The Bible Study Podcast, episode 334. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of the gospel of John with John 10.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. We're going to deal with a familiar

image of Jesus here in John 10, and that is the image of the good shepherd. Very truly,

I tell you, Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other

way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the

sheep. The gatekeeper 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.

Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.

So since this particular story ends with the Pharisees not knowing what Jesus is talking about,

I think it begs the question of what is Jesus talking about. And I would put it this way.

I think what Jesus is talking about here is the fact that our faith is not about what we know,

but who we know and who knows us. And so Jesus is saying that he is

the good shepherd, and he's using this analogy because obviously sheep would be much more plentiful

in that day, and people would have seen shepherds going through the fields. We're talking about

people that come out of a nomadic herding culture. Abraham and all his family had flocks.

And basically, the way you could tell that this sheep was part of that flock or that flock is,

who did it follow?

If the sheep went with that shepherd, then that was that shepherd's sheep.

That doesn't mean they didn't have more elaborate ways of marking the sheep,

but on a day-to-day basis, the sheep would follow the shepherd. They would learn the shepherd's voice.

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