The Gospel of John

Enemies In and Out of the Church

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 33- 70

Genre:

Track: 033

Dictation Name: RR197T35

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man who trusteth in Him. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we come again into Thy presence. We know how great our need is, how great is Thy care and Thy providence. We know also oh Lord how frail we are and easily disheartened. We come to Thee knowing that Thou art all wise in Thy wisdom. Minister unto us that which is needful, govern us by Thy will, teach us to wait on Thee and make us ever joyful in what Thou dost give for Thou art more mindful of us than we are of ourselves. Our God we thank Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is John 10:7-16. Our subject: Our enemies, in and out of the church. John 10:7-16.

“ Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.

8 All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.

9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

12 But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.

13 The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.

14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.

15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.

16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”

In verse seven as in verse two our Lord says that He is the door of the sheep. As we saw last week this is a reference baffling to people today but it was once well understood. A shepherd out in the hills or mountains would in some cultures bed his sheep down at night in a stone corral. The stone walls were high enough to keep out local predators such as wolves, coyotes, bears, cougars and lions. The entrance into this stone corral was a narrow one wide enough only for the shepherd to spread out his bed roll. He literally was the door to the sheep. They could not enter except over his body or exit except over his body. Now here in [unknown] counties there are three such sheep corrals, one on 128 and one on 59 as you go towards [unknown]. Our Lord tells us that as long as we stay on His corral in His care we are safe from predators. We can go and come in the security of His care. Now our Lord thus repeats in effect what He said in the previous six verses but then our Lord goes on to describe by various terms some of the kinds of persons whose concern with the sheep with Christ’s people may not be good. These are the wolf, the thief or robber and the hireling. First the wolf’s only purpose with respect to the faithful is to destroy them, they are his prey. Christ’s flock is seen therefore as exploitation and the wolf’s purpose is openly evil. Implicit in what our Lord here says is the warning not to trust ourselves to evil men, to human wolves.

If our trust in Christ is at all abated we will trust in men who are actual or potential wolves. This is a lesson the church has not always been willing to hear. One of the things that I think is remarkable about some of the medieval churches and cathedrals is that the builders actually had wood carvings depicting a wolf in the pulpit and the people listening gullibly. These verses over the centuries have had a powerful impact but are neglected in our time. The world outside of our Lord is not neutral, it has no good will towards Jesus Christ nor towards us for that matter. It believes not in salvation but in self-fulfillment at the expense of others. One of the interesting things that happened after about 1860-70 in the United States was that the whole attitude towards the ministry whether among Protestants or Catholics began to shift. The shift was from a calling to a profession. And what has taken place in recent years especially is that seminaries whatever their church affiliation are all training professionals. They openly talk about this without any awareness of what they have done. There is a gap between a professional and the patients he cares for. Dentists and doctors are professionals but the pastorate harks to another kind of model. The word pastor means shepherd, it is to be a ministry, a care.

Now one of the things I quickly realized after I went from seminary to an Indian reservation was that cowboys despised shepherds. They regarded as them low, very low class. Why? Because they lived on the ground level with the sheep. They were on a sheep wagon where they were constantly day and night available if there was a cry to care for the sheep whereas the cowboy rode among the cattle looking at them from a lordly vantage. It is totally impossible to relate the two kinds of work. It is interesting however that it is rare for a cowboy to get anywhere in the world. He’s a drifter, very often he becomes a cowboy because he’s an alcoholic. He will be out for six months or twelve months depending on where he is working deep into the mountains caring for the cattle when he is supposed to, doing the haying, but always looking down on the cattle as he rides among them, and when he gets his time off whether at the end of six months or twelve he takes his check and goes into town and blows it. He cannot save it and I’ve never known one who did. There must be one or two someplace who saved what they had but I recall once being on the mail truck and boarding it at [unknown]. I’d come down some time before to go somewhere on a trip and there were these two cowboys who got on at [unknown]. Now they were headed back, very, very woebegone and hung over in their appearance. And the one had no memory of what he had done so he turned to the other and said ‘tell me Joe did I have a good time?’ He didn’t know.

But some of the finest sheep ranches in the whole area, in southern Idaho and northern Nevada were in the hands of shepherds, sheep herders, who had come here from the Bask country or Greece with little more than the clothes on their back and had saved everything and had become some of the most important people in the area. A totally different point of view. So our Lord calls Himself not the good cowboy but the good shepherd. The whole world of the shepherd and the sheep is a different one. Then second our Lord tells us beside the wolves there are the thieves and robbers. These are many and the appeal of the flock is the possibility of self-enrichment. By calling Himself the good shepherd our Lord contrasts Himself to all careless ones, men whose care for the sheep is lacking. The animal enemies of the sheep are predatory creatures and neither the sheep nor the good shepherd are predatory. To become a Christian means from one perspective to be disarmed. The most common weaponry used against the Christian is slander, lies, misrepresentation and deceit. Against these things the Christian can only respond with honesty and truth. And these are of little interest to the ungodly. We thus face the fact that many people want to believe evil of us because we are Christian. And the more our faith offends them the more they will speak evil of us. And the church has often had thieves and robbers within its leadership. Then third, our Lord speaks of the hireling. Someone who is working essentially for the money. He is an under shepherd who is in with the sheep without any sacrificial concern for them.

I saw a great many hirelings when the war broke out in the inner mountain country. The reason was because of the need of wool automatic deferments were given to anyone who became a shepherd, a sheep herder. And a great many young fellows immediately gravitated to sheep herding but after one or two months they were out of the hills begging the draft force to take them. It is hard work! You are your own cook, your baker, you do your own mending, there is nothing that you do not do. If an old ewe has two lambs then you have to bottle feed one or find a ewe that has lost its little lamb and you take and cut a strip of its skin and wrap it around the little lamb that has no one to feed it. Well, a hireling is an under shepherd who is in it just for the money. The care he gives is careless and at the sight of danger he flees or he protects himself rather than the sheep. Because of his unwillingness to risk anything in the sheep’s defense the hireling becomes an implicit ally of the wolf or of the robber. Consider the position of a shepherd if a wolf or a bear comes into the fold. Now he cannot fire readily because he’s liable to hit one or more sheep and even more the gunshot can scatter all the sheep all over the mountains. He’s got to deal with that in a different way, in a more dangerous and a more difficult war. Because of his unwillingness to defend or to risk anything in the sheep’s defense the hireling becomes an implicit ally of the wolf or of the robber. Then fourth by way of contrast Jesus Christ, supremely the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and am known of mine.

As the Father knoweth me even so know I the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep. Here our Lord tells us that he and the Father have a common nature but because Jesus Christ is the incarnate one not only very God of very God but very man of very man, He also knows us not only as His sheep but as fellow members of the new human race. His complete knowledge of us has its consummation in the completeness of his atoning sacrifice. We do not share Christ’s deity but by His perfect humanity and by His atoning and regenerating work He makes us His new creation. We are members of His humanity, not deity, and in Him we are linked eternally to the Father and to the new creation. Lest His followers see the true sheep or the true new humanity only in Jewish terms our Lord states emphatically then that He has other sheep which are not of this fold, not of Judea, all over the world. These He shall bring in so that they will be one flock and one shepherd under Himself. Now the translation of the bible is faulty at this point in almost every version because the translators are scholars and not shepherds. And where sheep are concerned a fold is a small group, a portion of the flock which is the sum total. A flock can number hundreds or thousands. The fold is a small group that a boy or some elderly man is leading around in the hills. Now this clearly sets forth the premise that the church is much more than one national or racial group. Other sheep I have He says. The basic premise of unity is not in the common origin of the members but in Jesus Christ.

There is no evil in a church which is German, Italian or Jewish in its membership. The evil begins when the church is limited to such a group. The membership of the church is not defined by the people but by Jesus Christ. Very early there were those who attempted to limit the church in terms of Judaic antecedence and these groups perished. Since then many like nationalistic definitions have been current and their failures are notable. This tells us that the danger to the church is greater than the hirelings, the false shepherds, the wolves, the thieves and the robbers. The danger exists and includes all Christians who want to place their limitations on what is not theirs because they are Christ’s property, not His overlords. Thus the otherwise devout believer can become as dangerous as these alien threats if he tries to erect his prejudices into barriers not of Christ’s making. Our Lord as we have seen last week does not compliment us by calling us sheep. Sheep are foolish and stupid animals, blind followers and devoid of the ability to keep themselves clean. Our Lord’s parable tells us what we are and also that there is protection if we follow Him faithfully. Jesus Christ alone defines the church, not man, and all manmade definitions of the church are an implicit warfare against Him. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that Thou art He who dost define Thy church even as Thou made us in the beginning and defined us and has remade us into new creations and again defined us. Teach us to look to Thy word and to Thy definition of ourselves so that we rely on the strength that Thou hast provided and look not to ourselves but unto Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice and there shall be one fold, it should be one flock. The use of fold in the first instance is correct, in the second instance it should be replaced with flock.

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] What?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] They are different words, yes, but you see if you assume they are just different words for the same thing you will use the same word. Any other questions or comments, yes?

[Question] In sixteen when it says and one shepherd does that refer to the triune God, or in this case is Jesus Christ who is the good shepherd and then it’s his responsibility…[Rushdoony interrupts]

[Rushdoony] Yes. He is referring to Himself. He is the good shepherd and therefore all those who are truly His and hear His voice shall be in His flock and He will be their own shepherd. You remember you saw last week that the sheep know the Shepherd’s voice and that’s all important. So this is why our Lord repeats this fact of hearing His voice. A great many people may claim to hear His voice but they have another meaning in what they say they have heard and it’s not His voice they’re listening to. Any other questions?

Well as you can see in these verses our Lord is using the idea of the shepherd and the sheep most tellingly and He will return to this because later on in verse twenty seven He says again: ‘My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me’ and the previous verse He says ‘but ye believe not because ye are not of my sheep as I said unto you’. Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Oh no.

[Unintelligible Question Continues]

[Rushdoony] Well that was not altogether uncommon. It is interesting that this particular wood carving was really part of the pulpit. I have a picture of it somewhere in my library. Now, the builders of the church often did things like that as a reprimand or as a warning to the priest because if you were looking up at a high pulpit and on the front of it you had a wolf carved preaching to a congregation that’s going to put some sober thoughts into the minds of the people and of the preacher. Well if there are no further comments let us conclude now with prayer.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy word. We thank Thee that Thou art the good shepherd. Day by day enable us to trust totally in Thee and to know that Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper I shall not fear what man may do unto me. How great Thou art o hLord and we thank Thee. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.