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If you have a Bible with you, please open it to John chapter 10. We are continuing our series in John. We are, this marks the halfway point, more or less. Kinda. But we are going to be in John chapter 10, verses 1 through 18. Please pray with me as we begin. God, I pray, as we come to your word, wanting to hear from you, that you would speak to us. That as we turn on our minds and hearts to be receptive and obedient to your word, that it would it would dwell deeply in us, that you would give us understanding and clarity. And also that you would transform us by your grace. In Jesus' name. Amen. Some of you guys are too young to remember back in March 1997, now that we find out he's too young, one of the big, I mean the big, big news story, and it was it was a shocker, involved a group called Heaven's Gate. Anyone remember Heaven's Gate? Yeah, you date yourself. You date yourself. I remember Heaven's Gate well. What had happened, for those of you who don't know, is there was a group called Heaven's Gate. It was a cult. And uh they had been discovered, all of them lying dead beneath purple shrouds in a mansion in San Diego. 38 people, they had done this uh together, coordinatedly, voluntarily. What they had done is they had put on matching Nike tracksuits and Nike shoes, all the same, and eaten heavily laced uh pudding, and then put the purple shroud on and laid down. How'd they get there? Well, the answer is they were following their leaders. There was a guy who some of you may remember from uh from the TV named Marshall Applewhite, he of the incredibly protuberant eyes uh and unblinking eyelids. You guys remember this guy? Now, a lot of us will attribute all this to him, and he was the leader, but there was also uh another leader named Bonnie Nettles. They started it together back in 1975. She was actually the architect of their whole kind of cult theology. Just one more example of a man getting credit of something a woman did. Am I right? Am I right, ladies? Gosh, never stops, right? Even in the cult world. But in 1975, they promised their followers if you follow us, we are gonna lead you to ascend to a higher life. And how do they do it? Well, you follow us. And it was little by little. First of all, they they had to believe their theology, which was a great combination of half-understood Christianity and a lot of Star Trek. Okay, there was a lot of aliens involved. In fact, their website is still up and running. No one knows who's reading it because of the whole mansion thing. But you can go look it up. It still looks like it's like a time capsule to 97. It's like a 97 website. I looked at it. But part of this is they had to renounce all of their family and friends, and they had to live as the as the as the cult commune, and they had to renounce all possessions, and they had to wear the matching tracksuits. This was part of it, so that there would be no divisions of class and no one had nicer clothes or anything like that. And also, uh they they forswore all romantic relationships, some of the men even going undergoing procedures, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah. So it's little by little, it gets more and more until finally, but when 1997's rolling around, there was this this comet. Um, the Halley, does anybody remember the comet? It was closing passing close to Earth. The Halle, Halley Berry comet. Haley, Haley, okay, the Haley's comet. I thought it was the Halle Berry comet. Is that not right? She doesn't have a comet in the all right. Haley's comet. And they said, okay, this is part of their theology, they said that there's a spaceship following behind that comet, and God is on that spaceship because God is actually an advanced alien. And for us to board God's spaceship, we have to shed our mortal bodies. Here's your pudding. Okay? And by the time they're getting handed the pudding, they had led and they had followed so far where their leaders were leading that they were like, oh, that's reasonable. Give me the pudding. Sure thing. Nikes, I can do that. Now, this is an extreme example of how leadership can be abused. How if you follow the wrong leader, you can end up where you don't want to go. It's extreme, but the thing is, is there's a common pattern that you when you that you see with extreme examples that you can start spotting in more subtle examples because the truth is, is you are asked many times a day to follow someone. You are inundated with people inviting you to follow them so much so it's it's bewildering. And you're sitting there saying, Well, how do I know who to follow? What if I follow the wrong person? You know, I I like Nikes, but I'll pass on the pudding. And for some of us, we say, Oh yeah, yeah, follow no one. I know the answer to that. Sermon over, follow no one, which is the advice of many leaders. I could show you books. You know, it's funny. Like, I've been to shows, like, like remember Rage Against the Machine's first single, Killing in the Name of, and they're like, bum bum bum, now you do what they told you. Ba ba ba it's so bad to do what they tell you, and then the song ends, and it's like, no, sir. They don't say no, sir. No, sir, I won't do what you tell me. And then Zach Dilar Woka, he's on the stage, and he's like, everybody, and they're like, No, sir, I won't do what you tell me, in unison because he told them. It is amazing how uniform individualism can be. But here's the thing: is you also need a leader. Why? What if you want to get somewhere and you don't know the way? You need a leader, right? Who are we to follow? There's no shortage of candidates. I mean, the sort of the Silicon Valley tech elites want to lead humanity. They're saying, just trust us, buy our stuff, give us, you know, carte blanche in the law, and we will we will push humanity forward. You know, they did a great job with my music recording program. I'm really grateful. I'm not sure if I trust them with the future of humanity. Um you know? Or or there's politicians who are like, hey, I'm gonna make your city better, I'm gonna make your world better, I'm gonna make your nation better. Just do such and such for me. Right? They're saying, follow, follow me. I'll get you where you want to go. But will they? And there's no shortage now. I mean, there's an entire uh industry of people who are influencers, right? Whether they're they're doing uh 30-second clips on the on the Insta Talk, or or if they're doing a podcast for three hours talking about goodness knows what, and people listen. And these these range all over the place. Now there's some of them. Don't hear me condemning all politicians. I'm grateful for our public servants, I'm grateful for Silicon Valley and and the fact that uh, you know, I can I can record music easily or whatever. And uh, you know, I listen to some podcasters when they're when they're sharing in their domain, you know, you got legal experts talking about law, or you got history experts talking about history. It's great. But the thing is, is a lot of them tip over into just follow me generally speaking. I'll show you how to be a real man, I'll show you how to be a real woman, or we'll we'll figure out how to fix the country, right? These guys who who, you know, their background is in like, I don't know, they're like snuff experts or dip experts or whatever they do. I don't know. I started a dip company. I know how to fix the country, or I know what the Bible really says, and I'll tell you, just listen for three hours to my podcast. How do we know who to follow? Well, we have to ask uh a couple of questions, you know, and and we'll get into that. But in Jesus' day, there were some people who were considered, you know, trustworthy leaders who actually Jesus had a huge problem with, and and Jesus is actually gonna give us guidance on how to discern who is someone we should follow and who is not. In verse 1 of chapter 10, he says, Truly, truly, 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. Now, we heard that um reading from Ezekiel 34, talking about the shepherds of Israel. It is the most common biblical image for a leader of God's people is shepherds and sheep. And so Jesus is invoking that, and he's referring to some people that he calls thieves. What's the interest of a thief in a sheep? It's not love for the sheep. Right? It's to kill, destroy, take, and all that. What had just happened before this in chapter 9 is that these shepherds, these so-called shepherds, had expelled the man born blind because he wouldn't condemn Jesus. Okay? And so Jesus, in response to this, right on the heels of what he is saying to the man born blind, then says there are false shepherds, not people that you don't want to follow. Instead, he says to follow him. We look at verses two through six. He says, But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he had brought out all his own sheep by his wait, when he has brought out all his own, sorry, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. Do you? Okay, let's talk about what he's saying. Okay, the way it worked in the ancient world, Jesus is using the most common thing possible: sheep and shepherds. It's like cars to us. They're just everywhere. Very familiar. Okay? So the way it would work is in a sheep fold in many villages, you'd have a uh, it's either built around a cave or something like that. It's a secure location at night for sheep to go. Okay, when during the day, sheep go out, they eat, drink, do sheepy things. At night, they go back into the fold where there's a guardian at the door. And there's only one way in or out. The whole purpose is to keep it secure, to keep the sheep safe from robbers and wolves. Now, a lot of the time there would be a common sheep fold. So you'd have many flocks in one sheep fold, right? That's economy of scale. And the shepherd would come the next morning, and he would have a special call that his sheep would recognize. They would recognize his voice and his call, and so he would call out his sheep from the fold, and only his sheep would come, and they would only come to him. So what Jesus is saying, he's saying, I'm the shepherd of God's people, follow me. Not me, Matt, but Jesus. Okay? That's what he's saying. He's saying to follow him. Now, how can Jesus make this claim? What makes him different from these other shepherds? Well, there's three crucial questions we have to ask of everyone asking us to follow them. One, where do they lead? Two, why do they lead? And three, can they lead? One, where do they lead? Two, why do they lead? Three. Can they lead? So, first, where do they lead? This is really important. I I want to teach you guys, if you don't know the word, you'll hear it from time to time. It's really important. The word, the Greek word that we use in English too, is telos. Anyone familiar? Okay, telos, if you translate it, it means end, but it's not end as in the last thing that happens, but end as in destination or fulfillment. Right? We use it to talk about the purpose of life. Where are we going? Are my current actions in line with my tellos, or are they working the other direction? Because I really don't think that we think about this. I think we're too distracted of a culture. There's signs of this that we don't reflect on tell us. One of the signs I see, up by the storage unit that I use, there is a dispensary. And on the outside of this dispensary, you may have seen it, I think it's out on Smith Road, I think that's the name of the road. There's a bunch of huge murals on this dispensary. You know who's on it? They're well done, well painted. But you've got Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, and uh Janice Joplin on a dispensary. Think about what's that saying. Hey, do you want to end up like these people who all died of drug overdoses? Come on in. People aren't thinking, where does this lead me? They're asking me to go there. Where does it go? Where they went. We don't think about our telos, and we don't connect our telos with the decisions we're making on who we follow. If you don't know what yours is, or if you don't have any idea what this is, how are you making decisions? Right? It it and you gotta ask of everyone asking you to follow them. Where are they leading? To what end? To what tellos? Alright, Elon wants us to follow him. Where is he gonna lead? Trust me, it'll be great. Really? How do I know? Where where does he know where he's going? Where does AOC or P Hegeth want to lead me? They want us to follow, that's for sure. Right? They want to be leaders. Where are they gonna to what end? Where does this podcaster or influencer, where do they want to lead me? Okay, maybe they don't even know. And you might be saying, Well, what about you? Aren't you a leader? So, yeah. But this is, I don't want you to follow me. I want you to follow Jesus. Right? I I am not saying follow me, I'm saying go that way. That's my whole job, guys. I don't lead you to your talos, Jesus does. Jesus leads to God's telos for you. This is what he says right here in verses 7 through 8. So remember, they didn't understand what he said. So Jesus takes a second swing. So Jesus said to them, again said to them, Truly, truly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. Now, you get confused if you say, wait, didn't he say the shepherd enters by the door? And he's like, Shepherd, that means the door too? Don't worry about it. He's he's just he's throwing metaphors around a little more freely. You ever mix a metaphor? I do it all the time. Okay? He's just saying, don't think too hard about it, guys. The point of the door is there's only one. There is one legitimate way in and out of that sheepfold. He's saying he's it. And he says, What? Where does he lead? Look at verses 9 and 10. He says, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. So what's he saying? That the door is the one way to, if you're inside the sheepfold, it's the one way for the sheep to go out, find food, water, and do their sheepy things, and it's the only way back to safety. One way. Okay? And and that the others who are not the door, they're not there for their for the sheep's benefit. They're gonna lead to where? Destruction. He's saying he is the only way to God's telos, and he's saying he leads to salvation. Okay, when we look at uh yeah, I already said that. Covered that. So point is that God has an end for you. He has a telos, he has a direction your life is meant to go. And Jesus is the one who will lead you there, and he is the only one who will lead you there. Do we all know exactly what God's purposes are? We might get some inkling over time. Long discipleship, long reflection, long knowledge of yourself. You get an idea. If you're not sure, guess what? Follow Jesus, you'll get there. He is the one way to God's Telos. We need to follow him because he leads to God's telos for us. And we also have to ask when we're discerning who to follow, why do they lead? Why do they lead? Not just where, but why? This is a crucial question. Um, you know, the real question, it comes to us from ancient Rome. One of the most exciting showdowns in Roman history was not a gladiatorial combat. There was something that the ancient Romans were far more interested in, and that was oratory, who was the best speaker. And uh in this case, like they would they would attend legal proceedings just to hear the eloquence of the speakers. And there was a guy who was the reigning heavyweight champ of Rome at this time. His name was Hortentius, and he was being he was being uh he was gonna have to debate and speak. Uh the opposing counsel was a guy who you may have heard of named Cicero. Now, the case was concerning a Roman noble named Gaius Verus, who was being accused of of, when he was uh governor of Sicily, uh, of rampant corruption, which is wild because the Romans, they were totally for corruption. So this had to be like crazy corruption. This would be like a MAGA Republican saying, that's too many American flags. You've crossed the line, that's too many. Like, how many does that have to be?

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A lot.

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Right? And so Cicero, he wins the strap, he wins the belt from Hortensius with this argument that he makes. He lays out the case. He says, Do we how do we know if if he's corrupt and he's guilty of all these things? He asks the question, Quibono, who benefits? Right? And that has rung down through the ages because it made everybody say, oh, this dude is guilty because he benefited hugely. You know, he cinched it. We need to ask the question. If I follow this leader, quibono, who benefits? That politician who's trying to turn up your anger and fear about how bad the other side is, who benefits? Do you? Get all mad over your morning coffee? To get scared all the time? You know, fear and anger are just really reliable motivators. And who's benefiting? They got your vote. That's what they want. They got your attention, that's what they want. They benefit, not you. That uh podcaster or influencer who's like, you're doing it all wrong, freak out about your life, you're doing it wrong. I'll show you how to do it right. Do you ever benefit from that? No. Who does? They do. When we follow Jesus, who benefits? He addresses that next in verses 11 through 15. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, this is different from the robber, these other, these other leaders, he says he doesn't own the sheep. He sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he's a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, I know my own, and my own know me. Just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I laid down my life for the sheep. And we follow Jesus, who became Benefits him? No. In fact, it's the other way around. He said, you know the real leader. You know the one you should follow by who benefits. The hired hand, what are they there for? Their own interests. At best, the people asking us to follow them are hired hands. Maybe it's kind of beneficial to listen to this person, but in the end, they're not really there for you. They're there for them. Jesus leads for your benefit, not his own. Look, like Oprah and Joe Rogan are not dying for you. They're not gonna lay down their lives for you. They have one interest in us following them, and that's their own benefit. We need to follow where Jesus leads, because he does not lead for his own benefit, he leads for our benefit. And the last question is: can they lead where they propose to lead? Can they lead where they promise to lead? And you need two things to do that. You need authority and ability. Authority and ability. Little thought experiment. Let's pretend that I um tomorrow I go to uh Mike Johnson's office and I say, uh, Mr. Johnson, you're taking the day off. I duct tape them to a chair, I shove them in a closet. Thank you for your service. And I say, I'm gonna be mayor for the day. And I start just doing outstanding things. I I sign a bunch of things, I don't know what the name is. Uh I hire some people, I fire some people, you know, I'm I'm cleaning up this town, or whatever. And let's pretend, for the sake of argument, I'm great at it. I have all kinds of ability to do it. Don't look so skeptical. Alright. Can I? Any of those decisions stick? No. Did I lead anyone anywhere? No, why? I don't have the authority to do so. I'm not the mayor. I can't fire anybody, I can't hire anybody, I can't sign a piece of paper on behalf of the mayor. Right? I don't have the authority. Conversely, there's ability. So I don't know if you're following the LA mayor's race at all, but it's a little entertaining. Um, there's an insurgent candidate named uh Spencer Pratt. Anybody following this? Spencer Pratt, uh, you know, he's got all these grandiose promises about how he's gonna fix LA. And maybe maybe he's appealing to some people, but here's the thing: his only work experience is that he was a reality star villain on a show called The Hills, which I am fortunate enough to never have seen. Okay, that's his entire work experience. Villain on the Hills. Alright, let's say he wins the race, which he very well may. Okay, he has the authority, but does he have the ability? No demonstrated ability, right? So he's unable to lead where he says he will. You need both authority and ability. I mean, honestly, when we ask the question, the these promises from whoever, from anyone who's asking us to follow them, do they have the authority to do this? Are they just self-appointed? They just get up one day and say, I'm a leader. Like no one's ever said to them, you're a great leader. I like where you led me. Like that's never happened. They're just like, I'm a leader because I'm kind of mean. And that seems to be one of the main qualifications. People dislike me, therefore, I'm a leader. I can talk people into things, therefore I'm a leader. Okay, or they they lack the ability. But Jesus can lead. And first of all, that means he has the ability. In verses 15 through 17, he says this just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, I lay down my life for the sheep, and I have other sheep that are not of this fold, I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, so there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. He's talking, of course, of his death and resurrection. Okay, he has the power. Where do we see that he has the ability to lead where he says? Well, he's promising us eternal life. Well, guess what? He is going to rise from death. He's actually gone there. He actually has gone there. He's capable of leading us there. The Heaven's Gate people, their plan, I don't know if this needs saying, it didn't work. There's no one on a spaceship. They just, you know, ate the pudding. But he also has the authority. Jesus did not appoint himself. Look at the end of verse 18. He says, I have authority to take it up again. This charge, meaning this mission, I have received from my father. Jesus is not self-authorized. He was appointed to lead by God Himself. We need to follow where Jesus leads because he can lead there. That is a differentiating factor. A lot of the time people tickle your ears and you say, Oh, that sounds good. I think that they do we ever ask the question? Not just where do they lead, why do they lead, but can they get you there? Do they have the authority? Do they have the ability? Jesus can lead us there. So we need to follow where Jesus leads because he leads to God's tell us for us. He leads for our benefit, not his own, and he can lead us there. The question is how? How do we follow Jesus? Well, it is mainly about your daily formation. You don't come here once a week, have a sermon go in one ear and out the other, and then expect, like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm that's following Jesus. No, it is about daily formation. Worship is certainly part of it. But daily engagement with the word, daily engagement with prayer, daily engagement with other Christians in community, right? Following with other people, having people speak into your life, it has an effect on you over time that you are formed, that you learn to recognize the voice of Jesus among this crowd of people saying, Follow me. We need to follow Jesus. There was once a pastor named André Trocmé, and uh he lived in a in a little village in France called Le Chambon. I'm glad Nika's not here to correct my pronunciation. I know I'm saying it wrong. But um Le Chambon, the way it was founded, it's founded up in the mountains, and um and uh it was founded in the 17th century by French Protestants to escape Catholic persecution, which was going on at the time. And so when France fell to the Nazis in 1940, and uh this is in the territory, the Vichy territory. You guys know all this? All right, the north of the north of France was occupied by the Nazis. They left the South free, but it was under a puppet government. It was called the Vichy government because their capital was at Vichy. I know I'm saying that wrong too. But this was, they did whatever the Nazis said. And so they started going after Jews, and and Le Chambon is positioned pretty close to the border, and so uh their Jews began fleeing to this village. And um, you know, it was one of those little villages with one church, and under André Trochme's leadership, they sheltered around 5,000 Jews and helped them escape before the end of the war. I mean, this was this is just think about this for a second. At this time, before the Second World War, France was probably number two or three for anti-Semitism in Europe. And that's really saying something when Germany was number one. Okay? They they were ranked. They were up there, they were in the conversation. So these folks, instead of bowing to the Vichy authorities, instead of you know uh um being intimidated or whatever, they did the incredibly courageous, the incredibly countercultural. They went against every leader in that country saying, do what we say, follow us. And they went the other way. In fact, when um when uh the police finally got on to what Andre and Magda, his wife, were doing, they came to arrest him. And they came to arrest him just as his family was sitting down to dinner. And he said, Well, can we just eat? You can join us to the police, right? And so the police like sat there and ate with them, and and word got out around the village, and all the all the villagers who also were his, you know, part of part of the church, were like coming in to say goodbye to him and bringing him care packages of like toilet paper and sausages and a flashlight and all these things. Everybody's like weeping, and the cops are weeping, right? And and and when whenever we hear a story like that, especially from this time, we say, How is it that in this environment of propaganda, when every leader is saying, go this way, there was someone who knew to not go that way. How is that? How did these people, among this whole country that went along with it, I know there were other rebels too, but by and large, most people went along with it, including many Christians, how did this village go the other way? The answer is they were following a different shepherd. They knew the difference between the voice of their shepherd and of false ones. We need to follow Jesus. Please pray with me. Lord, you are the good shepherd. I pray that you would wake us up to the many times a day that we are being pulled in the wrong direction by those who are either hired hands or robbers, who would pose as shepherds, as someone who who would bid us follow them, but do not mean us well. I pray that you would form us so deeply that we would know your voice amongst this crowd of pretenders, and that we would follow only you. In Jesus' name. Amen.