Easter
4 – 17 April 2016 – Year C
Grace to you and peace from our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text for this meditation is written in the 10th Chapter of the Gospel according to St John; Verses 22 – 30.
22 At that time the Feast of Dedication
took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was
walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. 24 So
the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in
suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus
answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe.
The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my
sheep. 27 My sheep
hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and
no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them
out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
Today’s reading from the Gospel
comes from the Good Shepherd chapter of the Bible, John 10. The lectionary system that we use always
selects a reading from the Good Shepherd chapter for the Fourth Sunday of
Easter. In the first year, we learn that
Jesus is the door to the sheepfold. He
is the only way into eternal safety. In
the second year, we learn that the Shepherd lays down his life for the
sheep. In today’s reading, we learn that
Jesus our Good Shepherd knows His sheep and His sheep follow Him.
What does it mean to know and be
known? There is a big difference between
knowing someone and knowing about someone.
We know about the Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull. I think it would be safe to say that no one
here actually knows him. Many of us know about a woman named Gina
Reinhardt. Again, I think it would be
safe to say that no one here actually knows
her. It’s like that with famous
people. We may know about them, but we
don’t know them.
On the other hand, we know our
spouses, our children, our parents, our friends, and the like. We’ve spent time with them. We know their personality traits. Not only do we know them, but they also know
us. Jesus is talking about this kind of
knowledge when He says that He is our shepherd and we are His sheep. He said, “My
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
Jesus went on to tell of the great
benefit that this knowledge brings. He
said, “I give them eternal life, and they
will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Here is Jesus, the very God of all things,
and He is saying that His sheep receive the eternal blessings that only He can
give.
Some may be surprised to learn how
well and how long Jesus has known us. In
his letter to the church in Ephesus, the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul
to write, [Ephesians 1:3–4]
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in
Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose
us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and
blameless before him.” Did you hear
that? God knew us before He even began
to create the cosmos. God didn’t just
know about us before He began creation.
He knew us and He chose us.
Think about that. Before God said, [Genesis 1:3] “Let there be light,” He already had His
salvation plan in place. The historic
Roman Catholic Priest Martin Luther centred his basic theology in the fourth
stanza of his hymn, “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice.” He wrote, “But
God had seen my wretched state before the world’s foundation, and mindful of
His mercies great, He planned my soul’s salvation.” - That is to say that before God said, [Genesis 1:3] “Let there be
light,” He knew us and He knew how He was going to save us.
We know that God created the
universe through the Eternal Word, God the Son.
When the Eternal Word participated in the creation, He already knew us. He already knew that we would rebel against
Him. He already knew that He would give us
a set of perfect instructions for living in His blessing, and that we would
ignore them. He already knew that we
would make up our own set of corrupt instructions and follow them instead. He already knew about the suffering and pain we
would inflict upon ourselves and upon the other sheep with whom we live. He already knew that this would eventually
result in our death.
The Eternal Word, God the Son knew
all this and still He resolved to be
our Good Shepherd. He resolved to save
us with His sacrifice. As He created the
world, He already knew that He would take on human flesh in the womb of the
Virgin Mary. He already knew that He
would live a life of poverty and humility under the law. He already knew that He would have to keep
the law perfectly and then suffer the punishment of a criminal under the
law. He already knew that He would
suffer and die. He already knew that
this is what it would take to redeem us.
This is what it would take for Him to be our Good Shepherd.
Many people have asked, “If God
knew all this before He even began creation, why did He do it?” The Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to
give this answer: [Romans 5:8]
“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for
us.” Before creation, God already
knew us and He loved us. He knew that we
would rebel and He loved us. He knew
that we would be helpless and hopeless and He loved us. Before creation, He already knew us better
than we now know ourselves and still He
loves us. He loves us enough to suffer
and die for us. He loves us enough to
suffer and die so that He could be our Good Shepherd. This is what Jesus means when He says that He
knows His sheep.
God also wants us to know our Good
Shepherd. That is the reason that He
spoke through the prophets and apostles.
He wants us to know how it is that we are His sheep and He is our Good
Shepherd. He wants us to know of His
love for us. He wants us to know the
security of His salvation. He wants us
to know that there is no burden that He will not carry for us. In fact, He wants us to know that He will not
just carry our burdens, but He will also carry us. He does not just want us to know about Him,
but He wants us to know Him. He wants us
to know Him forever. He has given us
Himself in the Bible so that we may know Him.
Sadly, today’s reading from the
Good Shepherd chapter tells us that there were some who did not want to know
their Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd
chapter is the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to John. For nine chapters, John has been telling how
Jesus showed that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now, here in the tenth chapter, the Jews gathered around him and said to
him, “How long will you keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” The problem is not that Jesus has been hiding
His identity as the Christ. Instead, the
problem is their stubborn refusal to believe … their stubborn refusal to know
Christ. John the Apostle had this to say
at the end of his account of the Gospel: [John
21:25] “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I
suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be
written.” In spite of all this
evidence, there will always be some who refuse to know the Christ … who refuse
to know their Good Shepherd. Jesus wants
to love them and care for them as a shepherd cares for sheep, but they do not
want His gifts.
Jesus does not just know about us. He knows us
personally, and He has known us since before the creation of the
world. He knows us better than we know
ourselves. He knows us way better than any mere earthly shepherd knows his sheep. He sacrificed Himself for us and saved us.
God the Father honoured our Good
Shepherd by raising Him from the dead.
That is how we can know that Jesus truly is our Good Shepherd. That is also how we can know that Jesus is
not just our Good Shepherd while we live here on this earth. He is our Good Shepherd for eternity. For when we leave this earth, Jesus will call
us by name as a shepherd calls his sheep.
He will give us eternal life, and we will never perish, and no one will
snatch us out of His hand. As David the
Psalmist said, [Psalm 23:6]
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall
dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Amen
The love and peace of our Great
Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus. Amen
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