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Nanosermon Script:
We all love to watch a film or read a cartoon about a superhero, one who by his amazing super-human power can save us from crashing cars, falling buildings, villains or aliens.
But do Christians ever think of Jesus like that? Do you? I mean, we’re familar with his miracles. Indeed, maybe we’re too familiar with them. Healing the blind, the deaf, the lame, lepers, raising the dead, walking on water? And Jesus said his disciples would do greater things than those.
But there remains one miracle of our Lord Jesus which none of us can ever replicate. The Lord’s ‘Good Shepherd’ words in chapter ten of the Gospel of John are familiar. But as I show in my nanosermon ‘The Good Shepherd’, as well as being comforting, they are our Lord’s claim to be the divine, messianic ruler prophesied in the Psalms and by the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.
‘I lay down my life for the sheep’
But Jesus does not let it rest there. Let’s pick up the narrative in John chapter ten and verse fourteen:
John 10:14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
Beautiful, comforting words, based on the relationship between sheep and their shepherd in the middle east, even today.
John 10:15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: …
We sometimes miss those words, but they are paving the way for something big,
… and I lay down my life for the sheep.
That, you will recognise as our Lord’s own prophecy of his crucifixion, taking upon himself your sins and mine and allowing the Roman soldiers to nail them with him to the cross. And still he was not finished. The next verse spoke about bringing in the Gentiles, which would have shocked his Jewish listeners:
John 10:16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
The ‘Christ figure’ in film
Then Jesus then said some staggering words about laying down his life. Look at this:
John 10:17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.
He is building this up. Yes, I could lay down my life for others, and so could you. Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends. Or for his family. Literature is full of those who give their lives for others, the ‘type-of-Christ’ character. He’s there in the nineteen-fifties film ‘Shane’, and in the aboriginal guy in the 2008 film Australia who holds off the Japanese so the children can escape. Or in the Magnificent Seven, four of whom lay down their lives for villagers they hardly know. But ‘take it again’? Jesus says of his life:
John 10:18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.
Power over Life and Death
What is that all about? Power to lay his life down, and power to take it again? The Lord Jesus was not just prophesying his death on the cross but also his resurrection. More than that, he was saying he has power over death. He would rise from the dead in his own power.
Only God has power like that. And only Jesus was and is fully God and fully man. You can know the power of the risen Jesus to deal with every problem and every sin in your life. Acknowledge him today as the good shepherd who gave his life so that you might be forgiven and you too can live in victory over sin and in the power of his risen life.
Because, make no mistake, no superhero can help you do that. Nor did any superhero ever have the power not just to lay down his life but to take it again. But of course Jesus was no superhero. He was not a cartoon character. He was and is and ever will be God in the flesh, the only one who ever walked this earth with power over life and death.
SCRIPT ENDS
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