The Gospel of John Chapter 10A: Follow Your Leader
During our study of the Gospel of according to John we have been creating a list of
take-a-ways.
A teaching does no good unless you put it into practice.
Knowing and Doing the Truth is what a disciple is all about.
In our study the take-a-ways are little reminders to put the truth we’ve learned into practice.
Jesus is God,
Jesus chose you,
Do Whatever He Says,
Clean House,
Be in the Kingdom,
Welcome the Light.
Gush
Want to Get Well
Eat, Drink and Love
Do Honorable Work
Love
Eyes Wide Open
And today we will add: Follow Your Leader
Being a Christian, a follower of Christ, a disciple of Jesus, a holy person,
Is all about following your leader.
To be like Jesus, you have to follow your leader.
To follow you have to do the things Jesus is doing.
I am to urge you to Follow Your Leader.
We are at the 10th chapter in the Gospel of John.
The events of the first part of this chapter take place during the Feast of
Tabernacles.
Jesus has said some incredible things,
And he has performed some incredible miracles
To validate his teaching.
Jesus has stirred up a hornets nest.
He is a polarizing figure.
Everyone has formed an opinion,
Some believe, some want him dead.
He has just healed a man born blind, now lets hear what he has to say.
You can read along in your Bibles as we watch John 10:1-21
John 10:10 is really the mission statement of
Huntington Beach Community Church.
John 10:10 (MSG)
A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
Based on this our Mission Statement reads—
Empowering People To live life to the full.
Living life to the full---
HBCC is all about empowering people to live life to the full.
But I’m still afraid that it is the best kept secret in Huntington Beach.
The reason it’s a secret is because we’re not telling any one
about it.
Once again I saw a stat that said 85% of people
that you already know will come to church with
you if you invite them.
Is there someone in your world,
Someone that you know
That needs to live their life to the full?
It’s been a while so let me explain to you what life to the full is.
Love, Joy, Acceptance and Belonging.
Peace, Contentment, Satisfaction, Confidence
Meaning, Purpose, Significance,
Its being caught up in something far bigger than yourself.
It is passion, and compassion, in action
It is being associated with the people here who gather in Jesus name week
after week.
People that become your brothers and sisters in Christ.
A family that you can count on.
But it is also getting caught up with bringing the kingdom out there
Using your gifts, your abilities, to manifest the glory of God and to
bring his kingdom to those who desperately need it.
Do you know someone in your world that needs to be loved?
That needs to belong?
That is living his or her life for nothing more than material
Gain, get through the day, make it to the weekend?
Why not invite them to church with you.
They are trapped in a living hell right now.
You’ve probably said it yourself,
I don’t know how they make it with out Jesus.
They’re making it because of God’s grace,
Grace that is buying you time to ask them
so that their living hell doesn’t become an eternal hell.
I recently came across a story about hell.
From my relational theological perspective I said wow, right on.
Astronaut Cartoon
Hell is eternal separation from God,
Hell just might be eternal solitary confinement.
The Apostle John in the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ described
hell as being thrown alive into a lake of fire.
If you have no idea as to why solitary confinement is considered a
punishment,
you have no idea how devastating being cut off and
totally alone from other human beings can be.
Your invitation just might save someone from that destiny.
Why not fill this building up with your friends?
John tells us in Chapter 10 that Jesus is the gate.
John 10:9 (MSG)
I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture.
Jesus says he is the only way into salvation.
That statement is probably the second the most offensive things about
Christianity today.
The first being Christians who aren’t disciples.
Christian’s have a Jesus Heaven
Jews have a Jehovah Heaven
Muslims have an Allah Heaven
Buddhists and Jains have a Nirvana Heaven
Hindus have a Krishna Heaven
Shinto’s have an Ancestor Heaven
Vikings had Valhalla
Greeks and Romans had Olympus
And then there is a host of belief systems that have no room for a
heaven at all.
How can a person say they have the right Heaven?
How can a person say their religion is right and another wrong?
After all isn’t what you believe extremely influenced by where
you are born, the faith of your parents,
and of the greater culture?
I don’t have a great intellectual argument to answer those types of questions.
But here is one thing that faith says for sure:
John 10:3-4 (MSG)
“… the sheep recognize his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he gets them all out, he leads them and they follow because they are familiar with his voice.”
I believe that his voice is the language of love and it transcends every culture
And speaks in such away that those who recognize its sound, follow.
John 10:16 (MSG)
You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them, too. They'll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd.
Jesus is the Gate to salvation.
That is the testimony of the Scripture.
It’s never been a popular position
—look what they did to the one who said it.
Jesus tells us that he lays down his life for his sheep.
John 10:11 (MSG)
"I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary.
The Good Shepherd is a reference to Ezekiel 34.
Read it soon. I’m just going to pluck out one verse
Ezekiel 34:31 (NIV)
You my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are people, and I am your God, declares the Sovereign LORD.'"
Jesus sheep are the people who recognize His voice and follow him.
And what is it that Jesus will do for his people?
He will Lay down His Life
Lay down his life he did,
Crucified by those would not receive his message.
Jesus our leader Laid down His life for his people
As followers of Jesus we are to do what we see Jesus doing.
As true disciples of Jesus we are to lay down our lives for his sheep.
We’re called to follow our leader.
Only those who lay down their lives for Jesus’ people
will be empowered to live their lives to the full.
Matthew 10:39 (NCV)
Those who try to hold on to their lives will give up true life. Those who give up their lives for me will hold on to true life.
If I lay down my life in service to Jesus, for others, I will live.
I will live my life to the full.
But if I refuse to lay down my life in order to preserve it,
I will die.
This paradox is difficult to come to terms with,
Well at least for me it is.
From a theological perspective I understand the concept pretty well.
My old life of self-centeredness needs to be put aside so that I can live a new
life of Christ-centeredness.
In my teaching concerning the sin nature, egoism,
Me, myself and I, being my own authority,
I have taught you that the sin nature must be crucified with
Christ so that you can truly live.
How is it Crucified?
Quick theology lesson.
Because of Adam and Eve’s Fall, we are cursed with original sin.
Relationally understand original sin as estrangement from a
right relationship with God.
Humanity estranged from divine authority replaces God with Self.
This deifying of Self is the sin nature,
It shows up as attitudes and desires that are opposed to
God.
I think its best described as egoism.
Edging God Out with I Self and Me.
Then estranged from God, with Self in charge we do things that deter,
damage and destroy relationships.
Those deeds are actual sins.
Things we have done or failed to do that hurt
Others, that mess up our relationships
When you first become a believer,
faith in Jesus Atonement secures forgiveness of those actual
sins and reconciles your relationship with God.
Accept you need a Savior
Believe the Savior you need is Jesus.
Commit yourself to discipleship
And two of your major sin problems are taken care of.
Original sin and actual sins.
That leaves the sin nature—egoism.
Egoism will eventually rear its ugly head in the life of a
believer.
The Apostle Paul described it this way---
Galatians 5:17 (NIV)
For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.
This conflict can get you so tied up in knots that you might even wonder if you are
in the salvation process.
Yet when you get to that place in your spiritual journey,
Where you recognize this problem,
When you know that God wants egoism crucified,
And you want God to change the motivations of
your heart that your first impulse is to love.
It is then that God does a second work of grace in your life,
God sanctifies your heart, rectifies those attitudes, desires and wishes
So that now love motivates your behavior.
There is an ABC to this crucifixion of egoism.
Acknowledge that you are at war inside
You are torn between living for God and
Living for yourself.
Believe that it is God’s will and command that you live a
holy life, your allegiance to Him only,
and that what God command’s He
empowers.
Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to Jesus Christ
and continue following Jesus.
That’s pretty much what it means to lay down your life theologically.
But from a day to day perspective what does this laying down of my life look like?
For me it boils down to making the right decision at the right time.
I’m sure you are familiar with the passage in Ecclesiastes that tells us
there is a time for every purpose under heaven.
You need wisdom to figure out what time it is.
Fortunately God is the giver of wisdom.
Galatians 5:24-25 (NIV)
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Making right choices is what the scripture means when it admonishes us to keep in step with the spirit.
There are things I can do to ask God to give me wisdom to make right
choices at the right time.
Those things are the spiritual disciplines:
Reading the Bible, Prayer, Fellowship, Service,
Worship, Obedience, Contemplation.
God uses these channels to deliver His wisdom into your
life.
Now if you are trying to live with your eyes wide open,
You remember that not every need is a spoken need,
So you see.
As you live with eyes wide open you will begin to see so many
needs from so many places, that it can overwhelm you.
There are is so much hurt and injustice and poverty and pain and
Persecution that most people close their eyes and do nothing.
From that passage in Ecclesiastes
There is a time to meet a need of another,
And there is a time to refrain from meeting needs
In one situation your response to a need of another may be no.
There’s just not enough of you or enough of your resources to
meet the need.
In another situation your response to a need of another may be yes.
Which cause pulls your heart strings the most?
Which need has God burdened your heart for?
Which need has God given you the desire to do
something about?
In the everyday life of living in a community of faith,
The scripture seems to indicate that most of the time your answer is going to
be yes to the body of believers.
That yes may be inconvenient,
That yes may be costly.
A yes may cost your time,
A yes may cost your money.
Your time and your money represent your life.
Follow your leader and lay down your life to meet the need of another.
Galatians 5:14 (NIV)
The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
God may call you to meet needs in a homeless shelter, a nursing home, an
orphanage, a county jail.
God may call you to meet needs in a foreign country, human rights, human dignity,
Needs of the unborn, the unwanted, the unwed.
God may call you to raise money, or get your hands dirty, or to be an advocate.
God may call you to clean up the coffee pots after church.
When the call comes, follow your leader,
Lay down your life, that you might find life to the full.
Follow your leader