I want you now to turn in the New Testament to John chapter 10. John chapter 10, we’ll be reading our sermon text from this book of John, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Beginning in verse 28 and reading through verse 30. Here again, God’s word. Jesus says, referring to his sheep, I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 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. I and the Father are one. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.

Our God, we thank you that you have not left us without your very word. Not only did you send your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Word made flesh, but now we have before us all that pertains to Him and His Gospel, to our life and godliness, that we may know Christ our Savior, that we not merely know Him in our minds, but our hearts may be transformed by the Spirit’s work applying this Word to us, that we may praise, honor, magnify, glorify Christ, lift up high our Savior, all the world may know, in whom the only hope is Jesus Christ, Son of God, risen from the dead. So we pray this in his name. Amen.

Please be seated. You surely all know the scene Paul and Silas have been traveling around Asia Minor and over into Greece. And they come to the town of Philippi. And there’s a woman in Philippi, a slave girl, who’s demon-possessed. And this demon somehow gives her the power to tell fortunes and to make money for her owners. But Paul and Silas coming in the name of the Lord’s girl. And their owners are upset. There goes their source of income. So they get a mob up and go to the magistrate and demand that Paul and Silas be thrown into prison. So Paul and Silas are there in the Philippian prison and taking advantage of the time they’re singing and praising God all night as suddenly an earthquake strikes. The Lord breaks their fetters, breaks their bounds, breaks the doors of their cell. They’re able to escape, and the prison guard is at a loss. He knows that if prisoners escape under his watch, he will be executed. So he is about to fall on his sword, and Paul stops and says, no, we’re all here. There’s no need to kill yourself. And so the jailer asks him that famous question. Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Now we don’t know if he’s asking, you know, explain to me the doctrine of salvation in Jesus Christ. He may just really mean, you know, get me out of this situation. But Paul and Silas respond with the gospel and it cuts him to the heart. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. And so they do, they respond in faith and he and his household are saved. That question, you know, what must I do to be saved? We know the answer. The Lord Jesus Christ, believe on him and you will be saved. Maybe ask yourself a similar question. Now that you are saved, now that you’re walking in the Lord Jesus Christ, do you ever wonder, Lord, what must I do to stay saved? What must I do to remain saved? What must I do now that I’ve entered the Christian life, Lord, do I continue to save myself? Well, if you notice in Paul and Silas’s answer to the Philippians, they pointed to Christ. Believe in Lord, depend on him what he has done and you will be saved. And what Jesus shows us today in John chapter 10, that the answer to that second question, what must I do to remain saved, is exactly the same. It’s not so much what do I do, but what does Christ do, what has Christ done to keep me, to guard me, to protect me, to assure me in my heart of eternal life, that I may know that I am Christ’s. That I may know whatever in this life comes upon me, sickness, disease, danger, disaster, even death itself, that my salvation in Jesus Christ is sure. That’s the good news of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that I hope to share with you this morning from this text. Our outline will be very simple. We’ll look at these verses in order. Verse 28, Jesus keeps his sheep. And in verse 29, God the Father keeps his sheep. And therefore, in verse 30, Jesus and the Father are one. Jesus and the Father are one. Let’s begin in verse 28, though. Jesus says, I give them, referring to his sheep, I give them eternal life. So, of course, the first question we have to ask was, well, who are the sheep? Who exactly is Jesus talking about when he says this to those gathered around him in John chapter 10 at the Feast of Dedication? There’s a couple ways you can answer this question. One, we can sort of wander all over the Old Testament and find many ways in which God refers to his own people as sheep. Or we can just look at the previous verse. We can just look at verse 27, where Jesus defines sheep this way. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. We kind of get both perspectives there, don’t we? From our perspective, we hear the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we follow him. From Jesus’ perspective, a sheep is one whom he knows. In fact, he says in verse three that he knows his sheep by name. To be a sheep of the Lord Jesus Christ is to be one whom he knows, one whom he has set his love, one whom he knows and has called by name and has made a member of his flock. We’ll talk more in a minute about how that happens. But to know the Lord Jesus Christ, or better, to be known by him, as Paul puts it, is to be a sheep, to be one whom Jesus keeps. What does Jesus say about these sheep in this verse? He really says one thing, but he says it two different ways, doesn’t he? He says, I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. Eternal life, never perish. Two ways of saying the same thing. Well, of course, that raises another question. What is eternal life? What is this thing that Jesus is giving to us? Again, we could answer this in more than one way, but if you simply look here at the imagery in this chapter, that Jesus describes a life in him. For instance, look at verse 16. What does Jesus say? I have other sheep that are not of my fold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, for there will be one flock, one shepherd. Jesus says, to know me is to be with me, is to know me and to be United with me, one flock, one shepherd. So in one sense we could say that what is Jesus promising to his people when he promises eternal life is that he’s promising them himself. He’s promising that he will be with them forever, to the end of the age and beyond. When he returns to what? Gather his sheep. We wonder, how does he give sheep this eternal life? How is this a gift that is in his remit to give to us? Our text is saturated with this answer. For instance, verse 11, what does he say? I lay down my life for the sheep. Verse 15, I lay down my life for the sheep. Verse 17, I lay down my life for the sheep. Verse 18, no one takes my life, I lay it down. You notice a pattern, you notice a turn, you notice an echo, you notice the overriding emphasis of what Jesus says. The way in which I gain these sheep and give them eternal life is how? By laying down my life for them. The barrier between us and eternal life is our sin. It’s the way in which we have broken God’s clear commands and won for ourself nothing but condemnation. and death itself. Our sin and our death are the barrier between ourselves and eternal life that we can never cross. But what does Jesus do? He says, clearly, I lay down my life for my sheep. I sacrifice my life. The very one who has lived life perfectly, the very one who has, through his obedience to the voice of his Father, through his righteous life, has won eternal life, says, I will first die. to pay for the sins of all those sheep who could never enter eternal life on their own. Who, like real sheep, would only head for the ditch and fall in and not be able to rescue themselves and be stuck there forever. I will die for them. I will purchase them with my very blood. Perhaps now we can understand why Jesus says no one can snatch them out of his hand. Look at the price that he has paid for them. He has purchased them, he has bought them, he has made them his own. And he says what? When I bring you into my flock, you are one with me. If someone was gonna snatch us from Jesus, it’s too late. They’ve already lost their chance. Eternal life is to be with Jesus, and if we are his now, in one sense we can say that eternal life is not merely something that’s in the future, but that we are one with Christ now. It’s too late. It’s too late for us to be snatched. We already have union with Christ. We’ve already been united to him by faith. And that’s where this day that we call Easter comes in. The Apostle Paul says something very interesting about this day. When in the book of Romans, he writes to those Christians gathered in Rome that Jesus Christ has been raised for our justification. He says because of his conquering of sin and death and setting himself through the empty tomb, Jesus was declared, he was vindicated, he was declared to be righteous, he was declared to be the Holy One of God, and therefore he gives that status to us. So for you to somehow be snatched from Jesus. For you to somehow lose your eternal life that he’s already given you, for you to be somehow wrenched away from him and disunited from the one who has united himself to him, that would be like stuffing, pardon the metaphor, stuffing Jesus back in the grave. It’d be like reversing Easter. It’d be like saying that it never happened. It’d be like that eternal life that you had, just kidding, Jesus never raised, and that’s not true. He appeared to more than 500 people. We know that Christ is raised, and if that is sure, and it is, the brothers and sisters in Christ, so is your eternal life. And nothing can snatch you from the hand of the one who has won that for you. Verse 28 of John chapter 10 is gloriously good news for us who are fickle, for us who are very good at wondering, like sheep, again, who need to know the steadfast assurance of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The verse, as we saw, verse 28, is at the end of the chapter. If that were enough, Jesus now turns and addresses the people in light of what God the Father does in keeping them for eternal life. We are saved not just because of what Christ does and has done through the empty tomb, but also through God the Father himself. My Father, Jesus says, who has given them the sheep to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand either. Jesus says the Father has given these sheep to him. We just said that Jesus Christ paid for them through his very blood. So what does this mean? It means it was always part of God’s plan to have Jesus shepherd these sheep. Notice the intentionality of what Jesus says. He says, my Father who has given them to me is greater than all. It’s not as if we sort of accidentally fall into salvation and we might perhaps accidentally fall out. No, Jesus says, Father, identified by name, gave these people, these sheep, these beloved eternal souls to me. That’s the most precious gift the Lord could give to his son, members of his kingdom, a reign and a rule, the church itself, the kingdom here on earth. So if the Lord gave this flock, this group of people, this congregation, those that united him to Jesus Christ, we know the Father is not, again, the sight of Father who says, what I give one day, I take the next. No, it’s an irrevocable gift of a kingdom of people to the great King Jesus Christ. Do you really think God would go through all this? setting upon His Son this task of taking on flesh, of going to earth, of dying for your sins, dying for you, and for me and all those who confess their sins and come to Him in faith, merely to cast you out later. Merely to say that was sort of an iffy or conditional proposition that salvation offered you. No, He’s greater than all, no one can undo this, not the world, Not the devil, not his demons, not like the one cast out of that servant girl in Philippians 17, or Acts 17. Now perhaps you’ve never heard someone say it like this. Perhaps you’ve never heard someone object to this doctrine. They’ll say, well, okay fine, I can’t be snatched by others out of Jesus’ hand, but I can leave if I want to. They say, Jesus never says that after all. And I know when people say this, perhaps their intentions are good, but do you notice actually the sort of arrogance in that statement? So Satan can’t do it. Satan can’t figure out how to snatch people out of Jesus’ hand, and demons can’t do it. The evil world and its array and its power and its persuasion can’t do it, but you can? Think of all of history, Adam, Adam and Eve, when they sinned, after the Exodus, when God’s people were exiled to Babylon, again and again and again, there were lots of chances for God to say, I’m done with these people. God had a lot of opportunities to say, I’m through, I wash my hand of you, I go back on my word, but if God were to do that, he would not be God, and this world would cease to exist. But he didn’t do that, did he? He said, I know what I’m getting myself into, so to speak. I know what you people are like, and you’re exactly the ones I want. You’re the ones I want to give to my son, because I know through his death and resurrection, you will become and may like to be like him. You will be given his, declared to be righteous as he is. You will be given his resurrection and eternal life. Again and again and again, what does God do but show himself to be far more faithful than we? Therefore we could know that we are safe. It’s because of this, it’s because of this close unity of the Father giving sheep to the Son, of Jesus keeping you safe in his hand, of God the Father keeping you safe in his hand, that Jesus can say this most remarkable statement in verse 30. I and the Father are one. If Jesus keeps his sheep and if the Father keeps his sheep, then they are one. What does this mean? What does Jesus say when he, what does Jesus mean when he says that he and his heavenly Father are one? He could be speaking perhaps what you might call unity of purpose. We’re in this together. Think of a basketball team. It’s playoff time and you’ve got two superstars on the same team. They’ve got to coexist. We have the same goal. We have the same purpose. We’re in it together. We are one. And of course this is true, you know, there is a beautiful unity to the gospel. The Father loves, Jesus saves, you know, the Holy Spirit seals the same group of people. They are in this together, they are of one purpose, the one divine will to save the people that God has loved and chosen. There’s no way for any sheep to fall through the cracks, because the very same people that God has foreknown for the foundation of the world are those for whom Christ died, who is the ones the Spirit regenerates and brings to faith in the Lord Jesus. So yes, Jesus of course does have this unity of purpose with God the Father.