PvBibleAlive.com Parkview Baptist Church 3430 South Meridian Wichita, Kansas 67217
John 10: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door is a 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 When he brings all his own out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 A stranger they will never follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 This figure of speech Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which He had been saying to them.
7 So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and [a]have it abundantly.
11 “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. 12 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 flees—and the wolf snatches and scatters them— 13 because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. 14 I am 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, which are not from this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18 No one [b]takes it away from Me, but from Myself, I lay it down. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”
This is the third sermon in a series I started on my 20-year anniversary. And on that day, I asked the question; What about the next 20 years? Will there be a next 20 years? What is our mission for the next 20 years? And I proposed to you that our mission has to be the same goal that has been the mission of all the Lord’s churches since the day He established the Church 2000 years ago; Seek lost sheep.
Our task as the church is to find lost sheep and bring them into the fold. But, as I have learned over at least the last twenty years, this is no easy task, whether we are seeking lost sheep, or just our lost keys. I was looking for a sermon illustration at this point, and I found some disheartening advise about searching for things that are lost. Call them the 3 laws of searching for lost things.
#1 Maryann's Law: You can always find what you're not looking for.
That’s helpful.
#2 Law of the Search: The first place to look for anything is the last place you'd expect to find it.
#3 Miller's Corollary: Objects are lost because people look where they are not instead of where they are.
You can summarize the problem in searching for lost things in one statement; We are looking in the wrong place. And that, it seems, is how the life of the church often goes in regard to their task of seeking lost sheep; We are looking in the wrong places. We are looking “out there.” We are looking “put-together” people. We are looking for people “like us.”
Thus Miller’s Corollary. We don’t find the lost sheep because we look where they are not instead of where they are.
We’re going to take a look at Jesus’ description of Himself as the shepherd, and His people as the sheep in John 10 this morning. There’s a lot of truth here. But the main truths that we are focusing on are those regarding lost sheep.
There are three types of sheep; the potentially lost, the purposefully lost, the presently lost. We need to know who they are so we can “seek lost sheep.”
Prayer
Before we jump into the first point, I need to let you know a little about the setting for these words that Jesus spoke; because the setting tells us a lot about Jesus’ meaning.
We are in chapter 10 of John. If you have your Bibles open, you might notice that chapter 10 begins immediately with Jesus’ illustration of Himself as the Good Shepherd, and those that are His as sheep.
1 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.
We are not told where He is when He speaks these words. And if you go back one chapter to chapter 9, it begins with
As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. 2 And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?”
He and His disciples are “passing by” and see a man sitting there who was born blind. You might remember that story. Jesus heals the man. He made clay and put it on his eyes and told him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam. The man does so and can see for the first time in his life. Well, as you might imagine, this causes quite a stir. Not only because of the miracle, but also because Jesus healed Him on the Sabbath day. The day of rest. There was a Jewish traditional law that forbad making the sick well on the Sabbath day. But this left the Pharisees in a conundrum. They were backed into a corner. On the one hand, Jesus had healed a man born blind, which demonstrated that His power had to be from God. But, in healing him, He violated their law, which they taught as God’s law. So, in effect, if they believed that this miracle happened, they had to believe that God violated His own law. Or they had to conclude that their interpretation of God’s law was incorrect.
But, in chapter 9, we still don’t have a complete picture of the setting for Jesus’ story of the Shepherd and sheep. Where did all this happen? What made Jesus start talking about sheep, thieves, wolves, and strangers?
If you go back to chapter 8, we find the answer.
But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him; and He sat down and began to teach them.
This is the context for Jesus’ story of the sheep. He was in the temple. The people gathered to Him. He taught them many things. Among the people were the Pharisees, who were the religious elite of Israel. Among the things He taught them was a statement about Himself.
Jesus says, in verse 12 of chapter 8, ““I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” Well, this statement, among others is too much for the Pharisees. Jesus is doing miracles, attracting huge crowds, even in the temple itself, and He is claiming things attributes that they consider to only belong to God. So, they start arguing with Him.
We’re not going to go into all the argument, but, in short Jesus tells them He is from God, and that they are children of the devil. They counter that He is a lunatic and has a demon. In the end of this argument He makes the claim to be God. “Before Abraham was, I am.” “I am” was the name God gave Himself when speaking to Moses.
And because He says that, they immediately take up stones to stone Him to death. Verse 59 of chapter 8 ends this way,
59 Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus [q]hid Himself and went out of the temple.
As Jesus had done other times, He miraculously is able to escape them. It’s like supernaturally they suddenly can’t see Him, or they are confused in their minds long enough for Him to slip away.
And it is then that the healing of the man born blind occurs. They are leaving the temple complex, and here’s this man born blind sitting there, his begging spot. And Jesus heals him. Now you know a little about the contentious atmosphere in which Jesus gives His shepherd and sheep analogy. The Pharisees are angry about Jesus claims about Himself, and they are angry that Jesus healed on the Sabbath.
They had threatened the people, that if anyone expressed faith in Jesus, he would be put out of the synagogue; excommunicated. They have taken the man born blind to question him. And despite their best efforts to shut him up, he expresses faith him Jesus. They put him out of the synagogue.
As the day wore on somewhere in Jerusalem, Jesus finds the man formerly blind. And the Pharisees and crowds find Jesus again.
35 Jesus heard that they had put him out, and after finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered and said, “Who is He, [e]Lord, that I may believe in Him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” 38 And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. 39 And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “Are we blind too?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
And in this atmosphere, Jesus teaches about the Good Shepherd, sheep, robbers, thieves, hired hands, and wolves.
Now let me remind you about the three kinds of lost sheep. the potentially lost, the purposefully lost, the presently lost.
I. The potentially lost
A. Meaning context
There are those who are among us, who are potentially lost. They are among us. By all appearances they are believers. They may be on the church roll. They may be baptized. They may even teach, or be a deacon, or the pastor. But they are potentially lost.
Let’s look at the passage. And I am just going to briefly cover the general meaning of the analogy, then hone in on “the potentially lost” sheep.
1 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.
This statement directly ties back to the continuing story that I introduced our study with. Jesus has just told the Pharisees that they are from the devil and that He is from God. They are called the “shepherds” of Israel, but they are in fact thieves and robbers.
This is not a new analogy in Scripture. The prophet Ezekial said almost the same thing to the religious leaders of his day who were supposed to be the spiritual shepherds of Israel.
Ezekial 34:1-31 Then the word of Yahweh came to me saying, 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to [a]those shepherds, ‘Thus says Lord Yahweh, “Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been [b]shepherding themselves! Should not the shepherds shepherd the flock? 3 You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool; you sacrifice the fat sheep without shepherding the flock. 4 Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, and the [c]diseased you have not healed, and the broken you have not bound up, and the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you searched for the lost; but with strength and with severity you have dominated them. 5 They were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and they became food for every beast of the field and were scattered. 6 My flock wandered through all the mountains and on every high hill; My flock was scattered over all the surface of the earth, and there was no one to seek or search for them.”’”
The Pharisees set themselves up as spiritual guides, but they did not seek the welfare of the people. They sought to be enriched and empowered by their position. Evidence of that is the man healed of his blindness. Here was a man whose story was clear evidence of Jesus being from God. But to believe his story meant undermining their authority and admitting error. So, they threw him out of the synagogue. They weren’t concerned about the sheep except for how the sheep prospered them.
Then Jesus, in His analogy, presents Himself as the true and Good Shepherd of Israel.
1 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep.
Jesus doesn’t say it right here, but later He will plainly say, “I am the Good Shepherd.”
Again, Ezekial had something similar to say to the false “shepherds” of Israel.
10 ‘Thus says Lord Yahweh, “Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will seek My flock from their hand and make them cease from shepherding the flock. So the shepherds will not shepherd themselves anymore, but I will deliver My flock from their mouth so that they will not be food for them.”’” 11 For thus says Lord Yahweh, “Behold, I Myself will seek My sheep and care for them
16 “I will search for the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken, and strengthen the sick;
B. The true 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 When he brings all his own out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 A stranger they will never follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.”
Look at how this passage describes the Lord’s sheep. Christians, believers, the saved
1. His sheep hear his voice.
John 6:37 37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out.
How do you know if someone is the Lord’s sheep? They listen to the Lord’s voice. It’s pretty straight forward. “The sheep hear his voice.” It would probably be helpful to understand a little about 1st century shepherding here. You see, in the 1st century, there were little villages and communities. Bethlehem, for example, may never have been more than 400 people. And most families would have had some animals. Israel’s terrain is especially suited for raising sheep. So, each family would have some sheep. Most wouldn’t have had that many. They would have young sons go out with the sheep during the day to feed from the hills and valleys. But, at night, they would come in from the fields to a sheep fold built out on the countryside. It was just a small enclosed area, with an opening for entering. And as the sheep entered the fold as dusk and night descended, they couldn’t see the young men, but they could hear their voices. They followed the voice of their shepherd.
2. He knows their name and leads them.
Their shepherd had named them; probably based on characteristics. “stumpy, spot, grumpy, dopey, sneezy.” The second characteristic of those who are Christian, is the Lord knows their names.
Isaiah 43:1
But now, thus says Yahweh, your Creator, O
Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel,
“Do not fear, for I
have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine!
45:3 3 I will give you the [ah]treasures of darkness And hidden wealth of secret places, So that you may know that it is I, Yahweh, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name.
Revelation 3:5 5 He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments, and I will never erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.
3. The sheep follow him.
The third characteristic is that His sheep follow Him. They hear His voice, He knows their names, and they follow him.
They follow him. They continue with the Lord.
John 10:28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Philippians 1:6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
How do you know if someone is a Christian? They will persevere. If they don’t persevere to the end, they weren’t truly believers.
1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.
The fourth characteristic.
4. They will not follow a stranger.
5 A stranger they will never follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.”
A sheep entering the fold at night, would hear the voice of his shepherd, and only the voice of his shepherd.
So, what kind of sheep are these? They are here, they are among us. But they are potentially lost. You say, “what do you mean?” If The Lord knows His sheep by name, and they follow Him, and will not follow a stranger, then how can they be potentially lost?” “Are you saying that they lose their salvation?” “No.”
Now here is where we get into a little theology. I should more accurately say, the theology of salvation. You cannot lose your salvation. God knows who are His. God does not lose those who are His.
Romans 11:29 For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
But and listen to me closely, just because God knows who are His doesn’t mean I know who are His.
I have been in church my whole life. There are people in church who I have considered to be rock solid Christians. There are people that I know very well, and those I don’t know so well. But ultimately, there is only one person that I know well enough to say absolutely, without a doubt, they are a believer; myself.
So, everyone else is “potentially lost.” I don’t know for sure. What does that mean practically? We can’t assume. We have to first watch over those who are here. We don’t just assume that because they are here every week, because they talk about God, because they are members, that they have come to faith in Jesus.
That’s where we begin with lost sheep. God can look over this assembly and pinpoint those that are his, but I can’t. That’s why we keep preaching about salvation to the congregation. That’s why we rehearse how to be saved to people who are seemingly saved. That’s why we keep talking to each other about the Lord. Because we can’t assume. In our day where we emphasize freedom of choice, and tolerance, it is easy to look the other way when we see a fellow believer beginning to slip. We are hesitant to confront wrong theology, or sinful choices that may lead a fellow Christian away from this flock. But we must remember that the first lost sheep are the potential ones among us. And if we are to find those potential lost sheep, we have to be listening, and reaching out at the first notice of any straying tendency.
theology
Proverbs 27:17 Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another.
sin
Job 4:3-4 Behold, you have disciplined many, And you have strengthened limp hands. 4 Your words have [a]helped the stumbling to stand, And you have encouraged [b]feeble knees.
Hebrews 3: 12 See to it brothers, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart [a]that falls away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
diligence
Hebrews 10:24 24 And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
So, that is the potentially lost, let’s now consider the purposefully lost.
II. The purposefully lost
When I say, “the purposefully lost” I mean those who stray away on purpose. They leave on their own volition. One day they are among us, then they are gone.
7 So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and [a]have it abundantly. 11 “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. 12 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 flees—and the wolf snatches and scatters them— 13 because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep.
In this, and other passages, I want to outline for you three kinds of purposefully lost sheep. The obstinate, the ignorant, and the fearful.
Now there are three evil characters that Jesus introduces; the thief, the hireling, and the wolf.
The thief
When we read this part of Jesus analogy, we get a strong sense of the danger to the sheep. He says that there are thieves, robbers, fleeing hirelings, and wolves. All of those are dangerous for sheep.
Thieves and robbers, like Satan, only comes to steal, kill, and destroy. In the first century world of the sheep fold, the shepherd Himself would lay at night across the entrance to the sheepfold. So, a thief would not come through the door, he would jump the barrier around the sheep. And, in the analogy, he comes for one purpose, to steal the sheep, and consume them. Thieves would jump the barrier while the watchers slept, and because trying to pick up and carry a live sheep out of the fold without being discovered was well-nigh impossible, he would quietly jump in, slit the throat of the sheep, then carry them out.
The wolf
Again, the wolf only desires to kill the sheep for his own consumption. Jesus also referred to the wolf, but He said to beware of false prophets who are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
And we often think here of Wiley coyote dressing up like a sheep to infiltrate the flock. What this actually is, is a wolf dressed up in wool. “Sheep’s clothing.” Shepherds would naturally make, or have their clothing made from wool. So these wolves are those who disguise themselves as shepherds to lead away the sheep, and consume them.
The hireling
The hireling was an individual that the shepherd hired to watch the sheep for a time period. But this was a dangerous time for the sheep. Because the true shepherd was willing to lay down his life for the sheep, if a thief, or predator came, the hireling was not willing to do so.
So, let’s go back to the three kinds of purposefully lost sheep. The obstinate, the ignorant, and the fearful.
When we talk about seeking lost sheep, it also means that we seek sheep who seem to be walking or running away of their own volition. The Lord’s sheep hear His voice, He knows them, but some get lost. That doesn’t mean they lose their salvation. But, for whatever reason, they stray away. They are the one sheep that we are commanded to seek, leaving the 99 in the fold. So why do they stray? How do we recognize the straying?
The obstinate
This kind of sheep isn’t specifically described in this passage, but in other places. One of the first places I thought of was Psalm 23:4
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
We often read that in the context of the 23rd Psalm, and it gives us warm fuzzy feelings about the Lord. “Your rod and staff comfort me.” The Lord comforts me. And we fail to ask the salient question here; how does the Lord, our shepherd, comfort us with a rod and a staff? It doesn’t say, “The Lord is my shepherd, your warm blanket and campfire comfort me.” It’s His rod and staff.
I think the key here is the previous statement that He leads us in paths of righteousness, and in the valley of deep darkness. He is leading you in right paths, sometimes through scary places. So why would a rod and staff be comforting? The staff was for when the sheep accidentally strayed into danger. The staff had that traditional shepherd’s crook at the end that he would use to pull a sheep back from danger. But what about the rod? It’s translated in other places as “club.”
The club was used to fight off predators. But it was also used for discipline for a sheep that obstinately kept straying.
Proverbs 13:24 He who holds back his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.
2 Samuel 7:14 I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will reprove him with the rod of men and the strikes from the sons of men,
Psalm 89:32 Then I will punish their transgression with the rod And their iniquity with striking.
Proverbs 26:3 A whip is for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, And a rod for the back of fools.
So why would seeing your shepherd walking with a rod hanging from his belt, and leaning on the shepherds staff be comforting? Because you know that those are the tools of bringing you back from danger when you stray.
Sometimes sheep wander because they are obstinate, sometimes because they are…
The ignorant
Sheep are led away by false shepherds. Wolves in shepherds’ clothes. They appear to be genuine, but they are false teachers and prophets. The New and old testament constantly warns the sheep not to follow false teachers.
2 Peter 2:1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 And many will follow their sensuality,
2 Corinthians 11:13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.
20 For you bear it if anyone enslaves you, anyone devours you, anyone takes advantage of you, anyone exalts himself, anyone hits you in the face.
2 Corinthians 11:26 I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the desolate places, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brothers.
There are false prophets even performing signs, false teachers, false apostles, false brothers. And sometimes sheep stray because they are ignorant or deceived.
And this is another area of seeking lost sheep that we need to address. Frankly, too often, we hear that someone has gone to another church, or is questioning the truth of Scripture, and we don’t want to confront it. We live by the pseudo-Christian philosophy, “Any church is better than no church.” And by that philosophy we’ve watched supposedly Bible believing Baptists leave us and attach themselves to Mormonism, Catholicism, Charismatic churches, non-denominational churches, or churches that have abandoned belief in the Scripture.
Just like it is easy to let our people just slip away from commitment to the Lord and His church, it is easy to see someone slip into a heretical group, and just say, “Well, at least they are in church.”
There are the potentially lost, the purposefully lost and the presently lost. You might notice something. The first two groups of sheep are already in the fold. With 2/3 of sheep, we are just watching out for what is right in front of us. There’s no big push to go out into the furthest parts of the earth. They are right here.
Do you know that I made a list of all of the people who have graced us with their presence at least once in the last 6 months? It has about 40 to 50 people on it. Then if we include people going back 5 years, the number doubles. Then you can consider our membership files and the number goes up to triple the active members.
I guess the question I have to ask myself is, “Did we seek those lost sheep?”
The last group is what I call the presently lost.
III. The presently lost
14 I am 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, which are not from this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18 No one [b]takes it away from Me, but from Myself, I lay it down. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”
Verse 16 is an interesting verse.
16 And I have other sheep, which are not from this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.
Who is Jesus talking about here? Well, to understand who the sheep “not from this fold” are, we have to first understand what sheep were in the fold, when Jesus used this analogy.
Romans 9:23-26 23 and in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles? 25 As He says also in Hosea, So, what does this have to do with the presently lost? Well, Jesus is telling this group of Jews that He is the Good Shepherd and the fold is Israel. But that there are sheep from another fold that He will bring them together with the current flock. They will become one flock.
You see, the fold Jesus is speaking of in this analogy, are not the church. We’ve been speaking of it as though it were the church, because that’s how its principles apply for us today. But when Jesus first used this analogy, the fold wasn’t the church. The fold was Israel.
Remember that from the start I told you that this analogy was a response to events that happened in chapters 8 and 9. Jesus was drawing a contrast between Himself, the Good Shepherd, and the false shepherds, the Pharisees, who just wanted to devour the Lord’s sheep. The sheep were the Jewish people who had been lead astray and used by the false religious teachers. The best He could say about them was that they were hirelings who prospered from leading the sheep during good times, but when wolves showed up, when it became difficult, they fled.
So, the analogy fits Israel. And the point that further cements that interpretation is when He says,
16 And I have other sheep, which are not from this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.
Who’s He talking about? The Gentiles.
When Jesus came He came first to Israel.
Matthew 10: 23 “But whenever they persecute you in this city, flee to [a]the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes.
John 11:51-52 51 Now he did not say this from himself, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
“I will call those who were not My people, ‘My
people,’
And her who was
not beloved, ‘beloved.’”
26 “And it shall be that in the place where it was
said to them, ‘you are not My people,’
There they shall
be called sons ofthe living God.”
Ephesians 2: 11 Therefore, remember that formerly you—the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hands— 12 remember that you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the citizenship of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off [h]have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups one and broke down the dividing wall of the partition
But here’s the relevant part for us. The Gentiles were not yet part of the flock. Jesus came to the Jews first, and for the most part, Jews were the only ones who heard Him. What’s more, Jesus was not yet crucified. Even the Jewish people were not yet Christian. But Jesus is calling Gentile people “sheep” who were not yet Christian.
16 And I have other sheep, which are not from this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.
Jesus already knew who among the Gentiles would come to Him. The Lord said something to Paul that bears out that truth. Paul was in Corinth. This was the first time the gospel had come to this Gentile city.
Acts 18: But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the word, solemnly bearing witness to the Jews that Jesus is the [a]Christ. 6 But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” 7 Then he left there and went to the house of a man named [b]Titius Justus, a God-fearer, whose house was next to the synagogue. 8 And Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians when they heard were believing and being baptized. 9 And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent; 10 for I am with you, and no man will lay a hand on you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.” 11 And he stayed there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
God told Paul that He had many people in that city. What does that mean? Was He talking about the people who had already become Christian? No, The Lord is talking about the Gentiles He already knows will believe. He is saying to Paul, “Be encouraged. I know this work is difficult. But be assured, I already have many people in this city.” There were lost sheep in the city that the Lord knew, who would believe, they just hadn’t yet. So what was Paul’s job; to seek the lost sheep.
You say, “Hold on.” You are saying that the Lord already knows those who will believe? Yes. We have a hard time understanding this because we are bound by time. But God is eternal, and He knows the future as well as He knows the past. And God doesn’t think in terms of past, present and future. In God’s economy, His eternal perspective, those sheep who haven’t yet believed, are still His sheep. They will believe.
Now, what is our job? To seek lost sheep. We are not God. We don’t know which are sheep and which are goats. We just scatter the seed. Go into the world. And we leave the drawing to the Lord.
So, how do we know where to spend our time? What is the first attribute of the Lord’s sheep? They hear His voice, and they follow Him. Go into the world, and when you find someone who will listen and follow, you have a lost sheep. If they cease to listen and follow, move on.
Don’t cast your pearls to swine, don’t give that which is holy to dogs. Move on.
So, what is the job of the church? Seek lost sheep. Tend the existing flock, watch, lead and chasten those who may be straying, go out looking for others who will hear and follow.
Pretty simple actually.
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