Jesus the good shepherd

The Lord presents himself as the good Shepherd, Jesus the good Shepherd. So chapter 10 of John, we're going to start with verse 11 and we're going to go up to verse 18. The Lord says: "I am the good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. But the hired man who is not the shepherd, whose sheep are not his own" that is, they are not his but they are simply paying him money for his work, a salaried employee but he is not the owner of the sheep, "the salaried man who is not the shepherd, Whose sheep are not his, he sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches the sheep and scatters them."

"So the hired man runs away because he is a hired man and he doesn't care about the sheep" and one could say but in this case, "but I am the good Shepherd and I know my sheep, and mine know me.

Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father and I lay down My life for the sheep, I also have other sheep that are not of this fold, those I must also bring and they will hear My Voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd. That is why the Father loves me because I lay down My life to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I put it of Myself, I have the power to put it on and I have the power to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father."

We now go to verse 27 of that same passage where the Lord continues His dialogue or His monologue rather towards us. Where He says: "My sheep hear My Voice and I know them and they follow Me, and I give them eternal life and they will never perish nor will anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father who gave them to Me is greater than all and no one can snatch out of my Father's hand." There is security in that, brothers, security for us.

The Lord says: no one can snatch you out of My hand. It is what the apostle Paul says in another sense: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Nothing. Then the Lord ends by saying: I and the Father are one. That fierce attachment that the Father has towards His sheep that no one snatches I also have it because I and the Father are one. Just as the Father is strong and fierce in His support of His children when he calls them so I am also in My defense of you.

What we have here, brothers, is an invitation to see Christ as that Shepherd and that image of the Lord Jesus as the Good Shepherd has tremendous repercussions and practical consequences. Every time we present Jesus in one of His incarnations He teaches us a facet of His personality. When He says, for example, that just as the Son of Man is raised up like the serpent that was raised up in the desert when the Hebrews were suffering from fatal stings and bites, and that bronze serpent became the antidote, so also He offers himself as the antidote to sin and the attacks of the devil, neurosis and the darkness of this world and we must lift Him up high.

The Lord presents himself in different ways that we are going to see through these passages, He says: I am the way, the Truth and the life, and each of those incarnations that He presents have practical incarnations- In another passage he says : I am the bread of the world or the bread of life, I am the light of the world too. There are many ways in which God presents himself and each of them has its own implications.

Here the Lord says: I am the good Shepherd and by extension he says: and you are My sheep. And I believe that this idea of Jesus as the Good Shepherd and us as HIS sheep has a number of practical implications for how we should live the Christian life. I want to present to you a few quick points like this, I am going to give you the structure and then I am going to develop it slightly like this.

Number one: this passage, before that by the way, verse 1 chapter 10 right there says: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter through the door is a thief and a robber." Then later He says that He is the Gate of the sheep, verse 7: "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the Gate of the sheep" that is another image that the Lord uses to speak of himself, He introduces himself like the gate And I want to suggest that these two images are at stake. Door and Shepherd are part of a single system. So we'll see that later. Christ is the Door but he is also the good Shepherd, the shepherd of the sheep.

Number two another implication, Christ not only calls us to the Father but also promises to guide us through the Gospel journey. There is an initial call but there is also a long-term commitment to us.

Number three: He, as the good Shepherd, guides us through the Holy Spirit, that is the way in which He constitutes himself in us as the good Shepherd.

Number four: despite our limitations and sins, despite our current condition as fallen beings, we can enter into that relationship to which He calls us as Shepherd with confidence that we will not fail, we will not be destroyed, we will not to perish; we will reach the goal.

Number five: that Shepherd relationship invites us to see the Lord and ourselves as establishing a relationship of friendship and mutuality with Christ throughout life. It is a rich relationship, with a lot of texture and nuance to which the Lord calls us where He offers to be our guide but also our interlocutor, the one who talks with us, the one who sits at the table and who dialogues through that journey and gives us new ideas, gives us understanding; it enlightens us about the things we have experienced and sends us back on the path of life with new strength.

Number six: the road is difficult. The Christian journey is difficult and has its trials, including its failures, but there is always a solution that the Pastor tells us that there will always be a solution to every situation because He is with us.

I believe that the solution to the dilemma of faith and of the Christian life with all its struggles and trials is to adopt the attitude of a sheep. Just as we have a Shepherd who commits, there must be sheep who commit to adopting the attitude of a sheep. When we enter the Gospel we are like kids, right? but then the Lord wants to form a new attitude in us and that attitude is an attitude of obedience and subjection, total surrender of our lives to that Shepherd as a sheep surrenders to the arms of its shepherd.

Number eight: that sheepish attitude is forged in us little by little throughout life's journey. Sometimes through the trials that we are going to experience, God uses those difficult situations in life to form us and to form the character of Christ in us.

Finally number nine, I know that each one of you will be able to repeat each one of those nine things if I asked you right now, right? Here Luci has a bunch of napkins there that has been writing down all those things. Number nine finally: Christ gave the example of that sheep attitude when He submitted to the Will of His Father and I always see Jesus saying: I do nothing but what I see from the Father, I say nothing but what I hear from the Father. Father. I and the Father are one, I obey Him and do everything He tells me. And He now, after having walked that path of subjection to the Father, now invites us also to enter into that relationship with Him, He being the one who guides and we being the ones who let ourselves be guided through life but He through Your experience can now become a guide for us too.

All this, even if you don't believe it, is reflected in that image of Jesus, it emerges from the image of Jesus as the good Shepherd. Christ as the Door reminds us of the entry point into a relationship with God, it is the beginning. When you receive Christ as Lord and Savior, when you surrender your life to Him, you go through the door that is Christ; you cannot enter that fold of protection with the Father if it is not through Christ. No one comes to the Father if it is not through Me, says the Lord, that is why he says: I am the Door, right?

And Christ as the Door invites us to meditate at that moment in which we enter the beginning of the Gospel. But the Christian life is not something static, it just stays at that point, right? When we accept Christ we already believe that since we have our passport and card stamped we are going directly to heaven, we go to bed to sleep, we come to Church on Sundays from time to time but we do not understand that the Christian life is much more than that. Walking in the door is simply the beginning of a relationship.

After we enter through the door we begin an intimate relationship with Jesus, then He who is the Door becomes the good Shepherd. In other words, He is at the beginning of our new life but also continues with us as Shepherd as we develop in our new condition as sheep. That is why the Word says that the Lord puts in us the willing as well as the doing for His good Will; in other words He puts it on us to enter into His relationship but now He makes sure that we get to do everything the Father wants us to do.

No religion that I know of offers me such a perfect image of the relationship between God and man as that image of Christ as the Good Shepherd. Many religions and many images of God see God, such as the deist philosophy, which sees how God created the world, wound it up, established some principles in the universe and then released them so that it works according to those principles. But the Bible tells me that God is a God who is intimately involved in His creation every day and is involved in my life.

He is a personal God, he is a God who says I am with you every day until the end of the world. Christ gets into our condition and works from within. The Gospel presents a God who came to live bodily among us and who, after offering His life for them and ascending to heaven, descended again in the form of the Holy Spirit to live with them day by day. Remember the Lord said: I am leaving but I am going to send the Holy Spirit.

And in reality what he said was: I am going to return, I will be with you and I will be in you, He said. He said: if you knew what is going to happen, you would be happy that I am going to the Father because now I am going to descend. When did the Lord descend on His people? On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended, a new relationship between God and humanity began. All His children could now enjoy the presence, the company, the direction of the Holy Spirit.

The Lord said: "He who loves Me will keep My Word and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make our home with him." That is the way the Lord moves as the Good Shepherd. The key to the Christian life is in the Presence of that Holy Spirit within us. That Spirit who is our comforter, our comforter, the one who comforts us in trials, instructs us in the struggles of life, reminds us of the Word of Jesus Christ who has said that the Holy Spirit will be the paracletos, the comforter who will be with us and will comfort us and guide us to all truth.

The Holy Spirit and the Christ are the same thing, they are part of the Trinity, they are interchangeable. That is why Christ says: we will come to him and make our home with him those who believe in him. Through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us Christ can call himself the good Shepherd. His Spirit shepherds us through the vicissitudes of life, the Lord is always present with us guiding us along the path of justice for the love of His Name as Psalm 23 says.

And this is what encourages us to come to Christ without fear no matter what our condition. Many tell me: I have many problems, someone recently told me about a relative, I want to go to Church but first I have to solve many things, I don't feel up to it. Brother, you will never be in good condition to come to Christ. On the contrary, the worse your condition, the better you are prepared to come to the Lord.

But we can come to the Lord without fear because He is the good Shepherd, He knows that you cannot do it alone. That is why there is a shepherd, because the sheep cannot defend themselves and need someone to guide them. And that is why we need to come to the Lord just as we are and He begins that relationship. Christ says: "he who comes to Me I will not cast out" He receives us as we are to start a new relationship from there. We are not alone in the battle to live holy lives, pleasing to God, for God himself has committed himself to help us in that battle, that fight.

You can come to Christ confident that now you are going to start a new relationship with Him, a merciful and compassionate God. Don't look at the Christian life as a set of prohibitions brother, don't look at the Christian life as a set of: don't do this, don't do that. Look at her rather in a positive way: a Shepherd who loves you, immensely compassionate; The Bible says that as the father pities his children, Jehovah pities those who fear him. It says that He knows our condition.

A shepherd knows that his sheep are defenseless and he knows that the sheep, the word must be said, are stupid. It's just that sheep aren't very intelligent, those little animals are beautiful, you know? but he says that the brain of a sheep is very small, they are clumsy animals, they cannot defend themselves and God knows that you are clumsy, I am clumsy too.

When you come into the arms of the Lord He says: oh poor creature how entangled she is in so many things and then He begins as one of those finite little chains, right? that it is tangled He begins to unravel it, to untie it little by little. So that's the relationship, you have to look at the Christian life that way. Sometimes we see God as an ogre but it is the opposite He is a good Shepherd, if we understood that, brothers, how many scales would fall from our eyes and our being.

Do not see God as a tyrant impossible to please, see him as the good Shepherd committed to the task of shepherding the sheep during their entrances and exits and to lead them safely at the end of the day to the eternal and heavenly fold, the Lord will go with you Step by Step. That invitation from the Lord to look at him as the good Shepherd is like that music that relaxes one, it is beautiful to see Christ in that way. And that is what I want you to see the Christian life that way, that you see the Lord that way.

What is your problem, what is your bondage, what is your situation? I know that between us there are many dramas. There are people who are struggling with drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, bad memories of a cruel childhood, marriage problems that are in difficulty, children born out of wedlock; there are so many dramas here, people who are cheating on their wife, their husband, people who are tied to pornography, people who have different kinds of problems.

I want to tell you my brother, my sister in all these things the Lord says I am going to walk that race with you and I am going to teach them what they have to do to make this work easier for the Pastor, but the Pastor is willing and is not scandalized at all that you bring That is the message that we have to give to the community out there, He is not a tyrant with a series of prohibitions. He wants to enter into a dialogue with us. He wants to tell that young man out there who believes that, whatever, that the Lord is willing, to come and learn here, to grow.

Come to the intellectual who is not sure that the Church can respond to their needs and dilemmas and questions, start walking because the Lord is committed. The Gospel is not a difficult burden that God imposes on us but rather a relationship of intimate friendship with that good Shepherd in which God gradually leads us to the full knowledge of Him. That is why Christ says in Matthew 11:29 and 30: take My yoke upon you for My yoke is easy and My burden light.

Why don't you put on the Lord's yoke whatever your situation is right now? enter the ways of the Lord, strap on your yoke, they have it there hanging on the wall with your number and your name, put it on and start walking the Christian life. I can tell you something that the yoke that Christ puts on is much easier than the one that the devil puts on, it is much more difficult with the devil as your foreman than with Christ as your Lord and Savior. I can guarantee it.

Let me tell you, human life cannot be lived without a yoke. Are you going to wear a yoke? The question is whether you are going to wear the yoke of the devil or the yoke of Jesus? that's all. And when He puts on you His yoke is a yoke, He says my yoke is easy and My burden is light.

There are many people who want to show people: not that the Christian path is, it is difficult in one sense, it is a narrow path the Lord has said, but on the other hand the Lord also says that His burden is light and His yoke is easy. It is both, why? because it is difficult but with Christ it becomes much easier, it is more bearable. Because He is the Shepherd who offers himself.

And I believe that this image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd invites us to understand this, we are not alone on the path or the Christian journey. That idea of fully entering the Christian life scares many of us because we have not understood Christ nor have we seen him as the good Shepherd, we have not meditated enough on that image of a Shepherd who goes before His flock, as he says: I go before them, guiding them along paths of justice and it is not you who have to forge your own path towards the sheepfold, but Christ who promises to lead you along the path that He has prepared for you.

His promise is unconditional. The Lord says that: whoever enters through Me will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture, glory to the Lord. There is no point in saying that if I am in a good mood or if I got up on the right side of the bed then I am going to support, no, he says: he will go in and out and find pasture. Hallelujah. It is an unconditional commitment that God has with you. No one will snatch you out of His hand says the Lord. He is not going to get up one day and kick you tired of you, He says: I am going to be with you through all the time because I am the good Shepherd, I go before My sheep and I go to ensure that at the end of the day I enter your heavenly homeland.

One of the things that we have to believe is that. I do believe that idea of Calvinism that believes that when you are saved you can be sure. There are many people who live as if we were hanging by a very thin thread that could break at any moment and we fall to hell, and it is not like that. I believe that we have a strong hand that grabs us, the hand of the Lord. And I want to tell you brother, sister that as long as you love the Lord and you are aware of your sin, that you are a fragile creature, even though you offend the Lord and who has not offended the Lord even after being in the ways of God the Lord will be with you, He will not leave you or forsake you.

Every time you come and appeal to the blood of Christ, He will forgive you and enter you. I believe that many of the anxieties of the Christian life, many people move away from the Lord because they say: I have used up my quota of forgiveness. There's no such thing.

And that is not a license to sin, understand me. For me it is an invitation to believe and be confident because I know that this Christian life is hard and difficult. The more I live with my brothers and live inside my own skin, I understand that the Christian life is a dynamic life and that we have to offer people a realistic Gospel.

There are so many preachers who offer you in one way or another a Gospel that: come to Christ, the Holy Spirit is within you and you are like a super man, a super woman, a super giant, you will not have, look brother it is a fight and the devil is bad, and we are going to fail, and we are going to fall but the Lord will always be there to lift us up, strengthen us, forgive us. Get into that battle.

I believe that more people do not enter the ways of the Lord because we offer them an unrealistic image of the Gospel. That is why we pastors have to be more honest and transparent from the pulpit and talk about our own struggles and our own difficulties. Because he sees us here with a good perfume and a fine tie and all that and he says: this man walks on water, but they arrive at his house and the wives are very prepared to show them that it is not like that and the children too.

And they are right. And I think we have to show people: look, this is a difficult road. We fail, we fail, we fall but the Lord is powerful. I already renounce that well-intentioned superficial Gospel that is often presented to people in a Gospel as God solves all your problems immediately, and you will not have any more struggles, more sins, more bad thoughts, more temptations, more falls , is not true.

We have already seen so many examples of great men of the Lord who failed, who fell in one way or another. That is why I wrote that book Pies de Barro because I have always been captivated by that image of the Christian life as something dynamic. Josaphad, a man who loved the Lord so much, fell so many times, he failed the Lord, but God blessed him, kept him, raised him up again and again. You cannot get away from the hand of the Lord. Understand that.

If you come to Jesus with the attitude of a sheep ready to hear the voice of the shepherd, because that is where the success of the Christian life lies. The success of the Christian life is tied to obedience. Because many people ask: well, if it is as easy as the Gospels present it, why are there so many people who stray from the ways of the Lord after knowing him? Why are there so many who fail to live the Christian life, who set a bad example or who want to please the good shepherd and cannot? Why is it so difficult sometimes to live the Christian life? What do you say to the drug addict who loves God and has accepted Jesus Christ, has come forward to be anointed twenty-five times, and is still struggling with temptations?

And then he is offering us: no, if you surrender to the Spirit of God, if you surrender to God you will not have, no. What is the secret to living the Christian life more properly? I say this to answer that question of why the Christian life can be so difficult even though we have a good pastor who is committed to us. You have to look at this passage for a moment from the perspective of the sheep, with this I am closing this meditation.

The sheep brothers is one of the most docile animals on earth. Yesterday I was watching a documentary about Shakespeare's life and there was a part of the documentary where he talks about where he grew up. His dad, the dad of William Shakespeare one of the great poets in history was a man who dealt and was a merchant, and he sold wool, he made a lot of money using wool and selling and buying wool.

And in that documentary they show a sheep being sheared and it's the most interesting thing in the world. The shepherd catches that sheep with a modern instrument to shave it and the sheep remains so languid in his hands, while the shepherd inserts the razor and cuts the wool, while the sheep is there calmly. He doesn't protest, he doesn't try to get out of the shepherd's hands and the shepherd is taking all the wool from him. Until he finishes, the sheep comes out naked, just with the skin, and he takes the wool and puts it in a sack, and the sheep leaves very calmly completely naked.

And I say wow, what animal do you know? Forget a cat would have scratched it twenty thousand times already, a dog would have bitten it seventeen thousand times, but a sheep submits to the shepherd's treatment, surrenders totally and therein lies the key. And that is why I believe that the Lord chose this image of the shepherd and sheep. The problem is that the Lord knows how to be a shepherd but many of us don't know how to be a sheep and God wants to induce in us that image of sheep, obedient, submissive, delivered.

That is why Christ says: My sheep hear My Voice, and they follow Me. The sheep follow the shepherd unconditionally. Success in the Christian life is tied to obedience. If we do not obey the way the sheep obey the shepherd, we cannot succeed in the Christian fight against sin. We have to obey the Lord, only then can we succeed. Obeying for me is more than an act that we carry out over and over again, for me it is a disposition, an attitude, a posture of the heart that says to the good Shepherd: I will follow where you guide me, wherever you go, faithful to you. I will continue as that beautiful hymn says, right?

And that is what God wants to induce, instill in your life, that attitude of total surrender to the Lord. If you come to the feet of the Lord with the attitude of a sheep willing to hear the voice of the shepherd and follow where He leads you, you don't have to worry, God will do the rest within you. He will reveal within you through His Holy Spirit and His Word what He wants from you. If you learn to live with that open attitude towards what God wants to ask of you, if you adopt that attitude of obedience, if you confidently abandon yourself to what God may have for you in the future, you will have done your part, God will take care of it. the rest.

The Apostle James says: "Why do you say tomorrow we will go to a city and traffic and sell and return the next day instead of saying: if God wants? You see, that is the attitude that God wants to show in us and I I believe that therein lies the secret of a blessed life, when we enter into the Christian life and become like children.

What does the Lord say in His Word? if you do not become like children you will not be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. You have to drop all that false sophistication and get rid of all sense of independence. I think one of the problems with many people who come to the Church today in the ways of the Lord is that they come with their baggage from the world, how things are done in the world. For me the hallmark of a Christian who has been treated by the Holy Spirit is that he is meek and subject to the authority of the Kingdom of God.

I can easily identify a person who has not yet been dealt with by the Spirit of God because there is a slight arrogance in those people. And they enter the Kingdom of God believing that things in the Kingdom of God are done as they are done in the world. I was telling Meche yesterday that I have learned more and more to respect the Catholic Church, I know that some of you are upset when I say that. There is something very good in the Catholic Church and that is that it teaches people to respect the authority of the Church and to submit to its priests and pastors. It is a hierarchical relationship and I think there is something good in that, let me tell you.

That is why I believe that when Catholics fully enter the Gospel they are very good Christians because they have learned to be respectful of the authority of the Church. And today the Catholic Church is one of the few churches in the world that is putting up a fight, while many evangelicals are dropping the bar and changing the distinctive values of the Gospel to make it more supposedly attractive to the culture. The Catholic Church is putting up the fight.

They have made their mistakes, they have made them without a doubt, but that is something very important. Look, the Church of Christ is here, two thousand years ago the Lord established it and whoever wants to enter the Church has to go through a very short door and has to change the way of thinking and computing life. When you enter the ways of the Lord enter to be subject to the Word of God. Study the Bible and know that there is authority that you have to respect.

The Church does not conduct its affairs as the world conducts. You have to be humble and meek of heart. Study the Word, don't try to wrestle with this Word. Let the Word settle over you, your authority. Read the Word like a little child so that the Word will instruct you. What the Bible says is true.

Even if you do not believe certain moral and ethical values that the Bible says, receive them in the name of the Lord and ask the Father to give you understanding and obey them by faith, hold on to the Word of the Lord, respect your authorities; love your Church, pray for your pastors and your leaders. Many people want to dictate to people what they have to do and it's not like, it's good that there is independence of criteria and many times we pastors abuse people and the truth is that they are men like any other, and there can be mistakes and it's.

But I believe that on the other side there are many people today in the 21st century who have not submitted to God's treatment in their lives and do not respect their churches properly. And so humble, simple-hearted people are needed, take the Word of God seriously, obey the word of the Lord, ask the Holy Spirit to work in them and when we surrender to Him then He does the work in us.

And I believe that therein lies the secret of being used by God and being blessed and protected. Many times when we are in rebellion, the Good Shepherd cannot do his job. The sheep strays off the path, out of the pen, and then the Shepherd has to go looking for it there again, beaten and battered by the wolf instead of staying within the safety of the pen. There are many people in the Church who do things that they shouldn't and are like trying to refine the Gospel, it is not like that. You have to have an attitude of surrender, of subjection to the Lord.

When we do that, when we are good sheep, then the good Shepherd says I am going to defend you and I am going to lead you through the path of life. There is the key. The Lord is committed to you. Nail this. The Lord is faithful, compassionate and merciful and will accompany you through life. Number three when you fail the Lord the Lord is going to restore you, he is going to bandage your broken little leg and he is going to put you back on the path. The Lord says I am going to protect you and I am going to keep you from all trials and all attacks from the enemy. Nobody is going to tear you out of My hand, the wolf will not be able to hurt you.

I am with you, I commit myself. I am not going to be scandalized when you fail, I am going to take you. Now the Lord also says: take My hand and let yourself be guided and be simple of heart, be humble, obey Me. Stay within My ways, let yourself be guided by your authorities, do not try to pretend that you know more than they do and that you can do things better than they do. Hold on, let yourself be taught, let yourself be guided and be humble.

I have found that in humility, in simplicity, in meekness brother there is great blessing and there is great protection. When we allow others to speak into our lives, when we are not always pretending that we know more than others, there is a collective council that God has established over His Church and that the more we respect that, the more security there is.

So young people, new believers, enter this great economy where the Lord is committed to you. He says don't worry, no one is going to snatch you out of His hand and you are going to have trials and difficulties but you are going to reach victory, you are going to reach the end.

Bow your head for a moment and we are going to surrender our lives to the Lord again, we are going to place ourselves in God's hands and we are going to ask the Holy Spirit to play that role. If you are going through some test, some tribulation in your life, the Lord says do not worry, I am your good Shepherd, I am with you and do not worry about what you are going through; no one will be able to snatch you out of My hand. I am committed to you for the long term and I am willing to forgive you and take you step by step through the paths of life.