Wrapping up the Great Debate
Tom Shrader contrasts the religious leaders of Jesus' day with Christ Himself, using the imagery of shepherds and sheep from John 10. He exposes the Pharisees as false shepherds who are thieves and robbers, while Jesus presents Himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. The teaching culminates in Jesus' declaration that His sheep have eternal life and cannot be snatched from His hand, addressing the security of salvation.
“Can you lose your salvation? No. Why? Because you didn't earn it.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: John: The Essence of Life (2003)
Recorded: 2003
Duration: 44 min
Themes: shepherding, authority, leadership, salvation, security, eternal life, false teachers, good shepherd, pastor, church leader, struggling with doubt, new believer, questioning salvation, facing false teaching, spiritual mentor, elder
Scripture: John 10:5-30, John 10:27-28, John 2:18, John 5:16, Mark 7, John 6, John 8, John 8:44, Acts 20, Ezekiel 34, 2 Corinthians 12:16, Romans 2:16
Theological Themes: eternal security, perseverance of saints, pastoral authority, christology, soteriology, salvation assurance, biblical shepherding, false teaching
Full Transcript
We are in session 6. When we're done today, we will be halfway through this 12-week series. The series is entitled The Essence of Life. I want to be careful here. I taught yesterday, and I got in a jam time-wise. I just lost a little bit of sense of how long things were going to take. There are so many different important sub-messages today.
Let's work our way through it. We'll try to follow the outline, but I want to make sure that we really do get the essence, the point. Go ahead and take a look at the outline, and I'll give you the close at the very beginning. You see it there. It's John chapter 10, verses 27 to 28. This is Jesus speaking, and He says, "My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life. They shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of my hand."
I will tell you, when we get there, hopefully there'll be about 10 to 15 minutes left at that point in the lesson. I want to really apply that. That verse, those verses, are absolutely filled with some of the most profound and important theological information that we can communicate, especially to Christians. We want to spend a great deal of time, if we can, on those. Great practical advice and comfort as well.
The Ongoing Confrontation Surfaces
What happens is we've got five weeks into this, and if you've been along with us and studying with us, what you've noticed is there's a kind of a subplot. It's fairly under the surface until last week. Then last week it just surfaces as the Pharisees and Jesus, the Jewish leaders and Jesus, come into a point of confrontation. There's been just a series of questions and debates.
You've got them there, seven of them that we've looked at. Who are you to do what you do, they ask in chapter 2, verse 18. Jesus has just emptied out the money changers, and they're saying, who gives you the authority to do this? What gives you the right to do this? Then they ask this in John chapter 5, verse 16, why don't you follow our rules? The important word in that sentence is our. Why don't you follow our rules? That is an ongoing source of irritation to these Pharisees.
You don't need to turn there, but let me just talk about Mark chapter 7. The Pharisees and the scribes said to Jesus, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? Jesus said, rightly Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites. Let me stop there, because so often we hear this, you know, Jesus is love, and Jesus does this, and Jesus does that, and He's kind of this anemic figure. Who are you to judge? Don't you hear that all the time? Who are you to judge? Who are you to be critical? Jesus never did that.
Jesus Confronts Religious Hypocrisy
I'll tell you what, "rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites" is about as in-your-face to a religious leader as you can be. He said, He wrote, the people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. You say to these guys, you're doing all the right things, you're going through all the exercises, your lips are saying the right words, but there's something wrong with your heart. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of man.
He said, Isaiah forewarned us about you guys. Here's what he said, he said, you guys are going to come along and start teaching the teachings of man and elevate them beyond the teaching of God. His conclusion, Jesus' conclusion is this: neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.
When they ask Him, why do your guys not follow our rules? That's very appropriately put. Jesus is saying, listen, you've taken human tradition and you've elevated it, not just equal to scripture, but beyond scripture. Many denominations will do that. You'll have the scripture, they'll acknowledge the scripture, they'll acknowledge who Jesus is, but they'll have a book that supersedes the scripture.
False Teaching Then and Now
At Easter and Christmas you'll see a lot of ads on TV that go something like this: you have the Holy Bible, now you need the other testament. That would be heretical once you get to that point. Or you've got somebody who can declare truth or divine tradition, and so the tradition of the church supersedes the teaching of the scripture. When you're in that situation, you've got false teaching going on. You've got a bad structure.
Well, that's what they had here. No different than what was in place 2,000 years ago. Here they said, how could you be from heaven? That was a question they asked. In John 6, Jesus had just said, I'm the bread of life that came down from heaven. They're mystified by that conversation. When Jesus says, before Abraham was, I am, they're going, how can this be? You're not 50 years old. That can't be.
Fourth question: where'd you learn this stuff? Because they're thinking, you haven't been to school, haven't been to seminary, haven't been trained. How do you know these things? Where'd you get these ideas? You're a carpenter. They're jealous. They're jealous of Him at this point. We saw that earlier.
The Source of Their Amazement
Remember when Jesus is 12, and they've made their trip to Jerusalem, and Mary and Joseph leave, and somehow they misplace Jesus. How'd you like that load as a parent? You've misplaced the Savior? That's not a good deal. What do they find Him doing? You find Him at my Father's house, and the people were sitting, and the teachers and the scribes were listening to Him. They're going, we're amazed.
All through His life, they were amazed by His teaching. Where do you get this stuff? How can you prove your case in John 8? Go ahead and prove it to us. That's what they're looking for. Prove it to us. Show it to us.
What we're going to focus on today are these last two questions. What do you say about us? That's what they want to know. What do you say about us? And then, what do you say about yourself?
If you've got your Bibles, you can open them to the very end of chapter 9, and then we'll spend the majority of time in chapter 10 of the Gospel of John. The Pharisees asked Jesus, "What do you say about us? Who do you think we are?" Those Pharisees who were with Him heard these things, heard Jesus talking, and they said, "We're not blind, are we too?" Remember, Jesus just healed the blind man, and they haven't believed, and they didn't get it. They're saying, "Are we blind? Is that what you're saying to us? Are you saying we're blind too?"
Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would have no sin, but since you say 'We see,' your sin remains." Jesus first pointed out to these guys that they are sinful people.
Understanding the Pharisees
Now, I want to make sure you get this. When we think of the scribes and the Pharisees today, we have somewhat of a distorted image in this sense. We see them as a group of guys with one eyebrow that goes from one ear all the way across to the other, and sinister guys, evil guys. In that day and age, you're talking about the religious leaders. Put it in the context of whatever faith you are clinging to here. They're the priest, or they're the rabbi, or they're John MacArthur, or they're R.C. Sproul, or they're the top guys.
We see them as bad guys, and we spot them this way, but in that culture, they're the honored men. They're the guys that they listen to, and the guys they look to. Jesus says to them, "Listen guys, you've got problems here. Your eyes are open. You're sinful people."
Jesus Calls Them Thieves and Robbers
And then He says this. He says, "You're thieves and you're robbers." Look at verses 1, 8, and 10 out of John's Gospel. "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, and climbs in some other way, is a robber." Verse 8: "All who came before me are thieves, but the sheep hear, and the sheep do not hear their voice." Verse 10: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they might have life and have it abundantly."
Let me just add parenthetically here, John 10:10. Many of you know Larry Wright, know that name. John 10:10. Abundant life. That was the theme verse for abundant life. "I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly."
The Imagery of Sheep and Shepherd
For the balance of this chapter, Jesus is going to use the imagery of the sheep and the shepherd. I'm from Iowa, so everybody thinks you know something about a farm. All I know is I don't want to be around one. That's what I know about a farm. I don't care less. And I certainly don't know anything about sheep. But I've read, in conjunction with a lot of different studies, quite a few things about them, especially in that Middle Eastern culture.
What they would do with sheep, and this is really important, you might have 4, 5, 6, 7 herds. What they would do is they would store them in individual pens at night. These pens would be oftentimes made of stone. They would be about as high as this bench seating. They would be circular or oval in their shape. There would be one door, and one door only. The sheep went through that door. You didn't go through that door, you weren't a sheep.
In the day, what they'd do then, is they'd let out all these sheep, and they would commingle the herds. They would take them out, and they'd graze them, and out they'd go. Then at night they would come, and the shepherd would simply stand by his gate, and he would call his sheep. He would say, "Come to me." Out of these 5 or 6 herds, his sheep would know his voice, and come to him, and enter through that narrow gate, into this safe place of rest and haven.
The True Shepherd vs. The Thief
Now does that make that imagery start to come alive a little bit for you? See what's going on in this process? If you didn't go through that gate, and if you weren't the shepherd who went through that gate, if you climbed over a wall, you were entering into a place you didn't belong, and they entered, as Jesus said so specifically, just to rob, or just to kill, or just to steal.
Jesus is talking to these religious leaders, and He's been very straightforward with them. In John chapter 8, verse 44, He had already talked about this subject. He says to these guys, "You are of your father, the devil. You're of your father, the devil. And he was a liar from the beginning, and a murderer from the beginning, and a destroyer from the beginning, and so are you guys." They said, "Hey, listen, what do you think about us?" If you're going to ask that question, you better get ready for the answer. Jesus gives them the answer. "You're a thief. You're a destroyer. You're a liar."
Strangers and the Voice of the Shepherd
Here you go, in verse 5, He said, "You're strangers, you don't even know the sheep." "And a stranger, they will simply not follow him, but will flee from him, because they don't know the voice of a stranger." See, as the sheep, in our case, as the children of God, the true children of the one true God, all of a sudden, the false shepherd comes, and we reject that voice. We don't know that voice. It's a robber. It's a thief.
See, that's why it's so important for you to know the voice of the Lord. I'm not talking about some audible voice. I'm talking about, how do you know the voice of the Lord? You've got to know this book.
The Missing Element: Discernment
I'll tell you what's missing in this culture today. And I'm talking now about our Christian culture. There's nothing that sniffs discernment. Nobody has any discernment. We have at our church, we have a training center where we're training young men to be elders, pastors, leaders. One of the things that they're doing now is visiting churches. They went out the other day, on a Sunday, so I can't go, but they go out on a Sunday, and we have a trainer with them, and they go out, and they went to a large church, a big church, a big old honking church.
And they came back, and they said, how was it? And they talked about all the things that were good, and they said, how was the message? He said, it was unbelievably bad. This guy would take a piece of scripture, and he would take it so far out of context, and so remove it from what it said, to make it say what he wanted it to say, it was awful. And yet, thousands of people are there.
Why? I'll tell you why. No discernment. See, the sheep should have pretty sharp listening ears, and the false prophets should be fairly easy to spot.
The Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
This imagery is the same imagery that Paul uses in Acts 20. He says goodbye to the elders at Ephesus. I'd argue his favorite church. He spent three years there. He left his favorite person in the world in charge there, Timothy. As he's saying goodbye to these elders, he said, listen, I did not shrink from teaching you the whole counsel of God. I taught you everything.
Now guys, watch out! When I leave, the wolves will come in sheep's clothing. What's he talking about? He's talking about not attacks from the outside of the church, he's talking about attacks within the church. Where guys will be in pulpits, and people will teach in Sunday school, and they'll have on robes and garbs, and all the stuff that goes with it. But they won't be believers, they won't be true shepherds, they'll be false shepherds. That's exactly the imagery that's here.
The Bad Shepherds
And here you go, the fourth point: they were bad shepherds. That probably is self-evident. Look at verse 11, "I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep." Verse 14 through 16, "I am the good shepherd, I know my own, my own know me, even as the Father knows me, I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep which aren't in this fold, that I must bring them also. And they shall hear my voice, and they shall become one flock with the shepherd."
Verse 17 and 18 here, "For this cause the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it up again. No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down of my own initiative. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it up."
Here Jesus is saying, these are bad shepherds. You know why? There's no self-sacrifice here. A shepherd, and this isn't just figurative speech, this is literal speech, the shepherd would risk his life for a sheep who was in trouble. One thing that set these shepherds apart from the hirelings: the hirelings would be guys that were just paid to do the job. When it got tough, or a sheep was lost, or there was extra work, they didn't do it.
Maybe you've worked with guys like that. Maybe you have guys working for you that are like that. They'll give it a little shot, but they're in it for the money. The heart's not in it. He's saying, I'm a good shepherd, and I lay down my life for this.
A Word to Pastors and Church Leaders
Just spend a second here. In this study, especially at noon today, we have guys, a lot of pastors, and a lot of church leaders. And maybe you're here today, and you fall in that category. Let me tell you, you've got to be willing to die for these sheep.
I don't know how hard that is. My fantasy is, I mean, I think about it periodically. If somebody came kicking in the doors right now, and they came in, and they had guns, and they said, you either deny your faith in front of these people, you deny your faith, or we're going to kill you. If they said, deny your faith, or we're going to kill you, I think, we don't know until it would happen, I think I would say, shoot sharply, young man. Make sure you get it done the first time. If they said, deny your faith, or we're going to torture you, I'd say, ooh, now we've got to think about this a little bit. Torture. What kind of torture were you thinking? How painful would it be?
But you know what? That happens all around the world. I think many of you know that. In fact, if you're unfamiliar with it, now's the time to familiarize yourself with it: www.persecutedchurch.org. There are far more, thousands more, martyrs dying this day in 2003 than there were in the time of Christ. Thousands of people around the world are dying for their faith today.
The Greater Challenge: Living for the Sheep
We don't happen to be them, and in all likelihood, we're not going to be called on to die for the faith. And in a way, I think that'd be easier. Here's what you're called to do. You're called to live for the sheep. That's way more difficult, I think. I could be wrong.
We talk about parents. Any parent would go out and risk his life to save his kid, wouldn't they? There aren't many dads that I know of who would see their kid out there drowning, even if they were lousy swimmers who wouldn't go out and risk their life for him. Even the worst dad in the world would do that.
That's not the challenge. The challenge isn't to die for the kid. The challenge is to live for the kid. That's the hard thing, to set aside your own desires. To submit many of the things that you'd like in your life and submit them to what the kid needs.
We've talked about this at length. I really believe you have somewhat of a social contract that once you have these kids, your life, in a sense, goes on hold, in that that responsibility is a paramount responsibility. So it may mean that you can't play golf three times a week, or you can't go fishing on the weekends, or you can't go... It may mean a lot of those things. Far more difficult to live for the kids than to die for the kids.
Jesus Laid Down His Life Voluntarily
And here's what He's saying. I'm the good shepherd. You know how everybody knows? I'll die for these sheep. And this is not figurative speech, is it? Jesus is saying, I'm going to go and I'm going to die.
He gives us some important information here. In verse 18 He said, "No one has taken my life. I lay it down. I do it voluntarily." They did not take Jesus and nail Him to the cross against His will. You understand that, don't you? He wasn't fighting and screaming saying, I want out of this thing. He could have come down.
from that cross at any point at any time. In fact, the scripture is very clear. Even when He dies, He gives up His spirit. They didn't take it away from Him. This is a voluntary act of the good shepherd who loved the sheep so much that He paid the ultimate sacrifice. He who knew no sin became sin. That is, He became treated as though He were guilty of sin. Why? Because He loved the sheep. That's a sign of a good shepherd.
The Hired Hand vs. The Good Shepherd
Hey, what do you think about us? Well, He's dealing with it. And here's what He says in verse 12 and 13. He says, basically, you're a hired hand. He's a hireling, not a shepherd. Not the owner of the sheep. But when the wolf comes and they leave the sheep, they flee. They scatter.
Leave your finger, if you have your Bible, leave your finger right there in John. Turn to the left. We're going to go into the Old Testament here. Just a little ways into the book of Ezekiel. One of the things that I know I don't do very well and I feel so inadequate in is to try to help us understand the human dynamic of this. Here are these religious leaders. They've said to Jesus, what do you think about us? And He's basically said, you guys are pathetic. You're liars, you're killers, you're murderers. You don't care about the sheep.
The Ezekiel Connection
Ezekiel chapter 34. And I would just encourage you, as you have the time, to go ahead and read through this chapter in its entirety. The reason I turn here is, these Jewish leaders knew this Ezekiel prophecy as well as you can imagine. 2 plus 2 is 4 to them. A word of the Lord comes and it said, Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. And look at verse 2. Woe shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves.
And what you get now is an indictment of the leaders of Israel. When Jesus says to these guys, you're bad shepherds, their mind went Ezekiel 34. They went, bam, He's talking to us. This is the prophecy. And what God does is just issue an indictment against these guys for exactly the crimes that Jesus has outlined.
But God begins to speak and look at verse 11. For thus saith the Lord, Behold. And now God says, here's what I'm going to do. I myself will search for my sheep and I will seek them out. As a shepherd cares for His herd in the day when He is among His scattered, I will care for my sheep.
Verse 13, I will bring them from peoples of other lands. I will feed them. Verse 14, I will feed them in good pastures. Verse 15, I will feed my flock. I will lead my flock. Verse 16, I will seek the lost. Verse 17, I will destroy. I will feed them with my judgment.
When these Jewish leaders heard Jesus speaking, what He has been saying here in John chapter 10, they knew that He was referring back to this prophecy and they understood the gravity of these charges. So here you go, short version. They say, who do you say we are? And He says, you're the shepherds that were prophesied about who have led the sheep astray and God will destroy you.
Who Made You King?
Now, there was another question they asked. The other question was, what do you say about yourself? Who are you? And that's almost a natural response. Here you go, somebody comes along. You've had this probably happen in your life. Come along and say, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. I mean, your reflex reaction is, who made you king? Who gave you the authority?
So Jesus told them who they are. So they want to know, who are you? And so He begins to paint this picture. We'll get to John chapter 10, verse 25. I told you, but you don't believe the works I do in my Father's name. But these bear witness of me. He said, listen, you have missed the signs. You want to know who I am? I've shown you who I am. I've given you the signs.
In 2 Corinthians 1, the Jews were looking for a sign. The Jews wanted a miracle. Show us a miracle, show us the sign. He said, listen, we've done this. We're coming in this John 10, right on the heels of healing the blind man. The lame are walking. The lepers cleansed. The dead are rising. And you're asking who I am? And you're questioning my authority? Even the blind man. Remember we saw that last week. The ignorant, uneducated blind man. Irreligious person that he is. He said, hey, only God can do this stuff, you guys. This guy must be from God. Jesus comes right at that.
You're Not My Sheep
Then there's verse 26. He says, but you do not believe because you're not my sheep. Romans chapter 2, verse 16. Paul writes this. God will judge the secrets of men through Jesus Christ. He says, listen, you don't believe. You want to know why? You aren't my sheep. You're the religious leaders of the day. You're the religious authorities. And you're not even converted.
You got a lot of this going on. Again, I think great parallels to the world we live in. You got a lot of men who are in pulpits and positions of leadership who aren't converted at all. They don't know Christ. They're not one of the sheep. They go through all the motions. Let me say it again. They've got all the trappings of authority. They've got a pulpit or they've got the robes. They have something that gives them some position that the world stops and says, these are ecclesiastical authorities.
And Jesus is saying, you're not even one of the sheep. Forget being a shepherd. You're not even one of the sheep. I'm looking at your heart. I'm not hung up on robes and rings and pulpits. I'm looking at your heart. You're not even converted. You don't believe. He doesn't leave it there. He starts to unpack this. He says, my sheep hear my voice. And I know them. And they follow me. And I give them eternal life.
And they'll never perish. And no one can snatch them out of my hands. That is rich with teaching about salvation. Let's hit the highlights here.
Again, verse 27. My sheep hear my voice. If you're here today and this word makes sense to you, if you believe Jesus is who He was, if He'll do what He said He would do, if you plan your life and death accordingly, if you believe—not just in an academic sense, I'm talking about putting your money where your mouth is—if you believe that, then you're one of His sheep.
How do you know that? You hear His voice. He's standing outside the gate and He's saying, "Come to me. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden." Is that you? You just pooped? Pooped from trying to be good enough? Religious enough?
You get these conversations all the time, don't you? With people? So and so's in heaven, how do you know? Well, they're a good person. Well, being a good person doesn't get you there. Because the scripture is clear: no one is good in God's evaluation. They may be far better than us. They may on a human standard have extraordinary acts of kindness and goodness and generosity and obedience. We might even call them godly in their behavior. In reality, what we're saying is they were somewhat moral people, but they failed the ultimate test because their heart's not right. How do you know that? If you don't know Christ, your heart can't be right.
The Evidence of True Faith
But they hear Him. He stands. He says, "Come." And they come. My sheep hear my voice. I know them. This is Adam knew Eve. There's an intimacy here. It's not just that I have knowledge about Him. I know Him intimately. I have a relationship with Him. And they follow me.
How do I know if you're a Christian? Well, the only way I can know it externally is there's obedience. Jesus says it this way the night before He dies: "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments."
Some of the most damaging teaching that I hear is in this area. And this term won't mean much, I imagine, to many of you or some of you anyway. This idea of lordship. Do you know that idea, that concept? Ring a bell at all? The idea of lordship? The idea is this: that if Jesus is my Lord and Savior, there will be a difference.
The anti-lordship people would say, "No. The Bible says"—and they'll go to John's gospel all the time. Why? Why would they go to John's gospel? The very reason we've looked. He just says, believe, believe, believe. And they're saying, "John says, all I've got to do is believe. So if you just believe this, we'd like it to change your life. We'd hope it would change your life. But all you do is believe."
Let's read the whole thing: I know them and they follow me. If you love me, you'll keep my commandments.
The Reality Check of Sin
If you're here and you're just involved in some ongoing sin—I don't know what it is. You're involved in some ongoing sin. You fill in the blank. And you're unrepentant. And you just keep doing it. I'm not talking about something where you struggle. And maybe you do struggle about it.
I know some guy that was shacking up that was coming to one of our studies. And he said, "We actually sense this is wrong." And he said, "I want you to know, we pray every time before we go to bed together." Really. And he says, "I'm telling you, when I'm done, I feel so guilty and so filthy and so dirty that it's very hard." It's like he wanted me to compliment him for hanging in there with how difficult this was, this affair. Are you nuts? You have no biblical assurance of your salvation. I'm not saying the guy's not a Christian. I'm just saying he has no evidence of it.
One of the great ways to understand your spiritual condition is this, I think: is how do you respond to sin? More than whether you have your quiet time and you pray. Okay, I got all that. Put me down for yes. I'm for you. But how do you respond when you sin? Can you just sin and go, "Oh, man, that's a big one. I know the big guy upstairs. Okay, boy, I blew that one. We're all on a journey. We're all struggling." What is that? Look it: they'll follow me.
The Finality of Eternal Life
Now I give them eternal life and they'll never perish. I was talking to someone the other day and they were telling me that somebody we know died. And they said, "We need to really pray for him." I said, "Okay, let me help you out here. Why waste that prayer? He's dead. At the point you die, you're either in heaven or hell. There's no purgatory. There's no holding tank. You're either in or out. What would be the point of praying for this guy? He's either in heaven or hell."
Isn't that right? I mean, Howard—well, Miss Howard, because he is such a figure in this study. He's been sitting in that chair for years and years and years, commenting along with me as I speak. I'm going to miss that. Okay. But don't be praying for him. When he took that last breath, at that moment, his fate is decided. He's either in heaven based on the work of Christ or in hell based on his judgment of his own sin. That's it.
Right? I mean, that's the truth. There is no middle ground here. If I'm saved by grace through faith, and not of myself, not a result of works, then there can't be any purgatory that I go to to try to have works done to get me to heaven. Right? Either Jesus paid the price, or He didn't. See, this stuff starts to come together.
Now we put a little shoe leather to this, and everybody wants to go, "Amen," until we start to spell it out like this, and they go, "Well, I'm not sure." Well, if you don't believe that, then what you're doing, I mean this, is following the traditions of man, not the traditions of the scripture. The scripture doesn't—there you go. You got the thief on the cross. I'm guessing this thief on the cross is a bad guy. He didn't say, "Today you'll be in purgatory for 458 days." He said, "Today you'll be in paradise."
Other guy's in hell. Seems simple to me. You have eternal life. What's eternal life? Now, let's make sure we understand this. Every person who's ever lived has eternal life. When Jesus is hanging on the cross, both of those thieves had eternal life. It's not just a quantity of time. It is a quality.
What Jesus is talking about here is eternal life as we think about it. When He says none of them will perish, obviously they died physically. What's He talking about? It has to be a spiritual truth. And the eternal life that He's talking about is today with Him. In a place we call heaven. In the presence of the one we call savior.
Worship: Giving, Not Getting
We go to church on Sunday and we worship. When people will say, "I didn't get anything out of the worship," you're not supposed to. You're not supposed to get anything out of the worship. You're giving the worship.
It drives me nuts when somebody says, "I didn't get anything out of the worship." Well, why would you? We're not worshiping you. If you don't get anything out of the worship, you are totally, 100% screwed up in your thinking. You're not there to get something out of the worship. Worship is giving.
Even the worship—and I'll use it sometimes. I'll use the phrase, "Gary's going to come and close our time of praise and worship." Well, that's wrong. There is no close of time and praise of worship. Life is an action of praise and worship. We have eternal life. This is the Jesus that saved you. This is the Jesus that you say you love. This is the Jesus you yearn for. And heaven is eternity in His presence.
Can I Lose My Salvation?
This will deal with one of the great questions. This is a huge question. We get this all the time. Is there any way that I can lose my salvation? Probably the most questions—I don't tend to get them because I think people just know it doesn't interest me that much. But I was never bitten by the end times bug. I was vaccinated for that. So I'm grateful. So I don't get a lot of questions.
But the other one I want to know is—I always run out of names. Is Bon Jovi the Antichrist? Well, I don't know. Let's go with no. I don't know. Who cares? When I read it the first time and it said nobody knows the day or the hour, I lost interest in reading books about the day and the hour. I'm not very smart, but I got that.
Get that out of the way. Second question is this: Can I lose my salvation? If I'm a Christian, can I lose my salvation? Well, here's what the scripture says. Let me just read it. "My sheep hear my voice. I know them. They follow me. I give eternal life to them. They'll never perish. No one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father's giving them to me is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand."
You Didn't Earn It, You Can't Lose It
Can you lose your salvation? No. Why? Because you didn't earn it. You didn't do anything to deserve this. What made you a sheep? It wasn't an act of your will that made you a sheep. It wasn't a determination on your part to be a sheep. It wasn't because you saw things more clearly than your brother or sister or mother or father or your best friend.
You're a sheep because before the foundations of the earth, God chose you for salvation. Your sheep hear the voice. Why? Because God's opened their eyes. You're born again. How do you know you're born again? Because you have faith. It's not the faith that saves you. You're born again. He who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Christ Jesus. You're saved by grace, not by works.
That's such an extraordinarily important point. And we have a tendency to flip back to works when we start to think this out practically. Can I lose my salvation? No, because you didn't earn it. Getting it wasn't based on you and keeping it isn't based on you. No one can snatch them out of my hand.
The Preservation of the Saints
Here's a term. You might know this term. The term is the preservation of the saints. Do you know that term? The idea there is that you're saved and once you're saved, once you're a Christian, you cannot lose that salvation. I don't like the term preservation of the saints, though I'm willing to use it. Or perseverance of the saints. See, that's the term that they'll use so often. Perseverance of the saints. Preservation, a far better term.
It's preservation of the saints. God preserves you. It's not you hanging on to Him and holding and saying, "Come quickly, Lord Jesus, I'm losing strength here, my arm's shaking, that one's gone already, and we're hanging here." It's all you.
That's a very important teaching. Any teaching other than that, if you're in a church—my personal view now, and I think it's a biblical view. We can't even argue about whether it's a biblical view. It's a biblical view. If you're in a church teaching anything other than that, I'd get out of there. I wouldn't hang on. I wouldn't try to change them. I wouldn't try to convert them. They don't want to change because this is the truth. And if you mess up salvation, you're going to mess up everything else.
You know what happens here? Just as you hear that today, all these things we talked about—God did this, God did this, God did this. What happens? God gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Man gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.
I and the Father Are One
Now here you go, and then we've got to stop. Verse 30, Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." What is He saying? Because it could get a little metaphysical and we could have a little hard time with it. But here you go. We don't have to wonder what He's saying. The Jews figured it out. They picked up stones to stone Him.
It's the third time now in this 10 chapters that we've looked at that they've done this. And Jesus said, "I showed you many good works from the Father. For which one of these are you stoning me?"
good things. Why would you stone me? Which one was it that particularly agitated you? But for blasphemy. Because you being a man have made yourself out to be God.
When you talk to people that say Jesus never claimed to be God, take them to John chapter 10. Take them to John chapter 10 verse 30. And take them to the response. Take them to the response of the Jews. They knew exactly what Jesus was saying. He's saying that the Father and I are one in essence and in nature. We're identical. I am God. And they stone Him.
One of them was, what do you say about us? And Jesus' conclusion was, I say you're bad shepherds. You're thieves and you're robbers. And who do you say you are? And Jesus says, I'm God. And my sheep are going to hear my voice. And my sheep are going to understand this.
The Comfort of Eternal Security
We're right on the dot. Maybe just right up against it here. Let me try this. Will you think about this? If you're a Christian and you hear His voice, do you know the great comfort that you have eternal life in Him?
It's not a comfort that says, wait a minute, now I can go and sin and do all I want to do. Yes, you could. If you're a Christian, you cannot out-sin God's grace. There's nothing you can do to lose your salvation. But it's exactly the opposite desire. It's not a desire to go and sin. It's a desire now to live to please Him. And you'll never lose that. It's a desire to love you. Isn't that a great teaching?
I don't know. It seems so simple and yet, you know what, for years I didn't get it. Doesn't it seem simple to you? And yet for many of you, wasn't there a time when you said, I don't buy that at all? What happened in there?
God Opens Our Eyes to Truth
Evidence of what we're talking about. God invaded your life and opened your eyes to see the truth. You rejected it. You ignored it. And all of a sudden one day you said, how did I ever miss it? Well, because you were blind. And now you can see. Not through an act of your will, but through what He did in your life.
What's the end result? Praise and thanksgiving to the Father. And a life that's lived to glorify Him and enjoy Him and life forever. Halfway done. We'll pick up there next week.
Closing Prayer
There are many inadequacies. I know. That as I try to articulate and express what's here, that it's incomplete and insufficient. That's okay. These are your words on this page. We read them and then your spirit applies your word to our heart. Our eyes are open and we hear the truth.
God, thank you for your Son Jesus. Thank you for His life. And His death. God, we thank you for Howard and his life. We don't pray for his salvation. He is saved by grace through faith and that not of Himself. In fact, we're a little bit jealous of him. We leave here to go into this world and work and do all that the day holds. And he will spend today with you. Be there forever.
But God, you left us here for a reason and a purpose to be your men and your women in this world to express your truth. God, thank you for this. Not a lot of laughs in this lesson, but certainly a lot of joy. Father, help us understand that the essence of life is found in your Son Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.