Sermon Text: John
10:1-10
Title: “How
Can You Hear?”
I. The voice of
Jesus is heard most clearly in His Church.
II. When we
aren’t in His Church we have difficulty hearing His voice.
THROUGH THE CROSS OF
CHRIST WE ARE GIVEN EARS TO HEAR WITH - AND AS A RESPONSE TO THAT GRACE WE WANT
TO BE IN CHURCH TO HEAR HIS VOICE MOST CLEARLY.
In the name of the Father and the Son + and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and from our
LORD and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text for the homily for this 4th Sunday of
Easter, is taken from today’s Gospel lesson…
“Truly, truly, I say
to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by
another way, that man is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door
is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his
voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has
brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for
they know his voice. 5 A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from
him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 This figure of speech
Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
7 So Jesus again said
to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who
came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9
I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out
and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came
that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I.
A man is out in the backyard assigned the task of cooking
supper on the grill. His attention is
focused on the grill so that he does not burn the burgers – again. He hears a
tap on the window of the kitchen, looks up and sees his daughter trying to tell
her dad something. She is making hand singles that the dad isn’t comprehending
and she is seemingly shouting but the dad can only hear muffled sounds through
the glass. This goes on for a few minutes and then finally the dad goes inside
and exasperatedly asks, “What do you want?” The daughter says, “Mom, wanted me
to remind you to NOT burn the burgers again.” The dad furrows his brow and
says, “That’s it?!” And then out of the corner of his eye he notices out the
window that his burgers are on fire!
If it was so important why didn’t the daughter come outside
and tell her dad what she wanted to tell him? Wasn’t there an urgency in the
message? Wouldn’t it make more sense for
the daughter to go and tell the dad her message at the grill rather than trying
to communicate with him through the glass? But now it is too late and the
supper is ruined.
St. John writes in our text today…
But he who enters by
the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep
hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When
he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him,
for they know his voice.
The Shepherd has come among the sheep of His flock and He
calls out to them to come and they hear and follow His voice, for they know
Him, they recognize His voice and they come.
But how do we know Him?
When I was growing up my younger brother and I would play
out in the backyard and when it was supper time, or time to come in my Mom
would come to the back door and tells us so. Then as we got a little older we
would play out front [we lived on a deadend street]. And when it was time to
come in Mom would yell out the front door, “Ray and Todd!” Then as we got a bit
more older we began to venture out into the neighborhood on our bikes. And it
was then that something changed. We had to keep track of time on our own. Our Mom
could scream and yell our names until the cows came home – but we wouldn’t hear
her. Why? Because we weren’t near her enough to hear her. Now we might hear
another mom shouting for her kids to come home, but we wouldn’t listen to her because
we didn’t know her, she wasn’t our Mom.
Isn’t the same true of you? Are you likely to follow a voice
you don’t know? Many of you who gather here in this sanctuary each week would
NOT follow the voice of another pastor. There is no trust there. You don’t know
this voice. You may have even felt this way when I was first sent to you. Over
time and through the hearing of my voice and through my speaking the truth as
you now it through GOD’S Holy Word, you have begun to trust me – or at least I
hope you have. You hear from me the truth of GOD’S Word, truly you hear the
voice of the Good Shepherd – Jesus Christ in what I preach, teach and
confess. Because you know His voice and
you can hear that voice in me, you continue to follow Him. And that comes from being here in the pew
each Sunday.
Then there those times when you think being here every
Sunday, or at least very often is not necessary. And so you become this person
named Skip. You skip Sundays, you skip Bible class, you skip reading the Bible,
you skip praying, and the list goes on. What about Skip? Does he hear the voice
of the Shepherd? Not as clearly. It’s like the dad trying to hear his daughter
shouting through the window. It’s all muffled. The words she’s saying are not
reaching the ears of the dad.
The same is true for you too. You who aren’t in the Word,
who aren’t in church and Bible study and prayer. How can you hear when you
aren’t in the same area code as the Shepherd? How can you hear when you are
only hearing YOUR thoughts and words? For this is the voice that competes with
the Shepherd’s voice – along with your spouse’s, your kids’, your best friend’s
your co-workers’ – but in the end it’s all your voice doing all of the damage.
I want to do this or that rather than go to church. I would
rather watch TV than read His Holy Word. I need to be here or there rather than
in Bible Study. I am too sleepy for prayer tonight. I don’t feel like fighting
my children in order to get them to church and Sunday School. And as we speak
these words out loud or think them in our minds we are drowning out the voice
of the Shepherd.
There is one more voice in the background trying to overcome
the Shepherd’s voice and this one does so with a whisper. This one is sickeningly
sweet. It is the whisper of Satan, the shepherd of lies. Is he shouting? Not
usually. His is a more subtle, devious, and deceitful word spoken in the ear of
the faithful. He whispers things like, “did He really say…” and “surely a man
can’t survive in a fish for three days…” and “surely a baby in the womb is NOT
a life…” and “surely you can’t get to heaven merely by the death of this Jesus
on the cross, surely you have to add something to that, like your own works…”
and the list goes on and on. The devil has whispered his lies into the mouths
of some TV evangelists, politicians, and even popular daytime talk show hosts. His
whispers can be heard in the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the Facebook
and twitter and Instagram that we cannot live without. He has even added his
falsehoods to what we are told by some within our own beloved Missouri Synod.
And that whisper competes with, and oft times drowns out,
the voice of Jesus – especially when we aren’t close enough to Him to hear His
voice.
II.
How can you hear the voice of the Shepherd? When your ears
are filled with so many voices, how can you hear?
We look to the Cross and in this Cross and this one only,
Jesus is recreating the ears of His people. He is making His voice heard above
all the others. This is the wonderful gift that is embedded in the grain of the
Cross of Christ, where His blood stained that wood a deep red. Here we find
that Christ is making His voice loud and clear for all to hear. He is tuning
our ears to His voice.
But if we are not in the Word, if we are not in church, if
we are not in prayer, how can we hear the voice of our Shepherd calling to us,
leading us through the wilderness to the gates of THE Promised Land? Out there
in the world there are so many voices competing with the voice of the Shepherd
and we can choose to listen to those voices, shutting out the Shepherd. Here –
in His house – the voice of the Shepherd is heard by His sheep. It is heard in
the Word rightly preached, and the Sacraments rightly administered. It is heard
for the forgiveness of sins.
So it is here in His House of Prayer that we come to hear
clearly the voice of the Shepherd – Jesus Christ. Here we are reminded He has
forgiven us our sins – even the sin of tuning Him out. Here in His Church He
begins again the same work each Sunday of fine tuning our ears so that we can
hear Him.
How can you hear? By being close to the Good Shepherd – and
there is no better place to be close to Jesus than right here. Amen.
The peace of the LORD which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Amen.
+ Soli Deo Gloria +
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