Let us pray. O Lord, what we know not teach us, what we have not, give us, and what we are not make us. For the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Redeemer. Amen. I want to begin this morning by sharing with you a helpful principle that I have found at least helpful in my own life, in the practice of seeking to read and understand and interpret a parable, for that is what we have before us in some measure here in the tenth chapter of John's Gospel as we put our minds on the topic of shepherding and sheep. And the principle is this don't try to make a parable walk on all fours. Don't try to make a parable walk on all fours. That is to say, not every minute detail of a parable is meant to have a one-to-one correspondence in meaning or reference to something. Not every detail of a parable symbolizes something. And we do better to guard against getting caught up in the weeds of details and parables, and we do better to rather aim and seek to at least grasp a sense of the main point, the main message coming through, the core of the message. As someone suggested wisely, I think, and this is especially pertinent to parables, it is possible, it's not recommended, but it is possible to take up a parable in your reading and to squeeze it to the point where it yields poison rather than the pure milk of the word of God that is meant for our spiritual nourishment. I want to encourage us to rather, as I said, aim and grasp the general idea, the main point, the core message. If I were to just simply give an example that would be common for most people to understand this principle, I might briefly point us to the parable of the prodigal son, which is a widely known parable. And you can probably recall some of the details of that parable in your mind. One of the sons becomes a pro the prodigal son, uh, acquires his inheritance, goes off into a distant land, squanders it, a famine hits, he finds himself in the great state of need, hires himself out to work for a living, and he ends up feeding pigs, and even more so, feeding off of the pig pods himself, he comes to his senses and realizes that he would do better to go back home where his father's hired servants are living better than he is, and he makes his way back. And upon return, he is, I believe, welcomed with a robe, a ring, shoes, and a fattened calf is slaughtered. All that to say, those are all the details. And most of them are somewhat incidental to the story. They're not unimportant, but we wouldn't want to weave our way into that parable and start looking for what does the famine mean? What does the ring refer to? Uh, what about the fattened calf and and the hired servants? Who do they represent? We know. What we want to do with a parable such as that is we want to understand what is the main message coming through here. And to that point, it's very simple. The message is a message of repentance, forgiveness, and restoration. It's very easy to obscure that message if you were to get caught up in too many uh superficial details. And the message is meant not just for the prodigal, but for us. That as the prodigal found himself in need of repentance of his erroneous ways, returning to his father for forgiveness, and being restored in the family, so too are we invited to take that very same course of action with God, our Father. And we have the same hope held out to us. That's the idea. I want you to hang this principle I'm kind of tunneling into and dwelling on. Hang this principle, if you will, on a mental peg in your mind as we now turn and consider together this parable this morning from the tenth chapter of John's Gospel, where, as we've heard, Jesus is referring to shepherds and sheep. And one thing we need to understand as we read also any portion of Scripture, notice I said the tenth chapter, that means there's a chapter nine. So there's a context here. And the context, especially in this case, is absolutely critical to understanding why Jesus offered this teaching. Because chapter 10 is a direct continuation of chapter 9, not just in order, but in meaning and purpose. Jesus did not just decide to offer this teaching on sheep and shepherds out of the blue one day. He doesn't just shoot it out into the vacuum, but rather he is speaking in the context of an audience. And it's very helpful to know who is he speaking to? Well, you we find out in chapter nine. And I would just encourage you that maybe a good devotional practice today for everyone would be go home, have a rest, make a cup of tea, coffee, what have you, open your Bible and read for yourself this afternoon, chapter nine, and then turn and let chapter nine shed light on chapter 10, what we are now reading today. For our purposes, I will just very briefly summarize what is happening in chapter 9 is a great healing. This is where Jesus heals a man, and it's not a parable, this was a literal experience. Jesus heals a man who was born blind, and he draws the ire and the criticism and the chastisement for having healed this man born blind on the Sabbath from the infamous Pharisees. There are people who observe this healing to have happened, and they're trying to understand who did this and why did he do it on the Sabbath, and they come to the conclusion that it was a bad act altogether. It shouldn't have been done. That this healing on the Sabbath was against God, it wasn't from God. They even go so far as suggesting that the person who did it, Jesus, might be possessed with a demon. And to that, Jesus says in chapter 9, essentially, you all are blind. You, my shepherds, supposedly, who have the title of shepherd in the people of God, who wear the garb of shepherds, who supposedly know all sorts of things about God, you've entirely missed the point, and you are not able to recognize that I have come to take care of my sheep and to do good by them, and in this case, heal them. And so Jesus flips it back around on them. Then, immediately, in the same setting, Jesus turns and says, here in our gospel, truly, truly, Amen, Amen. Which means this is really important. Listen up. I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. We might hear those words a little differently now. Sometimes the teaching on being a good shepherd and this Sunday gets a lot of positive, comforting treatment, and rightly so in some respect. But before we get to the comfort that it has to offer, we have to hear the rebuke. And the rebuke is very strong. In fact, he's calling the leaders of his day less than shepherds. He's saying, You are not shepherds, you are thieves and robbers. Because rather than pointing people to me, you are driving people from me. For sake of time, without weaving our way through every detail of this passage, as I uh said in the beginning, it's important for us to come to the main point. And you're sensible people, you judge for yourselves. But here is what I think the core message coming through in these ten verses is Jesus is saying, true shepherds of God lead people to Christ. That's it. It's that simple. True shepherds of God will lead, appoint, encourage people to come to me, and vice versa. False shepherds won't. That's the message. Some of you are astute enough to realize, but wait a second. Shepherds plural, I thought Jesus said that he was the good shepherd. And he does, but not yet. Because in this portion that we're dealing with this morning, he is not identifying himself as the good shepherd yet. He does that in the immediate verse after our passage, verse 11, but here he's identifying himself as what? The door. I'm the door. And those shepherds who encourage my people to come to me, the gate, into my sheepfold, who encourage my people to pass through me into my protection, into my enclosure, and who lead people out through me to provision and pasture. Those shepherds who bring people to me, the gate, doesn't this sound like another teaching of Jesus? I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. That's the thrust of meaning here in this section. Jesus is the door, and Christ is central. And there's no way around it. And if you try to seek another way, you are found to be false, climbing over the wall, luring people of God away from Christ. I like how St. Augustine sums this up so well. He says of his own office as bishop in the church: Whoso would enter the sheepfold of Christ, whoever would approach God's flock in the pen, in the sheepfold, let him enter by the one and only door. That is, let him preach very Christ. Let him not only preach very Christ, but let him seek Christ's glory and not his own. I, St. Augustine says, seeking to enter into your hearts as a shepherd, am only commissioned to preach Christ. If I preach anything other than Christ, I shall be found to be striving to climb in by some other way. No, Christ is my door, and through Christ your hearts are one. The true shepherds of God see this clearly. They realize how central Jesus is. I can't help but notice, on the one hand, though, how how simple this teaching is. Jesus is drawing on a very common practice in the first century, the Palestine region, shepherding. Everyone knows, not everyone is a shepherd, everyone knows about shepherding and what that entails. And yet, did you notice and pick up on the fact that even after Jesus spoke these words, we're told that in this figure of speech, in this illustration, verse 6, they did not understand what he was saying to them. They missed the point altogether. It makes me think of a quote by John Dryden. He said, Errors like straws on the surface flow, but he who would search for pearls must dive below. We cannot remain on the surface of a teaching like this. We are being invited and encouraged to go deeper. On the surface, it's true. All we may glean and see in this is a first-century word picture into some nature and dynamics between sheep and shepherds. But when we dive deeper into these words, and if you will, when we take Christ at his word, we come to see more. And the more we come to see, hopefully by faith, is nothing less than or other than Christ Himself. And when we find Christ in Scripture, we find God. And when we find God, we come to realize in actual fact that we are not the ones who have found God, but rather that God has found us. And in finding us, we finally come to realize that we have come to the fulfillment of an even more ancient teaching in Holy Scripture, which can be found in the book of Ezekiel, where God says of Himself, For thus says the Lord God, Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep, and I will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on the day of clouds and thick darkness, and I will bring them together. I myself will be their shepherd, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and I will feed my flock. Those words were uttered hundreds of years before Jesus taught the people in this parable. And we get to see how they have come to fulfillment in Christ. That Christ, in healing the man born blind, was binding up the wounded. His flock was calling his people. And his people, the man born blind, in being healed, heard his voice and responded like a shep like a sheep to their proper shepherd. And the same is true for us today. As we people from around the world, from all different places, hear the voice of God, we are also coming to fulfill the scripture as the sheep of God who hear their master's voice and respond and follow. Amen.