Sermon text: John 10:22–30
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The days between the Old Testament and the New Testament periods were dark days in the land of Israel and Judah. The Babylonians had destroyed Israel and Judah and Jerusalem. Then eventually the Babylonians were destroyed by the Persians. And under the Persians, the Jews had been given permission to return back home to Jerusalem to rebuild their city. Then the Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great, which didn’t change a whole lot for the Jews. But then Alexander the Great died and the Seleucids took over the area of Judah and Jerusalem. One of the Seleucid kings was Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus Epiphanes, or in English, Antiochus the Enlightened, sought to enlighten the Jews regarding their own religion. He looked at the religion of one God, of keeping commandments, and of waiting for a Messiah, and decided that the Jewish religion was holding them back from progress. Sounds like today, doesn’t it?
So, he made the practice of Judaism punishable by death. He turned the temple into a place of pagan sacrifices and a brothel. And if parents had their sons circumcised, or if they refused to work on the Sabbath, the father was scourged and ultimately slain to death. In time, a family known as the Maccabees rose up from among the Jews. The first family to revolt was Mattathias. In short order, Mattathias’s son Judas became the leader of the Maccabean family and thus inherited the leadership role in the revolt against the Seleucids. Judas Maccabeus led a makeshift army against the Seleucids — which was a dynasty, excuse me, a family group that had taken over basically all of the Roman Empire’s east — and gradually defeated them. Jerusalem then was freed, and the Jews held a great celebration in which they cleansed the temple and rededicated it to the Old Testament God, the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim. The occasion became known as the Feast of Dedication. That is the feast that’s mentioned in the opening verse of the gospel lesson this morning. You know that holiday as Hanukkah.
One of the purposes of the festival: one of the purposes was to celebrate Judas Maccabeus as a great hero of the Jewish faith and sovereignty. He saved the land of Judah from the Seleucids and restored freedom to worship the one true God in the temple in Jerusalem. At the time of the war, Judas was regarded as a hero. But even more than a hero, some speculated that Judas Maccabeus was in fact the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. There is no doubt that he was a great man, but his messiahship was temporary, as was the deliverance he brought to the Jews. In 161 or 160 — someplace in there — B.C., he died in battle. But unlike the real Messiah, he did not rise again, proving that he was not the promised one of Genesis 3.
Under Judas’s leadership, Judah had won a temporary political freedom. But that was only temporary, until the Seleucids reasserted and took control of the whole territory. Judas the hero was dead, and the freedom that he fought for was snatched away once again.
Thus, the gospel began. “At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon.” Jesus was, by the way, well known by this time. His teachings were being repeated by the lowest of the human beings on the social ladder, talking about the gospel and the new preacher and rabbi. His miracles were being recounted, told over and over again, and a great multitude followed Him wherever He went. So this time as He’s walking through the courts of the temple, there were a lot of people watching Him to see what He would do next: to see if in fact He would take the throne of the Messiah. The time was right, they thought, for a hero. The politically inclined of the day wondered if Jesus would be a Messiah like their famed Judas Maccabeus, only successful in establishing a permanent peace.
As far as some of the Jews were concerned, Jesus had potential. After all, He was a man that had the power of God to heal the sick and even to raise the dead. And He showed He would and could stand up to the religious establishment of the day. He also had the support of the people, but He seemed to lack the political zeal of a Judas Maccabeus, and He showed no military aspirations against the Romans. So the Jews gathered around Him on that day and said to Him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
Well, ask and it shall be given to you. Jesus had done that before: spoken very plainly about who He was and what He came to do. But He reasserts it again, starting in verse 25: “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
The communication breakdown you see about Jesus’s identity was not on Jesus’s end. To prove His identity, Jesus always pointed to the works that He did in His Father’s name and what the Old Testament taught regarding the promised Messiah. We were taught in the Old Testament, they were taught in the Old Testament: that look for these signs and you will know that this is the one who God has sent to restore all of His creation. Jesus also points to the words that He speaks: that is, to the doctrines that He taught that give eternal life to His sheep.
It’s obvious that the Jews who were questioning were not sheep. There is clearly a difference between Jesus’s sheep and the goats of this world. Jesus said in 27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Jesus’s interrogators don’t hear His voice because they don’t follow Him. Because they are not His sheep. Notice He doesn’t call His followers soldiers or revolutionaries or zealots, as Maccabeus likely did in his day. He calls those who hear His word, trust in Him, and follow Him: sheep. By the way, it’s kind of not complimentary, once you get to know the qualities of a sheep. Nonetheless, He calls them sheep.
As to the question, is Jesus the Christ? Jesus’s answer is yes. Without a doubt, He made it clear to one and all by all that He says and all that He did. He is the Messiah, the promised one of Genesis chapter 3. It’s not that He hasn’t told them plainly before. They just actively are not listening to Him. Their ears are closed. Their eyes are blind. They’re looking for a different kind of Messiah. They want a warrior, a conqueror like Judas Maccabeus, or an establishment preacher who agreed with their doctrine and their oppressive religious oppression of works-righteousness according to the traditions of their day.
But Jesus doesn’t liken Himself to a warrior. Instead, He likens Himself to a shepherd who, as He says elsewhere, will lay down His life for the sheep. The Savior’s Shepherd stands before them, and He speaks His faith-creating word. But these Jews are not sheep, because they did not believe in Him. The Shepherd calls them, but they don’t want to be sheep. To them, Jesus isn’t the Messiah because He’s no Judas Maccabeus. And worst of all, He shares table fellowship and hangs out with sinners. And He teaches a gospel that is unrecognizable to them: the exact opposite of everything that they believe and that they teach.
So Jesus is no Judas Maccabeus. He’s far superior — and as superior as God is to man. Judas fought and died, and the freedom that he won momentarily was lost. Jesus will suffer and die, but He will rise from the dead. He gives His people and His sheep eternal life: freedom from sin, death, and the power of the devil. He gives them a victory that is greater than any political or military victory that can be achieved on this earth. A victory that cannot be snatched out of the Messiah’s hand. Jesus, our Good Shepherd, is the only one who can call, gather, take care of, and protect His sheep and bring them to their heavenly sheepfold.
You might remember that John the Baptist, when he was in prison waiting for his head to be cut off, started to worry, or get a little confused about Jesus. So he sent his disciples saying, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” And Jesus replied, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them” — to prove who He is, establish His identity. Jesus points to His preaching and to His acts of mercy to sinners. John’s disciples did as instructed. John the Baptist received his answer and believed.
In spite of the proof that Jesus offered as Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one, some could not believe. Why? Jesus explains that too: “You do not believe because you are not a part of my flock.” We are sheep because we hear. We hear because we are sheep. The sheep know His voice because they are sheep. It’s in their nature. And that’s a great mystery: this thing called the doctrine of election. Why some and not others? Why some? Because they hear. And why do they hear? Because they’ve been made sheep already.
And what does it mean to be part of the flock? It means to be a person of true Christian faith. It means that the Holy Spirit worked through Christ’s word, through His doctrine, through Holy Absolution, Holy Baptism, and through the holy meal, the Lord’s Supper, to work faith in the heart of hearers and to keep faith alive and strong. Just as Jesus gives the title Good Shepherd to Himself, He claims all who believe in Him are His sheep, His flock.
Jesus told the gospel truth to the people in the gospel lesson. They did not hear the voice of the Good Shepherd because they were not of the flock. Again, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” If you know somebody claiming to be a Christian, yet they do not listen to the voice of the Shepherd — that is, they do not listen to the word of God and disregard it and willfully violate it — then it might be that they’re not sheep of the flock. But that’s for God to decide, not for us to judge.
The people that Jesus was talking to were not in the following mood. True to form, Jesus doesn’t miss an opportunity to make a bad situation worse. He enjoys to do that, it appears. And true to form: after telling men that they don’t get it, and that they’re not a part of it, and they don’t get it because they’re not a part of it — He tells them that He is the one who gives eternal life. That is: they, the sheep, shall never perish, and no one will snatch them out of His hand.
But Jesus wasn’t done. He inflicted a final outreach by telling them, “I and the Father are one.” Now, if that doesn’t answer the original question — “Are you the Christ?” — I don’t know what constitutes an answer. Now that they have the answer, they’re not happy. Our lesson ends at verse 30. But the episode did not end at verse 30. Verse 31: “The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.” It is now: religious and community leaders generally, as a rule, don’t like the real Jesus the Christ. He’s exclusive. He’s offensive. He’s not a peddler of works-righteousness or a model of cultural virtue or wokeness. So the questioners take up stones to kill Him, because He’s just crucified their entire theological system and gutted their political and religious power.
In verse 32, not included in our reading again, Jesus answered them: “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” And the Jews answered, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
Well, that’s the case. Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, the anointed one, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the Good Shepherd. He’s the complete package. He’s both the Lamb and the Shepherd. He’s the King and the Servant. He can’t be cut up and divided from Himself. They want Him dead because He’s claiming to be Son of God, equal to and one with God the heavenly Father.
You see, Jesus: a nice guy who goes around doing good things for people is one thing. But Jesus, who claims to be the only way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except by means of Him, is an entirely different and more offensive matter. It is the giver of true knowledge and of the truth in religious doctrine who speaks. He is the Son of God, and His word has its very own authority, self-contained, for He spoke it Himself. And Jesus’s teaching is His word, His gospel.
Hearing and believing are synonymous in the biblical text with trusting and believing. In Jesus’s time, several flocks would gather each morning, either in a courtyard or a sheepfold or at a watering hole. And in the morning, a shepherd would go out to collect his sheep, and he would call to them. But even if there’s a dozen other shepherds calling out to their flock at the same time, each sheep in that combined flock knew which shepherd was his, and heard that voice alone, and ignored all the other voices of all the other shepherds, and separated itself from the crowd to follow its own particular shepherd.
Oh that we Christians would have such devotion when it comes to the doctrine and worship of the Lord God: Jesus Christ, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You see, you are known by the Father, and that’s the most important part. He has changed you from a goat into a sheep through the water and the word. Christ has made you one of His flock. He’s forgiven your sins. He has brought you to the sheepfold to be taught and fed His word. Psalm 95:7: “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.”
And as long as your ears hear the voice, as long as you remain in your baptismal faith, the Good Shepherd will bring you to Himself, and no one will ever be able to snatch you out of His or the Father’s hand. You’re on your way to the heavenly sheepfold, for your sins have been forgiven you. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.