The Good Shepherd

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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Old Testament reading today is in Ezekiel 34 1 through 16. The word of the

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Lord came to me, son of man, prophecy against the shepherd of Israel. Prophecy and say to them, even the shepherds, thus says the

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Lord God, ah shepherds of Israel who have been feeding aren't yourselves. Should not shepherds feed the sheep?

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You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.

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The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you are not healed, you have not healed. The injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.

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So they were scattered because there was no sheep and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains, and on every high hill my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.

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Therefore you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts.

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Since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherd have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves and have not fed my sheep.

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Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God, before I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep.

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No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.

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For thus says the Lord God, Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out, as a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among the sheep, his that have scattered.

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So will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.

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And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land.

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And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the ravens, and in all inhabited places of the country.

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I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land.

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There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pastures they shall feed on the mountains of Israel.

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I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and lost, and I will, and I will strengthen the weak and the fat, and the strong I will destroy.

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I will feed them for injustice. The New Testament reading is 1st

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Peter 2 24 through 25. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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By his wounds you have been healed, for you were straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

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So as we are all aware, Pastor Tim has not been quite himself lately.

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Be in prayer for him. And as this situation kind of came up pretty quickly here, the elders decided that we needed to do something a little different.

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So we have, and I'd like to introduce to you, Brian Solomon, who is a friend of LaRue.

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And actually we have a little history, to be honest with you. When my kids were small, this young beautiful young lady came over to babysit our kids, and she would stay afterwards when

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Deb and I'd go and come back home and have a great date. She'd want to know how our date went. And one thing led to the next, and then two hours later,

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Naomi's mother would come and say, is Naomi still at your house? I'm just wondering.

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She's, you know, yeah, she's still here. We're talking about life. And so anyway, she came over and showed us her senior pictures and said that the photographer was very interested in what her future was.

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And anyway, because she was so beautiful, she should be a model.

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And she said, you know, I don't want to be a model, but you know, my mom has talked to me and told me, you know, but this is truly a gift of God, and if it gets me a great husband, then

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I'm good with that. Well, you must know how beautiful Naomi is, because Brian is her husband, and Brian is a great godly man.

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And so the Lord answered that prayer. We're very excited about that. Brian has been involved, and Naomi has been involved in Scioto Hills and leading there.

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He's also pastored at Southgate in Springfield as an assistant pastor there, and currently he is the state director of Capital Ministries, which is in Columbus, and he's looking to expand some of that ministry possibly into Colorado.

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So anyway, we've had connections with him and asked him to come and help us in our time of need, and he was very ready to do that.

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So I know that you will welcome him and just get to know him, and we will be led to the

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Lord, and we appreciate, Brian, you coming to do that. So thank you. Well, my wife, she does like to talk, and I love her, and she's not here this week so I can say the truth about her, and she is beautiful for sure, but of course

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I'm biased. So, but my poor wife, you can pray for her today. If she thought her good looks were going to get her a good husband, you can pray for her because her life definitely took a sideways turn for her.

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So it's good to be with you. Pray that our time together would be encouraging for all of us here, and as we dive into God's Word this morning, pray that His Word would speak truth into our hearts.

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And one of the things that I was praying specifically last night and then into the morning as I came up was that we would approach this very familiar text with fresh eyes.

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Oftentimes we come to the pages of Scripture, and if you've grown up in church or grown up in the faith, many passages are familiar to us, and this is one of them.

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But I pray that the familiarity of this passage wouldn't find our hearts dull, but that we would dive in and see some new things that maybe we've missed before.

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And so I pray that the text would be helpful for us this morning. Well, by way of introduction,

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I thought maybe I would do this. I've got a couple of slides here. This is my family. We've got four daughters.

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Our oldest, Allie, is 14, and then Claire is 12, Mia is 11, and Lydia will be 10 next week.

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And so the Lord certainly has a sense of humor. I'm the oldest of four boys, so having four girls was the furthest thing from my mind.

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And so obviously being outnumbered by all these ladies, I had to go buy a boy dog. And then that boy dog needed a therapy dog, so we got a new puppy too.

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So it is what it is. But yeah,

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I live in a world full of pink for sure, so I find solace in backpacking and camping.

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So I've got to do manly things. I've got to get out of the house just to keep my sanity.

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But no, I love my daughters. A couple years ago, after serving for about 13 years on staff at Southgate Baptist Church, I joined a ministry called

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Capital Ministries, and essentially I'm a missionary to political leaders. And for so long, there have been many ministries in our nation that have been pointed toward national leaders, but they tend to, from my point of view, miss the mark somewhat.

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So some of those ministries focus in on prayer, and certainly we need prayer in our nation's capital for sure.

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Many of those prayer efforts have degenerated into more ecumenical moments where you have, well, even more recently, a senator, or excuse me, a representative praised on the floor of Congress in the name of Brahma, or to the god of Brahma.

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Just awful things where the name of Jesus is actually devalued in those places.

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There's also been a movement toward Christian lobbying, and certainly we need Christians to lobby in our government, but that's not what we do.

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We are primarily Bible teachers. We lead expository Bible studies in the capitals.

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We lead legislators through God's word, verse by verse, and allow his word to have their way in their lives.

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And we believe that if a person's life is transformed by the gospel of Jesus, they'll live and legislate differently.

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And so we are viewing the landscape of politics less as a battlefield, but more as a mission field where people need the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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So that's what we're doing. Oftentimes I have the opportunity to open the

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Senate in Columbus in prayer. Funny story, last

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February I had a chance to open the House in prayer. And at the time, Representative Larry Householder, who was the

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Speaker of the House, who if you're following state politics at all, you'll know that he caught up, or was caught up in a $60 million bribe, and is now the subject of a pretty intense

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FBI investigation. Well, Speaker Householder was standing next to me as I was opening the session in prayer, and I was praying the essence of Philippians chapter 2, and that God would guard the hearts of the legislators there from any sort of selfish ambition.

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And I watched the prayer back afterwards, and as I'm praying that,

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Speaker Householder's eyes kind of go, and then went back down again. And I think the

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Lord was actually extending him a moment of grace, because even then he knew that he was caught up in something that was purely selfish.

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And God was giving him a way of escape even then, and yet he didn't listen.

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So we'll see what happens there. But God gives us opportunities to meet with legislators on Wednesday mornings in Columbus, and currently my wife and I were raising support with the hope of possibly launching a ministry at the

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Denver Capitol in Colorado. Colorado is a growingly dark place, culturally liberal, politically liberal for sure, but just people who are lost and need the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And so we're praying that God would raise up funds for us, and would make his will known to our family for this next leg of ministry.

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The founder of our ministry is Ralph Drolinger. If you've been around a while, some of you old -timers would recognize the name

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Ralph Drolinger. He played basketball at UCLA back in the 70s. He was the first NCAA basketball player to start in four straight

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Final Fours. Played for Coach Wooden there, and Ralph was 7 '2", and next to him

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I look like I'm 12 years old. So I was looking for a phone book to stand on before we took that picture, but who has phone books anymore?

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So, but Ralph and his wife Danielle started the Ministry of Capitol Ministries about 25 years ago in the

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Statehouse of California in Sacramento. And currently they lead, well they were leading several

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Bible studies in the nation's capital every week. There was a Monday study that he currently still leads with Congress.

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There's about 30 congressional members that come for this weekly Bible study. On Wednesdays there's a Senate study.

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On Tuesdays he was leading the first Bible study of its kind in over a hundred years. He was leading a presidential cabinet study.

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So every Tuesday in an undisclosed location, 11 of the 14 members of President Trump's cabinet will come for a

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Bible study. And so Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Housing Ben Carson and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Jim Bridenstine, the head of NASA, Sonny Perdue, the

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Secretary of Agriculture, and others would come faithfully for a 70 -minute Bible study and it was pretty pretty awesome.

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With the change of administration it should heighten all of our prayers for our nation's leaders.

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I don't believe that there is a God consciousness in this new administration and I would just pray that God would send faithful people to our government and point people toward Christ in those places.

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And so we should be praying evangelistically for our leaders in that way for sure. Well this morning we're going to be in John chapter 10.

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So if you have your copy of scriptures I'd invite you to turn to John 10. But before we do let's pause and pray and ask for God's help.

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Lord as we open your word I pray that you would find us faithful in the preaching and the hearing and then eventually the applying of your word.

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Lord I pray that you would guard me from error this morning and that you would guard the people from any sort of mental vacation, weariness, that we would all give attentiveness to your word here this morning.

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We need your help and so we pray for it in the name of Jesus. Amen. Well the deity of Jesus is a major theme in John's gospel and throughout this gospel we see over and over again

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John is presenting to us Jesus as the

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Son of God. That Jesus is in fact God. Jesus as the hypostatic union of two natures a hundred percent

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God and a hundred percent man coupled together in the person of Jesus.

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And so as we leave the gospel of John today even in this short snippet here of John chapter 10

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I pray that your heart would be gripped with the knowledge that Jesus is

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God. Jesus is God. That was not a message that was well received by the religious leaders of Jesus's day and many of his hearers this fact was lost on them as well.

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Mistakes and misconceptions abound all around us, right? There are misconceptions everywhere.

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I was reminded of a story recently of little boy named Tommy and Tommy was excited about this news that his family was going to receive a new, he was going to have a new brother or sister come.

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His mother was pregnant and so little Tommy was super excited and he was six years old and so in his first grade class he would announce often to his class and to his teacher that he was going to have a new baby brother or sister that was going to come to his house soon.

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Well one day Tommy's mother allowed Tommy to feel the movements of the unborn child in her belly and he would put his hand on his mom's tummy and there was movement inside of her womb and Tommy's eyes got big and but as weeks would go by the teacher noticed that Tommy stopped telling the class about this new baby brother or sister that would be coming to his home and so the teacher finally sat the boy on her lap and said,

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Tommy what's ever become of that baby brother or sister that you were expecting at home? And poor

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Tommy burst into tears and confessed, I think mommy ate it. Poor Tommy didn't have the life experience necessary to be able to process all that was going to happen with this new baby or brother coming to his home.

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He had a misconception. Often we have misconceptions about who God is, right?

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And sometimes those misconceptions are because we create caricatures of God.

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If you've been to a fair or circus or different places and oftentimes there will be an artist that would be drawing out caricatures and someone would come over and they would sit in a chair and the artist would look at this person and they would they would draw out this picture of this person but this caricature however will be based on one feature of that person and the artist would kind of over exaggerate that one feature of that person.

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I grew up in Denver, Colorado and the artists loved John Elway and oftentimes the newspapers would have caricatures of John Elway and John Elway of course was known for his big teeth and so the caricatures on the front page of the sports section would certainly take great liberties with John Elway's big front teeth on the paper.

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It was a caricature. Well we create a caricature of God sometimes and say well

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God is love, right? Of course he is. Sometimes we present a caricature of God to our neighbors and to our world where we highlight one attribute of God over another.

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We might say well God is all love. Well certainly he is. But God is also a righteous judge.

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He is. He takes sin serious. But sometimes we we highlight his attributes of justice over and above love and we portray an angry

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God who's looking to zap you every time you step out of line, right? And so for parents and grandparents trying to represent

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God to our children and grandchildren oftentimes we give to them a caricature.

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Well when we come to this section of the Gospel of John, people no doubt are wrestling through a caricature of who

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God really is. And John chapter 10 is helpful in allowing us to see the heart of God and particularly the heart of Jesus here.

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Well finding the right balance between work and rest has been one of the ever elusive realities of our human experience too.

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Some err on the all work and no rest extreme while some err on the all rest no work extreme.

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And both are wrong and not at all what God had intended for us. In Jesus's day the caricature of God was all based upon the conformity externally to the written word found in the

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Mosaic law. So there was great emphasis placed on work and not emphasis placed on faith and resting in the truth of who

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God is. Polar perspectives have consequently crept into our thinking as we relate to God as well.

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Most worldviews believe that our good deeds, our works, our laboring must outweigh our bad deeds in order to make it into heaven.

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Biblical Christianity teaches that the only way that we can approach God is on his terms and by his grace.

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God extends his grace and forgiveness to all people, not on the basis of our good works, but on the basis of his loving kindness.

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Ephesians 2 teaches us that for by grace are you saved through faith. It's not of your own doing, it's the gift of God, not as a result of work so that no one can boast.

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This has been God's plan of redemption since the beginning and then may manifest through the person of Jesus.

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Now we've deviated from God's plan and through the ages we've tried to impress

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God and others through our own brand of goodness. And as I look at the issues facing the church today, people are still erring on the extremes and in doing so we present to the world a caricature of God and his redemptive plan.

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Many young people are motivated by the injustices of our time.

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They throw themselves into all sorts of various forms of activism that's void of evangelism.

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Being connected at Southgate Baptist Church in Springfield, we're 12 miles north of Cedarville University and I'm amazed at how many college students,

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Christian college students, from this evangelical school are drawn toward issues of justice that are void of any sort of evangelistic thread.

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Conversely, many older Christians champion evangelistic efforts that are void of mercy efforts.

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It's important for the Christian to balance both gospel proclamation and demonstration.

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The two have to go together. The struggle for balance has defined the days in which

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Jesus lived too. The Jewish leaders of the day focused their teaching on living externally compliant lives, consistent with the

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Mosaic law and the traditions of their own customs. Everything they did revolved around the outward legalistic kind of living and they missed the fact that Abraham and the patriarchs were justified not by their doing and working and laboring but by their faith.

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They were justified by faith. God is not impressed in our doing and our complying with religious standards.

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I mean, after all, you all are fine upstanding Christians. In the era of COVID, you showed up at church this morning.

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How wonderfully compliant of all of you. And for those of you at home watching online, you tuned in this morning.

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Good job. And yet the measure of our faith is not based on external conformity to certain religious standards.

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No, we are justified by faith alone in Christ alone.

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God is deeply interested in our internal transformation that begins when we repent of our sin and place our faith and trust in Christ.

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And only then do we live our lives as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.

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So it's kind of a roundabout way of bringing us into John 10 this morning.

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But even before we get into John 10, it's important that we establish some sort of context before we just leap into John 10.

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John 10 is about smack dab in the middle of the Gospel of John. So it's it's halfway through John's Gospel, but it's only three months from the cross.

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And so as we come to John 10, we've got to understand some of the context around Jesus's words in John 10 so that we can feel the tension that is building as John leads us toward the events of the cross because there's a lot of drama surrounding

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John 10. And if we just go to John 10, we'll kind of walk away again with a caricature of Jesus.

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It's like, oh Jesus, that good shepherd. Oh, isn't Jesus just a kind, gentle man?

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He's kind of like that long -haired hippie who holds lambs. Oh, kind Jesus. We gotta be careful.

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We gotta be careful. And so we're gonna water ski through John chapter 9 to establish a bit of context, and then we'll walk through John chapter 10.

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We'll highlight some observations and some interpretations and, Lord willing, the applications that flow out of John 10 will be obvious.

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So speaking of obvious, there's gonna be a lot of Captain Obvious -like statements throughout this morning.

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And so we'll begin with this. Here's a good Bible study tip, right?

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Good Bible study begins with making good observations. We work with legislators in the

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Capitol. We work with people at our church, students and children even, helping them learn to study

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God's Word on their own. And as we work with folks, we try to communicate the importance of good

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Bible study habits. And so when we come to God's Word, we're looking for repeated words.

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We're looking for lists. We're looking for conditional statements, looking for words like if and then, and also looking for statements or ideas that are in contrast with one another.

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Good observations lead us to making better interpretation and application.

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So this morning we're gonna be making all sorts of observations surrounding contrasts.

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And this text is full of contrasts, so pay attention.

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All right. John chapter 9, and we'll go to John chapter 10.

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John chapter 9. So the setting of John 9 and 10 is actually sandwiched between two

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Jewish festivals. And so the Festival of Lights is called the, excuse me, the

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Festival of Dedication or the Festival of Booths and the Festival of Lights.

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Those are the two Jewish festivals that this context of John 9 finds itself in.

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John 9 and 10. Festival of Tabernacles or Booths took place in September and Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, notes that that this was the most popular of Jewish festivals.

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This Festival of Booths lasted for an entire week where people would live in makeshift booths or tabernacles.

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It was kind of like the precursor to this modern movement of RVing, you know, where people buy an

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RV and they drive toward a campground and they pull up and they camp out in this makeshift home for a weekend or a week or so.

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This was like that. And so the people would would come to Jerusalem and they would set up their tents.

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It was like a week -long camping trip with all of their friends and neighbors and they had a blast.

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It was a good time. It was one of the most popular of festivals or customs for the

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Jewish people. The festival lasted an entire week. They would look for ways to commemorate

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Israel's wilderness wanderings. There would be a lighting of huge candles in the women's outer court of the temple to demonstrate the

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Shekinah of glory, how God would lead his people in the wilderness by a pillar of fire at night and a pillar of cloud by day.

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Every day there would be different ceremonies that were prescribed and there would be a drawing out of water from the pool of Siloam.

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And every day at daybreak for the seven days of the feast, the priests would go down to this pool of Siloam and would fill these golden pitchers with water, containing about two and a half pints of water to be exact.

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And he was accompanied by a procession of people and musicians and on returning to the temple, he was welcomed with three blasts from a trumpet.

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And going to the west side of the great altar, he poured the water from the golden pitcher into a silver basin, which had holes in the bottom through which the water was carried off.

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And the ceremony was accompanied with songs and shouts from the people, the sound of trumpets.

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It's very formal. And each one of these things was to communicate different things that the nation endured and experienced in their wilderness wandering.

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That's the one festival. The second festival was the Jewish festival of lights or the festival of dedication.

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Most Jews call this the festival of Hanukkah, right?

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So this festival of Hanukkah, let me find my notes here,

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I'm all discombobulated. Essentially in 186 BC Antiochus Epiphanes, the

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Seleucid king, profaned the Jewish temple and forced the Jews to abandon their sacrifices and adopt pagan rituals.

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And so in 165, Judas Maccabeus led a revolt and they overthrew the Seleucids and reclaimed the temple.

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And according to their rabbinic traditions, when the Jews re -entered the temple, they could only find one small sealed jug of olive oil that had not been profaned or contaminated by the

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Seleucids. They used this to light the menorah in the temple. And though the oil was only enough to last one day, it miraculously lasted eight days.

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Time for more oil to be made ready. And this is the reason why Hanukkah lasts for eight days.

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John 9 and 10 take place right in between these two Jewish festivals.

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So that's the context culturally there. Now, John chapter 9.

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Many of you will remember this from your flannel graph studies in Sunday school way back in the day.

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And this is the story of how Jesus heals a blind man.

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Verse 1 of chapter 9. As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him,

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Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

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And Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

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We must work the works of him who sent me while it's day. Night's coming when no one can work.

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And as long as I'm in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said these things, he spit on the ground and he made mud with the saliva.

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And then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam.

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What else was happening at the pool of Siloam? Well, during this festival, there was a huge formal procession with trumpets and golden pitchers and drawing water out from the pool of Siloam so that it might be ceremonially poured out there in the temple.

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And Jesus says to this man, go wash in the pool of Siloam.

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And Siloam, which means sent. So he went and washed and he came back seeing.

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The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, isn't this the man who used to sit and beg?

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Some said, yeah, it's him. Others said, no, but it's like him.

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And he kept saying, no, I'm the man. So they said to him, then how are your eyes opened?

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And he said, the man who is called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash.

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So I went and I washed and received my sight. And they said to him, well, where is he? And he said,

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I don't know. So they brought the Pharisees, brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind and now it was the

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Sabbath. And when Jesus had made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight.

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And he said to them, he put mud on my eyes, kind of. Is that really what happened?

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He put mud on my eyes? Again, let's come to this text with fresh eyes.

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What did Jesus do exactly? He spit on the mud or in the dirt, made mud and put it up on the blind guy's eyes.

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Now, in the era of COVID, how would that make you feel? Somebody walks in here and hawks are looking.

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Many of us would be like, whoa, especially some of us who were COVID crazy. Whoa, makes me nervous.

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I don't know if I can do that. Right? Jesus does something very unclean and he makes mud and he slaps it on this guy's face and says, hey, go wash this mud off your face.

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This is incredible. In last June, I had a cornea transplant surgery in my left eye.

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About four years ago, I got in the shingles virus and the virus actually crept down under my face and then it just kept on going and actually got into my eye and really just tore up my cornea to the point where I was legally blind.

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I had gone from 20 -20 vision in my left eye to where I was seeing 2 ,200 over 20.

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It meant that I wasn't seeing anything out of my left eye. Praise the

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Lord. One thing led to another and I was referred to a corneal specialist in Cincinnati at the

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Cincinnati Eye Institute. It turns out this guy is one of the pioneers in his field and is a world -renowned corneal specialist.

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Imagine if I had walked into his office and he said, hey, Brian, just hold on right there.

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I'm going to go outside, grab some dirt. I'm going to spit in this dirt and throw it up on your eye. I'm going to tell you to go wash it. You know what?

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That cornea is going to be made new. I would have said, yeah, right. But what this cornea specialist actually did was take a cornea from a cadaver, a healthy cornea, from an organ donor, and he did what's called a

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DALC procedure. They went in and they cut out the damaged portion of my cornea and they dropped in a new cornea and they sutured it together.

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And then they injected an air bubble underneath all of the layers of the cornea to kind of press it together.

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And then they sent me home. I still have 12 stitches in my eye.

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You wouldn't be able to see them. It's remarkable what happens. And although it's remarkable what modern medicine can do, never in the history of the world has a man's eyes been opened who was born blind.

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That has never happened. It's never happened. Jesus heals this man.

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Then they take this man to the Pharisees. They tell the Pharisees what had happened. And the Pharisees said, Jesus did what on the

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Sabbath day? He did a work on the

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Sabbath day? This is blasphemy! Now there are misconceptions all the time.

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There are misconceptions about God, the caricatures that we had just talked about. And then there's just flat out willful rejection of the truth.

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John, in his thesis of the Gospel of John, in John chapter 20, says that these things are written so that you may know and believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God. John says that there are many other things that I could have included in this book, but I didn't.

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But what is here is enough. And for the witnesses of this miracle who lived in that day, and the

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Pharisees who were so caught up in this legalistic, externally conformity to the traditions of Moses, they missed the

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Messiah who was right there. If we had time, we'd walk through the rest of John chapter 9.

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We see that the rhetoric and the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees are escalating to the point where the

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Pharisees are calling Jesus a demon.

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They're saying that he's demonic. Imagine that. That's offensive to us who know

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Jesus as Savior and Lord. He's demon -possessed.

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At the end of John chapter 2, they just say he's flat out insane. Jesus is communicating through his words and his works that he is

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God. The tension is rising. Again, we're three months now away from the cross.

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And in the midst of this intense back and forth with the religious leaders who have just called him demonic,

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Jesus says in verse 1 of chapter 10, he says, This figure of speech

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Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So Jesus again said to them,

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I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

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The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

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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 does not own the sheep, he sees the wolf coming and he leaves the sheep and flees and the wolf snatches them and scatters.

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He flees because he's a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd.

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I know my own and my own know me. Just as the Father knows me and I know the

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Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep, and I have other sheep that are not of this fold,

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I must bring them also. And they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd.

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For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

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I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my

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Father." There again was division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, he has a demon and is insane.

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Why are we listening to him? And others said, these are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon.

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Can a demon open the eyes of the blind? There's really three parts to this good shepherd discourse here.

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And each part has a shepherd -sheep interplay or interconnection.

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The first part, Jesus is communicating to his hearers that he is the true shepherd.

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And the second part, he is communicating to his hearers, to the sheep, that he's the gate or the door.

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And the third part is that he is indeed the good shepherd.

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As the true shepherd, Jesus is communicating the quality or the kind of shepherd that he is.

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Distinct from the kind of shepherds that the religious leaders of the day claimed that they were.

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In part two, Jesus communicates that he is the door or the gate of the sheepfold.

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We're going to talk about that in a moment. And third, the kind and quality again of the shepherd as good.

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Jesus is good. We're going to see that here. So the good shepherd discourse, part one, the true shepherd.

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Now in order to get a world full of competing truth claims, Jesus is the true shepherd.

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Verse one, truly truly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs it another way, that man is a thief and a robber.

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But he who enters the door is the shepherd of the sheep. Now, any full -time shepherds here?

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Any full -time sheep herders? Nobody? I'm not one either.

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And so everything that I've learned about sheep, I've read and I've studied out. And so there's this term that scripture uses here called a sheepfold.

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And a sheepfold essentially is a pen of sorts. And what I've read and what

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I've studied is that there's two kinds of sheepfolds that are noteworthy. One is the kind of sheepfold that would be out in the country and the sheepfold that would be in town.

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Out in the country, as a shepherd would be leading their sheep to different pastures from one place to another, oftentimes the shepherd would have to find a safe place to bed the sheep down at night.

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And so the shepherd would try to find a cave or an alcove of sorts and then would construct this kind of pen around the front side of this cave.

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And this pen would be made of like thorns and thistles and would create sort of like this front fence to protect the sheep from themselves from wandering out at night.

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And then also protect from any sort of wolf or predator or lion or tiger or bear, oh my, who might come in to take the sheep, right?

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And there would be this little gap in the front part of that makeshift thistle -y fence pen thing, this little gap where the sheep could go in and out and the shepherd would actually sleep across that one place.

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And so that the only way to get in or out of the sheepfold was through that one spot and the shepherd had to guard it.

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Jesus says, truly, truly, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in another way, that man's a thief or a robber.

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He who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him, the gatekeeper opens and the sheep hear his voice and he calls out his own sheep by name and leads them out.

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And when he's brought out all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow but they will flee from him for they do not know the voice of strangers.

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Jesus is communicating to the people of Israel, communicating to the religious leaders of Israel.

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The blind man and his parents are still there. Everyone is hearing this and Jesus says, hey, there's a big contrast between me and them.

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They claim to be shepherds of Israel and they're not. The Old Testament reading, if you recall, was an indictment against the religious leaders of Israel for not shepherding the sheep in the way that God had intended.

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And Jesus says, I'm the true shepherd. I'm the one who is different from them.

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I'm the one who can do the job that they can't do. I'm the shepherd who brings about life.

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They're the ones who are looking to oppress you. Jesus is drawing out a huge distinction between him and the leaders of the day.

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Jesus is the true shepherd. I had an interesting conversation with a pediatric ear, nose, and throat specialist a couple of years ago when my daughter was having her tonsils and adenoids taken out.

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The physician was from India, a fantastically skilled physician at Dayton Children's.

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I had a chance to interact with him several times before the surgery itself. He had asked me questions about what

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I do for a living. Of course, any time a pastor tells anybody what they do for a living, there's all sorts of different sort of reactions that come to that, right?

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And so, in this last and final visit before surgery, Dr. Elleroo asked me, he says to me,

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Dad, do I understand that you Christian pastors receive some sort of call from God to be a pastor?

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I said, well, yes, that's true. I said, but before you can understand that call, you've got to understand

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God's general call to all men to come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

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And so, God invites everyone into a relationship with him through faith in his son, Jesus. And he says, well, so is it true in your faith tradition?

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He asked me several questions, and I stopped answering those questions, and I asked him a question. I said, well, now, knowing that he's from India, more than likely

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Hindu, polytheistic, he comes from a many -God perspective, Christianity comes from a monotheistic point of view, that we believe in one

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God. I knew there's a huge clash of thinking already. And I said, so in your faith tradition, what do you believe about God?

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He said, well, I'm in an interesting place in my life. He says, I'm a non -practicing

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Hindu, and my wife is a non -practicing Jew, and I've got all sorts of questions in my life.

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He says, you know, the problem I have with Christianity is that it feels so, and I knew exactly where he was going, so, and I said, narrow?

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Exclusive? Almost condescending, right, to say that there's only one way to God?

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He said, yeah. I said, isn't that the very nature of truth? In order for something to be true, something else has to be untrue.

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You can't have two mutually exclusive truth claims be true at the same time.

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One has to be true, and one has to be false. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

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No one comes to the Father except through me. Either that's right, or your polytheistic worldview is right, but they both can't be right at the same time.

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And he says to me, you know, you're a little bit more philosophical than some of the Christians I know. He said, maybe we should grab coffee sometime.

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I said, yeah, we should do that. In a world full of competing truth claims, Jesus is the true shepherd, and he can be trusted.

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Friends, study out the claims of Jesus, and you'll find that you can camp your life on them. They are rock solid.

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Rock solid. In part two, Jesus says that he is the gate, or the door.

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Jesus is the only gate by which people can enter into God's provision of salvation for them.

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Now after this first part, they didn't understand what Jesus was saying. He was using this figure of speech, so he goes on to the next one.

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And he says to them, again, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.

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All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.

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I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.

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The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

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Jesus is the only way a person can have salvation. It's only through Jesus.

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And Jesus is communicating in this sheepfold, shepherd, sheep sort of way, that the only way to get into the fold is through the shepherd.

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It's through him. Jesus is the only gate by which people can enter into God's provision of salvation for them.

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The third part of this figure of speech that Jesus is using to communicate to these people is that he is good in contrast to those false shepherds, fake shepherds, who are not good.

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Verse 11, Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

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He who is a hired hand and is not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and he leaves the sheep and he flees.

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And the wolf snatches them up and scatters them. He flees because he's a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

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I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.

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Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, I lay down my life for the sheep.

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We know that Jesus is the good shepherd by the way that he knows and cares for his sheep.

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Again, this caricature of Jesus, long -haired hippie Jesus who holds lambs, right?

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All kind Jesus, right? It's quite a bit different than the kind of Jesus who sees the wolf coming head on or the bear coming head on and he meets this predator head on and he fights for his shepherd or for his sheep so that they might follow the shepherd into life.

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That's quite a bit different than long -haired hippie Jesus. Can't we all just get along and sing

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Kumbaya? We hear that a lot at the Capitol. We just want to pray. We just want to get along, have unity.

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Jesus is the embodiment of love for sure. Jesus is the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep willingly, but he's the kind of shepherd who protects and fights for his sheep.

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The scriptures tell us right now that Jesus is interceding on our behalf right now as the good shepherd.

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Doesn't that bring you hope, comfort to know that our shepherd is interceding for us now?

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Pray that your hearts would have a renewed affection stirred and directed toward Jesus, our good shepherd.

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Alright, let's land this plane here. There's a lot that we could say about this. Four things that I think are important to walk away from this text.

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One is the knowledge that you are loved and cared for.

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In verse 11, verse 14, verse 18 communicates that the shepherd loves us, loves us.

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The atonement, the doctrine of atonement teaches this. The doctrine of atonement says that there's this great exchange that Jesus has actually imputed his righteousness to me.

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When I express saving belief in Jesus Christ, I've repented of my sin, I savingly believe in Jesus Christ.

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Scriptures say that Christ's righteousness is now imputed to me.

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That my sin was placed on Jesus and his righteousness was placed on me so that when

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God sees me, he sees me through the lens of Jesus, right? That's what the doctrine of atonement teaches.

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But I've got to be honest with you, some days I don't think that I am loved by God. I feel like I am tolerated by God.

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There are some days, some days I feel like God isn't looking through Jesus at me.

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It's kind of looking around Jesus at me, right? Paul says in Romans, why don't

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I do the things that I want to do? And I don't do the things that I really want to do? Oh, what a wretched man that I am.

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Who will deliver me from this present body of darkness? Now some of us though don't wrestle with that.

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Some of us wrestle with self -righteousness and say, of course the shepherd loves me.

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I'm awesome. Why wouldn't the shepherd want somebody like me in his pen, right?

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I mean, look at these other morons in the pen. I'm pretty awesome. I'm pretty good.

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And so we kind of err on either extremes of that spectrum there.

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But the fact of the matter is this. As a Christ follower, you are loved by God.

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You are loved by the shepherd. And you take it to the bank. Next, according to this passage, verse 4, verse 14, and verse 27, we are known.

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Have you ever had a meeting with a friend, maybe a lunch or a coffee, and it's a good friend, not an acquaintance, and you walk away from that meeting just full of life because you, it's like, man, that person just gets you.

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They know you. That coffee, that breakfast, that dessert, that meal, whatever that you just had with that friend was just sweet because they know you as you, not the sort of Facebook social media filter that you project onto the world, but they know you.

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This is the kind of knowledge that the Savior has for us. That intimate experiential knowledge of who we are.

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Friends, we are loved by the Savior and we are known by the

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Savior. And so in those days where I feel like God is looking around Jesus at me,

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God knows me, warts and sin and all.

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He gets me like nobody else. He still loves me. It's an amazing thing.

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Third, here's the Captain Obvious statement of the morning. You ready? As Christ followers, we are followers.

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As a Christ follower, as a sheep who is in the sheepfold of Jesus, we follow the sheep.

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Now, it's an interesting thing, this whole shepherd, sheepfold, gate thing, this little narrow entrance and exit.

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When the shepherd would take the sheep into town, there would be one pen set up and all of the sheep would go in and one shepherd would bring their sheep in and another shepherd would bring their sheep in and another shepherd would bring their sheep in.

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There would be many sheep from different flocks in the same pen and there would be a hired hand who would guard the sheep for the night.

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Then the shepherd would go in and go take a bath because they've probably been out in the fields a while. They would go eat, sleep.

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The next morning the shepherd would come out. But all these sheep are intermixed with one another.

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How do they know, how do they know which shepherd they should follow?

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It's pretty remarkable. So the shepherd would go to the sheepfold in the morning and he would call for them.

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One shepherd would go over there and another shepherd would come over here and would just call them by name.

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And the sheep would go to the shepherd because they knew the voice of the shepherd.

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They trusted the voice of the shepherd and they had no problem following the voice of the shepherd.

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You see shepherding, Near Eastern shepherding, is quite a bit different than Western cattle driving. The cowboys of the

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West would herd their cattle from point A to point B in kind of a U -shaped formation behind the cattle and they would hoot and holler and drive their cows from point

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A to point B. Near Eastern shepherding, the shepherd would walk out in front of their sheep and they would call them, follow me.

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It's a distinction of leadership. Parents, grandparents, how are you leading your kids?

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Are you driving them like a cattle driver? Are you leading them like a shepherd?

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It's a lesson in church leadership too. Elders, deacons, how are you leading the people here?

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Are you driving them or are you walking out in front of them? Are they following you because they trust you or because they're afraid of you?

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As Christ followers, we are followers. We can know the voice of the

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Savior and follow him with confidence. And then finally, we're protected. In this world, this world there are dangers and pitfalls on all sides.

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To where shall we find refuge and shelter? Only with the shepherd, the good shepherd,

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Jesus. Friends, if you're here today and you don't know Christ as Savior, you have no shepherd. You have no protection in this world or the next.

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Yet Jesus offers us protection in this life. The scriptures tell us that we are invited to an eternal hope, an inheritance in heaven someday when we die, when we place our faith and trust in Jesus as the good shepherd.

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So friends, walk away with the knowledge of this this morning, that you are loved, known, that you are a follower of the shepherd, and you're protected by him.

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And that should give you a little spring in your step this week as you go from here to there with the knowledge that our shepherd is good and you can trust him.

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Friends, let's pray. Lord, thanks for your word. Thanks for Jesus. Thanks, Lord, that you haven't left us to our own devices, but you have preserved your word through the ages.

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And it gives us great hope and comfort because it's true. Lord, help us as we leave this place.

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Help us to order our steps after the shepherd. Rescue us from our own futility of thinking and living.

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I pray that you would enable us to stay close to Jesus this week as we leave here.