He knows your name and leads you onwards
Readings: John 10. 1-10
What do you make of Jesus? Who is he? What is he? A good teacher, giving wise advice, who helps us think about the bigger things of life? Certainly. A Saviour who dies to set his people free? Absolutely. But here Jesus takes on a different picture for himself. The shepherd.
The fact that Jesus takes upon himself the title of shepherd, and indeed in the very next verse after our passage for today, the title of the good shepherd, is a rich picture. We’ll think about some of what he’s saying in a moment, but first it’s worth pausing to note the theological undertones here. The leaders of God’s people in ages past, whether Moses or Joshua, or the Kings of old were sometimes referred to as shepherds. But it’s not just them that this language is used for in the Old Testament, rather, as Psalm 23 reminds us, God himself is spoken of as the shepherd of his people. For Jesus to take this language on for himself is to make that connection, to equate himself with God. It’s more subtle than in other places where he is much clearer, but he is again making that link, in him we see God in the flesh, come to shepherd us in person.
And we join this conversation halfway through, the chapter division rather hides it, but this is the same conversation that he’s having with the religious leaders at the end of chapter 9. He’s just healed a blind man, and these leaders are divided about who this Jesus is. And it’s into this conversation that Jesus begins to speak of himself as a shepherd. These leaders were those entrusted with being shepherds of God’s people, and yet they have failed again and again, so here is Jesus, the Good Shepherd, come to shepherd his people himself.
And what we find in this passage is that Jesus is deeply connected to his sheep. He knows their names, he knows your name. Did you notice that? He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. In the Ancient near East it was common for shepherds to keep their sheep in sheepfolds with multiple other flocks. And so you’d have the sheep of multiple shepherds all mixed up together. And what these shepherds did, and sometimes still do, is stand at different parts of the fold and make their unique call to the sheep, and the sheep will recognise their voice, recognise the call and go and gather around their shepherd and the shepherd can then lead them out to pasture. Isn’t that amazing.
But what Jesus tells us today of this shepherd, of himself, is that he doesn’t just make a generic call, he calls each by name. Jesus knows your name. We often talk of how Jesus lays down his life for the world, or for his people, the church. All those things are true. Upon the cross he dies to set us free from sin and death, to win us forgiveness. But it’s also true that he died to set you free from sin and death. Died so that you can be forgiven. Died to give you life in all its fulness. As he resolved to come to earth, as he was born as one of us, as he agonised in the garden the night he was betrayed, as he hung their upon the cross and as he died there, he was not thinking of a generic body of people, of his church, his flock in a general sense. He was thinking of you. You, in person. You, by name. In Isaiah chapter 43 God speaks of his people and says ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine’. And this is true in the sense of the calling of us as a people, but it is also true of us as individuals.
If you had been the sole sinner on the earth, God the Son would still have been born as one of us, died on the cross, and been raised on the third day to redeem you. Our shepherd is deeply personal, he knows you by name.
And on the flip side of that is Jesus’ repeated saying that his sheep recognise his voice. He knows our names, and in turn we recognise his voice. It’s why we are Christians, it’s why we have our faith in him. We recognised the voice of our shepherd, of the creator of the universe. We recognised his voice and followed him.
Another difference between shepherds in the Near East, both in Jesus’ day and in our own, is that they lead the sheep. In Wales, and the wider western world, for the most part we drive the sheep, often using sheepdogs. In many parts of the Near East they do not do that. The shepherd walks ahead and their sheep follow them because they recognise the voice of their shepherd.
It’s a wonderful picture of discipleship. Being a Christian, being a disciple of Jesus isn’t about him chasing us around, hemming us in, keeping us in line. Rather it is us learning to recognise his voice and following where he leads. And whilst that may well be in the sense of following him as he leads us through life, trying to work out the decisions we should be making, where we are meant to be going. It’s also in that deeper sense of following him in obeying his voice. Living as we should, doing what he calls us to do as we find it in the Bible, and refraining from what he calls us not to do. Seeking to grow in love, and patience, and generosity, and living sacrificially, and less selfishly, hatefully, and fearfully.
If we are Jesus’s sheep, and we recognise his voice, then we are to obey his voice, to do as he calls. It is no good simply going ‘oh that’s Jesus’ voice’ if we do nothing with what he is calling us to do, if we never follow where he is leading. Hearing his voice is one thing, but it is only the beginning of following that voice, of obeying that voice.
And perhaps that idea of obeying Jesus’ voice is familiar and comfortable. But perhaps it jars, we in our day recoil a little at the idea of obedience, of doing as someone tells us. We value our freedom, and how do we know that this person has our best interests at heart. In the last decade or so we’ve seen the growing distrust of authority figures and experts and the rise of wanting to work things out for ourselves. So do we really want to obey Jesus? Is that something that is good for us? And that reluctance is perhaps born out of seeing how religion is used exploitatively at times. How so called religious leaders use peoples faith to line their own pockets, fund their lifestyles, build their brand and influence. We see faith weaponised to justify war and exploitation and misogyny and hatred. But just because something can be exploited doesn’t make it a bad thing, it simply recognises that it is a powerful thing.
Jesus assures us that he is for our good. Others who try to lead us, they leap over the wall, crawl under the fence, they do not enter by the gate. Others come for what they can get, come to steal and kill and destroy. They come to consume the sheep, caring little for the welfare of the flock. But our shepherd, Jesus, he knows us by name, he cares for us. He comes through the gate, and he comes that we may have life and have it to the full. Every command he gives, even every restriction he places on us, everywhere he leads us, even through the darkest valley, he is leading us into life.
Everything else, everyone else, whether they realise it or not, are looking for something from us. It’s true of us too, every relationship we have we’re looking for something, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But Jesus needs nothing from us, he doesn’t need us, but he still wants us. And because he does not need us he has no reason to exploit us. So when he tells us he has come to bring us the fulness of life, we can believe what he says, for he proved it to the uttermost, even unto death.
And as he leads us, and as we follow, we have the assurance that he goes with us. As we go through life he is going on ahead of us every step of the way. Which means wherever we go, we do not go alone, we are instead following his footsteps. If we are to look for our shepherd we do not need to fear that he has abandoned us as we might if he was driving us from behind, rather we find him ahead, clearing the way, defending us, guarding us as he lead us onwards. The joyful reality of following Jesus’ voice, is that we are following, he already is where he is leading us to next, simply a few steps ahead.
My brothers and sisters the Lord Jesus is my shepherd, is your shepherd. He calls you by name, he leads you now and all your days, he walks ahead, going before you into all things. So may we be attentive to his voice, to his leading. And as we hear his voice may we obey that voice, for he has come not to take what he can from us, or to lay waste to our lives, rather he has come to bring us life. Life without end. Life that is deeper, fuller, more true and more joyful that we could imagine. That’s the life he is leading us into, that is the life he has come to bring, where we will dwell in his house forever.
Amen.