of God for his
people. We see the wisdom of God, that
God could be so wise as to have a purpose where he magnifies
all of his glorious attributes and yet justifies all of his
people. We see his law honoured and magnified. extraordinary power is displayed
by our King in what He did. He has the power to take my sin, to put it upon
His Son, to punish that sin infinitely and completely to the full extent
of holy justice, to the extent that that sin does not exist
anymore. That's power. That's amazing
power, isn't it? Our power is involved in God
conforming us to His image. Salvation is declared. It is finished. Completely finished. by this man, but this man, after
he'd offered one sacrifice for sins forever, one sacrifice for
sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God, henceforth
expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. This is Hebrews
chapter 10, as you know. For by one offering, listen to
this, This is the King speaking, this is the King speaking his
words of truth. For by one offering he hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified. This is the God that stood before
Pilate. Pilate thought he was just caving
in to the whims and the will of wicked people, and those wicked
people thought their very worst, and yet in all of that, our sovereign
king reigns and rules. And even today, he's calling
his people to himself. He's calling his people to himself.
The shepherd speaks. He says, I've come into this
world that I should bear witness unto the truth. The truth of
who I am, the truth of what happened on the cross, the truth of how
I saved, the truth of him calling his people, and he says, come.
He says, come. And I'll never cast you out.
He says, come. He says, believe. He commands.
And when he commands, with his command comes the power in the
hearts of his people to come and to believe on him. He will
in no wise cast out. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we thank you for the wonder of he who is the truth. And we praise
you for his work of truth in revealing the truth of who you
are, our Father, the revelation of God in the life and the death
and the resurrection and the glorious ascension of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the truth of who we are. sinners and nothing but
sinners and the truth of the wonder of salvation in him heavenly
father we praise you that there is such a shepherd we praise
you for his power to bring all of the promises of God to be
yay and amen in his people. We've heard your promises today,
Heavenly Father. We've read your promises. We
pray that we might just hear the shepherd's voice calling
us into fellowship, into closeness with him again. We're wandering
sheep, our Father, We praise you that there's a good and great
shepherd who calls us back to him. We thank you again, Heavenly
Father, for that blood. We pray that you would do what
you alone can do by your spirit, and that is to make it precious
to us and make him who's shed it so precious to us. We praise
you that he sits on the throne of glory and all of his bride
has sat there with him. wonderful Redeemer. What wonderful,
amazing, redeeming love. Bless your word to the hearts
of your people. May the Shepherd speak. May the Shepherd speak
with power. Power to call. Power to cleanse. Power to save. Power to keep. We pray these things in your
precious name and by your dear and