The Good Shepherd Dies for His Sheep

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You'll turn with me, please, in your Bibles to John chapter 10, the gospel of John chapter 10.
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And relying upon the Lord's help this morning, we will be looking once again here at this tremendous chapter together.
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But before we do so, let's pray together. Our Grace Heavenly Father, once again, we ask for your help and your assistance, your
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Spirit's power to help us to handle your word of right, to consider the great truths that are presented here before us.
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There are so many things that would distract us, especially at this time of year. We would ask that during this time we'd be focused upon your truth, that you would help us to build that foundation upon which everything else is necessary, to stand upon that foundation.
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Lord, help us to understand. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. One of the casualties of flu this week was
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I did not have the opportunity of rerunning the bulletin insert that we used a number of weeks ago where I presented to you a graphic.
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I can see one right now. We'll just simply have George hold his up, face it backwards. That should be enough for everybody.
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There you go. That should be enough for everybody right there. I did not have an opportunity of rerunning any of those
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We're certainly not going to be making super, super speed through John chapter 10, so I will have opportunity,
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I'm sure, to reproduce some of those in the future. But if you were not with us that last time, we have begun an unusual series of studies in the
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Bible, in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, all based upon an ancient papyri known as P45.
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We are looking at sections of those books that are contained in what is left of P45, a manuscript that originally contained all of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, but doesn't anymore.
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It's actually much more of a miracle that we have any papyri book from 1 ,800 years ago.
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But it is fragmentary, and so we are using that as sort of our guide. And we started working into John chapter 10, and we just got to the first portion that is actually visible on the papyri page that I produced for you here in John chapter 10.
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But I wanted to remind us of the context. It has been a few weeks, and a few things may have happened in your lives since then, so let's look to John chapter 10.
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Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.
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But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
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When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him because he doesn't know the voice of strangers.
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This figure of speech, Jesus spoke to them, but they didn't understand what those things were which he had been saying to them.
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So 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 hear them.
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I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
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I came that he might have life and have it abundantly. Now this is the portion that we have covered, that is the back context, and I just briefly remind you of the fact that we noted the danger that is ours of breaking these chapters up based upon the artificial chapter divisions and forgetting how the text relates to itself.
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John chapter 9, remember? The man had been healed. He's wrought before the
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Jewish leadership. They try to get him to say that Jesus is a sinner.
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He says, I don't know about that. All I know is what Jesus has done for me. And the man ends up worshiping
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Jesus at the end of the chapter. And again, end of the chapter. Well, at the end of that story.
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That's the immediate entrance into what is happening in John chapter 10. And so this description of the thieves and those climbing over walls and eventually what's going to come down here in regards to the hirelings all refer to those
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Jewish leaders who were demonstrating that they were not truly concerned about the sheep.
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They were not truly shepherds of the flock. And this is the background of what we have here in John chapter 10.
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And we finished last time by looking at that signal passage in verse 10.
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The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that he might have life and have it abundantly.
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And we had a few thoughts that we shared then on this idea of abundance of life.
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Certainly, this is the type of text that is rife for abuse when you're looking, when you're searching through the scriptures to find a verse that says what you want to preach about.
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This is the kind of verse, unfortunately, that very frequently gets landed upon. But it does have a very deep meaning to it.
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We made some comments last time. I actually preached on this text as a whole at a
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Reformed Baptist Church in Brisbane, Australia a few weeks ago and expanded a little bit on what we had said even in our time here.
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So that is the the background to refresh your memory. And so the next section,
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Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, he who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees.
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And the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep.
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I am the good shepherd and I know my own and my own know me. Even as the father knows me and I know the father and I lay down my life for the sheep.
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I have other sheep, but you're not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will hear my voice. You'll become one flock with one shepherd.
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For this reason the father loves him because I lay down my life so I may take it again. No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative.
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I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from my father. So we see that we are entering into a rather deep section here.
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And of course there are so many different themes that are presented here that even as we try to outline them, they're very challenging.
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But what I what I want to attempt to do in our study today is to recognize that you can have texts of scripture that are specifically in the context of here
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Jesus dealing with himself as the good shepherd. And yes, the context is his demonstration of of the the
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Jewish leaders and their abandonment of the calling that was theirs.
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But he uses that as the grounds upon which he introduces himself and that he is the true good shepherd.
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And notice the things that are mentioned here. We have laying down his life for the sheep. We have in verse 14 the relationship that exists between the sheep and the shepherd and the fact that I know my own and my own know me.
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Then we have that paralleled with the relationship of the father and the son in verse 15.
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Even as the father knows me and I know the father. And then that's connected back together with the laying down of his life for the sheep.
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Then in verse 16, as we will see, don't worry, we're not getting to all of this this morning, but I'm looking at it in an overview sense.
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Then you have a prophecy of the Gentile mission of the church.
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I have other sheep which are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will hear my voice.
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They'll become one flock with one shepherd. Extremely important text in regards to the fact there is not to be a
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Jewish Christian Church and a Gentile Christian Church. There was a danger of this happening.
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Anyone who reads Acts, anyone who looks through, sees what happens in Galatians, needs to understand.
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But what happens in Galatians chapter 2 when the Apostle Paul stands before Peter is trying to keep this promise alive.
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It's how God kept this promise alive. Was he used someone like Paul to keep that division from taking place?
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Because it looked like it was going to take place. It was taking place in Antioch. When you have individuals in Antioch, you have the the
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Jews having table fellowship over here and the Gentiles over there. It's going to be, there may just be a aisle between them right now, but eventually that becomes a wall and that is a very, very dangerous thing.
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Here you have the the prophetic word of Jesus. There will be one flock with one shepherd.
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And then you have these amazing statements. The Father loves me.
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I lay down my life so I may take it again. No one has taken away from me. I lay it down on my own initiative.
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I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it up again. This is the the very voluntary nature of the self giving of Christ.
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There's a lot in here, and here's the problem. Sometimes, you know,
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I've told the story before and Kelly will remember this, but many, many years ago we had a,
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Kelly and I had a lunch with an individual. We weren't members of this church yet. That's how many years ago it was.
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We were talking about, interestingly enough, the subject of the debate that was just announced in January in Atlanta that I'm going to be doing with a representative of Catholic Answers on the perseverance of the saints.
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Can you lose true salvation? And when he asked me, well show me where the
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Bible teaches this, where you think the Bible teaches this. Well, I decided that, you know, let's start with the plain things, and I was going to go to Ephesians chapter 1 and talk about the
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Holy Spirit as the Arabon, the down payment, so I could talk about the fact that the grounds of believing that is recognizing that salvation is the work of God to His glory.
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It's the Father, Son, and Spirit together, etc, etc. You start where you need to start. If you start with man, you're just going to end up with opinions.
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But start with what God is doing and go from there. Well, he stopped me immediately. He stopped me immediately and basically said, look, if you can't show it to me in Jesus's words, then don't bother showing it to me at all.
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Well, I have since described this as hyper red letterism, and it's the idea that if it's printed in red letters, it is somehow more inspired than if it's printed in black letters.
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And, of course, printing in black and red letters is a fairly modern innovation anyways, but the idea being that, no,
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I'm not going to allow you to go to someone as complicated as the
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Apostle Paul. I mean, doesn't even Peter say there are things in him that are difficult? Yeah, which he says the untaught and unstable distort their own destruction, so let's not get into a discussion of that right now, but the idea is that when we are looking at the text of Scripture, that we must handle it.
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We certainly attempt to model from this pulpit a consistent methodology of exegeting the
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Word of God, handling the Word of God, and that is we try to avoid something called eisegesis, reading into the text concepts and ideas that would have been foreign to the original author and the original audience as well.
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That is the greatest way in which the Bible is abused today, is when people go looking for a text that will fit the idea that they already want to preach, that they already want to present to people, rather than allowing the
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Word of God to determine those things and drawing out the meaning from the text of the Word of God.
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We want to avoid eisegesis, and so what we normally do in a text of Scripture is to walk through that text, and we want to pay attention to its context, what comes before and what comes after.
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We want to look very carefully at the language. We want to handle. This is how you honor the
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Scriptures. We have said many times before, if you write a letter to someone, if they honor you, then they are going to expend a tremendous amount of effort to try to make sure that they're listening to what you intended to communicate.
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If someone takes a letter you have written to them and twists its meaning and inserts ideas into it that never would have crossed your mind, you are rightly offended.
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You rightly feel like you have been abused by this individual. Well, in the same way, we show respect for God when we accurately handle
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His truth. At the same time, we believe that what is found in John chapter 10 is given to us by the very same
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Spirit of God that gives us Hebrews chapter 7, or Philippians chapter 2, or in other words, that there is a unity that exists in Scripture that is supernatural in character and in content.
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Now, you can't come to understand what that unity is by ignoring the hard work of doing meaningful interpretation.
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It's real easy to, you know, put on your spiritual gown and to claim to have special insights into Scripture and start cobbling passages together.
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That's not what I'm talking about. But when we have honestly approached each of these texts, then we can take the conclusions from those texts and bring them together and those texts will then clarify and further illustrate the meaning of each other.
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This becomes the analogy of Scripture, where Scripture actually becomes its own context, its own milieu of interpretation.
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And this is really where the power of Christian truth and the unity of Christian truth is to be found.
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I find that many Christians today find, well, I won't go into it right now, but just a few months ago, there was a bit of a controversy.
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And it really wasn't a controversy. It just simply was a light shone upon the fact that there's a lot of confusion in what's called the evangelical world about the
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Bible and what it actually is. But there are a lot of Christians who feel like, look, there's just too much in the
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Bible for me to ever really master all of it. And so I'm not even going to try to go there.
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This idea of trying to put passages together and harmonizing it, it just seems too complicated for me.
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I want something that I can fit into my millennial lifestyle. And the result will be a millennial level
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Christianity, which is not something that I think is necessarily going to call too many people to die in its defense of, unfortunately.
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We want to know everything that the Word of God has to say. We want to see it in its fullness.
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We want to see the truth of God in its fullness. And that truth is not found in any one text.
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It's found in the harmonious relationship of all of these divine texts placed together.
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Now, what does that have to do with John chapter 10? Well, in 2008 a conference was held,
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I think. I don't remember. I was out of the country at the time. I was in London, I remember. Maybe somewhere down in Georgia.
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Might have been outside of Atlanta. It was a very large Southern Baptist Church called the
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John 316 Conference. And it was a it was one of the, one of a number of conferences that have been held now by a portion of the
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Southern Baptist Convention that is openly seeking to try to protect the convention from what it views as encroaching
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Calvinism. And it's not been very successful, but they're out there and they continue to do their thing.
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It's not they've come up with anything new, but they, they definitely are active, shall we say.
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And one of the speakers at that conference was Dr. David Allen.
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Dr. Allen is a professor of preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas.
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And Dr. Allen spoke on the subject of the atonement.
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He also spoke on issues such as hyper -Calvinism and things like that. Identified me by name as a hyper -Calvinist.
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And though we have refuted that many times, he has refused to apologize for that, which, you know, we'll just leave that there and it says what it says.
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But the arguments that were put forward against what is called the Calvinistic understanding of the atonement struck me as extremely simplistic.
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They struck me as someone who was just starting to think about the subject and was sort of assigned a topic that maybe was just a little bit beyond where the reading level of that particular individual should have led them to feel competent to address.
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That was eight years ago. And Dr. Allen has now come out with an 800 -some -odd page book on the same subject, after eight years.
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And I was listening to some comments from Dr. Allen just yesterday. And I am sad to report to you that the level of argumentation, the substance of argumentation, has not changed whatsoever in eight years.
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And I was caused to reflect upon this statement, which he made. He said, limited atonement is a doctrine looking for a text.
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A doctrine looking for a text. So it's a it's a doctrine, and there's no text in the
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Bible that actually teaches it. It's just philosophical implication and speculation.
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Now, Dr. Allen may seriously believe that. I have attempted over the years to interact very often with Dr.
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Allen's claims, and I have gotten absolutely no evidence whatsoever that that he can hear what is being said in response to him.
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It may be a very strong dedication to tradition. It may have to do with the politics of the
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Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. But whatever it might be, the reality is that as I listened to this,
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I was struck once again by the fact that we have entire organizations such as this amongst the
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Southern Baptists. We have what I call the non -denominational denomination. It's called
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Calvary Chapel, which I have said over and over again, and unless it comes straight forward and starts dealing with Reformed Theology in a meaningful fashion, we'll continue to create
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Calvinists, whether it wants to or not, because its way of approaching it has not been to do so in an accurate, forthright manner to this point.
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And the point is of all of this is to bring us back to here to John chapter 10 and to go, well,
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Jesus says that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
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Now, someone like Dr. Allen would say, ah, logical error on your part, logical error on your part.
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Just because he lays down his life for the sheep doesn't mean he doesn't lay down his life for everyone. I mean, if he lays down his life for everyone, then every subset under everyone can accurately say it as well.
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So in Galatians chapter 2, Paul makes the profession that Jesus Christ gave his life for me.
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Does that mean it was only Paul? Obviously, we have to be very careful when we talk about texts that speak of why
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Christ gave his life, and so if a limitation on the scope of the giving of the life of Christ means it's only for that group, then
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Galatians 2 proves it was only for Paul. And of course, I think most of us sitting here this morning go, really?
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They argue like that? And we have to go, yes. But here's the issue. The power and the strength of the
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Reformed doctrine of atonement is not found in a single text.
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It is found in the consistent testimony of Scripture, to the intention of the
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Triune God in that divine act of atonement, and hence it takes into consideration text after text after text after text in harmony with one another.
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That's why it becomes so powerful. And sometimes we as Reformed folks, we tend to,
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I don't, but some people tend to be somewhat embarrassed by this one doctrine of limited atonement or a particular redemption.
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I had a, I remember a lady came up to me in a church in London, and I had just preached, and that was a wonderful sermon.
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That's a wonderful sermon. I knew there was something, as always, you know, that the other shoe was just dangling in the air at that point.
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It was a wonderful sermon, but you don't, you don't believe in limited atonement, do you?
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And it was, it was almost sort of like, you don't have a dreaded communicable disease, do you?
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And it was in exact, that exact tone, with that exact expectation of dreaded response.
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And you know, we were really not, we were standing in a hallway blocking people, and it was crowded, and it was, it was not the best place to be having this conversation, but I just looked straight at her, and I said, well, of course
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I do, don't you? You know, put it back on your other shoe, and, and I, when
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I look at what we call, and I, and I hope we all recognize the five points of Calvinism, we're just simply an acrostic, and they do not begin to exhaust the fullness of the
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Reformed faith, but they speak to important issues. When you look at those five points, when you look at what comes before that,
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I like the six points of Calvinism. I like a stulip, personally, but, but the sovereignty of God, the, the fallenness of man, the total depravity of man, the unconditional electing grace of God, and then you look at the last two, the irresistible grace of God, and the perseverance of the saints.
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Where does the eternal intentions of the triune
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God in the past meet together with what then happens in bringing about the actual salvation of God's people?
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Well, it's really focused right there in the L, because the L refers to the actual accomplishment of redemption in the perfect work of the
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Son. It's where all those threads of divine intentionality and purpose meet together, so that when, that what flows from that will be the irresistible grace of God.
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Why is it that God's grace is irresistible? Why is it that he brings about our regeneration at his time, in his way, that he can raise us to spiritual life and do so justly?
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Well, it's because of the perfect work that has been accomplished in the atonement of Jesus Christ. Why will we persevere in the, in the faith?
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Because, again, the Good Shepherd will not lose any of his sheep, John chapter 6. It all has its focus always in Christ, and when we look at the, the summary statement of Reformed faith, where is the central
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Christological statement? But in the work of Christ, and all, all we're saying when we talk about, quote -unquote, limited atonement, is that the
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Son acts in perfect harmony with the Father and the
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Spirit. Have you ever thought about it that way? That's really what it's all about, because when you're talking about the electing grace of God the
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Father, when you're talking about his intention to save a divine people, when you're talking about the
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Spirit of God coming and, and making that real in those people's experience, now we look at what the
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Son does, and is the audience going to be different between the Father and the
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Spirit? No, the audience is going to be exactly the same. There is going to be perfect harmony between Father, Son, and Spirit, and the accomplishment of this tremendous triune,
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God -glorifying act. And so I really see it as, as a place where sometimes we are sort of, well, yeah,
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I sort of believe that, rather than, well, you better believe I believe that, don't you? Look at what the
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Scriptures say here, because there are, anytime we come to these texts in Hebrews chapter 7, the high priest, in Hebrews chapter 9,
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Hebrews chapter 10, the perfection of the work, the, any of these texts, they are saying the same things.
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And so when we come here to John chapter 10, verse 11, there are going to be some people who are going to say, can you really, can you really see that much theology in a conversation that Jesus has?
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There in John chapter 10, and I just want to step back and go, have you read that chapter?
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I give to them eternal life. No one shall snatch them out of my hand. The Father who gave to me is greater than all.
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No one shall snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one. You have Jesus quoting from Psalm 82, when they could pick up stones to stone him.
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I mean, the relationship of father and son, in bringing about the salvation of God's people, where else would you find this level of theology and teaching in the
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Gospel of John? Of course it's here. And so, when you look at these words in verse 11, and you hear
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Jesus say, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, you cannot separate that out from everything else that Jesus is going to say about the sheep.
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You can't separate that out from the fact that the shepherd is sovereign in the selection of those sheep.
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You can't separate that out from the relationship that exists between the shepherd and the sheep.
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And that also means that you at least have to take into consideration, as uncomfortable as it may be.
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Verse 26. Verse 26.
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But you literally are not believing, because you're not my sheep.
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You're not my sheep. Now, this theme had already been presented in the
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Gospel of John. It happened in John chapter 8. In John chapter 8, in speaking to the false believers,
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Jesus said, why can't you hear my words? It's because you do not belong to God.
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He who belongs to God hears the words of God. And you and I have been so deeply influenced by the thinking of modern, now 21st century evangelical methodology, that it's very easy for us in our minds to reverse the actual order that's given in Scripture.
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It's very easy for us to go, well, what Jesus means there is, you're not of my sheep, but you can become one of my sheep anytime you want to.
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I mean, that's, it's all up to man. The idea that there is a distinction, and that in fact, what
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Jesus is saying is, the reason you are not believing, the reason that you are rejecting my words, is in, it's in you.
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It's who you are. You are of your father, the devil, is what had happened in John chapter 8.
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You haven't been set free. You think you have, but you haven't been set free. And they rebelled at that.
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And now Jesus is saying the same thing. You're not my sheep. But if the reason they're not believing in verse 26 is that they're not his sheep, then what does that mean when we go back to what
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Jesus says in verse 11? The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
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Does this not of necessity present to us a question regarding the scope and the intention of the giving of the life of Jesus Christ?
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Now, it has been repeatedly said that no one is saying, and that no
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Reformed theologian has ever dreamed to try to mean, that there's somehow an intrinsic limitation on the value of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.
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In other words, well, Christ could only redeem a certain number of people.
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His, the value of his death is limited intrinsically to a certain number of people.
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And just because, you know, God might want to save some more people, but he just can't because the death isn't sufficient to do anything more than that.
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That's never ever ever been the thought, and I hope it's never a thought that's crossed your mind either. The issue of the scope of the atonement must first be decided on the basis of asking a different question.
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And that is, what was the intention of the
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Father, the Son, and the Spirit? Well, we ask the question, when?
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I would say, what was the intention of the Father, Son, and Spirit in eternity past? So that, that same intention would be there at the incarnation, in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and on the morning of Calvary.
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You have the same intention, the part of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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What was that intention? What did the Father intend to accomplish at Calvary?
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Well, Jesus has already told us, if we're going to listen to the gospel of John, Jesus has already told us in John chapter 6,
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I've come down out of heaven, not to my own will, but the will of him who sent me. What's the will of him who sent me?
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That of all he's given me, I lose none of it, but raise it up on the last day. He's already said that. He's already made that clear.
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So here in John chapter 10, when he says, I am the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, and then he later on says,
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I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it back up again. This is a commandment I've received from my Father. This is not something brand new.
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It's not something that just popped out of nothing. It doesn't make it any less amazing in what it's actually saying.
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But it is a continuation of a theme that has been woven through the gospel of John itself.
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And it will then continue on into chapter 17, where that same intentionality is presented to us.
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But what was the intention? Was God attempting to save every single human being in the cross of Jesus Christ?
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And there is just such tremendous evidence that that is not the case.
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Not only would you have to ask the question, well, what about all those who came before Christ?
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What about those who, you know, I've often used the illustration of the
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Amorite high priest, who was one of those destroyed by the invading
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Jewish armies. Are you saying that it was God's intention, when
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Christ died, to try to save that individual? Or are you saying, well, no, for some reason
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God intended to do this at this particular point in time, and so now it's just every individual since then. But what do you mean every individual since then?
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There were entire places of the planet that for hundreds of years after the time of Christ, no one came close to those areas as a missionary.
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So, if it was Christ's intention, if it was the Father's intention, the Son's intention, the
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Spirit's intention, death of Christ, to save the Aboriginals in Australia, the next year after Christ's death, well, that didn't happen.
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And so, what was the intention? Do you have intentionality in this text?
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You do. You do. What did Jesus say? I have other sheep that are not of this fold.
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I must gather them together. One fold, one shepherd. He didn't say, you know, it would be a really good idea.
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Let's try it. This would be a really neat thing to add. No. He says,
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I have other sheep that are not of this fold. And so, that's a direct parallel then with John chapter 6, all the
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Father gives me. The Father had given him shepherd, the good shepherd.
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They had given him sheep, Jewish sheep and Gentile sheep. They all need to become one. And so, there's intentionality.
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What is the intention of the Father, Son, and Spirit? That will answer the question of the scope.
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Because the scope of the work of the Father, the scope of the work of the Spirit, the scope of the work of the
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Son, they are going to be absolutely consistent with one another. That's the beauty.
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Now, there's some people would say, and there are some people who will actually call themselves some flavor of Reformed.
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It will say, look, I understand if we're just talking about the salvific intention.
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If you just limit it to that, okay, but see, there's more than this. There's more to the cross than just salvation.
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That may sound strange to you. But I happen to agree, and most Reformed theologians do.
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What do you mean? Well, Colossians chapter 1 says that God has made peace, having reconciled all things to the blood of his cross.
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That's the exact same all things that he has just been talking about in the preceding verses that exhaust the meaning of creation itself.
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So either you become a universalist, a universalist, and there are people like that out there.
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We almost never went into them. I think we probably did better off than we did, because I think they sharpen us a little bit.
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But you're gonna have to join the group that believes that everyone's gonna get saved, and then we get to start dealing with all of the mountain of biblical evidence against that assertion.
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Or you're gonna have to have some understanding of what this means in regards to peace through the blood of his cross, and what reconciliation means in regards to God's relationship to all things, including
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God's punishment of the unrighteous in eternity to come. Because nothing's gonna be left undone.
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Nothing's gonna be left where there is not peace. But wait a minute, those people don't have peace with God, so therefore it's not it's not completed.
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It's not finished. Because of the work of Christ, because of the demonstration of the justice of God in the cross, their judgment is demonstrated to be just.
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Their judgment is demonstrated to be completely consistent with the character of God, which was demonstrated in the cross of Calvary.
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This is where this wisdom is being manifest to the entire universe. So there could be some who would say, but there's more to it.
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There's more to the death of Christ. Okay, I understand if you're just talking about things like that, but but we must understand that when we talk about Jesus's own words, when he says he lays down his life for the sheep, that implies a relationship that is very specific.
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And when you start abandoning that, the result is an impersonal concept of the atonement and salvation, where Jesus's death simply makes salvation a possibility.
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And who will end up being the sheep becomes something that we end up filling out as time goes by.
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And it removes the intensely personal relationship, the intensely personal knowledge,
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I know my own and my own know me, verse 14, that exists between the
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Son and the sheep. Between the Son and his elect people. Once you start going there, the cost will be very, very great.
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Unfortunately, there are many who are more than willing to go that direction. And so my point this morning is this, when we look at a text like this, and we see
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Jesus saying, the Good Shepherd, he lays down his life for the sheep, we should not shy away from seeing that it is the intention of John to tie this together with so many other great truths of the faith, that we are forced, forced, to see what the relationship is.
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Between what? Well, between the Father, the Son, the Shepherd, giving of life, the
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Son's obedience to the Father. This is what commandment I've received from my
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Father. The fact that so much of our salvation is really dependent upon the confidence that we have, that the
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Son always does what is pleasing to the Father, our confidence in the perfection of his work, that keeps us from ever looking to ourself and our own fulfillment and our own works.
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How many false teachings in the history of the church would have been short -circuited right at that very point?
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How much of the work salvation teaching of man would have been short -circuited right there, if we had just thought about these things?
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Yes, there are those places in Scripture where tremendous truths are presented to us, and they are woven together with other great truths, so that we can see that the tapestry of divine truth is not simply a threadbare, simplistic presentation.
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You can't fit this into four spiritual laws. You just can't do it. It's so much deeper.
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It's so much more vibrant, and as we look at this text, and especially as we're going to get into the text concerning I and the
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Father, we are one. Sometimes we're hesitant to put so much weight into a conversation that takes place between Jesus and others.
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We cannot be hesitant to do so. We must allow these texts to have the weight that they demand, and to see that John is purposefully linking us to what's come before, giving us opportunity to see what's going to come later on, seeing how these things are woven together, because it is a woven fabric that is so much stronger than single threads together.
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The tendency of the modern mind is to break things up into simple little parts, but the beauty and the consistency and the harmony of the
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Christian faith is to see these things as they're woven together. I've used the illustration before as the orchestra.
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One part may be beautiful unto itself, but it cannot do what an entire orchestra can do in expressing the fullness of a symphony.
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In the same way, our tendency is to basically want someone to play one note on the piano for us, when really what we have in texts like this is a full orchestra.
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If we will but take the time to stop and to listen. May the
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Lord help us to do so this morning. Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your
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Word. We thank you for the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. And Lord, we know that this giving of that life was intentional, perfect, and salvific, and that is why we have peace with you this day.
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We do thank you for the opportunity of once again considering these words, and may we be reminded of that great price, that laying down of that life, which has given us life to this day.