Pray to Begin
Ask — that the Holy Spirit would tune your ear today to the voice of the Shepherd, so that among all the voices clamoring for your trust you would know His, and follow.
Give thanks — for a Shepherd who did not flee when the wolf came, but stood between you and it and laid down His own life — not because it was taken, but because He chose to give it.
Yield — the anxious grip you keep on your own safety, and ask Him to let you rest in the truth that you are held in a hand no one can pry open.
Today’s Passage: John 10
John 10 flows directly out of chapter 9, where Jesus had opened the eyes of a man born blind and the religious leaders had thrown that healed man out of the synagogue. Those leaders are the “shepherds” Jesus has in view as He begins to speak — false shepherds who shut out the very sheep God loves. Against that backdrop Jesus draws a picture every listener knew by heart: a sheepfold, a gate, a gatekeeper, a shepherd whose voice the sheep recognize, and thieves who climb in to steal. Then He turns the picture on Himself with two of the great I am sayings of this Gospel: “I am the gate for the sheep” (v. 7) and “I am the good shepherd” (v. 11). The chapter falls into three movements — the parable of the fold and Jesus’ twofold claim to be both gate and shepherd (vv. 1–21), then, months later at the Feast of Dedication, His teaching on the security of the sheep in the Father’s hand, climaxing in “I and the Father are one” (vv. 22–39), and finally His withdrawal across the Jordan, where many believe (vv. 40–42). The full text is quoted block by block in the commentary below.
As you read, hold this: The voice the sheep know, the door that saves, the shepherd who lays down His life — and the hand no one can pry open.
Context The world of John 10
Shepherding and the sheepfold. To Jesus’ first hearers, none of this imagery needed explaining. Sheep were everywhere in Judea’s hill country, and the shepherd’s life was hard, lowly, and intimately known. A sheepfold (v. 1) was a walled enclosure — sometimes a cave, sometimes a stone pen with a single low opening and no door but the shepherd himself. At night several flocks might share one communal fold, watched by a gatekeeper (v. 3); in the morning each shepherd would call, and his own sheep — who knew his particular voice and even his unique calls — would separate themselves out and follow him to pasture. A stranger’s voice scattered them; the shepherd’s voice gathered them. Jesus’ picture of sheep who “know his voice” and “will never follow a stranger” (vv. 4–5) was simply how it worked.
Ezekiel 34 and Psalm 23 fulfilled. Jesus is speaking into a long prophetic tradition. Ezekiel 34 is a blistering indictment of Israel’s “shepherds” who fed themselves and let the flock be scattered and devoured — and God’s promise to step in personally: “I Myself will search for My flock… I will tend My flock” (34:11, 15). Psalm 23 had sung of the LORD as the shepherd who leads, feeds, and walks with His sheep through the valley of the shadow of death. When Jesus declares Himself the good shepherd, against religious leaders who have just cast out a healed man, He is announcing that the long-promised arrival of God-as-Shepherd has happened — in Him.
Laying down one’s life willingly. Ancient shepherds did genuinely risk their lives — David spoke of killing a lion and a bear to rescue his sheep (1 Samuel 17:34–36). But Jesus presses past risking to choosing: “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord” (v. 18). This is not the tragic death of a hero overpowered; it is a sovereign, voluntary self-gift. The cross, in John, is never something done to Jesus that He could not prevent. It is something He does — the Shepherd stepping deliberately between the wolf and the flock.
The Feast of Dedication (vv. 22–23). Verse 22 marks a time-shift of perhaps two or three months and names the setting: “the Feast of Dedication… It was winter.” This is Hanukkah, the festival commemorating the rededication of the temple in 164 BC after Judas Maccabeus cleansed it of the pagan altar Antiochus IV Epiphanes had set up — Antiochus, who had blasphemously styled himself Epiphanes, “God manifest.” The irony is sharp: at the feast that celebrated reclaiming the temple from a man who claimed to be God, the true God-made-flesh stands in “Solomon’s Colonnade” (a sheltered portico on the temple’s east side, a refuge from the winter cold) and is accused of blasphemy for telling the truth about who He is.
The unity claim and the response. When Jesus says “I and the Father are one” (v. 30), the crowd’s reaction is the surest commentary on its meaning: “the Jews again picked up stones” (v. 31), charging Him with blasphemy “because You, who are a man, make Yourself out to be God” (v. 33). His reply, citing Psalm 82:6 (“I have said you are gods”), is not a retreat from the claim but an argument from the lesser to the greater: if Scripture could call mere mortals who received God’s word “gods,” how much less is it blasphemy for the One the Father “sanctified and sent into the world” to call Himself “the Son of God” (v. 36)?
John 10:1–6 (BSB)
¹ “Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever does not enter the sheepfold by the gate, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber. ² But the one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen for his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will flee from him because they do not recognize his voice.” ⁶ Jesus spoke to them using this illustration, but they did not understand what He was telling them.
Coming straight out of chapter 9 — where the religious leaders cast out a man whose only crime was being healed — Jesus draws a picture of two kinds of approach to the fold. There is the one who climbs in some other way, over the wall, in the dark: “a thief and a robber.” And there is the shepherd of the sheep, who comes openly through the gate, whom the gatekeeper opens for. The contrast is between the leaders who have just abused the flock and the true Shepherd who tends it. Notice the tenderness in the picture: “He calls his own sheep by name” — not a faceless herd but named, known individuals — and leads them out. He does not drive them from behind; “he goes on ahead of them,” and “his sheep follow him because they know his voice.” The whole relationship turns on voice and recognition. John adds, almost wearily, that the listeners “did not understand” — the same blindness chapter 9 just exposed, now in those who claim to see.
John 10:7–10 (BSB)
⁷ So He said to them again, “Truly, truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸ All who came before Me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹ I am the gate. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness.
Word study "Gate / door" — thyra (John 10:7, 9)
Greek: θύρα (thyra), pronounced THOO-rah. Strong’s G2374.
Thyra means door or gate — a portal, an entrance, the place of both opening and closing. Jesus uses it of Himself twice: “I am the gate for the sheep” (v. 7) and “I am the gate. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved” (v. 9). In a wilderness sheepfold the shepherd often slept across the single opening, so that his own body became the gate — nothing entered or left except over him. That is the picture Jesus claims: He is not merely a way in among many; He is the opening, the one access point through which the sheep “will come in and go out and find pasture” (v. 9). The word carries a double note of welcome and exclusion at once — a gate lets the sheep in and keeps the thieves out. John’s Gospel will echo the image: “I am the way… No one comes to the Father except through Me” (14:6); and the same imagery of an opened thyra recurs as the risen Christ says, “I stand at the door and knock” (Revelation 3:20).
Since they missed it, He says it plainly: “I am the gate for the sheep” — thyra (THOO-rah), the one opening through which the flock passes safely. He is not one option among many ways in; He is the gate, and “if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved.” The picture of the saved sheep is freedom and provision: “he will come in and go out and find pasture” — security to rest inside and liberty to graze outside, all under the Shepherd’s keeping. Then comes the line that draws the whole chapter’s contrast to its sharpest point: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” That is the entire ambition of every false shepherd and every enemy of the flock — subtraction, death, ruin. Over against it stands Jesus’ purpose, stated in the most generous terms in the Gospel: “I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness.” Not bare survival but abundance; not a narrowed existence but life overflowing its banks.
John 10:11–13 (BSB)
¹¹ I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand is not the shepherd, and the sheep are not his own. When he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf pounces on them and scatters the flock. ¹³ The man runs away because he is a hired servant and is unconcerned for the sheep.
Word study "Good" — kalos (John 10:11, 14)
Greek: καλός (kalos), pronounced kah-LOSS. Strong’s G2570.
Here is a word that quietly transforms the title. English has two main words behind the Greek “good”: agathos (G18), which stresses moral goodness, usefulness, benefit; and kalos, which means good in the sense of beautiful, noble, excellent, fine — goodness that is visible and admirable, the kind that draws the eye and wins the heart. Jesus does not call Himself the agathos shepherd (the merely competent or beneficial one); He calls Himself the kalos shepherd — “I am the good shepherd” (vv. 11, 14) — the beautiful, noble Shepherd, whose goodness is most clearly seen precisely where it costs Him most: “the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” The beauty of this Shepherd is not sentiment; it is sacrifice. The same word describes the “good works” that glorify the Father (Matthew 5:16) and the “good confession” Christ made before Pilate (1 Timothy 6:13) — goodness that shines, goodness worth dying inside of.
Word study "Shepherd" — poimēn (John 10:11)
Four words carry the weight of this chapter — two images Jesus claims for Himself, one adjective that recolors an entire title, and one small word that detonated a stoning.
Greek: ποιμήν (poimēn), pronounced poy-MANE. Strong’s G4166.
Poimēn is simply the word for shepherd — the one who tends, leads, feeds, and guards a flock. But in the Old Testament background this is never only an occupation; it is a title for those who rule God’s people, and supremely for God Himself. When Israel’s appointed shepherds — kings, priests, leaders — fattened themselves and scattered the flock, God thundered through Ezekiel: “I Myself will search for My flock… I will tend My flock” (Ezekiel 34:11, 15). And David had already sung the gentler side of it: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1). So when Jesus says “I am the good shepherd” (v. 11), He is not reaching for a homely rural metaphor. He is stepping into the place the Old Testament reserved for the LORD — the God who comes Himself to do what the hired men failed to do. The same word names the under-shepherds He leaves behind (“Be shepherds of God’s flock,” 1 Peter 5:2), but here it is the Shepherd of shepherds speaking.
Now the chapter’s central claim: “I am the good shepherd” — the kalos (kah-LOSS) shepherd, the beautiful, noble one — and immediately the proof of His goodness: “The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” This is what makes Him kalos and not merely useful: His goodness is cruciform. Against Him Jesus sets the hired hand, and the difference is ownership. The hireling works for wages; “the sheep are not his own,” so when “the wolf” comes, his calculation is simple — the sheep are not worth his life — and “he abandons the sheep and runs away.” The wolf then does what wolves do: pounces and scatters. The whole tragedy of false shepherding is in that one verb — unconcerned. The hireling is not cruel; he is simply not invested. The Good Shepherd is the opposite: the sheep are His own, bought with His blood, and so when the wolf comes He does not run — He stands, and He bleeds.
This is the verse to carry from today — the heart of the chapter, and of the cross:
John 10:14–16 (BSB)
¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father. And I lay down My life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them in as well, and they will listen to My voice. Then there will be one flock and one shepherd.
He repeats it — “I am the good shepherd” — and now opens the knowing at its heart. “I know My sheep and My sheep know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father.” The standard of the Shepherd’s intimacy with His flock is nothing less than the mutual knowing inside the Godhead. That is staggering: the love between the Father and the Son is the pattern of the love between the Shepherd and you. And again the cross is folded in: “I lay down My life for the sheep.” Then a horizon opens beyond Israel: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.” These are the Gentiles, not yet gathered, who will hear and come — “they will listen to My voice.” The goal is unity: “one flock and one shepherd.” Not one fold (one pen, one nation, one set of customs) but one flock (one people of God) under one Shepherd. The dividing walls are coming down; the gate is wide enough for the world.
John 10:17–18 (BSB)
¹⁷ The reason the Father loves Me is that I lay down My life in order to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from My Father.”
Here Jesus guards His death from every misunderstanding. It is not a defeat, not an accident, not a murder He could not prevent. “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.” The cross is an act of sovereign will, not a fate. He has “authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again” — and that double authority looks past Good Friday to Easter morning: the laying-down already has the taking-up in view (“in order to take it up again”). And it is all obedience, not improvisation: “This charge I have received from My Father.” The Son freely gives His life, and in doing so does exactly what the Father commissioned — which is why “the Father loves Me.” The love of the Father and the obedience of the Son meet at the cross, and the sheep are the ones for whom it is all spent.
John 10:19–21 (BSB)
¹⁹ Again there was division among the Jews because of Jesus’ message. ²⁰ Many of them said, “He is demon-possessed and insane. Why would you listen to Him?” ²¹ But others replied, “These are not the words of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”
As always in John, Jesus’ words split the crowd. “Again there was division” — the third such fracture this Gospel has noted. One side dismisses Him with the easiest slander available: “He is demon-possessed and insane.” It is the standard tactic against a claim too large to refute — call the claimant mad. But others will not have it, and they reach back to the miracle of chapter 9 as their evidence: “Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” The healed man’s restored sight is doing its quiet work, dividing those who reason from the evidence from those who reason from their offense. There is no neutral ground here; His message forces a verdict.
John 10:22–24 (BSB)
²² At that time the Feast of Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, ²³ and Jesus was walking in the temple courts in Solomon’s Colonnade. ²⁴ So the Jews gathered around Him and demanded, “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
A time-shift of some months, and a new setting: “the Feast of Dedication” — Hanukkah — “It was winter.” John’s note about the cold explains why Jesus is “in Solomon’s Colonnade,” the sheltered eastern portico. The feast itself celebrated the rededication of the temple after it had been defiled by a ruler who claimed divine honors — a charged backdrop for what follows. The crowd surrounds Him with a demand that sounds reasonable and is really a trap: “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” But Jesus has been telling them — in signs, in I am sayings, in the very shepherd imagery they just heard. The problem is not that He has been unclear; it is that they have not believed. As the next verses make plain, the issue is not information but allegiance.
John 10:25–30 (BSB)
²⁵ “I already told you,” Jesus replied, “but you did not believe. The works I do in My Father’s name testify on My behalf. ²⁶ But because you are not My sheep, you refuse to believe. ²⁷ My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand. ²⁹ My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one.”
Word study "One" — hen (John 10:30)
Greek: ἕν (hen), pronounced HEN. Strong’s G1520 (the neuter form of heis, “one”).
The whole chapter gathers to a point in three Greek words: egō kai ho patēr hen esmen — “I and the Father are one” (v. 30). The crucial detail is the gender. Hen is neuter — one thing, one in essence, one in nature — not the masculine heis, which would have meant one person. Jesus is not collapsing the Father and the Son into a single individual; He is claiming that He and the Father are one in being. This is why the listeners reach for stones: they hear it exactly right. “You, who are a man, make Yourself out to be God” (v. 33). The same numeral runs through the New Testament’s confession of the one God (“God is one,” Galatians 3:20; “there is one God,” 1 Timothy 2:5), and Jesus will later pray that His people might share in that unity — “that they may be one as We are one” (John 17:22). But the unity of verse 30 is unique: the oneness of the Shepherd with the Father whose hand holds the sheep (vv. 28–29).
Jesus answers their demand by pointing to what they have already seen and refused: “I already told you… but you did not believe. The works I do in My Father’s name testify on My behalf.” Then He names the real barrier — and it is breathtakingly direct: “because you are not My sheep, you refuse to believe.” Their unbelief is not a lack of evidence but a lack of belonging. And by contrast He describes His own: “My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me.” What follows is one of the strongest assurances of security in all of Scripture. “I give them eternal life” — a present gift, not a future hope — “and they will never perish.” Then the great negative: “No one can snatch them out of My hand.” And as if to make doubly sure, He adds the Father’s hand to His own: “No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand.” The sheep are held in two hands at once, and the grip is unbreakable. Then the sentence the whole chapter has been climbing toward: “I and the Father are one” — hen (HEN), neuter, one in essence. The unity of the two hands is the unity of the two Persons. The sheep are safe because the Shepherd and the Father are one.
John 10:31–33 (BSB)
³¹ At this, the Jews again picked up stones to stone Him. ³² But Jesus responded, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone Me?” ³³ “We are not stoning You for any good work,” said the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because You, who are a man, make Yourself out to be God.”
The reaction to verse 30 is the truest commentary on it. “The Jews again picked up stones” — they understood Him perfectly. No one stones a man for claiming to be a good teacher or a great prophet; they reach for stones because they heard a man claim to be God. Jesus’ reply has a wounded irony: “I have shown you many good works” — kalos works, beautiful deeds of mercy like the opened eyes of chapter 9 — “for which of these do you stone Me?” And they say it plainly, removing all ambiguity from the scene: “not for any good work… but for blasphemy, because You, who are a man, make Yourself out to be God.” Modern readers sometimes claim Jesus never said He was God; His enemies, standing close enough to throw rocks, had no such doubt. The charge is exactly right; only their verdict on it is wrong.
John 10:34–38 (BSB)
³⁴ Jesus replied, “Is it not written in your Law: ‘I have said you are gods’? ³⁵ If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— ³⁶ then what about the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? How then can you accuse Me of blasphemy for stating that I am the Son of God? ³⁷ If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me. ³⁸ But if I am doing them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works themselves, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father.”
Jesus answers with Scripture, quoting Psalm 82:6, where God addresses Israel’s judges — those “to whom the word of God came” — as “gods,” because they bore His authority. His argument runs from lesser to greater: if Scripture itself (which cannot be broken) can apply the word “gods” to mere mortals entrusted with God’s message, how can it be blasphemy for “the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world” — set apart and commissioned from heaven — to call Himself “the Son of God”? This is not Jesus backing away from His claim; it is Jesus showing the leaders that their own Scriptures leave them no clean ground to stand on. Then He returns to the evidence: “If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me. But if I am doing them… believe the works themselves.” He invites even the doubters to start where they can — with the deeds — and let the deeds lead them to the truth: “that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father.” Verse 30 restated, now with an open door for honest doubt to walk through.
John 10:39–42 (BSB)
³⁹ At this, they tried again to seize Him, but He escaped their grasp. ⁴⁰ Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had first been baptizing, and He stayed there. ⁴¹ Many came to Him and said, “Although John never performed a sign, everything he said about this man was true.” ⁴² And many in that place believed in Jesus.
They reach for Him again, “but He escaped their grasp” — His hour has not yet come, and no one takes His life until He lays it down. He withdraws “back across the Jordan to the place where John had first been baptizing” (1:28), returning to where the whole Gospel’s public witness began. There the chapter ends on a quiet, hopeful note that answers all the stone-throwing in Jerusalem: “Many came to Him.” And they remember the Baptist: “Although John never performed a sign, everything he said about this man was true.” John the Baptist worked no miracle, yet his testimony stands vindicated — he had pointed to “the Lamb of God” (1:29), and here is the Lamb, the Good Shepherd who will lay down His life. The final line is the verdict John keeps hoping his readers will reach: “And many in that place believed in Jesus.” The voice of the Shepherd is still gathering His sheep.
Study notes Going deeper
Five themes carry the chapter, each one a thread John has been weaving through his whole Gospel:
- The Shepherd who knows and is known. The sheep follow because they know his voice (v. 4); the Shepherd knows My sheep and My sheep know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father (vv. 14–15). This is not management but intimacy — a knowing that reaches all the way up into the life of the Trinity.
- The door of the sheep. Jesus is the single entrance — “If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved” (v. 9). Salvation has a door, and the door is a Person.
- One flock, one shepherd. “I have other sheep that are not of this fold” (v. 16) — a quiet announcement that the Gentiles are coming in, gathered into a single flock under a single Shepherd.
- The Father’s hand and the security of the sheep. “No one can snatch them out of My hand” (v. 28) — and then, lest anyone wonder, “No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand” (v. 29). Two hands, one grip; the sheep are doubly held.
- The willing self-gift. The Shepherd’s goodness is proved at the cross: “I lay down My life of My own accord” (v. 18). No one forces Him. Love does.
Three passages stand behind this chapter and are worth holding open beside it:
"For this is what the Lord GOD says: 'Behold, I Myself will search for My flock and seek them out. As a shepherd looks for his scattered sheep when he is among the flock, so I will look for My flock. I will rescue them from all the places to which they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples, gather them from the countries, and bring them into their own land. I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines, and in all the settlements of the land. I will feed them in good pasture, and the lofty mountains of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in a good grazing land; they will feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will tend My flock and make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the broken, and strengthen the weak; but the sleek and strong I will destroy. I will shepherd them with justice.'" Ezekiel 34:11–16 (BSB)
This is the prophecy John 10 fulfills. Every verb God claims for Himself here — search, seek, rescue, gather, feed, tend, bind up, strengthen — Jesus takes up as His own work. The Good Shepherd is the LORD of Ezekiel 34, arrived in person.
"A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want." Psalm 23:1 (BSB)
David’s most beloved line is the seed of the whole chapter. When Jesus says “I am the good shepherd,” He is saying, in effect: I am the LORD of Psalm 23. The rest is gospel detail: this Shepherd does not merely lead through the valley of the shadow of death — He walks into it Himself, and out the other side.
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38–39 (BSB)
Paul’s great crescendo is the New Testament’s commentary on “no one can snatch them out of My hand.” The list of would-be snatchers is exhausted — death, powers, height, depth, all creation — and not one of them can break the grip. The Shepherd’s hand is the love of God in Christ, and it does not let go.
Personal Application
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Knowing the voice. Jesus says His sheep “know his voice” and “will never follow a stranger.” In a life crowded with voices — advice, opinion, fear, the endless noise of a phone — how would you recognize the Shepherd’s voice among them? What practice might tune your ear so that, more and more, His is the voice you know and the stranger’s the one you flee?
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Held in the hand. Jesus promises that no one can snatch His sheep out of His hand, or out of the Father’s. Where are you living as though your safety depended on your own grip — on getting it right, holding it together, never letting go? What would change today if you trusted that you are held by a hand that cannot be pried open?
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The cost of the Shepherd. The Good Shepherd is good because He lays down His life — He does not flee the wolf, He faces it. Where have you been waiting for a “hired hand” kind of love that protects itself, and missed the Shepherd who has already proven His love by dying for you? How does it change the way you face your own fears to know the Shepherd stood between you and the wolf, and won?
Pray to Close
The central truth of John 10: Jesus is the Good Shepherd — the LORD of Psalm 23 and the God of Ezekiel 34 come in person — who is Himself the gate of salvation, who knows His sheep by name and lays down His life for them of His own accord, and who holds them in a hand no one can pry open, because He and the Father are one. Your safety is not in the strength of your grip on Him, but in the strength of His grip on you.
Praise — the beautiful, noble Shepherd who did not run when the wolf came, but laid down His life so that His sheep might have life in all its fullness.
Yield — your anxious self-keeping, and rest in the two hands that hold you; ask Him to teach you to live as one who is safe.
Ask — that the Holy Spirit would so tune your ear to His voice that you follow Him gladly, and that you would believe, with the many across the Jordan, that everything said about this Man is true.
Worship for Today
Psalm 23 (Surely Goodness, Surely Mercy) · Shane & Shane (Faith Displayed, Lyric Video)
There could hardly be a fitter response to John 10 than a sung Psalm 23 — the very psalm Jesus claims for Himself when He says “I am the good shepherd.” Shane & Shane take David’s ancient lines and let them breathe with the assurance of the New Testament Shepherd who has now walked the valley Himself:
“Surely goodness, surely mercy, Right beside me all my days; And I will dwell in Your house forever, And bless Your holy name.”
What John 10 makes explicit, this song carries in melody: the Shepherd who “lays down His life for the sheep” is the same LORD whose goodness and mercy follow His people all their days, whose hand no enemy can break. The refrain “I shall not want” is the rest of the sheep who “come in and go out and find pasture” (v. 9); the “valley of the shadow of death” is the very valley the Good Shepherd entered to take it up again (vv. 17–18). Let it carry the chapter into worship — the LORD is your Shepherd, you shall not want, and no one can snatch you out of His hand.
Listen: