This sermon was preached on Sunday 11th May 2025.

John 10:22-30

I’ve been on my own this weekend. Cecily has been away at a retreat weekend with a church prayer group. So, it has just been me and the dog, our little Aslan. 

Aslan, our yellow Labrador, lives up to his namesake in many ways. He is extremely loving and friendly. He always brings you joy and loves to play. However, unlike a lion, he is no alpha and is more on the anxious side. But he is very fluffy and gives great cuddles. So, he has got everything you could ever want with a dog. We love him so much. He is our son. Are there any other dog lovers here who can relate to this? 

For anyone who has spent any time with a dog, one of the things that you notice is that they are very loyal to their family. Aslan will follow me around the house, regardless of what I am doing. If I am sitting at the desk writing some emails, he comes and sits under the desk. If I am in the kitchen cooking dinner, he comes and lies at the kitchen door with his blanket. If he has been asleep, and he hears me move or speak around the house, he comes straight away to find me. Dogs are very responsive like that. You think, ‘But you were asleep!’ But any movement or word from me and Aslan is there. Dogs are so responsive. 

I mention all this because when I call Cecily on the phone while she is away from home, Aslan is so alert to recognising her voice that even through the quiet digital tones of the phone speaker, he can tell it is Cecily. Often, he starts looking for Cecily and heads to the front door to see if she is about to come in. Aslan knows Cecily’s voice so well that even with the most gentle whisper, he can tell it is her. 

Human beings can have this sensitivity too. Think of being in a crowd of people. Perhaps you are at a concert, a football match, or in a busy shopping centre. You might be surrounded by dozens or even hundreds of people, yet your ear can pick out a familiar voice without even trying. You pick out your friend who is also at the same concert, a few rows back. You hear your supervisor from work in the checkout line at the other end of Tesco. You don’t plan to hear them. You don’t leave the house telling your ears, ‘Now listen out for anyone we might know.’ That would be a bit weird, nor would it make any difference. You recognise that other voice without trying. It’s an instinctive, subconscious response. The real question here is, how are we able to do this?

It’s because it is familiar. The reason you can pick out a familiar voice from a crowd of strangers is that you have heard it so many times that your brain has ingrained and memorised that voice, along with the pauses, intonations, accent, and everything about how they speak. Think about how you could pick out the voice of your spouse, your parents, or your child. You know their voice without questioning it because you have heard it thousands of times. You have practised hearing and recognising their voice. That is why you can do it. I used the word practice very deliberately. It is through practice, through repetition again and again, that we come to know a thing, person, action, fact, skill etc. 

Think about the skill of learning to drive. Think back to your first car. I learned to drive in a grey Nissan Micra. When you first learn to drive, you are trying to hold so many different things in your head. You need to hold the steering wheel, with both hands at 10 and 2. But you also need to be able to change gears, and you need to be able to do that without looking down at the gears, which also requires an awkward foot dance with the three pedals. The clutch is important, but you don’t really understand what it does. There’s a lot of technical stuff going on, and this is just inside the car. In addition, you need to be looking all around you: up front, left and right; use your mirrors to check the back and both sides, and then bend your head round to check the blind spots. There is so much to do when you drive; it is a wonder that anyone manages to do it. Yet, I know that most of you this morning grabbed your car keys from the side, sat in your car, started the engine, and drove here without giving it a second thought. 

What changed? What took this overwhelming task to an everyday skill that you do unconsciously. Practice. It is through practice and accurate repetition that we develop muscle memory and mental coordination to do all the steps required to drive a car. We have practised so much that we don’t even need to tell our bodies to change gear, check the mirrors, or turn the steering wheel thirty degrees on the bend. Our bodies are so thoroughly trained with each step that it does it for us before we even think about it. That is what practice does. It turns conscious action into unconscious action.  

At the start, I mentioned that Aslan can pick out Cecily’s voice even through a whisper over the phone. How? It’s because he has practised listening to Cecily. He has heard her voice a thousand times over. He learns to listen and respond to her voice and instructions. He can do it instinctively without even thinking because he has practised listening, recognising and responding to Cecily’s voice. Dogs unconsciously recognise their master’s voice. It is the same with a lot of animals.      

Similarly to dogs, sheep recognise the voice of their shepherd. Through the day in and day out experience of being with their shepherd, listening to them, and responding to their voice, they come to know the voice of their shepherd as an instinct, the same way Aslan knows Cecily’s voice, or we might know the voice of a spouse or a parent. Nowadays in our modern world, people tend not to know as many shepherds and shepherdesses, but many of us have seen this relationship lived out with dogs and other domestic animals. 

In our gospel scene (I bet you were wondering when I was going to get to that), Jesus is in Jerusalem at the temple for a festival. Whilst he is walking around the temple, the crowds come to him and ask: 

‘“How long are you going to keep us in suspense? Tell us the plain truth: are you the Messiah?” Jesus answered, “I have already told you, but you would not believe me. The deeds I do by my Father’s authority speak on my behalf; but you will not believe, for you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”’^[1]

The crowds want to know if Jesus is the Messiah. Is Jesus really the Son of God? But Jesus pushes back at them, saying, I’ve already told you, yet you still don’t believe me, and the reason you don’t believe me is because you are not my sheep. 

Last week, Jesus instructed Peter to take care of his sheep. The sheep that Jesus is referring to is the same sheep in this passage. The sheep are his followers. We’ve spoken already about how dogs follow their masters, and similarly, sheep follow after their shepherd. It is what they do. Jesus is saying to the crowd, if you really followed me, if you truly took the time to listen, and spend time with me, then you would know who I am without having to ask. The sheep know the voice of their shepherd because they practice every day listening to their shepherd, and it is through the repetition that they know their shepherd’s voice without question. 

The crowd in Jerusalem weren’t devoted followers. They weren’t interested in spending time with Jesus and getting to know him. They just wanted a quick answer. But that isn’t how being a sheep works. That isn’t how you truly know who the shepherd is. You have to spend time with them, get to know them, and then you know them so well, it is unmistakable to you who they are.

We do this in our own families and friendship circles. We know our families and friends so well that we can often guess what they are thinking. I can often anticipate when Cecily needs a cup of tea (and which kind, because she likes her herbal teas), or I can tell what she might have on her mind without asking. It’s not through mind-reading that I know these things. But it’s because I have practised getting to know her. It’s through the repetition of being with her day in and day out for months and years that I know these things unconsciously without even thinking. I just know. Familiarity breeds recognition. 

My question for us, and the question that our Bible reading offers, is: Are we practising spending time with Jesus? Is Jesus familiar to us? Like sheep who know the voice of their shepherd, like Aslan can detect Cecily’s voice over the whisper of a telephone, do we know Jesus’ voice in that way? If we are called to be Jesus’ sheep, Jesus’ followers, then part of that is learning to know his voice, and the only way we do that is through spending time with Jesus. That is how we get to know him and his voice without even thinking. 

The crowd didn’t want to get to know Jesus, who he was and learn to recognise his voice. They just wanted a quick answer. You could criticise the crowd and think, ‘How could you?’, but when we look at our world today, we see that people are just the same. How many people want quick answers on Google rather than taking the time to know or understand something? How many people switch jobs every six months without taking the time to get to know and grow in a career? How many people numerically know more people than ever before, yet know no one intimately? It’s the reality of the world we live in. We can be impatient and unwilling to take the time again and again to get to truly know something or someone. But all that happens is that people fall into the same trap of the crowd in Jerusalem and miss what is staring them right in the face because they never took the time to listen and discover who Jesus is.  

If we are to be Jesus’ sheep, we need to be different from the crowd. We need to practice following Jesus, spending time with him and listening to his voice. 

That’s all very well, but what does it look like in practice? Well, for starters, it looks like what most of us are doing now. We turn up to church each week to come and worship Jesus; we come to gather in his presence. We come to hear the words he said that we have recorded in the gospels. However, following Jesus is not limited to coming to church on a Sunday. Sheep don’t spend one day with their shepherd and then say ‘see you later’ for the rest of the week. They spend time with them daily, and likewise, we too must spend time with Jesus daily. It is through daily praying, reading our Bible, worshipping God in our words, actions, work, rest, and our whole lives that we come to know him more.      

Aslan knows Cecily’s voice because he spends hours with her every day. I know what Cecily is thinking half the time because I spend hours with her every day, which is how I know who she is. That is how I know her voice and her mind. And that is how we, as sheep and followers, come to know the voice of Jesus. This becomes possible only through consistent repetition. It gives you the familiarity to know that if someone told you that Jesus robbed a shop, you would know it is untrue. How? Because you know that is not who Jesus is. That is not in keeping with his character. We know that his voice wouldn’t say that. This kind of intimate knowledge doesn’t happen overnight, but it is through repeating it each day, through following Jesus and spending time with him consistently, that we come to know his voice as his sheep. 

Have a look at your own life. Are you spending that time with Jesus like a sheep does with their shepherd? If you are, that’s great, but if not, then know that Jesus, our great shepherd, is longing to spend time with his sheep. He wants to spend time with you, know you and love you. Will you be his sheep?

Amen. 

I’m running the Cardiff Half Marathon on 5th October to raise money for Barnardo’s, who do amazing work to help children find a loving home. If you are able, please sponsor me via the link here. Thank you so much. Shakeel ❤️

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^[1] John 10:24-27 [GNB].