We come now to our final day together in meditating on the magnificent phrases of what someone has described as ‘the sweetest religious song ever written –the Twenty-third Psalm’. It began with a positive note of assurance: ‘The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want’, and it ends in the same exciting and exhilarating way: ‘I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.’ This Psalm, as we have seen, pictures sheep so fully satisfied, so utterly content and so much ‘at home’ with their shepherd that there is not the slightest desire for change. Conversely, of course, on the shepherd’s side, such a relationship has developed that he would never think of parting with one of his sheep. So strong are the bonds between the shepherd and his sheep that nothing can separate them –ever. As I conclude these meditations, there comes to mind a memory from the days when I first entered the ministry in the scenic farming country of Carmarthenshire in West Wales said a narrator. Many of the farmers in the area were deeply caring of their sheep, but there was one who was notorious for his neglect. When one looked at his thin and scraggy sheep, bunched together in the corner of the field, one could almost see in the eyes of these abused and neglected creatures a longing to find themselves under the care of a good and gracious shepherd. My dear friend –aren’t you glad you don’t belong to a shepherd like the one who was notorious for his neglect in the scenic farming country of Carmarthenshire in West Wales? You belong to the Good Shepherd –the one true God Lord Jesus Christ. Rest in that fact! His care for you is not just for now; it will last into eternity also. You will dwell forever … for ever …in the constant Care and Loving Presence of the Lord. This is the Assurance He promised us!

Now let us read John 10:22-38; 22 After this the Feast of Dedication [of the reconsecration of the temple] was taking place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 And Jesus was walking in Solomon’s Porch in the temple area. 24 So the Jews surrounded Him and began asking Him, How long are You going to keep us in doubt and suspense? If You are really the Christ (the Messiah), tell us so plainly and openly. 25 Jesus answered them, I have told you so, yet you do not believe Me [you do not trust Me and rely on Me]. The very works that I do by the power of My Father and in My Father’s name bear witness concerning Me [they are My credentials and evidence in support of Me]. 26 But you do not believe and trust and rely on Me because you do not belong to My fold [you are no sheep of Mine]. 27 The sheep that are My own hear and are listening to My voice; and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never lose it or perish throughout the ages. [To all eternity they shall never by any means be destroyed.] And no one is able to snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, Who has given them to Me, is greater and mightier than all [else]; and no one is able to snatch [them] out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are One. 31 Again the Jews [d]brought up stones to stone Him. 32 Jesus said to them, My Father has enabled Me to do many good deeds. [I have shown many acts of mercy in your presence.] For which of these do you mean to stone Me? 33 The Jews replied, We are not going to stone You for a good act, but for blasphemy, because You, a mere [e]Man, make Yourself [out to be] God. 34 Jesus answered, Is it not written in your Law, I said, You are gods? 35 So men are called gods [by the Law], men to whom God’s message came—and the Scripture cannot be set aside or cancelled or broken or annulled— 36 [If that is true] do you say of the One Whom the Father consecrated and dedicated and set apart for Himself and sent into the world, You are blaspheming, because I said, I am the Son of God? 37 If I am not doing the works [performing the deeds] of My Father, then do not believe Me [do not adhere to Me and trust Me and rely on Me]. 38 But if I do them, even though you do not believe Me or have faith in Me, [at least] believe the works and have faith in what I do, in order that you may know and understand [clearly] that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father [One with Him].

27 The sheep that are My own hear and are listening to My voice; and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never lose it or perish throughout the ages. [To all eternity they shall never by any means be destroyed.] And no one is able to snatch them out of My hand. “My sheep hear My voice,” Lord Jesus says, in today’s gospel reading in John 10:22-38: “I know them, and they follow Me.” And I want that to be true. I want it to be true that you and I hear His voice. And that we always follow Him. But I’m not always sure that this statement is true for all today because if we do, I don’t think our situations will be the way they are today with wickedness, hardship, suffering, total lack and economic melt-down everywhere with people dying in large numbers and the leaders and politicians doesn’t know exactly what to do! After all, we live in a very noisy world these days. A world filled with all kinds of different voices, all competing for our attention. And it seems difficult, in the midst of all this noise, to hear the voice of our Good Shepherd, doesn’t it? But our Bible passage said, ‘34 Jesus answered, Is it not written in your Law, I said, You are gods? 35 So men are called gods [by the Law], men to whom God’s message came…;’ today where are this type of men and women to whom God’s message comes? You and I have heard a number of different voices this week, to be sure, all competing for our attention. And some of these voices are incredibly good at convincing us to pay attention to them. They create ads, geared just toward us. They convince us that we need whatever they are selling, to be safe, or to be popular/famous, or to be successful, or simply to feel better. These distractive voices that could be regarded as being empty vessels that make great noises that we no longer can even hear the good voice of our Good Shepherd not to talk of knowing what He is telling us. Modern technology and social media means that companies know us better than they ever have, and they use that information to convince us that we need whatever they have contrary to “My sheep hear My voice,” “I know them, and they follow Me.” The voice of our Good Shepherd sure started sounding long before some of these modern technology and social media and companies, so why is it that we are not attracted to the voice of our Good Shepherd more than these modern technology and social media and companies? Or does our attraction to these modern technology and social media and companies a direct definition of who we are,… of the world? Just for fun, as I was preparing this sermon I googled this question: “Is my phone listening to me?” And the top hit was a simple answer: “Yes, and here’s how to stop it.” Have you ever had an experience of talking to a friend about buying something – let’s say a power-washer – and the very next time you went on Facebook or somewhere like that, you saw ads for power-washers? Yes, our phones and other devices are listening to us. They hear our voices. And then they try to sell us stuff. They know us, and all too often, we hear their voice, and follow them. But these devices are often false shepherds, making promises that they cannot keep, for instances, have your phone not promised to keep your contacts but more often the contacts get lost in the phone by one act or the other. There is only one True Shepherd. And we are all His sheep. And today, we are reminded to listen to His voice. Because at the end of the day, there is only one voice we can trust; one voice that truly matters to our soul life and peace. And that is the voice of the Shepherd, the voice of our Savior, Lord Jesus Christ. So why don’t we always hear that voice of our Good Shepherd? And how might we hear His Voice more effectively? I want to put aside the obvious reasons why we don’t hear His voice – that there are too many other competing voices distracting us from hearing His Voice, and we don’t always take the time to listen to His voice. And, instead, I want to share three other reasons why, according to Scripture, we don’t always hear His voice as well as might, and three corresponding ways to do something about that. Lord Jesus Is Not Saying What We Expect Or Want To Hear: The first reason why we sometimes miss hearing Lord Jesus’ voice is that He is not saying what we expect or want to hear. That was true of the Jewish leaders in today’s gospel reading. They were right there, listening to Lord Jesus. But they didn’t really hear Him, because He was not saying what they expected or want to hear. They expected the Messiah to act differently. They thought He’d be like King David, and lead them into battle to overthrow Rome and gain their freedom from the Roman Empire. Lord Jesus was different. And He didn’t say or do what they expected of Him. So they didn’t really hear Him. And isn’t that often true of us? We miss Lord Jesus’ voice because He is not saying or telling us exactly what we expect or want to hear. It’s challenging/difficult these days to listen to anyone or anything with an open mind. As soon as anyone speaks to us about anything, on social media or anywhere else, we are listening for their agenda, or for evidence of how they view the world. We are making up our mind about what they are saying or telling us, even before they finish saying it if it contains what we expected or wanted. That’s the nature of the world we live in and that is the nature of humans. And this is why it is more important than ever for us to listen to Lord Jesus with an open mind, and an open heart because He is the only One Who Voices to us what belongs to our peace and good in life, others have their own agenda. Having known this it becomes wise Not to listen for what we expect Him to say, but simply to listen. Let us make efforts to make our minds be changed. Let our hearts be changed because it is only when we allow Him to effect change in us will we be able to benefit from Him. So we have to consciously and effortly put aside all the distracting voices in our world, and listen for the loving voice of our true Shepherd for it to be well with us. We Are Too Ashamed/Unworthy to Listen: This is the first reason we sometimes miss hearing Lord Jesus’ voice, that He is not saying what we expect or want to hear. What is the second reason? It is that we are sometimes too ashamed to listen. Our sin and guilt causes us to feel unworthy of Lord Jesus speaking to us, so we fail to hear Him. In Genesis (3:8), we see this sin and guilt happen with Adam and Eve, after they committed the first sin, they then see their unworthiness to go close to the Lord God: “8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, Where are you? 10 He said, I heard the sound of You [walking] in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” This same thing is exactly what is making people today being reluctant in welcoming, believing and accepting the things of God in their life because God’s Word addresses our inner ills of life! So sin and unworthy life attitude make us behave in like manner, too. Our sin can cause us to feel naked and ashamed and unworthy. And in this condition of mind and body we are tempted to hide ourselves from God, so that we can miss hearing His voice calling us in diverse ways. I have talked to people, and maybe you have, too, who won’t come to Church until they get their act or attitude or character together. Or who won’t come to Church until we get our act together! But Church, as Martin Luther reminds us, is not a hotel for saints; it is a hospital for sinners. Where the defects of their act, attitude, character are healed to get together or to conform to Christ. We cannot get our act together without Christ, in other words we cannot change our act on our own! That is one of the reasons we begin our worship as Lutherans/Christians with confession and forgiveness. To acknowledge that we are not worthy, that we don’t have our acts together. And it becomes necessary to confess that. And also to receive God’s forgiveness and ultimately for us to be reminded of God’s grace, mercy, and love. And then, because we have been made worthy by Christ, we can listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd: which means that any individual or people who cannot listen to our Good Shepherd have not been made worthy of Him! He Is Saying Something We Don’t Want to Hear: But there is a third reason why we sometimes miss hearing Lord Jesus’ voice that I have to mention today: Sometimes, He is saying something to us that we don’t want to hear. Remember Jonah? “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh …” But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” Remember the rich young ruler? He wanted to inherit eternal life. Lord Jesus told him to sell all that he had and give it to the poor, then come and follow Him. That was not what he wanted to hear! He “was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Mark 10:22). Jonah, the rich young ruler, and others in Scripture did not want to listen to God, because they didn’t like what they were hearing or what they were being told. That can happen to us, too or it often happen to us. We don’t really want to go where the Shepherd is calling us to go, or do what the Shepherd is calling us to do. So we give up listening to Him and move away from Him. Often when this happens, we need something to happen in our life that forces us back to listen. Could this that happens to our life forcing us back to listen to our Good Shepherd be one of the reasons we do have numerous troubles and problems in life, could God be trying to call us back to Himself by the things He allows that is happening to us? Could it be our own version of finding ourselves in the belly of the whale like Jonnah? The astonishing thing, of course, is that sometimes God does send a whale. Or speaks through some other life events: C.S. Lewis says that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. Pains/Hardship/Suffering/difficulties is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” And sometimes that is the only way we will hear Him. Like a Shepherd in search of lost sheep, Lord Jesus looks for us. And doesn’t stop until He finds us. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow Me.” We can and do ignore His voice as many times as we like, but still the voice persists. And we often find ourselves restless and unsettled until we hear and respond to His voice, and follow Him. We have heard His voice enough to know and believe that our lives are not complete until we hear and respond to the voice of the Shepherd; until we allow that voice to lead us through our days on earth and to finally lead us home to eternity since He has assured us that we can never be destroyed or lost or perish!

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” As I wrap today’s message up, I just want to emphasize that in this reading, Lord Jesus is calling us sheep, rather than followers or disciples. This is important, because the people who first heard these words would have pictured the shepherds that they knew. They would have known that these shepherds would often get together with their sheep at various times during the day, a bunch of shepherds all together with lots and lots of sheep. Say at a watering hole. The shepherds catching up on events, the sheep getting something to drink. It was often noisy and chaotic, to say the least. But at the end of the day, despite the mixing of many sheep from many shepherds, the shepherds would call for their respective sheep. And the sheep would follow their own shepherds to a safe place to sleep. So in the midst of all that chaos and all those competing voices, the different group of sheep would hear their Shepherd’s voice, recognize it, and follow him. Can you now understand where this custom is coming from! And I think that is why, in today’s gospel reading, Lord Jesus describes Himself as a Shepherd, and we His followers as His sheep who will surely hear His voice and follow Him despite the many other distracting voices in the world. “My sheep hear My voice,” He says, “I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” You and I have heard a great number of different voices this week, to be sure, all competing for our attention. But at the end of the day, Lord Jesus seems to be saying to us, it is only the voice of the Good Shepherd that can lead us home, that can lead us to safety. It is the voice of the Good Shepherd that has called us to this place. It is the voice of the Good Shepherd that calls us to follow Him. And it is the voice of the Good Shepherd that leads us home, Home unto eternity.

“20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears and listens to and heeds My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will eat with him, and he [will eat] with Me. “Listen,” Lord Jesus says in the Book of Revelation 3:20 above. Today and in all Ages, we are invited/required to listen again to the voice of our Good Shepherd and to hear His voice. To open the door of our heart so that He will come in. And to follow Him. And in so doing, to discover once again that there is nothing else that we shall Want, when the Lord is our Shepherd. For His Goodness and Mercy shall Follow us all the days of our life. And we shall Dwell in the house of the Lord. Forever. Amen.