John 10:1-18 (Christ, The Good Shepherd)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you. Today we're going to close out a four-week look at John 10 1 through 18. And we're going to be doing it by looking at it one more time, but this time through the lens of the Good Shepherd.

The Shepherd Motif in the Old Testament

We've been sort of building to this. If you remember the theme underneath all of these passages is leadership, and in the context of this particular passage, it's failed leadership, flawed leadership, wicked leadership from the Pharisees that has poisoned and tainted the entire landscape of the Jewish people.

And Jesus is coming as the true and better leader to speak and to call his people unto himself, to transfer them out of the wicked leadership of the Pharisees and into his own flock, his own fold. That was week one and week two.

The third week we saw how Christ is the true, or sorry, the second week we saw Christ is the true door. And there was so much wonderful richness in those passages, how Jesus is the one who guards us from thieves and robbers.

He's the one who lays his body and actually himself physically becomes the door, not just to protect us from thieves and robbers, not just to protect us from the wolves and the predators on the outside, but to protect us from leaving him.

Because as we know, sheep could find any crack in the gate, any opening in the wall, so the shepherd personally lays down and becomes the door for his people so that quite literally the only way that they could leave is over his dead body.

And think about that. We can't leave Christ once we've been purchased by Christ because to do so we would have to walk right over Christ's dead body, and we are not able to do that. That was week two.

Week three, we took a deep dive and tried to understand the Pharisees as thieves and robbers, the quintessential thieves and robbers, and we looked at a lot of different passages from all over Matthew, Mark, and Luke and tried to really understand this heartbeat of the Pharisees, and at the end of the day, we saw how this spirit was not just alive back then, it was alive and well today in various manifestations.

But how Christ is the one who redeems us from that, transfers us out of that, which leads us to today where we have a good shepherd, a good shepherd who calls us by name, who leads us, who we respond to whenever he calls.

That's what I want us to focus on today, is who is this good shepherd? Now, of course, the background of the shepherd is all throughout the Old Testament. We remember that the Bible, over and over and over again, calls God the shepherd of Israel before it calls any human being to be a shepherd.

God is the shepherd over Israel. It says that in Psalm 80, verse 1. We saw in Psalm 23 that the Lord is my shepherd. He's the one who feeds us. He's the one who gives us everything we need. He's the one who prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies.

He's the one who, for his namesake, he calls us. He's the one who protects us during difficult seasons. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I memorized it in King James. I just can't get it out of my head.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Right? He is the Lord. The Lord is our shepherd. We are his sheep.

It's all over the Bible. Isaiah 40, 11 talks about how, as a shepherd, he actively cares for us. Psalm 28, 9 talks about, as a shepherd, how he carries us. Ezekiel 34, 11 says that he will come and he will seek us himself as shepherd.

Psalm 95, 7, we're called to be the people of his pasture. Genesis 48, 15, like a shepherd, he never leaves us or forsakes us. Psalm 79, 13, our behavior is defined by the shepherd that we follow. And Luke 12, 32, which is plastered on the back of our wall, that we will inherit the kingdom because this great shepherd will lead us and give it to us.

All throughout the Bible, God is described as shepherd, and that's just a sample. There's plenty of other verses that we could mention. But one of the things that I noticed this week is that God himself is the example of what a shepherd is.

And all through the Old Testament, he gives us examples, human examples, that are supposed to point us to him. So there's the anti-type that points to the opposite of who God is, and that's the Jewish leaders in the Old Testament.

They were the original thieves and robbers. They were the ones who showed us who God is not like, getting wealthy off of the rich, feasting, or getting wealthy off of the poor, feasting off of the brokenness of the people, abusing God's sheep.

So we saw that a couple weeks ago as well. But there's also these types. And if you don't know what typology means, typology just means something in the Old Testament that points to Jesus. If you think about it, like if you go to an.

Airport.

Souvenir trinket shop, there's all kinds of little Eiffel Towers or World Trade Centers, if you can find something like that now, or Statue of Liberty, or all these things. These are little figurines that point to the massive, big, physical object that either stands or used to stand.

Well, in the Old Testament, these men were examples of the overwhelming, amazing shepherd that was coming, namely Jesus Christ. So if you think about these examples, Abel. Abel was the first shepherd, and he was called blessed by God because he brought to God the very best of his offering.

And yet,.

He died an unjust death. His blood cries out from the ground. It makes you think of Jesus. It makes you think of the one who was the true shepherd, who brought the best sacrifice that was ever imaginable.

The one who died an unjust death, and the one whose blood cries out from the ground today. But not for justice. His blood cries out to us for redemption. That we who are in Christ would be saved by his blood and his precious blood alone.

So Abel points to the true good shepherd. You think about Abraham. He's a shepherd over great flocks. God literally blessed Abraham and multiplied him and said that your family will be a blessing to the ends of the earth.

And we see in the narrative of Abraham that his flocks became so large that they were running out of land. And when you think about Jesus, the fruitful, faithful, multiplying shepherd who gave us a great commission, who told us to be fruitful and multiply by going into all the world and preaching the gospel so that one day this world will be too small for the amount of Christians that habitate this place because of the preaching of the gospel.

Abraham is an example that points to Christ and Christ's mission. Jacob. Jacob trusted the Lord in this crazy season of his life, 21 years, where he's under the leadership of Laban. And he trusts the Lord that his spotted and speckled lambs would become greater than Laban's.

And he does some weird things to get there. He puts this stick up like that so that when the speckled lambs look at it that they'll be clean. And you think about Christ who on the cross, when we look to Jesus, our speckled and spotted stained sin is clean because of Jesus.

Jacob is not a perfect man, but he's pointing to the perfect man that all of us who are speckled and spotted can find healing in Jesus Christ. He's a shepherd that points to the true good shepherd. Think about Moses.

Moses is the one who is a shepherd priest. He leads his people to the promised land. What does Jesus do? He's our high priest, the shepherd who intercedes for us between him and God. And he's leading us by the power of the Holy Spirit where?

To the promised land where we will spend eternity with him forever. He's a flawed priest that points to the perfect priest. You think about David. David's life, it would take a book, it would take a series of books to unpack all the typology in David's life.

But think about it in this simple way. He was pulled out of his father's field, he was put on the throne, and he ruled over the people of God. Jesus pulled from his father's house in heaven, came, anointed on the cross, on the throne, so that he could rule over, sit at the right hand of God, and rule over the people of God forever.

Christ is the true and perfect David. So all of this typology in the Old Testament is trying to prepare our hearts that all of these shepherds are not good enough. And that the true good shepherd, the one who's going to lead God's people, is coming.

And Jesus in John chapter 10 announces, I have come. That's what I want us to look at today. Eight aspects of what a good shepherd, of what the good shepherd is. So if you will, turn with me to John chapter 10 verses 1 through 18, as we unpack this this morning.

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. But he who enters 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 he leads them out. 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 they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure of speech, Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were, which he had been saying to them.

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, and the sheep did not hear them. 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, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He was the hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees, and the wolf snatches them, and scatters them.

He flees, because he is a hired hand, and is not concerned about the sheep. 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.

I have other sheep, which are not of this fold, and I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock with one shepherd. For this reason, the father loves me, because I lay down my life, so that I may take it again.

No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up, the commandment, this commandment I receive from my father.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you so much that you are the true and good shepherd. Lord, we thank you that we can, through no effort, no righteousness, no ability.

Of our own,.

We can be called your lambs. And we know that when you call, we will follow, because it says it here. Lord, I pray that our ears would not be stopped up, and our hearts would not grow dull, and that we would hear the beautiful voice, the beautiful call, the same call that shepherds call and their sheep dance.

Lord, I pray that our true good shepherd, when you speak to us in your word, that our hearts would leap. Lord, we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Christ Enters the Fold, He Calls, and He Leads

There's eight fundamental characteristics in this passage of what the good shepherd is. The first is that he is the one who does the entering, not us. Verses one and two say it like this. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door of the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. Now, even though this verse may sound like this is about us entering, and we may be tempted to read the passage that way, it is not actually about us entering.

We may be tempted to think that this is about entering, knocking, seeking, finding, and then as the Pilgrim's Progress says, that if we try to climb over the wall and get into the fold another way, then we will be a thief and a robber.

But this passage, right doctrine, wrong text. Right doctrine, wrong text. This passage is not about what we must do to be saved. This passage is about what Christ has done so that we may be saved. That's the difference.

And that's a critical difference for us to understand because we don't enter anything in this parable. Jesus is juxtaposing the wicked leaders who are trying to enter inappropriately and him who enters rightly and righteously.

He's juxtaposing the Pharisees versus himself. This is not about the way that we enter into a relationship with God. This is the way that God entered into a relationship with us. It's about him. It's about him leaving the halls of heaven and coming down to be with us.

It's about him speaking against the backdrop of a sick and broken leadership structure of the Pharisees and saying that I am the good sheep or the good shepherd. I am the one who's going to lead you and care for you.

He does this as the prophets foretold. He goes past the doorkeeper, which I'm not sure if this is true or not, but it kind of makes sense if that's John the Baptist. He enters past the doorkeeper who's trying to prepare the sheep for his coming.

He walks into the sheepfold. He announces his presence in front of the sheep and the sheep respond because he's the one who calls. Our only contribution in that analogy is that we were dead and lost. If you think about it, our only contribution to our salvation is that we were dead and that we perpetually find ourselves lost.

We keep finding ourselves in situations where we fall into new and deeper pits. The only thing we offer Jesus is just how lost we are. So that by the glory of God, Christ is a better savior than we are runner.

He's a better healer than we are broken. That's the amount of glory that we have in our salvation, which is exactly nothing. We didn't make a millimeter of progress towards God in our lifetime. We often like to use this phrase, you know, two steps forward, one step back, because we like to think that we're making progress.

When it comes to God, we're only going backwards. We've not made a single step forward. Every breath that we've stolen away from God and not thanked him for is a breath that we will be accountable for if not in Jesus.

You think about it, if you're not hidden in Christ and given his righteousness, how do you stand before a holy God? How do you stand saying that, you know, I stole a million breaths over my lifetime and never once thought about thanking you?

I had all of these pleasures and enjoyment from a world that you made. I drank wine from the grapes that you made. I had incredible times from the days that you made and I didn't think once to thank you.

That's not even talking about all the active sins that they've done in order to be justly condemned. That's just talking about the one sin of not being thankful for all that God has done. How could you stand in front of the presence of a holy God if you're not standing in the shadow of Jesus Christ?

It's impossible. Without Jesus, we really would be on a highway headed towards hell with no escape. So praise Jesus that this passage is not telling us how to find Jesus. Praise Jesus that for all of us who keep finding ourselves lost, this passage has not given us a how-to manual on how to be found.

How could we do it? If we keep getting ourselves lost, we could never possibly work our way found. If we keep going backwards, we could never find our way forward. Praise God that this passage is all about Jesus and what Jesus has done because that is the only way you and I could ever have any hope.

This passage is about what he has done to save us, not what we must do to save ourselves. Praise the Lord. He's the good shepherd and praise God that he cares for dumb sheep. There isn't any other kind of sheep.

I know that might ruffle our feathers a little like, I'm not a dumb sheep. I'm one of the smart ones. You're still in the category of dumb. If you're a sheep, that's just what you are. That's the first aspect is that he's the one who enters.

The second aspect is that he is the one who calls. Jesus is the one who calls. And what a beautiful picture of intimacy, right? You think about Jesus entering into the sheepfold in this metaphor and the sheep are doing sheep things, sheep stuff.

I don't know what sheep do. I just know they're dumb. So maybe they're staring at the fence wondering if a hole is going to open up like a magic portal. That just seems like something a sheep would do.

And yet the moment that Jesus's voice speaks and pierces through the silence, the sheep wake up, the sheep leap, the sheep turn their faces towards their Savior. No other voice calls them forth like that.

No other voice do they respond to like that. And this is actually consistent with the way that Middle Eastern shepherding still happens today. Middle Eastern shepherds teach the sheep to respond to one person's voice.

There's examples of thousands, or not thousands, there's examples of tens and maybe even 20s of shepherds who are trying to call to the sheep and they don't give it a single glance. They go on about what they're doing, you know, imagining the portal is opening up on the sheep wall.

And yet when the single voice that they've been trained to listen to speaks out, they come running. How much more so us? Who when we hear the voice of the one that we were designed to love, we come running.

Now goats, goats will run towards anything shiny. It doesn't matter to them. They're equal opportunity. I do know something about goats, not much, but my grandpa had a goat that literally, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it.

It ate a can,.

Like a metal can, and I don't know how it did it. It was perfectly happy and pleased to eat this aluminum metal object. And you think like what low standards do you have to have to eat a can? That's what goats are.

They'd be pleased with anything. Think about us as people without Christ. Our hearts leap when we hear that we might get vacation. Our hearts leap when we think that we're going to get to buy a new car.

We spend hours researching, and we go to the lot, we talk to different people, and we evaluate the specs on it. We spend more time doing that than is probably necessary, and we come home and we have such beaming identity.

What are the neighbors going to think when they see me in my brand new car? What are my friends going to think? I'm going to post this picture on Facebook so everybody will like and heart it and make me feel better about myself.

When we were not in Christ, our hearts were charmed by a million other things. We work extra hours just so that we can buy some stupid trinket that's going to end up in the dumpster or in a garage sale in like a decade.

I don't know, the way technology spirals now, like in two months, it'll be in someone else's attic. The sheep alone respond to the voice of Christ. The sheep alone love His voice and are motivated by His voice and enlivened by His voice.

The world, the goats, they'll respond to anything. That's one of the ways that you can tell whether someone is a sheep or a goat. It's not what they profess with their lips. Often, you know, that's a start.

But many people will say, I'm a Christian, but they have no passion for Christ. When Christ's word says something in it, they say, well, that doesn't apply to me. The true sheep hear His voice and they follow Him.

And they don't follow Him begrudgingly, they follow Him joyfully. A thousand voices could be crying out for the Christian, and nary they turn their cheek, but to Christ, they will come running. That's how you can tell a Christian.

Our hearts were made to worship Him. Our hearts were made to revel in Him. His voice awakens us, propels us, shakes us, moves us. But it's even more than that. His voice doesn't just do something to us, His voice says something about us.

His voice says something about us.

We're known.

Think about it. Every single person in here, if you know Christ, you are known infinitely, perfectly. You can't be unknown. You can't be unnoticed. You can't slip through the cracks with Jesus.

He knows you.

If He calls you by name, then He knows you on a first name basis. Now, I love in this passage, right, it says that He knows us by name, but it doesn't say that we always know Him by name. We have very limited information about who God is, if you think about it.

The greatest theologians that have ever lived, you think about Calvin or Edwards or Augustine or Luther, you know, Luther's debatable. Maybe he's not in that first tier, but he was really great at insults.

If you go to lutherinsultgenerator .com, it is hilarious. I digress. I think about the greatest theologians that have ever lived, and they know nothing in comparison to an infinite and holy God. They know enough to worship Him.

We know enough to sing His praises until our vocal cords are ready to give out. We know enough, but in comparison to an infinite God, we know a grain of sand in an infinity of deserts. We know almost nothing, but He knows us intimately, personally.

When He gives us a name, it says something about us. But it also says something about Him, because when He gives us a name, it says that He's the one who has authority in the situation. You think about Adam.

Adam was given the task of giving all the animals names in the Old Testament. That's not because Adam was their equal. That's not because Adam was somehow subordinate to the animals. No, Adam was given the task of giving all the animals names because he was to rule over them and to have dominion over them and have authority over them.

Christ names us because He's the one in charge. He has all rule, dominion, and authority. You think about Jacob. Jacob's name means surplanter. It means manipulator and liar. And then in the midst of his life, he thinks it's a good idea to wrestle with God, to scuffle and try to throw his weight around with the Almighty.

And God, with a very gracious fingertip, throws his hip out of socket. Like, what did you think was going to happen, Jacob? But in the midst of that, He says, I won't let go until you give me a blessing.

And God says, no longer shall you be called Jacob, you'll be called Israel. The blessing was his name change. The blessing was not that on his birth certificate, now he has a different first name. The blessing was that he was transferred out of dominion of Satan and transferred into ownership to God.

When we get a name, it says something about who He is as well. We are His. We're under His authority. First century slaves would change their names whenever they were purchased. Slavery in the ancient world was different than it was in America 200 years ago.

There's some similarities at times, but it was very different. But one of the things that was very interesting about it is when a slave was purchased, his name was gone. His identity to his former family, gone.

He's now made a member of that new family. We can see this even in examples like Josephus, who now takes on the name of Vespasian and his family. There's all kinds of examples where people are bought and purchased and then now they have a new identity and now they identify with a new family.

That is the exact same thing that happens to us. We have not been transferred out of slavery to sin into this sort of unbridled freedom. We've not been transferred into, well, now I get to do whatever I want because Jesus saved me.

I can live like however I want. I can do whatever I want. No, we were transferred from one slavery to another. We were transferred from a wicked taskmaster to a wonderful master, and His name is Jesus.

He owns us. We belong to Him. We don't get to do whatever we want, and that's sort of the entire point of Christianity. Christianity is not about God cooperating with us. Christianity is not about God setting us free so that we could explore our best life now.

Christianity is about transfer of ownership. We now belong to Him. The call also, it says something about our attitude and the way that we approach God. So it says something about us as people. It says something about Jesus.

It also says something about our attitude. In the ancient world, if you knew the name of the God, then you could manipulate the God. You think about in the scene where Elijah is making fun of the God, and the prophets are calling out his name, calling out his name, calling out his name.

Why do you think they're doing that? They're trying to manipulate Baal into sending fire down from heaven because the idea was that if you know the name of the God, you can manipulate the God. You can control the God.

You can pray in that God's name, and it will be so. Well, in this passage, we're not the ones who know the name. He's the one who knows the name. He's the one who gives the name. We are His. We don't get to use our relationship with Him to manipulate Him.

We don't get to use our relationship with Him to say, you know, in Jesus' name, I want a new car. That's idolatry. That's treating God like one of the Canaanite idols. So, with this God, we are His subject to do what He pleases, not the other way around.

And if you think about it, we kind of chafe at this idea of slavery because of our past in America, and, you know, it's awful. If you read about some of the stories, it's terrible. But there's nothing better than being under the leadership of a good and loving master.

There's nothing better. The problem with slavery in the modern world is that there's no one good. But how much more us, how much joy and happiness belongs to us, the people of God, that we are His slaves, that we belong to Him.

We can find joy in that identity because He's good and because He cares, because He loves us and He's righteous. So, He calls us to show us who we are. He calls us to show us who He is. And He calls us to show what our attitude must be towards Him, that we belong to Him.

That's the second thing that He calls. The third is that He's the one who leads. Verse 3 and 4 says, To Him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear His voice, and He calls His own sheep by name, and He leads them out.

And when He puts forth all His own, He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow Him because they know His voice. Now, we've looked at a lot of passages on how God is the shepherd and how He's the leader, and we're not going to rehearse all of those now, but there's one we haven't looked at that I think is fascinating, and that's in Numbers 27, 15 through 17.

Moses is at the end of his life. Moses is praying for a successor. Moses knows he's not going to live forever, and someone is going to have to lead this stubborn, rebellious people into the promised land.

Joshua is the one who's in the background saying, Really, me? I get to lead them? Okay. Numbers 27 is his prayer, and this is what he says. Then Moses spoke to the Lord, saying, May the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation, who will go out and come in before them, and who will lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the Lord will not be like sheep which have no shepherd.

Moses is praying for someone who would be faithful. Moses is praying for someone who would treat leading the people of God as carefully and as passionately and as lovingly as a shepherd treats leading his own flocks.

Now, that prayer was fulfilled in a near-term way by Joshua. Joshua was the one who did lead his people into the promised land, but if you know anything about the story, they didn't conquer the land, they didn't do what God said, and just a few hundred years later, the nation is divided in two, and they've never been more broken.

So this passage, this prayer that Moses is praying also, and ultimately, refers to Jesus Christ. I don't know if you know this or not, but Jesus's name in Greek is Joshua. In English, we say Jesus, but Jesus is sort of our way of saying it.

Yesus, which is Greek, is the Hebrew word Yeshua, Joshua. So Jesus is the true and greater Joshua. He's the one Moses prayed for. He's the true shepherd who would come and lead his people. Now, what is Moses and what is Jesus both saying about leadership?

Leadership is being out in front of the flock. You know, when we think about cattle herding now, we see cowboys on horses and sheepdogs, and we see them from the back pushing forward. That's not the biblical way of leading.

The biblical shepherd is in the front, and the biblical shepherd is the one who is leading them because in the front, you can see all of the predators, and you can see all the holes in the ground because sheep will fall in them.

It's not like a general who sits hundreds of miles away, maybe even in the Pentagon, calling orders to the troops from the safety of his air-conditioned tent. Jesus is out front. His rod and his staff, they comfort the sheep.

Why?

Because his rod, he's going to bust over the head any of the wolves that come and try to harm his sheep. Jesus is out in front to protect us, to care for us, to lead us to green pastures. When we think about all the examples in Scripture where Jesus tells us things like, take up your cross and follow me, those statements are predicated on the fact that Christ first went to the cross for you.

There's no place Jesus is ever going to call you to where he doesn't first go before. And there's no place that Jesus is going to call you to where Jesus wouldn't dare show his face. Jesus leads us from the front.

Jesus calls us up to him. That's sort of a metaphor for Christ's work in our own life. Now, many claim that they follow Christ. Many claim that they're Christians, but you don't see them with the flock of Christ.

I ask you the question here in this text, is that even possible? My sheep hear my voice, they know me and they follow me. Many today will say that, oh, I'm a Christian. Do you go to church? No, I don't belong to a local body.

Do you practice purity? No, I'm living with my girlfriend. Do I do this or do I do that? No, no, no. But I believe. I prayed a prayer one time and Jesus definitely is going to save me. How in the world?

The Bible does not give a category for a carnal Christian. The Bible doesn't give a category for those who proclaim the name of Christ but don't follow Christ. The Bible doesn't give a category for a sheep who's off in the fields of sin, doing whatever they want, but trusting in the fact that one day the Savior is going to come and bring them to heaven.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that. And for us as believers, I think this is why the Bible says that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

I think this is why the Bible says that we should examine ourselves constantly to see if we're in the faith because we can deceive ourselves. When it's advantageous for us to follow Jesus, we will. When we're getting something out of it, we will.

True sheep follow Him when it hurts. True sheep follow Him when it's heartbreaking. True sheep follow Him when they gain nothing from it but Christ. That is what it means to follow Jesus, is to have no benefit in the world but Him.

He's your treasure. He's the reason why you would sell everything you have and buy the field to have the pearl of great price. And that alone. If Jesus knows us, He'll call us. Guaranteed, it says it here.

If Jesus calls us, we'll follow. Guaranteed, it says it here. For all of us who are not following Jesus, these are stern words to say that maybe my prayer, maybe the thing I'm resting in is not actually made me a Christian.

If we have no desire to follow Jesus, if we have no passion or affection to love Jesus, to care for Jesus, then maybe we're not a part of His flock. But for all of us where even the spark of passion is there, where even the faintest hint of love for Jesus is there, for all of us who God has deposited something inside of us that is growing over the years and it's not perfect and it's not even nice looking yet, it's still a little awkward.