John 10:11-18
‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’
************************
How many of you have ever seen a sheep taking anti-depressants? How about antacids, because they're so stressed out they need to medicate their constantly roiling stomachs? No? Me neither.
Now, I've tried both. I've taken almost every antacid on the market, and none of them relieve the turbulence in my stressed-out stomach. I've tried anti-depressants, too, and if they didn't make me so light headed I'd probably still be on them—I have spent the last 7 years trying to deal with my anxieties, and while I'm glad to say they're far better than they used to be, they're still not fun.
So what makes me different than the sheep? Why am I, and so many others, heavily medicated for reasons that are solely mental while sheep, who are a lot more physically threatened than I, seem so content?
Simple—they trust the shepherd.
Me? I'm busy trying to secure my own life with my own two hands and my overactive brain. I'm busy trying to take care of everything because I have a hard time trusting God to hold up his end of the bargain. I could learn something from the sheep—I could learn to trust the shepherd.
Now, admittedly, the sheep don't have much of a choice. I've never seen a sheep attend a career fair, asking for resumes and trying to decide which shepherd to trust with their lives. Sheep are merely born into a herd and spend their lives there, providing wool for clothing or becoming a delicious meal. Perhaps some sheep should look into their options...
We, on the other hand, have all sorts of options as to which shepherd to follow. The devil has ensured that there are plenty of options, and our sinful habits drive us to try as many of them as possible. Jesus talks about how his sheep know his voice and follow him, but if we, the sheep to which he refers, are open and honest, we have to admit that we spend a good deal of time chasing after other voices, confusing them with Christ's voice. Thankfully, we know that Christ searches out the lost sheep, because while we often like to label other people as the lost sheep, the reality is that we spend a good portion of our lives just as lost as anyone else. Christ seeks us out and brings us home.
The story of the shepherd seeking out the lost sheep is but one example of the reason that Jesus is called the Good Shepherd. Not the bad shepherd, not the mediocre shepherd, not the shepherd who brings home most of the sheep—he is the good shepherd, and I want to spend some time today talking about the reasons that he is good.
The first reason is that he is trustworthy. We can trust the shepherd with our lives. If you owned a flock of sheep and were hiring a shepherd, you wouldn't hire the shepherd with a 75% retention rate for bringing home the sheep. You wouldn't even want the guy with the 99% retention rate—you want a shepherd who will bring home every single sheep. You want to hire a shepherd who will face down danger and do whatever possible to protect the sheep.
Now, as the sheep, we have to realize that we don't understand all of the ways of the shepherd. Think about how many things a shepherd might do that the sheep might not understand. If you remember the story of David slaying Goliath, he did so with his sling and a smooth stone he had picked up from a river. The reason he was lethal with his sling is that he had spent time in the meadow guarding the sheep from wolves and other predators, and he used his sling to ward them off. He had practiced so that when he needed it, he could use the sling to protect the sheep.
Picture yourself as a sheep. You're watching the shepherd use a leather sling to hurl rocks at a fencepost or nearby tree. Seems like a pretty dumb waste of time, right? Perhaps an enjoyable hobby, but nothing more. Now, when you see a wolf come near and you feel threatened for your life, all of a sudden you see the shepherd pull out that sling and kill the wolf—only then do you understand what all that practice was for.
In the same way, we have to trust completely Jesus Christ as our shepherd, and we also have to accept that we don't understand all of the ways of the shepherd. We want answers—we want to know everything, to understand the ways of the world, to know why evil happens and why Christ doesn't intervene in Syria or Somali or the sorrows of our own lives. We want to know why it seems like the Devil is winning and why people we love keep getting cancer. We want to know God's plan for our lives and we want to know it yesterday so that we can get on with life. We want to know.
And there's nothing wrong with the desire for knowledge. There's nothing wrong with asking God. But Jesus is the Good Shepherd—he's worthy of our trust. Just because we don't have the answers to our questions doesn't mean that Jesus doesn't love us or that he's not paying attention to us—it just means that we don't have the full picture yet. We don't understand everything. It's ok—he is worthy of our trust. He is the Good Shepherd.
So Jesus the Good Shepherd is trustworthy. He's also devoted. He notes this in the very beginning of the passage—the Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. He contrasts this with the hired hand, the one who turns and runs to save himself at the first sign of danger, the one who does not care enough for the sheep to risk a hair on his head. Jesus, on the other hand, cares enough to lay down his life for the sheep.
This is the ultimate sacrifice of a shepherd. The shepherd is willing to place himself between the source of danger and the sheep. The shepherd doesn't stand behind the sheep, hoping that the predator will eat his fill before he gets to the shepherd. The shepherd doesn't urge the sheep to turn and run, hoping that some of them might save themselves. You've heard the saying that when a bear attacks, you don't have to be the fastest one, you just can't be the slowest one—this isn't what Jesus is teaching to the sheep. He is going out and standing between danger and the sheep, so that the sheep not only are protected but also can take heart, take courage, in his example. They know they are safe because they have a shepherd willing to take the punishment that belongs to them. Without the shepherd, the sheep would be in danger of death, powerless to do anything about it. But with the Good Shepherd in front of them, they need not fear for their own lives, but can take confidence that the Good Shepherd will pay the price for them.
Our Good Shepherd dies for us. Humanity has gone to a place of sin that should mean death for us, but Christ stands between us and death and takes our punishment. He lays down his life so that we don't have to—not because he deserves it, but because he chooses to do so. His life is laid down for us, to protect us, to give us hope and courage in the face of death. We have nothing to fear because our shepherd stands between us and death, taking the punishment and suffering death so that we do not have to.
Our Good Shepherd is devoted.
Our Good Shepherd is trustworthy.
And finally, our Good Shepherd is powerful.
Notice this at the end of the passage—this is so important. I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.
Did you get that? No one takes Christ's life from him. The next time you think of the battle between good and evil as a war between two equal powers, read that sentence again. Christ knows full well that he'll be nailed to a cross and the devil will throw every worldly power against him to kill him, but Christ knows the devil cannot take his life. The world cannot take his life. Every weapon we have ever created, from the first rough-cut arrowhead to the entire nuclear arsenal of the world today, cannot take his life. Only he can lay it down, and he chooses to do so for us.
Jesus is so often portrayed as a sorrowful figure, going to a painful death orchestrated by the Pharisees. And his death was an awful one, but let us not forget that Christ chose this path for you and I. Christ chose to lay down his life so that humans might live in freedom from the shackles of sin and death. Christ chose to go this way, and only he could give up his life—the world could only receive what he had chosen to give. He is more powerful than anything the devil can conjure up, and this will be noted with finality when Christ returns and shatters death and sin forever in his victorious right hand. Christ will reign forever, and we can be assured of this because God is more powerful than evil, Christ is stronger than the world—and yet God chooses to use this power for love, for good, for us.
So here we are, sheep of the Good Shepherd. Our shepherd is trustworthy. Our shepherd is devoted. Our shepherd is powerful.
When he calls your voice, will you hear and obey? Will you follow him to the green pastures to which he wants to lead you? Will you let him take you into abundant life? Will you stop listening to the voices of the world's shepherds, who promise everything and deliver nothing? Will you deafen your ears to every other voice but his and his alone, and follow him wherever he may lead, for his glory?
Let us pray
No comments:
Post a Comment