Life to the Full? Men's Bible Study (John 10)

All right, so now welcome guys. Hopefully this one is working. Uh, tried it with OBS, it didn't seem to work so smoothly, so we're going to try it directly with YouTube Studio, see how that goes. We'll check it out afterwards. The idea here is we're going to do a Bible study every night. It's going to be probably about a half hour, maybe not, maybe a little bit longer than that depending on how many people actually are here to ask questions or prayer requests or have dialogue, but for, for the first few, it'll probably be about a half hour. Um, we've been going through the Book of John. Right now we're in John 10. So I'm going to pray, we're going to read the scripture, break it down a little bit, and that'll be it. All right, so Lord, thank you so much for this time. Thank you that we're able to open your word, uh, and just rip it apart a little bit, spend some time with you, come to understand what it is that you have for us. So just be with us tonight, for those that are watching live, for those that are watching later on. I just pray that your word is bread, gives us life, life to the fullest. Your name we pray. So I'm going to read from the ESV. You guys can read from whatever version you want. Hopefully you've got a Bible handy. If not, don't worry. I'll read the passage and we can go back and forth on it. So starting at John 10, verse 1. 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. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. Kind of convenient that they They didn't understand. Give them a lesson, right? So Jesus again said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and he will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the Good Shepherd." The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees. The wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I might take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. There was again a division among the Jews because of these words, and many of them said, he has a demon and is insane. Why listen to him? Others said, these are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind? We're gonna stop there. Uh, chapters in John can be a little bit longer, so we'll just do— we'll do that segment for tonight. Uh, really, this was about me getting this recorded because it's been quite a few nights before I got one down, and I wanted to see how well we could do this live instead of recorded. So, um, again, we're coming back to this idea of those that belong to Jesus will know him. They'll know his voice when he calls them. They know the direction they're supposed to go in. And anybody else who is making a claim that they are the way, the truth, the life is really there to pull and take, uh, and they're the thieves, the robbers that they're talking about. Now, in this instance, it's most likely the Sanhedrin he's referring to. They've been following around, they've been giving him a hard time. It hasn't been a great time for him. So, uh, there's a constant animosity between the two of them, and he's cautioning that these, these Jews that are standing here, these, these Pharisees that are standing here, they, they just don't get it. They don't get what I'm saying because I'm not their shepherd. They don't hear me. He, he again addresses that they've got this idea of the 2 flocks, right? You've got the Jewish people and you've got the Gentiles. And he didn't come for one or the other. He came for both, both of those flocks. But he didn't come for all of them in entirety, just those that hear his voice and hear what he's calling them to do. And when he calls, they come. Um, and it, it really is that simple of If this word resonates, if who Jesus is and what he's done and what he's accomplished in laying down his life for us and, and giving up his life so that we might have life with God, if that is something that resonates, if that's something that you can hear, that's a call that comes to you from the word as you hear it read, there's just, there's value in that because it You hear Jesus clearly. And that's all that Jesus is saying here is, if you hear my voice, if when I call you hear that voice and all you can do is come to it, you belong. You're part of the flock. And that, that's not through anything that you've done. That's just, you know, the shepherd's voice. If anybody else calls you and you don't go, well, that's because they're not the shepherd. And it really makes the whole process that simple. And I know that we often, as churches, as Christians, we want to make it more complicated than that. Well, what about your— how you were baptized, or, or, you know, what type of church you're attending, which denomination you're attending, which Bible version you're reading, um, which hymnal or which psalter are you, are you singing from? Do you do contemporary worship or classic? None of that. We, we tack all of that on as an extra. There, there's value and merit to breaking down some of those things, but That's not the criteria for salvation. The criteria for salvation is simply this: Do you know the shepherd's call? If Jesus calls, do you answer? Are you going to answer? And if you do answer, the promise isn't a promise of pain. It's the desire to give you life and life abundantly. Abundantly. It's not a word that we use very often, but just that idea of abundance, of overflowing, of more than you can possibly imagine or fathom. A life that full. That's the offer. Do you hear him? If so, there's life abundant. Just follow. It's that simple. So I think at this point, I know it's relatively short. We're about seven minutes there, but I want to see how everything kind of works. This is kind of a dry run. In the future, I may do some worship. We'll do longer times of prayer. I may do a longer passage in John where instead of just reading it all and going through it. So if you guys have any. That you would like to see done with this, feel free to let me know in the comments. Just let me know, you know, I, I would like it to be longer, I'd like it to be shorter, this is kind of the area that I'm looking to have covered, we want to go into the Greek maybe. You let me know what you think this should look like in the format because this is new. But very— at the very least, I want to be able to go live every night, open God's word, and hopefully share that with some of you guys. So I'll just close in prayer. Lord, thank you so much for the technology that we've got, that we're able to open the Bible and just speak your word across the globe to people all over the world. And I pray that the men that watch this later, that find this in, in search or find this on their profile, uh, that they're able to open their Bible and just wrestle through John and realize that the promise is there for them. Lord, I pray over them, uh, whatever struggles they may be finding in their life right now, that the promise of life abundant would be a blessing to them. Amen. They would come to know you and pursue you and answer that call. In your name we pray. That's it, guys. I'm gonna try to do these every night, so we'll see how that goes. Hopefully this one worked out. Take it easy until tomorrow night.