Loyal, OK

 
Pastor Leon Seaton

Follow the Shepherd

John 10:1-18

Martin Huffaker is a 40-year-old man that lives at the City Rescue Mission in Oklahoma City. He grew up on a farm, and now he says, “I should have stayed on the farm.” Unfortunately, he wasted 16 years of his life doing drugs, eventually taking crack cocaine.

I suspect that when he was young he rationalized drug use and robbery by saying, “It’s my life; I can do what I want to with it.” That is never a safe attitude! What he thought was freedom almost destroyed him.

By August of 2007 he had seen all the violence and murder he wanted to see. Totally disgusted, he walked away from that life and found safety and a place to start over in the Rescue Mission.

He said, “I’d never had anything spiritual in my life. I didn’t believe in God, but I wanted to find out about Him. I knew church people when I was a kid and I wanted to know why they smiled all the time.”

At the City Rescue Mission he met their source of joy, for he met God! Today he says, “What keeps me here is God…I thank God for His grace. I have no doubt in my mind that He loves me. I can’t have Church on Sunday only; I have it every day of the week. He’s in my spirit all the time.”

Martin is currently working on his GED. He sees the love of God in his teachers. “They conduct classes with love and feeling.”

The article in the Sept-Oct 2008 issue of the Rescue Mission newsletter ends with Martin’s statement, “God’s been with me my whole life and kept me alive. I want to live to be 80 so the next 40 years I can live for Him! I want to be a warrior for God. I think that’s why God brought me here.”

Martin has discovered what Jesus meant in John 10:10. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Let’s look at what Jesus is telling us. First, He talks about the sheep fold of that day. At night the shepherds kept their sheep in a pen out in the open country. It was open range, so a sheep fold was built for safety at night. The pen only had one opening.  If it was a large pen several shepherds might keep their animals in the pen at the same time. The watchman watched over the gate.

Anyone that tried to enter without going through the gate was a thief and a robber.

The shepherd of his sheep would enter the pen and call for his animals. They knew his voice, so only his flock would follow him.

Then the sheep followed their shepherd.

A pastor is an undershepherd. We judge our pastors by how well they fulfill the scriptures and by how closely their lives reflect the life of Jesus. If your pastor is not guiding you right, you should either change pastors or change churches.

In a sense, parents are also shepherds – or undershepherds, if you please. When our children are little, we can control what they see, hear and therefore learn. But when the little darlings go to school everything changes! The other kids in the class, the teachers, and the parents at school events all have influence on our children.

When a child goes to a friend’s house to spend the night he/she may be tempted in areas that we do not know about. How do we protect them? We protect our children by teaching them the values and principles we have, not just our rules.

When we read the Ten Commandments we may see them as oppressive rules. But when we see the love that God poured into them it makes more sense.

God gives us the opportunity to follow Him closely. However, we have a choice. In that sense, we are a lot like sheep. Sometimes we are just plain dumb!

Sometimes our kids are the same way! Well, maybe not yours, but some kids are.

As a pastor of this congregation and as a parent I can teach and preach with all my heart, soul, mind, energy and ability. But you have to respond. Our children had to internalize what we taught them.

In Jesus’ parable He said that the sheep will never follow a stranger. How many know that parables do not tell the complete story… they just make a point or two.

Sometimes we follow the wrong shepherd. Satan – or our human nature – convinces us that we do not have to do everything God tells us. We figure that it’s okay to go to church when it is convenient, pray when we feel like it and read the Bible when there is nothing interesting on the TV.

In my 12 years of being a dialysis nurse I took care of at least 200 different patients with kidney failure. At least 80 percent of those patients were there because they did not take care of their blood pressure or their diabetes. It was that simple. Failure to take care of our health will kill us. And sadly, God often gets the blame!

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)

Who is that thief? Certainly Satan gets a lot of the blame. However, anybody, anything, any spirit that draws you away from Jesus is the thief. Sometimes we run the risk of being a thief if we are not walking closely with the Lord.

How can we know that our shepherd is the good shepherd? Jesus explains that in verse 11. "I am the good Shepherd. The good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.  Our salvation is not free. Oh, it is free to us because Jesus paid the bill in full. He did it by sacrificing everything for us. Matthew Henry notes that Jesus did not lay down His life for His doctrine, but for His sheep.

Verse 16 has always intrigued me. It says, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen.” Note that he says, “Sheep” not “Goats.” What he was referring to was the fact that salvation is available to everyone in the world. They thought that salvation was limited to the Jews; Jesus was referring to the Gentiles – that would be us.

A good parent wants to protect his/her little ones. When the child is an infant, we carefully chose babysitters or day care centers.

As the child matures things get a little more difficult. In school the children interact with kids from other families that may not have the same values.

At home we are very careful what our children see and hear… for instance, they may quote us! We also monitor the things they watch on TV.

As the child continues to mature, his/her freedom increases… only what they have internalized from our teaching sticks with them… Thus we need to be sure that our kids are learning what we tell them!

Our nation has not always had good shepherds. Our current financial crisis is due in part to the greed of many people in the investment field. They were so focused on their personal gain that they did not watch out for the common man. Our nation needs to hold them accountable.

A minister that spoke at the Evangelical Association Convocation last week made a powerful point. He said that God gives life, therefore, when man takes a life he is fighting against God. He went on to say that abortion is pagan. It is taking what God has given.

Some people talk about abortion being the mother’s right because it is her body. That is not what the scripture says. 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20 states,

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

The King James Version puts it this way:

            “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”

Many of the people that heard Jesus’ teaching that day did not understand what He was saying. (John 10:6, 19-21) It is the work of the Holy Spirit to teach us what we do not understand. The Spirit teaches us when we meditate on the Word of God.

Our Lord laid not His life down for His doctrine, but for His sheep.

I’ve got several loose ends in this message. Let me bring them all together. As God’s children we are to walk in close fellowship with Him. We are to seek to understand things as God understands them. We are to follow our Shepherd. Jesus loved everybody. Because He did that, many followed Him.

We are to seek to win people to Christ. An article in Charles Stanley’s recent magazine makes a powerful point. The author was an atheist... and very proud of that fact. However, as her children grew up she realized that she was not so comfortable with that belief because she was a little concerned that she was wrong.

She was a single mother… her boyfriend was a Christian. But he was a wise man. He did not argue Christianity; he did not defend Christianity. He merely stated that he believed God and the Bible – even the parts he did not understand.

Because of his loving patience, because he listened non-judgmentally, he won her to Christ. Today they are serving God together as husband and wife.

Follow your Shepherd! Internalize what you learn from God, as your children internalized your teachings.  Jesus can be with you all the time, through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Follow your Shepherd!  And, be a good shepherd yourself!