Bible Text: St John 10:11–16 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
Jesus says, I Am the Good Shepherd. He doesn’t say He is a good shepherd. He is the Good Shepherd; there is no other. Because there is no other who laid down His life for you, and no other who could have laid down His life for you and done any good. He laid it down and took it up again. And to know this is to know Him. He is everything. We sing during this Easter season the hymn, “At the Lamb’s High Feast we Sing,” and we confess, “Christ the victim Christ the priest.” What does that mean? It means he’s not simply the Lamb, the sacrifice for sin. He’s the one who offers the Lamb, He is the priest. And this is Christ through and through. He is a father, because he cares for you and teaches you, but he is also your brother, who shares His inheritance to you. He is your Lord and Master, your King, whose word you obey, but He is also your Servant, who stoops down and washes your feet. He is in heaven, where you will be, but He is also here with you, because heaven cannot contain God. He is God the eternal and Almighty, but He is also man, born in a stable, who shared your mortality. He is everything good to you, in every situation of your life. That is what it means that He is the Good Shepherd.
There are five things the Good Shepherd says about Himself and His sheep. The first is definitive. It’s the reason for everything else. He lays down His life for the sheep. You know He laid down His life for all sinners, not just for those who believe in Him, but that’s not what He says here. He says He lays down His life for His sheep, because this is what defines your relationship with Him. He Himself bore your sins in his body on the tree. He did what no one could possibly do for you, because He loves you like no one can possibly love you. He is Love. You were born His enemy, and He loved you. You sinned against Him, and He loved you. You worshipped other gods, and He loved you; you misused His name, and He loved you; you despised His word, disobeyed authority, hated your brother, lusted, coveted, gossiped, and He loved you. You deserved His anger, but He laid it on Himself instead. Death claimed you, the devil demanded you, a sinner, as his rightful property, and He faced your death for you and silenced the devil’s accusations by facing all God’s wrath against your sin, so that there is nothing for the devil to accuse you of anymore. He emptied hell’s claim on you, and gave you heaven. That, and more than we can possibly imagine, is contained in those blessed words spoken by your God and Lord, “The Good Shepherd lays down His life for His sheep.” It’s the fulfilment of that beautiful promise in Ezekiel, God saying, “I, I myself, will be the shepherd of my sheep.”
Second, Jesus knows His sheep. “I know my own.” He calls you by name, He knows you as the precious child of God that has been washed clean of all your sin in your Baptism. He knows your frame, your weakness, your worries, your sadness, your doubts, your fears, your joys. He knows your needs before you even ask Him. He knows the days ahead of you. He knows your sin, because He’s borne it. He knows your trust in Him, because He wrought it by His Spirit. He knows your righteousness, because it is His righteousness that He gives to you. He knows you better than you know yourself, He knows what is good for you in your life, and He will certainly give it, and you know it, because He laid down His life for you.
Third, His sheep know Him. “My sheep know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father.” These are unspeakably beautiful words. You know the Son of God, as the Father knows the Son and the Son knows the Father. How? How is that even remotely possible? The Father has known the Son from eternity, and the Son has known the Father from eternity. They are one God, with the Holy Spirit. The Almighty, the Holy, the Righteous, the Unchangeable God. And you know the Son like this? How? You know His love. It’s imprinted on His hands and in His side. And that love has brought you into union with God Himself. You are the body of Christ. He is your head. You are His bride, one flesh with Him. This is what Jesus prays to His Father on the night before His passion, “I have made known your name to them, and I will continue to make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them and I in them.” He made it known on the cross. There is God, there is God’s love. When you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart the truth that the Father sent His only Son for you, and the Son happily obeyed His Father, and humbled Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, you know God. That knowledge grows and grows through suffering and through hearing your forgiveness and through trusting in Christ through it all, until in heaven and in the resurrection, you will know as you have been known.
Fourth, His sheep hear His voice. “They will listen to my voice.” Jesus says that His sheep don’t listen to the voice of strangers, because the words sound strange to them. A sheep won’t follow the voice of a stranger, and the only voice we Christians know is the voice of our Jesus. This is what we strive for throughout our lives, that false teaching would sound strange to us. What do you mean I evolved from slime? That’s not the voice of my Shepherd. My Shepherd says I was created in His own image, fearfully and wonderfully made by the almighty God. Why are you saying my works contribute to my salvation? That’s not the voice of my Shepherd. My Shepherd says, “By grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not of yourself, not of works, lest any man should boast.” What do you mean the Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience? That’s not my Shepherd’s voice. He says, “Take eat, this is my body. Drink of it, this is my blood for the forgiveness of sins.”
That’s the voice you know. It’s the most beautiful voice imaginable. It’s the voice of the God who laid down His life for you. That’s why we promise at our confirmation to hear the Word of God and receive the Lord’s Supper faithfully. It’s not a grudging duty that I have to pay to fulfil some religious obligation; it is the sincere confession of your heart that this Jesus is your Lord and you will not, cannot live without His words; you would rather die than lose them. These words are what the Good Shepherd gave His life to give you. His Words are life-giving, they reconcile to God, they open heaven, they keep you from sin and despair and shame, they comfort you in all your sadness, and strengthen you to live life as a child of God.
It’s a remarkable fact of the resurrection history, that when Jesus rises from the dead, the first thing He does is institute the pastoral office. It’s the first thing He does. He tells his disciples to preach, to forgive sins, to do this in remembrance of me. On the day of His resurrection, He was looking out for you, today. He was making sure that the sheep for whom He laid down His life, whom He knows, even before you were born, even before you ever heard His precious name, He was making sure you would know Him and hear His voice, so that there would be one flock, one shepherd, over all generations, one holy Christian and apostolic church.
And in this Church, Christ never flees from the wolf. He is no hireling. He is committed to you completely. You belong to Him. He bought you with His blood. You are His priceless treasure. He will never abandon you, He will forgive every sin, teach you and discipline you for your good, expose the lies of the devil for what they are by revealing to you day after day the beauty and joy of belonging to Him.
We put our trust, and we should, in people like moms and dads, brothers and sisters, spouses, and friends, we trust them and we listen to them, because they have loved us, and they have loved us not even a millionth of what Jesus has loved us. We trust in Jesus, we listen to Him, because He is the Good Shepherd, and the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. You confirmands will receive from Him today the body and blood that bore your sin and rose to life. It’s His voice that says, “This is my body, given for you. This is my blood shed for you.” Love His voice, look forward every Sunday to hearing it, prepare yourself by reviewing the ten commandments and knowing your need for what He gives you here, listen to His voice all your life, cling to it, know it, and you will know Him, until you know finally as you have been known and see Him face to face in that place He has prepared for you. Amen.