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INJ
St John 10:11-16
'Shepherd and Sheep'
Divine Service
Misericordias Domine, Easter 2 | April 6, 2008
Dear Saints, Dear Sheep,
The image of the shepherd and the sheep runs all through the Scriptures. It is beautiful and full of comfort and very simple. Simple enough for the children to understand. The Lord is our shepherd and we are His sheep.
And in this simplicity we have the answers to just about every question that might come up in the church. This promise that the Lord is our Shepherd and we are His sheep tells us about who God is, what He does, who we are, and what His church is.
I know that I get questions like this all the time, and you might as well. What do you think about God? What does the Bible teach about man? What is the church? We want to know the answers ourselves, and we want to be able to answer these questions as they come to us.
So, let's have the questions and, more importantly, the answers. First, who is God? The only way we can have an answer this questions is if the Lord Himself answers it. Over and over in the Bible the Lord takes this upon Himself.
[The LORD] will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. [Isaiah 40:11]
“11For thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. 12 As a 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 places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.” [Ezekiel 34:11-12]
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. [Psalms 95:7]
Or the most famous passage of them all,
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. [Psalms 23:1-2]
All these promises in the Old Testament must be kept in mind when we get to the New Testament and to the Gospel text for today. When Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd” He is taking all of these Old Testament promises and applying them to Himself. He is saying, without question, that He Himself, the man from Nazareth, is the eternal God.
Who is God? We know God in the man Jesus, and His Father, and the Spirit that He sends forth. Jesus is our Good Shepherd, and by Him we know the true God.
And more, we know what God does, what He wants, what He loves. You know that people talk about theology and theologians. Theos comes from the Greek word for God, and logos from the Greek word for word or idea, we use it to talk about the study of something (like biology or psychology or geology). So theology is our study of God, our thinking about Him. But it is beginning to become more and more clear to me that there is a much more important question than what do we think about God, and it is this: What does God think about us?
You see the difference. Does God love me or hate me? Is He my friend or my enemy? Is He going to save me or destroy me? Now the answer to that question is also in the image of the Shepherd and the sheep. But before we get to the answer from the Scripture, lets talk about what God should do. Should God love or hate me? Should He be our friend or our enemy? Should He save or destroy us? “We all, like sheep, have gone astray.” We have to know that as wandering and wicked sheep we have deserved the Lord's wrath and punishment. The Great Shepherd told His first two sheep, “If you eat that you will die.” And understand this, that this death is not the natural consequence, like the fruit had rat poison in it. No, death is the punishment from God for sin. And it is into this punishment that we are born, and we don't help things much by our daily sin and rebellion.
So, what we deserve is God our enemy, our destroyer, our death-giver. But look, dear saints, the Lord does not give us what we deserve. We have this wonderful news in the first verse of our Gospel reading. Do you what to know how God thinks of you? “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” [John 10:11] Now that's fantastic.
Instead of taking your life, he lays His own life down. Instead of punishing and destroying you He is punished and destroyed in your place. Instead of hate we get from the Lord His undying love; instead of a scowl we have a smile. Instead of handing us over to our wandering ways, He seeks us our and carries us home.
So we have who God is: Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and His Father and Spirit. And we know what He does: this Good Shepherd seeks and saves the lost; He lays down His life for the sheep.
We also know who we are: we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. We are His sheep that hear His voice. This is what it means to be a Christian: that we hear the voice of our Good Shepherd, Jesus. It is good for us to have this clarity, that the Lord Jesus who has gathered us here today would tell us who we are in Him.
I've heard it said, “That's not very Christian.” You know what people are talking about when they say that. Someone cuts you off in the street, or they throw their trash out in the yard, or they use some foul language. “That's not very Christian.” Now, it is true that the Lord has commanded us to love our neighbor, and we should do everything we can to serve them. But is that what makes us Christian? Is Christianity a matter of dos and don'ts? No, Being a Christian is not a matter of doing, it is a matter of hearing.
Remember how Jesus said it, “My sheep hear my voice.” To be the Lord's sheep means that we have been given by the Holy Spirit ears to hear the voice of our Jesus, our Good Shepherd. We are Christians not because of our hands or our hearts, but because of our ears and the Words and promises that the Lord Jesus speaks into them. The hands and the heart come later.
What this means (and now we are on to the last question: what is the church?) this means that the most important thing in the church is the hearing of the Good Shepherd's voice. It is His speaking and our hearing and believing that makes us His flock, His people, His congregation. We praise God that even a seven-year-old child knows what the church is, namely holy believers, and sheep who hear the voice of their Good Shepherd.
We hear His voice, His Word, and by that Word we live. It is His Word that commands us how to live in the Ten Commandments, and shows us our sin. And it is His Word that says to us, “I forgive you all your sins.” It is His Word that says to us, “I love you.” It is by His Word that we are given the name of His children in our baptism, and it is His Word that feeds us this morning, “Take and eat, this is My body give for you. Take and drink, this is the New Testament in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
So, dear sheep, let us continues to hear the voice of our Good Shepherd, and in His voice find our life and salvation. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church | Aurora, CO
