The Good Shepherd and His Sheep | John 10:1-42

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

wa well, good morning friends. Good morning. My name is Alex. I’m one of the pastors here and today. I am starting with a confession of guilt. I feel it’s important to let you know this, just as a pastor in a local church, I have a group of friends that I spend some time with, and recently one of them turned 40.

And so someone who shall remain nameless came up with an idea, let’s organize a fake evening. And then at some point during that evening. Kidnap the 40-year-old person, turn up in a car, throw him into the back, and then go and celebrate together. Now recognizing that I am a man of peace as a pastor and not predicated towards violence I was designated as the driver for that evening.

And so you knew it was a party for a 40-year-old, when at some point when they jumped out the car to grab him, someone yelled, be careful. He’s got. Old shoulders. It was definitely a party for those. Of a older age. Now the reason I tell you that is for a couple of reasons. The first is that if was anyone watching and at some point this all gets out and the some kind of newspaper article that says, past scene driving getaway vehicle at 26 miles an hour through a residential area.

You were pre-war for it. And the second reason. It is for the question that I wanna start us with today which is this. Which is this. Have you ever ended up following the wrong person? Have you ever ended up following with that person that just has these kind of ideas that can get people into trouble?

While you think about maybe an example from your past, let me share one of mine. As a child growing. I was about four or five years old and I ended up with another student hanging around with this kid who was that charismatic kid that can get you to do anything that he wants you to do. He printed us cards to say we were belonging to a special club.

And I remember thinking, I’m gonna keep this card for the rest of my life. This is gonna navigate me forever. And so each day he would give us tasks, challenges. To do. And so one day I remember him saying, we’re gonna go to the back of the playground, and there’s a fence that attaches to somebody’s garden, and we’re gonna kick a hole in that fence.

It seemed a pointless task at the time, but I obediently as a follower, stood there with one of the other students and over the time of the recess kicked a hole. In the fence and we went away thinking nothing else would come of it. The next day as we sat in assemblies gathering of students, the principal of the school stands up to say that this terrible event has occurred, that some student, much to his embarrassment, has kicked a hole in this gentleman’s fence, and he has come to complain.

He expresses his great disappointment and says, I will find out. Who did this, but I’m gonna give you a chance to confess. I remember the feeling of heat that just went across my body, the sense of turning red, the sense of embarrassment. I remember leaving the assembly and walking through the halls, processing my guilt, unsure what to do next.

I remember when the other student who kicked a hole in the fence with me came to me and said, I saw you kicking a hole in the fence yesterday. And I said, I bet you did. You were pretty close. You were kicking the hole at exactly the same time. And the two of us went together to confess to this principle, and I remember the look of disappointment.

He had the look where he said to me, you. Have let me down and you have let the school down. And I remember all of the punishments that my parents doled out quickly upon a poor 5-year-old who did nothing worse than follow the wrong person. I start you off on this point because this passage is primarily about following now, following at times.

It’s a little bit of an innocuous decision. Sometimes the person who’s a great leader, sometimes they’re just a good leader, but sometimes it can have the most dire consequences. Where you end up depends on whom you follow. Where you end up depends on whom you follow. This picture is of Robert Scott, one of the great explorers of his day, the first man to step foot on Antarctica, the first man to start to progress the investigation of humanity.

Southwards a man who dreamed of getting to the very most southern point of the world, the south. Paul Scott knew that he had a clear shot at this. The great competitor of the day was rolled Amundson, and Amundson was committed to going north, and so Scott begins to plan his expedition. He comes up with a couple of ideas that he thinks will get in there.

He gets hold of some tractors and decides that they can go when no animal or human can go. They can continue to work when it’s just beyond the capacity of human beings. He decides that he’ll take ponies too as backups to help on the journey. They can pull incredibly heavy loads, and most importantly of all, he decides that he’ll only make his teammates walk when the weather is good.

When the weather is good, they’ll walk 60 miles a day. And when the weather is bad, they’ll stay home and do nothing. They’ll sit in their tents and wait it out. But unbeknownst to Scott Amundson has changed his mind. He too now is determined to go south, but he has a different plan. He recruits skiers cross country skiers to his team.

He makes sure that everybody on his team is trained to ski behind sleds of dogs. He relies only on dogs because they’re bred exactly for that climate. And as far as how far to go, he makes a different decision. He says, every day I get my team up and we’ll do 20 miles. The weather’s bad, 20 miles, the weather’s great, 20 miles.

Who would you follow in those circumstances? The technology guy maybe. The old school guy, the guy that lets you sleep in when the weather’s bad, the guy that wakes you up when the weather’s bad, maybe there’s not much in it. Or maybe, you know how this turns out, it was supposed to be a battle or a decision just around first or second, but the decision becomes more than that following one ended in life following the other in death.

Scott and his whole team die trying to get to the Antarctic, to the South Pole, whereas Amon arrives weeks before Scott gets there. It’s a heartbreaking story but one that’s actually similar to the story Jesus presents, where he presents himself as the only way to life, the only person that we can follow.

And he does it through a series of really beautiful metaphors. But before we get too far, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. John seven, chapter seven through chapter 10 of this continuous narrative. If you’re not familiar with the stories in John chapter seven, Jesus stands up at a festival.

And he declares that anyone who is thirsty should come to him and out of them will come rivers of living water. A little later that day, he stands up and says, I am the light of the world. In the midst of great darkness, I bring light into the darkest places. Last week, we looked at John chapter nine as he brings healing eyesight to a man.

Born blind and then continues the conversation by saying, I have come so that everyone who is blind may see, and those who think they already see perfectly well will be revealed as blind. I left you with this idea here. Jesus can open your eyes if you can admit that you can’t see, and then the conversation just hangs it’s continuous.

Remember? And so this moment, this. This encounter pauses for us and we come back to it this week as Jesus continues to teach. This group called the Pharisees about his mission and what it’s really centered upon. That’s the story we entered into and to continue it, what Jesus tells a story, and it’s this one.

Very truly, I tell you, Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep and by the gate but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a rubber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listened to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

In the ancient world, the art of shepherding was not as much about driving sheep. Perhaps you’ve seen these moments where shepherds will send dogs out across valleys and they’ll manage to bring sheep from incredible distances by driving them with dogs behind them. But this wasn’t shepherding in the ancient world.

A shepherd would walk out in front of a sheep and call them by name and they would follow him, but they will never follow a stranger. He says, in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize. The stranger’s voice. A shepherd in the ancient world would often have very specific names, at least for some of the sheep, but most importantly, they would recognize the sound of his voice.

That was how they knew. Him. Now, maybe if you’re someone that’s been around the Jesus following world for a while, maybe you’re someone that’s read the scriptures a lot. You know the biographies of Jesus life. Matthew, mark, Luke, John, you’ve maybe had this question throughout John that’s just floated under the surface.

Maybe you haven’t put it into words, but maybe if you wanted something like this, where are the parables? In Matthew, mark and Luke, this there, there’s these stories with intent parables everywhere. Jesus is a storytelling teacher. He’s constantly telling stories that people have to work through. So far, what, 10 chapters into John.

We haven’t had a single story and now we get one. It doesn’t seem exactly like a parable to us. I would guess it seems something like folksy wisdom, like a proverb around who follows who and how somebody can move from following one person to another. The, there’s actually another ancient or older version of this proverb that looks something like this.

If you buy an old dog from your neighbor, it will keep going back to his house. I’m not sure what kind of dogs they’re working with. I have a golden retriever. If she comes to your house and you feed her, then you have a dog for life. They just graduate, migrate to whoever has the best food. But you get the point.

He’s trying to say something about following commitment or those sorts of things, but for the ancient person, for the first century Jewish person, this will qualify as a parable perfectly well. In actual fact, if you look at John chapter six, some of you will have language that looks like this. Jesus used this figure of speech, but some of you who have different versions of the scriptures will see something like this.

And Jesus used this parable. It’s a story with intent, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them, which raises a question, why don’t they understand? Why don’t they understand? Jesus is telling a story about shepherds and the whole of the history. It’s about shepherds, their greatest prophet, Moses a shepherd, their greatest king David, a shepherd, all through the Old Testament scriptures.

Story after story about Shepherds Genesis, the man who they are named after as a nation. Israel says this, the guard who has been my shepherd all my life to this day. In Psalm 77, verse 20, you lead your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and outrun everywhere, the shepherd language, but most poignantly, most importantly for this passage, a book called Ezekiel.

A book written by a prophet as a warning to a whole group of people says this and catch this language ’cause it’s so relevant for what we’re gonna look at here. Son of man. Prophesy against the shepherds. The teachers, the pastors, the ministers of Israel, prophesy and say to them, this is what the sovereign Lord says.

Woe shepherds of Israel who only care for yourselves should not shepherds take care of the flock. It gets even worse. Verse 11, or our prep actually even better for this is what the suffering Lord says. I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he’s with them.

So I will look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered on the day of darkness. Jesus stands up after telling people over and over again. I am the one who is to come, tells a story about shepherds to the teachers of Israel and they say, we’re not really sure.

What he’s talking about that they don’t understand, you might say is the problem. They should understand what he’s saying, but because they don’t, because they’ve missed the point entirely. Jesus comes at it from another angle. The story maybe is more complicated than I’m making out to be. And this maybe gives them just a little bit of excuse.

The story works across many metaphors. There’s at least four different allegories, at least four different characters in the story that Jesus either says or implies could be attached to himself. The Pharisees and then eventually to us and you. Many of you’ll have an idea already of which they are, but we’ll run through to make sure we’re on the same page.

Therefore, Jesus said again, very truly, I tell you, I and the gate for the sheep, all who have come before me are thieves and rubbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. Jesus begins with this idea. I am the gate. Now that seems a bit foreign to us. We’re used to the idea of sheep maybe being kept in a fold.

They have a gate that opens and closes. In the ancient world, there’d be a stone enclosure that went almost the entire way round, and then a gap. The shepherd would lie down in the gap. No one got in without him knowing. No one left without him knowing. So when Jesus says he’s the gate and then. Just a couple of sentences later says, I am the shepherd to a, to an ancient audience.

They’d be tracking even if we’re not. Jesus is the gay but something more. They will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief, the one who comes in who’s not the shepherd, comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. Remember, he’s still talking about a physical sheep in some ways. At this point, the thief wants to take the sheep.

Eventually wants to kill the sheep and eventually will destroy it completely by cutting it up and eating whatever he can and leaving nothing. Jesus, on the other hand, has come for a very specific reason that they may have life and have it to the full. I think we often think that we have a very good idea of what real life looks like.

Jesus says, I know what real life is. Zoe is the Greek word, and he says, I have come to give life beyond any measure you could ever imagine if you felt at different times that you might be missing out on life by following Jesus. And Jesus says, the opposite is true in following me. You are experiencing life in its most full terms.

Jesus is the gate. That leads to real life. Jesus is the gate, is the first metaphor, but quickly this language, I am the good shepherd. And Jesus, as well as the gate is also the good shepherd. The one predicted, prophesied back in that book, Ezekiel, the one who is to come, who will truly care for the sheep, the ones that are lost and lonely and hurting.

That would’ve all felt pretty normal to a first century group, and then there comes a surprise. Then there comes this line. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, not just a caring shepherd, but one who’s willing to sacrifice ultimately, that the sheep may be saved. He’s the good shepherd who gives.

His life there. There’s a writer on the idea of the Good Shepherd named Kenneth Bailey. He’s an expert on Middle East and culture. If you’re interested in kind of tracking more with this, his book, the Good Shepherd, is just brilliant, runs from Psalm 23 all the way through all the ideas of Shepherd.

But he says this, check this out. The ancient tradition makes clear that on arrival, the expected divine Shepherd will engage with evil and is willing to pay the price to restore the lu and scattered flock. That’s all normal, but there is no hint of any direct harm to be inflicted on the shepherd in the process.

Then he says, come the gospels where constantly Jesus is presented as this one who is willing to die. Next metaphor, he moves on quickly. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. When he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock. And scatters it.

The man runs away because he has a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. In Jesus’ metaphorical world, the Pharisees are the hired hands, the ones that will not protect those that need them, the ones that are simply in it for what they can get out of it, have no care, particularly for those that they are called to shepherd.

I am the good shepherd. Jesus says, again, I know my sheep and my sheep know. Me, I have other sheep that are not of the sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. Jesus says that I’m a shepherd that is so caring. I’ll bring in more and more people and care for them and they will be one.

Group one flock with one shepherd. Which leads us to the fourth slightly uncomfortable metaphor. If all that is true, we are the sheep. How do you feel about that? I don’t know if I care for the metaphor of sheep. At least as a first think about it, this is a lamb and a sheep. It occurs to me that there is no animal on earth where the cuteness differential changes as greatly from a baby to an adult, as is true of sheep.

The lambs are delightful. They bounce around. Everything is good, and then the sheep looked like sheep. Look, I don’t know if I care for being called a sheep, and it’s not just the looks. It’s also where sheep end up. They end up in some of the stupidest places. This I feel called to say now is not ai. This is the kind of thing sheep do.

They’re known for being creatures that can just wander anywhere, get lost anywhere. They are known for being particularly low. In intelligence, and Jesus says to all of us, regardless of how intelligent we find ourselves to be, he says, you a sheep, but doesn’t that fit if we’re honest, if you follow Jesus for any length of time, haven’t you found it true?

There’s a lyric in a, in an old hymn that says this prone to wander. Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love prone to end up in some of the most ridiculous places. In fact, I found this video for you that some of you may have seen it short, but brilliant.

Actual footage of Jesus rescuing me for my bad decisions. I am the sheep. That so often ends up in the most obscure situations that constantly needs a shepherd who is willing to rescue me. That’s how Jesus presents his story. In actual fact, there’s another story, another parable in Luke’s narrative, Luke’s biography of Jesus life that describes exactly what we just saw.

Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it and when he finds it? He joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home, and then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, rejoice with me.

I have found my lust sheep. Jesus is the shepherd that goes into the wilderness spaces and pulls his sheep on that. Wherever you find yourself, whatever life looks like right now, have a disappointed you might be in yourself. However much you feel he might be disappointed in you. He’s the shepherd. Comes after his.

She. This is a 1930s painting of Jesus returning home, sheep on his shoulder, ready to celebrate. That’s why we read in Psalm 23, this shepherd idea, the Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He refreshes my soul. It refreshes my soul. If you translated, literally might translate something like this.

He returns me to my breathing and we picture the sheep lost, scared in danger. The shepherd brings him back from a wilderness and places him in green pastures where he can find safety and does it over and over again. You might say this, of this shepherd. He leads us from the wilderness. To those green pastures, willing to go wherever we find ourselves.

In order to find us the, this is a picture of Shrek the sheep who wandered off and got lost for a whole bunch of years. I forget how many, he was gone so long, he could no longer see. When he came back, his wall weighed some ridiculous way that he could no longer sustain. He was slowly being eaten by all the bacteria, the viruses, and that a caught hold of them in that period.

Have you ever felt like Shrek in your life? I have. I have. Have, I am the sheep that wonders so easily and many of us are. And so as we look through what his message is really at heart, it’s this, we are called to follow him from whatever point we meet him. And the beautiful gift of a good shepherd is you might meet him in some of the most bizarre places.

And over the years I’ve spoken to friends that have met Jesus in bars, in brothels, in churches too. Some of the most broken of places. The passage is about following, but it’s not only about following, is it? The passage is about following, but it’s equally about listening. Yeah, that’s the idea that Jesus runs past us all the time.

He keeps saying things like, my sheep know my voice. They listen to me. He takes the idea of following. He takes the idea of listening, and he places the two of them close together and says they are attached completely. Now, I know as we talk about listening. And listening to God specifically, we’re starting to push into some territory that can feel awkward and it will feel awkward, especially if you find yourself in specific cultural locations today.

Maybe working for a big company, something like that. Something where a lot of people have a particular worldview and it will sound awkward. If you consider yourself perhaps an intellectual, as we push into the idea of what it is to listen to God’s voice, I think we live in a world that’s made a couple of assumptions.

The assumption is this, that skepticism is wisdom. That any sense that to believe is nonsense is the wise root. And on the other hand. The, that belief is foolishness. That seems to be the way that the world tends to operate and that isn’t new. Look what the statement is of Jesus in this passage.

He says, the reason my father loves me is that I lay down my life. Only to 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 authority to take it up again. This is the command I received from my father. And look what they say of his statement.

The Jews who heard these words were again divided, amended them, said he’s demon possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him? There is a viewpoint I think that floats around in culture that says to still believe anything. About how the world operates, especially from a divine perspective, is close to foolishness and so there’s a couple of things that I think might need to be said before we get to lesson listening.

The first is this. I would suggest if you have chosen to follow Jesus, you’ve chosen to do it with this really important premise. You’ve chosen to follow Jesus because you believe. And I believe that he’s the wisest person, that he knows more about how the world works and how it operates than you can feel or deduce.

Now, I know that feels risky because the next step might be this is 2000 years later and we know a lot more. But if you’ve chosen to believe that Jesus is who he is, that argument doesn’t work anymore. In following Jesus, we’ve come to this conclusion that Jesus is the wisest person who ever lived in, he understands best how the world works and how we get to operate in it.

When he come at it from that premise, when he says, my sheep know my voice, they hear me, we get to say, that might seem a little scary to me. And there might be all sorts of intellectual questions that follow. But I’m gonna trust that Jesus knows what he’s talking about in this area. It’s primarily a trust issue.

The other thing I might say is this. When we look across the history of the world, it’s really easy to see that there’s been a whole bunch of people that have said, God said this, and what they’ve said, God said, fits not at all with the character of Jesus. As presented in the Gospels. So if you wanna know if God said something, one of the easy answers is, does it fit with the character of Jesus?

Think for example about the crusades in the 12th, 11th century, the number of people that would take up arms and go and wipe out a whole people group that found themselves defenseless and weapon less. They would say as they went about it, God wills it. Does that sound like the voice of the one who said, blessed of the poor, blessed of the meek.

If anyone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek also. So while we can’t just throw out the idea that God still speaks, it seems like there’s a whole bunch of cautionary things, but having said all that Jesus says as we push into verse 27, my sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me.

John has a couple of language choices when he writes this. There’s a couple of different words he could use to describe the idea of calling. The first word is the most common. It’s the idea of calling a specific person or group. If I said to you, Hey, Sal, fellowship, listen to me, that would be calling, but he doesn’t.

Use that word, he uses a different word that just simply means to make a sound, to announce something that is more about the act of voicing something than it is about the specifics of calling a specific person. And that’s the word John uses seems what he wants us to know is this, that God is constantly calling people.

The decision point for us is, are we the sort of people that listen, I might phrase it this way. The question is not is Jesus calling me? For any of us specifically, the question is better phrased, can I or will I hear him? Now, here’s some good news. If you are someone that chose at some point to follow Jesus, I would suggest that means that you already have heard his voice and already have ab obeyed him.

It means you are one step into the process, but. What John envisions for us is this continued process where the voice of the Good Shepherd might get more and more familiar to us as each day goes by. This is a continued, perfect ever present tense that John uses, one that constantly wishes that you and I are the sort of people that could listen to God and obey.

And if you’ve never heard that voice. Let me simply say, it doesn’t sound like all your fears might make it sound. I experienced life growing up following in Jesus where every voice I associated with the voice of God was harsh, was demanding, was disciplined in me, exactly like the voice of that headmaster all those years ago.

Perhaps the voice of my dad who were the well-meaning and longing for the best for me could be demanding too. That was that voice of God. And then came a moment where I heard that voice deep and personal inside me, speaking to me, caring deeply for me, and it happened again and again after again and again.

One story I’ll tell you about that. I’ve sat on a beach in France. I’ve been through a season of my life with lots of questions, lots of good opportunities, but a lot of uncertainty as well. A lot of uncertainty about who I was called to be, and a sense that just sat in me over and over again.

God was probably disappointed in me that after following him for a while, I probably wasn’t all I should be. I sat on that beach. I just started to say some of these things to my good shepherd, some of the sense of my own interior feelings and my suspicions about how he felt, and slowly and gently, the voice of this good shepherd whispered to me, not disappointed in you.

You are loved more than you can believe. I’m so proud of you. That’s the kind of thing that this shepherd says to his sheep is the discipline. Sure is the times when you need correction. Sure. But what I believe most about this voice of God is it encourages us and pulls us gently towards him. It is after all, after out of all the I am statements, the most intimate, the most close, the most gentle, and the bread of life shore.

I’m the light of the world. Brilliant. I’m the good shepherd. The one who loves you deeply. This is a continuous relationship and this is what it looks like. But of course, you know already we have a problem. And this is where we’ll try and start to conclude. This is Kenneth Bailey again with the information technology that surrounds us.

Never in human history have there been so many divergent voices calling loudly for the attention and loyalty of the flock. Daily. The sheep must cons. Consciously seek to ignore those noises and listen to the voice of the good shepherd and follow it. God’s voice has much competition in your life and in my life.

There are so many other pieces of culture that call to us that his voice becomes easy to miss. There are so many voices from your past. So many voices from past experiences, past relationships that seek to speak to. That operate like this. At Christmas, we bought my kids a gift. They had been asking for a while for some really good headphones.

They’d had the little headphones that, go in your ears and charge, and they kept losing them. They kept breaking them. So they said we’d really love some headphones, and so we went out and bought them some headphones that go over your ears that are really hard to lose missing. One important detail.

On the box it says noise canceling. If you have teenagers. That have noise canceling headphones. Of what I speak the most frustrating experience of all is to be shouting for kids across the house and know there is absolutely zero chance of them being able to hear you. Just the other day, one of their friends came and knocked on the door.

I knew it was one of their friends, and so I called to my kids saying, Hey, so and so is at the door. Zero answer. Called again, louder, no answer, and finally did what you have to do many times more than you’d ever believe as a parent, which is get up from the place you just sat down in for the first time in a long time.

Wandered upstairs to answer the door, and my two kids were sat next to the door with their headphones firmly in place that I would suggest. Is what life can be like in this modern world and yet trying to hear the voice of a good shepherd. We are, at times, children with noise canceling headphones perfectly in place.

The good news is this, there is a remedy that’s incredibly hard and yet incredibly potent in terms of helping God’s voice and it’s this word, stillness. This is why Psalm 46, first 10 says this, be still and know that I am God. Dallas Willard, a brilliant philosopher thinker in the Christian space as this.

It. It is much more important to cultivate the quiet inward space of a constant listening than to always be approaching God for specific direction. So many of us have moments where we might say, I’m following Jesus and I’ve been faced with a crisis. Now is the moment for me to ask God for his wisdom, and yet this is the first time we’ve asked in an awfully long time and expect miraculously to find an answer.

Rarely it seems. Does that. Work. Finding this listening space is what it takes to let that voice become increasingly loud for us. Can you, can I be still, that seems to be the great challenge of this passage. Can you be still in an un still word? Everything is against us. Yeah, every other opportunity gives another voice another way for us to be distracted.

But stillness is and has remained the greatest way to hear the voice of God. And so for a moment, I’m gonna invite you. I’m into just a few seconds of stillness, and then the decision will be, can you make this a practice? Can you begin each day? Not with a phone and not with something to do. But can you pause for a second and be still, maybe you have toddlers, maybe they wake you up.

All of those things are true and important, but can you find a time, any time to say I will be still? The truth is most of us can find one. So let’s just take a moment to quiet our hearts, to gather our scattered senses. Maybe you define yourself as someone who’s never, ever heard the voice of God. Maybe you’ve never chosen to follow Jesus,

and maybe in this space, this room that’s fairly big might get really small,

and maybe the general voice of your good shepherd might say to you, you are deeply loved and cared for. Follow me. Maybe some of you would say it’s been so long and I feel so in the wilderness. I feel like the sheep that’s wandered off and got stuck in between the rocks, and maybe you’ll hear the voice of your good Shepherd coming to find you calling your name maybe twice over as he did with Moses.

Moses.

Maybe if someone that hears that voice all the time. And you know it and you love it. Maybe in this moment you’re just thankful

and Jesus, you know that this place is a different place. It’s designed to be, it’s designed to be countercultural. It’s designed to pull us away from everything that happens in the week and create a space where belief is normal.

For each person in this room, would you encourage their hearts with a voice of a good shepherd?