We turn to John 10.
Behind everything in the Gospel of John is a Jewish background. In this Gospel there is a movement from the Jewish dispensation to the new and heavenly dispensation. There is a transition taking place.
On the one side, it is the closing down of the history of the old Israel; on the other side, it is the opening up of the history of the new Israel. There is a background and a foreground in this Gospel.
We are following sixteen points in that transition, and tonight we come to point number thirteen. Point number thirteen is marked in John 10.
Everybody knows what is in this chapter. It is the chapter of the Good Shepherd and His sheep. We are not going to read the chapter because it is so well known.
The heart of the chapter is the word:
I am the good shepherd.
I want to put alongside of that one or two other passages of Scripture.
Psalm 77 speaks of God leading His people:
Thou leddest Thy people like a flock,
By the hand of Moses and Aaron.
Psalm 78:52 says:
But He led forth His own people like sheep,
And guided them in the wilderness like a flock.
In Acts 20:28, Paul says:
Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock,
In which the Holy Spirit hath made you overseers,
To feed the church of God,
Which He purchased with His own blood.
And then he adds:
I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock;
And from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
Now turn to Hebrews, which is the basis of all our meditation this week—Hebrews 13:20:
Now the God of peace, Who brought again from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus,
Make you perfect in every good thing to do His will.
Here we have the flock spoken of in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The prophets were continually speaking about Israel as God’s sheep. The nations were judged by God because of their treatment of God’s sheep: they destroyed and scattered them. God was very angry with the false shepherds in Israel because they failed to fulfil their trust toward the sheep.
We begin our meditation on this matter by speaking about the Lord as the Owner of the sheep. That is the great point which governs this whole matter: the sheep belong to the Lord. They are the Lord’s sheep.
The Lord’s ownership of the flock is everywhere emphasized, and the shepherd exists for the sheep. The love of God for Israel as His sheep is everywhere to be noticed. They were the sheep of His pasture. The love of God for Israel was a very wonderful thing.
He provided pasture and water for them even in the desert. How angry He was when anyone touched His sheep. He was very jealous concerning His sheep.
The Lord’s claim and ownership of His sheep had never been broken. Because He owned them, and because they were His sheep, everything that He did was on that ground.
And we have seen how, on the one side, God had to forsake Israel. The God Who had so loved Israel, the God Who had been so jealous for His people, the God Who had done everything that He could do for Israel—at last had to hand over His sheep and break His relationship with them.
Why was that? It seems to be such a contradiction of God. God would never, never do that if He could possibly avoid it.
He said:
I have loved thee with an everlasting love.
It was a terrible thing for God to have to forsake Israel, but He had to do that. Today Israel is in that position. Israel is no longer God’s flock as it was in old times. They are without the Shepherd.
Why did that come about? They turned to other gods. They made other gods their shepherds. They followed the voice of other gods. They repudiated the sole ownership of the Lord.
Isaiah 53 shows their attitude toward the Shepherd:
All we like sheep have gone astray.
Romans 10:16 says:
But they did not all hearken to the glad tidings. For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?
They refused to believe the message of the prophets. The message of the prophets was all about God as the Shepherd and Israel as the sheep.
The prophet says:
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned every one to his own way.
Away from the way of the Lord, they turned to their own way. Their own way was to choose other shepherds than the Lord.
Psalm 95 says:
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
And the sheep of His hand.
But the verse does not finish there:
To-day, oh that ye would hear His voice!
Harden not your heart.
We are the sheep of His pasture, but sheep can have very hard hearts and refuse to hear the Shepherd’s voice.
That very word is quoted at least three times in the Letter to the Hebrews:
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
It was hardness of heart and refusal to hear His voice that led to this tragedy. Paul said in Romans that a hardening in part had happened to Israel.
You have only to read John 10 to see the hard heart of Israel. It is a terrible thing. Jesus had been speaking about Himself. He had said:
I give unto them eternal life;
And they shall never perish.
He spoke all these wonderful things about Himself as the Shepherd and His sheep.
There arose a division among the Jews because of these words, and many of the Jews said, “He hath a demon.”
He had said:
I lay down My life for the sheep.
I came that they may have life.
I give unto them eternal life.
They shall never perish.
And yet they said, “He hath a demon.”
Now do you understand why God had to forsake Israel?
We have turned every one to our own way.
We have gone away from the Shepherd.
In other words, they said, “We will not have this Man to reign over us.”
That is the Jewish background of John 10. Into that situation Jesus came as the Good Shepherd.
You can feel the very atmosphere of antagonism. You can feel how they hated Him. Presently, they would take counsel that they might kill Him.
Out of that old flock, He gathered the nucleus of His new flock. A dividing work took place.
Some said:
He hath a demon, and is mad; why hear ye Him?
Others said:
These are not the sayings of one possessed with a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?
There were those out of the old flock who were inclined toward Him. They were the new beginning, the new Israel. He said, “I will lead them out.”
We see that nucleus on the Day of Pentecost: beginning with the twelve, then one hundred and twenty, then more than five hundred brethren at once, then three thousand, and then five thousand. The new flock.
Jesus is building upon the Old Testament principle. He will take up the principle of shepherd and sheep and carry it over into His new Israel dispensation.
The position is perfectly clear: one Israel is being put aside, and another Israel is being put in its place. The earthly is going; the heavenly is coming in to take its place. This heavenly Israel becomes the new flock under the new Shepherd.
Now we have to note some of the marks of these true sheep. There are certain things by which He knows His own sheep. If you have any doubt as to whether you are one of the Lord’s sheep, here it is: you can prove it.
Shepherds put marks upon their sheep. It may be a red mark, or it may be a blue mark, but upon their sheep they put their own marks.
In our country it is wonderful to see how that works. Many flocks of sheep all get mixed up. But when the shepherds want to bring in their own sheep, how are they going to get their sheep out of all that mixture?
The shepherd has a sheepdog. How it is, I do not know, but those dogs know the sheep that belong to their master. The dog knows the sheep that belong to his master.
The shepherd simply gives a word to the dog, and he goes over the mountain, picking up all the sheep that have a certain mark on them. The dog brings back just those sheep.
The point is that the sheep have a mark upon them, and by that mark they are known. Jesus is saying, “I know My sheep because there are marks on My sheep.”
What are these marks?
The first mark is this:
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them.
“My sheep hear My voice, and they know Me.” This is an illustration of great truth.
If you go through the rest of the New Testament, you will read a great deal about spiritual intelligence. You will read about having an ear to hear what the Spirit saith. Seven times at the beginning of the Book of Revelation, you have that word.
The sheep of the Lord have an inward ear given to them. It is not a natural ear; it is a faculty of spiritual intelligence—an ability to hear what no one else can hear.
It was to that that the Lord was referring: “My sheep are always listening for My voice. My sheep hear My voice.”
Every truly born-again child of God is given a faculty of spiritual hearing. That is why, in the early days of your Christian life, you say, “The Lord seems to be saying something to me.”
“The Lord seems to be saying that I ought not to talk as I do talk.”
“The Lord seems to be saying to me that I ought not to dress as I have been dressed.”
“The Lord seems to be saying to me that I should not go to the places that I used to go.”
And a thousand other things like this. The Lord seems to be saying something. He is speaking in the heart.
As we go on in the Christian life, that becomes the governing thing in our lives. We seem to hear what the Lord has to say to us.
And when we hear His voice, then there arises a crisis: are we going back to the way of the old Israel, or are we going to hear that voice and obey?
That is the message of the Letter to the Hebrews. Do not go back onto that old ground.
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
It is a very wonderful thing to see people obeying His voice. It is not because other people have to tell them these things. There is a poor kind of Christian who has to be told all the time what they should do and what they should not do.
The true sheep hear His voice, and they follow Him. It is something that comes out of the heart. They have heard Him speak in the heart.
This, of course, is the whole New Testament subject of spiritual understanding. You and I, as Christians, ought to have that faculty of spiritual understanding.
We were thinking about Nicodemus earlier. He was a ruler of the Jews, a great man in Israel. He had a high position and a great education, and yet he had not the first idea of spiritual things.
Jesus had to say to him:
If I told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things?
Nicodemus could not get beyond the natural to the spiritual.
When Jesus said, “Ye must be born again,” he said, “How can a man be born when he is old?” He had no spiritual intelligence. He was like a little child.
I have a little granddaughter, about four years of age. She went to Sunday school and came home saying, “Mother, will you get me another baby toy?”
Her mother asked, “Why?”
She said, “My teacher said I must be born again.”
Well, that is a little child. But Nicodemus was no better than that. You might expect more of him.
Spiritual intelligence belongs to the born-again ones. You and I are given that gift with our birth. We have a whole new set of faculties: to hear, to see, to feel, and so on.
I repeat: it is about that very thing that the New Testament speaks when it speaks of spiritual understanding. That is what Jesus meant when He said:
My sheep hear My voice,
And they know Me.
That is very simple in the words, but it has a very deep meaning. It means that His sheep never have to be driven. His sheep never have to be compelled to go His way. They follow Him in a voluntary, spontaneous way.
The Lord never has to say, or ought never to say, to His sheep, “You must come this way.” The Lord is going a certain way, and His sheep see which way He is going, and they follow.
Of course, in this part of the world it is just the other way round with sheep. I have a son who is a farmer, and he has one of these wonderful sheepdogs. How often we have heard him give the dog a word of command.
The dog runs from side to side all the time, not letting one of those sheep get away. He is driving them. If a sheep lingers, the dog quietly creeps up and then suddenly lets his presence be known. Then that sheep goes on.
These sheep have to be driven.
Jesus takes the principle of shepherding from the East. He says, “I do not drive My sheep. I never have to get behind them and force them to go on. I never have to send a dog after them to bite their heels to keep them going.”
My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me.
It is a spontaneous movement of the heart to go out to the Lord.
These are the marks of His sheep. Do you really hear the Lord speaking in your heart? Do you listen for His voice? Do you seek to have your life guided by that voice of the Spirit within, speaking to you through the circumstances of your life?
There are very few things that happen to the Lord’s sheep which do not have some meaning. It is for us to seek what it is that the Lord is saying to us.
The government of the life of the Lord Jesus is by hearing His voice. Do you know anything about this?
We have only to know that the Lord wants something, and we respond.
Now I must close. Time has gone extra quickly tonight somehow.
What is the bond between us, His sheep, and Him? It is the same bond as existed between old Israel and the Lord. This same principle is taken over: it is the principle of His ownership.
That which unites us with the Lord is the realization that we belong to Him, that He is the absolute Owner of our lives.
To quote another Scripture:
Ye are not your own;
For ye were bought with a price.
We have the mark of the Lord put upon us, which is the seal of His ownership. The seal is the Holy Spirit. When you look at a seal, you know to whom the property belongs. It says that this is the property of a certain person.
He gives us His Spirit, and that seals the fact that we belong to Him.
Paul said:
Henceforth let no man trouble me;
For I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus.
The marks of Jesus mean that I belong to Him. Paul said, when he was travelling to Rome:
Whose I am, and Whom I serve.
The true sheep of the Lord are never ashamed to say, “I belong to the Lord Jesus. He owns my life and everything that I have. I am completely committed to Him.”
Now you can understand why we have these words which have been the key to all our meditations:
Companions of a heavenly calling.
Companions of Christ.
There is a kind of companionship between the Shepherd and His sheep. They are not merely animals; they are friends.
There is a wonderful friendship between the Lord Jesus and His sheep. As His friends, they take His name: companions of the heavenly calling.