Good morning. Oh, faces. It is good to be with you all and you online as well. Good to see faces again. You know, as we sing that song in the first service end now, just hit me that I'm just so thankful for the music. Stephen and his team, they just do such a great job. We just say thanks to the Lord for our great worship musicians. Thank you guys. All right. Good morning. I want to invite you to turn with me in a Bible to Ezekiel chapter 34. And we're going to have a kind of a two week series starting today and then concluding next week in which we're going to be talking about something really important. And in fact, over the last year or so, the elders of our church have been studying something that's really important for elders to study. And that is what the Bible says about being an elder. So we've been studying our role each month. We tackled another chapter of a really excellent book called The Shepherd Leader, which is written by a man named Dr. Timothy Whitmer, who was a professor of practical theology at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia for many years. And his book, The Shepherd Leader, is lauded as one of the best books on what it means to be an elder and what the role of the elder is. And the way churches benefit greatly when church leaders adopt the fundamental thesis of his book. And that is that the fundamental responsibility of church leaders is to shepherd God's flock to care for God's people. God's design for a church is to be among other things, a body of people who are being cared for by God himself. As we seek to follow him in this fallen and broken world. And as we'll see this week and next God calls the leaders of any church to operate as a team of shepherds. So the elders are actually in process in the process of implementing a newly revised and reformatted plan for ensuring that everybody that's part of this church is cared for and led well. And so while we are implementing that plan, I thought it would be good for us to think about what shepherding is, especially focusing first as we will today on the fact that God reveals himself as a shepherd, as our shepherd. So that will be our focus for this morning. So again, turn with me to Ezekiel 34. And this week we're going to see how one of these, one of the primary metaphors that God uses to describe himself is that of a shepherd. And the next week we'll see how God shepherds his people through Godly leaders, Godly elders. But as we talk about the shepherd from Ezekiel 34, I want to do a little context first, make sure we know what we're hearing. If you go back later today, which I would encourage you to do, if you go back all the way to Ezekiel 34 verse 1, what you'll see is that God is inditing some leaders of his people who are not caring for his people. He's saying that the shepherds, the people he's raised up to lead and care for, his people are not doing what they're supposed to, rather they're serving themselves. And so if you peak really quick at verse 10, you'll see that he says something terrifying. He says, thus I am against the shepherds. And that's really huge because it shows us that God is so for his people that if the leaders he's raised up to shepherd them are serving themselves, then he becomes against those leaders that is terrifying for anyone who feels called to be in church leadership. But it also speaks to just how much God cares for his people and wants his people cared for. He wants them shepherd it. So what we'll see now, we're going to read, I'm going to read Ezekiel 34 11 through 16. And here what we see is that after rebuking the shepherds who are serving themselves and not caring for God's people, God applies the age-old adage if you want something done right, do it yourself. Now, hear your God, your shepherd, emphatically promise to shepherd his people. Ezekiel 34 starting in verse 11, this is God's holy, true and life-giving word. For thus says the Lord God, behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As the shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered so will I seek out my sheep. And I will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the ravines and in all the inhabited places of the country, I will feed them with good pasture. And on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. And I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord, I will seek the lost and I will bring back the straight and I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak. And the fat and the strong I will destroy, I will feed them in this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, let's pray, Father. We thank you that you speak to us even now, even this moment through your word and spirit. You want us to know you and to know that you have known us since before the foundation of the world. And it has been your plan that you would redeem us in Christ and shepherd us. As we wait for His glorious return in the making new of all things. So would you, Lord, speak to us now through your word and teach us of your shepherd's heart and our need for it. And give us joy as we engage in understanding you as our shepherd so much that we want to go tell someone else about it later today. We pray in Jesus' name. You know, Puritan, pastor and theologian John Owen claimed that one of the biggest challenges he had as a pastor was convincing the people in his church that God really cared about them. So if you struggle to believe that God really cares about you and is caring for you from time to time, which we all do by the way, then this is good news for all of us this morning. Our focus for today is that in the same way that a really good shepherd cares for his sheep, our God cares for us cares about us and cares for us. If there's one thing that we leave here believing more deeply this morning, let it be that we can be certain God is our shepherd and he cares for us more than we will ever realize. Unpacked this thought about God as our shepherd and his great care for us by talking about three things having to do with this metaphor of God as shepherd and we as people as sheep. I want to talk first about the prevalence of this metaphor. It is throughout the scriptures. So we'll talk about the prevalence. Number two, I want to talk about the problem with the shepherd sheep metaphor. Why is it that it doesn't have as big an impact on our life? We'll point that out. And then third, we'll talk about the power of this reality that God is our shepherd. We are his sheep. Okay, that's where we're headed the prevalence, the problem and the power with this metaphor. So let's talk about the prevalence of this metaphor of God as shepherd and his people as a sheep. Look back at verse 15, Ezekiel 34, 15, and notice what he says there, I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. Now I want to, before I show you a number of other places that we see this, I want to make sure that we understand that this metaphor might hit us not quite as deeply as it may have hit the original hearers. Most of us probably don't have sheep. Okay, if you do, that's great. Don't bring them here, but that's great. For those of us who have not tended sheep, we may not know that in ancient Israel people understood shepherds and the way they interacted with their sheep. As a relationship that had a lot of care, shepherds generally knew every single sheep by name. They cared very much for all of those sheep. They were committed to making sure that those sheep were not only known by them, but they were led and fed and protected throughout their whole life. So this really is a metaphor in which God is saying, I care about you and for you. And what's amazing is this metaphor is really quite prevalent. In fact, there's over 100 times in the Bible in which God refers to Himself or is referred to by someone else as a shepherd. Over 100 times, God is declared to be a shepherd. 400 times. 400 times we, God's people, are referred to as sheep or said we are like sheep. So this is a very prevalent metaphor. God wants us to understand Him in this way. And one of the, actually the first place that we see this show up is in Genesis 48-15. You can turn there if you want, but I'll tell you what it says. In Genesis 48-15, Jacob is near the end of his life. He's pronouncing blessing on Joseph's children. And this is the way Jacob describes God. He says, the God before whom my father's Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day. Now here's a little non-secret if you've read the Old Testament. Jacob was not a good guy. He had a real honesty and integrity issue. And yet, at the end of his life, he is confident. He can refer to God as the one who has been his shepherd all his life long even to this day. That is a picture of the sweet grace of a gracious God. That's one of the places that we see it. And then we see it all throughout. We see it in the Psalms. Obviously, probably the most famous verse in the Old Testament, Psalm 23 verse 1. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. We see it in the prophets, obviously in Ezekiel 34. We're seeing it here, but also in Isaiah, another major prophet, Isaiah 40 verse 11. He will tend his flock like a shepherd. And then, of course, in the New Testament, it is beautifully communicated to us that Jesus is the good shepherd in John 10, 11. Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. And so this is something that we see throughout the Old and New Testament. This metaphor that God uses so that we know him better. He's our shepherd. We are his sheep. Another way that God does this is by having the fact that two of the most prominent figures of the Old Testament, two of the most prominent leaders of God's people in the Old Testament, were shepherds. It's actual shepherds of actual sheep before they were leaders of God's people. So Moses, for example, Moses, we know a great leader of God's people, but Exodus 3 verse 1 tells us that he was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, when God appeared to him in the burning bush. So he was actually shepherding sheep before he became a leader, a shepherd of God's sheep, God's people. David was a little shepherd boy before he became king. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the David and Goliath story, if you know that story, which I'm sure most of you do, is the way David comes and he says he wants to fight against Goliath. David is threatening the armies of Israel, and they're all shaking in their armor, and David comes, and David says, I'll do it, and Saul, the king, looks at David, and he says this in 1 Samuel 17, 33, it says Saul said to David, you are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth, and then here's how David responds. He says, not, I got this, I've been a shepherd. Here's what he says. But David said to Saul, your servant used to keep sheep for his father, and when there came a lion or bear and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears. And this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them before he has defied the armies of the living God David, is this leader of God's people, and here he's basing his belief that he can do this with God's help on the fact that he has protected sheep before he knows how to do this. So not only does God call himself a shepherd, not only does he call us a sheep, but these prominent figures of the Old Testament were shepherds before they were leaders of God's people. I grew up in a, what you might call a state farm family, state farm insurance, my dad worked for state farm insurance for 31 years, this is not a commercial for state farm, I don't care where you get your insurance, but I grew up in a state farm home. So everything we had had the state farm logo on it, and most of everything we had that had the state farm logo on it had a little tag line which many of you may remember, like a good neighbor, state farm is there. Now it's Jake from state farm, totally funny, but anyway, back in the day it was like a good neighbor, there was a jingle, like a good neighbor, state farm is there. That was bad, but like, you know, I had to sing that every day at breakfast, we would sit down and we would sing the jingle. I'm just kidding, it was at dinner, but even as a kid, even as a kid I understood what they were trying to do, they wanted to use that metaphor of a good neighbor who's there for you and you need them to portray what their company is like. Now whether or not they lived up to that, that's up to you to decide, but our God calls himself a shepherd so that you and I can believe more deeply that he knows us and that he's committed to leading us, feeding us, and protecting us. Tim Whitmer says the Lord's self-revelation as shepherd of his people is not merely a metaphor with which his people could clearly relate, but it is one that describes the comprehensive care that he provides for his people. It's a sweet phrase talking about your God and you, the comprehensive care. So this is a very prevalent metaphor. It's a major way that God wants us to know him and how he views and cares for us. What's the problem? We talked about the prevalence of this metaphor. What's the problem with this metaphor? And I'll say this, the problem with this metaphor is it pushes hard against the American idea of rugged individualism. It pushes hard at that fallen natural instinct that you and I have to not want to need any shepherd. We are born in our fallenness. We are born feeling like I need to justify myself. I need to show that I matter. I need to show that I can do things I don't need help. In fact, it happens when we are little kids, anybody who spent any time with little kids as soon as a child learns how to do any task, if you try to help, they will tell you I do it myself. That's the response, right? I do it myself. They want to show they can do it. And guess what? We get older, the feelings still there, we just use better grammar. That's what there is no problem with this metaphor out there. It's in here. Because what it does is, you know, by nature, in our fallenness, we will look to build our own identity on something about us. We look to build our identity on how successful we are, or maybe how kind and caring we are, whatever it may be. We seek to build our identity and our value and our worth on something we do, on something we have accomplished, or on something who we are. And so when there's the idea that we need help, you need help. We don't like that. We're allergic to the idea that we can't do whatever we need to do on our own. And so that's why this metaphor actually can be kind of offensive to us because if you look at what is said here in Ezekiel 34, 11-16, the way he's describing the sheep, it's clear that God sees the sheep and they're lost, they're in danger, they're alone, they're hungry, they're wounded, and they're weak. You want that on your tombstone? Here lies so and so he was lost, in danger, alone, hungry, wounded, and weak. But that is the estate in which we live. That's us, that's us, that's us describing us. Otherwise why, if you look at the passage, why would God need to search if we're not lost? Look at verse 11, he's searching. Why would He need to rescue us if we're not in danger verse 12? Why would He need to gather us together verse 13 if we're not alone? Why would He need to feed us if we're not hungry verse 13? He needs to heal us verse 16, He needs to strengthen us. You know, it isn't our weaknesses that tend to get us in the most trouble, it's the illusion of our strength. And so God wants us to be able to come to grips with the fact that we do need Him, we need a shepherd. Because otherwise we keep depending on ourselves. And that is tragic for many reasons. Here's a very cliché story you probably heard before, but I'm going to tell it anyway, there was four people on a plane. The pilot, and a pastor, and a cub scout, and the world's leading computer scientist. And the pilot comes back into the cabin, and he says, I'm sorry, the plane's going down, there's four of us, and only three parachutes. And I'm taking one because I got a wife and kids at home and he puts on a parachute and he jumps out of the plane. And the computer scientist stands up and he says, I'm taking one of those parachutes to guys because I'm one of the smartest people in the world. And people need me down there so he takes a pack and he jumps. The pastor looks at the cub scout and he says, listen, young man, you got your whole life ahead of you. And I'm ready to meet the Lord. You take that last parachute. And the cub scout says, relax, Reverend. The smartest guy in the world just jumped out of the plane with my backpack. It is not really our weaknesses. It's how highly we think of ourselves. It's the illusion of our own strength. It's the fabrication from our fallen hearts that we don't need a shepherd. So if we see that then relying on our own strength is what gets us in the trouble. Then the way we repent, repentance means change your mind. The way we let God's word change our mind is we humbly acknowledge that we need God. We do need a shepherd. At our church here, we fulfill our mission to make disciples by connecting with people who aren't connected by growing together spiritually and relationally, by serving. And one of the key ways that we grow together, grow spiritually, is by letting God's word shape how we view who He is and who we are. And what God is saying, maybe it stings a little bit, but what He's saying is we are lost. We are in danger. We are alone. We are hungry. We are wounded. We are weak. And if we can say those things to ourselves this morning, instead of fronting and presenting like we've got it all together, if we can be honest about ourselves this morning, then what happens is what wells up in our hearts is the desire for a shepherd. Man, if I really am lost and in danger and alone and hungry and wounded and weak, then I need a shepherd. Well, good news. There is a shepherd. So third, we've talked about the prevalence of this metaphor. We've talked about the problem we have with this metaphor. Let's third talk about the power of this metaphor, the shepherd and the sheep. See, here's what's so beautiful about Ezekiel 34 11 through 16. What we see when we look at the whole picture, the whole grand narrative laid out for us in the scriptures, is that Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promise to be the shepherd of His sheep. Promise was made and then fulfilled in Christ. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God's promise to be the shepherd of His sheep. He said 34 verse 15. He says, I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. And he's promising that Jesus will come in doing so. And what's so amazing about this is Jesus is not only the good shepherd. We know he's the good shepherd from John 10, but he's also the Lamb of God. Jesus is both the Lamb of God and the good shepherd. Here's what that means. It means that Jesus not only came to rescue us, but also came to become one of us, to take on flesh and to experience all that we experience. In chapter 1, verse 29, John the Baptist sees Jesus coming and he says, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And obviously, he's talking primarily about Jesus as Lamb as sacrifice for our sins. But he's also recognizing here is the shepherd who has become a sheep for the sake of the sheep. He's a shepherd who has become a lamb so that he knows and we know that he knows everything that we're feeling because as a human, he felt what it felt to be lost. He felt what it feels like to be in danger. He felt what it feels like to be alone. He felt what it feels like to be hungry and wounded and weak. When we're wrestling with these hardships of being human in a fallen world, we can know that Jesus knows how all of these things feel. No one knows better than him. No one can relate to what we are going through, whatever situation it is, better than him because he's the Lamb of God. But not only see the Lamb of God, he's also the good shepherd who came to triumph over all these things. For us, and then to bring us with him, think of John 10-11 where Jesus says, I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep. And here's where you go back to Ezekiel 34 and you see the way that Jesus adds both the Lamb of God and the good shepherd fulfills all these promises. Think about it, in verse 11 of 34, Ezekiel 34 says that he will search for his sheep. And that is exactly what Christ did when he comes from heaven to earth. He was looking for us, seeking us out. If you have faith in Christ, it's because he sought you. It's because he pursued you, found you. And then he rescued you, look at verse 12 and Ezekiel 34, I will rescue them. He says, well, absolutely, after seeking us and he rescues us, how does he do that? By the cross, by laying his life down for the sheep. Jesus went to the cross to pay for our sins so that our sins could be forgiven, we could be made right with God. How can somebody be made right with God? Job asks through the good shepherd laying his life down so that whoever believes in him is forgiven, declared righteous. He rescued us. He gathered us to look at verse 13 and Ezekiel 34 says, I will gather them. Well, do you feel gathered right now? Because you are. He has gathered us into a body, into a church to be shepherded together. Verse 13 says, God will feed his sheep. Jesus feeds us even now through his word and his spirit. Verse 16 says he will bind up the injured or heal the injured. Jesus is at work healing our wounded hearts and minds. Verse 16 says also he will strengthen the weak. And Jesus is the one who gives us strength as we know him more and more and more. He is the Lamb of God and the good shepherd. He is the fulfillment of these promises and he is with us our whole life. Just like Jacob said, he has been my shepherd all my life long even to this day. Listen to this, Tim Whitmer says, this is one important distinction between the metaphor of father and that of shepherd. Children grow up and become less dependent on their earthly fathers though the relationship continues. Sheep on the other hand are always completely dependent on their shepherd. They never outgrow their need for the shepherd to care for them, feed them, lead them and protect them. The shepherd cares for the newborn lambs and is still there when the sheep grow old and weak. Here's how you apply this. Here's how we as a flock apply this. We depend on our shepherd. We live like we have a shepherd. We think about it day in and day out. We trust that he is with us. He knows us. He's leading us. He's feeding us. He will protect us. When life is getting hard and you're feeling lost, you stop and you say the Lord is my shepherd. He will find me. He will bring me where I need to be. We're suffering when friends betray you. We stop and we say the Lord is my shepherd. He will bind up the injured. He will heal these wounds in my heart. When parenting is just beyond what we can handle, it's just so hard sometimes and we feel so weak, we stop and we say the Lord is my shepherd. He will strengthen me in my weakness. He will always be with us and he will always be exactly where we need him to be. The proof is the cross. We've never needed anybody to show up somewhere more than we needed Jesus to show up when he went to the cross. We can believe that as our good shepherd who has laid his life down for us, he is with us. He will be there for us. He knows us. He's leading us. He's feeding us. He's protecting us. He's always there when we need him. Speaking of being there on August 8, 1982, Fenway Park. Dave Stapleton was up to bat and he hits this line drive, foul ball goes like a rocket into the stands. The whole stadium here is this big crack and they're assuming it hit the side of the dugout or a chair and then everybody begins to realize that it hit a four-year-old boy in the head. He's slumped over and he's bleeding. At that moment, Hall of Famer left fielder Jim Rice realized it would take way too long for the paramedics to arrive and then get all the way through the crowd to help the boy. He just springs into action. He jumps up into the stands and he scoops up this little boy in his arms. If you Google Jim Rice later, it's the first picture that will come up. He's carrying this bleeding little boy in his arms like a good shepherd carrying a wounded little lamb. He carries this little boy down into the dugout where the Red Sox medical team is able to start working on him immediately. 30 minutes later when they get this little boy to the hospital, the doctors say that if Jim Rice had not done what he did, the boy would not have survived. After the game, Jim Rice would go to the hospital and visit the little boy and he found out that the little boy's family didn't have a hold out of money so he stopped by the hospital business office and said, send me the bill. He also, after this ordeal had taken place, he returned to the game and he played the rest of that game with blood stains all over his jersey.
He was there when that little boy needed him. Just a little picture of our God, the good shepherd who was there when we need him, except on his uniform, it's not our blood. It's his own, because the good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep and brothers and sisters, he has laid his life down for you and for me. To rescue us and now to lead us to the new heavens and new earth, the Lord is Father. We thank you, we praise you for teaching us in your word that you are our shepherd, that Jesus is the good shepherd. Please, by your spirit and through your word, help us believe deeply that you reveal yourself this way so that we live with certainty that you care about us and you care for us. Thank you for being our shepherd and Jesus name we pray.