The Good Shepherd
I Am • Week 4
There is so much power and deeper meaning behind Jesus' statement "I Am the Good Shepherd." It was intended to correct and challenge the religious elite of that time; and to comfort and encourage Jesus' followers then and today. We are sheep, and we have a Good Shepherd in Jesus. Dave Brown explores this deep and powerful meaning in week 4 of our I Am series.
MESSAGE NOTES
The Good Shepherd
I Am | Week 4
March 28, 2021 | Dave Brown
--
John 10:11-18 NIV
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
- We are sheep.
- Jesus is the Good Shepherd.
- Sheep know their Shepherd.
You’ve never heard of a wild sheep before; that’s because sheep without a shepherd die.
We need a good shepherd or we’ll die too.
John 10:11 NIV
“I am the good shepherd.”
Psalm 23:1 NIV
"The LORD is my shepherd.”
C.S. Lewis
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
A Good Shepherd: Guides, Provides, Protects, and Corrects
The Good Shepherd Guides Us
John 6:37,39 NIV
"All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever come to me I will never drive away...And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.”
The Good Shepherd Provides For Us
John 6:35 NIV
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
The Good Shepherd Protects Us
John 10:11 NIV
“The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
The Good Shepherd Corrects Us
Psalm 23:4 NIV
Your rod and your staff comforts me.
I’d rather limp into heaven, than run into hell.
John 10:14 NIV
I know my sheep and my sheep know me.