I Am the Good Shepherd

A shepherd who was doing what he should never hesitated to risk perhaps even lay down his life, and it was voluntary.

Didn't have to engage in that. To the shepherd, it was the most natural thing then to risk his life. It's what shepherds did. That's why Jesus says, I'm the good shepherd. The shepherd who's the good one lays down his life. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. If you've ever forgotten your anniversary or a close friend's birthday, you know it is possible and regrettable to overlook significant details about those you love. That's probably true even about the person Christians should love most, the Lord Jesus. So take a look at some details about Christ that perhaps you've forgotten as John MacArthur continues his study on grace to you called Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture. We're going to be in the gospel of John today, so if you have your Bible, turn there now, and here's the lesson. Turn in our Bibles to the 10th chapter of John, and this really wonderful and rich and precious portion of Scripture in which our Lord identifies Himself as the good shepherd who cares for His sheep.

That particular metaphor, that simile, that word picture as it's called in verse 6, maybe needs a bit of an explanation for us as to context so that you know why it happened here. There's nothing sort of isolated in the ministry of Jesus. Everything, of course, had a context, a historical context. I think many people read the Bible as some kind of spiritual book, as if it were detached from history and events and people and consequences and sequences. But this is all history, and all that we read in the gospels in terms of doctrine and theology and our Lord's great discourses were in a moment and an event, a strategic point where this is what spoke to that moment and what spoke to that crucial hour.

And that's essentially true of this. Our Lord had been in chapter 8 in a confrontation with the leaders of Israel, and they had rejected Him, and they had declared their hatred of Him, and they were on a course to kill Him. In fact, by the time we get to chapter 10, they've tried at least three times to bring about His death.

There's no question what their view of Christ is. In chapter 8, there was this conflict, this confrontation, and admittedly, He escalated it by telling them the truth. He said to them, you're of your father, the devil.

He's a liar and a murderer, and so you are liars and murderers as well. We could say that for them, the incident in chapter 8 ended on a very severe note. As a result, chapter 8 ends with these words, Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. So He escapes a stoning and on-the-spot kind of vigilante mob violence execution. On His way out of the temple, He sees a blind man, and by now, He's absorbed in the crowd. As He goes out the gate, He sees a blind man because that's what blind men did.

They sat at the gate to beg, and that's where He found this man. The man had been blind from birth, and Jesus stops and heals him. By then, His enemies, the Pharisees, had caught up with Him.

They had slowed down the effort to kill Him at the moment, He being absorbed in the crowd and having drawn the crowd's attention by the miracle. They are, again, deeply distressed by the fact that He is having such popularity and that He has healed this man and drawn such attention to Himself. They had made a law, that law is indicated in chapter 9, verse 22, that if anyone confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, He was to be put out of the synagogue. Well, Jesus healed the blind man, and then the blind man came to faith in Christ As the story ends, we know down in verse 38, He said, "'Lord, I believe,' and He worshiped him." So the man was healed physically, and he was healed spiritually, and as a result of that, he violated their law. He has confessed to Him as Messiah, Lord, and Savior. They throw him out of the synagogue, and they are still completely intent on killing Jesus. Chapter 9, then, features an extension of chapter 8 in the hostility of the religious leaders of Judaism toward Jesus. The healing of the blind man, in a sense, in the big drama of things, is somewhat incidental.

Not incidental to the blind man, but the big picture here is that when Jesus does a monumental miracle that has no other explanation because this is a man congenitally blind, and everybody knows it because he's a familiar figure there who's been begging a long time. It has no effect on how they feel about Jesus. They make no move in the direction of affirming something other than that He's satanic. Their hostility has passed the point of any return. They are, in fact, demonstrating themselves to be false leaders who, instead of acknowledging their Messiah, reject their Messiah, want to execute their Messiah. They are, in a word, the false shepherds of Israel.

So in chapter 9, after the healing of this man, they surface again with the same hatred and the same hostility. The chapter closes, chapter 9 does, with Jesus pronouncing a judgment on them because of their blindness, because they are willfully blind to the truth. The conversation specifically with them ends with these words, Your sin remains. You are anything but righteous. You are in your sin. Now, He said that back earlier when He said to them, You will die in your sin. And where I go, you will never come. Here He says, a couple of chapters later, You remain in your sin. Your sin remains. So, here are the blind leaders of Israel, the blind leaders of the blind. Here are the false shepherds of Israel. As we come into chapter 10, He is still talking to them, still talking to them. They're still there.

The blind man is still there. The disciples are there. The crowd of Jews is there by the location where the healing took place. And the Pharisees, scribes, are still there. Jesus then launches into a description of how a good shepherd conducts his life, verses 1 to 10.

It is, according to verse 6, a figure of speech, an analogy, a metaphor. And we looked at some of the details about that that help us to understand shepherding. A shepherd has his own sheep. He has his own sheep. He knows his own sheep.

He not only has the right to feed and lead his own sheep, but he has the responsibility to feed and lead his own sheep. At night, you remember, the sheep would come into the village fold, and every shepherd would bring his sheep, and they would all be in the same fold. And then in the morning, the shepherd would come and call out his own sheep and call them by name. He knows his sheep.

He calls them by name. The sheep know their master's voice, and they follow him. The sheep will not follow a stranger. We also learned that while they're in the fold at night, thieves and robbers may try to climb over the wall and fleece the sheep or even slaughter the sheep, and so there has to be a guard set at the door to protect the sheep because they're always thieves and robbers. The shepherd is committed to protecting them at night in the fold, and then in the morning, they're coming and leading them out by name, one by one, to green pastures and still waters. And the shepherd is even the door because they have to pass by him to be identified as his own.

Beautiful picture of animal husbandry, but that's not its intent. That's the figure. The reality comes clear when you look at the language in verse 9. I am the door. If anyone comes through me, he will be saved.

Oh, I see what we're talking about. This is a picture of the salvation provided by the true shepherd. Salvation.

These are all pictures of salvation doctrine. The divine shepherd has his own sheep. They've been given to him by the father.

They've been chosen before the foundation of the world. He knows them all by name. He has the right to call them. He calls them by name.

They know his voice. They follow him. They will not follow a stranger. That's salvation. The elect are in the fold of the world, but the time comes to call them out, and the voice of the shepherd calls, and they hear that voice, and they follow that voice. This is irresistible grace. This is the effectual call, the divine call to salvation. They will not follow a stranger.

They will not follow a voice that's unfamiliar. Yes, there are thieves and robbers, false teachers who try to climb into the fold and fleece and destroy the sheep, come to destroy and kill, but the shepherd provides protection for them from the false teachers, and the shepherd leads them, goes before them, and they follow him. He takes them in a safe way to green pastures, meaning spiritual blessings, still waters, meaning spiritual blessings throughout time and all into eternity. It's a lesson on salvation.

That's the figure. Who is this shepherd? Jesus is starting to give us a pretty good idea when in verse 9, as we saw last week, He says, I am the door. Shepherds were the door. At night, the sheep would go in, and the shepherd would drop his rod and stop every sheep, every sheep, every sheep, check them over for any kind of wound or any kind of problem, and then lift the staff and let them go in.

In the morning, He called them all by name, and they had to pass by Him into His care. The shepherd was the door. Jesus is saying, this shepherd, this faithful shepherd, this is how shepherding should be done.

This is how I do it. I am the door. That gives a pretty good hint. We know He's speaking metaphorically because it is a figure of speech, and because in the same verse, He says He's talking about salvation. But then in verse 11, He says specifically, I am the good shepherd. That good shepherd that I just described, that good shepherd that I just identified by the way He behaves Himself and conducts His life with the sheep, 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, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he's a hired hand or a hireling and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know My own, and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father, and I lay down My life for the sheep.

I have other sheep which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice, and they will become one flock with one shepherd. For this reason, the Father loves Me because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.

This commandment I received from My Father." A division occurred again among the Jews because of these words. Many of them were saying, He has a demon and is insane.

Why do you listen to Him? Others were saying, These are not the sayings of one demon possessed. A demon cannot open the eyes of the blind, can he? So here in verses 11 to 21, our Lord explains how He fulfills the identity of the good shepherd. And as I told you last time, and I reiterate again, He launches into this particular figure of speech because the religious leaders of Israel were known as the shepherds of Israel, but they were false shepherds. And so He distinguishes the false leaders from Himself.

He is the true shepherd of the sheep. They were blind. That's how the conversation with them ended in chapter 9, verses 39 to 41. They were spiritually blind to the truth of God.

They couldn't lead anybody anywhere because they couldn't see where they were going themselves. They are false leaders. They are, in fact, strangers, not shepherds. They are hirelings, hired hands who do what they do for money and have no concern for the sheep. They are thieves. They are robbers who want to fleece and kill.

Jesus was talking about them in contrast to Himself. The false leaders, thieves, robbers, strangers, hired hands have nothing in mind but protecting themselves. They are not about to risk their lives for the sheep, as we read.

They want the money, and if need be, they will become thieves and robbers to get it. They are strangers, not shepherds. The true shepherd, however, is described here as one who loves and cares for and nourishes and lives for and dies for the sheep. And that, of course, is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. So let's look then at these verses 11 through 21, and we'll just kind of work our way through. This is the, by the way, the fourth I Am in the gospel of John. There are a whole series of I Am's that our Lord gives, and I Am is the tetragrammaton in Hebrew, the ego, eimi in Greek, the I Am, meaning the name of God.

So they are claims to deity as well in the context of each one. I Am the way, the truth, and the life. I Am the resurrection and the life. I Am the door. I Am the good shepherd. All affirmations of His deity bound up in the I Am statement of it. But here, He is the good shepherd.

Let's look at that a little bit. I Am the good shepherd. Then He repeats it immediately, the good shepherd again. Now, this is an important construction for us to understand. The emphasis here is this. I Am the shepherd, the good one.

Very important order there. I Am the shepherd, the good one, as if to say in contrast to all the bad ones. I Am the shepherd, the good one. But it's not, there's two words in Greek for good. One is agathos, from which you get the word agatha, or the name agatha, agathos, old name. Agathos means sort of morally good, good in the, sort of confined to moral goodness. It's a wonderful word, a magnificent word, familiar in the New Testament. But the other word is kalas, kalas, opposite of kakas, which is to be bad. Kalas is to be good, not only in the sense of moral quality, but it's a more encompassing word.

It means to be beautiful, to be magnificent, to be winsome, to be attractive, to be lovely, to be excellent on all levels, not just in that which is unseen in terms of character, but in all aspects. I Am the shepherd, the excellent one. I Am the shepherd, the lovely one, the beautiful one, as contrasted to the ugly ones, the dangerous ones. He is not just another shepherd. He's the shepherd, the good one.

The one who is preeminently excellent is above all shepherds, the good one. Now the Jews had an idea about who was the best shepherd. For them, historically, it was David. It was David, David the shepherd boy who cared for his father's flocks and defeated Goliath and became the king of Israel. David was their great shepherd, historically. But you do remember in chapter 5, Jesus claimed to be greater than Moses, and in chapter 8, He claimed to be greater than Abraham.

Before Abraham was, I Am. And here, He is a shepherd far greater than any other shepherd, including David. He is the shepherd who is the good one, the premier one.

That is quite a claim to make. To say you are better than Moses, better than Abraham, better than David, and to say you are God, no wonder He had to back it up with miracles, right? He was telling those Jews that He was God because they knew, Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. They knew Psalm 80, the shepherd of Israel. They knew what Isaiah the prophet said about God shepherding His people. He is saying, I am the shepherd, the good one. Again, another claim to deity. Now His true goodness as a shepherd is seen in three ways here in this passage. I'm not going to tell you anything you don't know, but I'm going to tell you what's here.

You can be grateful you do know this because looking at this again is so rich and wonderful for us. This shepherd, this shepherd, the good one, is marked by three particular ministries to His sheep. One, He dies for them. Two, He loves them. Three, He unites them. He dies for them. He loves them.

He unites them. Back to verse 11, the shepherd, the good one, lays down his life for the sheep. Shepherds were absolutely responsible for sheep. It was serious business.

It was a man's man's job, and it was really kind of a lowly and humble job as well because it was unskilled and it was high risk, and it was messy and dirty. But a shepherd was absolutely responsible for the sheep. If anything happened to the sheep, he had to produce proof that it was not his fault due to dereliction of duty or rustling the sheep away for his own keeping or letting a friend take one or whatever. Amos, the prophet, speaks about the shepherd rescuing two legs or a piece of an ear out of a lion's mouth, Amos 3.12. They were in battle with beasts. There were wolves. There were mountain lions.

There were even bears. David tells Saul how when he was keeping his father's sheep back in 1 Samuel 17, David fought off a lion and he fought off a bear. By the way, that's what made David such a heroic shepherd. To the shepherd, it was the most natural thing then to risk his life. It's what shepherds did.

It's what they did. They could just take him to the grass and leave him there, I suppose. But why did the shepherd stay?

Why those long, long, long hours of staying there? Because he had to be a protector. There's an old book called The Land of the Book, and the author of that historical look at Israel said, "'I have listened with intense interest to their graphic descriptions of downright and desperate fights with savage beasts. And when the thief and the robber come, the faithful shepherd has often to put his life in his hand to defend the flock.'"

I've known more than one case where he literally had to lay it down in the contest. Well, I mean, if you're fighting a wild beast, you could lose. So there was risk, and you couldn't just all of a sudden stop the risk.

Could come to death. He goes on to say, "'A poor fellow last spring between Tiberius and Tabor, instead of fleeing, actually fought three Arab robbers until he was hacked to pieces with their con jars and died among the sheep he was defending.'" It happened, but that's what a shepherd did. Talk about a man's man.

Talk about a tough job, low paying, low skill. A shepherd who was doing what he should never hesitated to risk, perhaps even lay down his life. And it was voluntary because he didn't have to engage in that. That's why Jesus says, I'm the good shepherd. The shepherd who's the good one lays down his life. He lays down his life.

That's John MacArthur. He's pastor of Grace Community Church and chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture. That's the title of John's current study here on Grace to You. John you had a great line in your lesson today. You said that Christ as the good shepherd means that he loves and cares for and nourishes and lives and dies for the sheep. And that brought to mind the Bible verse that says, the Lord understands us and can sympathize with our weaknesses. That's a great encouragement. And I think there may be no better remedy for the problems of this life than faith in the truth of who Christ is and what he has done.

Yeah, it's such an important issue, Phil. There has developed over the years in Christianity a kind of simplistic pragmatism. If you want to live the Christian life, do these three things, do these four things, and people will sometimes give you sort of mechanisms to help you make good decisions or whatever, whatever. What really allows you to live the Christian life is to be consumed with the person of Christ, to be Christ-conscious all the time. You are, as a believer, united to Christ.

You are joined to Christ. Paul says, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. My life is Christ. Whether I live or die, I am Christ's.

Christ is in me. So I think it is our union with Christ that is the controlling reality in spiritual strength and spiritual sanctification. The more you know about Christ, the more sanctified you become. When Christ is your all in all, when you set your affections on him, when you're looking, when you're looking, as the book of Hebrews says, unto the author and finisher of your faith, when you're looking to the living Lord Jesus Christ, and you're lost in wonder, love, and praise for Christ, and you understand all the details of the revelation of God about him, this is the sanctifying—this is what used to be called sort of the beatific vision, the vision of God.

You see God most clearly when you see Christ, and when you see God in Christ, as Paul says, you see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, this is the path of sanctification. I want to remind you about the book that we're offering, The Deity of Christ, free to anyone who has not been in contact with us before. The book titled The Deity of Christ, compelling look at who Christ is and how you can know the fullness of his glory, which has such an impact on your life. Free to anyone contacting us for the first time, just ask for the book, The Deity of Christ.

Christ's preeminence, his authority over creation, his equality with the Father. This book can help you or someone you love better understand the person and work of Christ, how best to serve him to his glory and to your blessing. To get a copy of John's book titled The Deity of Christ, and remember, it's our gift to you if you're contacting us for the first time, just call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to the website at GTY.org. Our website is also where you need to go to download John's current series, Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture. There you'll find all of the studies that we've aired on radio, plus hundreds more that have yet to air. In fact, all of John's sermons from 52 years of pulpit ministry are free to download in audio or transcript format at GTY.org. Spend some time there. And now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson encouraging you to watch Grace To You television this Sunday, check your local listings for channel and times, and be here Thursday for another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.