In this sermon, Greg challenges us to open our minds up to the idea that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, speaks to his sheep. This means that God speaks in a way that we can hear and follow him to the cross. Greg then explains the way that the voice of God works and how we can learn to listen. 
John always emphasizes the Lamb at the center of the throne where the transcendent God sits. The slain Lamb defines God to the core of God’s being. However, the image here is surprising because the Lamb becomes the shepherd who cares for his people. This passage echoes Psalm 23. This sermon focuses on the role of the shepherd in our lives, specifically on hearing the shepherd’s voice and what that means.
The first thing to recognize is that the voice of Shepherd will lead us to the cross. It was common to depict leaders as shepherds in the Ancient Near East, but never as simultaneously shepherd and slain little lamb. Jesus said in John 12:31-33: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. There is a double meaning here to “lifted up.” It simultaneously conveys death and exaltation. To follow the Shepherd’s voice will mean going in the direction of other-oriented love. This is a general principle that we must remember about hearing God’s voice.
The second thing is to acknowledge that we have a relationship with the Shepherd who wants to lead us in specific ways, and thus speaks to us. We need to look at a couple of passages from John 10 to hear Jesus’ words on this matter:
The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. (John 10:2-4)
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. (John 10: 14-15)
The Shepherd is always speaking to the sheep, and he calls them by name. He knows us personally, and the sheep know the voice of the Shepherd. There is an intimate familiarity that the sheep have for the Shepherd. When the Shepherd speaks, the sheep listen and respond.
The entire New Testament teaches that God not only hears us when we talk to God, but also God speaks to his people through his indwelling Spirit. We see the same thing in the relationship between Jesus and the Father in John 5:19 and John 12:49. Jesus sensed the voice of the Father, not necessarily an audible voice as if he was listening to another person. Jesus usually heard and saw God in the same way we hear and see God: in our imagination. Jesus had an intimate relationship with the Father in his imagination. In the church tradition, this is called the inner sanctuary, the place where our spirit encounters the divine.
This is challenging for us today because we are conditioned to distrust our imagination and to assume every voice in our head is our own voice. We think in terms of a secular mindset. Thinking about God or talking to God involves taking a break from our otherwise atheistic lives. We step out of our secularized default to go to church, and then we return to our secularized default.
We need a total reframe. We need to imagine that our Shepherd is always speaking to us, trying to lead us to nice waters, encouraging us, correcting us, pointing out opportunities to serve.
There are three things that we can do to hear the Shepherd’s voice. First, validate your imagination. We must accept, by faith, that our imagination is not just “make believe” but a God-given portal by which we can access the spiritual dimension. We need to acknowledge that if your heart is seeking God, some of what transpires in your imagination may originate not in your own creativity, but in God. Not everything that we imagine is from God, but we need to open ourselves up to the possibility of God speaking to us in our own inner voice.
Another thing is to ask this question: If perfect love were to have anything to say to me, what would perfect love say? Or think about this: What would perfect love have me to do? This can help us get in the right frame of mind, a mind that looks to the cross as the guidepost of what God’s prompting looks like.
Finally, invite the Good Shepherd into your thought processes. Start talking to Jesus in conversational ways and make space to reflect and listen. This can open up your inner sanctuary to the voice of the Shepherd.
The Shepherd is always guiding us, his sheep. When we attune our ears to hear, we might be surprised by the way that he leads us to be a blessing in this world.
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A great sermon, Greg, on the imagination and how God can speak to us through it. Some time back I stumbled upon a podcast entitled “Finding God with the Poetic Imagination”, an interview with Malcolm Guite (an English poet, Anglican priest, acedemic and theologian) on the Nomad podcast. This podcast is along the same theme of the Sunday sermon where Malcolm makes the point that with the coming of the Enlightenment the rational took precedence over the imagination and, as a consequence, we are all the poorer for it in the search for truth. Well worth a listening to: https://www.nomadpodcast.co.uk/malcolm-guite-finding-god-poetic-imagination-n154/
Graeme thank you I knew nothing of Malcolm Guite.
If you go to YouTube and in the search enter Malcolm Guite you will bring up numerous videos.
This one caught my attention:
Imagination and Truth – Iain McGilchrist in conversation with Roger Wagner and Malcolm Guite
Malcolm opens with: Lewis, in the 1920s at Cambridge before this conversion, living this poem:
“The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast
On the one side a many islanded sea of myth and poetry
On the other a gleam and shallow rationalism
Nearly everything a loved I believed to be imaginary
Nearly everything I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless”
On Dan’s sermon “Antifragile Faith” I made a comment ending with:
“Our opportunity to live like Jesus, [to give our life away], the Way of the Cross, while we’re still on the road is slipping away, and anything other than following on this narrow path of wisdom, in the fruit of the spirit, must one day be left at the gate and as Dan said not a lobotomy someday, by God, but our own willingness to suffer the loss.”
In another lengthy comment:
At the beginning of time, quark confinement, just after .00001 of a second, for every 10 billion pairs of quark and anti-quark collisions there was 1 extra quark, equaling the tiny fraction, making up the majority of the ordinary matter masses of the universe (protons, neutrons) with electrons a remaining fraction 1/1,835.
In an earlier, PLANCK ERA, time before .00001 GOD set the FINE TUNING elements in place, so the only thing left after the beginning of time was THE WAY BACK illuminated by RUACH animating energy.
Consider ALL the QUARKS, replaced by the 10 billion to 1 PHOTON ratio, still reside in HEAVEN where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
From the sermon “We Are Family”:
“We are not just all members of the same fan club; we’re actually members of one another. We belong to one another. We have more than just shared interests. We actually have a shared life and a shared love and a shared calling and a shared purpose.” ~Bronwyn Lea
Our next now moment starts in our imagination and TRUTH can only be found, through the Power of the Holy Spirit, with a vision of true reality found in Heaven NOT via photons of light emulating a Matrix illusion.
Greg wrote a book about that “Escaping the Matrix”
Albert Einstein famously stated that “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one,” suggesting that our perception of reality is NOT an absolute TRUTH but rather a CONSTRUCTED EXPERIENCE based on our five senses and interpretations thereof based on, as Greg would say, the limited 5 to 9 chunks of Soul driven meaning our avatar flesh body can focus on at any given: [a perception illusion].
When Jesus returns Heaven will NOT need photons of light just the Power of the Holy Spirit.
We will get new bodies NOT made from a stardust illusion but the real stored QUARK stuff in Heaven.
As far as wealth and status goes it will be the results of the plus TRUTH versus the minus LIES that we have lived. [ALL we ever took with us] Revelation 22:14-17
From the above: It appears from the Lewis poem your Imagination can take you to truth and lies depending on which hemisphere of the mind is in control.
From my prior comment: Clarity from the Biblical story perspective.
Quark anti-quark collisions caused annihilations resulting in photons. Interesting every PARTICLE has an ANTIPARTICLE. – [TRUTH LIES WARFARE?]
Revelation 12: 4 7-9
From verse 4: The dragon’s tail swept a THIRD of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. [Consider a THIRD, including EVENTUAL HUMANS, plants and animals, were also CAST OUT]
And there was WAR in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was CAST OUT, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceived the whole world: he was CAST OUT into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. [The fall of the Prince of MATTER leaving it behind]
Isaiah 14:12-15
How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart, “I WILL ASCEND TO THE HEAVENS; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”
But you are BROUGHT DOWN to THE REALM OF THE DEAD, to the DEPTHS OF THE PIT.
From Romans 9 — Note: presented as two questions to be considered
What if God, ALTHOUGH CHOOSING to show his WRATH and MAKE his POWER KNOWN, BORE WITH GREAT PATIENCE the OBJECTS of his WRATH—PREPARED FOR DESTRUCTION?
[Consider God’s GREAT PATIENCE being setting FINE TUNING the WAY BACK in place PREPARED before the WARFARE starts].
What if he did this to make the {RICHES} OF HIS GLORY known to the OBJECTS of his MERCY, whom he PREPARED IN ADVANCE FOR GLORY [the two thirds left in Heaven with ALL the quark MATTER] — EVEN US, whom he ALSO CALLED, NOT ONLY from the JEWS BUT also from the GENTILES?
[The ALSO CALLED implies not from the two thirds left in Heaven but from the third fallen – OBJECTS of his WRATH]
From Romans 11 For GOD has BOUND everyone OVER to disobedience [the third fallen that is] so that he may have MERCY on them ALL.
EVENTUAL HUMANS:
Unless you REPENT [that is, change your inner self—your old way of thinking, live changed lives] and BECOME LIKE CHILDREN [trusting, humble, and forgiving], you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Children explore the world around them innocently, full of curiosity, trust and wonder, until they come to a boundary bordering on territory potentially dangerous. That’s when parents should step in to help them discern what is GOOD for them or NOT “Eat your vegetables” or “Don’t eat your crayons”.
Judging the difference between what is good for children and what is harmful is an essential skill to learn to grow up healthy. Judging shortcomings of another is NOT. If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
Greg – REPENTING of Religion: When we judge others negatively, we stand in the place of God. We leave the proper domain given us, with its vocational description to be God-like in love, and we move to the center to carry out a job that belongs only to ONE who rightly occupies the CENTER.
[It appears it’s only a short matter of time until this CAST OUT/BROUGHT DOWN BOUND OVER world will take children’s IMAGINATION to LIES – ORIGINAL SIN].
Greg’s TRITARIAN WARFARE THEODICY: (1) Our love must be freely chosen, (2) love therefore entails risk, (3) this risk constitutes our moral responsibility, (4) and therefore our potential for morally responsible goodness must be proportionate to our potential for morally responsible evil.
From the end of my prior comment “It appears from the Lewis poem your IMAGINATION can take you to TRUTH and LIES depending on which hemisphere of the mind is in control”.
It also appears as we pursue spirit wisdom good there is a shadow archetype (4), our flesh, with a proportionate potential for morally responsible evil that we need to CRUCIFY/NUDGE forward PRAYING for God’s help moment by moment. Kind of like the Lord’s PRAYER: “Give us this day our daily bread” least we club each other over the head, in a race, competing for it.
A COSMIC DANCE WARFARE FACT: The 1 actual partial of mass (matter) for every 10 billion photons of energy, quarks, DANCE inside protons and neutrons in the nucleon both ATTRACTING and REPELLING within a range of a quadrillionth to one ten trillionth of a centimeter by exchanging color within themselves via gluons (the strong FORCE) or between each other via pions (the nuclear FORCE) and this happens every .0000000000000000000000023 (10-23) of a second.
So what music are we dancing to? Should it slow down to a Waltz?
Greg has a (5) the power of influence is irrevocable. [The potential for morally responsible evil can NOT be taken away]. However we can Follow JESUS, [as the CENTER], CRUCIFYING our FLESH by ATTENDING to our CROSS.
ATTENTION is the beginning of a devotion to what shapes who you become and the amount of love, joy, and peace cultivated in your life. Self-righteousness is a lack of attention [self-awareness]. The more aware I am of the things God has yet to change in me [my planks], the less offended by and uncomfortable I will be with what God has yet to change in someone else. We get uncomfortable when others’ beliefs, dysfunctions, insecurities, or sin differ from ours – however people who were nothing like Jesus liked him because Jesus was comfortable among us and he invites us to follow.
A DIVINE CONSPIRACY – The KINGDOM of HEAVEN is like a FATHER who SENDS His SON DISGUISED as MUSTARD SEED which over time by the POWER of the HOLY SPIRIT PERVADES the COSMOS.
Greg made a comment that our UMWELT MATRIX, the visible Light that we see 760 – 380 nm, is only .0035% of the ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM.
Consider when we get our new bodies with ALL the quark MATTER stored back in Heaven, a 10 billion to 1 enhancement upgrade, just maybe a full spectrum upgrade will also come.
Interesting even though we have a limited UMWELT MATRIX spectrum, by following JESUS by the power of the HOLY SPIRIT on the path of WISDOM, over the course of time, we have discovered radio, microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma rays.
GOOGLE: Can we create new senses for humans? | David Eagleman – UMWELT MATRIX upgrades
When Jesus returns (6) the power of influence is finite. [THE REALM OF THE DEAD, DEPTHS OF THE PIT and LIES will ALL be tossed in the lake of fire].