A young woman emails to ask, "Pastor John, in John 10, verses 1 to 21, Jesus tells us that He is the Good Shepherd, and we are His sheep, and His sheep know His voice. My question is, what is Jesus' voice? Is it His word, or is it like someone literally speaking to you?" Here's the context in John 10, which I think they're referring to.

"I am the Good Shepherd, I know my own, and my own know me." That's verse 14. And then, verse 27, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." And verse 16, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold." I think he means this Jewish fold.

I have other Gentile sheep out there. "I must bring them also. They will hear my voice." So he's talking about his elect ones that the Father has chosen, and the Father will give them to the Son when the Son calls them. We know this because of verse 26, "You do not believe because you are not among my sheep." So believing is what proves you are a sheep, not the other way around.

You don't believe and thus are turned into a sheep. John says, "You don't believe because you aren't my sheep." In other words, my elect ones, my sheep that the Father has chosen, will hear my voice and will follow me, and that will prove that they are elect. "My sheep hear my voice" means my elect are enabled by God to hear the truth, the true shepherd, when the gospel is preached.

So here's another example of it. In 2 Corinthians 4, 4, "The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." So blindness keeps us from seeing the glory in the same way that deafness keeps us from hearing the glory or hearing the voice.

We are deaf and we are blind so that when the gospel is preached, we don't see the glory of Christ and we don't hear the voice of the Master. The voice is an alien voice. It's a boring voice. We're not interested in the voice of the God that's speaking through the gospel.

And what has to happen is, verse 6 of 2 Corinthians 4, "God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." And we could just use the other metaphor of not seeing but hearing.

God has shouted into our hearts and taken away our deafness and caused us to hear in the gospel the voice of the risen, living Christ. So God opens the eyes of the heart. He opens the ears of the heart so that the beautiful glory of Christ is seen and the beautiful voice of Jesus is heard.

And here's one more evidence that we're on the right track. In verse 16 of John 10, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also; they will hear my voice." It's parallel to Acts 18.10 where Paul's in Corinth and he's frightened and discouraged and Jesus comes to him in a vision and he says this, "Do not be afraid.

Go on speaking, speaking. Let your voice say the gospel, Paul, and don't be silent. For I am with you, no one will attack you. I have many people in this city." In other words, I have other sheep that are not of this fold. They're out there. I have sheep.

So speak. And what will happen when you speak the gospel is that the sheep among all those goats, the sheep will hear the voice of the master in your preaching of the gospel. They will hear the voice. So my answer to the question is, the voice of Jesus is the word of the gospel or the word of God more generally in Scripture, accompanied by the work of the Spirit of God that enables us to recognize in the Scripture or in the gospel the very call of Jesus on our lives.

And so I'm sure if Jesus were saying this, he'd end with something like, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You can visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.

I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening.