Good Shepherd Sunday Sermon
Rev. Rolf Preus| May 4, 2025| Trinity Lutheran Church, Ottumwa Iowa| John 10:11-16
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.” John 10:11-16
A pastor is a shepherd. When Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, he is calling himself the good pastor. He is the only good pastor. He is the pastor of his church. All other pastors are under shepherds of the good shepherd. They are pastors only insofar as they speak the words of Christ, the good pastor. There is a man in Rome who claims to be the pastor of the entire Christian church. That’s a false claim. Only Jesus is pastor of the entire Christian church.
Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. David sang, “The LORD is my shepherd.” When Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, he is calling himself David’s LORD. He is the Lord God. He gives his life for the sheep.
What punishment so strange is suffered yonder
The shepherd dies for sheep that loved to wander.
As we take to heart the words recorded for us in today’s Gospel Lesson, let us consider specifically three things. First, the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Second, the good shepherd knows his sheep and is known by them. Third, the sheep listen to the voice of their shepherd.
The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. This sets him apart from all other gods, all of which are false gods. False gods, ancient and modern, require human sacrifice. People offer their sons and daughters as sacrifices to gain the favor of these gods. Our God does the opposite. He sacrifices himself. God was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man. God was betrayed into the hands of sinners and crucified under Pontius Pilate. He gave his life for his sheep.
Sheep are weak and vulnerable to potential predators. The wolf seeks his prey and if he gets a chance he’ll grab a sheep, kill it, and eat it. The devil seeks out his prey. He does his best to separate the Christian from Christ. Once he does so, the Christian is powerless to defend himself against the wolf. He’s lost.
The hirelings preach whatever sells, whatever brings them popularity, and whatever lines their pockets. They care nothing about the sheep. The sheep don’t belong to them. They’re working for money, not for the good shepherd. So, when sin and false doctrine threaten the flock, they don’t defend the flock. They ask instead if they would win or lose by standing up for this and standing against that. Without principles beyond their own wellbeing, they watch as the sheep are victimized by one religious con after another. Think of the many false gospels that have assaulted the church in recent years: the gospel of self-esteem that teaches us we must first love ourselves before we can love others; the health-wealth gospel that teaches us that we can name and claim any blessing we want because God wants to make us rich in material things; the gospel of salvation by your own decision, by your own devotion, by your own good deeds; the social gospel that takes every holy mystery of the faith and twists it into a program for political activism; the woke gospel that affirms every perversion you can think of. These false gospels arise before the eyes of the hirelings who watch Christ’s sheep fall into sin and death from which they cannot set themselves free. The hirelings offer them no help. God will judge these false shepherds!
The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Not only does he defend them against the wolves, but he dies for them. The wandering and lost sheep is the sinner caught up in his own sins. He should have stayed with the shepherd. He should not have wandered from his Word. But he did. That’s the essence of sin. Sin is to set aside God’s word for another word, just as Adam and Eve did in the garden when they listened to the voice of Satan and set aside the voice of God. That’s sin and sin must be punished because our God is just. Just so, that sin was punished when Jesus was nailed to the cross. The shepherd becomes one of his own. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.
This is the vicarious satisfaction. Vicarious means that the shepherd takes the place of the sheep. He substitutes his life for theirs. Satisfaction means that the shepherd satisfies the demands God’s law requires of the sheep. The sheep of the shepherd look at Jesus lifted up on the cross and they see the price God was willing to pay to take away their sins. They see God in his boundless grace. They see the forgiveness of all their sins. They see their salvation. As he dies for his sheep God purchases them as his own, to remain his own, safe from the wolf. Right after saying that the Father knows him and he knows the Father, Jesus says that he lays down his life for the sheep. In Christ’s vicarious satisfaction we know the Father and we know the Son. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us this knowledge.
Second, the good shepherd knows his sheep and is known by them. When predicated of God, to know means to choose. In the Epistle to the Romans, where St. Paul opens for us the mystery of predestination, he writes, “Those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” To foreknow is to choose from eternity. It’s not just to know something will happen. It’s to make it happen. When Jesus says that he, the good shepherd knows his sheep, he is saying that he chose them and won’t let go of them. Later on in this chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus says:
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone 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 My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.”
Jesus knows us by choosing us. We know him by faith. John uses several metaphors for faith: see, know, eat, drink, keep – all of these words mean to believe, each stressing another feature of faith. Here in our text, the word know refers to faith because it is through faith alone that we know Christ.
Through faith. Not experience. Faith. Not through our figuring God out, through our feeling our way to God, through any exercise of our will, but through faith. St. Paul puts it this way: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Romans 10:17
Third, the sheep listen to the voice of their shepherd. The shepherd’s voice spells the difference between life and death for the sheep. We hear, we listen, we keep, we hold onto, we grasp, we eat and drink. We take his word inside of us and inwardly digest it, so that it becomes a part of us. This is how the sheep remain sheep of the good shepherd.
Faith is knowledge, assent, and trust. It is not merely an intellectual thing, though it certainly involves the intellect. Now a sheep isn’t the brightest animal in the world, so clearly, Jesus doesn’t use the shepherd-sheep metaphor to teach us that faith is an intellectual achievement, like figuring out a math problem or learning how to speak a foreign language. Faith hears God’s Word and believes. There are other words that compete with God’s word. They are tempting, alluring, very sensible, and deadly, leading us away from Christ, from God, and from eternal life. Sheep stubbornly ignore other voices and listen only to the voice of their shepherd. They know it. They don’t know the voice of a stranger.
They say that a dog is smarter than a sheep. But dogs are stupid when it comes to strangers. If I go up to a dog with the intent to kill him and say, “Here, boy, here, boy,” he’ll come running up to me to get killed. A sheep, on the other hand, will hear my voice and he won’t trust it. He’ll turn away from me because he doesn’t know me. The smart dog is dead while the stupid sheep is still alive.
One reason that Jesus uses the sheep-shepherd metaphor to describe his relationship with his Christians is to emphasize the total dependence of the sheep on the shepherd’s voice. Jesus repeatedly emphasizes listening to the voice of the shepherd in this chapter of John. Indeed, it is listening to that voice that makes one a Christian and a member of the church. The words of our text for today conclude with Jesus saying:
And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.
Faith is always individual. You cannot believe for me and I cannot believe for you. The Bible says, “The just shall live by his faith,” not by someone else’s faith. Faith is always individual.
But faith is always corporate as well. The faith of one Christian is the same as the faith of another Christian because all Christians hear the same voice. And because they hear the same voice, there is one flock and one shepherd. First, it was the Jews to whom Jesus came. Then, the Gentiles. But all people who are led to faith in the good shepherd belong to the same flock. They have the same shepherd. St. Paul talks about the unity of the faith and the unity of the church in Ephesians 4:4-6 where he writes:
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling;one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
The unity of the church is not something we can see and measure. If we look at the church with our eyes, we will see division. False doctrine divides the church into innumerable sects with competing and conflicting teachings. Clever theologians schooled in the art of church politics over the past hundred years or so have tried to craft agreements that will unite this church with that church, but it’s always at the expense of clarity and the truth. The so-called ecumenical movement has not promoted the unity of the church. It has undermined the truth.
Jesus said that there would be one flock and one shepherd. St. Paul says the same thing. Are we going to believe God’s Word or what we see with our lying eyes? We see division, sin, apostacy, corruption, and hypocrisy. But God sees what the faith of the faithful receive: forgiveness of sins, innocence, the Holy Spirit, true righteousness, goodness, and godliness. Listen to how we Lutherans confess this church in the words of the Large Catechism:
I believe that there is upon earth a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called together by the Holy Ghost in one faith, one mind, and understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love, without sects or schisms. I am also a part and member of the same, a sharer and joint owner of all the goods it possesses, brought to it and incorporated into it by the Holy Ghost by having heard and continuing to hear the Word of God, which is the beginning of entering it. For formerly, before we had attained to this, we were altogether of the devil, knowing nothing of God and of Christ.
What unites us is God’s Word, the shepherd’s voice. So, we hold onto it, confess it, preach it, and refuse to compromise what it teaches. We do not bring about Christian unity. God does. We confess it as an article of faith. We find our unity with our fellow Christians by holding onto the pure doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, faithfully confessed in the creeds and confessions of the church. We find our unity in the church where the gospel is purely preached and the sacraments are rightly administered, for these are the voice of the good shepherd. All the sheep hear the same voice.
The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. The good shepherd knows his sheep and is known by them. The sheep listen to the voice of their shepherd. That voice bestows life. The life of a sheep of the good shepherd is a good life. It is lived in communion with God and one another. It is lived under the shelter of God’s grace. It is a life of love that the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts. It is a life of faith.
Increase my faith, dear Savior,
for Satan seeks by night and day
to rob me of this treasure
and take my hope of bliss away.
But, Lord, with you beside me
I shall be undismayed;
and led by your good Spirit,
I shall be unafraid.
Abide with me, O Savior,
a firmer faith bestow;
then I shall bid defiance
to ev’ry evil foe. Amen