As we continue with our exposition of the Gospel of John in Chapter 10, you will recall that after Jesus gave sight to the Man Born Blind in Chapter 9 that a confrontation ensued between the formerly blind beggar and the Pharisees.
The issue with the Pharisees was not with the blind beggar but with Jesus.
John 9:39-10:10
39 And Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind."
40 Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, "Are we blind also?"
41 Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, 'We see.' Therefore your sin remains.
10:1 "Most assuredly [amen, amen], I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.
2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
3 To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.
5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers."
6 Jesus used this illustration, but they did not understand the things which He spoke to them.
7 Then Jesus said to them again, "Most assuredly [amen, amen], I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
8 All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.
9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Jesus used the stubborn refusal by the Pharisees to “see” that He, Jesus, is the One Sent from God to give the parable of the Good Shepherd.
Verses 1-10 of John 10 establish that Jesus of Nazareth is the Shepherd of Israel who is sent by God and who enters the sheepfold by the door.
In verse 7 Jesus said that He is the door to the sheepfold and that the one who enters by the door is the Shepherd of the sheep. The “door”, I believe, is all of the OT prophets and that only the One who fulfills the words of the OT prophecies about Messiah can be of the True Shepherd of Israel.
The doorkeeper [porter], I believe, is the Word of God that protects the sheep from following a false shepherd.
Jesus said that those who try to come any other way than by the door are thieves and robbers and that the sheep will not hear them because they will by no means follow the voice of a stranger. Jesus is clearly comparing Himself to the scribes and Pharisees.
Jesus gives the character of the false shepherds and the character of the Good Shepherd.
And so now we move from The Shepherd of Israel [1-10] to The Good Shepherd [11-21]. Do not be confused by the different metaphors and titles.
Jesus is described in many ways, e.g., the Word, Light, the True Bread, the True Vine, the Lamb, the Lion, et al. Each different metaphor and title gives us information about the character and purpose of Messiah.
In John 10 Jesus is the Good Shepherd.
In Hebrews 13:20 Jesus is the “great Shepherd.”
Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
In 1 Peter 5:4 Jesus is the “Chief Shepherd.”
“…and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.”
Perhaps in another study we will examine the nuances of the Good Shepherd, the Great Shepherd, and the Chief Shepherd. For now we will stay with our text and the Good Shepherd.
As we read verses 11-21 think about this question.
How good is the Good Shepherd?
11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.
12 But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.
13 The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep.
14 I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.
15 As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.
16 And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.
17 "Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. 18 No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father."
19 Therefore there was a division again among the Jews because of these sayings.
20 And many of them said, "He has a demon and is mad. Why do you listen to Him?"
21 Others said, "These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?"
What Jesus says about Himself in verse 11 is the exact opposite of what He says about the Jewish leaders in verse 10. The prophetic description of these false shepherds is given in Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34 that we referred to in the message on verses 1-10.
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy….
Compared with:
11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.
These religious men cared nothing about mercy! All they cared about was their twisted interpretation of the law. Their father is the devil [8:44] and that great deceiver enticed them to accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath when He restored the strength to walk to a man who had been lame for 38 years and gave sight to a man born blind!
See the contradiction of sinners against Himself! Religious hypocrites accuse the Lord, even of the Sabbath, of breaking His own law of the Sabbath?
That spiritual blindness of the Jewish leaders had existed for centuries in national Israel and is the basis for the proclamation of judgment that Jesus made about Israel in:
John 9:39-41
39 And Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind."
40 Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, "Are we blind also?"
41 Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, 'We see.' Therefore your sin remains.
The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.
This verse is so full of information that we could camp out here for hours and not exhaust its depth. The goodness of the Shepherd, what a shepherd does, the characteristics of sheep, etc.
The Good Shepherd makes a propitiatory sacrifice for a specific set of people here referred to as “sheep”. The context of the passage will not allow for the notion that the entire human race is intended to be His sheep [26].
Was the death of Jesus on the cross a “stab in the dark” by God the Father to see if, just maybe, someone might be saved? Or was His name to be called Jesus because He will save His people from their sins? [Mathew 1:21]
What says the prophet Isaiah?
Was Messiah to accomplish anything specific?
Isaiah 53:10-11
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
The congregation before me has been taught the Doctrines of Grace. But I can assure you that the majority of Baptists in our day have not been taught that God is sovereign in His choice of who will be saved.
Quite the contrary, if the doctrines of Grace are ever mentioned it is to misrepresent what they mean and to disparage them as being unscriptural and that they are to be rejected as heresy.
[Article in Mainstream Baptist, March 2005, page 3]
“On the Alabama Presence of Calvinistic Baptists,”
by Joseph M. Jones, Editor.
Some readers may have raised a quizzical eyebrow when they read in our last issue that, according to Mainstream President Mark Ray, Southern Baptists’ first seminary in Louisville has a president who “believes Jesus didn’t die for the sins of all people, and that some people are born with no chance of salvation.”
He was, of course, referring to a system of beliefs called “Calvinism” and to one of its chief modern proponents, Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mohler is a leader in a 21st century manifestation of Calvinism known as the Founders Ministries.
The matter came to out attention again, just a few days later, when on January 6 The Alabama Baptist printed a letter to the editor from the pastor of the Southridge Community Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Duncanville, near Tuscaloosa. He invited Alabamians to consult the website www.founders.org for a list of Reformed Theology Churches in Alabama.
(Modern Calvinistic adherents in Baptist circles are reluctant to use the word Calvinism, which is taken from John Calvin, the 16th century Frenchman whose theology was introduced in Geneva and has been influential since. They use instead terms such as “doctrines of grace,” and “reformed theology” and “founders’ ministries.” Although I am a layman and not a theologian, I am given to understand and do accept that the Founders’ theology closely overlays Calvin’s, the essence of which in this regard is that Christ’s atonement for sin was limited to certain “particular” people, that a person is born to be saved or damned and that he can do nothing to alter that. On the other hand, most Baptists, that is mainstream Baptists, believe that Christ died for all, that each person is free to receive or reject salvation, that it is not God’s will that any should perish.)
The Founders web site to which the pastor referred lists 20 churches in Alabama that are “Founders-Friendly.” All but four are self-identified as Southern Baptist churches – two are listed as independent Baptist, and two have “other” affiliations.
The web site also promotes a number of publications offered for sale, and lists 68 Alabamians, all men, who are “friendly” to the organization’s beliefs.
Well, we have been “exposed”!
The dilemma ascribed by Mr. Jones to those who believe the “Doctrines of Grace” and whom Mr. Jones disparages leaves him with an even greater problem. Viz., Does God know everything?
Does God know who will be saved before they are justified?
How does God know who will be saved?
The “mainstream” answer would be that God looked into the future and saw who would accept Jesus and then He chose those people. Even if that were the case [which it most definitely is not] it would still mean that God knew who would choose Him and allowed those whom He knew would not believe in Him to be born only to die and go to hell.
The point is that Mr. Jones has the precisely same dilemma that he ascribes to those who believe the “Doctrines of Grace”.
The only way out of this dilemma for Mr. Jones would be that he believes that God is ignorant! For Mr. Jones to be consistent, God would have to wait in ignorant wonder for a man to make a choice based on a total and unconditional “free-will.”
Even God cannot “know” a thing unless He controls that thing. That is why you and I cannot know anything until it has happened. But God knows the end from the beginning.
The doctrine of God’s sovereignty has caused men to stumble ever since there have been men on the earth.
Genesis 2:15-17
15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
Genesis 3:17-19
17 Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it':
"Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
18 Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return."
Genesis 4:1-5
1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have acquired a man from the LORD."
2 Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
3 And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the LORD.
4 Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the LORD respected Abel and his offering,
5 but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.
What has the story of Cain’s unacceptable offering got to do with the atonement? From the time of Adam’s first sin man has been at odds with God over how men will be accepted by God. More than that the issue is who is in charge! Is it God or man?
And men today get just as angry as did Cain when they are confronted about God’s absolute sovereignty.
The doctrine of the atonement is perhaps the most contentious of the “Doctrines of Grace”. For whom did Christ die?
For whom did the Good Shepherd give His life?
Who are the sheep and how do they become His sheep?
Did Christ die with the purpose of saving every human?
Then He cannot see the travail of His soul and be satisfied! {Isaiah 53:11}
Did the death of Christ on the cross actually save anyone or did His death only make it possible for someone to be saved?
That is the issue: an actual atonement for His chosen people or a possible atonement that depends on the exercise of man’s choice?
The following are just a few references that clearly say who the sheep are and for whom Christ died. Every Bible reference that seems to indicate that Christ died for the human race without exception can be understood in a limited sense. That is not the case for any of the verses that I will put before you now.
John 3:16-17
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Ah Jim, now you’ve messed up and proven yourself wrong! You can’t use John 3:16 to prove God’s sovereign choice! Everybody knows that John 3:16 means that God intended to save the entire world!
Our “mainstream” friends would insist that the “world” absolutely must mean the entire human race. Any serious study of the usage of “cosmos” by the Apostle John will show that there are no less than five and probably seven meanings assigned to “world”.
Besides that the verse qualifies itself. It is “whoever believes in Him…” and how do the “whoever” come to believe in Him?
It is not my purpose to labor long in the field of the intent of the atonement this morning but only to say that “world” here does not necessarily have to mean every human being.
The way John often uses “world” is to mean both Jews and Gentiles and not only Jews. And Jesus is the only Savior that the world will ever know!
The same Jesus who spoke John 3:16 also said:
John 6:35-40
35 And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.
36 But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe.
37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
39 This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.
40 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
John 6:43-45
43 Jesus therefore answered and said to them, "Do not murmur among yourselves. 44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.
45 It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.
John 17:6
"I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
John 17:9
"I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.
John 17:20-21
20 "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;
21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
These are only a few of the scriptures that say who Christ died for; there are many others.
Acts 13:48
Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.
Acts 20:27-29
28 Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
Ephesians 5:25-27
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her,
26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word,
27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.
Matthew 1:21
21 And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins."
Romans 8:31-36
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
33 Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.
34 Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written:
"For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."
It was not my intent to make this message a topical lesson on the atonement of Christ. All I want to do is to show that the consistent message in the entire Bible is that God is sovereign in His choice of who will be saved.
The charge brought against those of us who preach the “Doctrines of Grace” is that we are not evangelistic. But our accusers define evangelism as begging spiritually dead sinners to make a “decision” without the sovereign operation of the Holy Spirit. There is no conviction of sin against God’s holy, just, and good law. There is no leading of the law to bring one to Christ. There is no demand for repentance! Just man and his imagined free will.
Once you understand that the Holy Spirit must first operate on a man’s dead spirit you will see that man is not in charge.
My definition of evangelism is to preach the gospel to every creature and to trust the Holy Spirit to quicken dead sinners. And yes, I urge you to make your confession public. Repent and believe in the Gospel and be baptized!
Some years ago I was witnessing to a woman who was struggling with the sovereignty of God in salvation. She had been brought up in churches that taught the sovereignty of man’s free will. One day she said to me: “I think I see it now! How does the Holy Spirit know whom to regenerate?”
Do you see the depth of understanding in her question?
There is a complete system of soteriology in her question.
What or Who determines who will be “born again” by the Holy Spirit?
Jesus said, “You must be born again.” But How does the Holy Spirit know whom to regenerate?”
It is simply man’s sinful pride that allows him to think that God is obligated to offer salvation to everyone. It is the refusal to “see” that every man and woman is as helpless as the blind beggar and that if anyone is saved it will be by grace through faith!
It is God’s mercy that anyone is saved! So instead of accusing God of unfairness for not saving everyone we must praise Him for His goodness that He saved anyone at all!
Let’s continue with our exposition after too long of an excursion.
12 But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.
13 The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep.
In the Parable of the Lost Sheep Jesus leaves ninety and nine and the Shepherd seeks and finds the one sheep that had wandered away from the flock. That one sheep was as important to the Shepherd and all the rest of the sheep. [Luke 16:1-10]
The hireling, in contrast, only cares for what he can get from the sheep. The hireling does not love the sheep and will run away when there is danger and the sheep are threatened. It is not necessary for me to give you many examples of modern day hirelings.
Far too many pastors today will run away to another “calling” instead of caring for the sheep. How else can you explain the fact that the average Southern Baptist pastor stays in a given church for less than two years?
14 I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. 15 As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.
What profound words!
I know My own.
My own know Me.
Just as My Father knows Me.
I know the Father.
I lay down My life for the sheep.
16 And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.
Once again I will say to you that your eschatology [your understanding of the end times] will interpret Scripture.
What is Jesus talking about here? What is the fold? What is the flock?
Is it only a Jewish flock? Or is it the church?
My understanding is that God always deals with individuals in the matter of salvation and that God never saves anyone on the basis of their birth certificate.
The problem that the Jews had and it is the same problem that most systems of eschatology have is that an assumption is made that because God greatly blessed the Jews with the oracles of God and circumcision that that meant the Jews were exempt from the wrath of God.
In other words, they are saved from the wrath of God because they are Jews, because of their birth certificate! Paul deals with that wrong conception in Romans 3.
There has never been a national entity, never a generation of the Jews, in which everyone was redeemed.
Search through your Bible carefully and you will find elect Gentiles and the elect Jewish remnant and never a national salvation. And yet the majority of scholars insist that God will save the Jews because they are Jews.
The “other sheep” which are not of the fold are the Gentiles. They will hear the voice of the Shepherd and there will be one flock and one Shepherd!
The most popular view of end times says that Jews and the church are two separate entities and shall never be together.
But here Jesus says there will be one flock and one Shepherd. There is not a Jewish flock and a Gentile flock; there is one flock.
Just as in Romans 11:16-24 there one holy root of the single olive tree with wild Gentile branches [branches are individuals] grafted in with the natural branches [the remnant of believing Jews as individuals] and they become the single olive tree.
And so the flock of sheep is made up of all the sheep that follow Christ: They are elect Gentiles and elect Jews who come to Christ through the Gospel of free grace and they are the flock who make up the true church.
There is also the “must” of divine predestination here. I must bring…
16 And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.
17 "Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. 18 No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father."
The Son of God freely gives His life for the sheep. No one takes His life from Him. Jesus is not a helpless victim. Jesus is in complete control of the events as He gives His life for the sheep.
He has the power, the authority, the right, and the freedom to lay down His life because He alone has the power to raise Himself from the dead.
19 Therefore there was a division again among the Jews because of these sayings.
20 And many of them said, "He has a demon and is mad. Why do you listen to Him?"
21 Others said, "These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?"
There was a division.
The truth will cause division. The stubborn person will cling to their imagined power over their eternal destiny and go to hell for their trouble.
To some He is crazy. He has a demon and is mad!
Others have the truth revealed to them and they know there is more to Him.
So where are you at this very moment?
Are you one of His sheep?
Is all of this business of believing and trusting in Jesus just something that you will put off for now?
Do you want to be one of His sheep? Then repent of your sin and trust your eternal soul to the Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ.
John 10:9, “If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, …”
The invitation is to “anyone.” Anyone who enters will be saved!
But you must enter!
Do you see the beauty and majesty of the Good Shepherd?
Are you able to take your place as a simple and needy sheep who must come to the Good shepherd? Then come! Come to Jesus and you will be saved!
Amen
Sola Scriptura 
