Jesus Knows His Own and They Know Him

We continue in our study in John chapter 10 this evening. Really, in essence, we will do this evening what we would normally have done this morning if I could talk faster.

But I have to be slow and measured in my speech, and so this evening we will do the exegesis of the text that would be the normal part of our examination of God's Word.

This morning we looked at the background once again. We read through the first section of John chapter 10, and so if you were with us, you are aware of that.

If you're not, you're not going to be missing too much. We will be picking up specifically with verse 11 this evening when

Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his soul, that is the literal word for soul, in behalf of the sheep.

Now that word to give is not the term that's normally used of something like an offering of a sacrifice or something like that.

Instead, it emphasizes the fact that the individual engaging in the action is in control of the action.

This is something that the good shepherd does. It is really interesting in the providence of God just this afternoon.

I got an exceptionally lengthy BAPTINAP. That is the genetic thing that happens to Baptists on Sunday afternoons, and greatly lengthened when you're recovering from the flu.

When I got up, I noticed in our online chat channel that there was a gentleman who had introduced himself.

No one had really responded to him because generally on Sundays it's very quiet. He ended up being a

Pakistani Muslim living in the Dallas area. We ended up having a rather extensive conversation together.

One of the real issues, and it's good that we got to the main issues that came up, was this idea of the nature of Christ and his ability as the

God -man to give his life in behalf of the sheep.

This is really honestly the fundamental soteriological or gospel issue that exists between Christians and Muslims in regards to how we are made right with God.

It is the assertion on the part of the Christian faith that what is absolutely necessary is that God's law be fulfilled, and that this is what necessitates

Jesus being much more than a mere prophet. Here the good shepherd emphasizes the fact that he lays down.

He is the one laying down his soul, his life. Then the preposition that is used here is the preposition of substitution.

It is a preposition that would be utilized numerous times, especially in Paul's writings, to speak of the giving of Christ in behalf of his people, in behalf of those who have faith in him.

Can we push that preposition to an absolute proof text? No. But it is perfectly consistent in the sense that the good shepherd is giving his life in behalf of the sheep.

Now remember he is contrasting this then with what comes afterwards, and that is the hireling, the one who literally receives a wage, the one who is a wage receiver and not the shepherd, and the sheep are not his own.

He sees the wolf coming, and he is out of there. He abandons the sheep, he flees, and the wolf comes, and he snatches them, and he scatters them, because it is not a matter to the hireling concerning the sheep.

Now why would you have this entire section inserted here when

Jesus goes right back to this emphasis in verse 14, I am the good shepherd,

I know my own, and my own know me. It seems like a fairly lengthy detour to go right back to where you were, but I think it is important, not only again continuing that idea that there is a condemnation here of the

Jewish leaders who were not functioning as shepherds of Christ's sheep, but the point is that those who see the wolf coming,

Jesus knows what it is going to cost him to be the good shepherd.

He goes into this with full knowledge. He knows what the cost is going to be, and when it says because it is literally not a care to the hireling, that is what it says, it is not a matter to him, they are not his sheep, it is not a care to him concerning the sheep.

The emphasis therefore is that we are really transcending just the mere human shepherd and sheep relationship here.

That is what sort of lays the foundation for what we find in verses 14 and 15, which really takes us into the deep spiritual unity that exists not only between father and son, but between believers.

This is somewhat, if you are thinking ahead in the Gospel of John, this is somewhat of a preview of what we are going to see in John 17, where you have the discussion of what it means for the son to be in the father, and us to be in the son, and therefore our relationship with God and the very intimate relationship that exists there.

It is important to recognize that in so many of man's religions, there is nothing like this, nothing like this at all.

And yet, in mystic religions, where you have a tremendous amount of emphasis upon union with God and knowledge of God and things like that, what is missing from the mystical religions is the continued recognition and necessity of seeing that we are creatures of God, created by God, responsible before Him, and that we have individual value and responsibility before God.

That is what gets lost. In the mystical religions, union with God basically involves the absorption of yourself into the

One. In Christianity, you have the continued emphasis upon the reality of God as Creator, the reality of creation itself, the responsibility of mankind before God.

And yet, because of the amazing reality of the Incarnation, because of that one thing where the

Word becomes flesh, invades His own creation, you have something absolutely unique.

There just isn't anything like it. Even if you talk about alleged incarnations and polytheistic religions, there's just nothing that can be paralleled in any meaningful fashion with the

Christian faith and the Christian message when it makes these claims. And so, I am the

Good Shepherd, verse 14, and I know my own, and my own know me.

Now, that might seem a very simplistic statement. It might be, okay, what's that supposed to mean?

But you need to understand, here is where you have such a massive division between paganism and what it is we present to the world.

We do not present to the world an unknown God. We simply do not.

What we have is a known God who has made Himself known.

He has made Himself known in a, not just as a being far, far away, not just as a

God who thunders from Mount Sinai, but He has made

Himself known in such a way that I know my own, my own.

There is a sovereignty in that statement. He does not say,

I know those who have chosen me and allow me to know them. I saw,

I saw a, I even took a screenshot of it. This is a thing on a computer,

Pastor. And there literally was a, it could have just been,

I don't know, maybe you all tell me, maybe I was just being overly sensitive because I haven't been feeling well lately, but there was a red button above some

Jesus memes thing, I don't know what it was, but evidently

Facebook thought I'd find this wonderful, I don't know, but there was a red button to click.

Click here to accept Jesus now. Now this wasn't at the end of some kind of gospel presentation.

This was an advert. I mean, there was, you were clicking here to accept

Jesus. So we have clickbait evangelism going on on the computer.

And I was absolutely shocked by what I was looking at. How could someone think that this has anything to do with the intimate call of discipleship that is throughout the pages of the

New Testament? I know my own.

This relationship that Jesus has with his sheep is not a relationship that exists merely with a theoretical group.

Now again, I know sometimes the theological battles can become tiring.

But there's a reason why those before us have fought the theological battles that they have.

And I know sometimes Calvinists can be jerks. And I know sometimes,

I know there are lots of Calvinists that just like to run around drawing their theological swords and chopping up,

Well, we've been getting I don't know how many letters here at the church addressed to me from one fellow.

I opened up one. And you have permission, by the way, if you get any more from this guy. You can line the windows with him, whatever you want to do.

Insulation, it doesn't matter. But the very first line said, I know that you're famous for debating

Armenians. Some of you are going, what's wrong with that?

Well, I actually have never debated an Armenian. And I happen to know some Calvinistic Armenians, because Armenia is a country and Arminianism is a theological system.

And I sort of figure, if you're writing to challenge me to debate on that subject, if you don't know the difference between Armenia and Arminianism, it's probably not going to go really well in the long term.

And so there are Calvinists that just love to find somebody like that and just get that big old hunk and sort out and take off a few theological heads.

I understand all that. I get it. I get tired of the battles, too. But there is a reason why you always have to step back and go.

But there are certain things that remain extremely important. And one of these important things is this.

The doctrine of election requires that we believe that God sovereignly elects not just a group called the elect, but the individuals therein.

Now, our confession of faith says that. There's no way around that. But that's because there is a massive chasm of difference between saying that God has freely chosen to save and elect people.

And then what you do is you take a few steps back and say, and we basically get to choose who they are.

It's up to us. That's a very, very popular perspective. Very, very popular.

Big, big names promote that kind of a perspective. Because it can allow you to sound like you're very biblical while still holding to a very man -centered concept.

Well, what's the cost of that? I mentioned it briefly this morning. The cost of that is that the work of Christ becomes impersonal.

It becomes impersonal. And what I mean by that is that His work becomes that which makes possible the salvation of a nameless, faceless group.

And then we fill in the details as time rolls on.

Have you ever thought about the fact that when Jesus says, I know my own, that if you are one of His own, that means you have been foreknown and foreloved?

It's difficult for us to wrap our minds around eternity. It's difficult to wrap our very time -centered thinking around this.

But the scriptures are very plain. We have been foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified.

And when Jesus says the good shepherd knows his own, it's real easy for us to just simply leave that limited to the right now.

Once I buy my sheep card, then

Jesus gets to know me. Isn't that a privilege for Him? No.

I know my own, and my own know me. There is a personal relationship that is found here.

Now, I didn't exist when Jesus said these words. But the certainty of my existence was as certain as the decree of God in creating this universe.

And just as it can be said that we have been already seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, the certainty of what

God is doing in the gospel lies at the very root of the confidence that we can have that God is going to accomplish what

He said He's going to accomplish. It's a trendy theological thing for people to come up with the idea that the future is open, and it's a continued struggle, and you need to sort of sign up for God's side.

That sounds real good if you just want to have a God who sounds like the most recent political victor in a campaign or something.

But the biblical teaching simply cannot survive this kind of trendiness.

Jesus says that the Good Shepherd knows His own, and it's a reciprocal relationship between His own and Himself.

My own know me. Not just about Him. Not just about Him.

There is a danger, my friends. There is a danger in apathetic, non -passionate

Reformed theology. Have you looked at Europe? Have you looked at where Calvinism once was the very law and essence of the land?

Those are some of the most secular, rebellious, spiritually dead places on the planet today.

This faith is not passed on genetically. It is not passed on simply by doing the proper catechesis and reading the proper questions and having the proper statements of faith.

All those things are wonderful and good and proper. But knowing about Jesus is not the same thing as knowing

Him. And we've said it so many times before.

Do not think that... Well, you know, our pews...

God bless our pews. I wish I had seen them when they were all brown.

Some of you don't know that they were once chocolate brown. I'm not sure how they got that way, but I heard that it took a long time to get them no longer that way.

A lot of hard work. But there's almost something...

We'll have to call it semi -Puritan about our pews. Because we have one cushion.

Now, if we had two cushions, we couldn't even claim to be Puritan. Right? I think that's why we don't have one on the back.

Is that we can still read about the Puritans. We can still read about their two and a half hour long sermons.

And the people walking up and down the aisles. The big long things where you reach out and whack people on the head to keep them awake.

Because we have the backs of our pews. And so we sort of enter into that suffering of the people of God over time in that way.

But not in fullness. Because we have cushions.

And that pew... You may have noticed that Reformed Baptists tend to gravitate toward the same spot.

For example, there is a pew right there. That on the edge, half of it's brown and half of it's more blonde toward the back.

That's how Brick knows where he's supposed to sit on Sunday morning. Now, I'm not sure what happened with George this evening.

We're leaning... I'm sort of holding on like this. Because George is too far over to the side and the balance of the room has been completely lost.

But we sort of know where people end up. You know?

And it's funny, when people come, you just sort of walk in and you just look around.

And does God predestine you to a particular seat? I'm really not sure how that works. But we can become comfortable there.

And it's a wonderful thing to be able to look back over decades of faithful ministry and preaching and teaching in the church.

If, as you sit in that pew, what you're doing is you're truly hearing the

Word of God and desiring to be obedient. But that pew will never protect you from the fires of hell if you do not know

Jesus. You can go into hell knowing more about Jesus than anybody else in there.

You can go into hell knowing more facts about Jesus than half the people in heaven. It won't make any difference.

Unless you know Him. Not about Him. There is a particular word for about.

And it's not there. It doesn't say, my own know about me. It says, my own know me.

And then to emphasize that reality just as the Father knows me and I know the

Father. And I give my soul in behalf of the sheep using the exact same phraseology that had been used just up above.

And so, again, this is going to be expanded upon in John chapter 17.

We're not going to go there this evening, obviously. But twice in the

Gospel of John, Jesus emphasizes that the reality of His knowledge of His people, the personal nature of our knowledge of Him and His knowledge of us, is to be likened to His own relationship with the

Father. Now, if you're thinking about that, if you're thinking about that in your more honest moments, you're saying to yourself,

I don't know if that really describes my experience. Well, each one of us has to look at our experiences.

There's no question about that. But what we must realize is, you do not get to judge the truthfulness of Jesus' words by your experience.

The truthfulness of what Jesus says here is based upon the spiritual union that we have with Him.

We are indwelt by the Spirit of God. It is the Spirit of God who binds us to the

Son. He binds us to Him. It is through Him that our prayers are presented before the

Father. In John chapter 14, this is going to be brought out when Jesus says, I will come to you.

I and the Father will make our abode with you. How? By the presence of the Spirit in their lives.

And so, the temptation for some of us is to look at a statement like this, and maybe you've been in a period of apathy, lethargy.

I was FaceTiming with Clementine a couple days ago, and she was saying, yeah,

I'm feeling a little sick and lethargic. You're not four yet, and you're talking about,

I think she was trying to say allergic, but she said lethargic, so I ran with it. That's okay. That's alright.

Sometimes we experience that spiritually. And it's real easy then to look at this and judge the truthfulness of Jesus' words by what we are experiencing.

I'm not discounting the reality that we need to look honestly at our own hearts. Perhaps what I am saying is that we should recognize that the true basis of our union with Christ is found in the work of the

Triune God, not my feelings about it. Not my feelings about it. And so, the beauty of the promise in verse 15, can you imagine the

Son ever forgetting the Father? Can you imagine a disruption in the relationship of the

Father and the Son? There's a big controversy going on right now. A big controversy going on right now.

There is a bunch of big stuff going on at the Evangelical Theological Society, and stuff going on about what monogamous means, the term only begotten, unique, one of a kind, all sorts of stuff in regards to the eternal generation of the

Son, and all sorts of Trinitarian theology. But the funny thing is, from my perspective, it has little to do with the term monogamous.

If you want to see the real depth of biblical doctrine regarding the relationship of the

Father and the Son, it's right here. It's right here. And the term monogamous isn't even used in here.

Because you see, you must understand, Jesus is making a statement here.

He's making an analogy. And so, something must be taken as a given, and the given is the use of the term

Father and Son. Father and Son. Just as the

Father knows me, and I know the Father. What's being asserted there is an intimacy and a completeness of relationship.

One that's seen elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew. In what's called the Gospel of John in Matthew.

Because it sounds so much like John, but it's in Matthew. Where Jesus says, no one knows the

Son except the Father. And then there's the idea of the freeness that the

Father and the Son have in revealing these truths. And so here, what is being assumed here is the perfection of that relationship between the

Father and the Son. And given that, that means the sheep have just as much assurance that the shepherd will always know them, and therefore give his soul in behalf of the sheep, as they have assurance based upon the reality that Father and Son know one another, and have intimate relationship with one another.

Isn't that a lot different than so many of the

Christian theological systems that ground your relationship with God based upon performance.

Based upon what you do, who you are, what you've accomplished. There's a vast difference when you realize that in the

Christian faith, in the Christian faith, this is something God does.

We say it all the time. We emphasize it all the time. That the gospel is to the glory of God.

It's not about man. But what does that mean? How do you work that out? When you start looking at what the gospel actually accomplishes, when you look at how

God actually saves, this taking of this undeserved people, deserving of the wrath of God, just as anyone else, and this sovereign election of them, not based upon anything that they've done, the uniting of them with the

Son, being placed in Him. Ephesians 1.

What, Ephesians 1 in John chapter 10? Yeah, they're talking about the same things. And you consider the fact of that union with Christ.

In Him you have all these things. In Him you have all these things. There is no place left open whatsoever for any kind of human accomplishment.

Any kind of human sacramentology where we somehow control the grace of God. Any type of human boasting.

It's all wiped out. And what we're left with is a foundation that gives us the strength to face the most difficult tasks and the most difficult persecution and suffering this world could ever present to us.

It's totally different than the very popular forms of evangelicalism that exist in our land today.

And so we have the promise, Father knows me, I know the

Father. If you trust what Jesus said, we're so used to hearing this, but you've got to realize, this was a leap of faith.

These people, the Jewish leaders were saying, this man's a false teacher.

He's dangerous. He's leading you away from the truth. You had to believe what Jesus was saying.

I know the Father and the Father knows me. If you believe what

Jesus says about that, then you have to believe everything else. Everything that flows from it. And I lay down my life in behalf of the sheep.

Right there, in the midst of a discussion of union, knowledge, election, once again, soteriology, salvation, atonement, the giving of life in behalf of the sheep, because the sheep have a need.

The sheep have a need. It's not enough just to know, well, God knows me, because I know me too, and I've got a need.

He's going to meet that need. There's only one way of meeting that need. The way of meeting that need is that He gives

His life in their place, in behalf of the sheep.

Hopefully, both this morning and this evening, what you see is the tremendous balance and beauty.

Balance and beauty of the Christian gospel. So often we cut it up into little pieces, and we have our doctrine of God over here, and our doctrine of salvation over here.

They are so much fuller and more beautiful when they are held together and seen in their glory.

And this is a glorious, glorious passage. It truly, truly is.

Now, the text talks about the shepherd. And elsewhere in the

New Testament, the elders of the church are called under -shepherds.

Peter refers to fellow elders, fellow shepherds of the sheep, even as he, as one of the apostles, was told to feed

Christ's lambs and things like that. At this time, Dr.

White's message is complete, and he segues then into discussing local congregational business, which the staff of Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church believed was best left out of the final mix.