“11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life— only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
Before he died from pancreatic cancer in 2012, Michael Sellers prepaid a florist to deliver birthday flowers to his daughter Bailey every year until she turned 21. On her 21st birthday, the flowers came with a note that read, “This is my last love letter to you, until we meet again. Love you and happy birthday, Daddy.”
Michael Sellers took all the opportunities to love that he could. He seems like an admirable father, but Bailey is about 24 now. Her father is still dead and there are no more flowers. No flowers. No dad. He isn’t able to stop by her new place and show her to replace the water filter in the fridge. She isn’t able to tease him about whatever 24-year-olds playfully tease their father about. She misses that. She misses him. Michael Sellers wanted to love his daughter however he could and so he sent those flowers. That is admirable, but as he knew, and she knows, it isn’t the same as being here today.
It’s different with Jesus. He also took his responsibility to love seriously. He also died, but, unlike Michael Sellers, he has already risen again. This means that his love isn’t only sent from the past like those flowers. His love is given in the present. Easter says that we have more than flowers from a late father as precious as that is; we have a risen shepherd. That’s the claim of this sermon: we have a risen shepherd.
We see this in three points. First: our shepherd knows us and we know him. Second: our shepherd laid down his life. Third: our shepherd arose. That is different from your outlines. We see that our shepherd knows his sheep and that we know him in verses 14-16. We see that our shepherd laid down his life in verses 11-13. We see that our shepherd arose in verses 17-18.
First: our shepherd knows us and we know him. Being known is important. We have a children’s book entitled How are You Peeling? It is a book about feelings. It consists of photos of fruits and vegetables cut to look like faces –hence the title How are You Peeling? There is a smiling orange and a frowning apple, an anxious onion and a proud red pepper. It’s a book about understanding your own feelings and the feelings of others. The last page reads, “when how you feel is understood, you have a friend and that feels good.” That’s true. Knowing someone else and being known by someone else feels good. Being understood feels good. That’s why Michael Sellers sent those flowers.
This sort of knowing is just a part of what Jesus has in mind in verse 14 when he said, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” Jesus wasn’t simply claiming that he could identify which sheep were his. Jesus was claiming to know us and that feels good.
Jesus knew what made Peter, Peter. He knows what makes me, me. He know what makes you, you. Parents quickly learn that each of their children are different and so they love each child in different ways, not more not less but differently. Jesus knows how to love each of us differently. He knows you. He knows me.
The good shepherd knows us. More remarkably, we know him. Verse 14, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”
We know Jesus because he opened himself up to us. As we saw on Palm Sunday, we don’t find opening up all that easy. Jesus knew that opening himself up would lead to his death, but he did it anyway because he wants you to know him.
Perhaps you’ve been invited into the intimacy of someone important. I remember forming a friendship with a rather well-known Christian apologist and writer. His wife came to him with something rather important while he and I were talking. Rather than excusing himself or excusing me, he invited me into their conversation. That felt good. I was invited into the intimacy of someone very important.
Now I’ve also been invited into the intimacy of Jesus and I’ve been invited into something of his intimacy with the Father. As verse 15 puts it, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.”
We are invited into something very precious here. I spent a lot of time at my best friend’s house in high school. His dad started calling me, ‘son.’ That was, and is, precious to me. He connected me with a cherished relationship, his relationship with his boys. Jesus connects his disciples with his most cherished relationship, his relationship with his Father.
Of course my relationship with my friend’s dad is different from my relationship with God just as my friend’s relationship with his dad is different from Jesus’ relationship with his Father. These merely human relationships are merely windows to peek into the divine reality.
Jesus’ relationship with his Father is beautiful beyond our comprehension. It is full of mutual love. Over and over again the Father says, “this is my Son whom I love.” Some people who are listening can’t even imagine their father saying that about them to others. Over and over again the Son says, “the Father loves the Son,” and, “the Father is greater than all.” Some fathers who are listening can’t even imagine their children saying that about them to others.
Jesus takes this most beautiful relationship and says, “knowing me is kind of like that.” If you don’t know Jesus, you really are missing out. You can know him. You see that in verse 16, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”
This sheep pen of which Jesus spoke was Israel. As Psalm 100 put it, “It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.” Now I dare say that most of us listening are not part of that pen in terms of ethnicity. We are those of whom Jesus said, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also.”
For centuries now Jesus has been bringing people from every nation, language, and walk of life into his grace. It’s worth reading the biographies of these people if only in order to understand your own biography. You have been welcomed into the intimacy of God. You’ve been welcomed into the intimacy of Jesus. He knows you. You know him.
You know him if you’ve responded to his voice. As he said throughout John 10, “the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out… The sheep follow him, for they know his voice.”
The sheep know Jesus’ voice because it is the voice of God. Jesus says what God says. Jesus does what God does. The Pharisees didn’t recognize Jesus’ voice as the voice of God because they didn’t know God. That is remarkable considering that they devoted their lives to teaching His word. Apparently it is quite possible to know religion up and down and never truly hear from God. It is possible to devote your life to teaching God’s word and then put God to death when you meet Him.
You need to ask yourself if you recognize Jesus’ voice as the voice of God. You can completely familiar with Jesus’ words by reason of having grown up in the church without ever once treating his words as the words of God. The word of God causes you to tremble before it. “This are the one I look on with favor: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at my word.” You need to ask yourself if that describes you. In other words, you need to ask yourself if you really do know Jesus and if he knows you.
You need to be certain about that because unless he knows you and you know him, his death means nothing to you and his resurrection means nothing to you. We see that in our second point: our shepherd laid down his life.
As we open John 10, we find ourselves in the midst of a heated argument between Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus had healed a man who was born blind. The Pharisees, in their abundant sensitivity, condemned that man as a liar. They called him a sinner and cast him out of the synagogue. Jesus told the Pharisees that while this man could now see, they were still blind. They were blind to who he is.
He tried to open their eyes in verse 11, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” He tried to open their eyes to the fact that they were not behaving like good shepherds.
Ezekiel 37 was the background Jesus had in mind here. Ezekiel prophesied against the wicked leaders, of Israel saying, “Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought.” Jesus gave these same sorts of rebukes to the Pharisees. They had certainly shown their colors in their treatment of that man Jesus had just healed.
Jesus had shown his colors too. Jesus was the good shepherd. Ezekiel prophesied about the good shepherd. The good shepherd was God. “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy.”
Jesus is that shepherd. Jesus is God in the flesh shepherding his people. He brought back and brings back those who stray. He bound up and binds up the injured. He strengthened and strengths the weak. He is God shepherding his people.
He is also a man. Ezekiel 37, “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.”
The good shepherd would somehow be fully God and at the same time David. This is one of the reasons that the genealogies at Jesus’ birth make such a big deal of his lineage from David.
David was Israel’s ideal shepherd, their ideal leader. Psalm 78 looks back in admiration, “God chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds; from following the nursing ewes he brought him to shepherd… His people… With upright heart David shepherded them guided them with his skillful hand.”
Jesus is the better David. He had an even more upright heart. He guides his followers with much more skill. He knows how to restore. He knows how to correct. He knows how to speak truth in love. He knows how to encourage. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want.”
Jesus is exactly what Ezekiel prophesied; he is the God-man. He is the good shepherd. Jesus told the Pharisees that as the good shepherd, he would lay down his life for the sheep. Verse 11, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
The Pharisees certainly wouldn’t lay down their lives for the sheep. As Jesus put it, “they tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” People who aren’t willing to lift a finger to help certainly aren’t willing to die for those same people. Jesus was willing.
Does anyone love you to the extent that they are willing to die to save your life? My guess is that the only ones who love you that much are those who have some sort of responsibility for you, those who in some, way, shape, and form shepherd you day in and day out – like a parent, like a spouse, or a friend in the army. Their love is a very beautiful, very meaningful, and yet it is only a dim reflection of Jesus’ love. He is the good shepherd whom you have been waiting for all your life. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
The good shepherd’s death saves the sheep. That’s clear in the word ‘for’ in verse 11, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus’ death saves us. Jesus didn’t suffer death just to show us how much he loved us, like a boyfriend jumping out of a plane without a parachute yelling to his girlfriend, ‘look how much I love you.’ That would be a weird and unwelcomed confession of love and that would be the cross if it weren’t for the atonement. That would be the cross if it weren’t for the fact that it put you and God at one—at-one-ment.
Jesus didn’t die just to show you how much he loved you. He died so that you might live. He died for the sake of life. I hope that you recognize that this Easter. We are only celebrating the resurrection because of death and we only celebrated that death because of resurrection.
We see that resurrection now in our final point: our shepherd arose. Michael Sellers gave flowers and cards to keep loving his daughter after his death. Jesus did even more. He arose to keep on loving. Jesus told the crowd that this continued love was part of the reason the Father loved him. Verse 17, “the reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life— only to take it up again.”
Jesus loved his church after the resurrection. You see that in the book of Acts, and you see it all the way to the book of Revelation. We aren’t simply studying history here, although this is history. We are considering the present because Jesus is alive and just as active as he was in the gospels. This is why we can say Psalm 23 in the present tense, “Jesus is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He leads me in the right paths for his name sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley will fear no evil for you are with me.”
We don’t say, “well, Jesus, you were in first century Palestine and the fact that you were is really helpful to me in this dark valley.” We don’t say, “Jesus, you lived on earth far before I was born, you might not return until after I’m dead and so I will not be in want.” We speak in the present tense and that’s right.
Jesus rose again to live. He is alive. You are alive. Know him. Be known by him. He is all that he was in the first century. You can know him like Peter knew him. We Christians don’t follow an idea. We don’t follow a historic personage. We follow a person just like the original disciples.
Jesus is still loving his disciples. Hebrews tells us that he is praying for us. If you belong to him, he was praying for you before you woke up this morning just as he prayed for his original disciples on those early mornings before they woke up.
Jesus says that he is preparing a new creation for you. “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
Don’t limit Jesus’ love to the cross. Jesus didn’t and Jesus doesn’t. He views the cross as part of his love, a necessary and important part, but not the totality of it. Think of the cross the way that Paul did. He saw it not as the end all and be all of the Christian religion but as a promise of all things. He wrote, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
The cross is not the destination. It was the only way to all things being made new. Easter is the day that proves all things made new. Today has more to do with the destination than Good Friday did. Life is why Jesus laid down his life, or as Calvin put it, “we should always remember the resurrection when we think about Christ’s death.” I do hope that your faith isn’t merely a memorialization of Jesus because that isn’t faith. Faith knows a risen Savior. I hope that you know him. I hope that he knows you.
Michael Sellers wanted to love even after his death, but Michael Sellers is still dead. Christ rose from the grave to keep loving today. He will raise you from the grave to keep loving you forever. Amen.