Good Morning Friends,
“I tell you the truth, the man who does not
enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief
and a robber. The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The
watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls
his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own,
he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.
But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him
because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” (John 10:1-5)
In Jesus’ day, the sheep knew the voice of
their own shepherd. Out in the open fields, two shepherds would often meet and
while they talked their two flocks mingled with each other. When the shepherds
were ready to go their separate ways, one would call out to his sheep and they
would follow him. The other shepherd would head a different direction, call to
his sheep and they would follow him. There was no danger of the wrong sheep
going with the wrong shepherd. The sheep knew the voice of their own shepherd
and they followed him.
The sheep got to know the voice of their
shepherd because they spent a great deal of time with him. They listened to him
sing and talk. They got to know his voice so well that they could pick it out,
even among dozens of shepherds.
Jesus talks at length in this chapter of
John’s Gospel, comparing Himself to a shepherd and His followers to sheep. The
point in these first few verses is that His sheep can get to know His voice so
well that they can pick it out among many competing voices.
There is a principle there about knowing the
will of God. The best way to be able to discern the will of God – where He is
wanting you to go – is to get to know the Shepherd so well that you can tell
which voice is His, even among the many which compete for attention. Like the
sheep of Israel, we will get to know the voice of our Shepherd only by spending
time with Him, lots of time with Him. The better we know Him, the easier His
voice will be for us to hear.
His, by Grace,
Steve
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