My Sheep Hear My Voice

 John 10-:11-18

April 25, 2021

 

One odd thing about being a pastor

is that you end up knowing a lot about sheep.

Even a city-dwelling pastor like me.

I think I’ve met just a handful of sheep

in person in my life, but I feel like

I know a lot more about them than I do other livestock.

 

That’s because there is a lot of of talk about

sheep and shepherds in the bible.

Moses was a shepherd before he

Talked to a burning bush and told the Pharaoh

to “Let my people go.”

 

David was a shepherd before he

was found by Samuel and killed Goliath

and was made the greatest king of Israel.

 

You would think that Jesus would have been

a shepherd by profession instead of a carpenter.

 

But Jesus is known as THE shepherd. The good shepherd.

Not because he cares for sheep, because he cares for people.

We are the sheep.

Now most of the time people would be insulted

if you call them sheep, but the bible does it all the time.

 

One thing I have learned about sheep is that they

are not great by themselves.

They need someone to help them,

someone to guide them to food and water.
They need someone to lead them to these places.

They are kind of helpless in some ways.

They often get lost and they are libel to drown

if they accidentally go into moving water.

 

And they have no real defense against predators.

They can’t bite or scratch,

they don’t have a shell that they can curl up into,

they can’t change colors,

they can’t squirt a terrible smell, They can’t roar

they just go BAA which is not a threatening sound at all.

They are just fluffy and delicious animals.

 

The only defense they have is to run

And when one runs in fear the others tend to run too.

 

Most of the time, when a sheep moves it is

because it is running from something.

It is trying to get away from a real or perceived threat.

 

I think that might be something

we can say about people.

As a species, our movements are often dictated by fear.

 

We lock ourselves up in our homes and

don’t talk to strangers

we arm ourselves to the teeth,

we look on anyone different with fear and contempt

 

And we might not always literally run,

but we run metaphorically.

We run because we’re afraid of being poor or unsuccessful.

We run because we are afraid of loneliness

we run because we are afraid of failure,

or because we are afraid of pain or rejection.

 

There are lots of churches whose whole

ministries are based on fear

fear of the other, fear of the unknown,

fear of change, fear of the future,

fear of the end of the world,

fear of the world in general.

 

And when we live in fear we make decisions based on fear,

we become irrational and so, like sheep, we run.

 

But running never works.

Because once we’ve run from one thing,

we find that there’s always something else

to run from again.

 

And like those sheep end up getting in the greatest trouble

when we’re running away from some perceived danger.

 

So sheep really do need someone to lead them

they really do need a shepherd that cares for their

well being, someone who can see the big picture

someone who has the sheep’s best interest at heart.

The sheep really need the shepherd.

Like we really need Jesus to guide us to help us

to show us the way.

 

One other thing I found out is that sheep

really do respond to the voice of their shepherd.

The shepherds of Jesus time

would have a hundred or so sheep.

And there were always other flocks of sheep around

with their shepherds, and they tend to all look a lot alike.

 

Sometimes the shepherds and flocks would meet to go to sleep

and they would all get mixed up at night.

But in the morning, the shepherds could call

their flock and their sheep would follow them.

 

So Jesus is saying that the sheep

do just know his voice and we respond.

But how do we know which voice is really Jesus voice?

 

There are even so many voices that say they belong to Jesus.

People use Jesus name to justify so many stupid things,

that it’s hard to know what Jesus voice sounds like.

People take snippets of scripture out of context

to support whatever fears and prejudices they have.

We’ve got some pastors who say that Jesus told them

that the sheep need to buy him a 65 million dollar private jet.

Other people is saying that Jesus wants them

to keep everything for themselves and forget about any one else.

Other people say that Jesus is telling them to

condemn, to judge, to suspect, to hate, and even to kill.

But we know that Jesus isn’t like that.

How do we recognize Jesus voice?

 

The one thing that Jesus says

the most in the scriptures

are these four words, “Do not be afraid”.

 

We know the voice of Jesus

because it will never lead us to run away,

Never leads us to suspect or hate others.

It never leads us to hoard all our things and money

and keep them all for ourselves.

It never leads us to stockpile weapons

in our attics waiting for the apocalypse.

We know the voice of Jesus because it never leads us to be afraid.

Jesus never leads his sheep to run erratically in fear.

 

Jesus voice leads us beside the still waters.

It leads us by the green pastures.

 

Even when we’re in the presence of our enemies.

Jesus voice tells us to pray for them.

Even though we may be in hostile territory.

Jesus says “do not be afraid, I am with you.”

Even though we might not actually be safe.

Jesus says that death will not have the last word in our life.

Even though the world may be falling down around us.

Jesus tells us to seek God’s kingdom first.

 

There is much that we could be afraid of in this world.
And without a guide in our lives,

we are libel to run and find ourselves lost,

drowning in the moving water.

 

But the good shepherd tells us

“Do not be afraid.”

The good shepherd has laid down his life for us.

 

We are Christ’s sheep. We are Easter sheep.

We are formed by Jesus life and death and resurrection.

We are guided by our Shepherd’s voice,

the good Shepherd’s voice.
It is the one that says “do not be afraid.”

It’s the one that leads us beyond our own fears.
The one that leads us from death to life.