Sheep Of His Flock - [John 10:27-30]

Turn with me tonight, if you would, to John chapter 10, a very familiar chapter where Jesus has spent the whole chapter practically presenting himself as the good shepherd, as the one who takes care of the sheep, knows the sheep, the sheep hear his voice, and he is the one that guides and takes care because sheep, if any of you know anything at all about domestic sheep, the domestic sheep, along with the domestic turkey, are probably the dumbest animals on the face of the planet.

Sheep are completely incapable of taking care of themselves. You put a sheep in the wild and within 24 hours it will no longer be a sheep, it will be lunch for somebody because everything hunts sheep and sheep have no defenses.

They are completely incapable of defending themselves and they're stupid besides that.

They will do things like, if a flock of sheep are in a pasture and the pasture has a little rise in it and a sheep gets to where she can no longer physically see the flock, she's lost.

They have no sense of direction, they can't get back. And at least one Bible teacher has offered the idea that God created sheep to use as an example of mankind.

And so here we are, we are the sheep of his pasture. But the shepherd has to take care of the sheep.

The shepherd has to lead the sheep. The shepherd has to take the sheep to where water is and actually prepare it because sheep will not drink from running water unless they're desperate.

Sheep have to have still water. And when David says, he leadeth me beside the still water, he knew exactly what he was talking about because David had spent a good deal of his life as a young man out with the sheep.

It's interesting that Moses had also been sent out to take care of the sheep in preparation for taking care of God's people and for leading them out of Egypt.

It seems that whenever God has some great thing to do for one of his leaders, he does that.

He sends you out to take care of the sheep. And of course, it's a solitary occupation, you have a lot of time to think.

It can be a dangerous occupation and it's sort of an antisocial occupation too because you start to smell like the sheep and people don't particularly want to be around you.

But anyway, Jesus is talking about himself as the good shepherd. He's doing that all through chapter 10.

And we want to look at some of this tonight because as we begin to grow, we're born, we begin to grow up, questions begin to occur to us from time to time.

Questions like, where did I come from? I'm obviously here, where did

I come from? And then the next question that comes out of that is, why am

I here? What is my purpose in life? Where am I going? What is my destiny?

Because we sense that we are more than just ordinary animals. We are not just one more of the animals, that we are somehow special.

You don't have to tell a child that, a child instinctively knows that. And of course, as we've been discussing for the last three

Sundays in Sunday school, it's because we're created in God's image and the rest of the animal kingdom is not.

So we are special, we are unique. And then we begin to ask questions like, is

God there? I'm here, everything else is here around me.

And so as David says in Psalm 19, just the nature that surrounds us, the stars that we look up and see, the beauty that we see around us, the fact that we ourselves are here is enough to tell us that God is there.

There must be a God because one of the things that we learn just from living is cause and effect.

And so if there is an effect, there must be a cause, which is greater than the effect. And since here, this is the effect, there must be some great cause that caused it.

Which is why very often, you don't have to convince a child that God exists.

That's obvious to a child. It's not until he becomes sophisticated and grown up that he begins to suppress this knowledge, as Paul says in Romans.

And so then the next thing, well, if there is a God there, if there is a

God there, am I right in his eyes? How can I be related to him? And we instinctively know the answer to that is no.

There's something between us and a creator God. And so that leads us inevitably to the next question is, how then can

I be right with God? We have to ask that question along with Job. How can a man be right before God? How can we stand before him if he's there?

And so we can rephrase that question a little bit and say, if a man can be saved, who saves?

If the situation can be corrected, how do we go about that?

Is it something that we can do on our own? Can we somehow appease God? And the world is full of religions that are trying to do exactly that.

In fact, with the sole exception of Christianity, that's exactly what every one of the world's religions does.

It says, we're going to generate some system of something that is going to somehow appease

God and maybe he will smile upon us and maybe he will be nice to us and maybe he will, you know, make it rain when it needs to rain and do these other things.

And so we dream up these ideas. And of course, we also tend, don't we, to invent gods that are in our own image.

Because even if we do know about the true God, we don't like the true God. And so we come up with a

God that is more to our liking and we invent one in our own image. If you know anything at all about classical

Greek mythology, you will find that all of the Greek gods and the Greek pantheon are essentially just human beings with superpowers.

And very often, they act like brat children. And so, but we do that.

We search for someone who is above us and we try to answer the question, can

I be saved? And if so, how do we, who saves, how do we do that? And the next question is, if a man can be saved, can he subsequently lose that salvation?

Because it would stand to reason that if I somehow generate my own salvation, then maybe

I could do something which would negate that. Or if salvation is granted to me by some organization of men, some organization that men have put together, well, if they grant me salvation, then it would also stand to reason that they could perhaps take it away if I do something that they don't like, that I cross the line.

So in his discourse in John 10, Jesus has presented himself as the good shepherd.

And he's going to address particularly these last two questions. He's going to address the question of who's in the flock.

Jesus is the good shepherd. Okay. Who's in the flock? And how do we determine who's in the flock?

That's a strong question today. How do we, we phrase it a little differently. How do we determine who's

Christian? Is it somebody who says, I'm a Christian? We have political candidates who are now, you know, they're on Larry King saying,

I'm a Christian. You know, after all, we believe in Jesus. We know who Jesus is. And so what's the answer to that?

And Jesus states very clearly to his listeners that there are two flocks and only one of those flocks belongs to him.

And the characteristics of the sheep that are in that flock is that they hear his voice, they know him, he knows them and his sheep follow him because they are his sheep.

That's the proof that they're his sheep. Other sheep don't do these things. Other sheep follow someone else.

Other sheep are in another flock. They're not in his flock and they don't follow

Jesus. And this is not a case as we're going to see. This is not a case of them simply lacking information.

It's a case of their willful disbelief. So towards the end of the chapter now, let me set the stage on what's been going on.

John tells us that it's winter time and Jesus is walking in Solomon's porch or Solomon's colonnade, which is a public open area.

And we presume he's alone. John doesn't say anything at all about him, about any of the disciples being around him.

And we presume also that he walked alone to present himself or to make himself available to anyone who would wish to approach him, who wants to come and talk with him and see him.

It's always been one of the things that has impressed me about General Colin Powell.

I read this in a biography about him is that when he was a three -star general, lieutenant general, very busy man, he still made it a habit every day to take a walk through his area alone.

And it was known among all of the troops that anybody that wanted to talk to the general could come up to him during this walk.

He was deliberately alone so that, you know, some PFC could come up and speak with the general and not be intimidated by the fact that there were lots of aides and what have you around him and an entourage.

He made himself available to his troops because, as he put it one time, he said, when your troops stop talking to you, you stop leading them.

So Jesus is, in a way, doing the same thing. He's making himself available to whoever wants to come up and see him.

So he's walking alone and he's ready, he's available, he's accessible, he's ready to do good to any who would come to him.

But instead of genuine seekers, he finds himself surrounded by...the

imagery is surrounded by a swarm of bees, something buzzing around him.

Here's this crowd, and it's not a friendly crowd, it's a hostile crowd, and there are Jewish leaders there and other people, and they have a demand.

They're coming to demand something. And so what they demand is that Jesus states in so many words, tell us plainly if you're the

Messiah. It's sort of implying that you've been withholding information from us up to now.

Tell us openly, are you the Messiah or not? And you can imagine that their tone is sort of like a petulant, whining child, whining to its mother.

And as we get into the Christmas shopping season, you're probably going to hear that a lot, the kind of kid that you want to reach down and go, wha, and just smack him.

And that's what this is. And the question is sort of implying that Jesus has held them in suspense, refusing to say plainly whether he's the

Messiah. In fact, you might render this, how long will you annoy us by withholding information?

You know, if only we had true information, we might follow you.

But this is a false premise. They don't want information. Jesus has been plainly declaring who he is for his entire ministry.

He's been saying it out loud in so many words. He has been demonstrating it in what he does.

Because by this time, you know, Jesus went throughout Galilee and throughout

Judea, healing everybody. You know, he's been showing these miracles, and he's been healing people, and he's been talking with people, and he's been saying things like,

I'm the bread of life. I'm the water of life. I'm the living water. Come to me if you're hungry.

Come to me if you're thirsty. Come to me if you're weary, you know, because I'll give you rest.

You know, yes, I'll put a yoke on you, but my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Come to me. And any who would see could see.

But he's dealing with people here, and of course, Jesus knows this. He is dealing with people who are being deliberately obtuse.

They're not interested in information. They're not interested in answers. Again, they're like, in some ways, they're like little children.

Now, every parent knows, has played this game where the child starts asking why. You know, the child, let me tell you a hint.

Those of you that don't quite have kids yet, when they start doing that, they're not looking for information.

They want to see how long they can keep the game going. That's all they're interested in. And so here we have, it's a little more sinister, but here we have deliberate, willful misunderstanding or deliberate, willful disbelief.

Because if the rabbis had been studying with regenerate minds, they would have recognized the

Messiah for who he was. That was their job. John 5, 39 and John 46 and 47 are just two of the passages that address this.

There's a whole bunch in the Old Testament as well. That if the rabbis had been reading this with regenerate minds, they would have known immediately who this was and would have been able to go back to the

Old Testament passages and cite, yes, Jesus fits. He fits Isaiah.

He fits, you know, the other types because it's all through the Old Testament. But they're not interested in that.

And so Jesus answers them with an indictment. Looking at John 10, verses 25 and 26,

Jesus answered them from the King James. Jesus answered them, I told you and you believe not.

The works that I do in my father's name, they bear witness of me.

But ye believe not because you are not of my sheep.

As I said unto you, you're not in the flock,

Jesus is saying. Now, Jesus has the advantage here that we don't have.

Jesus has the advantage of being able to see the hearts of men. He knows what's in a man's heart.

So he is perfectly capable and it's perfectly appropriate for him to look at someone and say, you're not in the flock.

You know, he is pronouncing judgment, if you will, upon these rabbis and leaders that are there.

But his indictment of his accusers is very simple. You don't believe, or you could also state it as, you won't believe because you're not one of my sheep.

You won't believe in me because you don't belong to me, is what he's saying.

Unless you missed it, Jesus is teaching the doctrine of election here. And you all are saying not again, that we're dealing with that again.

But no, Jesus is preaching election. You know, you're not one of my sheep.

The reason for this obtuseness, if you will, in the face of both clear word and clear action is very simple.

They are not his sheep. You don't belong to me, Jesus says. And so, notice what he says in these two verses.

He says, number one, you're not of my sheep. Now, what's that mean?

That means they are not disposed to follow him. It's not a matter of lack of information.

They won't follow him because they are not disposed to follow him. They do not have teachable spirits.

They don't have teachable spirits. They are unreceptive to the doctrine of Messiah. I mean, they're looking for a

Messiah, all right, but they're looking for a political Messiah. They're looking for somebody who will overthrow the

Romans and who will restore them to their former glory that they had under Solomon.

And so, because they are not part of his flock, they cannot associate with his flock.

You can't have false sheep in with the flock.

Likewise, you cannot have false shepherds in with the flock either because false shepherds do not care for the flock.

Only the true shepherd cares for the flock. The hired hand doesn't care for the flock,

Jesus says. He says, only the shepherd cares for the flock. And so, they can't associate with his flock.

They will not come. They will not come to Jesus.

Now, we like to quote, whosoever will may come, and that's a perfectly valid statement.

But we leave out the part, which is just a couple of verses down from there that says, unless the father draws you, you won't come.

The father must first work a work of grace in your lives before we will come to Jesus.

Otherwise, we will not come by an act of our will. Now, what's going on here?

What is this? Everyone in here, most likely,

I would say, because it's Sunday night and the faithful are here.

Okay. You can, every one of you, if I asked you, would say, yes, there was a point in time where, you know,

I came and I repented and believed. I put my faith in Jesus Christ. Now, why did you do that?

And if I ask you that, I might get many different answers, but underlying whatever the answer was, it is because a sovereign

God worked a work of grace in our lives before we came to Jesus.

The initial steps in the salvation process or what is called the order of salvation, if you study it in reformed theology language, the order of salvation, there's a whole series of things that happen.

And the beginning ones are all what we call monergistic. They come only from God.

There is a regeneration that has to take place because as Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born again.

And we frequently in evangelical circles, we equate being born again with salvation. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

But actually being born again is one of the early steps in the process because what we need is a new nature.

Why will we not come to Jesus on our own? Is there some little spark of goodness?

I mean, are we basically fallen? But there's a little spark down there.

And if we fan it right, it'll burst into flame. And then we'll say, oh, you know, I'm not right with God.

I need to get right with God. And so I'm going to come to him and I'm going to cast myself on his mercy. Is that the way it works?

The Bible knows nothing of that. And the Bible tells us that the heart is desperately wicked, right?

Who can know it? The Bible tells us that there's none good. No, not one.

There's none good, not even you, the Bible says. And you will find that in both the

Old Testament and the New Testament. And so we have a problem.

We need a new nature because if we're stuck with our old nature, we're not going to come.

That's just the way it works. We respond, we react according to our natures and that's all we can do.

And so first we have to have our nature changed and our nature is changed by an act of God's sovereign grace.

And after our nature is changed, we still, guess what? We respond according to our nature, except now our nature is new.

And so now we're going to say, oh, there is a holy God and I need to come to him.

I need to come to him. How am I going to do that? I can't. I have nothing that I could possibly bring to him.

What do I have that I could bring that I did not receive from him? What do I have that is a value that I could present to God that God did not provide to me?

And so I have to come empty handed. I have to come empty handed and I have to look, what does

Jesus say? He says, repent and believe. And so I placed my faith in him.

And now, yes, I'm taking actions. I'm taking actions of my own volition, of my own will, but it's only because my nature has changed that I am capable of taking these actions that the

Bible tells me I have to take. And so Jesus is saying to his hearers, you are not designed to be my sheep.

You are not among those that have been given me by my father. My father, he's about to say, has given me a certain set of sheep and every last one of them is going to come to me and they're gonna be in my hands and nobody can take them out of my hands.

Nobody can take them out of my hands, but you're not among that group, he says to his leaders or to his hearers.

And so by way of contrast, by way of contrast with the stubborn refusal of his audience to listen and to obey and to hear, that's what hearing means, right?

Hearing means obedience. He's going to outline the characteristics of the true sheep, the sheep that are in the flock.

And so look at verse 28. He says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish.

Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. It's verse 28.

My sheep hear my voice, my sheep follow me. These are the defining characteristics of true sheep.

I related this before, but a pastor friend of mine who went to the

Middle East and toured around in the Middle East was in a village, particular village on market day.

And he said, this was a sheep raising area. And he said, it was literally wall to wall sheep. There were sheep everywhere in the middle of this village, just all intermingled and just wall to wall sheep.

And towards the end of the day, when it became time to go home, a shepherd said something in Arabic and started to walk off.

And a group of sheep detached themselves from this big mob of sheep and followed him. And then another shepherd said something in Arabic and another group of sheep, different group of sheep, detached themselves from this mass of sheep and followed him.

He said, after about the third time, he said, it hit me that these shepherds were all saying exactly the same thing.

Whatever it was they were saying, because he didn't recognize, it was in Arabic, he didn't recognize it, but he could tell from the sound that they're all saying the same thing.

Yo sheep or whatever it is, you know, head them up, move them out, whatever. But it's not the words.

He said, it wasn't the words, it was the shepherd's voice that the sheep recognized.

And the sheep knew their shepherd's voice. And when he said whatever it was he said and started moving off, they followed him.

That's the characteristic of the sheep that are in that flock. They know the voice of the shepherd.

And that's the characteristic, the central characteristic of the true sheep. The true sheep hear the shepherd's voice.

They know the shepherd's voice. They recognize the voice of the shepherd. Now, why does some individuals, some individuals open the word of God, we sit down, we read it, and it speaks to us.

Every page speaks to us. And we read a passage that we may have read a hundred times before, and yet it's still speaking to us.

There's new things that we see that we didn't see the first 99 times that we read this passage.

There's something new there. It's constantly living, it's constantly moving. It's constantly speaking to us. Why is that?

It's because we're sheep. We're true sheep. We recognize, this is the voice of our shepherd right here.

And we recognize it for what it is. And when we read it, when we read it, we say, yeah, that's him, that's him speaking.

I recognize that. He's speaking to me. Other people, other people attempt to read the

Bible. I said, I read the Bible, it didn't make any sense at all. Well, why not?

It's because they're not in the flock. They don't recognize the voice of the shepherd. They follow some other shepherd, whatever it is.

And they recognize that other voice, but they don't recognize the voice of the good shepherd. And true sheep also delight in their shepherd's voice.

They are in their element when they are with the shepherd. That's where they are designed to be, is with the shepherd.

They are supposed to be around the shepherd. They follow the shepherd. Real sheep are in their element when they're sitting at the shepherd's feet and hearing his word taught.

And one of the marks of a true Christian is a love for the teaching of the word.

Why do we come here every Sunday to hear the word taught? Why do we go to the various small

Bible classes to hear the word taught? Why do we do that? Why do we tune in on radio stations or on the internet or wherever it is that we listen or get

CDs or tapes or whatever it is that we do? Why do we do those things? It's because we delight in hearing the word taught.

It's a signature mark of real sheep, of sheep that are in the true flock, that they love to hear their shepherd teaching.

And regardless of who is actually speaking, they know it is the shepherd who's actually doing the teaching.

And so true sheep follow the shepherd. They do according to what the shepherd says because to truly hear implies obedience.

It's not a simple awareness of sound waves impinging on the ear.

It's receiving and responding positively to the instructions and obeying those instructions.

Everyone who has children knows the difference between hearing and hearing, right?

You know, as mom is dragging little Johnny into the kitchen, she said, didn't you hear me calling you?

Yes, mom. Why didn't you come? Well, I didn't think you were serious yet, you know, or I didn't think that you were mad yet or however he's going to put it.

But we know that there's a difference between, you know, just being aware that there's sound out there and actually hearing what is being said and responding positively to it.

So true sheep obey and true sheep also obey willingly. They want to know exactly what the shepherd wants of them so that they can fulfill the desires of the shepherd to the very best of their ability.

We are painfully aware sometimes that we fall way short of what is wanted for us.

And we are anxious for the sanctification process to proceed so that we can become more and more attuned to what

Jesus has for us to be in life. We are aware that he has something for us to do.

That's why we're still here. You know, why were we not snatched up to heaven the instant that we were saved?

Well, it's very simple. We have work to do. And as long as we have work to do here, we stay here.

And so they want to know, what is this you want me to do? I want to fulfill your desire for me.

And it's an attitude of willing obedience. It is the absolute antithesis of trying to find the lowest common denominator and seeing how little can

I get away with. I know we do that sometimes. We want to see, well, how little can

I do and not get my boss mad at me? You ever do that at work? But it's a characteristic of the sheep that we are truly interested in what the shepherd wants us to do for him.

And true sheep also go where the shepherd leads. They go where the shepherd leads because we are secure in the knowledge that he knows what is best for us.

Our welfare is uppermost in his mind. And we understand that we need to go wherever the shepherd leads us, even though sometimes we don't understand where he's going or what he's doing in our lives.

I've been told, I've never been there, but I've been told that the canyons that lead down to the area of the

Sea of Galilee are like your fingers running like that. And the shepherds take the sheep from the lower pastures to the upper pastures at various times of the year.

They lead them up to the upper pastures. And it's been suggested that this is what David has in mind when he wrote

Psalm 23, and that the shepherd... One of the things about this journey is that the trail that they're going to follow is very, very narrow and very dangerous.

And in some places, it's only one sheep wide. And there's no place to stop.

So the valley of the shadow of death, as David called it. And so once the journey starts, there's no place to stop until they reach the upper pastures.

And the good shepherd knows this. The sheep don't know this, but the good shepherd knows this.

And so what does he do at the beginning of the journey? Well, first he makes them lie down and eat and drink and rest and prepare for this journey because he knows the journey is going to be hard.

And once the journey starts, there's no stopping. The good shepherd knows all of that.

And he leads us the same way. He knows that from time to time, he is going to start us off on journeys that are going to be hard.

And there are going to be journeys where there's no place to rest. And so he prepares us for this.

And then we follow him because we don't know where we're going. And we don't know anything about the journey, but we do know one thing that the good shepherd has our best welfare in mind.

And so we can trust him and we can follow him. And we can say with H .G.

Spafford, whatever it is that happens, it's well with my soul. It's well with my soul.

Now, the good shepherd is also aware of the sheep. He knows the sheep by name.

You ever think about that? The good shepherd knows your name. In fact, in Isaiah, it is said, your name is engraved on his hand.

So that when he looks at his hands, he sees your name right there. Place there.

Think about that. He knows you by name. He distinguishes them from other sheep.

He knows which sheep are his. You look at 2 Timothy 2 .19, you can see this, how he knows his own sheep.

He has a particular regard for his sheep. He knows what your desires and wants and needs are.

He knows and preserves your soul. He knows where to find you.

He knows where to find you. He knows where you are. He knows what to do for you. He knows you far off and close by.

Nothing occurs in our lives that he is not aware of. Jesus said, my father takes notice of a little bird that falls, a little wren, a little sparrow that falls.

My father takes notice of that, and you are much more important than birds.

He knows the minutiae of your life because he is an omnipotent and omnipresent creator

God. He can put 100 % of his attention upon you all the time.

You say that doesn't make any sense. No, that is one of the mysteries of God, how he's able to do that. But he is very clear that he can do that.

He concentrates 100 % of his attention on every one of his children all the time.

And meanwhile, of course, he also holds the universe together, but that's beside the point, you know.

And so the good shepherd has done what? He has provided for the sheep. He provides a destiny suited to the sheep.

And now we're starting to get into those questions we ask. First, who saves? Who saves?

If it is God that does the saving, then only God can unsave.

I'll say it again, if it's God that does the saving, only God can unsave. And if salvation is a act of grace, from a sovereign

God, who is going to change that? Who is going to change that?

One of the reasons, if you've ever thought about this, one of the reasons that in evangelical churches, we do not have a ceremony of excommunication.

Because if you know what excommunication is, it is a withdrawal of salvation.

Because it goes like this, salvation is granted to you by the church, the organization that men came up with, and therefore they can draw it back from you.

And if you're not a member in good standing when you die, you're in trouble, okay? The worst thing that we can do to you is to disfellowship you.

But if you are saved, if you are genuinely saved, we cannot touch your salvation.

That's between you and God, and the discipline that's going to come is between you and God. But we didn't grant you salvation, so we can't take it away.

Salvation is of God, and God alone. It is not bestowed by any man -made organization.

And the Good Shepherd provides eternal life. And here's another question. How long does eternal life last?

Always. Amen. Amen. Eternal life is eternal.

I mean, if you want to be picky, you can say we have everlasting life, because our lives did have a start. But, you know, that's another sermon somewhere.

Eternal life goes on forever. And when you consider it, man is a living being with an immortal soul.

And so what could possibly be of greater value than eternal life?

And this is the gift that the Good Shepherd gives to his sheep. I provide them eternal life, he says.

And he gives this gift freely. This life is given freely. It cannot be earned.

It cannot be merited. It cannot be bargained for. It can't be bought. And so this is one of the things where you have a problem, or one of the stumbling blocks, if you're still trying to hang on to free will, and the idea that, okay, my will was free, and somehow

I, you know, sola bootstrapus, as we learned this morning, you know, I pull myself up.

But eternal security is in view here. Jesus is saying that I give the sheep eternal life.

And because I give the sheep eternal life, then they are secure.

They are secure. Because consider this, just for the sake of the argument, suppose it is an act of your will.

Somehow by your free will, you know, you come to Jesus. Well, what happens at the point of salvation?

Does your will suddenly become unfree at that point? Because if it doesn't, that means you can reverse your decision that inevitably follows.

If it was your decision in the first place, you can reverse that. And so as a matter of fact, if you go back and read the writings of the original

Arminians, the ones that really followed Arminius at the beginning, these men, for whatever their other failings were, they were intellectually honest, and they understood that, that their argument meant there was no eternal security.

And they stated that in so many words. But because we take the other approach, salvation is totally a work of God.

And therefore, if God does the saving, who's going to unsave?

If the sovereign creator, the sovereign king of the universe has saved us, who is going to undo that?

And the answer, of course, is no one. Because Jesus, not only does he give this life, he's got the authority and the power to do it.

And that's very important, because it's one thing, suppose we were walking downtown, say we went down to Manhattan, and we're walking downtown, and I say, you know,

I really, really like you, Scott, so I'm gonna give you the Empire State Building here.

I'm gonna make you a president of the Empire State Building. And your reaction to that is, I'm really glad you like me, but you don't have the authority to give me the

Empire State Building. You don't own it. Absolutely correct. But Jesus does have the authority.

Jesus does have the authority. Judgment is a prerogative of God.

And the father has given to the son the authority to render judgment.

The father entrusts all judgment to the son, and he has this divine authority granted to him by his father.

He has earned the right, if you will, to bestow eternal life upon his sheep, because he has paid their debt.

He died on the cross for them. He died on the cross specifically for them.

His death on the cross was not some amorphous thing. He had specific individuals in mind.

And when he died for sins, he had specific sins in mind. He had the specific sins of his specific sheep in mind.

As he died on the cross, paying their debt. And so he can give, he has the authority to give, and he does give.

And notice, he says, I give them eternal life. This is a present reality.

It is not something that says, I will give, or I might give, or if they hang in there,

I'll consider giving, you know. But I give, present tense. I give them eternal life.

And this results in several things, because the good shepherd is undertaking for the security and the preservation of the sheep.

Another part of the imagery that Jesus used sometimes, he talked about shepherds and shepherding a lot, because that was one of the things that his audience was very familiar with.

And the sheep fold that they would have out when they were out in the pastures, it was just a enclosure, a little enclosure with enough of a wall so that the sheep couldn't jump it.

And with an opening that the sheep would go in and out through. And at night, the shepherd would lead the sheep and he would herd them into the sheep fold.

And then the shepherd would lay down and he would sleep across the door.

And Jesus says, I am the door by me, if any man enter in. Okay, because with the shepherd lying there, the sheep couldn't get out without waking the shepherd.

And so he, the shepherd literally became the door of the sheep fold. And Jesus provides for the security and the preservation of the sheep.

He says several things. Number one, they never perish. They will never perish.

They escape the eternal damnation of the Lord. And the eternal damnation that is reserved for those who are not in the flock, for those who do not believe.

Jesus' sheep have passed from death unto life. And they cannot be kept from eternal life because the one who gives eternal life also preserves in eternal life.

And divine power is expended for the preservation of the sheep. Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

And that's any man. One of the things, I mean, amazing things float by from time to time.

And one of them is that, well, no outside force can pluck me from Jesus' hand, but I can take myself out.

If you've never heard that one, it's out there. But no, you're included.

No one, no force, nothing can pluck them out of my hand,

Jesus says. And so nobody is gonna be lost.

Nobody's gonna be missed. Nobody's gonna slip through the divine fingers. Every last sheep that the

Father has given to the Son will come to the Son. And He's going to preserve them in His hands,

He says. They're safe there. And if that's not enough for you, the

Father also has a part of this preservation of the sheep. He says, my

Father who gave them to me is greater than all. And no man is able to pluck them out of my

Father's hand. No man's able to pluck them out of the Father's hand.

The Father's power is greater than all. And He is able to do what no one else can.

The Father does not sleep. The Father is ever alert and watchful. The Father is greater than any possible enemy.

The Father also takes personal interest in the sheep. He has designated precisely who they are.

And He has presented them to the Son as a divine trust. And the

Son, it tells us in other passages, the Son is going to present these sheep back to the

Father. And so He's presented them to the

Son to be cared for and died for and preserved. And nobody can pluck the sheep out of the

Father's hand. Now, notice this. No one can pluck the sheep out of the

Father's hand. No one can pluck the sheep out of Jesus' hand. And this is only possible if Jesus is exactly the same in power, ability, and essence as is the

Father, which is precisely what He is claiming. Because He makes this claim.

I and my Father are one. And the next time someone is speaking to you, knocking on your door, telling you that Jesus never came to be

God, take them to John 10 .30. I and my

Father are one. And this does not simply mean, as has been suggested by some, that they just have the same aims and objectives.

He means they are exactly the same in essence. They are the same in nature.

They are the same in substance and power and glory. Stated in short,

Jesus claims to be God. And judging from the reaction of His audience, they understood exactly what

He meant. They knew what He meant. There was no doubt in their mind.

They get ready to stone Him in the next few verses. So no question that they understood

His claim. And this is the one that we have an eternal relationship with. We have an eternal relationship with God Himself.

And that leads inevitably to the eternal security of the believer.

What does our eternal security rest upon? It rests upon God. It rests upon God's integrity.

It rests upon God's preservation, not ours. It doesn't rest on anything that we do or fail to do.

It rests on Him. John also wrote in 1

John, and this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life. And this life is in His Son.

He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son hath not life. Seems pretty simple, doesn't it?

That's a binary relationship. That's one or zero. You know, have the

Son, have life. Don't have the Son, don't have life. That's not, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to grasp that concept there.

You know, these things have I written to you that believe on the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may believe in the name of the

Son of God. It's interesting. The writings, John says, do two things.

First of all, you've already believed. I know you've believed. And so I'm writing so that to encourage you, so that you understand what has been done for you and what it implies.

And this, I'm gonna tell you about this eternal life and that you know that it's secure. And at the same time,

I'm going to encourage you to keep on believing. You know, he uses the same phrase at the beginning and at the end, that you may believe on the name of the

Son of God. This is all 1 John 5, 11 to 13. And so John reiterates, in 1

John, he reiterates precisely what Jesus has said in John 10. God gives eternal life.

Jesus bestows eternal life. And the inescapable conclusion is that Jesus and God are one and the same.

They have to be. And the written word of God is both the assurance of salvation to those who believe and the basis for believing as well.

And so this is who we have a relationship with. This is who our shepherd is. This is the one that we follow.

This is the one that secures us. Eternal security rests with Jesus Christ.

And finally, by conclusion, D .A. Carson says this, Jesus the Son stands with human beings over and against God in dependence and obedience.

In other words, we are to be like him. When he was here on earth, you know, what did he do?

He did, he said, I do what the Father tells me to do. I came to do my

Father's will. I don't do anything that the Father doesn't direct me to do.

You know, I don't work independently of the Father or at his cross purposes with him.

I do what he says to do. And Jesus also stands with God over and against human beings in authority and in revelation and in glory and power because he is completely

God and completely man. So he's like us, but he's also

God. And right now he's seated at the right hand of the Father as our advocate for him.

Now let's pray. Our heavenly Father, our heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you tonight that you have reached down and you have brought us into your flock, that we are your sheep,

Lord. And we would pray that you would help us to follow, help us as obedient sheep to follow you, help us as obedient sheep to do your will, help us to listen to your voice and to seek out your voice daily,

Father. We praise you and we thank you that you have done this for us.

We can do none other than worship you because of what you have done for us, Lord. And we thank you and praise you in Jesus' name, amen.