1.
Grace mercy and peace to you from God our
Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The
message from God’s Word this morning is taken from Ezekiel 34:11-24 (READ TEXT). It’s entitled, “The Chief Shepherd,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
At this time of year, you start
hearing a lot about “leadership.” As we get closer and closer to fall
election time and political campaigns move into the home stretch from what it
seems like an endless campaign cycle, especially for the presidential race,
there’s a lot of talk about what leadership is and what leadership does—and why
the candidate whose commercial you are watching will provide the very best
leadership. In the Old Testament, God
wanted to give people more than mere leaders to follow. He showed as much when
he termed kings and prophets as “shepherds.” They were to be shepherds
of God’s sheep. Through Ezekiel, the Lord told his people in captivity in
Babylon that their shepherds had failed them. These bad shepherds cared more
about themselves than about the sheep. Therefore, the Lord said he would
replace them. He himself would become their Shepherd and take the place of
those wicked shepherds.
3.
When the Lord said he wanted his
people to be shepherded, he was comparing them to sheep. The comparison isn’t
flattering, for sheep are dumb. I’m told that a mother sheep will sometimes not
recognize her own offspring. Sheep can be kept in a pen even if it has no gate.
If someone lays a pipe or rod on the ground across the opening, the sheep will
usually not pass it. And sheep rescued from a burning barn have been known to
try to run back, straight into the flames. Sheep are dumb. Do you feel like a
sheep sometimes?
4.
Sin makes people stupid. The
prophets kept saying this. Isaiah declared, “The ox knows its owner, and the
donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know” (Isaiah 1:3). Similarly,
Jeremiah added, “Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and the
turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming, but my people
know not the rules of the LORD” (Jeremiah 8:7). In this case, ignorance isn’t
bliss. Sin makes us stupid, like sheep. We know what that’s like, don’t we?
Left to ourselves, we stumble around lost and defenseless, in need of help and
hope that we can’t generate.
5.
No wonder the Lord was so angry at
those shepherds who didn’t care for the flock. They failed, starting with not
feeding the sheep. In Ezekiel 34, feeding the sheep stands out as the chief
duty of the shepherd. You can gather the straggling sheep and bandage the
wounded sheep, but if you don’t feed the sheep, none of those things will make
a lot of difference. These faithless shepherds hadn’t done any of it, starting
with failing to feed the sheep. So the Lord declared a takeover. He would be
the Shepherd of his people. Everything the old shepherds did wrong, he would do
right. He would take care of his sheep, gathering them and bandaging them. And
yes, he would feed them. The Lord would be their Shepherd. They wouldn’t want.
6.
Toward the end of the text, the Lord
added, “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall
feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (Ezekiel 34:23). The
Lord wasn’t going to bring King David himself back in any sort of
reincarnation. No, he was going to bring into the world One from David’s family
who would be the Shepherd of his people. This is another prophecy of the coming
Christ. In Jesus, who is both God and Man, it is true that God is the Shepherd
of his people and also that David is the Shepherd.
7.
The Lord had taken David from the
work of being a shepherd, watching sheep, to make him king. Jesus is God and
therefore King of Kings from all eternity, but he didn’t hesitate to become our
Good Shepherd. He did the dirty work involved in being a shepherd. The Good
Shepherd “lays down his life for the sheep,” Jesus said (John 10:11). On
the cross, he was protecting us from the threatening peril of our sins by
taking it upon himself and dying under it. Further, this Good Shepherd rose
from the dead. He lives to keep on protecting, leading, and guiding us. He has
the authority to lay down his life and to take it up again. (See John 10:18.)
Jesus lives to feed his Church, his flock, on his Word.
8.
Sheep need to hear the voice of
their Shepherd. “During World War I, some Turkish soldiers tried to steal a
flock of sheep from a hillside near Jerusalem. The shepherd, who had been
sleeping, suddenly awakened to see his sheep being driven off on the other side
of the ravine. He couldn’t hope to recapture his flock by force
single-handedly, but suddenly he had a thought. Standing up on his side of the
ravine, he put his hands to his mouth and gave his own peculiar call, which he
used each day to gather his sheep to him. The sheep heard the familiar sound.
For a moment they listened and then, hearing it again, they turned and rushed
down one side of the ravine and up the other toward their shepherd. It was
quite impossible for the soldiers to stop the animals. The shepherd was away
with them to a place of safety before the soldiers could make up their minds to
pursue them—and all because his sheep knew their master’s voice.”1 Our Good
Shepherd said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch
them out of my hand” (John 10:27– 28). Jesus still feeds his flock on his
Word. 1, IBP, 420.
9.
How great is his love for us! Not
only did he do the work of salvation; not only has he sent his Word into the
world, even reducing it to writing by inspiring the prophets and apostles; on
top of all this, he has also given his Church proclaimers to preach his
message. He has given his Church pastors, undershepherds of the Good
Shepherd. St. Paul told the pastors from Ephesus, “Pay careful attention
to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you
overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood”
(Acts 20:28). Pastors feed the flock on the message of Christ. This is the
essence of their work: to feed the sheep.
10.
And the sheep? Note what’s said and
what’s not said when the Lord turns to address the sheep in Ezekiel 34. Although
we might expect him to tell the sheep to eat the food provided for them, he
didn’t do so in this passage.
Once
a Lutheran Pastor had a bunch of kids involved in a children’s sermon on this
text. In this instance he had the children help him make a point for everyone
else. Since almost none of these kids had any experience with sheep, the Pastor
told them to think of dogs instead. The Pastor asked one volunteer to act like
a dog. The Pastor pretended to set on the floor a bowl of food, and his “pretend
dog” started to eat. No one had to tell this young boy how to act like a
dog at suppertime. He simply started pretending to eat. It goes without saying
that a dog would eat. So in Ezekiel 34! There are other passages where the Lord
tells his people to hear his Word, but in Ezekiel 34 it went without saying. You
don’t have to tell a hungry animal to eat.
Next in the Pastor’s children’s sermon he told the kids, ten or fifteen
of them, to pretend they were all dogs. The Pastor acted like he was setting
down a single dish of food, then he stepped back. You can imagine what
happened. The kids, everyone pretending to be a dog, all went for the same spot
on the floor. Each of them wanted to be first to the food. It was the most
disorganized scene the Pastor ever witnessed in a children’s sermon, or anyone
else’s, but it made the point. Ezekiel 34 says much the same thing. The Lord
who promised to feed his sheep told them not to mess things up for one another.
11.
He warned against two ways of
messing things up. One was for the strong sheep to trample the food underfoot.
Thus, the food would either be pushed into the ground and rendered
inaccessible, or it would get to be so full of dirt that it was of questionable
value to eat anymore. The Lord often warns us about false doctrine, false
teaching in the Church. Rather than unhealthy, mud-filled food, he wants us to
retain the standard of healthy words that come from him.
12.
The Lord also told the sheep not to
trample on one another and push each other aside from the food, as in the scene
at the children’s sermon. A presenter at a workshop once asked an arresting
question: “Is there anyone in your church whom nobody likes?” Think of
that, and think more seriously still: Is there anybody in this church whom
nobody loves? Do we have unloved people who are pushed to the margins by
everyone else? It is amazing how insensitive we can be, without even realizing
it.
13.
This reminder brings us back around
to the fact that we are sheep, and sin makes us stupid. We need Jesus, the Good
Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, and who took it up again. We
need him to pay for our sin and see to our safety and security forever.
Especially for sheep like us, no other shepherd will do. The good news is, the
Lord is pleased to be our Shepherd.
14.
Over the years countless Christians
have been comforted by the simple words of Psalm 23, which of course says: “The
Lord is my Shepherd.” Two young girls were hanged in 1681 at Edinburgh
because of their religion. On the scaffold, one said to the other, “Come,
Isabel, let us sing the Twenty-Third Psalm!”2 The Lord was their Shepherd,
all right. He’s the Shepherd for you, the Shepherd you can die with and the
Shepherd you can live with. For sheep like us, no other shepherd will do but
the Better and Best Shepherd. 2,
Maier, ed., The Best of Walter A. Maier, 200–201. Amen. Now
the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus until life everlasting.
Amen.
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