John 10 More context than you can imagine

Barb from Minneapolis hosts the Biblically Wired podcast. In her ninth episode, she emphasizes the importance of understanding the context and structure of the Book of John. She discusses the use of numbers and the significance of the seven miracles and seven "I am" statements in declaring Jesus as God. She then focuses on John 10, where Jesus refers to himself as the door and the good shepherd. She explains that the Pharisees, who were illegally in their role as shepherds, are the thieves and robbers Jesus mentions. Hey everyone, this is Barb from Minneapolis, the host of the Biblically Wired podcast. Good day, good day, wherever you're at. I always picture all of you guys driving around, walking your dogs. Well, I'm in Minnesota now and both of my dogs, my golden retriever and my cocker spaniel are asleep, so it's a good time to do my podcast. This is our ninth podcast. I'm super humbled because I felt God call me to this and each of these takes a learning curve for me and a lot of diligent work. As you know, I already teach the Bible weekly and this allows me to emphasize certain portions in a cool way that teaching doesn't because I have two hours to cover so much. We're going to focus in today on John 10. I've been asked how I organize my teaching or study to teach and that's quite a complicated process that most of you listeners would not be interested in, so I'm going to get back to those people on my own, but I do want to remind all of us that this Gospel of John was originally written on a scroll and it was divided into chapters and verses much later. When I was first a Christian, I would pick up the Bible and find a chapter to read. I didn't always understand that there was a lot of emphasis sometimes placed on a chapter because of the surrounding chapters or a group of chapters within a larger framework of the book. Put that on top of arranging things in a writing, as the authors did, to emphasize certain things that are thematically emphasized in Scripture. Understanding that culture, even how they wrote and how they thought about their ancestors and certain stories within Scripture also is paramount, but there's a lot more than that. I just wanted to behoove you to look at the chapters surrounding a chapter just because it gives it much better context. We're in the Book of John and I'm going to start out by giving just a little preview on the book itself because I think it's vital and I think it's amazing. I think it's masterful in a way that I never understood, but I took a master's class on the Book of John, along with many, and the framework and wording in this gospel is saying way more than it says to us in our Western culture. First of all, John's goal is very clear. He wrote this to the original audience. All of the disciples thought they were in the end times as in Jesus is coming back soon. He didn't have us in mind in his writing, but of course the Holy Spirit did. But John's goal over Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they had separate goals in their writings. John's goal was to declare in a magnificent way that Jesus was God. Jesus is God. Jesus and God are one. If anybody tells you Jesus never said he was God, and I've heard this from many people, lead them to the Book of John where it is emphasized majestically. There is nothing like it. So I want us to even imagine writing about the person of Jesus Christ as his disciple after his death and resurrection. I guess I want you to think about an important person in your life and how you could use English or whatever your native language is to describe that person just in words. Words alone never comes close to describing people we love. And the creator of words, God himself, is hard to describe using the language he created. So the task John had before him had to be done by the power of the Holy Spirit, but you can see some planning that he did that is crazy amazing. So in a prior podcast, we talked about the Hebraic habit of using numbers to place emphasis and extra meaning on any subject. So the number seven is the number for complete. God created the world in seven days. Seven is the number for complete. Three also is a number for complete, but seven is also a number for vows and oaths. So seven is a special number. Another number we're going to delve into here in John 10 is the number five. What number is the number for grace or mercy? Okay, so what John does to emphasize to the original audience that Jesus is God is he places first of all seven miracles in his gospel. Now often we can read the miracles and wonder about other miracles. Kind of what else went on that was three years? Or we would hear Jesus healed all the people in this one space and makes you curious. Did he heal anyone from trauma? What about depression and other things? Well, the emphasis of Jesus Christ is never on signs and wonders. This is a key truth about Jesus Christ. He does not want us looking towards signs and wonders to prove to ourselves that he is real. Jesus wants us to believe in him by faith because of his life, not just the miracles. But here in John, John lists seven miracles. So what he was doing to the original audience is he was announcing that Jesus was the perfect miracle worker, the complete miracle worker. There is nowhere else you need to go for a miracle than to Jesus. Jesus is the miracle worker. So that's what he was saying to the audience. Now another thing he did with the number seven is he placed seven I am statements in his book. Seven I am, I am saying two words in English, I am, I space AM, just to be clear. What I am means to the Jewish people is really incredible. In Exodus chapter three, if you read through it, we find Moses coming upon the burning bush. The burning bush says, do not approach, you are on holy ground. The burning bush tells them what he's going to do. Now Moses is going to lead the Israelites out of 400 years of slavery, right? Moses is a little bit nervous to go back to the Israelites and say, hey, hey, guess what God asked me to do? Because he was raised by Pharaoh. They don't want anything to do with Pharaoh. His yoke of slavery has been heavy and awful. Moses is a little afraid and he's wondering how will they ever believe me? So Moses asked God, what if they ask me what your name is? And God says, tell them that I am, I am, I am, that's who I am. Okay, so why does God call himself I am? In English, it makes you want to go, who? You are who? You are what? Finish that sentence. But no. So in Hebrew, I am is Eheh, which is also the root of Yahweh. Yahweh is God's name in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So Moses saying, I am, asked me, is telling them that God is sending me to you. Now we see that Jesus proclaims his majesty, not only as God's son, but God himself. In the book of John, he says, I am the light of the world. He says, I am the bread of life. I am the resurrection. I am the way, truth, and life. I am the true vine. And the two we're going to focus on today is I am the door of the sheep, and I am the good shepherd. I am the door of the sheep. Here in John 10 is the most asked about I am of Jesus Christ, because you need a lot of context and background. And we're going to get there. I first, though, want to look at where we are in the book of John when we get to chapter 10. In chapter 10, we are just following up on Jesus healing a blind man physically, and then spiritually. And I love this. We could do many talks just on this, especially healing and healing spiritually. This blind man, he heals, goes and talks to the Pharisees. The Pharisees say we're disciples of Moses. We don't know where he, Jesus, even comes from. Then the blind man, or now the seen man, the healed man, says, how can this be that you don't even know him, yet he is the one who healed my sight? So we're in this topic of sight, and Jesus, with the Pharisees around him, basically tells them they're spiritually blind, which is something these arrogant Pharisees could never imagine. So we move into chapter 10, and we're mid-conversation with these Pharisees, and Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door, remember he's the door, into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him, the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts them forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure of speech Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which he had been saying to them. So I've read chapter 10, 1 through 6. We're going to read through chapter 10, verse 1 through 18 for this podcast. So we're a third of the way there here, and I'm going to look back at these first few verses. So what's going on here in context is, back in this time, small villages, maybe Bedouin tent properties, or big cities just outside of them, would have these pens, these pens where the shepherds would leave their sheep, and the shepherds would go home to sleep. Many different shepherds would leave their sheep in the same pen. And in the morning, the shepherds would come back, they would stand apart from each other, and they would do their sheep call. And their sheep would come out of the pen, divide on their own, and follow their shepherd for the day. So we can picture this, right? Well Jesus is saying that he's the door. He is the door of this pen, okay? Now if these shepherds were honest, they would get to these sheep through Jesus Christ. These thieves and robbers that he's discussing are the Pharisees. He is telling the Pharisees, and all of us reading this, that these particular Pharisees, high priests, and Sanhedrin came to their role as shepherds illegally, and they did. So in this time period, there were political and religious leaders that were called shepherds. So these Pharisees could be called shepherds in their villages and around the temple. If you read the book of Leviticus, you would see that all priests came from the tribe of Levi. So if you were not from the tribe of Levi, you have no right to be a priest. During this time, King Herod allowed people to be the priest, not by the Levitical rules, but by political power. Another thing that King Herod did was he stopped the lifetime term limit, so to speak, of being a priest or high priest. So what we had here is people that were trying to climb the fence and be the shepherd, not through the way of Jesus, not through Jesus, but through the way of the world. So a lot of them felt like they deserve it. They've done the work, they're well-schooled, they're well-versed in the Torah, they were very prideful, and they didn't mind jumping through a few hoops to get to be a shepherd. Now interesting to me is when we think about ourselves and we think about ministry, we do not want to even touch something ministerial related when we do not go through the door, the proper door, the person of Jesus Christ. I don't care what accreditation we have, what school we went to, we need to go through Jesus Christ for ministry, period. So Jesus is saying that they are thieves and robbers. They were after their own glory. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. These are the good shepherds. I love how in verse 3, Jesus says that he calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. This was not the practice of the regular Jewish or Israeli shepherd at the time to actually name all their sheep. I'm sure some did as they traveled miles a day and they needed someone to talk to. But Jesus added that here with his own personal touch that Jesus knows his sheep by name and he will call them by name. And name in this culture is their actual essence. Name in the Israeli culture is not just your name. It describes your actual essence. So Jesus knows his sheep so personally, he most likely knows them better than they know themselves. So it's pretty cool. Also they talk about the sheep following the shepherd and it's interesting because in our Western culture in general, shepherds drive their sheep from behind. But in the East, they led their sheep. Their sheep followed behind them and I think that's so beautiful. So the Pharisees at this point are still a little bit confused about what Jesus is even talking about. So Jesus says to them again, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture again. All things when it comes to Jesus often go back to understanding context is big. I want to highlight the fact that Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you. It's important for us to know that that is really strange in this atmosphere. What prophets and teachers did is they would say, thus says the Lord, or thus said the prophet Isaiah, or thus says the rabbi Gamaliel. They never said, truly, truly, I say to you. So this is the reason this culture felt like Jesus spoke with such authority, because he was not even referencing God. And this is another sign that Jesus was revealing himself as God. So, so cool. So when he says this, and he says, I am the door of the sheep, you can just picture the hair on the back of the Pharisee's neck raising. How is this guy saying what he has to say is so important. And now he's saying, I am, I am the door of the sheep. So in verse nine, it says, if anyone enters through me, he will be saved. Of course, that is the gospel there in a nutshell. And using the beautiful picture of a sheep pen to explain it. And when Jesus says they will go in and out and find pasture, in and out in the Hebrew culture is like birth to death, A to Z. What Jesus is saying is once we are born again and saved, we will spend our whole life with Jesus, and Jesus will find pasture. In and out describes someone's entire life. And now to verse 10. This verse is a Christian mantra. It is in a nutshell, revealing the enemy's goal and Jesus's goal all in one verse. So verse 10 says, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. So the thief here in this story is the Pharisees, the religious leaders that came to steal, kill and destroy. And what were they doing with their power, with their offices? They were stealing money from the Jewish people. They were allowing them to raise taxes on the Jews and taking some from the coffers. On special feasts and holidays, the temple was a place of huge profits related to the requirement of sacrifices. So they stole a lot. Did they kill? Oh, yes, they did. They killed for political power. They killed based on gossip. They did not follow the regulatory sanctions or set up of the Jewish court that God commanded. And did they destroy? With all the sin they were doing, yes, they did. They destroyed the people by packing on rules so that the focus would never be to the glory of God. The focus would be on the people. Whenever we put a lot of rules on people, what happens is the people start watching each other to see if they're keeping the rules. And the ones who claim or are seen as the best rule followers start to be worshipped, idolized, in control, and get power. So rules usually lead congregations to self-righteousness. So what did Jesus come for? He came that these sheep, his people and Gentiles, may have life and have it abundantly. This is what happened first on the cross. Jesus not only forgave our sins, he was resurrected and defeated death. He gave us the Holy Spirit as a pledge for our own resurrection so we do not die. We are basically moved from this body to heaven. And he gave us adoption as sons and daughters and inheritance. It goes on and on. The abundance that we get at the cross is hands down the biggest abundant gift we will ever get as followers of Jesus Christ. Now there's also a meaning in this word abundant of overflow, of passion, of presence. It is no small thing that the Holy Spirit lives within us, directs us, convicts us, is part of our sanctification, and gives us power, unbelievable, the abundant life that we get from the Good Shepherd. Then if you continue on, Jesus goes on to say, I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. That is the number one thing the Good Shepherd does. It is listed here first. He lays down his life for the sheep. And verse 12 says, 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 runs. And the wolf snatches them and scatters the sheep. So what's going on here is that in these pens overnight with all the sheep settled into sleep, there was a hired hand or a shepherd apprentice that laid across the gate. So there wasn't necessarily a door. There was a hired hand that laid across on night shift and kept watch over the sheep. So Jesus is saying this hired hand, he's going to book up and run when the enemy comes, when the wolves come to devour, when the lion comes, because he's not that concerned for the sheep. He's more concerned about his own life. But the Good Shepherd, he knows his sheep and they know him. And he lays his life down there for the sheep. In verse 16, it says, 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. Jesus is talking about us, the Gentiles, unless you're a Jew. On the other side of this microphone, we as believers in Christ are now one with one shepherd. So then Jesus goes on to talk about this laying down his life. Now in Instagram comments just this morning, I saw people talking about how humans killed Jesus. But I want to reiterate here that yes, they were guilty of ordering his murder, not only in their hearts, but through their lips. But it was Jesus Christ who laid his life down. The enemy and no power on earth could have killed Jesus Christ if he didn't want to die. This is why we see him on the cross, where again, he makes seven statements. That's another story. But we see him on the cross and he says, Father, receive my spirit. Jesus had to give up his spirit from his body himself, himself. So Jesus laid down his life for his sheep. The coolest thing is in this portion, and you could find this yourself in John 10 verses 15 through 18, five times Jesus talks about laying it down, laying down his life. He mentions this five times here. Now remember the number five reveals grace and mercy. It is incredible the things knit into scripture when you start to dig. What does this match? It matches everything we learn. We are saved by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, who laid down his life and forgave all of us so we can be reunited with God. What John is showing here is Jesus laid down his life literally out of grace and mercy for his sheep. He did it on his own initiative out of pure love. We are so loved, everybody. Jesus Christ loves us so much. He is that good shepherd that wants to lead us and call us by name and bring us to the lush, lush grass and the river stream for water. Can you see how loved you are? There is no person on earth, no religion on earth, nothing that will give you that kind of love. So in conclusion, you guys, let's rejoice today. Praise for this good shepherd who comes and reveals his love in such a majestic way. And I'm so grateful for the book of John, the way he chose to write his book to emphasize the majesty of the Lord that we love. 100% human and 100% God. I am just so excited this morning. I hope this Blessed Year Day gave you a little bit of a tidbit on how deep and knit and multi-layered the scriptures are. I absolutely love unraveling, unwrapping, and being this Bible detective I am. It is the favorite thing that I get to do each day. And I hope it's blessing your life. I so badly want this good stuff to get out there. I thank you again for listening wherever you are. My next podcast is going to be about Abraham and Isaac as we continue through Genesis. I thank you guys, I love you so much. And here we are in Minnesota, it's supposed to snow tonight, I'm excited. Wherever you are out there, I know our days can be rough, but let's rejoice and keep our chin up in Jesus' name.