How Far Love Must Go!

John 10:1-18 -- 6-15

The headline cheered: "He gave the ultimate."
The subheading explained: "Hero passes up rescue line so others can survive the crash."
Pictures of the amazing rescue attempt dominated the front page.

Here's what happened:
An Air Florida plane taking off in Washington, D. C., on January or team, 1982,
clipped the 14th Street Bridge and pummeled into the ice-clogged Potomac River
carrying 76 of its passengers to their deaths.

When the rescue helicopter arrived, and threw down its flotation devices,
the rescuers could spot only six survivors.
Each time they tossed a line, the man who called it passed it on to others, helping them to escape.
When the rescuers returned for him after carrying the others to safety, they were too late.
He had already slipped beneath the freezing waters.

A paramedic on the scene said that he had never seen such commitment in anyone.
He called him a true hero.

Why did he do it?
He did not even know his fellow victims, yet he laid down his life for them.
His remarkable heroism made the headlines because this was not normal behavior.
Your so-called "average man" would have thought to be the first one out of the water,
instead of gallantly offering his place to others.

This man's chivalry seems like something out of a nobler era.
He acts almost like the Good Shepherd Jesus describes in John 10,
as the one who gives everything to protect his sheep.
They seem to be worlds apart, don't they, this hero in the Potomac
and the gentle Shepherd in faraway Palestine?
But in this one thing, they seem to show that they knew how far love must go.

No matter what words you use to describe them, victims trapped in surging waters
or sheep endangered by thieves or careless hired hands, their plight is the same:
they need to be rescued.
They cry out for somebody who will love them enough to lay down his life to save them.
That's how far love must go.

As Jesus tells of the Good Shepherd, it isn't only natural disasters like crashes and floods
that threatened His people (the sheep).
They are victimized by thieves and robbers who will sneak in among them to steal
and kill and destroy.

He probably has the false prophets and false messiahs in his mind who were going around
Palestine in His day, exploiting people's fears and hatred -- just as they do now.
The safety of the sheep is also threatened by the hired hands.
A hireling is on the job for his pay.
He doesn't love the sheep, but he loves the pay he receives.
The sheep provides him the opportunity to earn his pay by tending them.

If any real danger comes up, he'll be the first to run off and leave the flock to their doom.
It could be that Jesus is thinking of the religious leaders, men who should make the welfare
of their flocks the most important priority in their lives -- but don't.

John Milton thought so.
In the 17th century, the poet heaped scorn on traditional clergymen.
In his estimation they were nothing more than hired hands.
He called them, "blind mouths," ignorant men more concerned with feeding their bellies
than caring for souls in their flocks.

By contrast, Jesus is the Good Shepherd.
He knows His sheep, and He protects them at all costs, even at the cost of His own life.
In a wonderful metaphor, He calls himself, Shepherd, (verse 11)
and the gate of the sheepfold. (Verse 7)

Picture this scene:
At night the shepherd leads his flock to the protected enclosure.
He stands at the gate to inspect each sheep as it enters, looking for scratches or wounds.
He anoints the wounds, waters the thirsty, and gives comfort to the sheep by his presence.
Then, when they are counted and safe, he lies down to sleep across the doorway
so that no one can leave or enter without disturbing him.

In his sleep as well as in his waking hours, he does everything for their sake.
The Good Shepherd gives His all on behalf of the ones He loves.
In the Bible, Jesus is called both Shepherd and Lamb. (1 Peter 5:4; John 1:29, 36)
Both names remind His disciples that the Lord of Love sacrificed himself for our sakes.
No matter how we define love, our definition must finally include sacrifice in its meaning.

He taught us by the way He loved us, and that when you truly love someone, you give all.
You are prepared to lay down your life for your beloved.
To love is to do!

The poet, Rilke, wrote in a letter to a young friend:
"For one human being to love another ... is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks,
the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all of the work is but preparation."
If he is right, and he is, it is because love gives everything, or it isn't love.

This is what John Oxenham means in these often-quoted lines:
"Love ever gives, --
Forgives -- outlives, --
And ever stands
With open hands.

And while it lives
It gives.
For this is Love's prerogative --
To give, and give, and give."

And this is love's only prerogative.
It must not be confused with our ordinary acts of charity.
It is much tougher, as Jack London points out:
"A bone to the dog is not charity (love).
Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog."

Love gives its all!

We are more accustomed to the easy morality of looking out for "Number One".
We expect a person to do whatever he has to do to save his own skin.
We really don't expect him to give his all for anybody.

Yet, Jesus insists on a life of love and a love that sacrifices, as a Shepherd sacrifices for his sheep.
When you read all that Jesus had to say -- you will notice that Jesus says so little about religion
and so much more about love.
To be His disciple is to love one another -- to love as He loves.
And that means sacrifice.

"I lay down my life for the sheep."
"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
That is what love does -- it offers itself so that another may fully live.

To love is to pay the price.

Jesus has already told us the price of love.
It costs everything.
Hired hands may run for cover, thieves may attack and steal,
but the Good Shepherd stays and sacrifices.
The cross of Jesus symbolizes the love of God in action.
Jesus gave everything because God's love was ready to pay the price to save the ones He loved.

It is also the price that the Lord of Love expects His disciples to pay. (John 15:12)
We can't love each other if we have an attitude like hired hands.
We must adopt the spirit of our loving Shepherd toward all who we genuinely love.

Have you read Tolstoy's mammoth novel, "War and Peace"?
The silent partner of Tolstoy in the writing of that novel was his wife.
When he was working on the novel, he would scratch out his rough draft by day,
then in the evening, after his wife had put their child to bed and the confusion of the day
had settled, Mrs. Tolstoy sat down at her table and, by candlelight, made clean copies of his rough drafts.

She had to work for hours to translate his scribbling into a legible text.
Then the next day, he would more than likely hand the same sheets back to her,
covered with his corrections, some of them so small she had to have a magnifying glass
to read them.
Her son,Ilya, said in later years that she recopied most of the mammoth novel seven times.
Can you imagine how difficult that was?
Yet she never complained.
She was, in her own way, sacrificing herself for her husband's career.
She loved him, so she paid the price.

We must understand the intensity of love's dedication.
The object of the lover's affection may seem unworthy to an uninterested observer,
but that doesn't take away from the fact that love pays the price.

Now let's take a closer look to what Jesus has in mind.
Most of us in our day and age have trouble picturing the shepherd and his sheep out in the country.

Think about a teacher of a London school in the second World War who, during an air bombing attack,
shepherded (that is the proper use of the word) all his children into the safety
of the schools shelters.
Then, going back one more time to make doubly certain that no one had been left behind,
he was hit by a bomb and killed.
He laid down his life for his sheep.
He loved them.

What that teacher did for his students, Jesus did for the whole human race.
His love is so comprehensive, so all-inclusive, that we could never grasp its dimension.
The words of Isaiah should enable us to understand it a little more:
"Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are held." (Isaiah 53:4-5)

Paul summarizes the life of Jesus when he writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21:
"God made him [Christ] who had no sin to be sin for us,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

The writer of Hebrews explains that "Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins
of many people." (Hebrews 9:17)
So, the cross looms before us as the instrument by which Jesus took into himself the poison
that was killing us, so that through His agony, we could live.

Some years ago, I read of the work of Dr. Claude Barlow, who exhibited a rare example
of the love of science and of people.
Dr. Barlow had gone to Egypt, where one half of the country's 19 million people were suffering
from a dread disease caused by tiny parasitic worms called flukes.

From the irrigation ditches of the Nile, he scooped up some snails that were infested
with these flukes and saved them, and was bringing them to America to study them
in his laboratory.
When he arrived, custom officials refused to allow him to bring them in.
They were too dangerous.

So, what should he do?
For without lab studies, all his efforts up to this point would be in vain.
Yet he couldn't carry the flukes into the country.
Then it dawned on him that there was one way, and he would do it.
He hid them in his own stomach -- he swallowed them.

He also paid the price.
His pain was excruciating, just as it was for the Egyptians.
He suffered as they had suffered.

The only relief he could get was from injections of tartar emetic, which left him nauseated
for eight months -- just as it did the Egyptians.
Dr. Barlow made his body the laboratory to find a way to bring healing to the Egyptians.

Remember what Isaiah said: "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows…"
This is the price that love pays.
There is no love without sacrifice.
Love gives it all.

"Amazing love, how could it be,
That Thou my God, would die for me?
The one whose sins, nailed You to the tree;
Amazing love, how could it be?

Who else but You Lord, robed in divinity,
Would put on the filthy rags of humanity?
Who knowing no sins would become sin;
Put on its likeness, to save all men.

Chorus:
Nobody but You, Lord,
Nobody but You;
This is something Lord,
Only You can do,

Who else but You Lord, having a hundred sheep,
And one of them ran away from Thee?
Who'd leave behind, the ninety-nine,
Then rejoice more over, the one that He find?

Nobody, nobody, nobody,
nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody,
nobody but You, Lord.

God's amazing love,
God's amazing love.
-- Written by- Jerry Mannery & David R Curry Jr

Sermon adopted from several sources by Dr. Harold L. White