This Is The Voice - [John 10:1-6]

I want to invite you to take your Bibles and open them to John chapter 10. How many of you have ever thought about time travel?

I spend way too much time thinking about time travel. Well, I recently was speaking to a man who experienced time travel.

What? Get him off the stage. I have a friend who was recently, a good friend who was recently released from prison.

And you say, well, how's that time travel? Because it's like he has no idea what to do.

He's been in prison for 18 years and he gets out and he goes, Steve, I went to a restaurant. I go into the bathroom.

I can't even wash my hands. I'm staring at the sink. There are no knobs.

He said, I had to look into one of the stalls and go, hey, can you help me out, man? I don't know how to get any water out of the sink.

He goes, my phone rings. My phone makes noises. I don't even know what to do with it. It is time travel of a sort, isn't it?

And when he said that about his phone, I just started thinking, you know what? My kids, my grandkids, especially, will never know, you know, the world that I grew up in.

I can remember, you know, when the phone rang, it meant somebody had to run to the kitchen. That's just the way it was.

And I remember it was a big deal when we got like one of those extension cords so we could walk, you know, away from the wall.

That was pretty cool. And then it was just absolute insanity when my mom got a phone installed in her bedroom.

How could this happen, you know? But I started thinking, you know, about phone calls and things that were really important to me.

There are some, you know, nowadays when the phone rings, you have caller ID and you instantly know who it is, which is great.

Because I get all these political phone calls and I just, I can't even be bothered, you know? It's just like so -and -so for president, no, so -and -so to save the planet, no, so -and -so for energy, no.

You know, it's just no, no, no, no. That's all I do all day. So if you have any one of those phone numbers, I'm really sorry.

But there are some phone calls that you just remember. Some voices that you hear and you instantly recognize.

I don't care if you have phone ID or not. You know, if somebody really important calls, you instantly recognize their voice.

I was here at the church the other day and somebody called and tried to fool me. Well, there's a problem.

That guy preached to me for about 10 years. So it was pretty hard for me to not know his voice.

Nice try, Bill. Guess again. That just wasn't happening. But there's something special about some voices.

You hear them and they just stick with you. You'll never forget them.

This morning we're going to hear, we're going to read about a voice that if you know the

Lord Jesus Christ, you know well. You know it very well and you will not forget it.

Let's look at our text. John chapter 10 verses 1 to 6. Truly, truly, this is the

Lord speaking, truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him, the gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him for they know his voice.

A stranger they will not follow but they will flee from him for they do not know the voice of strangers.

This figure of speech Jesus used with them but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

Isn't it interesting that as we kind of catch up to where we are in John chapter 10, that Peter who's typically the one we think of the most of the apostles because he was the leader of the apostles, the leader of the early church.

By the way, no, he was not the Pope, just for your information. But he was not, at least we wouldn't see this in scripture, he was not the

Lord's best friend. It's the apostle John, the writer of this gospel who's called

John the beloved apostle. And it's not that he was the most popular among the other apostles. It's not they thought, oh, here comes

John and they were excited. It refers to his relationship with the Lord. I think it's fair to say he was the best friend of the

Lord Jesus Christ, the best earthly friend. And he wrote his gospel, the gospel of John, a few decades after the other gospels were already written.

Why? Because he couldn't stand being left out? No, because there were some things that he, as he read the synoptic gospels, he thought there are some gaps, some issues that need to be addressed.

And he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to address those issues. And he wanted to underscore one simple truth.

Jesus is not only fully human, although he is fully human, he's also fully divine.

That is to say, he is fully God. He is the Messiah. And it is only by believing in him that anyone can obtain eternal life.

Now, last week, we concluded chapter nine. And really, there are three separate sections of chapter nine.

I could argue any number of ways of organizing it. We could talk about his initial visit with this man who had been blind from birth and how he healed him.

And then the middle section is all about the persecution of this blind man.

And really, it's persecution of him and his parents, but with a singular goal of discrediting

Jesus, of finding some charge to bring against Jesus by the Pharisees, the religious authorities.

And then in the final segment, the final vignette of this chapter,

Jesus goes and finds this man, asks him who he thinks the

Son of Man is. And this man worships him. He worships him.

And then Jesus, because this is taking place in a public place, he's overheard by some

Pharisees and he has a little exchange with them where he tells them, basically, that if they think they know something, because they don't, at least spiritually, that their guilt remains in them.

They think they are sinless. They think they are the chosen of God. And the fact is, they are not.

They are the persecutors of God. They are the enemies of God. And so, we come to our text this morning, and this morning we are going to hear

Jesus really, and I didn't outline it this way, so forgive me for describing it this way, but he's going to divide the world's population into four groups.

You say four groups, yes. Believers, unbelievers, unbelievers who want to lead believers astray, and the

Lord himself. So, there are only four groups here, or we could call them what he calls them in here.

The sheep, the thieves and robbers, those who want to lead the sheep astray, the good shepherd himself.

And he really doesn't describe the unbelievers, but we'll get a clear picture of what believers are here this morning in our text.

And first, I want to start with just a bit of a word of explanation. Sometimes I do this where I just kind of take things out of order a little bit.

I'm going to start in verse one, and then I'm going to skip to verse six, which sort of explains what we see in our whole paragraph here, our whole section of scripture this morning.

But just look at verse one, where Jesus says, truly, truly,

I say to you. Now, we understand, you know, some of you may have verily, verily, it's amen, amen.

And he's trying to make a point. But here's the interesting thing. Jesus doesn't launch into this truly, truly into this kind of teaching mode, except to explain something that has just happened.

So basically, what we're going to see this morning is kind of an illustration of what's just transpired in chapter nine.

In other words, Jesus is going to address the issue. Well, why don't some believe? Why don't they believe?

We're going to see it this morning. Why is it that some people respond so differently to Jesus?

Why is it that the man born blind when he was healed, and initially, if you recall, he didn't really believe.

I mean, he didn't even go back to thank Jesus. What did he do? He ran home, went to his old neighborhood. But he winds up believing, and these

Pharisees who, by the way, knew that this man was born blind because they tried, they did a full investigation. They found out, in fact, he was born blind, there was a miracle, and guess what?

They did not care. They did not care. In fact, they were so indifferent to it, they wound up throwing this man out of the synagogue.

Why is it that some believe and some don't? And I'll give you a little hint, because some hear his voice and some don't.

And we see this in a non -salvific way. That is to say, in a way that doesn't hinge on one's salvation.

Every single day we see this. How can we say that? Or how can I say that? Because we look out at the general revelation, at the construction of the world, at all the evidences that God exists, and the unbeliever sees it and says, there's no

God. We're just amazingly lucky. This one in 45 billion chance or whatever of us existing here on this planet, who knew?

Believers look at it everywhere, they praise the Lord, why? For his sovereign control over everything.

Two different views. One set of facts, two different views. We see this time and time again throughout the

Gospel of John and in the Scripture. Two worldviews. But look ahead in verse 6. This figure of speech

Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. Now, a figure of speech, as it's translated in the

ESV, some translations I think have parable. It's really kind of an allegory, and here's the point.

The point is, there is some one -for -one correspondence. I think if you get way down into the weeds, you'll get lost.

You know, who's the gatekeeper? That's not really the point. The point is, there are some, there's more one -for -one correspondence than there is like in a parable.

But here's the underlying point. It is intentionally veiled language.

Why? Because Jesus doesn't intend to reveal this truth to everybody. Like I said last week, there are times where he gives a parable.

Why does he do that? And he tells us it's so that some people won't understand. If Jesus wanted to be plain, he could just say,

I have an announcement, I want to tell you guys something. There's a big difference between me and the

Pharisees, and there's a big difference between those who believe and those who don't. He could just say, the

Pharisees want to lead you astray, I want to lead you to the Father. He could just say, there are many who don't believe and some who do.

And the ones who believe hear my voice. But he doesn't say that. Why? Because he doesn't want them to understand.

Why doesn't he want them to understand? We don't know. But he didn't want them to understand.

That's all we need to know. And now look at verse 1 again. We're going to see an unwelcome visitor, an unwelcome visitor.

He who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.

Now again, this is really vivid imagery, and here's what we have, a sheepfold, and somebody trying to get into the sheepfold by an unauthorized means.

In the ancient Near East, a sheepfold, or a sheep pen, I guess you could call it, would be a place to keep the sheep safe at night.

During the day, they'd be out with their shepherd, and what would they do? What do sheep do? They eat.

It reminds me of dogs in that sense, they just like to eat, at least my dogs do. But they eat.

During the day, they just eat a lot of grass, they eat whatever's out there. And then at night, they're led into the sheepfold for safety, to keep them safe from wolves and other animals that would attack them by night.

And what would happen is, at night, typically, several flocks, the flocks of several families would all be herded into one sheepfold.

And it might be up against a cliff, or it might be up against a house, you know, at the back, and then there would be a wall all the way around it, and there would be a singular gate, and it was through that gate that all the sheep would enter.

And then one man, either from one of the families or somebody that they hired, would stand watch over that gate all night long to make sure that nobody got in and got to the sheep.

The door was the only means of getting these that was legitimate, getting at the sheep that was legitimate.

So you had to take some extraordinary means to get to the sheep any other way.

So if someone was trying to get in over a wall, the presumption would be that they had bad intentions toward the sheep.

The words thief and robber are not good things, you know, this is bad. The word thief is from the

Greek kleptos. And if you listen, you think kleptos, klepto, kleptomaniac.

You think about somebody who's compelled to steal, and that's the idea. Not somebody who's compelled to steal, but somebody who steals.

Just means somebody who just grabs things and takes them that don't belong to them. But now the word robber indicates that that person is willing to use force or fear to get what they want.

And that should be self -explanatory, but let me just put it another way. People will call police stations and say, my house was robbed.

And I remember, you know, I was a little bit of a, not always polite person, but I'd say, you mean to say to me that somebody showed up at your house with a gun?

Well, no, somebody broke into our house while we're gone. Okay, then you were burglarized. And there's a big difference, why?

Because if you were burglarized, that means that we're going to send somebody to do fingerprints and kind of walk through your whole house.

But if you were robbed, well, it depends on how long ago it was. If it was just a minute ago, well, we want to get units out there looking for the robber.

There's a guy out there with a gun or something, you know, we got to stop him. So the difference between a thief and a robber is the robber is willing to use extraordinary means to get whatever he wants.

And that's the idea here. This guy is really, really bad. Thief is bad, but a robber is worse.

And these words don't just, they're not theoretical. They don't just apply generally.

They were representative of the Pharisees. So Jesus, in a veiled way, is calling out the

Pharisees. They were not authorized by God to lead his people.

They'd given up that right. They did not care for his flock, his sheep. Their concern, like any thief or robber, was only for themselves, for their own well -being, for their status, for their wealth.

The Lord spoke of these sorts of so -called shepherds in Jeremiah 23 when he said,

Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, declares the

Lord. And you say, destroyed, scattered. What did they try to do to this man who had been born blind?

They went after him viciously. I mean, first, they tried to prove that he wasn't, you know, always blind.

Or maybe they just wanted some dirt on Jesus. But ultimately, what they did was put him out of the synagogue.

And in that day and age, that was about, short of putting him to death, that was about as rough as they could be on him.

You have to ask yourself, what manner of men would persecute a man born blind who received his sight as a work of God?

Who would do that? Well, the Pharisees would, and they did, which is exactly why

Jesus refers to them as robbers, as thieves. So now we see a welcome sight, a welcome sight in verse 2, but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

To him, the gatekeeper opens. Again, the watchman, the gatekeeper, the guy who's in charge of guarding the sheep at night, he welcomes the shepherd.

Why? Because he's the authorized person. He's not trying to go over the wall. He's not, he doesn't have bad intentions.

He's the guy who comes out every morning to go get the sheep. And the night watchman's probably very happy to see him.

You ever work overnight, by the way? When you get relieved in the morning, you're happy to see whoever's coming to relieve you.

So they're happy to see you. And as the shepherd, Jesus is fully authorized by the

Father. He is the rightful leader of the flock of God. Again, going to the

Old Testament, Jeremiah 23, verses 5 and 6. Behold, the days are coming, declares the

Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called.

The Lord is our righteousness. Jesus, the descendant of David, the branch of David, had been born and was there to present himself to his people, to lead them, to be their shepherd.

Now given the position of the Pharisees, it's not difficult to imagine why they would oppose

Jesus. He was, after all, a threat to their power, to their positions, to their station.

What is surprising is how they oppressed and persecuted their own people. They ran

Israel, or at least their religious lives, by force and fear.

They had no care for the flock of God. But now at last, the true shepherd was on the scene.

If we look at verse 3, we'll see or we'll hear a welcome voice.

And by the way, the sheep hear this voice. They hear Christ. Look at verse 3.

The sheep hear his voice, that of the shepherd. The formerly blind man responded to Jesus.

He heard the voice of Jesus. And again, it stands in stark contrast with the Pharisees.

They rejected him. They heard him over and over and over again, and they rejected him and wanted to kill him.

This blind man responded to the voice of Jesus ultimately by worshipping him. The sheep are believers.

They hear Jesus. Well, some might say, well, so do unbelievers.

They hear him. They did hear him. But unbelievers hear him, but they reject him.

The sheep of Jesus not only hear him, but they listen. It's one thing, right?

Your kid hears you. Yes, I hear you, Dad. Okay, are you going to do what I said? Are you going to listen?

Are you going to heed? As I said, a sheepfold would likely have several different flocks in it.

However, the really, one of the cool things about sheep, a lot of uncool things about them, but one of the cool things about them is that they respond only to their own shepherd.

When I was a kid, my mom used to have this whistle that she would use. Now, not a, you know, that kind of whistle, but just a sound that she would make with her mouth, and I would repeat that for you, but it wouldn't edify you.

And it wasn't some loud, shrill thing, but it was just kind of a unique tone. And I'm telling you what,

I mean, you know, the legend has grown in my mind, but it seems like I could hear that thing for blocks away.

You know, I'd go, I'd be playing something, and all of a sudden I'd hear the, and I'd go, whoa, time to go, got to run, see you later.

And I really thought, you know, I don't think anybody else could hear that thing except for her kids, but I used to think that my mom invented that until I was at my dad's mom's.

So, my dad's mom and my mom were really close, and I was there one time, and she did that whistle, and I'm going, oh, that's where she got it.

You know, I just, I never knew. But it's in that same way that sheep hear the shepherd's call, and they go.

They know exactly who their shepherd is, and what his call is, and they go.

And we'll talk about that more in a moment, but I want to point out another thing here.

The sheep are known by Christ. Believers are known by Jesus. Look at verse three again, and he calls his own sheep by name.

Now, this is just a great word picture. I mean, if you just kind of meditated on this, you would think this is marvelous.

And I did meditate on it, and I think it's marvelous. Listen again, and he calls his own sheep by name.

Steve, Dan, Bill, John, he knows your name.

Isn't that amazing? That is just, that just blows me away to think this shepherd knows all of his sheep by name.

As I was reading about shepherds this week, it said that they can identify each of their sheep even if they're blindfolded.

I thought, that's just great to just be able to put your hands on them and to identify them like that.

But then I thought, you know what, and I'm not trying to say I'm better than a shepherd, but by way of illustration, you know, we had at one point, we had three little dachshunds similar in size, but I'm going to tell you what, and I mean this.

If you blindfolded me and put my hands behind my back, if you brought those dogs up close to me,

I could tell you which one was which. Why? Because they each had their own distinct smell, their own distinct little breathing patterns and things that they would do, and I'd go,

I know which one that is. You can do it. It's just a matter of intimately knowing the animals.

And that's how close the relationship is of Jesus with his sheep. They depend on him and he takes care of them.

A shepherd would spend all day with his flock. I mean, it really does bring to mind Psalm 23.

I'm not even going to go there, but if you just think about how it says that he leads me, and that's the idea, that he's just going before, and a shepherd spends his whole day with the flock.

So if the sheep are really dumb and they fall into holes or they get themselves stuck in some kind of brush or a bush or whatever, then the shepherd goes and he rescues them.

His role is to make sure that they don't get hurt, that they follow him, that they're all staying together.

And isn't that a great picture too? Because don't believers make unwise decisions? Don't they get stuck in situations that they ought not to?

Your shepherd is there. When you fall down, he is there. But it doesn't merely know the name of all of his sheep.

Jesus knows your strengths, your weaknesses, your desires, and your sins, and he loves you and cares for you anyway.

Here's why that picture of a shepherd is apt. A shepherd doesn't discard one of his sheep.

He doesn't say, I don't really care about that one, you know, got to take care of the many.

If one strays, I don't really care. No, what do we read? You go after the one.

That's Jesus. He cannot lose one. No one can take a sheep out of his care.

If you are a believer, if you have trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, he will never fail you. You will fail him.

He will never fail you. He will never cast you out. He will never lose you. He will never cease caring for you.

Again, Old Testament image of a shepherd. The Lord has just excoriated the so -called shepherds of Ezekiel's day.

And then he says this, I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep,

Ezekiel 34, 15 and 16. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep and I myself will make them lie down, declares the

Lord God. I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed and I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak and the fat and the strong.

I will destroy. I will feed them in justice. This is a picture of Jesus caring for his flock.

Notice also that Christ leads his sheep. Look back at verse three, just simply put, and leads them out.

He leads them out. Now, this is a unique tradition of the

Palestinian shepherds, the shepherds of that area, that they lead the flock and the flock follows them.

In other areas of the world, the shepherd would drive the sheep in front of him.

But in that area of the world, they follow him. But again, notice that it is only his sheep who follow them, who follow

Jesus. It's not just everybody who follows them. And when we look around the world today, it's pretty easy to see that many don't want to follow him.

It's become less and less fashionable to hold on to what the Bible teaches about various social issues, how many have said that they're followers and now they're just no longer interested in what

Jesus has to say on a matter. The Bible is clear on things like homosexuality, but many who would describe themselves as Christians, as followers of the

Lord, have refused to follow him on this, thus expose themselves as not his sheep.

And I've spoken about homosexuality and other sins before, but when we think about so -called homosexual marriage,

Jesus does teach about it. He talks about marriage. This position is clear, one man, one woman for life.

That's the way it is designed. And all of scripture is ordained by Jesus.

So to argue that maybe, well, you know, that was the standard of Paul, but not the standard of Jesus.

Jesus never spoke on this, that or the other thing is to deny the inspiration and the wholeness of scripture.

In other words, you know, some people want to say, well, I just believe in the red letters.

Well, the red letters are inspired, but so are the black letters, which are more inspired. Neither.

There is no difference. But Jesus is not surprised at those who say they are

Christians and don't follow him. What did he say in Matthew 7? Many will say to me on judgment day, this and that and the other thing.

And what does he say? Depart. I never knew you. He knows his sheep. He knows them intimately.

He knows them by name. I suppose if we could blindfold him, he could name them all. That's not the point. The point is he has an intimate knowledge of them.

What a marvelous image of Christ as the head of the church, the shepherd leading us out.

But notice also the sheep follow. Look at verse four. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him for they know his voice.

Notice the shepherd leaves none of his sheep behind all all of them.

He brings out all of his own and only his own. He doesn't bring out any that are not his.

And this verb brought out, I think it's amazing because, again, the idea that this is veiled language, this verb brought out, guess what verb that is?

Well, you wouldn't guess. It's exactly the same verb in the Greek as was used of the

Pharisees when they cast the blind formerly blind man out of. The synagogue, when they unsynagogued him.

Ekbalo, Jesus doesn't throw out his sheep, that's not the point.

The point is that there's a sense in which he is thorough, he goes in there and he makes sure that none are left out.

But he's using that same verb. Why? Because this is it's veiled language, but the point is still there.

He's making his points in other cultures, as I said, you know, sometimes the shepherds drive out their flocks, but Jesus leads them.

He leads them. He calls them to go and they follow him. Nearly a hundred years ago, a man recorded this example of a shepherd says, early one morning

I saw an extraordinary sight not far from Bethlehem. Two shepherds had evidently spent the night with their flocks in a cave.

So their flocks are intermixed. He says, one of the shepherds stood some distance from the sheep and began to call.

First one, then another, then four or five animals ran towards him and so on until he had counted his whole flock.

He just stands there and calls them and his whole flock comes forward. Now why do

Christians follow Jesus? Why is it that they come when he leads? Because they know his voice.

What does it mean? What does it mean that they know his voice? Well, it means that they trust him.

First of all, it means that they're listening to scripture, that they understand scripture, that they believe scripture. His voice is synonymous with scripture.

You can't say, I believe in the voice of Jesus and say, I don't believe scripture. You can't say that you're a

Christian and say, well, there are parts of scripture with which I don't fully agree. You either believe

Jesus, you either believe the word that he affirmed. The word that the Holy Spirit inspires or you don't, you either hear his voice and believe it completely or you don't.

So they hear him. It also means that they trust him. Just again, think about it.

A shepherd who knows his sheep, who can identify them, who knows their names. Can you trust him?

Do the sheep trust their shepherd? Of course. And that's another reason why this image is so powerful. They have an innate trust of their shepherd.

Why? Because they know he has their best interest at heart. He leads, they follow. They know that whatever the situation is, he's going to defend them.

He's going to rescue them. Now think about Jesus.

If he died for his sheep and he did, died in their place, is he going to lead them wrongly?

Is he going to lead them in error? Is he going to lead them into bushes where they're going to get stuck, into thorns and thistles, snake pits?

No. Now let me get really practical for a minute.

You hear the voice of Jesus. If you're trusting Jesus, if you're following Jesus, can

I just ask you, what are you worried about? If Jesus died for your sins, won't he take care of the lesser things?

Isn't the greatest trouble you have in life your guiltiness before God? If he died so that you were redeemed from that, what are you worried about?

You suppose this formerly blind man was thinking, okay, great. Now that I can see,

I guess I have to put together a resume and start looking for a job. I don't think so.

I don't think that was a concern at all. And if we're viewing life rightly, if we're thinking,

I have a great savior, he's out in front of me, he's leading me, he's guiding me. I hear his voice. I'm going to believe in him and trust in him.

What kind of troubles do we have? A lot less than what we think.

What does it mean to follow Jesus? Well, let me stress a front here. Nobody follows him perfectly.

We all sin. And when we sin, guess what? We're not following Jesus. But when we fail him, does he abandon us?

No. But here's what we should think. I failed my shepherd.

I failed my savior. I failed my master. It should pain you. Why? Because you failed the one you love.

If you follow Jesus, you love him. You want to follow him. I would also say this, that to follow him means you ought to avoid the habit of many, which is to say that they will choose the commands of the

Bible that they will keep, the commands of the

Bible that they like, and they'll just leave the ones that they don't like over to the side. So you can be a professing

Christian. You can say that you love the Lord Jesus Christ and you can live with your girlfriend. You can say that you love the

Lord Jesus Christ, but you can skip church all the time. You can say that you love the Lord Jesus Christ, but not give to the local church, not serve in the local church, but these are all commands in scripture.

It's not legalism to say if you hear his voice, you will obey him. It's legalism to say if you love him, then you'll go above and beyond what he commands.

It's not legalism to say if God through his word says something, then we ought to obey it.

But many who name the name of Christ, who say, I follow Jesus, they want to decide what the terms of following him should be.

That is not Christianity. We follow the shepherd.

We trust him. We believe in him. We trust his word. That's what sheep do.

In fact, the sheep are loyal. Look at verse 5. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him for they do not know the voice of strangers.

So even if a thief or robber shows up, are they just going to say, hey, take me,

I'm yours? No. In fact, this is kind of bizarre. It's weird reading about sheep because it's odd what people will do.

People have actually gone over to the Middle East, dressed themselves as shepherds, try to get all mucked up and put all the junk on and everything, and then imitate the shepherd and see if they can get the flock to follow them.

And guess what? They can't. They know. And it's really not that hard to imagine.

And again, just imagine, you know, you're used to your mom's voice, your dad's voice, whoever's voice, your wife's voice, your husband's voice.

And somebody else says, I'm your wife. I'm your husband. You just go, no, you're not.

You would know right away. Jesus intimately knows his sheep and his sheep know him.

We know him because he's revealed in Scripture. Sheep actually flee.

In some ways, I say that sheep have more sense than people because they see the false shepherds and they go, that's a false shepherd, and they run away.

And I get tired sometimes, you know, people say, why do you guys talk so much about false doctrine? Why do you do that?

Because we're commanded to by Scripture and because if you can't identify false teachers, we need to bring that to your attention.

And if this passage isn't a warning, I mean, it's an encouragement, it's a great encouragement, but it's also a warning about the very real danger of false teachers, those who would seek to destroy you.

And I'll tell you what, I could pick up any CBD catalog, any copy of Christianity Today or walk into any so -called

Christian bookstore and I can find books, articles, etc.

by voices that would profess to echo the Lord Jesus Christ, that would profess to be saying what

He says, but they wouldn't be. They would be the voices of thieves and robbers.

I mentioned before the phenomenon of Jesus Calling, and I'm just going to briefly talk about that today, written by Sarah Young.

I think it's illustrative of this, it's outsold many best -selling secular titles.

And in fact, the publisher says that besides the book, just other things, you know,

I don't know, Jesus Calling, the board game, you know, and all this, I mean, they actually have apps and all kinds of dopey things.

Leaving aside the books, sold more than 2 .5 million

Jesus Calling products. I don't know if that includes aftershave, I don't know what all is involved in that.

2 .5 million products. The book purports to be the words of Jesus.

The author would have us believe that she sits around meditating about Jesus and then He tells her things and she writes it down and it sounds to me like really bad

Hallmark card poetry. I'm not going to give you any quotes because they're just too dopey. She says, this is the voice of Jesus.

And when you hear them, if you heard them, you'd say, that's not the voice of Jesus. Why are they popular?

Because I think there are some people, particularly women, that's the market, who are looking for something comforting, something assuring, without any kind of confrontation.

When you read Jesus, you can be comforted, but you're also going to be afflicted by the teaching.

You're going to see, I am a sinner. And listen, whether it's

Sarah Young, whether it's Joyce Meyer, whether it's Joel Osteen, or whether it's men like John MacArthur, R .C.

Sproul, or some guy at our book table called Mike Ebendroth, every single author you need to compare it to scripture.

You need to say, well, is this the voice of Jesus? Are they reflecting accurately what

God has said? Let me just say this.

The last three, MacArthur, Sproul, and Ebendroth, they're going to try to exalt Christ.

They're not going to replace him or kind of ask you to imagine what Jesus might have said.

They're going to give you the Jesus of the Bible. They want you to hear the voice of Jesus and to follow him. What about other so -called holy books, even books where Jesus makes an appearance, allegedly?

What about the Book of Mormon? What about the Quran? What about the Bhagavad Gita, or however you say it?

What about all these other holy books, so -called holy books, that are supposed to give insight into spiritual things?

Friends, those are the voice of strangers. Those are the ones that would climb over the wall, grab you, and do violence to you, violence to your soul.

When you hear them, when you read them, you ought to shudder. I remember once, when

I was first saved, I was just looking for anything, and I went into a bookstore, and, you know, it had a book there about Jesus' life in India.

And I picked it up, and I started getting nervous just even holding the book. I don't know why, although it is the doctrine of demons, but just even reading that disturbed me because I knew it was false.

And we ought to be afraid of those kind of things. We ought to flee from them. We should not assume, by the way, that everyone who professes to be a sheep is, in fact, a sheep.

And here's a good test, and I like this test, as you might guess.

It's my test. Somebody says, I'm a Christian, great, how about give me the gospel?

Sometimes the answer can be very displeasing. I mean, it just goes on and on and on.

But if they can't give you the gospel, do they know the Good Shepherd? Do they know

Jesus? Have they heard His voice? If they can't repeat what Scripture says, do they know?

And I don't know. But our text tells us the sheep hear His voice, and there's no exception.

You'd think they'd remember it once they hear it. It's not a still, small voice.

It's not Jesus whispering. Jesus is not whispering in your ear. He's waiting for us on the pages of Scripture.

We need to study Him. Now here's what some will want to do when they consider this text here this morning.

They'll want to ask themselves questions, and I think questions generally are good. But here's a wrong question.

It goes along with, you know, am I one of the elect? You know, somebody might say, am

I one of Christ's sheep? I'd say a better question is this, am

I following Jesus? You want to know if you're one of Christ's sheep? Well, are you following Jesus? Is He your shepherd?

Does He lead and you follow? Here's a really wrong question.

What's the minimum I can do to convince myself that I'm one of His sheep? That's wrong on a number of levels.

Right question. Again, is He my shepherd? Do I reflexively, instinctively follow

Him? Have you heard the voice of Jesus?

Can you give me the gospel? Let me give you a hint. I'm going to help you out because I like to help people.

If you tell me it's something I need to do, if you tell me it's something I need to live, live the gospel, then you don't know the gospel.

The gospel is all about what Jesus has done. And what is that? He left His glorious throne at the direction of the

Father and came to earth, took on an additional nature, that of a man. He lived in perfect submission and perfect obedience to His Father.

He voluntarily submitted to a vicious, violent, horrible, bloody death at the hands of sinful men.

And then He lay in the tomb for three days, and the

Father raised Him from the dead to demonstrate that the payment for sin had been accepted.

That's the gospel. That's what you need to believe. Believing the gospel is what you must do to have all your sins forgiven, and you can't do it on your own, but that's another day.

To believe means to worship Jesus, just as the man who was healed of blindness did.

You must trust Him entirely. You must follow Him faithfully. You must listen to His voice exclusively.

His voice is unforgettable. It's unlike all others. What can you do?

Well, I'd say that we need to have compassion, even pity for those who do not know this shepherd.

But better than pity and compassion is to love them enough to tell them about your shepherd.

Tell them about Jesus. Tell them about the one you follow, about the one you love, about the one who loves you and knows you and calls you by name.

Let's pray. Father, what a blessing it is to be loved by Jesus, to think about His intimate knowledge of us, knowing all of our faults, all of our flaws.

And Father, setting His affection upon us, caring for us, leading us, protecting us, dying for us, and even now, interceding for us.

What a glorious Savior. What a friend we have in Jesus. Father, thank