John Bytheway: 00:01 Welcome to part two with Dr. Jenet Erickson. John 7 through 10.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 00:07 Here’s this chapter nine where we start out with this, Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth, and his disciples asked him saying, “Master, who did sin, this man or his parents?” And you just read in those questions, here is that world belief that suffering is punishment and that suffering would not exist at all if someone, you, me, the blind man, the blind man’s parents, Adam and Eve, whoever, hadn’t deserved to suffer in the first place. So, they’re clearly from that frame of mind that suffering is a just punishment, that suffering is an accusation from God. And here, the Savior just answers, “Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest.” What a story. It just cuts through like a two-edged sword into the truth.

John Bytheway: 01:02 Following up with what we just talked about, these themes of light and water, what’s going to happen with this man who lives in the dark because he’s blind? What’s going to happen? Light and water, here they come.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 01:18 At the Pool of Siloam, no less, right?

John Bytheway: 01:18 It all ties in. Mm-hmm.

Hank Smith: 01:20 Jenet, I think it’s applicable for our listeners too who when something bad happens, we often think, “What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong to deserve this?” And Jesus would say, “Nothing. This is part of the plan.”

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 01:34 Yeah, it’s so interesting that loss and difficulty are woven in to the fabric of our mortal experience. He doesn’t cause them as Elder Holland so clearly taught. He doesn’t cause these things. He answers them. So, here’s Jesus Christ, who rather than seeing the blind’s man suffering as a punishment, sees it as an occasion for him to enter in and bring healing. He doesn’t accuse. He just judges what is needed and offers that to him. He doesn’t cause suffering. He responds to it, and it feels like he’s always inviting us into that work of love, his work of love to respond to the reality of suffering.

  02:14 So, here we covenant at the Waters of Mormon to bear with those that suffer to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that are sad and needing comfort. It’s like he’s calling us into his work to offer grace and healing and redemption in the face of the reality of suffering. I love these words, it can in God’s hands, this is Adam Miller, be repurposed for growth and progress. It can teach and strengthen and empower. All the difficulties in our lives can be repurposed in his hands for growth and progress, for strength and empowerment. That is just to know who he is, is such a miracle.

Hank Smith: 02:54 Your trials can be repurposed. What is it John, 2 Nephi 2?

John Bytheway: 02:59 Consecrate thine affliction for thy gain.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 03:00 For thy gain. Oh.

John Bytheway: 03:02 Again, Lehi talking to Jacob, yeah, that he’ll repurpose all this. You’ve grown up seeing the rudeness of your brothers trying to kill your other brother, trying to kill me.

Hank Smith: 03:12 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 03:13 They call it I think the law of retribution, that there’s the law of the harvest, there’s the doctrine of retribution that this was so much in their minds that, well, somebody must have sinned for this guy to be blind. I think that we see Jesus, not just here but in other places, he talks about the Tower at Siloam that fell on people. Do you think they were all sinners? Trying to help them disconnect trials from a certain behavior or something is something that we see Jesus doing again and again, and this is just another place for that. Sometimes bad things happen that aren’t a result of you doing something. They’re just a result of welcome-to-a-fallen-world type of a thing. But as you mentioned, God can repurpose that. I feel like all of us could bear testimony that we’ve learned the most from our hardest times.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 04:05 It’s really important to realize this miracle is pretty significant because they’re later going to say not anyone, not Elijah, not Elisha, no one has healed a man who was born blind, that from birth was blind, which I think is so beautiful because it’s teaching us that Jesus Christ has power even over the things that we inherit, so to speak, like that we bring into this life, the traumas and difficulties that we bring in, he has power to transform us and to heal us. But what’s going to happen is this miracle and the miracle of Lazarus being raised from the dead are going to be the two that just solidify for the Sanhedrin they must kill him. He just can’t be. This being who can do this level of miracle, we just can’t have because it’s going to upset the power dynamics that they live in, in their Roman power. So, this is a really significant miracle. Jesus puts mud on his eyes, says, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam.” It’s so beautiful. And he goes, he washes, and it says, “And he came seeing.”

John Bytheway: 05:11 He washes the world out of his eyes with living water, with Siloam is living water. It’s, oh, what, the pool of Siloam, it means sent. Jesus was sent. Maybe that’s how we look at it. Living water, he is the living water, and I’m looking at, in the Old Testament, they called it Shiloah is Siloam. You’ll see Isaiah saying, “Because you refuse the waters of Shiloah that goes softly, I’m going to send an Assyrian tsunami.” Right? What happens when we refuse the living water? Here come the Assyrians. That’s Isaiah 8:6 in the footnote there. But I love how this all ties up together.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 05:54 Yes. I love how you describe he washes away the world, and then he’s actually prepared to see the living water, who the living water is. So, now we see him come to accept Jesus for who he is. And so, Jesus has brought light, physical and spiritual light, the miracle of the Feast of Tabernacles allowing him to see.

John Bytheway: 06:15 After testifying that he was the light of the world, he just gives this man real light. I was listening to Dr. Kent Brown. He said that there is a word that they could have used that Jesus smeared his eyes with clay, but he used anointed because they were in the shadow of the temple there, and this guy was washed in the shadow of the temple there, then received sight. I thought, “Oh, that’s pretty good. He could have used another word, but he anointed his eyes with clay.” I thank Dr. Brown for that one.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 06:47 Well, that’s covenant language again. In covenants, we grow. In covenants, we experience conversion. In covenant power, we’re changed to be able to see and receive evermore of the Redeemer’s light and power and influence in our lives. I love that anointing word.

John Bytheway: 07:02 Yeah. One of the places, if you’ve ever gone to the Holy Land, is just so inspiring to stand at the south steps because it sounds like if he set him to the Pool of Siloam, this is exactly where you would go. So, maybe when Jesus left the temple, it was right there and then sent this man down Siloam and there’s stairs so he could have gone there and washed there. It was just a recent story about how they’re working on restoring that pool of Siloam to, what was it, Hank, a couple of Olympic pool sizes? It was pretty big where the Hezekiah’s Tunnel comes out. But I love how 9 fits with 7 and 8, water and light.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 07:41 Oh yes, in this beautiful miracle and what he will do for us. Hank, you have to love what happens in this dialogue with the family and everybody else, right? It’s so embarrassing.

Hank Smith: 07:49 Oh man, when he starts coming back. I was going to say these conversations when he comes back seeing, oh, I love them. Every time I read them, I just, I kind of laugh.

John Bytheway: 07:59 Well, he’s of age… Yeah.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 08:01 Isn’t John plain that way? I mean, you just see these plain statements throughout John. This is full of them.

Hank Smith: 08:07 He’s walking around, he can see, and they’re like, “Hey, that looks like the guy who’s blind,” and others are like, “That is him.” He’s like, “It’s me.”

John Bytheway: 08:14 Nah, it just looks like him.

Hank Smith: 08:16 Yeah. How were your eyes opened? This is my favorite part. He said, “A man named Jesus made clay, anointed mine eyes. I went to the Pool of Siloam, I washed.” And they said, “Where is he?” And he said, “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him.”

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 08:27 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 08:29 Just a great little dialogue. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 is really fun because he’s so happy.

John Bytheway: 08:36 To be put out of the synagogue, what does that mean in verse 22?

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 08:40 I think there was this strong ostracism, ostracization, right? You will be ostracized from this community that’s bound up in synagogue or the neighborhood, yeah. Hard.

Hank Smith: 08:51 I imagine that this is a pretty big miracle that everyone’s talking about it because it gets the Pharisees involved because of course it was the Sabbath Day when Jesus healed him. They can’t get Jesus, but they go find the blind guy, the formerly blind man, and they bring him in.

John Bytheway: 09:08 Instead of saying, “We’re so happy for you. This is wonderful.”

Hank Smith: 09:10 Yeah.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 09:12 Yeah, give God the praise. This man is a sinner. Right? They’re insisting on that, and then I love how he just says so plainly, “Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not.”

Hank Smith: 09:21 I know not. Yeah.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 09:21 One thing I know, whereas I was blind, now I see. Can’t you hear the beautiful language in that hymn, Amazing Grace, right, as this enslaver, this man on ships that would take slaves and seeing his own conversion, I was blind, but now I see, and how many of us know the miracle of the fruits of Jesus Christ in our lives being blind, and then we can see.

Hank Smith: 09:49 When we bear testimony too, Jenet, this is just so beautiful. There’s things I don’t know. It’s okay to say that.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 09:55 Yes.

Hank Smith: 09:56 There’s things I don’t know. Whether he’s a sinner or not, I don’t know. But here’s what I know. Here’s what I’ve experienced.

John Bytheway: 10:02 That’s very 1 Nephi 11:17. I don’t know the meaning of all things, but I know, look, God loves his children.

Hank Smith: 10:08 I know some things.

John Bytheway: 10:10 And here’s what I know. That’s good.

Hank Smith: 10:12 I’ve told my children and my students it’s okay to not know answers. Right? If the qualification for having a testimony is you have to know everything, no one’s going to have a testimony. But there are some things that you can know for sure because you were there. What did he say? “I know I was blind, now I see.” What are they going to say? “Nuh-uh.” If I remember being blind, I remember seeing now.

John Bytheway: 10:32 That’s a testimony of experience, that’s of evidence. It’s right there. How do I say, “Okay, forget it. I’m blind”? How do you deny that?

Hank Smith: 10:39 A person with an experience is never at the mercy of a person with an opinion. We know this man is a sinner. They don’t know that. That’s just their opinion of Jesus. He’s like, “Well, I had an experience with him.” To me, this is powerful.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 10:54 It is so powerful. I love how you’re tying it together. It’s interesting that they accuse him again in verse 34 and say, “Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?”

John Bytheway: 11:05 That’s another judgment, isn’t it, how do you know, and that’s such pride.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 11:09 Yes. Even though he’s saying, “Since the world began, it was not heard that any man opened the eyes of one more.” I mean, he’s just saying from scripture, “This has never happened before. If he were not of God, he couldn’t do this.” And then will you be teaching us, and Jesus hears that He’s been cast out. It’s just such a tender thing. He knows this man’s been ostracized for simply bearing witness, Hank, as you said, of what had happened to him. And Jesus finds him and says, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” So, interesting, we don’t know the answers to all things, but we know who. We know who we can go to who is the way and who is the life. We don’t know how.

  11:52 I think about wonderful friends who’ve experienced same-sex attraction or questions of gender dysphoria and that feeling of like, is this an accusation from God or parents, right? A child whose life they’ve envisioned a certain way and they wrestle with that, and what does this mean for this child’s life, and to hear the Lord say, “Neither hath sinned, but that the works of God may be manifest.” And we may not know the way, how all of this stuff can be reconciled or figured out, but what we can know is he says, “Lord, I believe in you.” Here, he’s meeting the Savior, and the Savior says, “Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee.” And he says, “Lord, I believe thou art the way.” Just such an answer to the issues in our lives. Ty Mansfield’s beautiful testimony, just stay with me, I will show you the way, how the Lord does that for us and the things that seem irreconcilable.

Hank Smith: 12:52 What a day for this blind man. Can you imagine waking up that day thinking it’s going to be just a normal every day?

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 12:59 Oh, what a day.

Hank Smith: 12:59 He can see, and now he’s debating the elite of the society. And I love how he takes them on.

John Bytheway: 13:06 He’s good at it.

Hank Smith: 13:06 Yes, he is.

John Bytheway: 13:07 I’m thinking, “This guy, he can craft a sentence, this guy.” Right?

Hank Smith: 13:14 They said, “Tell us again what happened.” He said, “I told you already and you didn’t hear. You want me to tell you again? Would you be his disciple?” “You’re his disciple. We follow Moses.” He calls them out. He says, “You guys are in a tough place, aren’t you? You don’t like him, yet he’s doing miracles. That’s a tough place for you guys to be in.”

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 13:30 Yes, yes. Even greater than Moses did. Yeah, this powerful, my husband loves to quote that, “He is of age. Ask him.”

Hank Smith: 13:38 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 13:39 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 13:39 We’ll just say, “You’re dragging us in here to ask us about our son being healed. Well, he’s of age, ask him.” But they did not want to see the truth. So, isn’t it amazing that the Savior…

John Bytheway: 13:49 They wouldn’t take the answer he wanted.

Hank Smith: 13:50 They wouldn’t take the answer.

John Bytheway: 13:51 So, okay, fine. Ask him again. Yeah.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 13:54 So, here’s the Savior, the last verse is, “For judgment, to make things right, I am come into this world that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind.” He’s pulling out when we think we see, which is how our natural pride can be, how blind we truly are, and yet when we recognize our blindness, we create space for the redeemer of the world to help us see. That’s what his work is, to liberate us into the truth that we might see. And they’re angry. Right? Are we blind also? And he says, “If you recognize your blindness, you wouldn’t be sinning, but because you say you see, you are in sin.”

Hank Smith: 14:41 You are blind.

John Bytheway: 14:42 It reminds me of Isaiah’s call in Isaiah 6 and in 2 Nephi 16 where Lord says, this is Paul Hoskinsson, “Declare the heart of his people to be fat.” It says make the heart. He says, “That could be declared.” Their eyes, they have closed lest they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart and be converted and I should heal them. And these, they won’t see. Their eyes, they have closed. It’s a perfect example of I’m standing right here and their eyes, they have closed. And if they could only see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, they could be converted and I could heal them. And that call of Isaiah is repeated in every one of the gospels, and in the book of Acts, portions of it, the see, hear, understand, be converted and be healed. So, I love that.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 15:32 Yeah. Requires us seeing our blindness in order to be open to seeing which is so interesting.

John Bytheway: 15:37 Because they think they see, but they’re blind and that’s what he’s telling them.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 15:39 Yes.

Hank Smith: 15:40 And there’s some in verse 16 that are kind of trying to push, I imagine this is Nicodemus, how can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? So, there’s some of them saying, “I am seeing something.”

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 15:52 Yes. I can’t deny.

Hank Smith: 15:53 Yeah. Joseph of Arimathea going, “Come on, guys, we’re seeing some pretty wonderful things here.”

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 16:00 Which takes us to John’s whole purpose, right, to show these signs. It’s evidence all over the place that he is the Redeemer, but a shutting of the eye, a refusal to see it.

Hank Smith: 16:11 And John, it’s just a fantastic story. It really is. The healing of the blind man is so much to learn. Yeah, if you go slow and really get into it, it’s powerful.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 16:21 I love the Bible video that puts all of it together into one video. It’s just really powerful, this story. Well, we get to go to chapter 10, and we learn right at the beginning that this Savior is coming back. This is the Feast of Dedication. This is Hanukkah. This is the commemoration of the dedication of the temple, of things being sanctified, of the temple itself being sanctified. As part of that, there’s some suggestion that they would’ve read Ezekiel 34, which is about shepherds as part of the Feast of Dedication, actually is part of what they were doing in their synagogue reading for the year. They would’ve been at Ezekiel 34 at this time. So, it’s interesting that the Savior comes in and says he’s going to teach them about the good shepherd.

  17:07 So, he says, “Verily, verily I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheephold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.” And he’s going to later say, “I am the door.” It’s interesting to think about clearly there’s strong clarity that he is the only way, that redemption is only through Christ, that we must all enter through that narrow space of honesty in receiving the covenant power of Jesus Christ in our lives to be changed. But it’s also interesting that he says there will be efforts to climb up another way. There will be efforts to deny our need for a redeemer, to deny that he is the only way, to try to do it ourselves or some other way, and he says, “The same is a thief and a robber.”

  18:03 And then he just speaks of the love of the shepherd for the sheep. They know his voice. He leadeth them. They follow him. Again, they know his voice, and you get this strong sense of the shepherding at that time and the shepherding in the east where a shepherd would know his sheep. Of course, these are the two great biblical occupations, shepherding and farming, and the sheep are so important to the economy because the vital products that are derived from sheep, but in the near east, right, the shepherd doesn’t use dogs or whips or horses or trucks to drive the sheep. He calls.

  18:42 There’s a very intimate relationship where he knows them by name and this is covenant. We can’t hear anything else but this hesed covenant relationship that President Nelson is teaching us where he knows us each by name. We are marked by him, right, as belonging to him, in covenant relationship with him, a bonded working relationship with him, the shepherd working with the sheep to get them to pastures that are safe, to keep them growing and protected, and that he is the good shepherd who will become a sheep, who will become the lamb. It’s just so powerful that he will take on himself. These lambs that we hear in Isaiah, they’re stubborn. All we like sheep have gone astray, right? They were so dependent, like lambs that are so dependent.

  19:36 My dad was a sheep rancher, and so my early years were spent on sheep fields, and he’ll describe this effort to keep lambs. That’s what you just spent your whole time doing, trying to keep them safe because it’s the one animal that has no defense. He remembers looking back up at the hill and as he’s gathered them and he’s trying to get them off the mountain, and there’s a mother and a baby, and there’s a coyote like just four feet from that mother, and she’s just stamping her feet. The only thing she can do is stamp her feet. She has no teeth to bite or has no way to defend.

  20:10 And so, our utter dependence, even as we’re stubborn and go our way and how much we need the Shepherd, and then He will become the lamb, the meek lamb who, in a sense, submits defenselessly, in a sense, to death and does not fight back. He is as a sheep before the shearers is dumb. He opened not his mouth and takes upon himself our experience and overcomes it. So, this shepherd, sheep, what could be a stronger allegory, metaphor for our relationship with Him?

Hank Smith: 20:52 And John started that. In John chapter one, you have John the Baptist seeing Jesus.

John Bytheway: 20:57 Behold, the Lamb of God.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 20:59 Isn’t that amazing?

Hank Smith: 21:00 Verse 11, he says, “I’m the good shepherd, and the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.” That’s unheard of. Shepherds are great and they love their sheep, but they’re probably not going to give their life to save a sheep because it’s a sheep. The equation makes no sense for him to give his life for this sheep, and in the same way he is way above us in experience and in knowledge, and yet he is the one who’s going to lay down his life for ordinary people.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 21:25 For his sheep.

Hank Smith: 21:25 Yeah, like us.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 21:26 Yeah, so powerful. I mean, the gap is that profound as sheep to shepherd, right?

Hank Smith: 21:30 Shepherd, yeah.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 21:33 I think we can assume they were pretty upset when they heard him say I am the good shepherd because if they’re hearing Ezekiel 34, which the religious leaders are supposed to be the shepherds of the people, and we hear in Ezekiel 34, “Thus saith the Lord God unto the shepherds, ‘Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that to feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks?'” And then he just says, “The diseased ye have not strengthened.” You haven’t healed that which was sick. You haven’t bound up that which was broken. Here is the good shepherd being described, right, in Ezekiel 34, he will bind up, he will heal, he will seek that which is lost. And so, he’s juxtaposing who the true shepherd is against what they are, these false shepherds.

  22:19 Ezekiel 34 is just so powerful in drawing upon to help clarify this really profound distinction he’s making, the good shepherd from those who have with force and with cruelty have you ruled them, Ezekiel 34. So, I think when they heard the good shepherd, they understood what he was saying there as distinguishing between who the leaders were and who they should be.

Hank Smith: 22:46 What kind of leaders they should be, yeah.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 22:49 I loved reading this, thinking about our prophets as good shepherds, and Sister Dew just gave a devotional address a few months ago in Hawaii at BYU-Hawaii, and it was so powerful about prophets. But she asked this really powerful question. She says, “Is there anyone you trust to give you more inspired advice, unaffected by personal agenda, than the first presidency and quorum of the 12 apostles?” Can you think of any journalist, talk show host, celebrity, athlete or politician you trust more? How about a YouTube celeb or star of stage screen? She says, “In each of these cases, they want something from us.” Our vote, our money or support, they all have personal agendas. Prophets of God do not. Their agenda is the Lord’s, and yet too often we listen to them last. So, just thinking of the shepherds called of God who have literally given themselves to the sheep in pattern of the great shepherd.

Hank Smith: 23:52 We watched President Monson go from wiggling his ears down to barely able to stand up for three minutes at the pulpit he gave his life.

John Bytheway: 24:03 Go find Sheri Dew’s talk called Prophets Can See Around Corners. I want them to watch the whole thing and listen to that. So, thank you for bringing that up because yeah, what’s the motive behind it? This good shepherd loves the sheep to the point he’ll lay down his life for the sheep. I put in my margin when he says he goeth before them in verse four, and you have experience with this because of your father that I just put in my margin leading, not hurting, because like you said, I think in Western cultures we herd sheep with dogs in Ford F-150s. No offense, Hank. And in ancient cultures they lead the sheep.

Hank Smith: 24:45 It’s my favorite car.

John Bytheway: 24:45 Yeah. And I thought, “What an interesting difference between leading and herding.” But I like what you said because I hadn’t considered that even in Western cultures, we have to protect them. I like what you said too, Hank, not I am a good shepherd. I am the good shepherd.

Hank Smith: 25:03 The, yes.

John Bytheway: 25:06 I’ll give my life for the sheep. Whoa. So, thank you for the Ezekiel 34 tie-in too.

Hank Smith: 25:11 Yeah. Jenet, I love what you said that your dad probably got so tired of taking care of these lambs. Right? They wander. They’re probably not thinking. He wants to protect them. Right? He wants to keep them safe, but they do just the opposite of what he’s hoping they’ll do.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 25:29 Yeah. I’m just thinking of Isaiah saying, “All we like sheep have gone astray.”

John Bytheway: 25:32 Sheep have gone astray.

Hank Smith: 25:33 Gone astray, yeah. Did you ever have to watch that and go, “Dad, my goodness”?

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 25:40 Yeah, all the time. Yeah, it was really remarkable to just think that thought, “Please just stay where you need to go. Don’t go off. Stay in this safe place. There’s a coyote three feet from you or whatever. Stay in this safe place.”

Hank Smith: 25:52 Stay in the safe area.

John Bytheway: 25:54 There was a profound talk. I still remember it. We’re talking 1989, Sister Jayne B. Malan gave this talk called the Summer of the Lambs. Oh my goodness. Go listen to that.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 26:06 Oh, yes, I remember this, John.

John Bytheway: 26:06 Do you remember it?

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 26:06 Yes, yes.

John Bytheway: 26:10 She and her little brother, hey, the ewes had been killed in a storm. So, you take care of these little lambs and at the end of the summer you can sell them. And then she says, “After a little while, we forgot all about making money because our lambs were starving to death. They didn’t know how to eat and we had to feed them.” In the end she says to her dad, “Isn’t there someone who can help us feed our lambs?”

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 26:32 Trying with that mash, trying to get them to eat it. Yes, and get the milk in there. It’s so odd. We would take care of bum lambs. They called them bum lambs when the mother had died, and I have all these memories of us, you’d bottle-feed them six times a day initially. Right? Wake up in the middle of the night and feed them milk. But what was amazing is after just a couple of days, they would just come running to you. They knew who was going to feed them. It’s so beautiful to think of the Savior saying… Yeah, they get lost and wander off and stubborn that way, but they know the source of the food, and they would just come clamoring to us. Right? And he’s saying, “They know my voice. They know who will protect them. They know who will guide them and enable them to live.” That’s the relationship we want to have with the Savior. When He comes, we want to run to him and follow where He leads.

  27:22 I just think President Nelson’s talk published in September of 2022 on covenant relationship just captures this idea of the door and that he is the door of the sheep. And so, he just says, “When you and I enter that path, we create a relationship with God that allows him to bless and change us.” If we let God prevail in our lives, if we allow him to be our good shepherd, in my mind, that covenant will lead us closer and closer to him. All covenants are intended to be binding. They create a relationship with everlasting ties, a path of love, that incredible hesed, caring for and reaching out, and you think here he’s saying, he’s describing that hesed love in the allegory of a shepherd laying down his life for his sheep and being the door into the sheepfold of safety, away from all the predators that would take them that they have no defenses against without him leading them to safety. It’s a really powerful metaphor the Lord is using here teaching us.

Hank Smith: 28:28 I bet you can get a lot out of this having grown up that way. This is something they totally would understand because this is happening all over the place.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 28:37 Yes. Just a couple little last thoughts along this that he references the hirelings that would run away. He’s saying the shepherd is not going to run away. For sure, a shepherd’s not going to run away, and yet the hirelings, when they see something dangerous, the wolf comes and the hireling fleeth. And then he says, “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” So, he ties us back to the Father and what he will do. John is really clear in saying the Savior’s life isn’t taken from him. Over and over again, he’s going to make it clear. This was his willingness to be born in a manger in that unique way and to leave this earth in that unique way, of his choice to lay down his life. So, he’s going to make that really clear in these teachings about what he means.

  29:31 Therefore, doth the Father love me because I lay, 17 and 18, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. So, he’s referenced laying down his life before, and this is the first time we’re going to hear that he’s going to take it again. 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 in my father. This everlasting covenant of our heavenly parents with us, that they would send a redeemer who would take upon himself our experience in covenant connection and then he would overcome it all. He would live again. He would take his life again and break the barrier for us between who we are and who we yearn to be.

John Bytheway: 30:19 It’s an important point. We can get into a why were they so mean or the Romans killed him or these leaders among the Jews killed him. Well, actually, he gave his life. He was a willing sacrifice, and some of his last words in the gospel accounts are different. He gave up the ghost, He even chose, I think, the moment of his death and he chose it. I think that from what I’ve read, some people would hang on crosses for days, but he chose the moment of that death. So, I think it’s an important point because we needed him to die for us. He did it willingly.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 30:57 In 29, it’s interesting, in light of what you just said, because that means if he willingly gives his life and it’s totally under his submission to the Father, which is his power, then he says, I love this, and it’s almost alluding to what he will say in John 17, in the intercessory prayer here of 29, “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my father’s hand. So, his total control over his giving his life means he also has total control over our redemption. Nothing’s going to be outside of that. He has done all that is needed for every single one of us for full redemption, and there’s nothing outside of that. Here he is. No man is able to pluck them out of the Father’s hand because I will enable their redemption. I and my Father are one.

  31:54 We can be assured with an immutable covenant. I think it’s section 89, just that he is our redeemer. He will do his work. He has enabled that to all happen. I think they’re upset because they hear. They’re upset for a lot of reasons, right, rejecting this redeemer. But they hear in 36, he says, “Say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world.” Now, that’s really close language because they’re celebrating the dedication, the sanctification of the temple, and he’s alluding to that language of the sanctification of the temple, and he is saying about himself, “I am the one the Father has sanctified and sent into the world.”

  32:42 So, they’re concerned about the sanctification of the temple, and he’s trying to tell them that the temple celebration, the Feast of Dedication points to him. He was the one sanctified by the Father to enable our redemption that we might all be sanctified, and they can hear it. They can hear his reference. Oh my goodness. He’s telling us he’s greater than the temple. He is the sanctified being that the Father has sent to enable our sanctification, and they don’t like it. But he’s saying, “I was the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles. I am the fulfillment of the Feast of Dedication. I am the one whom the Father sanctified here for your redemption.”

Hank Smith: 33:27 And here come the stones again. He’s got to be getting used to this.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 33:33 Yeah, I think so.

Hank Smith: 33:34 They’ve got to get rid of him.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 33:34 So, this gospel of John is not only a gospel teaching us of the divinity of Jesus Christ, but as Eric Huntsman has said so powerfully, this is a gospel about discipleship. It’s about how we respond to the reality of this divinity. So, if we go back to chapter seven, we’re going to see these various responses. We’ve talked about them along the way here, but you hear, for example, if you look at verse 12, there was this murmuring among the people as they hear him. He’s a good man. Others say, “Nay, he deceiveth the people,” and no man spoke openly of him for fear of the Jews. I think interesting in our time to be afraid sometimes of testifying of Jesus Christ in a world that has left religious faith. Then in 20, you say, “Thou hast a devil.” And then 26, “Do the rulers know that this is the very Christ?” And 31, “And many of the people believed on him and said, ‘When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than this man hath done?'”

Hank Smith: 34:38 Right.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 34:39 It tells us that Christ himself evokes different responses from people based on where we are, based on the truth in our own hearts. Sometimes I think we think, “Well, if someone’s great, everybody’s going to recognize it. Everybody’s going to know and he’ll be popular or she’ll be popular.” But in fact, John is showing us how distinct our responses can be to the divinity of Jesus Christ, based on where we are in our way of being. So, 40 and 41, if you go down there, “This is the Christ,” others said. And some said, “Shall Christ come out of Galilee.”

Hank Smith: 35:17 They couldn’t get passed that, yeah.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 35:17 John, not even, yeah, they can’t. And they’re like, “Wasn’t he supposed to be born in Bethlehem?” not even realizing he was born in Bethlehem.

Hank Smith: 35:24 Yeah, just go ask him.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 35:26 And all the division that is among the people in encountering this remarkable being who is Jesus Christ. John is trying to teach us how we can all stand there and choose. He is the light, as he’s testified. He is the door of the sheep. He is the good shepherd. He is all of those things. He is the one who frees us from shame. He is the one who forgives. Will we receive him? Will we believe on him as the blind man does, as we see that in chapter nine, “Who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him?” I want a redeemer. Who is he that I may believe on him? And Jesus says, “Thou has both seen him. It’s he that talketh with ye.” And I think for all of us, will we receive all that he has committed to offering to us as he testifies of in these sections.

Hank Smith: 36:25 That’s fantastic. You have the woman in John 8, the woman taken in adultery with the JST edition that says she believed on him from that hour. And then you have others who are taking up stones. They’re in a mob mentality, want to kill him. What a different response. Just two sides of the spectrum there.

John Bytheway: 36:42 It reminds me of Alma 5. The Book of Mormon kind of has a tone, a personality about it’s this or it’s this. Have you noticed that? And if the good shepherd is not your shepherd, then who’s your shepherd. And he puts it really pointedly, Alma does, in Alma 5, and I guess that’s what’s happening here. As you just said, Hank, look at how these groups divide up. “I’m going to worship him,” the blind man says. The rest, “Let’s kill him.”

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 37:10 So, we shouldn’t be surprised at how we as human beings can experience sometimes truth and light and Christ himself, and to just be taught by what John is trying to teach us of all that he is offering us. He is all of this. He is the living water. He is the bread. He is the light of the world. He is the good shepherd.

Hank Smith: 37:35 This paragraph from Come Follow Me wraps up what we’ve been saying. “Although Jesus Christ came to bring peace and good will toward men, there was a division among the people because of him. People who witnessed the same events came to very different conclusions about who Jesus was. Some concluded he is a good man. Others said, “He deceiveth the people.” When he healed the blind man on the Sabbath, some insisted, “This man is not of God. He keepeth not the Sabbath Day.” Others said, “How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?” Yet despite all the confusion, those who searched for truth recognized the power in his words, for never man spake like this man. The Jews asked Jesus tell us plainly whether he was the Christ. He revealed the principle that can help us distinguish truth from error. “My sheep hear my voice,” he said. “I know them and they follow me.”

  38:22 What a great summary there of everything we’ve been talking about. These have been a fun four chapters. Jenet, what do you hope our listeners walk away with after they study John 7, 8, 9, and 10, which are just, man, we could have gone on for another few hours, I think.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 38:41 Intimidating to talk about these chapters. I think for me, it’s been so powerful to just study deeply all He is, and so grateful for the testimony of John who witnessed his life and then goes back and writes and pulls together all these testimonies of the Lord himself when he says, “I am the light of the world. I am that I am. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. Before Abraham was, I am. I was the one who said, ‘I will go.’ I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the vine.” And he is trying to help us know I am, I will be, I was for you, all of these things that you so yearn and need. I am so grateful for that truth. I know that is truth. I know, I know He is that, and he yearns to be all of that for us.

  39:43 So, here he is teaching us in these sections, I am the fulfillment of all of these things. I am here at the Feast of Dedication. This was pointing toward me. Feast of Tabernacles, this was pointing toward me. I am. I will do. And you just think, here’s John yearning for us to know what he came to know as he came to see this good teacher, then the Son of God, right, all the way through that, the redeemer of the world, and he wants us to know he is all of that. He will be all of that. Receive him.

Hank Smith: 40:15 I hope everyone listening can be like this blind man who says, “Listen, I don’t know everything, but there’s some things I know because I’ve experienced them myself,” and hold your ground. Yeah, hold your ground on the things you know.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 40:30 Yes. So powerful. Where I was blind, now I see, like our own personal witnesses. Thank you, Hank. A couple final thoughts as this relates to our mortal experience and relationships. I have a dear, dear friend who experiences same-sex attraction, did, and I remember him describing what it meant to come to know Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. I was thinking of how he might have felt like the blind man accused, in a sense, who has sinned, why is my life this way. And as he’s wrestling with that, what that means, he’ll describe offering to God on an altar, having to say, standing before and thinking, “I can’t have… I want to have all these joyful things. I don’t know how.” And, John, as you testified earlier, it’s as if he’s standing there saying, “There is no way. I am the way.” And watching in his life, just like the blind man, coming to see the goodness of God and find way to the miracles that he would never have thought possible. He really is our way-maker that way.

  41:37 But then I think what’s powerful about these sections, the final thought is that he invites us into being good shepherds. I love how the Hafens will talk about in married life, they’ll talk about the work of a father, of a husband is to nourish and cherish his wife even as the Lord loved the church. Our work is to help our partner and our children do what the Savior said. I came that they might have life more abundantly and that we develop greater life. So, as you see him respond to the woman caught in adultery, he frees her, he responds with what is needed, what is truthful to help her grow. He does the same thing with the man who is born blind.

  42:20 As the good shepherd, that’s what he’s doing, and he invites us into that, and that if we are good shepherds with him, we won’t run. When the wolves come, the wolf of adversity or the wolf of personal imperfection or the wolf of individualism, whatever the things are that we grapple with in ourselves, we will be good shepherds with him in that work of love for those we have been called to be shepherds to, beginning in our families, first of all, and what a call there is, and in our wards, and in our ministering, and that he invites us into that sacred work of being a good shepherd, nourishing, giving life.

John Bytheway: 43:00 I think a phrase that’s in the hymn, Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd is make us thy true undershepherd. I think I’ve heard that in talks before about as we minister to each other, we’re trying to do what the Good Shepherd would do and be undershepherds.

Hank Smith: 43:14 Yeah, he says, “Make us thy true undershepherds. Give us a love that is deep. Send us out into the desert seeking thy wandering sheep.” I like what you’ve said here, Jenet, that we can become shepherds ourselves.

John Bytheway: 43:28 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 43:29 Jenet, what a fantastic day. Thank you for spending your time with us today. It’s been wonderful.

Dr. Jenet Erickson: 43:35 Such a privilege. These chapters are just such a gift to us. Thank you. So good to be with you.

Hank Smith: 43:41 We’ve loved having you. We want to thank officially Dr. Jenet Erickson for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producer Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen, and we want to always remember our founder, the late Steve Sorensen. we hope you’ll join us next week. We have more New Testament coming up on FollowHim.

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