Class Outline:

Wednesday December 1,2021

Title: Ephesians 4:7-16: Spiritual gifts -pastor teacher, part 9.

 

As we conclude our study on JOH 10:1-18, we should summarize this wonderful and important passage. The context of the “I am the good Shepherd passage is the healing of the man born blind who the Pharisees sent out from the flock of Israel, over which they were bad shepherds. Jesus sought out the healed man after his excommunication and became his Shepherd. Jesus called him by asking him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man,” and the man walked through the door (Jesus is the door) by faith in Christ.

 

The background to this passage is Eze 34 where God condemned the leaders of Israel, then in captivity in Babylon, for being bad shepherds who actually devoured the sheep, and then promised that He, God, would be the Shepherd of Israel, gathering them as His flock. Jesus, the Son of David, would fulfill that prophecy, as He would so many others.

 

In Jesus parable or proverbial message, He spoke of Himself as the door of the sheep and also as the good Shepherd who leads the sheep in and out and out to pasture. He said that the sheep know His voice and follow Him. He spoke of the thief that only wants to kill and destroy the sheep, and He spoke of the hireling who is not an owner of the sheep and when the wolf comes, the hireling is more concerned for himself than the sheep, and he flees, leaving the sheep in danger.

 

He said that in contrast to the thief who wants to kill and destroy, He, the good Shepherd, came that the sheep might have life and might have it abundantly. The word abundantly means extraordinary, which is the experience of eternal life.

 

Then He said the most extraordinary thing.

 

JOH 10:11-13

“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life [psuche = life or soul] for the sheep. 12 He who is a hireling, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, beholds the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees, and the wolf snatches them, and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hireling, and is not concerned [it is no concern to him] about the sheep.”

 

The danger of the wolf is spiritual death, death of the soul, not physical death.

 

Death is connected with sin (GEN 2:17), “the day you eat from it you shall surely die.” Death is to us the punishment of sin, but the punishment itself is not so much the death of the body as it is the soul; the separation from all good and all hope, which is separation from God for eternity. This is the real danger that Christ delivers us from.

 

When spiritual death is removed, physical death becomes a joyous anticipation.

 

This is the wolf. The wolf for mankind is not the possibility of physical death but of spiritual death, continued separation from God for the unbeliever. Satan wants to see as many of us judged as possible. He knows that he is going to be. For the believer, the danger of the wolf, which I think is safe to personify as Satan, is a life distant from God, a life that is not extraordinary spiritually, a life ruled by sin and the flesh, a life lacking in communion with God in experience or in prayer, or a life having no divinely positive impact on others.

 

There are so many references and displays and exhortations and commands concerning the life that God desires for His own. One I read this morning:

 

Psa 128 A Song of Ascents.

1 How blessed is everyone who fears the Lord,

Who walks in His ways.

2 When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands,

You will be happy and it will be well with you.

3 Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine,

Within your house,

Your children like olive plants

Around your table.

4 Behold, for thus shall the man be blessed

Who fears the Lord.

 

5 The Lord bless you from Zion,

And may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.

6 Indeed, may you see your children's children.

Peace be upon Israel!

 

A life lived in the proper fear of the Lord, which if you remember, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, will have divinely good positive impact on others, especially those closest to you as in spouse and children.

 

Man has one life to live and then comes his one judgment. He cannot return to life, as reincarnation religions deceive with, and prepare for another judgment.

 

HEB 9:27

it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,

 

There is no coming back for another preparation for judgment. There is one life, one death, and one judgment, which for the unbeliever will result in a second death (REV 2:11). If your judgment happens to be the one that Christ received then life and death are a totally different matter. Your whole worldview is changed. And for the believer, who will not enter into judgment for rejecting Christ, but who will be judged by Christ for his works (2CO 5:10), that aspect of the proper fear of the Lord should be a consistent reminder and motivation to take hold of the Shepherd’s gift of abundant life.

 

On to the final section:

 

JOH 10:14-18

"I am [ego eimi] the good shepherd; and I know My own, and My own know Me, 15 even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16 "And I have other sheep [Gentile world], which are not of this fold; I must bring them [singular referring to the entire fold] also, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock [Jew and Gentile in one new man, EPH 2:14-15] with one shepherd. 17 "For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. 18 "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."

 

We’ll get to this other fold later on. First we want to discover this knowing.

 

It is such an incredible statement for the Lord to say that He knows us and we know Him as He and the Father know each other.

 

It must have eternal implications, because who of us who are coming to truly know Him would say that we fully know Him? We have a long way to go, and I think the experience of death and the passage over into eternity and another few million years in eternity are a part of the process.

 

EPH 4:11-13

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge [epignosis = full knowledge] of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ.

 

This intimate knowledge is followed by Him stating a second time that He lays down His life for the sheep. Perhaps He is emphasizing a part of Himself that He wants us to come to know, in other words, of all the things we could know about Him, His desire to lay down His life for us should be chief among them. It fits with His other teachings on love. Love is the chief of virtues and the greatest love, He told us, was that we love one another as He has loved us, and so to lay down our lives for one another. “I know the Father and the Father knows Me, and I lay down My life for the sheep.” He wants us to know the depth of this love, His love. And to know that, we, the sheep, have to follow Him. He also said that, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him” (JOH 14:23).

 

JOH 10:14-15

"I am [ego eimi] the good shepherd; and I know My own, and My own know Me, 15 even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.

 

In vv. 14-15, the verb “know” occurs four times, and in each case is the present tense of ginosko. The context makes the present have timeless force. He knows us and we know Him forever. In time, we have the opportunity to know Him as much as we can.

 

Of the many things that authenticate the work of the Shepherd, one of them is the recognition by the sheep of His voice.

 

The same is true of any pastor who does his job well. The sheep recognize the voice of Christ, meaning the truth from His word, in the voice of the shepherd/pastor teacher.

 

Place a dog between his owner and a stranger and you will know immediately which one is which. Christ stakes His claim on a similar recognition. If the soul of the believer does not respond to Him then His claim is wrong. That does not mean lordship salvation. The carnal believer might shutter at the voice of his Lord, but he will still know that voice.

 

Being known by God is a term for salvation.

 

GAL 4:9

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?

 

The Lord may have to wake some sheep, poke them with His staff, or even use a measure of severity to make them harken to Him.

 

The blind man’s response to the Pharisees and Christ reveals this.

 

One of the great critics of Christianity was Ernest Renan. He wrote a superb book entitled “Life of Christ.” He is very smart and a wonderful writer. But in his case against the authenticity of Christ and Christianity, he mentions nothing about sin. Sin does not appear in the book at all. The core of Christianity is that man is dead because of sin and Christ gave His life to be judged for sin in our place. Renan didn’t see himself as a sinner in need of salvation, and neither did the Pharisees. If Christ’s gospel will not stir a man to faith, then he is not going to be drawn.

 

The mutual recognition of Christ and His sheep is not only a salvation occurrence. It maintains a constant bond throughout the believer’s life.

 

Christ knows His sheep and they know Him. Augustine said that we often don’t know ourselves, but Christ knows us. That is a fine statement. If we go astray, if we lose sight of Him, and even if we doubt ourselves so deeply that we wonder if we are indeed even saved, Christ always knows exactly who we are. And being outside of time, Christ knows us resurrected in eternity.

 

A Christian might become so steeped in sin that he hardly looks like Christ’s bride at all. Like a stray sheep who has fallen into mire and thorns and has become so covered in filth that his master’s markings are not visible.

 

[Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John]: “Who could tell to whom we belong when we lie absolutely content with the poisonous pasture of this world’s vanities and rank gains; when the soul is stained with impurity, torn with passion, and has every mark that distinguishes Christ’s people obscured? Is it surprising we should begin then ourselves to doubt whether we belong to the true fold or whether there is any true fold? Shameful are the places where Christ has found us, among prayerless days, unrestrained indulgences, with hardened heart and cynical thoughts, far from any purpose of good; and still again and again His presence has met us, His voice recalled us, His nearness awakened once more in us the consciousness that with Him we have after all a deeper sympathy than with any besides.”

 

As the Lord said, if a man has one-hundred sheep and one goes astray, he goes and looks for it. God is not willing that any one will perish.

 

And wonderfully, it turns out that as much as He knows everything about us, we start out knowing little about Him. But because of His constant presence with us and in us, He causes us to know more about Him. We ponder His life, and death, and words and we have endeavored to discover His way; what He requires from us. It is true that He thinks of each one of us constantly. We are not ever alone. Our thoughts, deep and secret sin, He knows well and He is always working to steer us away from danger.

 

And over time, the Shepherd wins the confidence of our soul. He does for each of us thousands of kindnesses that we have not recognized. He has patiently waited for us to recognize His love. He has forever been indispensable to us while He has watched our struggle to grasp independence from Him. But slowly and surely there grows in every believer a reciprocal knowledge of Him, “until we all attain the full knowledge of the Son of God” (EPH 4:13).

 

Knowing Him. Worshipping Him. Knowing the thrill of being His own and walking with Him. Having a depth of awe and emotion concerning Him that no other excites. These and more are the reasons for maturing in faith and knowledge. The only parallel is the mutual understanding between the Father and the Son.