I Am the Good Shepherd, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. My confidence in life at 35 or 50 or whenever is not in my ability to figure out God's will.

I'm still a sheep and sheep are idiots. My confidence is in God's ability to lead me in His will. Welcome back to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist, J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Do you want to know how to find peace when you feel confused or afraid? When you don't know what to do with your finances or your kids or you're facing a big decision?

I think everyone within the sound of my voice has faced moments like that, maybe even right now. Well, today pastor J.D. shares how when we fix our eyes on Jesus, the good shepherd, we can rest in His promise to give us peace and lead us in the way we should go.

It sounds like the answer we all want, right? So how do we get there? Let's join pastor J.D. for this encouraging message as he leads us back into John chapter 10. Paul says in first Corinthians 12, three, that nobody can even say Jesus is Lord truly, except by the Holy Spirit, which means that if you are able to recognize this morning from your heart, that Jesus is Lord, that is evidence of His love at work in you. And so through that confession right now, he's saying to you, I love you. When I died on the cross, I was thinking about you.

I paid for your sin. I heard a true story about a guy named Steve Henning, who when he was two years old, contracted spinal meningitis and completely lost his hearing. For the next 58 years, Steve lived in complete silence.

He never heard the sound of music, laughter, the voice of his loved ones, nothing. Well, in the winter of 2001, his doctor told him about a new surgical procedure that could implant a sound wave detection device that could bypass the non-functioning part of his ear that had been destroyed by the meningitis, and it could transmit the audio signals directly to his auditory nerve. But here was the thing, after they implanted the device back near his brain, because how close it was, they could not activate it until the swelling from the surgery had gone down, and that would take at least six weeks. So Steve had to wait for six weeks to see if the surgery worked. Well, finally, the day arrived, and the audiologist programmed the cochlear implant on his device, and he held his finger over the final key and nodded to Steve as if to ask him if he was ready. Steve gave the thumbs up, and the doctor hit enter. And then the doctor motioned to Steve's wife to say something, and she leaned toward her husband, and she just gently said, I love you.

Steve's face suddenly burst into a smile. The first sound he'd heard in six decades were words of personal love. When God opens your spiritual ears, what you hear is the voice of God whispering in the gospel, I love you. His love is a personal love.

Y'all, before I go on to number three, could I just stop and reflect with you for a moment that this is what your soul most craves, you were created to be known and loved by God. And what that means is that you're always going to feel like you're missing something until you're known by him and cherished by him. Y'all, one of the most popular myths at work in our culture today, and it looks so lovely from the outside, but it's this idea, it's a satanic lie. It's this idea that the only love, the only validation that I need is my own.

We don't need anybody else to believe in us as long as we believe in us. I mean, it's like the great Whitney Houston song from the 1980s, the greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself, that's the greatest love of all.

Or more recently, the Barbie movie. You got to learn that whoever you are or whatever you are, you are ken-ough. And if you believe that about yourself, you'll have ken-ergy or whatever, however they said it. And y'all, listen, I agree. It is important not to live or die by the opinion of others.

But think with me for a moment, is that really enough? Imagine a songwriter who's been songwriting for 10 years. He's let a few thousand people hear his songs and everybody hates him.

They're like, these are terrible. You can't sing these songs. But the songwriter says, well, it doesn't matter what other people think.

I know in my heart, I'm a great songwriter. We might sort of admire his self-confidence, but probably we're going to think he's on the verge of insanity. He's delusional. Now, listen, here's the truth. You cannot fully validate yourself.

I'm sorry, but you can't. No offense to Whitney Houston or Barbie, but we yearn for a validation that comes from outside of us. We yearn for validation from somebody that we care about. We need somebody outside of us to tell us that we're beautiful, that we're valuable. Well, see, that leaves us with a dilemma, right?

We can't fully give that kind of validation to ourselves, but other people are not a reliable source of it. So where do we find it? From our shepherd. You were created to find your identity in him. Only your shepherd can name you and bless you.

And he does. Jesus said, the good shepherd calls you by name. Again, David reveling in this in Psalm 139 says, before I was fully formed in the womb, God already knew me. When I was a small lump called a fetus with no rights at all in the state of California, God knew me as a person. And God laid out a special plan for me and fashioned me for that plan.

Friend, that is true for you also. He created you special. He knows the plans he has for you, to prosper you, to give you a future and a hope. He's prepared good works for you to go and walk in them. You are his if you are ready to believe that.

His leadership is protective, it's personal. Number three, it is prospering. Verse 10, right before Jesus makes the claim to be the good shepherd, he says this, the thief comes to kill and still and destroy, but I came that they might have life and have it abundantly. I told you a few weeks ago that the Greek word there for abundantly is the word paresos.

It means literally over the top. Jesus promises an abundant, over the top life for his sheep. That does not mean I'm not going to be for his sheep. That does not mean I told you a problem for your life or a life necessarily filled with riches and popularity. No, this kind of abundance is better than those things. It's the abundance that comes from walking with one whose love you know is stronger than death and resting in the blessed assurance that you are his and he is yours and that he's working all things in your life together for good. That's the abundant life.

That's the over the top life. That's the peace that passes all understanding life. He promises to guide you into his pathways of blessing. Listen to this. This is for somebody, even when you're too dumb to figure out how to get there yourself, which as a sheep you are.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it's just true. Can I get you to a thought experiment with me for a minute? Think with me. For those of you over 30, how do you feel about your wisdom, say 15 years ago? You look back with amazement at how wise you were back then. I look back at 35 year old JD and on my 35 year old JD, that guy was an idiot.

I started preaching here when I was 28, but there is a reason you cannot find any sermons online for those first seven years. I'm not sure what was wrong with that guy. I'm kind of embarrassed by him to be frank. God graciously used me, but man, I look back on that guy and I'm like, what an idiot. But here was the thing, 35 year old JD thought he was pretty wise. He felt pretty confident. But if you'd asked 35 year old JD about 15 year old JD, he would have said, now that guy was an idiot. But here's the thing, 15 year old JD was pretty impressed with himself too. So follow this, 15 year old JD was impressed with himself, but 35 year old JD was embarrassed by him. Now 50 year old JD is embarrassed to 35 year old JD.

So here's the obvious question. What do you think 65 year old JD is going to think about 55 year old JD is going to think about 50 year old JD? He's probably going to think, what an idiot. How about heavenly JD? How will heavenly JD feel about earthly JD?

I'm guessing he's going to say, what an idiot. Hey, you don't have to be so enthusiastic about it. Okay. I get it.

Here's the point. Just a little bit of time and space, little bit of time and space in our lives shows us there's so much more about life that we don't know. Doesn't that mean that at every stage of our lives, we should show a little bit of humility and look to our all wise shepherd to guide us? You see the fact that the analogy that God chose for us with sheep is bad news, but the bad news has some good news in it too.

The good news is that sheep with a good shepherd turn out fine, and we got a great shepherd. And that means I can trust him to guide me, even when I feel incompetent, which if I were really wise would be pretty much all the time. My confidence in life at 35 or 50 or whenever is not in my ability to figure out God's will.

I'm still a sheep and sheep are idiots. My confidence is in God's ability to lead me in his will. Let me slow that down and say it again for you guys in the back, because I feel like some of you don't get this.

And if you did get this, it would set you free. My confidence in life is not in my ability to figure out God's will. My confidence is in his ability to lead me in it.

And that's a huge difference between those two. Jesus doesn't say my clever foxes figure it out and do just fine. He says, my dumb sheep hear my voice and I lead them. I've told you when I face a difficult decision, I often pray what I call the sheep prayer. It goes like this, God, you called me a sheep. That was your analogy, not mine. Sheep are idiots, which means you know that I don't have the ability to choose the right way here.

I'm probably going to get this wrong. So I need you to close doors that need to be closed. I need you to open ones that need to be open. Yeah, I'm asking you to give me wisdom, but where I mess it up, which I probably will, will you use your rod and staff you talked about in Psalm 23, will you use those to guide me into the path you want me to go? And then I make the decision that's in front of me. I make it in confidence that God is keeping his promise. And I'm at peace because I trust in him. I'm not even that confident y'all in my ability to hear his voice. Some of you are like, man, I'd love to have God lead me, but I don't even know what to hear his voice.

What does that feel like? What does his voice in my soul sound like? I'm so sinful. I don't know how to discern his voice. Hey, you are right.

And you probably don't know the half of it. You are so much more sinful and dull of hearing than you could possibly imagine. If you saw how spiritually inept you really are, you probably wouldn't even get out of bed in the morning. But good news, God is your shepherd and he is committed to guide you, which means he will find a way to steer you even when you don't know how to discern his voice.

If you trust him. Listen, my sheep prayer. Try it. Patent pending.

You can try it though for free. Lord, I'm a sheep, which means I'm going to get it wrong. I trust you to guide me. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in you. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

You can always you can always find more resources online free of charge by visiting jdgreer.com. We'll return to our teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to remind you that every week J.D. Greer Ministries delivers gospel-centered resources to people everywhere, from daily devotionals to podcasts and radio programs and even a television show. You see, our mission is to make the gospel accessible and help people grow in their faith.

You've heard us say it before, deep and wide. We want you to grow deeper in your understanding of the gospel, trusting God more each day and relying on his power than to take that good news and share it widely with the world in need. Everything we do is meant to point you in those two directions. But this work is only possible through the prayers and support of friends like you. Will you consider joining with us in this mission? Visit jdgreer.com to learn how your financial gift or prayer partnership can make an eternal impact. Together we can advance the gospel to those around us. And when you give, we'll send you our new I Am Bible study as our thanks for your gift to the ministry.

So give us a call at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgreer.com. Now let's return to our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D.

All right, last one. His authority is protective. It's personal.

It's prospering. It's propitiatory. I know you've used that word at least three times already today, but I want you to think sacrificial here. Think sacrificial. Five times in John 10, Jesus says he lays down his life for his sheep.

That would have seemed crazy even then. Shepherds are way more valuable than sheep. I remember one of my favorite Clint Eastwood movies that came out when I was in college called In the Line of Fire. It's about a special secret service agent that takes a bullet for the president, and we admire that, but has there ever been a president who took a bullet for his agent? That's what's happening here, but to an even greater extent, why would a shepherd lay down his life for his sheep? The shepherd's life is much more valuable than the sheep's life.

The only answer is because he loves them. No other leader in Israel's history had done that. In fact, the Old Testament leader who served as a model for what a shepherd was like was King David, and for a lot of David's life, for a lot of his reign, he was a great shepherd to Israel. Psalm 79 tells us that, but then there was that incident where David took Bathsheba, the wife of one of his most loyal soldiers, and he slept with her, and when she got pregnant to cover up his own sin and failure, David stages an accident where his loyal soldier dies so that David can take Bathsheba as his own wife, and nobody's the wiser, and you get to the end of the story, and you're left scratching your head saying, David, the great shepherd of Israel, makes one of his men die as a cover for his sin. The Jewish people love David.

He was the epitome of a great king to them, but it is a huge, unanswered question from the Old Testament. Even David turned out to be a bad shepherd, and that's because David is not the shepherd that Israel was yearning for. But see, here in John 10, here you've got Jesus who's gonna end his time on earth, not by making one of his people die for his sin, but by him voluntarily dying for theirs.

That's what we mean by propitiatory. It means that Jesus took our place in judgment, and that's because he's the true shepherd. He's Israel's true king. A true shepherd, Jesus said, lays down his life for his sheep.

That is the shepherd that you've always yearned for. Father Maximilian Kolbe was part of the German resistance to the Nazi movement. He'd been public with his objection of the Nazi regime.

So in 1941, he was sitting at his desk praying when Nazis burst into his home and arrested him for publishing unauthorized material. He was sentenced to the notorious Auschwitz camp. Conditions there, as you know, were harsh.

Life expectancy, they say, was about five months. And yet, despite the cold, the heat, the hunger, the grueling labor, Father Kolbe used every opportunity there to serve his fellow prisoners. One day in the middle of that summer heat, a prisoner from Father Kolbe's barracks escaped. So in retaliation, the prison guard lined up every prisoner in that barrack and said that 10 of them were gonna be put into the starvation bunker to die as a punishment for this one guy.

That escaped. And the guard was just gonna choose 10 people at random. And then he chose the guy standing next to Father Kolbe. And the guy started to weep for his wife and his children. But before he could step forward, Father Kolbe reached out his hand and stopped him. And he stepped forward in his place.

The prison guard looked up and he laughed, shook his head, but he allowed it. And Father Kolbe went to the starvation bunker in this guy's place. Several days passed, surviving prisoners said that instead of the cries of anguish and madness that usually came out of that bunker that they would hear, instead during those several days, they heard the faint sounds of hymns that were being sung in that dreadful place. Father Kolbe brought peace and joy to the other nine in their final moments. They said that when the doors to the bunker were finally open, they found Father Kolbe's body sitting against the wall with what looked like a peaceful smile on his face.

The man whose place he took went on to live until he was 95 years old, died just a few years ago. And for the rest of his life, he took any chance he got to honor Father Kolbe, the man who had laid down his life for him. There's so much about that story that pictures the gospel, a true shepherd, but there's one big difference.

The man that Father Kolbe replaced had not betrayed or turned on Father Kolbe personally. And yet Jesus, our shepherd, laid down his life to pay for the sins of the sheep that had rebelled against him. Isaiah said, all we like sheep have gone astray.

We've turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. How do you know the true shepherd? Jesus said to a confused group of Israelites one day, the true shepherd, he said, lays down his life for the sheep.

He sees value where others see junk. The leader that they'd always longed for, the leader that you've always longed for. What you've looked for from every leader, every parent, every boss, every president is fulfilled in Jesus. And by the way, for those of you who are in leadership, you're not gonna find a better model of leadership than what you see here in John 10. Christlike leadership is protective, personal, prospering, and propitiatory.

That's another sermon for another day, but it's a great thing for you to jot down and just meditate on. I wanna end our time today with two pictures. Two pictures relating to Jesus' shepherd that I want you to leave thinking about. One's a photo taken just a few years ago, the other is a famous 19th century British painting.

Let me tell you about the first picture before I show it to you. Alan Emery was a business leadership guru who spent his early years in the wool industry. He wrote a book called A Turtle on a Fence Post, which I don't know how that has anything to do with the wool industry, but he tells the story of being with a shepherd friend late one night on an open Texas prairie. The shepherd had lit a ginormous roaring bonfire to keep warm and it sort of marked the center of where the flock should be. And all the sheep were around this fire. Around that bonfire was one shepherd, this guy, three trusty sheep dogs, and a couple thousand sheep. Well, suddenly this guy says some coyotes start howling in the distance. Alan said you could feel the entire flock tense with fear. But then Alan said he looked out over the sheep and he saw something he said, I will never forget. So what I saw were thousands of small lights reflecting back at me.

Look at it. In their moment of fear, the eyes of the sheep were not looking out into darkness where the predators were. In their moment of fear, they weren't tearing out in panic, they were looking toward their safety. That's where peace and confidence are.

What do you do in Danger House? I will keep him in perfect peace, God says in Isaiah, whose eyes are fixed upon me. It's not I will keep him in perfect peace who's got that thick 401k that nothing can ever happen. I will keep him who perfect peace whose eyes are fixed on me because he who guards Israel never slumbers or sleeps.

He stands guard in front of the door of my pen each night and will not let in anyone or anything that he does not promise to use for good in my life. That means I don't have to be afraid. You want to know how to find peace when you feel confused or afraid or threatened? You know how to find peace when you don't know what to do with your finances or with one of your kids?

When you don't know which direction to go? I will keep him in perfect peace whose eyes are fixed on me. Be anxious for nothing, God tells us in Philippians. But in everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God. And let the peace, when you do that, the peace that passes all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. When danger howls, get your eyes onto the shepherd. That's where some of you are this weekend. And so I invite you to look and fix your eyes and rest. Here's the second picture.

It's a famous painting, 1898, by Alfred Usher Sword depicting Jesus, our shepherd, risking his life to go after another lost land. See, maybe life has gotten you into a place and you don't really even know quite how you got here. You're stuck on a rocky cliff out here called addiction. Or you're in a bad relationship. Or you're just suffering under a series of bad choices you've made that you now regret. And this morning, maybe for the first time, you realize that your main problem is that you've been doing things your way instead of God's way. You're lost.

And it's your sin, it's your insistence on going your own way that has led you to that place. I got good news. The Savior's reaching out for you. He knew you were missing.

He left the 99. He said to go out for the one, which was you. That's you. And this is him right here, reaching out for you this morning. That's that tug you feel in your heart right now.

You've been feeling it for weeks, haven't you? The question is, will you receive him? Will you take his hand? He wants to forgive your sins. He wants to rescue you. He wants to put you on a new path, but you got to surrender to him and you got to let him have control.

Are you willing to do that? So as we let the words of Jesus settle in our hearts, that we are known, named, and never alone, let's lean in together to where this good shepherd might be leading us next. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist J.D.

Greer. So J.D., you often talk about the importance of making the gospel known, both deep and wide. How do gospel partners help make that vision a reality?

Thanks, Molly. I love this question because it gets right at the heart of what we're about here at Summit Life. When we say that we exist to take people deeper into the gospel and to advance the gospel wider in the world, it comes right out of Colossians 1, 5, and 6. What we mean is that we want our hearers, those of you listening right now, to know the gospel deeply. I mean, to understand it better, to be transformed by it, to go deeper into it.

Because it's like Martin Luther said, the way to progress in the Christian life is to always go back to the beginning. Wider means we want to see the gospel spread as far and wide as possible through you, as well as through this ministry here on the air and on TV. Here's the deal. None of that happens by accident. It takes people who are committed to making it a reality. And Molly, one of the privileges we have is serving with one of the most dedicated teams here at Summit Life who are committed to our audience and to praying for them and just the quality of what we put out. But there's another side of that partnership, and it's what we call our gospel partners. They're not just donors to the ministry. They are partners with us in the mission. They pray for us. They hear from us. We pray for them. And they give financially.

Again, I want you to hear this. It's not about fundraising. For us, it's really about giving. It's not about giving. It's about us. It's really about, I like to say, faith raising. Honestly, I know I'm maybe a little biased here, but I don't think there's any greater investment that you can make that has a better E-R-O-I, eternal return on investment, than getting the Word of God to people.

So hey, if you're on the fence, I would say jump in. You're not just giving. You're sending the hope of Jesus.

As it goes deeper in you, you're sending it wider into the world. Thank you, JD. We've created a brand new featured resource called I Am, Seven Weeks in the Gospel of John.

This study explores the seven I Am statements of Jesus, shedding light on exactly who He claimed to be. Give today and ask for your copy of this study guide when you call us at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

It's even easier to give on our website. Go to jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovich. Tune in Friday when Pastor J.D. Greer talks about absolute truth. It's part of our teaching series in the Gospel of John right here on Summit Life. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.