John 10

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0:00 We're going to continue here on this thing looking at my favorite Bible verses just because we can we got time when we get to the school year so in like four more weeks or so we're going to go back to these core values for our church story piece lineage and life but for now we're looking at favorite verses last week we looked at this verse from Zachariah that said return to your stronghold of prisoners of hope and we talked about what that might mean this week we're

0:34 going to look at this verse I just referenced with the kids it's in the Gospel of John John chapter 10 if you want to look there with me in John chapter 10 this was one of my this has been a favorite verse of mine since I was younger maybe high school even it stuck out to me as cool John chapter 10 verse 10 that's it it's just says let me read it from here the thief comes only to steal kill

1:10 and destroy I came that they may have life and have it abundantly that's the verse that really stuck to me and has stuck to me for a long time I like the declaration of purpose for Jesus that he came that people would have life and have it abundantly that they would have an abundant life I like that Jesus says this is why he's come so often the motives are assigned to Jesus that are that he didn't give to himself so Jesus doesn't come to spec out the rules he

1:46 didn't come to condemn he didn't come to accuse and even sometimes like the idea that Jesus came to save I mean Jesus does save but he saves in order that we might have life and life abundantly so it's not necessarily that he came to take you out of a situation but to fill the situation that you find yourself in I love the idea that that Jesus says I came that they might have life and have

2:16 it abundantly and I was looking at my notes here let's just go back a little bit and read the context that it comes in John chapter 10 starting at verse one Jesus says truly truly I say to you he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in another way that man is a thief and a robber but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep to him the gatekeeper opens the sheep

2:47 hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out this is what I was telling the kids is true I'm not making up just for them often in little towns like Capernaum where Jesus is from most of them are shepherd sheep herders Nazareth where Jesus grew up when he was little same they heard sheep and goats and they don't have a lot of resources and money often shepherds weren't hurting their own they were hired hands to hurt to take care of somebody else's sheep and so they would all be in this center sheep pen or sheep fold and then

3:23 they would take them out they would lead them out during the day this is all the way back into Old Testament times right he leads us by still waters and quiet pastures the shepherd and so this metaphor of the good shepherd is like a consistent throughout the long story of scripture and Jesus is picking this up here and he's giving them an analogy from an experience that they know that that they're not hopping over the fence they know the code they know the lock they have the key to open the door and come in the proper ways like people are coming in and trying to get to folk all the time not coming in through the

3:57 right way and those thieves come to steal kill and destroy and at times when I think about this passage I think about the reality of the thieves that there are thieves for you and I that would offer or promise to take us to the right place but not the the one who comes and captures the sheep the shepherd comes in calls the sheep they follow him and he knows where the good grass is so the shepherd leads them out and they follow him they follow him in a group you know

4:27 sheep are notoriously dumb right but they know the voice of the shepherd and then they'll say in a group so they got to be in a group and so then they all follow the group and they get off to the quiet little pasture that happens to be green right now that's not all ate up from all the other sheep the shepherd knows the right place to take them and when they stay with the shepherd they're safe the shepherd is a good shepherd he doesn't run when the wolf comes but he fights off the wolf right with the sling or the staff or whatever he gets rid of

4:59 him and at the end of the day they're safe with this with the shepherd he brings them back to the sheepfold so the the good shepherd leads them into plop has that make sense the thief will offer to come and get him look I'm getting you out of the sheepfold it's gonna be great and he's coming to steal them to kill them and destroy them and he's giving them example you can extrapolate out the metaphor for your life what might you follow that leads you to green pastures what might you follow that robs you of your experience of life and I

5:33 think that's a I think this is the metaphor makes sense on the face of it so going forward when he has brought out his own he goes before them and the sheep follow him and they know his voice a stranger they will not follow but they will follow him for they do not for they do not know the voice of the

6:06 strangers this figure of speech Jesus used with them but they did not understand what he was saying and so then it's true that like I was telling the kids a good practice is to figure out do you know the voice of the sheep do you know what or the shepherd do you know what it looks like to follow Jesus are you able to tell the difference between the thief and the good shepherd it's a good application of the analogy verse seven so Jesus again said to them truly truly I say to you they didn't get it what he was saying they knew the literal explanation of

6:37 the shepherd and the thief but they couldn't extrapolate and apply it to Jesus and God they didn't know what he was saying so Jesus says again to them truly truly I say to you I am the door of the sheep all who came before me are thieves and robbers but the sheep did not listen to them I am the door if anyone enters by me he will be saved and we'll go in and go out and find pasture the thief comes only to steal kill and destroy I came that they may have life

7:12 and have it abundantly so Jesus goes further in the metaphor and goes there are there will be other shepherds that you will follow dumb sheep and if they come in through the person of Jesus they can be trusted you'll recognize their voice they'll follow them take them safe if they come outside other ways not through Jesus there are thieves and robbers and then he says this thing I came that they may have life and have it abundantly and like I said this has been a favorite verse of mine since high school probably and I've thought about

7:44 it a lot of ways this week as I was thinking about it this phrase life and life abundantly and trying to figure out what John means and why he uses that is where I spent my time because Jesus said that he came that we would have life and life abundantly so what does John mean so I started thinking a little bit first about what's really alive I started off at University of Florida as a philosophy

8:21 major I don't know why really I picked a philosophy major I liked thinking about ideas I guess is what I was in my head and I started off with intro to philosophy and red plateaus dialogues and Socrates and it was like this is kind of dry Bob and so then I had enough credits where I could take the second semester I took like one class in several different majors that I was considering and so I

8:55 took another philosophy class but a little bit further downstream to go where am I going here so I took this class called metaphysics and that's when I knew I needed to not be a philosophy major I mean it was interesting but only to a point right I like these guys are running in circles but one of the one of the predominant questions in that class was how do you know something is alive what

9:29 is life me how do you define life can you come up with a definition of life that works for all things that you think are alive right and the test always was you need a definition of life that doesn't end up with a flame being alive because a flame has a moment of germination it takes certain things it grows kind of lives and can spread right and then it has a moment where it's out

10:02 and it's done and so in what way is a flame not alive but a tree is alive I I've told the story before but when we went out to Yosemite and walked through the Mariposa Grove and stood next to giant sequoias that are thousands of years old and hundreds of feet tall in a grove of these things when you are

10:32 there you know those things are alive feels like you're standing next to a blue whale or something like next to a dinosaur it's incredible and you can feel it in the kind of in the ground and these things are alive right and plants they are alive like right like they there's like the notion about like that maybe through fungi they can communicate you guys have seen that to each other

11:07 somehow the trees can like network in forests together you've seen the science where so they definitely they are alive they they grow they have a life they they are they're like they begin and they have stages of life and they grow towards the final end even the great ancient sequoias don't live forever they have a cycle and then they're done and then they go back into the ground and

11:38 then they come again and they have some sort of form of communication and even like like you know I don't think plants have feelings but then you hear the stories of like if you talk nice to your house plants they grow better have you seen that like people do these side-by-side studies what is that right in my house we didn't grow up with pets really we had maybe hermit crabs we were allowed to

12:11 have hermit crabs which kind of count as pets but everything and then like little fish but they all ended up eating each other which was really a weird experience but we have dogs to college Aaron I had roommates with dogs in college when we we shared apartments in college and so it wasn't until I really had a dog that I realized like animals are alive in a different way from plants like a hermit crab is not much more than a tree you know I mean it just kind of is there right but a dog man a dog like has a full-on personality you know dog is alive in

12:52 a whole different kind of way a dog like communicates trees communicate okay but a dog communicates with more sophistication right like a dog can can learn words and commands and even you've seen the thing now about how they can they use these buttons and they teach them to use buttons for different things have you seen that they're training dogs with these buttons that have different words on them like I would like a biscuit that's this one I would like to go outside that's this one and they have voices and they're they're

13:25 trying to build conversations with their dogs right so so dogs have like personality like so pets animals are alive in a different way from plants right like where is the life thing like I remember in science when we studied viruses they're like viruses are this thing that are weird and in between

13:59 right they seem to act on their own self-interest they can propagate but they don't have any recollection or notion of what's going on they don't have a lot of the core components are viruses alive or or just like a cell that does its own thing rapidly it's hard to figure out and similar like the debate now right about like AI like who was talking about oh Mike Forrest this week was talking about how he didn't like the tone of voice that his chat

14:31 GPT was using it was much too casual you know like too comfortable so I gotta change the tone of voice and they were talking about these artificial intelligence that seems to have like a capacity to evolve at least so I'm saying like Jesus said that he came that we could have life

15:11 which one is it I mean I think I'm alive this was the question then in what kind of way is my life different from the flame the virus the plant the pet the AI the closest they would get in the metaphysics class was like all those components plus a self-consciousness a capacity to reason but then they flipped into the debate well what happens when you're asleep and you're not dreaming

15:46 are you dead then if you have no consciousness for a minute do you cease to live that's when I was like tapping out I'm done like this debate is running in circles and there's not an answer as I was like looking back through this idea like John remember John's gospel John is like this is the last thing he writes we're pretty sure that John is the last of the disciples of Jesus to

16:23 die they all get martyred but John lives the longest we're actually pretty sure that John's gospel this text that we're looking at here is the last thing written that's included in the canon one of the ways things got certified by the bishops at the council of Nicaea to be included in the New Testament was who wrote them and if one of the eleven wrote them it was in right and so there

17:00 were more letters you might read the shepherd of her miss or the gospel of Thomas but these the authorship of those was suspect and they didn't get included everyone agreed John wrote this but it was the very last maybe 90 AD and at the time John writes remembers his gospel because he's so old probably but also because he's writing at a different time than Matthew Mark and Luke maybe

17:33 30 years later when the movement of the way of Jesus has taken shape differently John is trying to communicate against a different group of people there's a there's a Hellenistic way of thinking a Greek way of thinking that's come into fashion and is interacting with the way of Jesus that gets kind of described as Gnosticism or secret knowledge and there's this idea of like that there's a

18:04 spiritual fully real long lasting realm and a physical realm that is different and they had a notion that there was a life that was broader deeper longer better than the one we found here Gnostics did but you don't get it until the end until you drop this body and this world and go to the next realm without

18:38 physical physical presence just spirit and life and Gnostics had this notion that this is what Jesus was talking about that Jesus when he came into the world was telling us there was a plane to which we could go where life would be eternal put up with this one now actually just just manage just endure stoically grit your teeth and make it through this one doesn't matter that one

19:12 does but you can't get there until you're done with this one and in some Gnostics even thought that Jesus because of this Jesus wasn't ever actually fully enfleshed that he just was like an apparition of a person moving around it's in that context that John writes his gospel and so one of the themes for John is that people have the eternal now

19:54 earlier if you look into first John you can look there with me first John is all the way towards the back because we got to get through all Paul's letters and then they start including everybody else's first John this is the first thing John wrote to the church he started most of his career writing was trying to combat this idea this Gnostic notion to root people because John's primary motive was trying to convince people to love one another now as they have been loved

20:30 by the God and working against that was the notion that your body their body this world doesn't matter stick your head in the sand flage late your flesh endure the life whatever you've got to do to realize this nothing matters here and you're going up there and John is saying everything matters here love your neighbor as yourself just as God has loved you he's trying to elevate what's happening here you can see it all the way in his very first letter John chapter one verse John chapter one verse one that which was from the beginning which

21:08 we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the this word of life the life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the father and was made manifest to us which we have seen

21:42 and heard and we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son Jesus Christ and we are writing these things so that our joy may be made complete you hear it John is saying there was a life at the beginning this is like running all

22:13 throughout like from all the Hellenistic thinking the Egyptian thinking all what's going on in their spaces life zoe the nature of life comes down it's a free gift from the divine right where does the life force that animates the giant sequoia come from where does the notion that your children's personality and anatomy will come together where do the nuances of your personality and the

22:49 fibers of your body come from all this gift from the divine and John says that it was at the beginning this is why he starts his gospel this way to the the word was at the beginning and in first John he calls it life was at the beginning and that life from the beginning he said was made manifest apparent a prehendable touchable feelable sealable hearable life was made manifest in front of us he said this is what he's trying to say with the story about Jesus

23:26 that Jesus says that I have brought life out from where it dwells right here to you I mentioned this a while ago but I was rereading CS Lewis's weight of glory and he put this in a some words that made sense to me you know John and Paul both called Jesus the second Adam CS Lewis talks about how your you have two

24:06 forces of life acting in you at the same time from these two atoms one comes down and is inherited from the first one that God from wherever he dwells infinitely breathes the breath of life into Adam and Eve and the force of that life does not need to be renewed but endures passed down from one generation to

24:36 the next that force of life is enough that it carries through hundreds of generations so that your parents had enough remnant of the life from Adam and Eve to bring you into the world but that life won't carry you through into the world to come and so Jesus said I came for a special purpose to bring you unmitigated life from the Father right down to you our people tell us in

25:10 baptism you get the great spirit of God again unmitigated undiminished straight from God into you this is what John is trying to tell the people in 90 AD that you can have the eternal life now this is why I like putting up with being a

25:47 Christian person in the world not because Christians are right often they are wrong not because Christians are good often Christians are bad I put up with being a Christian person in the world because it elevates my experience of

26:19 life no longer is this world just something to endure no longer is this body just a plant animated with glucose or a virus acting in its own interest it carries eternal life gifted from the Father brought into me enduring forever

26:53 it sets me on a purpose that gives significance to the life or lives around me also carrying life from the God gifted for free that I my love Jesus said he came into the world not to condemn it but to redeem it to give it life and life abundantly this is what you have life now you don't have to wait life now life

27:25 abundant I pray that you get to glimpse that this week that you begin to learn the voice of Jesus to follow him towards it to take hold of it in small ways and large ways let me pray hey Lord thank you for this room would you give them grace to receive the gift of life from you again this week to enjoy life deeply to

27:59 give love freely and receive it heartily from you in Jesus name we pray