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. John chapter 10, last week we
sort of did a precursory overview of the argument that Jesus begins
with. And I mentioned also that there
are some higher critics of this text who think that it should
not be here, and there are even others who consider it non-canonical. That means it shouldn't be in
the Bible. However, if you look at the context, as we've been
talking about for years, you see that the conversation continues
here. This is, even in this chapter,
we see a discussion about Jesus or God, only God can give sight
to the blind. And this makes week 84 that we've
been in John's Gospel, and I don't know about you, but it has definitely
been a blessing to me. It's been a blessing to be able
to eat the Word of God here, and then our midweek in Romans,
which by the way, we'll be back on track this week. So that we might see. We might
see the good shepherd. And so today I want to sort of
take this text, not necessarily out of context, but back in itself,
go through very quickly what we have already seen, and then
to expound just a little bit synergistically throughout the
Bible, what a good shepherd looks like. And then the antithesis
of that being what a bad shepherd is. And then, of course, we'll
put that in perspective as we see what the text is actually
saying, that Jesus is the most excellent shepherd. He is the
shepherd, the most excellent. He is the good one. And so look
there in chapter 10, we will read, starting in verse 7, Jesus
said to them again, truly, truly, I say to you, 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 he will go in and out and find pasture. The thief
comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they
may have life and have it abundantly." Verse 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his
life for the sheep. Now we'll stop there, and we
probably won't deal with that, but we will close at verse 11
this morning. When we think about this parabolic teaching, this
imagery that Jesus starts with in verse 1, He is reiterating
something in response to, I believe, what the Pharisees say there,
are we blind? And he says to them, what? If
you were blind, you would have no guilt, but now that you say,
we see, your guilt remains. We need to be reminded that many
times over, Jesus and the apostles in their understanding of this
and the teaching of the gospel, they show very clearly that Jesus
did not come to save the righteous. Jesus did not come to heal the
well. Jesus did not come to give sight
to the seeing. You see how that sounds, an absurdity?
If you're well, and yeah, maybe you go to the doctor for a checkup,
but if there's nothing wrong with you, why would he prescribe
to you something? Why would he do surgery upon
your body if there's no need for it? Jesus, in the same way,
cannot and will not and did not and does not save righteous people. Now the irony behind that is
that there are none righteous. Paul reiterates that in the teaching
of Romans chapter 3 where he says and he quotes from several
passages of the Old Testament prophets that none are righteous.
No, not one. All have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God and are deserving of death because it is the natural
consequence of righteous justice, holiness. being set apart, God
is, and His people He sets apart and gives them to Christ, and
Christ in turn has died for them, and therefore their sins are
no more. The guilt has been paid. Yet
many, even in our day, especially in the days of Jesus, thought
themselves right with God through other means, thought themselves
right with God through their daily choices, through their
obedience to the Law of Moses, through their study of Scripture,
through all sorts of regalia and things that they wear to
keep the Word of God in front of their face and near to their
heart. Everywhere we look, even in our present culture, we see
these same types of people who are overly religious and thus
hoping in themselves. The same is true with people
who would say, well, I am saved by grace. I am saved through
faith. I've been born again by God.
It is all of Him. It is all of grace. It is the
power of God who has bestowed upon me the ability to see and
trust in Christ, but by their very actions, by their very teachings,
by the very way they shepherd people. And you might say, are
you just talking about pastors? Of course, pastors, but also
we as we shepherd one another in our homes, in life. We are
always, as Christians, dealing with the Word of God, and the
Word and the Gospel infuses itself into our lives in some of the
most minute things. Yet, even then, sometimes we
teach wrongly. Sometimes we teach in ignorance.
Sometimes we teach, not us, but some do teach out of pure maliciousness,
hatred, arrogance. And so, though this is not written
to us, and about us it is written for us. And though Jesus was
specifically talking with the Pharisees, there are a long lineage
of Pharisaic people groups that have continued to be alive in
the world today. How ironic is it, how weird is
it to be called the Bible Belt, to be called one nation, quote,
under God. What God, I might ask? It's not
the God of Scripture that we are under. It is not one nation
under Yahweh, Jehovah, whatever you want to call His initials.
It's not one nation under Jesus who is the Christ, the Creator
and the Lord. It is some other God. What is
it? I would say to you that I've
seen many people be upset when we see the Church of Rome say
recently that those in the Muslim faith are our brothers in the
Lord Jesus and our brothers in Christ. Well, they are right. In the Christ they know and in
the God they serve, they are one and the same. but they are
not indeed brothers and sisters with the true church of Jesus
Christ. Now we have a humanitarian brotherhood. We are all brothers
and sisters in the context of our birthright as human beings.
We are all brothers and sisters in the fall. We are all brothers
and sisters in culture and food and ideals and sometimes politics.
But only those who are born of the Spirit, who have been justified
through the finished work of Christ, are truly siblings and
children of God. Jesus speaking to this group
with the Pharisees in Earshot, He continues to teach them, and
He has told us, as we saw last week, that the shepherd, the
true shepherd's voice, is well known to the sheep. That the
true shepherd, when He comes into the gate, He comes in in
the proper way. He actually then says there,
I am the door. And we'll talk about that this
morning. but it's a way of refreshing our minds. Jesus is saying that
the true shepherd comes to the gate and that the gatekeeper
recognizes him and opens the gate and then he comes into the
sheepfold and the sheep, they don't trust this is the shepherd
just because the gatekeeper let him in. Because the gatekeeper
could be a hireling and could run when the wolves come in.
That'll be next week. But the gatekeeper lets them
in, so the sheep are attentive. Who is this man that we see?
Do we trust the gatekeeper? Of which I might be compared.
As a pastor, people say, oh, you're the shepherd. No, I'm
an under-shepherd. I'm a gatekeeper. In my view, as we'll see, the sheep don't trust the gatekeeper,
except that they hear the voice of their shepherd and they go,
ah, it's the right one. This is our Shepherd. Let us
go to His voice. Let us follow Him out. Let us
go where He leads us. Why? Because there's no grass
in the sheep pen. There's not enough food in the
sheep pen to feed everybody. They go out into the fields and
the Shepherd talks to them and He leads the way. Remember we
talked about this last week. The great Shepherd Jesus never
comes from behind and whips the sheep to the place where He wants
them. He walks before them, much like Hebrews chapter 11 and 12.
We see this illustration of the great and good shepherd, the
Lamb of God, the one who has gone before us, who has paved
the way, and then all the saints who have gone before us, who
have paved the way. We follow after Christ. Paul
would say, follow me as I follow Christ, because if we follow
the ones who are following Christ, we follow Christ. And the shepherd cares for the
sheep and he loves the sheep. And as we'll see in a minute,
He lays down His life for the sheep. But those who are not the shepherd,
who are coming in another way, who have tried to worm their
way into the control of the sheep herd, they are robbers and thieves. They seek to do harm. Jesus says
today that they seek to kill and destroy the sheep. And this illustration of shepherding
was something very common to the people of this day. They
understood what a shepherd was and what a shepherd did. And
as a matter of fact, it was not a very esteemed job. It was not something that people,
you know, son, when you grow up, I hope you're a shepherd.
They're like, son, when you grow up, I hope you're a thief. Don't
be a shepherd. I mean, it was really looked
down upon. It was a dirty job. It was a necessary job, but it
wasn't an esteemed job. What was an esteemed job in the
day of Jesus? Well, maybe carpentry. I don't
know. I don't necessarily know that it was an esteemed job,
but the esteemed role of the day of first century Palestine
was to be a religious leader. And not everyone could be a religious
leader. Not everyone could be a Pharisee. Not everyone could
be a scribe or a chief priest. So the closer you could get to
those people, the closer you could look like those people,
the closer you could walk with those people, the more accolades
that you would get from those people as they turned their nose
up to the masses and then looked upon them and said, look at those
people. Look at them. They don't even
have the right doctrine. Look at them. They're following
that weirdo Jesus, building chairs. Look at them. They're hanging
out with shepherds. Look at them. You know. You ever been in that circle?
I have. I've been the one saying, look at them. These dummies don't even know
the gospel. Look at them. You don't even know what the
Bible teaches about hell. You don't even know what the
Bible teaches about justification. How dare you call yourself a
Christian? We know. That's a bad shepherd. That's
a wicked, evil man, actually. And if we're not careful, we
forget the grace of God that is given to us in abundance.
See, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Grace upon grace upon grace
upon grace upon grace upon grace. This is the work of God, whereby
in His mercy, His kindness, His charity, He gives all that's
necessary to His people. and He allows us to see. It is
by the Spirit that illuminates our minds to the Scripture. It
is not our wisdom. It is not man's wisdom. That
is struck down from every turn, from Christ to every apostle,
strikes down man's wisdom. And I'm thankful for the wisdom
that some men have been bestowed with. I am glad that God has
given some men minds to be able to take this word that the Spirit
has shown them and to expound it in such a way that all of
us can glean something from, but I am overly and equally thankful
for the simplest of saints who can say, I don't even know how
to spell my name, but I know Jesus Christ who died for my
sins and who gave me His righteousness. It's not mine. That's a work
of God. As a matter of fact, outside
of Paul and Dr. Luke, I would say that all the
other apostles of Christ were ignorant, unlearned men, so much
so that we see in Luke's account of the Acts of the Apostles where
people marveled. Because the job to esteem was
to be the scholar, to be the theologian, to be the big mouth
with the big pulpit and the big following. That's the worthless
shepherd. Not the faithful shepherd. Jesus
doesn't have a massive following. Jesus has a minute following. And they looked at these men
and they said, wow, these ignorant, unlearned men. And what did it
even mean to be unlearned? They didn't even know the Scripture
as well as everybody else. They didn't even have any type
of study. Who did they study at? What seminary
did they go to? This, that, and the other. Everywhere
you look, these men were teaching with boldness, with kindness,
with humility, not defending themselves, not standing, not
mocking. They never mocked the apostles,
never mocked the lost. They never mocked the Jews. They
wrote letters and they taught the sheep of Christ alone. And yet, the narrative reveals
to us that men of unlearned stature blew the minds of the learned.
They could not believe, here's what it says, what being with
Jesus had done for these men. See, that's your personal testimony. But that testimony does not save
a soul, it just makes them marvel at the work of Christ. Just like
the testimony of this blind man in John 9, and the lame man earlier
in the passages, who could walk and now see, and they were marveling. Wow! Look what being with Jesus
did for you. Let's go be with Jesus. Wow! He fed all of us with a sack
lunch. Let's go be with Jesus. So they
stayed up all night in John 6. And go to Capernaum. And Jesus
rebukes them and they all walk away. Let's not mistake salvation and
regeneration and faith with all. Let's not mistake someone who
is truly born of Christ, who truly has been set free and justified
because of the cross of Christ, with someone who is zealous for
religion. Let's not mistake someone who
has articulate ability to oratory, which would not be me, and can expound on something
that sounds intelligent, as someone who is a gift from God to the
church who is teaching. Every mouth that speaks is not
a teacher. For a teacher must have first
been given a heart and a call. And that heart will guide him.
The Spirit of God in that heart will guide him as he teaches. The context of teaching. as a
teacher is governed by the words of Christ, by the voice of the
shepherd. And the voice of the shepherd
tells his shepherds how they teach, and what they teach, and
with what heart they teach. And anyone, even if the message
is true, lacks the other, they are disqualified to teach. And the true sheep should not
hear them. The true sheep should shut their ears. The true sheep
should not talk about how bad a teacher they are, but should
delete them from their ears and from their eyes so that they
might not waste the breath of God learning the untruth. Shepherds. As I said, it was
very common for people of that day to understand shepherding.
We know shepherding. If you think about the Bible
holistically, think about the Old Testament, you think of Psalm
23. For the Lord is my shepherd. What does it say? I shall not
want. He makes me lie down in green
pastures and so forth and so on. This Shepherd is leading
His people, guiding His sheep, feeding His sheep, giving them
water, giving them restoration for their soul, cleansing their
conscience, showing them the path of righteousness, for He
is alone their righteousness. And then even, what does it say
in 23 verse 4? Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I shall fear no evil. A bad shepherd will tell you
that they're defending God. God doesn't need our defense.
We don't have to fear evil, heresy, error. We know the truth because
God has taught it to us. Let us teach the truth in contrast
with the error. And beloved, we need to remember
that God regenerates His people as He chooses, when He chooses,
as the Spirit blows, coupling with the words of God, the words
of Christ, and that no matter the intellect, God will grant
repentance. Psalm 79, But we your people,
the sheep of your pasture, we give thanks to you forever, from
generation to generation, we will recount your praise. Psalm
95, He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and
the sheep of His hand. I used to sing a song from that,
and I can't remember how long it's been, but that was a good
song. It is a good song. Ezekiel 34,
matter of fact, the whole chapter of Ezekiel 34 deals with the
shepherding of God's people. God says, I myself will be the
shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares
the Lord. Now what is this lying down?
This is the abundant life that Jesus is talking about. And some of us are going, yes,
nap time forever, hallelujah. You know, I can take a few of
those. There's peace. A sheep that's
a timid animal, if there's fear, they're not going to just lay
down and relax. They're not going to sit in the pastures. They're
not going to just bask in the sun. They're going to be on edge.
They're going to be standing. They're going to be shaking. They're going to be looking. They're
going to be running. They're going to be scared. But the shepherd is with them,
and when the shepherd is with them, they are at peace. They
sit. They rest. They're not fearful. Friends, I don't fear heretics.
I don't fear false teachers. I don't fear wolves coming in
here because, let me tell you something, I'll spot them like
a dirty diaper. I've never known a baby to be
able to just walk around in a dirty diaper for days. It's not going
to happen because we see it. Remember when your children were
just toddling? And they're so adorable, they're
so cute, like, oh, I just love you. You want to shake them and
kiss them and hug them. And when you pick them up and woof, they're
on the hill, oh no, no huggles today, buddy. Got to clean this,
take them outside with a blowtorch and get that pressure washer
out. That's how obvious false teaching can be to the sheep
who are eating the grass of truth. The sheep who are eating the
shepherd's words. the sheep whose under-shepherds
are pointing them to the Shepherd, and they hear the words of Christ,
and they follow after Him." Now, I love my well-meaning, late-generation
pastor-theologians who want to say that following after Christ
is just a chalk line of obedience to the Ten Commandments and all
this other kind of stuff. You know what? You go for it. You
go for it. And when you get it, I want you
to stand up here and show us all how it looks. Go ahead on. That's what my daddy
would say. Go ahead on. Do it. What you
gonna do? You'll find out. Go ahead on. The point is to
follow after Christ, our righteousness by faith. Yes, we see all sorts
of commands given to the elect, to the sheep, to the chosen,
to the body, to the bride, to the church, whatever word, to
the brethren, to the sisters, to the saints. We see all these
commands. Love one another. Do this, don't do that. Don't
be angry. Don't get drunk with wine, but be filled with the
Holy Spirit. We follow those. We hold each
other in check with those, not as police, but as siblings. If my pinky toe is kicking somebody,
I'll do something about that. I can't help myself, just kick.
What are you doing? It's my pinky. It's my pinky
toe, it's just taking my whole leg over there. Kick me again,
see what happens. Hey, don't blame me, blame the
toe. Outside church discipline is so important. Because when
one of us is allowed to run unchecked, with sin that brings reproach
to the whole body, we are all under the same reproach. We are
all guilty of that sin if publicly we are not dealing with that
sin. Psalm 119, I've gone astray like a lost sheep, seek your
servant. And I do not forget your commandments. Isaiah 53,
all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
So the Scripture is just replete. There's dozens and dozens and
dozens of references to the shepherd as God and the sheep as His people.
And there's something that the sheep are always doing, and they're
always running, and getting in trouble, and failing, and falling,
and jumping off cliffs, and the whole herd's following them.
And every time you turn around, the shepherd's having to do something
to rescue the sheep from perishing. And when we see the prophet Isaiah,
we see God speaking in a way that the sheep are being rescued
by the shepherd holding the iniquities of the sheep on himself. So I want to compare bad shepherds
and beautiful shepherds. Just from a contextual point
of view, this is a little different than exposition, but it is expounding. Jesus says, I am the door of
the sheep. So not only is He the good shepherd,
the most excellent shepherd, the shepherd, the excellent one,
He is the door. He is through which the sheep
walk. When Jesus says, I am the way
and the truth and the life, the way, this is another illustration,
another picture, another image that we see, the door. So the
sheep come in and out through me. A bad shepherd is a blind
shepherd. We've gotten out of practice
of this at my home recently with everything we've had going on
the last month or so and now this last week. Who knows how
normalcy will look or normality will look moving forward. But
in Matthew 23, when I hear that read, I can't compose my heart. I weep
desperately. In verse 15 specifically, I'll
read this morning, but it says, woe to you scribes, woe to you
Pharisees, you hypocrites, you actors. That's what the word
hypocrite means. The English word for that is actor. Someone
who is doing something, but they're not really that person. You actors. You travel across the sea to
make one single proselyte. And when he becomes a proselyte,
you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. That's
what a blind shepherd does. And I could ruin this entire
sermon right now and get on a soapbox so high my head would be stuck
up in the heater vent. It might be better for y'all
if my head was in the heater vent. But there are so many blind, bad
shepherds claiming to be shepherds who are not shepherding anyone.
All who come before Me are thieves and robbers." They seek to what? Verse 8. The sheep do not listen
to Him. They kill and steal and destroy. See, Jesus is saying... He doesn't say everybody. I mean,
John the Baptist wasn't a bad shepherd. The prophets weren't
bad. Moses wasn't. I mean, He's not
saying that everybody who would ever... He's talking about these
people standing before Him right now. the Pharisees, the religious
leaders of the day, the common pastor, if I could call that.
We don't want to make a correlation, pastors and priests, you know,
elders and that. But let's just put it that way
for our own understanding. The common pastor of Israel during
the day of Jesus were all impostors. Impostors. They had no understanding
of doctrine and theology. They had no understanding of
the very scriptures that they held and carried and taught every
day. They had no understanding whatsoever. They were blind guides.
They were blind shepherds. Yet they thought they could see
the way to God. They thought they could see the way to righteousness.
They thought they could see that they had no sin in themselves.
But Jesus says, because you say you can see, your guilt remains.
If you say you were blind, you would have no guilt. Because the very thing that the
Holy Spirit does when He regenerates a child of God is that we see
we are sinners in the best of ways, if that makes sense. And then no matter how moral
we are, which we should strive for good morality, we shouldn't
steal and kill and commit adultery and lie, none of that, because
that will get us in trouble with each other. not to count our witness to the
world. When it comes to being saved,
when it comes to someone having righteousness, it's not about
the morality of their life, it's about the reality of Christ's
morality. And beyond, He wasn't just moral,
He was impeccable. He was righteous. Christ never
sinned in thought or feeling. when he was accused as a guilty
sinner and arrested, what would you and I do? I'll tell you what
we'd do. We'd fight. And even if we had been given
the grace by God, as the martyrs have throughout the centuries,
to just take what comes, burn me for the sake of Christ, oh,
there would be fleeting nanoseconds of our soul that would think
this is just wrong. This is unjust. We might even,
in a parting breath, God get them, not Father forgive them. A blind shepherd always claims
to be a truth-bearer. A bad shepherd emphasizes the
fact that they are teaching the Bible like nobody else. And if
you don't listen to them about what they think about everybody
else, then you're not listening to the truth. Does that sound
familiar? Friends, if that's the attitude
of anybody you listen to or see, stop. Because they are not being used
by God. All these so-called ministries
popping up everywhere that are not part of the local assembly
of the saints. And no matter where you turn,
there's dozens of them every day. A new man with a new ministry,
with a new mission from God. It's like we need to get Jesus
Calling 3 out here or something. This heretical idea that God
has called them to right the wrong of the world of Christendom. What is that but arrogance? You
see, these are bad shepherds. They emphasize their points above
the truth of Christ. They emphasize their pet theologies
above the truth of the Word of God and the authority of God.
A bad shepherd also emphasizes rules over the righteousness
of God. How many times have we heard
already in the Gospel of John where the Pharisees would marvel
at the work of God and then say, who told you to pick up your
mat? How dare you break the Sabbath? You journey up here. Somebody
spit on your eyes. You washed your face. Whatever
it might be, this is sin. This is wrong. You're not holy. And it doesn't even have to be
teachers of the Word. But when any of us begin to hold
to these things and tell others, oh, you better do this, you better
do that, you better do this, and it's not what Scripture has
instructed of us, we have become Pharisees. When we start putting secondary
conditions on an unconditional election, based on the sufficient
or exhaustive knowledge of any particular part of God's work,
we have become Pharisees. The very men that said, oh, we
know Moses. Oh, we know Abraham. Jesus said,
you're the sons of the devil. That sounds like a comedy sketch. Something a parent would say
to a child. But it's what our God said to
the leaders of the spiritual nation of Israel. Bad shepherds emphasized rules
over the righteousness of God. They warranted that Jesus Himself
was a sinner and not from God, yet just several years after
they said He, they knew He was from God. And you'll see in a
couple of weeks, they actually say, we know you have a demon.
And Jesus already caught him on that, didn't he? Who said
you have a demon? Who's trying to kill you? He knows them. Jesus knows them. He knows you, beloved, intimately. A bad shepherd also enjoys self-glory
over grace. Self-glory, the Pharisees wanted
people to look at them, look at us. Don't look at the shepherd,
look at me. Don't listen to him, listen to what we say. Don't
listen to that, do what this is. And you might think, well,
didn't you just instruct us? Listen, be discerning. Be a Berean. The larger and louder the voice,
typically, the more heretical it is. I better start talking
quietly. But you know what I mean, in
the scheme of things. People that make a name for themselves,
it's easy to make a name for yourself. It's very easy. Just
pick a hot topic and set it on fire. Dead people will watch
it burn. You don't even have to be regenerate.
People love to watch it burn. People love to watch a car wreck.
People love to watch a fire. People will come. They won't
support it. They won't pay. They won't help you. But they'll
watch and they'll applaud. You've burned that down well.
You are such a man of God. Yeehaw. Baloney. The Pharisees
did that. We're going to burn Jesus to
the ground. We're going to burn blasphemy. Here's a blasphemer.
Oh no, blasphemy. Oh, we better listen to our leaders.
Blasphemer. Blasphemer. They didn't burn
back then, they hung Him on a cross. And that's what's happening. Proverbially, we are seeing people
hung on a cross who are our brothers and sisters in Christ because
of self-glory, not grace. See, it's in contrast
to what Jesus came to do and did do. The abundant life. We'll get there, I promise. I
better hurry. A bad shepherd establishes authority in their
popularity while ignoring the Word of God. We live in a world of soundbites. Think about it. Quote after quote
after quote after quote after quote. And it happens to all
of us. If your teaching is online, somebody's
going to quote you. Good, bad, ugly, indifferent,
it doesn't matter. People are going to take what you say, and
they're going to make a meme about it, and they're going to
put it out there, and it's going to be ridiculous. It could even
be truthful, but sound bites don't prove the whole. And to
make assessments on sound bites is to pass judgment in one's
heart against someone else. Show me the truth, the total
things. A bad shepherd establishes the authority and the popularity
of what they say rather than the authority of God's Word.
A bad shepherd envies others who seem to be gaining esteem.
Have you noticed that? The Pharisees, I mean, they weren't
even, I mean, John the Baptist was not even on their radar except
that now people were coming to him for baptism. They didn't
care if he went out there, blah, blah, blah, the kingdom of God,
blah, blah, blah, who cares? That's a nutcase. Look how he
dressed. Nobody's going to believe he's a godly man. Look at his
teeth. They got bugs in them. Nobody's
going to take him seriously. It didn't matter. God the Holy
Spirit was teaching through him and called people to Christ.
And when he started baptizing, which was a ritual that only
the Jews were supposed to do, the rabbis, they were like, wait
a minute, wait a minute, he's gaining esteem, we better do
something about this, let's go find out who he is. Oh, he's
pointing to this guy, let's go find out who he is, Nicodemus
John 3. Let's find out who he is, we can't handle this. Have
you ever seen someone all of a sudden get a lot of attention?
You've never heard of their teaching, never heard of their ministry,
never heard of their church, never heard of their book, never heard
of their poems. They could be alive today or
dead 5,000 years ago. That's hyperbole by the way,
which it could be. And all of a sudden it's like
the new fad. And it doesn't happen just in orthodox circles. It
happens in mainstream evangelicalism, the evangelical cults of our
day, and the Baptist cults of our day, and the other types
of cults of our day, and in the true churches. It happens. People
write a book, you've never heard of it. People teach a sermon,
you've never heard of it. And then people start to pay attention
and other folks get envy. That's what the Pharisees were
doing. Well, I better write some books.
Well, I better publish some stuff. These people are talking about
this guy. I want them to talk about me.
They're talking about Jesus and I want them to talk about me.
They're talking about the gospel of grace. I want them to fuss
about the heresy. Bad shepherds then will twist
Scripture that they cannot see nor understand and act as though
they can see it so that they can prove their point. bad shepherds
in closing of this, and then I move on to the good shepherds,
encroach on the culture with, as I've talked about, soundbites
instead of heralding the truth of Christ. You don't teach with
a sentence. You cannot teach with a two-minute
omelette. Teaching is a lifetime commitment
to be relational with those who feed on the Word of God. Feeding people. It's not a parade
route where we chuck candy out the window and hope we don't
run the children over as we drive by. We don't sit in the truck. We don't sit anywhere. We land
and rest and grow roots together. And bad shepherds are bullies.
They're bullies. They make people scared to do
what is right, to speak what is true. And then other bad shepherds
call them cowards. Calling a sheep a coward is sinister
and sick. Don't call each other cowards.
Because by goodness, if our boldness is not cowardice, then we can't
see the truth. You know what boldness is? It's
like we talked about in our man's meeting the other day, and I'm
sort of thinking about this a lot. What true masculinity is in the faith
is a man who can keep his mouth shut when he's being railed, when
he's being maligned. And a man who can have the spirit
of wisdom to not talk about all the fires that have been set
before him, but can continue to point to Christ who has peaceably
finished the work of redemption. And it's evidenced by the fact
they would not listen to the voice of Christ because any other person
that comes to them with the Word of God is an enemy. Faith in the gospel includes
listening and trusting the Word of God. And these bullies bully
in error, arrogance, short-temperedness, judgment, scripture twisting,
politics, the list can go on and on and on. But praise God. Praise God that we don't listen
to their voices. And that's what this is about.
Now the crazy thing is, as Jesus was saying this, as we'll see
in the weeks to come, is that the very bad shepherds He was
rebuking in this teaching were standing there going, He's talking
about Himself! A demonic! Surely not us! And they proved everything He
was saying by acting the very way He said they would act. You
cannot take an unregenerate person and make them see. You cannot
take a bad shepherd and make them love. But there are beautiful shepherds.
And of course, we know that Christ is the only true shepherd. We
as under shepherds, maybe gatekeepers, we can have failings. My goodness,
y'all have had to have us stand before you in this small, short
tenure as a church and say, we failed you. And we will fail
you again, beloved. If you think that we're going
to have an impeccable record of wisdom, please go ahead and
plug up your ears and put on some music because we're going
to fail you again. We're going to misjudge things.
but God in His mercy will correct us all, won't He? How? Through His Word. He'll correct us all through
His Word. We will love each other more deeply by the Spirit as
we are corrected and we are guilty of these things, but yet we do
not stand guilty before God because Christ, who never failed, was
punished for our failings. Punished for our sin. Punished
for our mockery. Punished for our bullying. Punished
for our arrogance. Punished for our hatefulness.
Punished for our unforgiveness. Christ suffered the death as
a sinner and He had no sin so that we would be the righteousness
of God. Beautiful shepherds point to
the true and excellent shepherd. That is the first and foremost,
top, bottom, end, beginning, all that every good shepherd
must do. All who came before me are thieves
and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them." We don't
listen. I know that was a long way to get through that one verse.
But we do not listen to the voice of bad shepherds. Jesus says,
I am the door. So a good shepherd points to
the door. The building's on fire. Go there or there. There's an
exit sign. A bad shepherd would say, come
on up here with me, y'all. Come on, it's alright, we got it,
we'll play us a song. Jaws, no, no, whatever. Just come on up here with us.
Don't worry about it, you're not going to perish out there.
Don't look out there at the fire rescue people. Just come up here
with me. We're fine, we're fine, we're fine. Like every other
cult in the country. And that's what Judaism was in
the time of Jesus. That's what it is today. And
that's what many men who claim to even be Reformed are Calvinistic
in their soteriology, who would talk about the sovereignty of
God and the authority of Scripture, but yet they act as though they are
their own gods. These Jews said, well, we know
God, we know the Word, we know Moses, we follow after it. We
know God, but they were their own gods. But the beautiful shepherds point
to the true and excellent shepherd. That's what they do. That's all
they care about. Here, drink of the cup of Christ.
Eat of the bread of Christ. Live through the living water
of Christ. Don't look at me, look at Christ.
Don't follow me, follow Christ. Don't listen to me, listen to
Christ. That's what a good shepherd, that's what a beautiful shepherd
does. And a beautiful shepherd that does that is a bold man
of God. Because it takes true boldness
to continue to proclaim the excellencies of the mercies of God in a culture
that would rather be triggered and think that it's profitable
than to stand at peace and rest laying down in the pastures of
our Lord. It looks weak, but it is mighty. It is mighty. Every bit of masculinity in me,
every bit of kung fu fighter I have, every bit of three gun
rally I want to try to accomplish in my spirit wants to just take
a jab right now for anyone who would dare question me. You see? It's in there, guys. I'm a fighter. But I must not be given unto
violence. And that's not just in my flesh
and hands. It's also with my mouth. taking personally and responding
accordingly is violence when I'm bringing down someone else,
even if they're the raging heretic of the decade. Stop it. Say it once. Feed the sheep of
Christ and say, beware this wolf here. And that's it. How many
times do I have to tell you? It's over. Mission accomplished. Evil men malign the bold, beautiful
shepherds who proclaim the truth and the excellencies of the grace
of God. And they're bold in the faith with all gentleness as
they run off the goats. Get out of here! Well, Jesus whipped them. Well,
I'm not God. And Jesus also tells me to submit
to the authorities of this day. If I start whipping people in
Claxton, I'm going to prison. And quite honestly, I don't want
a prison ministry right now. And I think we ought to run off
the bullies too, because they refuse the voice of the shepherd. Beautiful shepherds understand
that sheep are misled, that sheep are fearful, that sheep are misguided
and sometimes deceived. They are not. Sheep are never
deceived. What New Testament letter was
not written to sheep? That's right. You answered well.
All of them were written to sheep. Every letter was written to the
church of Jesus Christ. They're all the sheep of Christ. And almost every one of them,
the Thessalonians who had wonderful love, the power of the gospel,
all of this stuff that the testimony was flowing all through Asia
Minor, Achaia, Macedonia, all these places. Then, Paul has
to write to them about their misguided fear. The church of Ephesus. Oh! Mighty Artemis was put down.
And you know, Paul never preached against Artemis. Paul never preached against the
pagan gods of Rome or Greece. He just said, there's one unknown
god that you have there, and I know who he is. He is the only
god. So by proclaiming the truth, He undoes the error. And sheep
were maligned and misunderstood and fearful and deceived at times,
but God does bring us back to the truth. How does He do that?
Through bullies? Through arrogance? Through browbeating? No! Through right proclamation
of the truth. Gentle shepherding. Teach the
sheep without guilt. Because it's bad enough when
we realize we've been deceived. We think, oh, I'm such an idiot.
I'm so stupid. I'm so foolish. How could I be
deceived? instead of being guided to the
truth. And then we realize God is loving and gracious to reveal
the truth to me. That's where we need to understand
a beautiful shepherd's focus is, is seeing God the Great Father,
Jesus the Good Shepherd, guide His people to all truth. And
it is different for all of us. Many of you through the years
have sat down with me to work out the doctrines that we learn
in the Scripture. What does this mean? How do I
put away what I've always thought? Why is this so new? Or how do
I deal with my family? Or what it might be? Whatever. And if I were impatient with
you, if the other elders and men in this church were impatient
with you, and looked at you like, are you serious? I'm going to
ask that dumb question. You know what you would do? You
would never grow again. Because you would never ask another question.
And every time you looked a little off or a little discolored or
a little ill spiritually, we came up to you and we wrote you
a ticket for being off and you would never grow because you
would be fearful. True love casts out fear. And this teaching from John 10
is one of the areas where people emphasize the rebuke of the Pharisees
more than the doctrine of Christ. A good shepherd emphasizes the
weightiness of the doctrine of Christ over the rebuke of the
error. We look to see more sheep coming
to maturity. We stand for the truth as good
shepherds, as beautiful shepherds, to give glory to God with patience
and teaching, as I've already said. And a beautiful shepherd
reveals and expounds the glories of the excellent life that comes
from the most excellent shepherd, who is the door through which
we come. The door that opens, listen to
this, to the sheep alone. The blessings of God. I have
a question for tonight. Does God listen to and answer the
prayers of unregenerate people? The Scripture doesn't show anywhere
that He does. And then there's a caveat. And
then there's an explanation. But that's not for now. But the
door doesn't open to a wolf. The door doesn't open to a goat.
The door doesn't open to the thieves and the robbers. That's
why they have to come over the wall. They have to get in some other
way, because they don't come in through Christ. And beloved,
I hate the fact that in our life, together as a fellowship, we're
going to see more and more people come in and sneak in. They're
going to sneak under the radar of the shepherd, and they're
going to pretend as though they are in him, and then they're
going to go away, and they're going to try to drag some of
you with them. But you will not listen to them, because they
do not point to Christ. They do not have the voice of
the shepherd in their mouths. And the door, who is Jesus, opens
to the sheep alone. The Word of God, as it's taught
to you, beloved, you grasp it because you are a child of God.
You have been granted repentance. You believe, and your eyes have
been opened. This door is through which all
spiritual blessings flow. Wherein the sheep find peace
and protection. where the bad shepherds will
not go and the bad shepherds do not want to hear. For example,
grace upon grace upon grace upon grace is given to us through
Jesus Christ the Lord. Ephesians, all spiritual blessings
are given to us. What are those blessings? Salvation,
adoption, election, justification, sanctification, glorification,
all these things that Christ has promised us, all these things
that the Scripture tells us are ours, so much so that Paul would
put them in a past place in his syntax and his grammar. They
are as good as done. We are secure in Christ, our
Good Shepherd, and He is the door and all of this peace and
all of this truth and all of this joy, this abundant life,
I came. The thief comes to steal and
kill and destroy. I think I've explained what that is in the
other section in the beginning. I came that they may have life
and have it more abundantly. How does the thief come in to
kill and destroy? How does the bad shepherd do
that? Because they take your gaze off the gospel of grace. They take your gaze and put it
on something that's not important in the scheme of it all. Suffering. Heresy. Frustration. Politics. And the list goes on. But the Scripture says, I came. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, the
Door. I came that they who, the sheep, Only the sheep have life
and have it abundantly. Abundant life has nothing to
do with a lack of suffering, a lack of poverty, a lack of
illness, a lack of popularity, or lack of prosperity. has everything
to do with Christ and everything that He is and everything that
is accomplished being ours in an abundance, an overflowing
measure of joy and grace and peace and glory. That's it. He is our abundant
life. But most people look at Christ
as a ticket to a life where He is not the center. And you might ask yourself, well,
what is this? What is this life? How has Christ
secured this life? And this is where we end and
this is where we'll go next week. I am the Good Shepherd, and the
Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. Christ laid His
life down for the sheep. Those who shepherd as Christ
has shepherded lay their lives down for the sheep. Beloved, do you know what that
looks like? We're still trying to figure
that out. What's it really look like? It's
hard. It's hard to imagine. It's hard
to... illustrate. So what we can do
is we can see that Christ, who is God, came to earth, took on
flesh, that He might obey and fulfill all the law of God, and
might be the righteous man who is also God, and die a death
that He did not deserve so that we could be forgiven and credited
for all of His obedience. So that's what it looks like.
How do we live it? By faith. How does a good shepherd live
it? By faith. By faith to trust that the work
of Christ is essential and sufficient. By faith to know that the Word
of Christ is enough and we don't need our intellect and our commentary
to make it effectual. The faith enough to realize that
God will do as He wishes with His Word and that even those
bullies and even those bad shepherds are not to be given attention
because God will be with them in due time. Warn them once and
warn them twice. and have nothing else to do with
them. That's the instruction for when these people invade
our fellowship. And friends, yes, the local assembly
of the body is vital and commanded. And there are many, there are
many who have encroached upon our fellowship, and many fellowships
like ours, from without because of the digital age in which we
live. My counsel to you, shut them
out. Shut them out. Don't waste time
arguing. Don't give them a platform to
rob you of your joy. But in that same way, there are
also many brothers and sisters around us in the world that have
no fellowship. Many who have come to a place
where they've recognized that they've been under the shepherding
of a bad shepherd. And they depend upon you to pray
for them, church. Pray for them. Engage with them. Love them. That God might give
them a family and a shepherd. Christ laid down His life for
the sheep, only for the sheep, who are many and everywhere,
but not the majority. Rejoice that you are of the flock,
and pray that He would bring the numbers home. Let's pray. We thank You, Father, for the
Word that You've given us, for the truth of Christ, for the
glory of Your name, the power to see, and not be haughty, but
be gentle and at peace. We love You, Father, and we are
glad that You loved us that we might be able to love one another. Father, we continue to pray for
our fellowship for those who are not with us today because
of illness and travel, Father, and other things. Lord, we love
them also. For those who are part of our
Family who are not able to be in proximity with us right now,
God, we continue to pray that You would guide them to truth
every single moment. That You would help plant churches
around this country and around the world that are gospel-centered
churches, not social churches, but truth seekers. Spirit and truth who worship
because they have been made alive. that the sheep across this world
would come to hear the voice of their shepherd and feast and
rest. We thank You, Lord, that Jesus
laid His life down for us. For without His sacrifice, without
His righteousness, there would be nothing for us to do but weep
and mourn. And we pray these things in His
name. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.