Inigo Montoya Series: My Sheep Hear My Voice

He didn't fall? Inconceivable! You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, my name is Justin Peters. I hope you and your family are doing well today. I want to thank you very much for watching this video. This is the first official installment of the Inigo Montoya series.

John 10:27 in Context: Salvation, Not Private Revelation

And instead of you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means, this is you keep using that verse. I do not think it means what you think it means. And the first verse to which we will give our attention is John 10, 27.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. This is the go-to verse for this entire teaching that God speaks to us in a direct, quotable sense outside of Scripture. Just as a brief example, watch this from Robert Morris and Priscilla Shire.

Alright, so John 10, look at verse 1. We're talking about we're sheep and we can hear God. Most assuredly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, now watch this carefully, and the sheep, watch, hear his voice. Can you just say those three words? Hear his voice.

So John 10, 27 to me is the most concise and comprehensive verse in Scripture about hearing God. It is when Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me.

And hearing from God in this way, in a direct, quotable sense outside of Scripture, must be a very, very important part of the Christian life. Watch this from Rick Warren.

Last week we began a new mini-series on understanding how to hear the voice of God. Very few things are more important than this because you can't have a relationship to God if you can't hear God. If all you do is ever talk to him in prayer and you never hear God speak to you, that's a one-way relationship.

That isn't much of a relationship.

So according to Rick Warren and the vast majority of evangelical preachers and teachers today, we are to be hearing God speak to us on a regular basis outside of Scripture in some still small voice, and that's another verse that we'll look at later in our series, but some still small voice, some inner impression, some hunch, some unction, or maybe even an audible voice.

But we are to be hearing God speak to us in a direct, quotable sense outside of Scripture. And if we are not hearing that, then we really don't have much of a relationship with God. And the go-to verse is John 10, 27.

But let's look at John 10, 27 in its proper context. And to do that, we really only have to bump up just one verse. Let's look at verse 26 in John 10. Jesus is addressing the unbelieving Jews, and he says this to them,.

But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. So very clearly, we see immediately in verse 26 that the context here is that of salvation.

These were the unbelieving Jews, and Jesus says,. The reason you do not believe is because you're not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. This is very clearly talking about salvation.

And as if that's not enough, look at the next verse in verse 28. Jesus says,. And I give eternal life to them. Dear friends, how much more clear could that possibly be? This is not talking about God speaking to you in some inner impression or some still small voice or something like that to tell you where to go to have lunch one day or to tell you to take a right turn when you normally take a left turn at this particular intersection or something like that or even where to get your Thanksgiving Day turkey.

No, I'm not exaggerating. Watch this.

So are you asking if God speaks specifically? And the answer is, yes, He does. Let me give you two or three examples. Speaking about buying groceries, on a particular day, I had a very short period of time, and so I wanted to buy a turkey for Thanksgiving.

My time was really running out, and I thought, well, I shouldn't do this now. I said, God, just show me what to do. It's like God said, go to this store, buy the turkey now. Against sort of my will, I went.

I walked right in, straight to the right place, the right pound of turkey, walked right out, paid, and got back in the car in less than about 25 minutes. Did God tell me to go?

Yes, He did. Has God ever told you where to get your Thanksgiving Day turkey? Well, if not, then Charles Stanley apparently has a closer walk with God than do you. Dear friends, John 10, 27 is not even tangentially dealing with God giving us direct, special knowledge apart from Scripture on a daily, regular basis.

That is not what is in view in John 10. What is in view in John 10 is eternal life, salvation. Jesus states it very clearly in verse 28, I give eternal life to them. And this giving is a prominent theme in John's gospel.

In fact, let me show you a few other verses in John's gospel. Let's go to John 6, and we'll look at verse 37 and 39. John 6, verse 37, Jesus says, All that the Father gives me will come to me. Verse 39, This is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given me I lose nothing.

So very clearly, Jesus is talking about salvation. Christians are those that have been given to the Son by the Father. Now, let's look at John chapter 17. This is the high priestly prayer. This is the prayer, the longest prayer that we have recorded of Christ.

And He offered this prayer to the Father shortly, of course, before His crucifixion. So John chapter 17, let's look at verse 2. Jesus says, Even as you, referring, of course, to the Father, gave Him, the Son, Christ, even as you gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you have given Him He may give eternal life.

Verse 6, I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave Me out of the world. They were yours, and you gave them to Me. Verse 9, I ask on their behalf, of course, referring to His disciples. He said, I ask on their behalf.

I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom you have given Me. You see the very clear contrast that Jesus draws here between the world and those whom have been given to Christ by the Father.

Christians, believers, you and me. Let's look at verse 24. Jesus says, Dear one, if you know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, if you are in union with the Lord Jesus Christ, do you know what you are? You are a gift.

You are a gift from the Father to the Son. You have been given to the Son by the Father, decreed in eternity past, and you and I as Christians are love gifts from the Father to the Son. This is a beautiful passage of Scripture.

And what happens when a person gets saved? This is what happens. Before your conversion, you and I are lost sheep. We are lost sheep, and we are out there in the pasture of life, and we've got our heads down, and we're grazing, munching on the grass and the clovers or whatever, minding our own business.

But all of a sudden, we hear a voice. We hear a voice, and we perk our heads up, and we see the Shepherd, and we go to Him. We go to Him in salvation. We go to Him in the new birth. This is regeneration.

This is the effectual call of the gospel. When Jesus, the good Shepherd, calls His sheep, and His sheep hear His voice and go to Him in salvation. Dear friends, this is not talking about God whispering in some still, small voice in our heads telling us where to go to have lunch one day or where to get our Thanksgiving day turkey or which job to choose or something like that, something so trivial and menial as that.

What a terrible trivialization of such a beautiful, beautiful passage of Scripture in John chapter 10. This is a beautiful text. It is a profound, deep, meaningful, comforting text to us, and it is a terrible, terrible injustice to the Word of God to reduce it to something as menial as God giving us daily direction in our lives to take a right turn instead of a left turn or something like that.

Dear friends, you don't have to be a Greek scholar to see the context here. I mean, it's very clear. Just read it. Read it in your English Bible. I mean, it's very obvious what the context is, and anyone that would take John 10 .27 and reduce it to something like that would misinterpret it so badly.

Honestly, and this is going to sound harsh, but I really do mean this. If you can take John 10 .27 and twist it to mean something like that, then whoever would do something like that has no business preaching the Word of God.

I mean, no business teaching God's Word. If you can miss a text that is so clear and so beautiful and reduce it to something so meaningless, you've got no business preaching and teaching God's Word. And yet the shelves in Christian bookstores practically sag under the weight of books about how to hear the voice of God in John 10 .27 is the key text.

And if you miss it that badly, then you really need to stop teaching God's Word because that is a terrible misunderstanding of that passage. John 10 gets even more beautiful. Let's look at it again. Verse 28, And I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand.

If you have ever wondered about eternal security, then spend some time in John 10. We as Christians, we are a love gift from the Father to the Son, and Jesus holds us in His strong, secure hand. And no one will snatch us out of His hand.

And as if His hand were not strong enough, and it is. But look at verse 29. Jesus says, My Father who has given them to Me, there it is again, My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

And so we as Christians, we are being held in the strong hand of Christ. We're being held there because God the Father gave us to Christ, and He is holding us as His precious love gift from His Father.

And then as if Jesus' hand were not strong enough, then He takes the Father's hand and wraps it, as it were, around that of His own. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. Dear friends, we are held in the hand of Christ, and Christ's hand is being held by the Father's hand.

And friends, ain't no one getting out of that. Ain't no one getting out of that. Eternal life is a gift. We have been given to Jesus, the Son, and the Son gives us eternal life. And that which God gives, He does not take back.

So I hope that this has been encouraging for you, dear ones, as we look at the first in our series of Inigo Montoya. You keep using that word. You keep using that verse. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Now, I know probably I'm expecting the comments down below will be full of people saying, well, I really believe that God spoke to me and He told me to do this, or I can give you testimony, or God told me to do this when I thought I was going to do this.

And had I done that, it would have been a disaster. And I know that I heard God speak to me, and He directed me in this way and that way. And the comments, I just know already, are going to be full of people saying things like that.

That is another conversation. That is something that I will deal with in a later video, Lord willing, coming up within two or three weeks. I've got some traveling coming up, but I'm going to interview one of my dear friends, Jim Osmond, who has written a book on this.

And we're going to talk about that much more in depth later on. But the purpose of this video is to show you specifically, it has a very specific purpose, how John 10 .27 has been taken out of context.

So if you're tempted to write a comment, well, I know God spoke to me. Well, we'll talk about that later on. That's a conversation for another day. What we're talking about here is John 10 .27, my sheep hear my voice, and how that verse has been taken out of its context and twisted to mean something that it simply does not mean.

And I'm glad it doesn't mean that because what it actually does mean is beautiful, majestic, profound, awe-inspiring, and comforting beyond what words can describe. You, Christian, are a gift from the Father to the Son.

And Jesus gives us eternal life. And as we close, I want to show you this video that I stumbled across on YouTube. It's a really interesting visualization of what we've been talking about. There's a group of sheep in this pasture, and they have different people, tourists, I assume, go and they're trying to call the sheep, and the sheep don't respond to the tourists.

But then they bring in the real shepherd and watch what happens. Really good visualization of what we've been talking about. One more time.

Look at them, look at them.

Isn't that a beautiful picture? Let's close with John 10, verses 3, 4, and 5. Jesus says, They will not follow Buddha. They will not follow Muhammad. They will not follow Joseph Smith. Why? Because Buddha and Muhammad and Joseph Smith are strangers, and Christ's sheep don't know the voice of strangers.

Christ's sheep know the voice of their shepherd, and they follow him. Selah. I hope that this video has been encouraging to you, dear ones. I want to thank you very much for watching. Until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all.