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“Christ’s
Voice”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: John 10:22-30
“My sheep hear my voice. I
know them, and they follow me.”
DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS, we are the sheep of Jesus Christ.
We know, in our unique ways, when to hear and recognize Christ
speaking to us in our lives. Yes,
there are certainly times when we ask questions.
Often, our questions come from our lack of understanding, and we
wrestle with what we are to believe and hold onto in certain times.
We may need to hear more, from God, of what we are to hold onto.
This morning’s passage will help us with this, because before
we are told what (i.e. who) we are to hold onto in our faith—our deep
beliefs about Christ—we may hear Christ telling us what God holds onto
and what Christ holds onto in His faith: which are you, and me, and our
eternal life. No evil power
or painful influence can take this out of the hand of God. What we may
fully believe in, is our eternal life in Jesus Christ.
Sometimes, because a lot of pressure of religion might be placed upon
us, we have concerns about our success, based on how genuine, or even
how perfect our faith is. Much
of what is taught and preached to us, even in church, often makes it
seem like our outcomes are based primarily on how we believe, or how we
pray based on our faith, or our Christian actions, all rooted in
perfectly, proper, correct orthodox faith.
This is laying the power of the hand upon us.
The power of the hand, religiously, is often placed on us, and we
are not shown that God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ hold you and
me, and our eternal lives in their hand.
They are holding us in their hand.
When a child is becoming a toddler, starting to learn how to walk, and
is practicing on stairs with her Grandmother, walking up and down the
stairs, holding hands with her Grandmother, does her safety come from
her holding her Granny’s hand, or is her security grounded in her
Grandmother’s hand wrapped around her own hand?
We all know the answer to that question.
What we need to know is that God holding us in his hand is
totally parallel. We will not loose our eternal life because our heavenly
Father has us, whom He has given to Jesus Christ, in his hand.
Likewise, we are not to doubt our eternal life because we see
imperfections in our own faith. God does not save us because of our faith; God, in Jesus
Christ, saves us because of the faith of Christ Jesus.
Anything that helps us to hear this truth is the voice of Jesus
Christ.
In The Letter of Paul to the Romans, he wrote: “But how are
they to call on the one in whom they have not believed?
And how are they to believe in one whom they have not heard?
And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?”
In the passage we just read this morning from John, Jesus tells
these certain Jews, whom he knows do not believe in him and who are
testing him that they do not believe because they are not his sheep.
And then Jesus goes on to say, “My sheep hear my voice.
I know them, and they follow me.”
This passage is not meant to be supportive of hyper-Calvinism election,
saying that these Jews were not of the elect, because only the elect
will recognize Christ’s voice. These
Jews are not Christ’s sheep at this moment of their lives.
Nevertheless, it is not our place to label them as never being
brought into Christ’s flock.
What comes first, the chicken or the egg?
What comes first, believing in Christ, or hearing the voice of
Christ?
Those two questions are also parallel.
I do not know the answer, but I do know who comes to you first;
and that is Jesus Christ. He
comes to you before you even come to yourself or to God.
We, as Christians, are the sheep of Jesus Christ.
We hear his voice. This
means that we recognize the reality and the presence of Christ in our
lives, before we actually listen to hear what he is telling us. When and
where do we recognize the voice of Christ?
Christ gets our attention in many areas and aspects of our lives.
When our prayers are answered in certain ways, we then know that
Christ is speaking to us.
I went to a seminary that was Reformed in its theology and Presbyterian
in its polity, but it was not a seminary directly connected with the
PC(USA), our denomination. There
are other reformed, Presbyterian denominations, and actually in,
Reformed Theological Seminary, where I went, there were only two or
three of us who were in the PC(USA).
One of our graduation requirements was that we were to do either a
full-year internship within a church, or two summer internships during
our full-time school years. Seminary,
to receive the Master of Divinity degree for ministry is three full
years of residence education, so I wanted to do my two summer
internships during my three years. This educational situation was, again, that most of the
students were with the PCA, which is a spin off of the mainline
denomination that we are in. I
was baptized in our denomination. I
believed God led me here. And
I wanted to minister in this denomination.
But, I was in a school that was primarily connected with another
denomination and I needed to find a way for internship.
I knew this was going to be difficult.
On Saturday mornings, I had a number of student friends, with whom I
gathered together for a time of prayer.
We did what is done during prayer times; we each shared concerns
in our lives and other’s lives and then we came together and prayed
over what was mentioned and what came to our minds as we were praying.
I had told them about my concerns regarding my internship
possibilities, and so we prayed about this in our Saturday morning
prayer time. On Monday
morning, I went to the church ministry office at the seminary to talk to
the secretary about my situation, to see what I need to do to find an
internship.
When I told her that I was in the PC(USA) and that I need to find an
internship situation in this part of the church.
Her response was “Wait ‘till you hear what I have to tell
you. We had one who
graduated from here about four years ago who was also in the PC(USA) and
he just called this morning telling us that the church he pastors is
seeking to support a student needing internship in the PC(USA).”
I contacted him, for the next two summers I did my internships with him;
we became brothers in Christ and my first church ministry was near the
church I did my internship in.
The answer to the prayer was the voice of Christ.
And I believe he was telling me: “I want you in this
ministry.”
There are others types of experiences we have in our lives of faith:
blessings during worship, Christian thoughts as we are reading or
meditating, times when God’s peace is at work in our hearts, important
circumstances changing in our lives, and changes we may take in how we
perceive certain things. And
as each of these happen, what we know is that they have come into our
lives as gifts from God. We
recognize them as the voice of Christ.
The next thing we do in our faith orientation, is that we then begin to
listen to what is told to us through the certain events and situations.
One aspect of the voice of Christ in your life is what Christ
brings to happen in your life. Then
you go to him, and God the Father, in the Holy Spirit, and seek from
them what God wants you to learn, to hear, to know and believe.
Christ does tell us very specific things in our lives, but they are all
under the same theme, we have been given the gift of eternal life in
Jesus Christ, from the love of God the Father, in the power of the Holy
Spirit, and our eternal life is in the hand of God.
Nothing can snatch us out of the hand of God.
Let us pray…
Amen
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