This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. We're still in the dialogue here
of the Good Shepherd. I'm going to see some things
today that hopefully will put a lot of these things together.
Last week I started out the sermon with a grand treatise, if I can
exaggerate, about how we can know that we understand and rightly
divide the Word of Truth. How we can grasp the reality
of our doctrines and say that we hold fast to these things
is true is because we hear them in Scripture, not just pretextually
from a specific verse, but we hear them throughout the hall,
the echo of the synergy of scripture. We understand that what God has
been teaching us about his gospel, about the finished work of Jesus
Christ, about the authority of the written word and all that
we know and we hold fast to is because we can hear the voice
of our shepherd. Friends, as we know, the assembly of the
saints is not something we do. It's who we are. We gather together
as God's people. We've been taught in our culture
to put on the facade of all is well. While we sing it is well
with my soul, we're thinking it is not well. Things are terrible,
things are not the way they should be, and it's easy to pretend
until things get so bad that we cannot pretend. And then the
culture in which we live, I was taught in the young days of my
pastorate that by men, well-meaning of course, that you don't, you
look for people who have troubles and you tend to them, but you
keep them at arm's length. You put them in a place where
you can watch over them to make sure they don't set themselves
on fire by accident. And then you look for that type
A personality, those who have it all together and always have
the game face on no matter what's going on. And you put them in
the forefront of the church. You put these types of people
out and the world will see that being in Christ is a solid foundation
of personal and material joy. And friends, the word hypocrite
is a Greek word. It's a transliteration of a Greek
word. The word means actor. And so sometimes when we think
of hypocrite, we think of someone who is actually fussing about
our sin, but doing sin on the side of themselves. Which is
true, they're acting like it bothers them, but it really does
bother them, so they're really not acting. Usually they're blind. Well see, the Pharisees here
in John 10, they were the biggest hypocrites the world had ever
seen. And they were hypocritical in a lot of ways. So much so
that Jesus Saul fit to call them the sons of Satan, to call them,
in other Gospels, we see in the Synoptics, whitewashed tombs,
dogs, brood of vipers. Now let me just go ahead and
tell you, we're not Christ. We do not know the hearts of man. We
can quote Christ all we want. We can read the Word of God.
But when we go calling people those names, we have sinned. And then the proverbial gasp
just sucked me off the podium today. Oh, you're a compromiser,
you're a girly man, you're this, that, and the other. No, no,
no, no. I'm going to hold to the essence of what is commanded
to me in Scripture, where Jesus, who was God, did not take that
to be grasped, but made himself nothing, a slave, obedient unto
death on a cross. Have this mind among you, which is yours in
Christ Jesus. Peter says that when Christ was reviled, he did
not return reviled with reviled, but entrusted himself to the
one who was faithful. Friends, we need best learn that true
godly manhood and womanhood is to remain silent under persecution
and proclaim and herald the good news of Christ. Because then God is glorified
alone. Alone. and the restitution and
the restoration or the proclamation. We all hear people talk about
making much of men and defaming God. That is true. But friends,
let me tell you what the greatest trickery of the enemy and hypocrisy
is today in the reformed tradition of churches is that we esteem
the man teaching and we esteem the boldness of the man proclaiming.
It's nothing but idolatry. It's not the Satanism, humanism.
It's all the same. And that's where we were, that's
where they were here in first century Palestine. That's what
was happening with these Pharisees and everybody wanted to be a
Pharisee but they couldn't because it wasn't possible for them.
But everybody wanted to be as close to the Pharisees as they
could. Friends, there is some type of power in the critical
mass of feeling like you're like everyone else and everybody else
loves you for who you are. It's very difficult to be the
minority and to be hated. And even in the minority, it's
easy to find a majority and be indifferent, be hypocritical. One of the greatest ways hypocrisy
has leaked into the church of Jesus Christ, and I dare say
the quote, American church of our culture, is that we all think
we have the same Christ, and we all think we have the same
gospel, and we all think we have the same truth, when most people
who claim to be in Christ do not hold to the sufficiency of
the authority of Scripture. What is it that gives us joy?
How is it that we do sing, it is well with our soul? We didn't
sing that today, but we probably should. How is it that we sing
that when things are not well with our soul? How are we able
to cry out, I rejoice, rejoice, and again I say rejoice. How
are we able to say the things that we say in worship when they're
not true in reality? Because we are not talking about
this world. When we talk about the goodness
of God, the life of abundance that Christ has just said, we
talked about a couple of weeks ago, that He promised to give His
people, the thief and the robbers came to steal and kill and destroy,
but I came that they, the sheep, may have life and have it abundantly. Where is that abundant life?
It is not to be found in this temporal realm. So we put our
face toward Christ. We put our hope toward heaven.
We put our mind on eternal things. Because all this light momentary
affliction is part of the journey through which God will bring
about the revelation of just the end. Golly, there's no adjective. Jesus needs to give us an adjective
to describe the majesty of the Gospel. He's given us glorious,
but we say glory. I mean, I can look at a mountain
and say, look at the glory. I can't even give God credit, but it's
nothing in comparison to what we will behold. It's nothing
in comparison to the reality of what Christ has done for His
people and the joy that is there in Christ alone. It carries us
through places when our physical souls, when our persons, when
our minds, when our hearts have nowhere to go but down. Deeper
and deeper you think, well, you're at the bottom, you have nowhere
to go but up. No, you've been to that bottom and you've started
digging. That's not encouragement. Well, you're as low as you can
get. Just look up. Well, if you're that low, you look up. What do
you see? No way out. Jesus hasn't promised a way out
of the sufferings of this world. But we play games with our Christianity. We play games with the word of
God and our culture. We play games with being the
church of Jesus Christ. We play games and talk about
spiritual things. And friends, that's all the Pharisees
were, a bunch of gamesters. So it's like gangsters and gamers
put together. Gamesters. They're just a bunch of gamers
and gangsters. So gamesters works. It's a mistake,
but it works. There's a book for you. Go write
it. The Gamesters of Faith. But they were just playing. They
were playing self-glorification. They were playing with God's
Word. They were twisting God's Word so that they could be esteemed.
They sought after self-glory. They professed and confessed
that Jesus was the one come from God, only to three years later
saying that He was full of a demon. They'll say it at the end of
this conversation right here. That He was not of God, He was of
the devil. They'll blaspheme the Holy Spirit,
that the very Scripture that they memorized proved that He
was indeed God. And that the works that he did
was the work of God, the work of the Father, that which the
Father is doing now I'm doing, that which the Father is saying
now I say. I speak the words of the Father, John 14, John
17. We'll start to see that in the years to come. But then they couldn't stand
it because it didn't fit in their game. It didn't fit in the way
they played religion. And friends, there's never been
a time in my life that is so Pharisaic, like the Pharisees,
as it is in Evangelical Christianity this very day. As it is even in Reformed Baptist
churches, where people are playing with people's lives. They care
more about the doctrinal differences and the debates than they do
about the very joy of the soul of the sheep for whom Christ
has died. They'd rather to hang a sheep out over the cliff in
a net of safety, causing them to scream and mourn and be alone,
than to spend time shutting their own mouths and praying and laboring
for the sheep of Christ. And these men, these women, these
children, whoever they might be, they need to be brought under
public rebuke and discipline before the saints of God, so
that the world may see that these things are not tolerated with
the people of God. It is better for one to have
never been born than to cause one of the sheep of Christ to
stumble. I remember hearing that for the
first time from my daddy. Son, if I get a hold of you,
you keep this up, you're gonna wish you'd never been born. And
I laughed, because I knew my daddy wasn't gonna kill me. I
didn't have any other brothers at that time. He needed to keep
the name going. See? But when God says it, it's not a euphemism. It's not
hyperbole. It's not something that, God's
a little angry today. I better get him some coffee
and let him wake up. See, my children know when I'm
hangry. I have this edge about me. And it could be right at
the drive-through of a fast food joint on a trip. They're like,
shh, let's text our orders to dad, you know, in the front seat.
So I say, what do you want? They go, well, I think, there's
no wells, there's no I thinks on the menu. I only want to hear
food. Burger, rice, drink, nothing. I don't want to process any other
food. Daddy, have you eaten today? It's none of your business. God
is not hangry. God is not one of these men up
in the sky looking down wondering if we're ever going to get it
right and stressed out and frustrated. God never changes. He's immutable,
He's impassable. What we do does not move God. And because of that, God does
not change His feelings toward us, His love toward us. God does
not change the plan that He had before the foundations of the
world. God is not sitting amongst the throne of the cosmos, holding
time in His hand as a creation of His own will. wondering if
he would ever just see the ants of his colony get the mound built. But such is the God of Greece,
such as the God of Rome in every iteration, such as the God of
evangelicalism and reformation, such as the God of Grace Truth
Church, if it not be the God of scripture. And friends, we gather together
for your sake, but not for you. You see that? Those of you, I
don't know if you saw the troll that hit me this week when I
shared the picture. Lord bless the man. I don't know
him. But he decided, I mean, Levi brought it to my attention.
He's like, this dude just does not like you. What has happened
here? Who is this guy? He's supposedly a pastor somewhere.
He was cursing me, literally cursing me on Facebook because
I shared something that I thought was a little funny. And it was
a little funny to me. It basically said something like
this, that, you know, you make sure you have everything you
need the way you want it in the worship service, ellipses, if
you're the one being worshiped. I'm like, that is so true. That
hit me right there, you know? Because there's not a Sunday
that goes by that I don't get in here and think about everything that I need
to get right, you know? One day I'm going to be playing
an invitation over here at my foot sometime, you know, preaching over here.
We're going to get it together. We've got to get it right. We've
got to get this scene right. We've got to get this focus.
We've got to get this color. But the worship service is not
about us, though it is. beneficial to us, it is about
God. He determines how He's worshipped.
He determines what the church is and what the church does.
We don't. We get to decide nothing. We don't choose a thing. Yes,
you sit there, I stand here, I blab and you listen, and that's
just historically the traditions of the teaching of how we do
it in our culture. This is how you learn, this is
how I teach. Not necessarily the same in first century. Matter
of fact, there was nothing like this whatsoever. But there were
clear demarcations of leadership. There were elder teachers, pastors,
same thing. There were servants, and then
there were all the sheep, of which the elders, the teachers,
and the servants were all sheep. That in itself is different,
isn't it? The Pharisees of the first century, they weren't sheep,
they weren't Israelites, they were Pharisees, they were the
leaders of this thing here. We know the truth, we tell you,
you be quiet, you do what we say. Even Jesus says, do what
they say. But don't do what they do. And what's happening, and where
we're going, And what we need to see here is so simple, but
yet it seems to baffle me every single week. And I'm thinking,
there needs to be something else for us to see. So let me start
in verse 7 and read down through verse 15. And then let's
unpack it again and move into those latter four verses. So
Jesus again said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, I am, it's
the third I am statement of John's Gospel, I am the door of the
sheep. All who came before me are thieves
and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the
door. If anyone enters by me, he will
be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes
only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they, the sheep,
may have life and have it abundantly. I am, number four, the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays his life
down for the sheep. Verse 12, He who is a hired hand
and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf
coming and leaves the sheep and flees. And the wolf snatches
them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired
hand and cares nothing for the sheep. Again, I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know
me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And
I lay down my life for the sheep. Now you've heard and you've learned
most of this already. But let me back us up just a
minute. It's the same conversation happening
in chapter 9 where Jesus is talking amongst the crowds, Pharisees
in their shop, and they say what? They say what? Are we also blind? And Jesus says to them, if you
were blind, you would have no guilt, but now that you say,
we see, your guilt remains. Then Jesus goes into this double
verities, truly, truly, our main, our main, I say unto you, I say
to you, Jesus is teaching something that's worth noting as ultimately
true, absolutely true, and sovereignly true. This I say to you, and
He does so in the midst of a parable, doesn't He? He tells a story
about sheep and a shepherd and all this stuff. And look at verse
6. This figure of speech Jesus used
with them, but they did not understand what He was saying to them. This is why I know this goes
here in John's Gospel. For our higher critics, you're
wrong. He's continuing this conversation.
If you could see, listen to this truth. And then the gospel writer
says they couldn't understand it. Jesus is showing us, John
is revealing to us the blindness of these spiritual elites. These
self-righteous, judgmental, law-keeping zealots who acted and looked
the part and in their own heart thought they had it made, thought
they knew everything that was necessary for salvation. They
knew nothing. and they were blind and Jesus
proves it to the crowd right there when He gives this short
parable, this short figure of speech and it says they did not
understand what He was saying to them. They could not see themselves
because when Jesus speaks and says, I am the Good Shepherd,
what did they think? He's talking about us. He's taking
credit for what we are. I speak the words of God. He's
trying to pretend like He's one of us. He's an actor. He's a
hypocrite. When they were the true hypocrites.
The level of judicial blindness that takes place in the lives
of self-righteous people by the will of God is one of frightening
proportions. Because it's one thing for me
to be given a role and play it out knowing all the while that
I'm not this guy. It's another thing for me to think that I
really am and continue to act the part, not knowing that I'm
acting. And that's where these spiritual
leaders are. Jesus says, I am the door of the sheep. But these
guys, the Pharisees, they're robbers and thieves. I came to
give you life, sheep. They came to steal from you.
They came to kill you. They came to destroy you. I mean, does that go over well
at a family reunion? Uncle so-and-so you haven't ever
met, that lives a long ways off? And somebody gets into a little
spat, calls some guy ugly, somebody else says you're mama, then it's
a murder scene. You don't call people thieves
if they're not thieves. You don't call people robbers
if they're not robbers. You don't tell the world at large, these
people want to kill you and destroy you and steal from you when they
have no real intentions. And this is the blindness that
we have yet to really grasp of the self-righteous. They don't
know they're stealing. According to the law, Paul says,
I was blameless, perfect, without blemish. I didn't disobey. I wasn't a thief. I wasn't a
murderer. But how were the Pharisees thieves? They stole the people's money.
They stole glory from God. They stole the Word of God from
their hearts. They stole everything they could
so that they could continue to be glorified. You know what that
looks like in present day? Because I know you have some
application. It looks like people who stand in the pulpit and teach
the Word of God and twist it to their common good. Twist it
for their purposes. Twist it for their vision. For
there is no vision. The people perish. It's exactly
what Jesus says. If I don't give you sight, you
die in your sins. It's not about a mission or a
vision. It's not about a plan of action. It's not about any type of, you
know, what's your ministry philosophy? Who cares what my ministry philosophy
is? I've got 50,000 of them. Who cares what they are? What
does the Bible teach me about Christ and the gospel and the
truth and the glory of God and the church, the beloved for whom
Christ died? What does the Bible teach us
about how we are to assemble together and what we're supposed
to be doing? That's what matters. Twist the scripture and they
think they're the door. I've been told by a Baptist pastor,
oh my goodness, ten years ago now, February, this month, ten
years ago, and I was teaching a conference, and when I went
back home, it caused a lot of problems at this church. Because
people, for the first time in their lives, had an open door
to ask a pastor a question. And I spent four hours on a Saturday
standing in front of them with a music stand and said, do we
have any questions? I thought it was going to be
like a 45-minute question and answer. It was basically for
parenting. You got any questions about how
to parent your children, your teens? You got questions on how
to get some Bible study going in your house? But it came from
how do I get my child to stop being promiscuous to all sorts
of things, to doctrinal questions, and it just kept going. Four
hours kept going. And that ruffled the feathers
of that congregation to the point when I talked to the pastor on
the phone back when I was in the East Bay, and I was looking out my
bedroom window, and I could see the bridge there going over to
San Francisco from my bedroom. And I'll never forget this phone
call. He says these words, Tippins,
you have ruined my authority in this church. I'm sorry, I
didn't mean to do that. He said, you have taught these
people to read the Bible and think for themselves and that's
a dangerous thing. And I'm like, where is it? I was waiting for that. I said,
I'm sorry, what? He goes, you have ruined your,
the blood of the disunity of this church is on your hands,
something like that. It's not a verbatim quote. And
I said, well you, You're mistaken, my friend. You're supposed to
be teaching this church, your church, your congregation that
God has put you over as an under shepherd. You should be teaching
them and causing them to think, teaching them to eat the word
of God. He said, people are dumb and they must stay dumb if you
keep them under control. And I had some things to say
about that that weren't very pleasant. and he cursed me out
and hung up on me. So I called him back. You're
not gonna break up with me like that, no. And the conversation did not go well. People like that want to keep
a thumb on folks. Like the Pharisees. Just trying
to give you some present day application. I know we've been
going through this for four or five weeks. It's difficult sometimes
to see, what am I supposed to do with this? You're supposed
to learn, you're supposed to see, You're supposed to understand
the theology behind it, but sometimes you're supposed to be able to
help others. You ever had somebody come to you and tell you that
they feel oppressed, spiritually abused because of the way they're
bridled in the fellowship of the saints? If you've never felt
that, praise God, but I know you. I know some of you have
shared that with me through the years. And your answer to that was,
we're never going to be back in part of another church in
our entire life. And praise God, some weirdo came down here and
started Grace Truth, which is a bunch of misfits. We don't
fit together anywhere. We're little pieces out of a
thousand different boxes of puzzles. But in the end, where do we fit
here? We're in the sheep gate. And
Jesus will say that. Next week we'll look at that.
We'll close out with it today. Jesus will say that. I've got
sheep everywhere. Not just Jews. I've got sheep that are not of
this fold right here. They're not of Israel. They came to steal
and kill. The reason I bring that out is
that Jesus would not say these things if they were not true. He would not say these things
if they were not true. He would not say these things about these
men if they were not true. They were true. Jesus knew the
hearts of them. And even Caiaphas, as we'll see
the day that Jesus is arrested, he says, it is better that one
man perish than the whole nation. And then the evangelist puts
in there, he did not know what he was saying, but by the Spirit
he prophesied these things. Just to show you, not only does
Jesus know the heart of man, but He's sovereign over the mouth
of man. He can cause us to say what needs to be said. He can
put in the hearts of a king to call for a census so that he
can have every man, woman, and child from an entire nation in
one place as he sees fit. Now, of course, we could all
be laying on our beds and sort of like bewitched, God go, dinkle,
dinkle, dinkle, and we just wake up in Jerusalem, wake up in Savannah,
and I'm like, what happened? Wow! That's not how God works. That's not what the Scripture
shows us. If anyone enters into the door,
this is what we have with these spiritual abusers, these people
who think they are following after God and they put a burden
of legalism on the body of Christ. They bring us back under the
yoke of the law. And they begin to make a list
of things that fits their pattern. Have I said this before? Yes.
Have we experienced it? Absolutely. Are we experiencing
it now? Some of you probably do put this
on yourselves. But people that stand in these
positions of authority, they like to say, I'm the door. You
want to learn the Word of God? Come see me. You want to understand
how to apply Scripture? You better come talk to me. I'm the doctor around here. You're
sick and unable. You're a dumb old sheep. Let
me tell you exactly what you need to do. And that's where
most, listen to me, that's where most flesh wants to stand. The fear of judgment brings most
humans to a place where if they have any type of spiritual mind
whatsoever, and every human being has a spiritual mind, and they
try to align it with something that they read in a holy book,
or the scriptures, or something of that nature, they'll want
some guru to tell them exactly how to apply these things, and
they'll come up underneath a teacher who will tell them. Then we've
got Romanism, we've got Seventh-day Adventism, We've got the cults,
plethora of cults and world religions. Everywhere we turn, we've got
some guru, some man, some woman, some bush, some something, some
vision, some mirror, some tea leaves in the bottom of a glass
that's teaching somebody how to tell somebody else what to
do with their lives. And that is why I understand so passionately
how so many people who are zealous in the faith, who have never
been converted, walk away and go, this is a bunch of nonsense.
Because these spiritual leaders stand in the way and say, I'm
the door. You want to understand God, you've got to go through
me. Jesus said, He's the door. So if I want to show you the
door, I've got to show you Christ. If I want to show you the door
to eternity, I've got to show you Christ. If I want to show
you the door of protection from the Great Shepherd, I've got
to show you Christ. Why do you need protecting? We're not being
persecuted in this nation. How about from your own mind?
How about from your emotions? That's mine. The things I think
about, the feelings that it causes. What in the world would I do
if I used those as the instrument of navigation in my life? Where
would you be if your mind and your emotions led you as a GPS? I'll tell you where you'd be.
In a ditch. Driving in a circle. Nowhere. But Christ never changes. He never moves. He's always there. Where do we come to get the door?
We come to the body, we come to the teachers, but we really
come to the Word, you see. You could probably finish, most
of you could finish some of my sentences. So if I say to you,
don't come here to learn, but come here to what? To agree. I want you to be in the Word
of God, and that's why I teach what I teach, so that you can
understand it, understand how to understand it, and understand
to apply it, so that one day when we're sitting down together,
you can teach me something. One day when my emotions have
overcome me, when my mind has lost sight, when my heart is
downtrodden, when my arms cannot be raised, and you don't come
up and say, well, our pastor just washed out and done, oh
well, kick him to the ditch, get another one, who's next? which
is what most congregations do. Gotta get a pastoral search committee
now, gotta find another sucker, I mean pastor. Don't tell him
any bad stuff till he's here for a year. And what do you do? Then you
come back and you teach me what we've been learning together.
You teach me what God has shown you. You teach me what God has
taught you. You teach each other the Word of God. Because otherwise, there's no
protection. And a Pharisee doesn't want the
sheep to be protected. He doesn't want them to feel
safe. What does he want the Israelite to feel? Fear. The shepherd causes
us to be safe, but the hireling wants us to fear. I've got to
be in church. Oh, if I'm not in church, I'm
going to burst into fire. I wish y'all felt that way. No, I'm
playing. I'm glad you don't. Compulsion is good when it's
motivated by love and affection. When it's motivated by fear and
destruction and despair, what is it but control? But the good
thing is that Jesus is the door. The sheep don't listen to the
thieves and the robbers. Those who enter through Christ
find food. They eat. They want the Word
of God. Those who enter through a thief, they're left wanting. They're left empty handed. They're
going, what did we just eat? I just paid money for a meal.
You ever paid money for a meal and wonder why you've got to
go through a burger joint and get you something? You ever paid
money for a nice meal and it wasn't enough? Or it tasted so
bad you had to go eat a fish fillet? Who eats that? Go buy a nine dollar pack of
cheese crackers at the gas station. Yeah. That's what happens when we have
people who aren't feeding us. But what do they feed you? They
feed you all the negative. They feed you all the problems.
They feed you all the scare tactics. They feed you everything but
the truth of Christ so that the door remains shut. And they stand
off kilter about 45 degrees and say, I'm the door. Don't look
over there. Don't look at the Word. Don't do this. That's what that
pastor was doing to his congregation. That's what he was doing to them.
And friends, I hate to say it, it is the majority of things. It is the majority of churches.
It is the majority of teaching. God kill me in my place before
I do this to the sheep of Christ. Last week we looked at verse
11, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Verse
12, he who is a hired hand is not a shepherd. Who's a hired
hand? If we're not careful, we'll stick
this metaphor in such a rigid place. We'll be like, well, you're
a hired hand. You're a hired hand. You're a hired hand. Yes,
we're under shepherds. The teachers of those who teach
Christ and point to Christ, they're the hired hands. He's talking
about the Pharisees here as the hired hands. Everything that
I've just explained to you is verse 12. And when times get
tough, when things get difficult, isn't that the way it works? I was just thinking about this
this morning in a conversation, right before service, that when I began
to make questions of pastor elder brothers in the day, back in
the day, why are we doing this? What does this actually mean?
What's the call? What's the implication that now this is true, so what?
What are we teaching people? I wanted to know the answer.
I wasn't, I began to become a problem. I took the nickname as the prophet.
So they called me. And when I inquire, why are you
calling me the prophet? Why am I called the prophet? Because
you've got your Bible with you all the time. The Bible says this and the Bible
says that. And I'm like, that's not endearing for you to say.
I remember a tenure at a church.
It was a very short tenure, about 16 months. And there were, I
bet you, 500 copies of Robert's Rules of Order with everyone
in that church all the time. If you don't know what that is,
it's a book of how parliamentary procedure works in a business
meeting. Because in the Bylaws and Constitution,
which is a very robust document at that church, it said that
all of our conferences, meetings, gatherings, etc. will be governed
by the execution of Robert's Rules of Order. So I took one and I burned it
in the trash can in front of them. It didn't go well. It didn't go well because that
was wrong. I should have just preached the
scripture, you see. But I wanted them to feel the
burn, literally. And I was young and stupid and I shouldn't have
been a pastor. That's what happens with the hired hand. They point
you in certain directions that get you in a certain place. They'll
say things like this, well, it's a difference of opinion. Or it's
a difference of interpretation, or it's a difference of application.
Is it? How can the God who never changes,
with the Christ who never fails, give a message that changes in
its application and interpretation? How does that work? It doesn't. But what we have to do is we
have to decide, are we going to appease the culture in which
we live? Are we going to look to our neighbors
like the real fun guy that we want to be? Are we going to be
real and honest with our neighbors? Yes, I'm struggling. My neighbor
came over to the fence and asked me two days ago, everything okay? I mean, I started in my sarcasm
to say, yeah, we just decided to open up a nursery of a whole
bunch of plants and stick them all over our front yard and patio
and porch. And we just love having all these
plants, these wreaths on the door, flowers in the mailbox. And we just don't know what we're
up to. I said, no, my mother-in-law passed. I didn't say that. I mean, I told her the truth.
I was thinking all that. I should be fun with her. Now
we'd open up a nursery. I wasn't. My mother-in-law passed. Y'all
all right? No, ma'am, we're not. We're not
okay. We're emotions are on edge. My
wife is a basket case. It's not a good time for us.
I don't know what else to tell you. It is difficult to have
somebody in your life every single day, and then they're not there.
Just on a blue. You didn't have time to prepare.
It's like, I'll see you tomorrow. No, you won't. It's just unbelievable. Happens to everybody in the world.
and the culture says we're supposed to lie and pretend. But I said,
we're a mess, we're not okay, but the Lord is faithful. We look to that which is unseen,
not to that which is seen. God will work all these things
out for our good in His timing, because He always does everything
right, just, and good for His people. The good shepherd does
everything right, just, and good for His people. The hireling
only thinks of themselves, their status, their paycheck, their
opportunity, their self-glory, and the ministry that they've
built. Who cares about the name of a ministry? Who cares about
the following? Pharisees do. Who cares about
the public image? And I'm not saying our testimony.
I mean, we practice discipline for a reason. We encourage each
other and call each other out for a reason privately. We deal
with life not on a level that most people would consider. but
on a very light level. We all have sin and there are
some sins that we just need to let God work on. But there are
some sins we just can't let go because we love each other. We do what we have to do and
if it cost us, it cost us. If it hurts, it hurts. We weep
together, we weep together. We cry together, we laugh together,
we rejoice together. We do all these things together
with one body. I gave the illustration Tuesday in my high school class.
You know, I'm going through Ephesians with them and we're just getting
into, we just finished Ephesians 3, moving into Ephesians 4. And
I said, that Paul is so adamant and Jesus
is so constant on the issue of intimacy and the unity of the
one body, the one flesh, the one baptism, the one Lord, the
one faith, that we are considered one person as the body of Christ. And I use the illustration of
what would happen, for those of you who remember me talking
about punching people and stuff, you know, what would happen if
in those days when I would get physical, I would just blame
my hand. Why did you do that James? It's
my hand. It's my hand. I can't help it. Sorry. I can't help it. Stupid
hand. Are they going to lock my hand
in a little cage for being a, what, a violent hand? Are they
going to put my hand on probation? Have to put it in a cast and
tape it up? Tape it to my leg? What happened to your hand? Dude,
he's just a juvenile delinquent. He's only five and he's just
punching and kicking and slapping. Making pointy fingers. No, I'm going to go to jail for
that. If my hand slaps you and you call the cops, I'm going
to be punished for it. The same thing is true when the
church is abused. If one piece of the body is hurting,
we're all hurting. If one piece of the body is rejoicing,
we're all rejoicing. Now, the crazy thing is, is we
don't plant that metaphor down on a hard, strict timeline and
say, oh, we can rejoice and mourn at the very same time. I can
rejoice with you in the midst of your mourning and vice versa.
And we can rejoice knowing that even though we're hurting, even
though we're suffering, even though it seems to be that we're
never going to have a reprieve on these things, that the Father
is faithful to give His Son on our account and He has died for
us. But the hired hand won't go there. As a matter of fact, the hired
hand won't even protect the sheep. The hired hand will see the wolf
coming and run the other way. What does the wolf do? Does it
destroy the sheep? No, it scatters them. It scatters them. Snatches them up and scatters
them. Men sneaking into households, as Paul would say. Corrupting minds, corrupting
morals, corrupting hearts, enslaving people to do things. That's who
the Pharisees were. They were slave drivers. They
were legalists. They were self-glory seekers.
All they wanted is for people to fear their teaching and to
fear the God of their creation, not see Him as a God of mercy
who gave His only Son so that we would be free from the wrath
that is ours. Why does He flee? Why do men
who do this type of stuff so easily abandon the sheep? What
does it look like for a church to have someone flee them? They
just walk away? An elder in a church who just
walks away is not fit for the ministry tomorrow. An elder in
the church who decides he's just going to find something better
is not fit for the ministry. It's not the way it works. So
I said, okay, I've got 23 years under my belt in marriage, and I just want to be single
and ride dirt bikes now. Bye! I'm not a husband. What would it look like if Jesus
just decided, these people are aggravating me. Why am I hanging
on this cross and they're spitting on me? And mocking me? I mean,
can you imagine what Marvel Studios could do with a Jesus like that?
Who'd had enough? Not a Savior, but the Avenger
Jesus. That's how I know the kids are
listening. They all get excited. He's going to talk about Avengers.
No, I'm not. The Bible says vengeance is mine.
The Lord will be Avenger. We'll be the Avenger one day.
and He'll be just in it. Jesus laid down His life for
the sheep, and because of this, God the Father loves Him. Look
at verse 14. I am the Good Shepherd. He repeats
Himself here. I am the Good Shepherd. He repeats Himself. I'm the Good
Shepherd. These aren't the Good Shepherds.
Those aren't the Good Shepherds. That's not the Good Shepherd.
Don't listen to them. Listen to Me. I'm the Good Shepherd.
What about those? Thief. What about those? Murderers.
What about those? Wolves. How do you know Jesus? Because they're not pointing
to me. They're not pointing to my work. Friends, they're not
going to die for you. When the wolf comes, they're
going to run from you. They're going to let that wolf
tear you apart. They're not going to protect
you. They're not going to satisfy God's wrath for you. All you
guilty little sheep. Imagine it from this perspective,
judicially, from a spiritual sense. All you guilty sheep that
deserve the wrath of God, I'm your shepherd. I'm going to lay
down my life for you. I'm going to stand in your place that you
might be my righteousness. Here's the crux of the sermon
today. I know my own and my own know
me. That's the first part of a three-part
sentence. I know my own. Friends, this is not the first
time Jesus has said this. There is an intimacy that John laid out very clearly
by the Holy Spirit in the very beginning of this gospel. All things are made through Him,
and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was
life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light,
verse 9 of 1, which gives light to everyone, was coming into
the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through
Him, yet the world did not know Him." Won't you see that? What does
it mean there? You remember, 86 weeks ago, maybe
84 weeks ago, 83 weeks ago, when we dealt with that text, people
could not see Him. They weren't looking to Him.
Evidence, every time we turn around, evidence by the fact
that the Pharisees, the spiritual leaders of Israel could not see
Christ as Messiah. Could not see Messiah from a
biblical point of view. Could not understand the truth
and the power and the testimony of God the Father concerning
His Son. They could not see it. The world did not know Him. And one of the reasons the world
did not know Him, is because the Jews did not share Him. Did not share Him. They had the
keys to eternal life, so they thought. Jesus says, you think
that in the Scriptures you find eternal life, but they wrote
of Me. You're not looking to see Me, you can't see Me, so
you have no life. See, it's not about the construction
of how our mind comes to terms with the doctrines of Scripture.
That's not salvation. Salvation doesn't come because
we exercise some type of belief in Jesus as we understand Him
academically. Salvation comes through Christ
alone in His finished work on the cross, whereby He justifies
the sinner who's been given to Him by the Father that He has
known before the foundations of the world. You can call it
election, you can call it predestination, you can call it whatever you
want to. The Bible calls it redemption. We have been redeemed through
the blood of Christ. Now the nuances in the theological
discussions about the isms that come along historically in theology,
these are irrelevant to the reality that salvation is in Christ alone
through His substitutionary atonement. And we want to eat green pastures,
there's the food that sheep want. Show me in the Bible the perfect
redemption of my soul by my Savior. Show me that. That's what I want
to eat. My world's falling apart? Show me Christ. Everything I
know is destroyed? Show me Christ. Show me my Messiah. The word Christ, Messiah, the
same term. Show me. He was in the world. The world
was made through Him. The world did not know Him. He
came to His own. He came to His Jewish lineage. He came to His own people. To
His blood brothers. But they did not receive Him.
They did not acknowledge Him. They could not see Him. You see
the darkness? Now the light. Darkness, light. That's what chapter 9 is talking
about. Then chapter 10 is proving the point. Chapter 11. reveals it as absolutely irrevocably
certain. What? It's chapter 11. Lazarus
is taken out of a decaying state of death. I might breakdance
when I preach chapter 11. And I have to have drums up here
for the first time. but all who did receive Him.
That is, all who believed in His name, He gave the right,
and you know chapter 3, He gave the right to be the children
of God who were born as children of God, not of blood. Being a
Jew didn't make you a child of God, nor the will of the flesh,
nor the will of man. But by the will of God. You're
born by the will of God. Why? Because Jesus knew you. He knows you. He knows you. John the Baptist knew him. But
how did John the Baptist know Jesus? Because Jesus knew John
before he was. The Word became flesh and dwelt
among us, and we have seen His glory. Glory as of the only Son
from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness
about Him and cried out, This was He of whom I said, He who
comes after me ranks before me because He was before me. For
from His fullness we all received grace upon grace. For the law
was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The one and only God who is at
the Father's side, He makes Him known. And if you want to debate that
translation, we can talk afterward. I know my own. I know my own. When God opens our heart to hear
and see the truth of Christ, we then also know Him. I know
my own and my own know me. Do you know Christ? I'm not saying
do you know about Christ. I'm not saying do you know of
Christ. I'm not saying do you know some facts about Jesus and
all this other stuff. Do you know, intimately, know
Christ? Is He in you? Are you in Him? I know who my sheep are and I
know them by name. I know them all by name. You're
going to see it. You're going to see it in John
11 when he says, Lazarus. Jesus could have just said, come
out. Jesus could have just moved his hand like that and an explosion
taking place. The Pharisees could have had
a burnt afro and Lazarus could have been standing there speaking
Chinese. juggling fire, swinging from
a web. And we're like, wow! He called
him by his name. He knew Lazarus. It's the pictures
that we're seeing here. The argument of John's gospel
is so clearly laid out in every narrative, every discourse, every
conversation is perfectly illustrating the points that he's made in
his outline. That's how John, under the power
and leading of the Holy Spirit has constructed all of His writings. The wolf scatters, I protect. I know my sheep, and my sheep
know me. You know Him. You're not guessing. Look at the blind man. The blind
man knew Jesus, but did not know who He was. He couldn't recognize him because
he'd never seen his face. He left Jesus' presence blind
from birth, and he goes and washes his face and he gets his sight.
And he comes back and he tells those who have the door to heaven,
his spiritual leaders, I can see! And they ask him twice how
it was done. Why? Because Jesus spit in the
dirt to make the mud. And he broke the law of God. Tell me again. He spit in the
dirt. Take notes. Take notes. Put that
in Jesus' file. Jesus spit in the dirt. He followed
the ground. It's a violation right here in
the Mishnah, right here. Look at Moses. He's a sinner. He told that man to wash his
face. How far did you walk, sir? From there to here. You went
from the sin pool. by the sent one to us. Look how far you've walked. That's
not what a good Jew does. You've made a journey on the
Sabbath. You violated the law. Jesus had the power to heal your
eyes. How dare He do that on the Sabbath? He did some type
of work powerfully, and that's a sin. They're thieves and robbers.
Jesus knows His own and His own know Him. Do you know Jesus? Jesus says, do you believe in
the Son of Man? And this man goes, which one
is He? How many men were standing there?
Thousands of men were standing there. Who is He that I might believe?
And Jesus says, I am He. And he falls down and he worships
Jesus as God. because he had already confessed
to the Jews, only God can give sight to the blind. When God gives sight to the blind,
we know His Son. Do you know Christ? Do you know
that Christ is your only hope? How many years have we heard
the evangelical chime, how do you know that you have eternal
life? And here is an evangelical response. Because Jesus is my
good shepherd and he laid down his life in my place. Because
he loved me and gave himself for me. That's the answer. That's the Sunday school answer. Jesus gave himself for me and
has found me. The theological volumes are coming
out in the minds of many with that statement. Oh, that's just
such an insignificantly failed attempt at expressing the gospel,
friends. I'm just talking about the door. That's turning the
doorknob. How much more is there? It's
ineffable. It's glorious. But look at the comparison that
Jesus makes here. Not just that I know my own and my own know
me. He gives the similarity of that relationship. I want you
to watch and then I'm going to close. I wanted to spend more
time on this. The similarity of Him knowing
His and His knowing Him is just as, verse 15, the Father knows
me and I know the Father. And just as the Father knows
me, I know my sheep. And just as the sheep know me,
I know the Father. Now I want you to understand
the significance of that intimacy. How many times today have I talked
about the unchangeableness of God? The immutability of God? How many times today have I made
a point to illustrate God's everlasting love expressed? Does not Jesus
say that God loved the world in this way that He gave the
only Son that He had? That the believing ones would
not perish but have everlasting life? God did not start to love you
when you believed. When did Father start loving
the Son? Wait a minute, how come you've
gone from knowing to loving because that's what it means? It's not a knowledge in the way
of some cognitive understanding or apprehension. It is an eternal,
divine affection. In fact, that's the name of this
sermon. A love divine. This text right here, verse 14-15,
shows me the love of God clearer than John 3-16. Because it illustrates it so
perfectly as a reciprocating reality. And that while we were
enemies, Christ died for His own. So we come to understand,
for all the believing ones, I know them and they know me, just as
I know the Father and the Father knows me. Except it's flipped.
The Father knows me and I know the Father. God never began to love Jesus. It's an eternal love. Jesus,
the Son, never began to love the Father. It's an eternal love. This love is not easy to comprehend
because we in fallenness, even though we are born again, have
a hard time placing love in the parameters of the divine. But
love looks like this, in that while we were enemies, Christ,
who is the one who created all the world, came into the world,
took on creation, created a body for Himself in the womb of Mary
that He created so that He could suffer in temptation and suffer
the cynicism of life in obedience to the commands of God the Father
which are unchangeable. and die in our place. So Jesus
obeyed in our place and He died in our place. Jesus did not begin
to love us at any specific time. There is an eternal love that
God has for you, beloved. And there is eternal love that
God the Father has for the Son. and likewise the Son for the
Father, so that we can say we have an eternal love for Jesus?
No. Many of us remember the days
when we didn't know Christ, nor love Christ. But friends, that relationship,
according to Paul, and what we see in John 6, is so sufficiently
decreed that it is as if it is an eternal love. that none should be lost, that
none should be cast away, that all that the Father give to Him
will love Him. Start interchanging the teaching
of Jesus like that. No one can come to me except
they know me. No one can know me except they are given by the
Father. No one that's given by the Father
will ever be cast away. As a matter of fact, all that
are given to me, they will love me, I will love them. They will
be raised up on the last day. They will be resurrected unto
life. This is the promise that Jesus is making continually throughout
His ministry. And they're all thinking He's
ridiculous. Why? Because they were blind. They
cannot see. Why can they not see? We know why Jesus teaches
that the Pharisees could not see. He teaches that they could not
see because they were not permitted to see. And even what they thought they
could see, they couldn't see. So who gets the glory in all
this? Who gets the glory for all the sheep that come to Christ? Christ does. Not the pastor. Someone told me Thursday, I just
thank you so much for teaching me so much. I haven't taught
you anything. Just standing up here, blabbing them on my mouth,
and if the Lord doesn't work through His scripture, then nothing
is going to be taught to anybody. The Spirit of God teaches everything.
I'm more apt to teach you wrongly. than to teach you rightly in
my flesh. Because I like to think about
things that are somewhat strange. Father knows me and I know the
Father, and, he repeats himself, I lay down my life for the sheep. The shepherd knows his sheep,
he owns his sheep, he dies for his sheep, he lives for his sheep.
The Father loves the shepherd. I talk about breakdancing just
a minute ago because it's just a little joke that I've been
talking about since years. I used to breakdance as a kid. And sometimes
you get excited, that's what you do. Some people shake, some
people laugh. I mean, if something's really
exciting, how many of you like to dance? Even if it's just a
little jig or something. I mean, it's okay. Be honest. Imagine what the Pharisees were
doing in their soul and mind when they heard this teaching. They were not wanting to dance. He called us thieves and murderers
and liars, apostate, reprobate. And He said the Father loves
Him and that He loves our people and they love Him. and He loves
the Father, and He's going to lay His life down? He has no
idea how true that is, because we're going to kill Him. They
were breakdancing murder in their hearts, that's what they were
doing. And all these sheep, longingly
looking for century after century after century for their spiritual
leaders to show them the truth of redemption, to show them the
truth of the glory and the grace of God, never saw it. And here
is the glory of God standing with them and saying, I will
lay my life down for my sheep. And those sheep heard this and
they went, this man loves us. This man loves me. I love him. What is that? John 4. It's rebirth. It's regeneration. This is the
work of God, the Holy Spirit, to show us and to reveal to us
the truth. And the Pharisees would think
right there in their mind, He's going to take everyone from us.
He's going to become like a king around here. The irony is that's
what they wanted from Him in the beginning of His ministry.
He's going to take all of our glory and all of our people.
We're in big trouble. So Jesus and His omniscience,
Says verse 16. He puts the death nail on cue. Bing! Bing! Here it is. I have other sheep
that are not of this fold. I have other sheep that are not
of Israel and I will bring them also and they will listen to
my voice also and there will be one flock and there will be
one shepherd and I am he. It was over. It was over. That was it. And the division
got worse and worse and worse. And friends, that's what the
hirelings, that's what self-righteousness, that's what legalism, that's
what ungodly shepherds do. They create more and more division
by trying to hold the sheep to a burden that Christ has not
given them to bear. And amongst the unregenerate
of the world, there will always be actors. who pretend they're
in Christ. And they will always be divided,
never trusting, always being tossed to and fro. And yeah,
there are some sheep sometimes that get tossed to and fro. But
by the mercy of God, we see them, we teach them, God corrects them,
and they come right back with us. There is only one body. And there is only one shepherd,
Jesus, the righteousness of God. Let's pray. Thank you, Father,
again for sustaining my voice today. Lord, for giving me the
ability to stand and talk and to teach. And Father, most importantly,
I praise you for allowing your word to teach us. For permitting
me to stay focused to the things that we have come to know and
to understand. to help me not be swayed by popular
things and cultural things. But Lord, that if you have to
do any sort of thing outside to press me into reading your
word and to staying focused on that truth, Lord, I receive it
joyfully. Father, as a body, I pray that
we would continue to grow as an intimate family around the
scripture. Lord, that we would be kind to one another, that
we would pray for one another, that we would get to know each
other. It isn't like we have to, Father, always just be best of pals.
But God, we just must be intimately in love with each other because
you have given your love to us through Christ, your son. And as we leave out of this location
today, we are not separated except by distance and time. Father,
we look to the day where we will always be together under Your
Son, the Great Shepherd, who then we can just exult and rejoice. and know more intimately forever
and ever and ever and always as He has known us, as you have
known us, our Father. Help us to draw closer to you
and to one another. Help us to go into the darkness
of this world and to proclaim the light that you would draw
others, the sheep that must be part of this sheepfold, that
you would draw them in. And help us not to make distinctions
thereof, but to proclaim to all. And we thank you for these truths
and all of these things. In Christ's name we pray.