Transcription 11 of 12 – Freedom from Divination
I want you to open your Bible with me and we’re going to go into John chapter 9. Thank you again musicians, you are amazing: just play for hours and hours. We must give them a clap and appreciate them. Wonderful.
Ok. We’re going to pick up in the sheepy passage where we were the other day. We’re going to pick up in John chapter 10. We’re going to pick it up at verse 27 and 28. Now, when we were looking in this passage, we saw that Jesus represented Himself as the shepherd, and people are like sheep. So I hope a number of you heard that, and now I’m going to just take up this next part of it.
Jesus said in verse 27: “My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me. And I give to them eternal life, they shall never perish neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.”
So notice what Jesus says – 3 things. “My sheep know my voice. They know my voice.” One thing I found when we had a pet sheep, it quickly recognised my voice. Something unique about sheep is they can recognise the voice. So what Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice.” He says: “And I know them.” Notice what He’s saying here about relationship. He says: “I know them, and they follow me.”
Everyone is following something in life. You’re either following the fashion, following the crowd, following the TV, following the media. People are following something. We often don’t even realise it, that there can be pressures on our life that cause us to follow. We tend to want to be with the crowd, just like sheep, they like their social, they like to be together.
Notice what Jesus said: “My sheep can hear my voice.” In other words, He said – if we’re following Christ, one of the keys of following the Lord is the ability to hear His voice. Now, there are many voices in the world, many voices pressing on you, wanting your attention, wanting your money, wanting your heart. Many many voices. God has designed us that we live out of relationship with Him. We are spiritual beings, we have a part of us which is spiritual. We need God to fill that.
So in the absence of that, we’ll find something else. We can listen to the voice of people, or we can be listening to the voice of evil spirits. If you’ve been listening to the voice of people or evil spirits, God wants you today to listen to His voice, and to respond to His voice. He makes a promise that if we follow Him, we won’t live in darkness, we’ll have life, His life in us.
So Jesus extends an invitation to every person to follow Him, to make a decision at some point in their life: that we’ll stop being led by sin, stop being led by the crowd, stop being led by demonic spirits, we’ll make a decision to follow Him. Jesus says: “Follow Me. Whoever follows Me won’t be in darkness, but they’ll have the light of eternal life.”
In many people today, there is a darkness in their life – a darkness of bitterness and hatred; a darkness of anger and unforgiveness; a darkness of sin of all kinds. The Bible says God’s kingdom is a kingdom of light. The kingdom of the devil is the kingdom of darkness. So, Jesus makes this promise – if we follow Him, our lives will become full of light, we begin to shine, we begin to look different, speak different, live different. He says: You won’t walk in darkness.
In other words, God says, as you walk with Him, as you follow His leading, the Spirit of God will help you address and get rid of the darkness in your life. The darkness of hurts and angers, of grief and bitterness and disappointment.