Why Jesus Calls You a Sheep | John 10:11-18 | Crossroads Daily

Hey, I'm Chuck, I'm Mish, I'm Dani, I'm Jordan, and thanks for joining us. We're talking about Jesus calling himself the Good Shepherd, not just calling himself the Good Shepherd, Jesus is the Good Shepherd, but he compares a Good Shepherd to a hired hand, to somebody who doesn't have that level of commitment. And I'm just wondering, have you ever been under the guidance of a hired hand? Has that ever happened for you? Yes. Yeah? Hired hands disappear when things get messy. They sure do. When the mess starts to happen, I'm out! They just disappear. You got an example? Oh gosh, probably too many. One that comes to mind is, in a former job, we were trying some new things and it was, it got messy quick. And as soon as it got messy, the person that was in it with me, like we were in it, we were doing it together, dipped, dipped, left me there. And I was like, you know what? I'm stubborn and I'm gonna keep going. But yeah, dipped. Yeah, yeah. It happens. No, it does happen. It does happen. I think about, this is a blanket statement, but like most customer service experiences I've had have been hired hand experiences. Not most, I shouldn't say that, but there's some painful ones, right? Where it's like, you get to that point where you're like, I'm just talking to myself here. You really don't care about what I'm saying. You're not going to help me. And I think, yeah, there's that loyalty on the front end of a deal or a sale, but on the back end, it's like, I'm sorry. 100%. I feel like there's a lot of hired hands, just like content creators. That's a good one. Out there, to be honest, like people, like the algorithm or whatever, it kind of makes you, gives people the opportunity to be hired hands. I think the call-out and the watch-out sometimes is like within our own like church and Christian circles, how easy it could be to be a hired hand for us. I'm just like, good advice, because for people who do have a following and are like our well-known pastors and stuff like that, they can't always be around, like what the Good Shepherd was for Jesus is he was around. He was able to lay his life down to the people who are surrounding him, whereas like these people who are well-known in the Christian circles don't always have the opportunity and how easy it could be to fall into the trap of being a hired hand. That's so good. Chuck, what it reminds me

of when you're saying that and what you're saying, it's transactional. Yeah. It's not relational. It's not relational. And the Good Shepherd knows, like a good shepherd, and for real life, like shepherds, legit, they know their sheep, they recognize their their baz or whatever noise they make, they know what they look like, they know how they walk, they're intimately engaged with those sheep. And so, yeah, I mean, it's different. It's not transactional. It's super relational. That's so good. So when you think about your relationship with Jesus, what aspect of him calling himself the Good Shepherd is most challenging for you? Jordan, what's challenging about receiving Jesus as shepherd? Yeah, I feel like the first thing that comes to mind is I'm just not in a lot of spaces where I interact with sheep or shepherds, so just like the concept of it is just kind of foreign to me. You said you're not in a lot of spaces. Are you in any spaces? I don't think any spaces, but the idea of shepherd is just like, it's just foreign. It's not something I'm familiar with, and so I even need to press in a little bit more to the scriptures there to just be like, okay, I kind of have an idea of shepherd. I got this picture in my head of who that is. He's got a little cane staff thing, and he walks around, but I don't really know all the ins and outs of what he does, and I think that that's one of the challenges, is I can just assume, but I actually don't really know the day-to-day operations of a shepherd. Yeah, yeah. No, that's right. That's right. Yeah. I think for me, one of the most challenging things is I don't want to be a sheep, and I can actually believe I'm not. I can get to, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, like everything I have is by grace. Saved by grace. I live by grace. If I'm helping you in anything I say right now, it's only being said by grace. Like, it's not me, but I can so be self-deceived to think, you know what, God, I got this one. Yeah. I'll come to you for the big thing. I got this, and it's just not true, and so I think for me, the challenge in Jesus saying he's the good shepherd is me humbling myself over and over again and recognizing I am a sheep. I need, I need to, I literally can't put on my pants on the right legs. I can't put on my shoes. I can't tie my shoes. I can't do anything that really looks like fruitfulness without the good shepherd. Guidance, protection. All of it. I can't husband, father, friend.

I can't, I can't handle my money. I can't do anything without Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Mm-hmm. And I resist that. Yeah. I mean, I celebrate my independence so much. Yeah. But really, Jesus celebrates dependence on Him, right? And that's where I fall short. Yeah. Yeah. It's really easy to not live in that identity of being a sheep also, because everything in our culture tells us to be independent or be dependent on something completely different. That's right. And dude, I just like imagine you next week seeing like, yeah, I bought a ranch, leaned into what being a shepherd is. I bought a ranch and now I'm going to lead some sheep. But no, for real, like that understanding of what it means to truly be guided by this person who not only knows best for you, but will protect you against all odds. Amen. Right. Yeah. What does he say? He says, I'll lay down my life for the sheep. So we talked about the challenging part. What's been encouraging? How has Jesus shepherded you? What's some real ways that you've been shepherded by Jesus? I was thinking about this a little bit ago. Actually, I was talking to somebody about the idea of being a protector. Yeah. We were talking, we're having conversation about being a, you know, a dad, which is like a whole different discussion. But, you know, I think one of the big roles being a dad is a protector. And the idea of protection is really strange because I know there's so many times in my life that God's protected me from things, either like a decision or a move or a dream or this or that. But then there's also times where I don't know I was protected because I was protected. Right. Like, does that make sense? Totally. My mom used to pray a prayer, protect us from danger, seen and unseen. There's a lot of unseen. I know there have been things that I've seen that I've been protected of. I'm sure there's ten times the amount of things that were unseen where God protected me. And I'm so simple minded or whatever, you know, as a sheep that I don't even know that I was about to walk off a cliff. That's right. Yeah. And he pulled me in and I'm just like, I didn't know that happened. Yeah. It's kind of a wild thought, but it is. Yeah, it is. Mm hmm. Yeah. How about you guys? How's Jesus shepherding you? Or how is he shepherding you right now? I think that's the bigger one. How he's shepherding me right now. It's really easy for me to be like confrontational in the sight of like what I believe might be injustice. And I hope what Jesus is guiding me to see injustice. It's really easy for me to stray away from confronting my own pride, especially as it relates to like my family, whether it's like ambitions and desires and things that I want to do as opposed to ways he's guiding me, whether it's with my career,

whether it's with how our family is living, dying to my wife, things like that. And so I think it's shepherding me to have like be very communicative with my wife in particular, but also just like with my extended family and people who care with me or care about me so much and care about my family so much to just be communicative, like not confrontational, but communicative and upfront and honest and like where I'm at. I feel like Jesus shepherds me thankfully gently with the staff, not the rod. I mean, but he does it through a lot of times through people and, but I have to pay attention. So like I heard somebody talking about another person saying, you know, they're quiet and they don't really say much, but boy, they live a loud life. And that struck me and I was like, Oh, wait a minute. I think, I think there's somebody talking to me right now and recognize like, no, I want to make sure I'm living a loud life. You know, anyway, that's kind of fresh right now. That's cool. I love that. I love that. You know, as we wrap up, it makes me think about, Hey, I love that. Live a loud life. Like, how do you loudly follow the shepherd? Doesn't mean has come from your words, but it does come from your obedience. You know, the invitation is constantly there and what a good sheep does is a good sheep knows the voice of the shepherd and they follow it. And so today in your life, whatever that looks like for you, where are you hearing the voice of the shepherd and what does it look like to follow it so that your life loudly speaks to the goodness of Jesus as a shepherd.