"You do not believe, because you are not of My sheep" Wednesday of Judica 2026

25. March 2026
Wednesday of Judica
John 10:22-38

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

It is winter in Jerusalem. John tells you it is winter the way a man tells you the weather when he wants you to feel it in your bones. The Feast of Dedication — Hanukkah, the feast of lights — and the temple courts are cold. Jesus walks in Solomon's Porch, and they close in on Him. "How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly."

They want a declaration. But what they will do with it, they have already decided.

This is not the first time. They picked up stones not long ago, when He said, "Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58). That attempt failed. Now here they are again — same crowd, same hatred, same stones warming in their hands. They have not come to hear. They have come to confirm what they have already chosen to believe about Him.

And yet He answers them. He is patient in a way that should unnerve you, because patience like that is not weakness but mastery. He tells them, "I told you, and you do not believe." The problem is not a lack of evidence. The problem is not ambiguity. They have seen His works. They have heard His words. The testimony is complete. What they lack is not information.

They lack faith. And they lack faith because they are not His sheep. Stop there for a moment. Because that sentence — "you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep" — has a way of making people nervous. It should not make you nervous. It should make you honest.

We live in a world that has decided the most dangerous thing a man can do is draw a line. Distinctions are taken to be cruel. To say that some believe and some do not, that some are in the hand of God and some are not, that "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12) — this is now considered the unforgivable offense. Churches have bent themselves into pretzels trying to avoid saying it. They have fused Christian vocabulary with Jewish piety, or Buddhist warmth, or whatever decent morality happens to be in season, and called it love. But it is not love. Christ alone is love. No, it is cowardice dressed up as compassion.

Jesus does not do that. He looks at men who have seen His works, heard His voice, stood in His presence — and He says: You are not My sheep. But when Jesus says it, it is never cruel. It is the most honest thing anyone has ever said to them. The door is not locked from their side. But they will not come through it.

And here is where we must be careful not to use this text as a mirror in which we admire our own faith.

You are not better than these men by virtue of yourself. You are not in the hands of God because you figured something out that they missed, or because your piety is more consistent, or because you show up to midweek Lenten services. "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6). That includes you. That includes me. The wandering is not something others do.

And wandering is rarely dramatic. We want to imagine that apostasy looks like a sudden leap — Hosanna on Sunday, Crucify by Friday. But that is not how it works. The buildup to Crucify was slow. Premeditated. A long, patient, incremental choosing of unbelief — thought, then word, then deed. The heart wanders by inches. You stop hearing His voice, not in a moment of dramatic rebellion, but in a season of quiet neglect. The Scriptures go unread. Prayer becomes perfunctory. The neighbor you are commanded to love becomes the neighbor you are too busy to notice. "You shall not hate your brother in your heart" (Leviticus 19:17) — but the grudge sits there, small and warm, and you tell yourself it isn't really hatred. You are just being realistic.

This is the warning in today's text. Not just, look at what unbelief looks like in others. But, see that such an unbelieving heart does not overtake you also. Because it can. Because it has. And this is why you need something more than a moral inventory and a resolution to do better.  You need a Shepherd.

Listen again to what He says — not to His enemies, but to His sheep: "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand. I and My Father are one" (John 10:28–30).

This is the word that silences every fear. Every enemy outside you and every enemy inside you. Not even your own wandering heart can remove you from what He holds you in. That is not a license to wander — but it is a promise that when you do, when you have drifted and are brought very low and have nothing to offer, but the wreckage of your own faithlessness, the hand that holds you does not open.

He is not holding you because of what He sees in you. He is holding you because of what He has done for you. This Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. Not for the sheep who performed adequately. For the sheep who went astray. "The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6).

The cross is coming. You can feel it gathering through these weeks. Every story this season — the plotting, the stones, the thickening opposition — it is all converging on Jerusalem, converging on one man walking steadily toward it. No one takes His life from Him. He lays it down. For sheep who wander. For sheep who sleep in Gethsemane. For sheep who deny three times before the rooster finishes crowing. For you.

"Deal not with us after our sins; nor reward us according to our iniquities" (Psalm 103:10). That prayer — the church has prayed it across generations in exactly this season, in exactly this week — is not wishful thinking. It is faith looking at the cross and knowing that the answer is already secured.

They picked up stones to stone Him. And He answered them with patience and Scripture and logic and love. They sought to arrest Him, and He escaped from their hands — because His hour had not yet come. And when His hour did come, He did not escape. He went to it. He was consecrated and sent into the world for this. To be numbered among sinners. To make satisfaction for everything you have wandered into.

You are not in His hand because you are a good sheep. You are in His hand because He is a good Shepherd. Hear His voice. Follow Him.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin