In John 10 Jesus makes pretty clear that His followers
are to know Him by the sound of His voice and they will follow that voice.
You can read the whole chapter, but the two main pieces I
find interesting are verses 3, 4 and 14:
. . . the sheep listen to his (the shepherd’s) voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. – John 10:3-4I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me . . . – John 10:14
Clearly Jesus’ analogy is one where His followers are
compared to sheep and He is the shepherd.
At the same time it is clear that Jesus’ followers are to know Him so
well that they listen to His voice and follow Him as a result.
That means they must know what His voice sounds like.
It also means that they must trust that He has their best
interests at heart.
They must believe that He knows the way.
And, maybe most importantly, they then have to choose to
follow His voice over any other voice.
When you look at this simple passage, what
does it say to you?
How is it that so many people who claim to
be Christian end up going in such different directions, sometimes clearly away
from the one Jesus would lead them?
What is the way forward for us oftentimes
stubborn and dim-witted sheep?
I once asked the Lord what was the most important thing I could do for Him. His answer both surprised me and thrilled me. He simply said, ‘teach my people how to hear, they don’t listen’.
ReplyDeleteThis truth is both the reason for the multitude of conflicting doctrines derived from the same scriptures and the lack of growth we see in the body of Christ. The Lord pointed me to Isaiah 1 where it is written, ‘Come let us reason together says the Lord’. If you can’t hear God speaking to you how can you reason with Him? Paul writes, ‘faith comes by hearing’. Want to grow your faith, learn how to listen.
God speaks to us in so many ways. And yes, the scriptures are an essential part of that conversation, but they are far from the only part. His spirit testifies to our Spirit and more often than not when God speaks to us it’s in that ‘still small voice’ that He spoke to Elijah in. God can use a mule (see Balaam) to talk to you. He can use a line from a movie, a randomly spoken sentence, an event that’s more than coincidental. God speaks, the question is; are we listening? And how often to we mistakenly call Him hunch?
I came to a place during hurricane Ike where I felt I was at the end of my rope. My wife Paula’s Huntington’s had become so difficult for me to deal with that I had to put her in a Psychiatric ward. My house had roof damage in two places. The power was out for 4 weeks. Dow had me working 12+ hour days helping to restore facilities in both Houston and Freeport. I had thought I was a strong believer, but this was more than I could take. I cried out and the Lord answered me in a vision.
I was standing in a long dark tunnel, straining to see the proverbial ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. The Lord then handed a lantern to me and pointed down. I looked and there at my feet was what looked like a rail road tie with words inscribed into it. It read, ‘My Word is a Lamp unto your feet’. Then He wrote in the dirt, “Live life one word at a time”. That’s where the vision ended.
Since that day I’ve been diligent to listen for a word, to chew on it once I hear it and to watch as God reveals deeper and deeper things. More importantly He has trained (disciple) me to order my footsteps, one word at a time. My diligence to listen and follow has brought me from one of the darkest moments of my life into one of the brightest. I feel like Job starting his second life (which also was something He talked to me about).
Let me conclude with this. No matter where you are, no matter what your circumstances if we will “listen for the voice of the one who loves us” He will lead us into safe pasture. That’s His job! Ours is to listen and follow.
I love this passage but, unfortunately, I see nothing in it that is prescriptive for 'sheep'. Rather, Jesus gives a description of what 'sheep', in fact, do. I know you guys are hung up on notions of libertarian free will and the like, but you have inserted such ideas into this passage, ideas which - at least in this passage - simply are absent. To find out what Jesus is really doing in this passage, simply read verses 25 and 26: the unbelieving Jews did not exercise faith in Jesus 'because' - Jesus says - they were not of His sheep. Jesus is explaining who does and does not believe. There are plenty of passages that can be made to support the notion of people pulling themselves up by their spiritual bootstraps. However, this is NOT one of them. Again, everything in John 10 is DESCRIPTIVE, not prescriptive.
ReplyDeleteWhile sheep are trained by individual contact with the shepherd to recognize his voice and follow him as he calls, they still have freedom. Regardless of whatever factors of "determinism," they still have freedom to choose to follow the shepherd and freedom to choose to not follow him. That freedom to choose to not listen to his voice is the reason why sheep go astray.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, have always thought this scripture referred to people who tried to come to God without going through Jesus..but then the gatekeeper, ( God),)lets Jesus in and Jesus calls the sheep,( people),to Him and they get to know Him, and will follow Him.When someone else teaches something other than the going thru Jesus, they realize this is wrong and will not follow him.Not that simple?
ReplyDeleteI understand the philosophical point on 'freedom.' However, we must be honest with the text, which does not bear the weight of that point. Jesus concludes the matter by explaining why there are those who do NOT believe: "BECAUSE they are not of my sheep." Think about this a minute. We want to say that people are not His 'sheep' because they won't believe. But this is not what the text says. In fact, the text says the very opposite: those who fail to believe are do so because they are not His sheep. Without taking sides in any kind of debate over what one of the above posts refers to as 'determinism', THIS TEXT seems to be more deterministic than not. The original point stands: nothing in John 10 is PRESCRIPTIVE - rather, THIS TEXT is merely DESCRIPTIVE.
ReplyDelete