Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Makes Jesus the Good Shepherd? | The Gospels | John 10:1–21

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

What if your standing with God didn't depend on how well you're holding on to him? What if your weakness didn't disqualify you? And what if all Jesus asks of his sheep is that they know his voice? In today's episode, Keith shares how John 10:1–21 points us to the Good Shepherd whose goodness—not ours—is our greatest security. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: John 10:1–21

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. In July of 2005, in a village in eastern Turkey, a flock of sheep was out grazing while the shepherds sat down to have their breakfast. While those shepherds ate, one of the sheep wandered over to the edge of a cliff and walked off of it. That sheep fell to its death.

Now, you would think that would be a warning to the rest of the flock, right? It wasn't. The next sheep walked off the same cliff, and then the next one. one and the next, and one after another, almost 1,500 sheep walked off the edge of that cliff. By the time the shepherds could get back to do anything about it, around 450 of those sheep were dead at the bottom. And the only reason the rest of them survived is pretty grim. The pile of bodies at the bottom grew high enough that the sheep jumping off later had something soft to land on. 26 families lost their flocks that morning. We use the word sheep as an insult,

don't we? We call somebody a sheep when we mean that they're a mindless follower. They have no will of their own. They're just going along with the crowd. And that morning in Turkey is exactly why. Because left to themselves with no shepherd watching and no voice worth listening to, sheep will follow each other right off the edge of the world. They will follow each other to death. Here's what I want you to sit with. The Bible's favorite picture of you and me is sheep. And it's not because we're cute. It's because we wander. It's because we're defenseless. We will follow the crowd straight over a cliff, which means the single most important question of your life is not, am I a good enough sheep? The most important question of your life is,

whose voice am I following? Who is my shepherd? Do I listen to him? And into that question, Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. Now, I want us to think about that word good, because we throw it around so casually that we might miss what Jesus is saying here. When Jesus says he's the good shepherd, the word he uses isn't the one that would mean something like morally decent. No, it's the word that means beautiful or noble or genuine, the real thing as opposed to a counterfeit. So the question of this whole passage isn't, is Jesus a competent shepherd? The question is, what makes a shepherd beautiful? Let me show you three things about the shepherd from John chapter 10. He was promised, he dies for his sheep, and he keeps his sheep. First, the good shepherd was promised. When Jesus calls

himself the good shepherd, he is not reaching for some random sentiment. image, he's claiming a title that God had been promising for centuries. When you go back through the Old Testament, you'll find God's people being described as a flock. They are waiting for their shepherd. In Psalm 23, which is maybe one of the most famous chapters in the whole Bible, it says, the Lord is my shepherd. Well, notice who the Lord is. It's God himself. In Isaiah chapter 40, it says God tints his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart and gently leads those who have young. Do you hear the tenderness in that passage? God is the shepherd who carries his sheep. But then there are lesser known passages about shepherds like the one in

Ezekiel chapter 34. In that chapter, God is furious at the shepherds of Israel or their leaders. His complaint is that the leaders have fed themselves off the flock, that they took the wool, the milk, the meat, and they let the sheep wander off and get scattered and get eaten by wild animals. They didn't pursue them. They didn't protect them. They used the sheep instead of caring for them. And God says, enough, I will search for my sheep. He says, I will rescue them.

And he makes a promise. He will set over them one shepherd. And he calls that shepherd, my servant David. Now, if you've been under a leader, maybe even a religious leader, who used you, or who was in it for what he could get out of you, or who vanished the moment you actually needed him, then hear this. God saw that. He was angry about that.

and the promise running all the way from the Old Testament to the new is that one day God will be the shepherd, the good shepherd. So when Jesus stands up and says, I am the good shepherd, what he's actually saying is that the weight is over, I am God, I'm the one who's come to shepherd you. And notice, notice that the flock doesn't summon him. The flock didn't organize a search party and go find the shepherd. No, the shepherd came looking for them. That's the shape of grace every single time. God comes seeking us. The second point, is that the good shepherd dies for a sheep. Let's go back and think, what does it mean that Jesus is a good shepherd? What is it that makes this shepherd beautiful? Jesus tells us, and he says it twice in this passage. First in verse 11, he says, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And then just a few

verses later in verse 15, he says, I lay down my life for the sheep. I want you to stop and feel how strange that was to the people hearing it. Everybody in the crowd who heard Jesus' teaching assumed that a good shepherd was the one who kept the sheep alive and kept himself alive in the process. I mean, that was basic competence. That was shepherding 101. A shepherd who dies is a shepherd who failed. But Jesus takes the word good and he fills it with something nobody expected. He says the beauty of a shepherd, the thing that makes him the real thing and not a fake, is that he gives his life for the sheep. He puts his life in danger for the sake of protecting the sheep. And in this case, he's willing to die for the sheep. The goodness of this shepherd is measured by the cross. But also

notice what he does not say. He doesn't say the good shepherd has good sheep. His goodness is not a standard. He is holding over his flock, daring them to measure up. His goodness is a gift. He's pouring out his gift of goodness on the flock. He is good. He is good. He is good. He is good. He is toward bad sheep, toward wandering sheep, toward cliff jumping sheep, sheep who keep listening to the wrong voice, ignoring his voice. And this is why the message, try harder to be a better sheep, is always wrong. If you're standing with God depends on the quality of your performance, on how well you followed, on how rarely you've wandered, on how good you were, then you would still be lost. You'd be at the bottom of the cliff with the other sheep. The entire point is that the

goodness you need is not in you. It's in him. And it is spent for you. He brings the wandering sheep home by dying for them. And don't miss this. He did it on purpose. In John 10, he says, no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. The cross is not the shepherd getting cornered by the wolves and losing some great fight. No, the cross is the shepherd deliberately stepping in between the wolf and you. He puts his body in the the gap and he did it on purpose. Remember Isaiah said that the shepherd gathers the lamb in his arm and carries them close to his heart. That's not a shepherd driving the weak ones to keep up or get left behind. That's the shepherd carrying the ones who could never make the journey on their own. And the cross is

him reaching down and picking up the whole helpless flock. Finally, the good shepherd keeps his sheep. Because a good shepherd doesn't just rescue you once and then leave you to fend for yourself. No, he holds on. He watches over his flock. A few verses later, Jesus says it outright. He says, they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. Your security is not in the strength of your grip on him. If it were, you would lose him every day. No, your security is the strength of his grip on you. I want you to see how important this was to the first Christians. When the early church buried their dead, and during waves of persecution, they would bury their dead in underground tunnels in Rome that we call the catacombs, and they painted pictures on the walls of the catacombs.

And of all the images they could have painted of Jesus, the one they reached for more than almost any other, was not a throne, it was not a judge, it wasn't even a cross. It was a young man with a single sheep slung across his shoulders carrying it home. Think about that. Surrounded by the bodies of people that they had loved and lost, the early church chose to paint the shepherd, the shepherd carrying the sheep. because they believe that's what death actually was, being carried at home. And that's where the whole Bible is heading. Hebrews calls Jesus the great shepherd of the sheep, the one who is raised from the dead.

Peter calls him the chief shepherd who will reappear. And at the right hand in the book of Revelation, it says the lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will lead them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. The lamb who is slain is the shepherd who reigns. The one who died for the sheep is the one who leads them home and wipes their faces dry. So you do not make yourself good enough to be one of his sheep. No, he's the good one. He's the good shepherd. So stop grading yourself as a sheep. Stop taking your own spiritual temperature every morning to see whether you've earned a place in his flock. Your safety rests on his goodness, on his cross, on his grip, not your performance.

Second, let him carry what you can't. The lambs in Isaiah, they don't keep up. They get gathered up. So bring him your life, all that you cannot carry on your own. In other words, bring him your whole life. Your weakness and your willingness to take that weakness to Jesus is exactly what sheep should do. And then finally, face your own death the way those Christians in the catacombs did. Not as someone wandering toward a cliff in the dark, hoping that you've been good enough,

hoping that you don't fall, but as sheep who belonged to a shepherd, who already went through death, and is strong enough to carry you all the way through it. He's still speaking, and he's still calling, and the only thing he's ever asked of a sheep is that you know his voice and follow him home. He's the good shepherd, and you are his, and in him you will never perish. Amen.