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The Sheepfolds and the ShepherdThe Greatest Man Who Ever Lived
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The Sheepfolds and the Shepherd
JESUS has come to Jerusalem for the Festival of Dedication, or Hanukkah, a festival that celebrates the rededication to Jehovah of the temple. In 168 B.C.E., about 200 years earlier, Antiochus IV Epiphanes captured Jerusalem and desecrated the temple and its altar. However, three years later Jerusalem was recaptured and the temple was rededicated. Afterward, an annual rededication celebration was held.
This Festival of Dedication takes place on Chislev 25, the Jewish month that corresponds to the last part of November and first part of December on our modern calendar. Thus, only a little over a hundred days remain until the momentous Passover of 33 C.E. Because it is the season of cold weather, the apostle John calls it “wintertime.”
Jesus now uses an illustration in which he mentions three sheepfolds and his role as the Fine Shepherd. The first sheepfold he speaks of is identified with the Mosaic Law covenant arrangement. The Law served as a fence, separating the Jews from the corrupting practices of those people not in this special covenant with God. Jesus explains: “Most truly I say to you, He that does not enter into the sheepfold through the door but climbs up some other place, that one is a thief and a plunderer. But he that enters through the door is shepherd of the sheep.”
Others had come and claimed to be the Messiah, or Christ, but they were not the true shepherd of whom Jesus goes on to speak: “The doorkeeper opens to this one, and the sheep listen to his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. . . . A stranger they will by no means follow but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.”
The “doorkeeper” of the first sheepfold was John the Baptizer. As the doorkeeper, John ‘opened to’ Jesus by identifying him to those symbolic sheep that he would lead out to pasture. These sheep that Jesus calls by name and leads out are eventually admitted to another sheepfold, as he explains: “Most truly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep,” that is, the door of a new sheepfold. When Jesus institutes the new covenant with his disciples and from heaven pours holy spirit upon them the following Pentecost, they are admitted to this new sheepfold.
Further explaining his role, Jesus says: “I am the door; whoever enters through me will be saved, and he will go in and out and find pasturage. . . . I have come that they might have life and might have it in abundance. . . . I am the fine shepherd, and I know my sheep and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I surrender my soul in behalf of the sheep.”
Recently, Jesus had comforted his followers, saying: “Have no fear, little flock, because your Father has approved of giving you the kingdom.” This little flock, which eventually numbers 144,000, comes into this new, or second, sheepfold. But Jesus goes on to observe: “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; those also I must bring, and they will listen to my voice, and they will become one flock, one shepherd.”
Since the “other sheep” are “not of this fold,” they must be of another fold, a third one. These last two folds, or pens of sheep, have different destinies. The “little flock” in one fold will rule with Christ in heaven, and the “other sheep” in the other fold will live on the Paradise earth. Yet, despite being in two folds, the sheep have no jealousy, nor do they feel segregated, for as Jesus says, they “become one flock” under “one shepherd.”
The Fine Shepherd, Jesus Christ, willingly gives his life for both folds of sheep. “I surrender it of my own initiative,” he says. “I have authority to surrender it, and I have authority to receive it again. The commandment on this I received from my Father.” When Jesus says this, a division results among the Jews.
Many of the crowd say: “He has a demon and is mad. Why do you listen to him?” But others respond: “These are not the sayings of a demonized man.” Then, evidently referring back a couple of months to his curing of the man born blind, they add: “A demon cannot open blind people’s eyes, can it?” John 10:1-22; 9:1-7; Luke 12:32; Revelation 14:1, 3; 21:3, 4; Psalm 37:29.
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Further Attempts to Kill JesusThe Greatest Man Who Ever Lived
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Further Attempts to Kill Jesus
SINCE it is wintertime, Jesus is walking in the sheltered area known as the colonnade of Solomon. It is alongside the temple. Here Jews encircle him and begin to say: “How long are you to keep our souls in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us outspokenly.”
“I told you,” Jesus replies, “and yet you do not believe.” Jesus had not directly told them that he was the Christ, as he had told the Samaritan woman at the well. Yet he had, in effect, revealed his identity when he explained to them that he was from the realms above and had existed before Abraham.
Jesus, however, wants people to reach the conclusion themselves that he is the Christ by comparing his activities with what the Bible foretold that the Christ would accomplish. That is why earlier he charged his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. And that is why he now goes on to say to these hostile Jews: “The works that I am doing in the name of my Father, these bear witness about me. But you do not believe.”
Why do they not believe? Because of lack of evidence that Jesus is the Christ? No, but for the reason Jesus gives when he tells them: “You are none of my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them everlasting life, and they will by no means ever be destroyed, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is something greater than all other things, and no one can snatch them out of the hand of the Father.”
Jesus then describes his close relationship with his Father, explaining: “I and the Father are one.” Since Jesus is on earth and his Father is in heaven, clearly he is not saying that he and his Father are literally, or physically, one. Rather, he means that they are one in purpose, that they are at unity.
Angered by Jesus’ words, the Jews pick up stones to kill him, even as they had earlier, during the Festival of Tabernacles, or Booths. Courageously facing his would-be murderers, Jesus says: “I displayed to you many fine works from the Father. For which of those works are you stoning me?”
“We are stoning you, not for a fine work,” they answer, “but for blasphemy, even because you, although being a man, make yourself a god.” Since Jesus never claimed to be a god, why do the Jews say this?
Evidently it is because Jesus attributes to himself powers that they believe belong exclusively to God. For example, he just said of the “sheep,” “I give them everlasting life,” which is something no human can do. The Jews, however, overlook the fact that Jesus acknowledges receiving authority from his Father.
That Jesus claims to be less than God, he next shows by asking: “Is it not written in your Law [at Psalm 82:6], ‘I said: “You are gods”’? If he called ‘gods’ those against whom the word of God came, . . . do you say to me whom the Father sanctified and dispatched into the world, ‘You blaspheme,’ because I said, I am God’s Son?”
Since the Scriptures call even unjust human judges “gods,” what fault can these Jews find with Jesus for saying, “I am God’s Son”? Jesus adds: “If I am not doing the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I am doing them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, in order that you may come to know and may continue knowing that the Father is in union with me and I am in union with the Father.”
When Jesus says this, the Jews try to seize him. But he escapes, as he did earlier at the Festival of Tabernacles. He leaves Jerusalem and travels across the Jordan River to where John began baptizing nearly four years earlier.
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