Is Jesus Your Shepherd? - [John 10:1-11]

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Our message this morning is coming from John chapter 10. We're going to be looking at Jesus the shepherd.
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Last week you heard Pastor Mike preach on 1st
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Corinthians 6 on litigation in the church. Two weeks ago you heard the message from Pastor Steve on 1st
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Timothy 5 on elders. So those of you who are visiting here and are not so sure how this all adds up to expository verse by verse preaching
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Pastor Mike is going through the book of 1st Corinthians. Two weeks ago he was at a funeral in the family.
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This week he is shepherding a bunch of BBC sheep in Israel and when he comes back he will continue with 1st
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Corinthians. But if you are looking to see how the 1st Timothy and John how they were preached expository verse by verse you'll need to start coming to the evening services and probably even to the
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Sunday schools where Pastor Steve has been preaching and I have as well. And especially if you come this evening you get the added privilege of seeing the book of James also being preached.
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So more on that as we finish today. But today's message is entitled,
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Is Jesus Your Shepherd? Is Jesus Your Shepherd?
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When you think of the term shepherd for all of us a lot of images flow through our mind.
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Even the littlest one has some picture of God as our shepherd.
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There is something warm and fuzzy and comforting about the term shepherd. Many of you who went last week through some trials some difficult spots would have thought of God as your shepherd either leading you or guiding you or protecting you from those particular circumstances in which you were.
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So the Bible as you know has a vast imagery with this term shepherd.
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We will see a few of those references this morning and my goal, my purpose this morning is to add a few more paint strokes to brush that picture you have of the shepherd just a little richer so that when you come to Jesus and as you worship him as your shepherd you will be filled even more with what the scriptures say about Jesus your shepherd.
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And as you know who this Jesus is as your shepherd my desire is that you will follow him as his sheep.
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That you would follow him with that commitment and with that passion and with that desire that all of us ought to have when our sins have been washed white as snow by this shepherd.
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So I would like you to turn with me to John chapter 10 and as you are turning there I want to mention something very briefly.
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John chapter 10 comes after John chapter 9. John chapter 9 is actually integrally tied with John chapter 10.
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So as you are studying John 10 never forget to go back to John 9 and understand what went on there.
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In John chapter 9 you have an event that happened that was a powerful almost cataclysmic event in Israel and then
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Jesus is now speaking in the context of what that event refers to.
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Let me very briefly talk to you about John 9 and then we'll get into John 10. In John 9 you have a beggar a man who was born blind.
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In ancient Israel there was really no cure for such a person. He would just have to die in his blindness.
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And yet Jesus comes down to him and heals him of his blindness.
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This blind man now has his sight restored. Nobody can make out what happened.
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And so you have the leaders trying to figure out is this a genuine healing or is this a scam? They try to interrogate this person his parents, the people around.
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There's no walking around it. This man was genuinely healed. And so the leaders now come to the source of the healing.
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They say who healed this man? They find out it is Jesus. And Jesus always causes a little problem because he heals on the
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Sabbath. And the leaders don't like that. So they now have to find some way to discredit
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Jesus of this healing. And so there goes on a huge drama in this court that these leaders set up.
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And the end of the drama is that this man who was healed of his blindness is kicked out because he would not call
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Jesus a sinner but rather would credit Jesus for the healing. And the story ends beautifully if you can just look to the last few verses of John 9 where Jesus comes back to this blind man who now has his sight restored.
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And now he gives him spiritual sight. This man bows his knee to Jesus Christ as his
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Lord and as his God. And the end of the last few verses are powerful because the
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Jewish leaders look at what's going on and when Jesus talks about how he restores sight to the blind and how the blame rests on those who call themselves that they can see,
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Jesus comes and tells them, since you cannot see the Messiah in front of you since you cannot see the truth so obviously and yet you would not acknowledge your blindness, your guilt remains.
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And there is a condemnation on the leadership in Israel as chapter 9 closes. So this is the context and Jesus is probably still on the scene with the blind man, with these
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Pharisees and everybody else watching while Jesus is now teaching from John chapter 10.
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He is now giving a discourse. Let me read a few verses in John chapter 10 just to set that so you can get the context of what our passage is.
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Jesus says, truly truly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.
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But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
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When he has brought out all his own he goes before them and the sheep follow him for they know his voice.
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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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Let us pray. Dear God our heavenly father as we open your word and as we hear what you have to say, be exalted
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O Lord in our midst and we pray that you would speak to each and every one here from your word changes as was prayed before by your
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Holy Spirit. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So when we think of sheep and shepherds, there's a lot of pictures that come into our mind as I mentioned before.
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What are some of the scriptures that come to your mind? The first one that should come to most of our mind is
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Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. God portrays himself as the shepherd of his people, the one who leads them out.
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And the entire Old Testament and even the New Testament is peppered with many references to God as shepherd and we as the sheep of his pasture.
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There is one particular passage in the Old Testament that we may not be that familiar with but we need to reference because I think
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Jesus does have that in his mind when he's preaching here and that comes from Ezekiel 34.
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We don't need to turn there. We will look at it later this morning. In Ezekiel 34 it has parallels in a few other passages in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Zechariah 11 but in Ezekiel 34
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God talks to the leaders of Israel in Ezekiel's time. He says you know these shepherds who are given the sheep have not taken care of it so they have abdicated their responsibility.
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The sheep have started to scatter and God himself is going to come and return as the shepherd and he's going to appoint one specific shepherd and we will see how that points to the
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Messiah who is to come. And when you think of shepherd we think of God because God is the shepherd.
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He is the leader of his people but God also talks about people that he appoints leaders under him as shepherds.
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So we saw in Ezekiel 34 some of them were false but many of them were true. They would follow
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God and therefore lead the people. Obviously if the shepherd is the leader the sheep is referring to the people of God.
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And here in the end of John chapter 9 you have the Pharisees that Jesus is talking to and these
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Pharisees have failed in their qualifications as shepherds and that is what
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Jesus is pointing out pointedly but what is even more radically dangerous is that these
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Pharisees are not even the sheep in the flock at all as you will see later in John chapter 10.
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The term pastor in our church today it actually means shepherd. So God has appointed leaders in the church today to shepherd his people.
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In our message this morning we will not be focusing specifically on the New Testament pastor.
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Instead what we're going to look at is Jesus as the shepherd and we will see how he stands up against these false teachers that go about as leaders in today's church.
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So if I had to give you a key cheat sheet the good shepherd in our passage is
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Jesus Christ. The thieves, robbers and strangers we will encounter those are agents of the devil these are the false teachers in the churches and then the sheep refers to the elect people specifically the
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Jewish people and eventually the Gentiles which is all of us as well. So the theme of this passage is
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Jesus leads believers and believers will follow. They will listen to the shepherd.
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So the question back again is is Jesus your shepherd and if so let's see one specific attribute that the
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Bible gives us about this shepherd and I call this Jesus the shepherd enters uniquely.
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He enters uniquely by the ordained door. Let me read the first two verses as we get into our text.
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Truly truly I say to you he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way that man is a thief and a robber but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
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We are going to look at this in three different steps. First we are going to look at what it meant to shepherding.
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How was first century shepherding done so we can understand what Jesus is referring to.
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Then we will look at the specific context in which Jesus is speaking to these Pharisees and the blind men and the rest of the
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Israelites and then we will step back and look at what this means to our churches today. What does it mean to you that Jesus is the shepherd and what ought you to do because of that.
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So let's look at the imagery in these first two verses. Jesus is talking about a sheepfold.
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A sheepfold is a place where all sheep come together and typically you would have four walls.
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These walls could be independent walls like something out in the field or more likely in this particular verses it's talking about three walls that are attached to a house.
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So you have a house and a yard, a courtyard and that courtyard is now bounded by three walls where you can keep your sheep.
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We also see that this sheep will have a door and we will see a little bit more about it in the next verses.
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But Jesus is pointing out something very specific in the sheepfold. He's saying some people will climb in through another way whereas some will walk in through the door.
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It is the entry into the sheepfold that Jesus is pointing in these two verses. Some will climb in whereas some will come straight.
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Who are the people who can enter any sheepfold? Obviously the owner, the shepherd can always enter directly through the door.
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The person who has the right to come in will come boldly where everybody can see him whereas those who do not have that authority will sneak in.
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When the gatekeeper is sleeping in the night they will climb in over the wall and their goal we will see is to steal.
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It is only the thieves who come in who do not have the authority to steal the sheep. So that's what happened in first century
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Israel when you shepherd sheep. So what is Jesus doing when he is applying this to the people in front?
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If you look at verse 6, John writes this. 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. Sometimes when
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Jesus speaks it's a little problematic. Many of you know Jesus uses parables. A parable is a picture that Jesus paints of an earthly story and it has a spiritual meaning and there is one particular point of that parable.
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But John chapter 10 is even more confusing because it is not a simple parable like the ones you get in the rest of the synoptics.
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It's more like John 15 when Jesus talks about the vine. So this whole shepherdry image is not necessarily one story with one particular application like a parable.
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It's almost like you have many parables, many different images. The best term you want to use when you interpret
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John chapter 10 is symbol, symbolic. Throughout the gospel of John you have these symbols that Jesus uses that have a connection.
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And as you read through John chapter 10 you will see that sometimes Jesus is the shepherd, sometimes he is the door and sometimes when you talk about the wall or even the gatekeeper they may not necessarily have any particular application.
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So the way in which you interpret this passage has to be very carefully done and even in first century people had trouble understanding it.
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So what did it mean in first century Israel? So the sheep that Jesus is referring to obviously are the
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Israelites who would believe in him. These are the elect that God is talking about. But the thieves and robbers,
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Jesus actually contrasts very clearly. These are not the shepherd because the shepherd is the one who walks through the door.
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But who are they? They climb in. But who are they? Jesus has in mind the leaders of the
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Jewish people that he has just confronted. And when you think of the Jewish leadership in Jesus' time, you have two extremes.
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The one that are specifically mentioned in John chapter 9 are the Pharisees. These were legalists who did have a regard for the word of God but they would add something else to it.
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They would enforce their own rules. And on the other extreme you have the Sadducees who did not regard the word of God as important.
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In fact these were actually mostly priests who served in the temple and they made a lot of money out of that process and they were materialists.
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They didn't really care. They didn't even believe in the resurrection as we will see in the New Testament. And all they cared about was the present life.
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They wanted to have a good life, make a lot of money, have a lot of toys, and if I die with the most toys,
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I'm happy. And so should you. And that was the teaching of one of these groups of leaders in Israel.
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And this was so far out that Jesus doesn't even have to deal with them as much. But these guys, the
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Pharisees, who claimed to believe in God's word but kept adding things to it, they were the more dangerous ones and Jesus would deal with them more explicitly.
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What are some of the issues with these leadership? I'm going to pick up a couple of verses from the
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New Testament so you can just have these in your mind as you think about Pharisees and Sadducees. Even before Jesus comes on the scene in Matthew 3, 7, as John the
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Baptist is preaching repentance, some of these leaders get convicted and they start coming out and John has scathing words for them.
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He calls them, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come.
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Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. So what John has in mind is don't continue your empty professions but your lifestyle which is incompatible with what you're teaching, that has to change.
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If you genuinely believe in the message of repentance I have, you need to show it by a changed lifestyle.
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If not, you can't just hide from the judgment that is to come and this is to Pharisees and Sadducees who were condemned by John the
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Baptist. And then Jesus in Matthew 16, 6, he talks about another aspect of the problem for these leaders.
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He said to his disciples, watch and beware of the leaven of the
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Pharisees and Sadducees. When he talked about the leaven, we see in that passage later, he was talking about the teaching of the
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Pharisees. So not just were their actions problematic, what they taught was problematic as well.
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Especially when you think of the Pharisees, their teaching was they had a lot of dough that you used to make bread, but they would add a little yeast into it.
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And this yeast that got added to the dough of God's word was so powerful that it would permeate the rest of the yeast and it would cause it to be something other than what it should be.
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So it should be a flat unleavened bread, but now you have a nice warm, fluffy bread. That was not
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God's purpose. And these men by adding their yeast would corrupt the dough of God's word.
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And how they did this, we see in Matthew 23 further, they tie up heavy burdens, which are hard to bear, lay them on people's shoulders.
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And the reason they would do this is that they can fulfill all these deeds and rules that they made themselves and look good before others.
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They like the best places in the feast. They like to be greeted and they like to have their phylacteries and their fringes long.
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They wanted to be showing off their human achievements and that's how this yeast had corrupted their teaching.
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Now, so that's a broad context of the leadership that Jesus has in mind when he talks about thieves and robbers who have crept in.
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Now, why does Jesus use the term thief and robber? When a thief comes into your house, hopefully he comes in when you're not at home.
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And they normally stake out, make sure that this person is going on a vacation and then they would steal whatever you have in your house and go away.
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The goal is to come stealthily, steal and escape. When you think of a robber, these are the guys who stick you up in the dark alley at night.
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You know, he has a gun or a knife. He wouldn't mind using it if you wouldn't part with your wallet. They would get into a bank and have a weaponry to, you know, force their will upon the tellers and get their money out.
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So they would not hesitate to use violence. And Jesus uses both these terminology here to say these leaders have come in stealthily into the leadership position.
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But once they are here, they do not, they're not shy of harming the sheep over which they have authority.
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In fact, in Ezekiel 34, you will see that these false leaders were fleecing.
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They were feeding on the sheep and they were not at all concerned. And they were destroying the sheepfold of God.
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Now in contrast to these thieves and robbers, Jesus, in verse 2, says, he enters by the door as the shepherd of the sheep.
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He does not, he brings in the pure word of God.
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He demonstrates by his life the power of God's word in his own life.
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But there is something even more unique that Jesus points to. He says, the shepherd comes in through the door.
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He comes in as ordained by God. There is one specific way in which the leader of Israel is to come and Jesus has come that way.
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What is this way that Jesus is pointing to? In fact, if you look at your Bible, the entire
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Old Testament is filled with many references to Jesus Christ. Right from the beginning of Genesis all the way to the last book of the
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Old Testament and you carry that all the way through to the book of Revelation. It is all about Jesus Christ.
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Let me give you a few verses so you can just understand who this shepherd is. How is it that he has come in through the
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God ordained door as the leader of his people? Right at the beginning, God created
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Adam and Eve. They did not have sin. They could have continued in paradise forever but at the fall when they disobeyed, right there
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God promises that there is going to be one who is going to come back and rescue them. God is cursing the serpent for the temptation and there he says,
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I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.
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Unheard of. A child of a woman? That's not the way the language is used.
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You have a child of a man. A man and a woman coming together. Here is already an early promise to the
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Messiah who is going to be born of a woman and conceived only by the Holy Spirit with no agency of man and that is right there in Genesis 3.
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And then in Genesis 12, God then picks one man, Abraham. He is going to use this man and place his favor upon him and bless the world to him.
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In Genesis 12, 3 we read, I will bless those who bless you. God is blessing Abraham.
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And him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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It's not just that Abraham is going to receive the blessing but through this descendants of Abraham, the nation of Israel there is going to be a blessing that comes to the rest of the world which includes all of us here today.
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And that will find its fulfillment, its culmination in the person of Jesus Christ who is a descendant of Abraham in the body but when he on the cross achieves redemption that now becomes a blessing to all the world.
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Let's now come a little more specifically to Jesus Christ himself. Isaiah 7 A virgin shall conceive and bear a child.
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Talking prophetically about the birth of Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 9, 6 we read, for to us a child is born and to us a son is given.
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Talking about the incarnation and what are some of the attributes of this child? It blew the
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Jewish mind away. Wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father and prince of peace.
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You do not call a human being with these attributes. How do you reconcile a child who is born with divine attributes and Jesus is coming and saying
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I am the Messiah that was pointed to. Isaiah 53, 5.
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If I didn't tell you the reference, some of you may not even know if this was Old Testament or New Testament. It reads, he was wounded for our transgressions, our sins.
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He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his stripes we are healed.
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All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the
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Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. You can see here the prophecy of Christ dying in our place, bearing our sin and purchasing redemption on our behalf.
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If you do actually talk to some Jewish people, they would not recognize that this was actually in the
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Old Testament and actually talking about the coming of Christ. And then the verse that I want to leave you with when we look at the door that Jesus enters is
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Ezekiel 34, 23. When you go home you want to actually read this entire chapter, but here is the promise of Jesus as our shepherd.
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God says, I will set up over them, his people Israel, one shepherd, my servant
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David, and he shall feed them and be their shepherd.
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Throughout the book of Ezekiel there are many messianic promises and all of them call this Messiah as David or the descendant of David.
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And here this descendant of David is going to come and shepherd his people. And there is also the eschatological element to it about how the
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Messiah will lead his people in the time when he comes back again. So when you think of Jesus Christ, he comes in as foretold by God according to the
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Old Testament. He comes in as the Messiah. He is the shepherd who has entered through the door, but the false leaders have not recognized him, have not seen him as who he is.
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So let's now bring this down to our day and age. How, what does this mean?
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Do we have Pharisees and Sadducees today? The last time I checked, I don't think we've seen any calling themselves
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Pharisees and Sadducees. So what do we have to deal with in our churches today as we stand?
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Before I get into the section, I want to give a disclaimer. Not a disclaimer really. If any of you are associated with some of the names that I'm going to mention, either because you came from that church, or you belong to that church, or you have friends in that church, or these groups of individuals that I mentioned,
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I would strongly urge you that you come and talk to people here after the service. Because I'm going to give a snapshot of some of the problems in these groups.
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And if you do not know why we count them as descendants of Pharisees and Sadducees, I think you should come by and listen.
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Our goal is not to tear down other groups, but rather that the groups that bring in this leaven will recognize their error and come back to the genuine
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God and worship Him. So let's begin. There is one verse I want to point to before we get into our text, and that is from 2
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Peter 2, 1 -3. Just as in the old, in Ezekiel's time there were false prophets, just as when
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Jesus came and there were these Pharisees and Sadducees who were corrupting through doctrine, so also in our times today,
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God said, God promised that there will be these false teachers, and our responsibility is to watch out for them.
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Peter says, there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, and many will follow their sensuality, and in their greed they will exploit with false words.
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Sounds very much like what was going on in Jesus' time, and that's what God promises will happen in our churches today.
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So, who are some of these descendants of Pharisees and Sadducees we have in our churches?
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Let's start with the more obvious ones. Let's take some of the Christian heresies.
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They call themselves Christians, but they are so obviously different from what the
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Bible says that many of us here should be able to recognize them. Let's take the
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Mormon faith, as they believe Christianity to be. They have the
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Bible, they add another book on top of it, and their entire teaching now corrupts the teaching of who
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God is. He's no longer just a spirit, the Father. He now has a body. They take
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Jesus Christ, and they now reinterpret Him as someone who was created. They have the means to salvation taken away from the purity of God's Word, and through their teaching, they have now diverted the soundness of the
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Scriptures. Now, these so -called churches, we would call as false.
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These are false teachers who have crept in, and they are now harming the people under them.
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Jehovah's Witnesses, once again, they would claim to give authority to God's Word, but when it comes to the person of Jesus Christ, just as Peter said, they would even deny the
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Master who bought them. They no longer give divinity to Jesus Christ as the
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Son of God, and thereby take away from the truth. But these seem easy to identify.
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What are some of the problems that you and I have to watch out for in our churches now?
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I call these people the wall -climbers that just creep in over time, and before you know it, they are everywhere.
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So let's look at these two groups, the descendants of Pharisees and the descendants of the Sadducees. Let's start with the
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Sadducees first. The door that they avoid, as leaders they are supposed to come in openly through the door, but the door they would avoid is the door of revelation.
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You know the Sadducees had no regard for God's Word, so also these people, instead of staying close to the
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Word, instead would come in through the wall. Who are some of their descendants? Liberalism.
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So you have people who read the Bible, who thought they are faithful to God, come across a passage, they can't understand it.
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It must be culturally different. You can't interpret this the right way anymore because this is just too hard for our culture, so let's change the meaning a little bit.
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And then you come to another passage, and this passage, the God I can think of is not really like that, you know, and so there must be some error in that particular text.
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Let's skip that text. And so I'll pick and choose those passages that I like, and before you know it, the authority of God's Word, God's Word over us becomes me over the
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Word. So I will define what I like, and this now becomes a happy book that I can interpret any way
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I want. And what are the consequences of such yeast that comes into the dough?
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The consequences is materialism. People started out by saying, you know, religion divides, so let's now be all a nice happy family.
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I'm going to try to find out what's good for my neighbor, and that's in the Bible, and therefore I'll just stick to that.
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I'm going to make your life feel good, happy, and comfortable, and we all will live together as one big happy family.
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That's humanism. And what God has delivered once for all to the saints now degenerates into a human religion.
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Now some of the liberals would not necessarily go all the way there. They would say, oh, you know, I know there is a life beyond death.
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We are spiritual. We need to deal with the component of this being above, so let's now deal with that.
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Let's try to get some principles out of the Bible, and from the Koran, and from the Gita, and from all these other religions, we all will live together happily as coexistent religionists.
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So you have the pluralists who now think they have the hand on how to live a spiritually satisfied life, and once again, without giving the authority to the word, you have the corrupted form of Sadduceeism among these liberals.
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Once again, this may seem a little too extreme. Let's now get it a little closer to the descendants of the Pharisees.
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The descendants of the Pharisees we have is legalism, as we saw in first century
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Israel. Who are the churches today that promote this added doctrine on top of the word?
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The most in our regions today, the churches that are most in number are the
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Roman Catholic churches. Do they have the word of God? Absolutely. So if you read the scriptures of the
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Catholics, it's the same as the scriptures that we have today, except for some translations. What is the problem with the
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Roman Catholic doctrine, the yeast? They have added to the pure teaching of the word, works.
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Works that come by association with the church itself. The church now gives some grace that you do not get directly from the shepherd.
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You need to be baptized in order to get some kind of special grace. You need to be having the
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Lord's table with its own interpretation in order to get some grace. You need to work out, do your part in order to receive
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God's favor, and it takes away from the work of Jesus Christ, which is complete, free, and unadulterated.
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So while the liberals were taking away from the word of God, they did not want to enter the door of revelation.
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Here, the door that these churches would avoid is the door of grace. They do not see the pure and direct way that God has established for us in the work of Jesus Christ, and instead there is human works added.
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Let's take a few other churches. This is going to come closer. There are some Baptistic churches who have the gospel, who believe in the person of Jesus Christ and God, and yet would take some principles, which are biblical, which are good for us to follow, and now make them mandatory on the churches.
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Now these are the most insidious because you do not recognize the error, and that was exactly the problem with the
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Pharisees. The Pharisees did not say, go and blaspheme God. They just said, walk so much on the
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Sabbath and no more. So if there is a church here today that says, on this particular day you should do this, this, and this, and not this, this, and this, and your life should do this, this, and this, when there is no such command in the
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Bible, that would be legalism, and that would be the creeper that is most hard for you to watch out for.
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Let's take another group of churches, Pentecostal and Charismatic. So here is the leader who says,
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God told me this. If you came this morning to Sunday school, you would have had a good laugh, but these are men who genuinely say,
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I believe God told me this, and therefore I tell you this, and it is not in the word of God.
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You are adding to the word and corrupting the teaching of God himself. Now these men, all of these who are diverted
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Christians, as I call them, these wall creepers, are agents of the enemy, the devil, just as it was in the past.
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Some of these men could be deluded by the devil, so they are not necessarily coming here and saying, how can
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I kill this sheep and slaughter it and make a profit for myself? Some of these are wholeheartedly thinking they are serving
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God, but being fooled by the devil. And there are others who have sold in in order to make profit, selfish gain, as 2
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Peter 2 -3 says. Now in contrast to these, today we have
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Jesus Christ. These thieves and robbers come in over the wall to steal and to destroy, whereas Jesus comes in to save.
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He is our true shepherd. He is our true leader. He is
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God himself. And he cares, protects, and rules over his sheep. Now the question is, how does he enter today?
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When he came into 1st century Israel, he came in as a Messiah. Some acknowledged him and some rejected him.
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And today he still comes in as the Lord and Savior of the world. And how does he enter this world?
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The door that you want to be thinking of, what door does Christ enter in?
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He enters in still through the word of God. This morning we talked about special revelation and general revelation.
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Special revelation is the objective word of God that God has revealed once and for all in the scriptures.
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And then we have general revelation which all people can see outside. You see the world, it should point you to something.
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And we will get to that in a minute. But first let's come to the objective word of God. So when we talk about Christ entering the world today, we are talking about the scriptures.
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The scriptures are given to all the world and it is very plain for everybody to see how the scriptures point to Christ.
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So when you say in 1st century Israel the leader should have looked to the Old Testament and said this is the
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Messiah that it was pointing to. So also today there is only one objective basis on which people can know about Christ and it is
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God's word. So the God's word points to Jesus and everything it says about Jesus is true and we can see how he enters as in the
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God ordained way. Now some will say, come on, that's like stacking the cards in your own side, right?
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This is your word, what about another word? The Bible is unique in that it authenticates itself.
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Let me explain that in a minute. This is the one book that when you read, you will know that it is true.
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Now some people will say, well that's a cop out, you know, can't you actually prove that to me that it is true?
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Yes, this Bible was written by over 40 authors, it was written over hundreds of years and yet it has one unifying message, it never contradicts itself, it is coherent as a whole, it correlates to everything you see in reality.
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This is the one book that can explain all that you observe around you. Well that's not necessary for me to say because it is self authenticating.
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When you read the book you know that for yourself that it is true. So the objective basis by which
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Christ enters is God's word. We already saw how it also has prophecies about Jesus Christ in the
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Old Testament. Most people don't even know that how this is so beautiful, how Jesus comes in as God had ordained and he enters today yet through his objective word, the
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Bible. And there is also a subjective element to this. In the next section, we will not be looking at it today, in verses 3 to 5, you see that just as God's word objectively tells this shepherd who is going to enter, so also in each of us
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God has placed something that when the shepherd calls, his voice his sheep will listen.
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His sheep know his voice. There is something within each person that God has placed and there will be a response.
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Let me make this connection for you this way. So the Bible says that is the door and if your eyes are blind, you cannot see the door, right?
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Or if you are intoxicated, that door may seem to be moving and the person who is coming may not seem to be coming the straight way.
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But the Bible says two things. I want to quickly wrap this up.
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Firstly, in Psalm 19, we have general revelation. The heavens declare the glory of God.
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So every single person knows that there is a creator. We are created, we are created in God's image and therefore there is an innate sense that there is someone above us.
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And then in Romans 1 we read that God has made plain to everybody what can be known about him, his power and his righteousness.
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And we all know God and therefore we are not without, we cannot have any excuse when you come before God and say
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I don't know that there is a door. But our foolish hearts were darkened because of unrighteousness.
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There is sin that is within us that does not want to see what
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God has revealed. So when we talk about general revelation, we are talking about God in general. And we talk about special revelation, when a person comes before the scriptures, you see
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Jesus Christ and you do not like it. We read in John 3, verse 18, the light has come into the world, but the darkness did not like it because their deeds were evil.
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People do not like Jesus, not because he is not the one coming through the door, but because there is something within us that recognizes
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Jesus but does not want to submit to him because it means I have to acknowledge something within me as wrong.
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So what about you today? Can you recognize the rightful shepherd when he walks in through the door?
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Let me ask this more pointedly. If Jesus walks in through those doors there, can you recognize him?
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That is the kind of symbolism that John uses in John chapter 10. The door that we are talking about is
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God's word. When you read the scriptures and you see who Jesus is in the scriptures, do you recognize him as the rightful shepherd who has claim over your life?
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Some of you know this shepherd very well. And what you ought to watch out for from these two verses is for those creepers who pretend to come under the agency of the shepherd.
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The more time you spend in the word, the eternal word of God in written form, you know how to discern these leaven, these yeast that is sprinkled with the dough.
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The more time you are with the shepherd, following him, listening to him, you know how to watch out for those thieves and robbers who are out to harm you.
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Now for those of you who do not know the shepherd, how do you start following him?
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The Bible says that there is a God who is holy. There is a God who is your creator.
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There is a God to whom you are accountable. The Bible also says that you and all of us here before we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we all are in a state of sin.
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Now most people don't like the term sin anymore because it's so old and ancient and actually has connotations that are just ugly.
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But it is the most empirically verifiable truth ever. Not one of us can say
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I have no sin and genuinely mean it because every single one of us knows our heart. No one can live a perfect life and we know it.
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And then we have Jesus Christ, the shepherd who walks in through that door, the shepherd who comes as ordained and who demonstrates the love of God.
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God in his holiness could have just let all the people who sin die in their sins and instead he demonstrates his love by sending his shepherd.
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And later in John chapter 10 verse 10 and 11 we see that this shepherd gave his life for the sheep and he demonstrates his love by dying in our place, taking our sins upon him as we saw in Isaiah 53 and he gives us his righteousness.
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And that is the means of reconciliation. So not all of us are born as sheep following the shepherd.
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At some point in time God opens our eyes and we now start to love the shepherd. And today may be the day that some of you need to follow the shepherd for the first day in your life.
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This shepherd gave his life in order to rescue you, in order to take you home.
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As we close I want to just read the psalm that all of us are very familiar with.
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And as I read, just look up to Jesus Christ who is your shepherd.
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Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.
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He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.
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He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
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Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you, my shepherd, are with me.
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Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
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You anoint my head with oil, and my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the
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Lord forever. Let us pray. Dear God, our loving and gracious Father, we thank you for your son, our shepherd.
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Lead us, O Father, even as we go out from here. Call your sheep who are your own, and help us to keep our eyes fixed firmly upon you as we follow you the rest of our lives.