THE THIEF COMES TO STEAL, KILL & DESTROY (PART XV)

“Thieves and Robbers Stealing God’s Sheep”

By Akin Ojumu

A metaphor is a literary device that figuratively compares and equates two things that are not alike. An extended metaphor is a version of metaphor that extends over the course of multiple lines, paragraphs, or stanzas of prose or poetry. Extended metaphors build upon simple metaphors with figurative language and more varied, descriptive comparisons (Source: MasterClass).

The contextual backdrop of John chapter 10 is somewhere in the vicinity of the Jerusalem Temple. Gathered together are three different groups of people. On one side, you have the Lord Jesus and His disciples. Present also are the Jewish religious leaders, i.e., the top echelon of spirituality in Israel, represented by the Pharisees. Then you have the hoi polloi, i.e., the masses of ordinary people milling around and simply following the enigmatic Rabbi and His band of twelve disciples from the boondocks of Galilee.

This powwow is a continuation of the dialogue that began in John chapter 9. The Lord Jesus has just healed the man born blind. Here was a man who had just been set free from a life that, up to that time, had been lived in blindness, penury, destitution and beggarliness. Instead of rejoicing with him and giving glory to God on his behalf, his neighbors and those who knew him were more concerned about knowing how he got healed, who healed him and whether he was ever blind to start with. Perhaps hoping to curry favor with the religious leaders, the neighbors dragged the poor man before the council of religious leaders to snitch on him for getting healed on a Sabbath day.

Far from being empathetic to the poor man who had for forty years languished in blindness and penury, the religious leaders, who were supposed to be shepherds of the people, went ballistic. They lambasted him for not denouncing the Man who healed him and they excoriated him for not renouncing his healing which had occurred on a Sabbath day, a violation of the Tradition of the Elders. After subjecting him and his parents to intensive interrogation, the Pharisees banished him from the assembly of the people. 

Shortly after getting excommunicated, the Lord Jesus went and found him. In this second encounter the Lord, the man received a second healing. While, in the first meeting with the Lord, he was healed of his physical blindness, in the second meeting the Lord Jesus healed his spiritual blindness and the man was saved.

John 9: 35-38

“Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.”

Then the Lord Jesus declared:

John 9:39-41

“For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”

John chapter 10 is a continuation of this dialogue started in chapter 9. The audience remains unchanged. And it’s this crowd that the Lord Jesus addresses using the concept of shepherding in a sustained metaphor. 

John 10:1-5

“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.”

The Lord Jesus employs this particular metaphor about shepherd, sheep, and the sheepfold to teach the audience because shepherding is something that’s familiar to the people. Every single person hearing the sound of His voice is, one way or another, involved in herding of sheep. Nevertheless, they still fail to understand the analogy.

John 10:6

“This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.”

It’s instructive to note that the Lord Jesus starts His remarks with “Truly, truly.” This literary device is often used when someone is stating a first-hand, absolute truth. Here we see the Lord addressing the crème de la crème of the intelligentsia of Israel using a metaphor they are supposed to be familiar with, yet they fail to comprehend what He’s telling them.

Last time, we said that the sheep in the metaphor represents the people of Israel in the immediate narrow historical context. Zooming out, though, the sheep are the people of God at large. It’s a symbolic depiction of those who have Christ as their Lord and Savior and belong to God. The sheep, therefore, is a representation of the saints of God i.e., the whole Church of Christ.

The thieves and robbers in this metaphor are, obviously, the spiritual leaders of Israel represented by the Pharisees gathered around Him. The Lord calls them thieves and robbers because of their cruelty and cold-heartedness as shepherds of Israel. These are people who have illegitimately climbed their way into the sheepfold with the intention of stealing and harming the flock of God. They are thieves and robbers because they are brutal, mean, ruthless, and callous.

To their face, while sitting and standing right in front of Him, the Lord Jesus lets the religious leaders know they are nothing more than thieves and robbers whose motives are impure and whose agenda are unwholesome. In no uncertain terms, he denounces them as blind guides leading the blind. 

Because they honor God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him, they do not know the ways of God and are unable to hear the voice of God. Even though they pride themselves as experts in the Law of Moses, they fail to recognize Jesus as the Messiah about whom Moses and the prophets spoke extensively.

We’ll take it from here next time.