April 29, 2012 John 10:11-18
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep 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 are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
Dear Isaac, Tristan, Zach, Walker and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ,
The call to Christianity has never been an easy thing. You have been trained by now to know that Jesus didn’t promise you happiness in this life, not as far as the world thinks of happiness. He predicted that things would go from bad to worse in our world. Your own sinful nature will not stop harassing you once you are confirmed. You will not stop having sexual temptations or problems with anger or arrogance or indifference. The devil will not run away from you. He will look for ways to drag you into hell. Your sinful nature will not want to fight. It will want life to be easy. “Take up your cross”, Jesus said. The cross was never meant to be easy. Know that well.
Whatever Jesus calls us to go through; it pales in comparison to what Christ had to go through; what He volunteered to go through. Jesus compares Himself to a shepherd, and we are compared to the sheep. The most attractive thing to Jesus is that He lays down His life for the sheep. We love it when Jesus feeds us and gives us food and drink and good health. But all of those things are temporary. They still have the stink of death attached to them. It sickens me to see the flocks flowing in to hear preachers talking about Jesus the money manager and Jesus the success maker instead of Jesus the crucified. It is a different Jesus than the Jesus of the Scriptures they are seeking and receiving.
Think about the picture of Christianity and Himself that Jesus draws in today’s text. We are compared to sheep, helpless and weak sheep that go wandering through a wilderness. We have no fangs. We have no sense about us. We run when the wolf comes. The wolf is Satan, who chased humanity from the safety of the Garden and into the wilderness of sin and death. It is such a weak and pathetic picture we don’t like to even think of it. But the Bible is not a humanistic book. It talks about sin as if we were infected with it from head to toe. It portrays the devil and demons as very powerful and evil spirits that have control of the world. It tells us we are weak, dead, wicked and fearful people. We like to think of ourselves as strong as in control, especially when we’re younger. We sometimes do really foolish and dangerous things because we think we’ll never die. We sometimes fall into temptation because we over estimate our own spiritual strength. We say, “I’d never have sex before marriage. I’ll never get divorced. I’ll never get drunk.” Then the devil has us right where he wants us; in a condition of pride. Sooner or later we all come to the realization of our own weakness; when it comes to temptation or old age; we are all weaker than we think. That’s what the Bible says. We’d do best to pay attention and take its insults for real.
Jesus is different. He comes into our world from heaven above; the eternal God takes on flesh through the Virgin Mary. He seems so weak as a little baby in the manger. Yet He’s a perfect little boy and even goes to the temple to learn all of His Bible passages and ask engaging questions of His teachers. He is baptized and taken into a desert to fight against Satan. He’s not weak at all! He confronts the false prophets. He heals the sick and raises the dead. He preaches the truth. But then after all of this strength, He is crucified on a cross, not for His own sins, but for the sins of the world.
The cross is all important, for God’s Word tells us that at the cross Jesus was punished as a substitute for our sins; the death of God for the sin of man. It means that God actually put Jesus through hell for what we did. He stood His ground and allowed Himself to be blamed for what we did. He did it willingly. He let it happen. It wasn’t a sign of weakness. It was a sign of strength. And what did we do as humanity? We sat and watched. We taunted Him. We told Him to come down and save Himself. We made fun of Him for dieing for us. God didn’t make fun of Him. The Father loved Jesus for doing what He did. He gave Jesus authority to rise from the dead, and He did.
Christians are the sheep who love this story. The Strong became weak, for us. Christians realize they are weak and helpless sheep. We love the story of the Good Shepherd who loves the sheep enough to die for them, even though they are foolish, wicked, weak and rebellious. We come as often as we possibly can to hear about Jesus and learn more about Him. We love to hear about how God plotted out our salvation, how He set aside the Jews and took care of them through the Old Testament. We love to go through the story of the crucifixion every year; how Judas betrays Him and Peter denies Him; and how Jesus prays for those who crucify Him from the cross. This is our centerpiece. It gives us strength to know God loves us and our sins are forgiven and paid for. It gives us courage to know we will be resurrected to eternal life. We don’t even mind hearing about how sinful we are, because we know that this just drives us closer to the cross; makes us cling to Him all the more. The more God ridicules us and calls us sheep, the more attractive Jesus the Good Shepherd looks to us. God doesn’t help those who help themselves. He helps those who CAN’T help themselves. This is the story that draws us to Jesus. Jesus said, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” That’s US!
Jesus also said, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.” The word for “know” is not just to know with the brain. It is a knowledge of experience, like when you maybe used to play with Play-do. You stuck your hands in it and got it under your finger nails. You formed it and felt its texture. Then you jammed it back into the container it came from after rolling it back together. This is an illustration of how Jesus came to know us. He didn’t just stick His big toe in our world. He experienced what it was like to be hungry and tired. He saw widows cry. He felt pain and death. He put His hands on leprosy and healed it. Worst of all, he allowed Himself to be bathed in our sin and guilt on the cross; He felt sin and guilt; that of the world. He actually BECAME it, the Word says. He who examines your life and knows your life also suffered the guilt of all of your sin. He specifically died for it. He knows you inside and out. He knows what your weaknesses and strengths are. He knows how you feel; what makes you feel good and what makes you feel awful. He felt it first hand.
As well as you know Him, Jesus says that’s how you are to know Him as well. When the Holy Spirit comes into you at your baptism He opens your mind to who Jesus is, and drives you to want to know everything about Him. He wants you to know how many days Jesus was in the grave. Read through the story of Lazarus and think through it. Put yourself in the temple with Jesus and imagine Him asking the questions of the teachers. Know him well. That’s the Jesus the Midweek teachers and Sunday School teachers tried to introduce you to. That’s the Jesus your pastor talked about. We all wanted you to KNOW who Jesus is – not just in your head, but in your heart; in your emotions; in your life. Know what He did for you and love it.
Think about all of the things you’ve come to know here. You believe God took on flesh for you. You believe Jesus became a baby to live in your place. You believe He walked and talked here for 33 years. You believe that He allowed Himself to be blamed and go through hell for you. He let His body to be put to death in put in a grave for three days. You believe that He chose to do all this for you free of charge; that He gives this to you through baptism and through faith. You believe that every time you take the Lord's Supper He comes to you with His holy body and blood and gives you His righteousness and forgiveness time and again; keeping you strong in faith and holy and His sight. On top of this, God’s Word says that He still rules invisibly in the heavenly realms. He has every hair of your head numbered. He works all out for your good. He gives you your health and your wealth every minute and every day of your life. He protects you from Satan and keeps evil under control. He allows you to die, but promises a resurrection from the dead. He does all this for you, and you say, “That’s nice. What’s next on the agenda?” How could you? How would you?
Jesus contrasts Himself with the hired hand. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. The fact that the man is “hired” means he is under contract. He’s doing the job, but he’s only there for a paycheck. Being a shepherd used to be thought of as a disgusting and dirty job, maybe like some would think of a pig farmer today. Pigs aren’t real expensive right now, so I’m sure that someone who had a job for minimum wage there wouldn’t go risking his neck for the pigs. That’s how Jesus compares the hired hands. They’re only in it for a paycheck. They don’t really care about the sheep. As a matter of fact, they probably hate the fact that the sheep make them walk across barren lands in search of grass. But it’s the only job they can get, so they do it; but they don’t exactly put their life into it.
Your parents are supposed to be better than the hired hand. They were supposed to put their life into you; making sure that you were baptized in Christ and raised in Christ. They were supposed to pray for you and with you. They were supposed to be good role models in bringing you to church and accompanying you here. They weren’t just supposed to tell you to come to confirmation class and Sunday School. They were supposed to show that they too were hungry for the Word as they came to Bible class also. They were supposed to spend time and effort in teaching you Bible stories and having you memorize your memory work. They were supposed to value this more than how well you did at school or at sports. This was supposed to be their first priority. They weren’t supposed to just do it as a sense of duty; but as fellow sheep. And you, as their sheep, were supposed to make their duty easy for them. You were supposed to be eager to come to Midweek School and Sunday School. You were supposed to learn with an eager heart and not complain about it as if you were being led to hell.
Your pastor, Sunday School teachers and Midweek teachers were also supposed to get to know you and pray for you. They were supposed to regard their calling in life as a precious duty; not just a lesson that had to be taught because no one else would. They weren’t supposed to be impatient with you and angry with you at the drop of a hat. They were supposed to get to know you and pray for you and with you; to try and help you through your weaknesses; not to despise you because of them. They were supposed to make sure that throughout all of the lessons they thoroughly prepared to teach God’s Word correctly and ultimately brought you to Jesus. Your congregation was supposed to pray for you and help support you as well.
We are all sinners. I would hope that none of us are just hired hands. Yet our prayer life and our efforts may realize that we don’t regard this as a life and death matter. With our own sinful natures we didn’t prioritize our duties as we should. How many children go astray after confirmation? How many stop going to church when they get in college and rarely if ever come back? How many never return to another Bible class after confirmation? How many of their former teachers and congregational members ever bother to even call them?
So the lesson in this is that even though God uses sinful people to bring you to Christ, don’t rely on them and don’t rely on your self. Your parents will disappoint you. Your pastor won’t look after you as he should. You will disappoint you. They will be selfish with their time and efforts and so will you. Your congregational members will be too consumed with themselves to bother to get to know you or seek you if you stray. They won’t always be great role models. You can’t rely on them. You have to look beyond the sinfulness of God’s servants, and remember to see the Shepherd through it all. He is the centerpiece. You have to focus on Him alone. So do they.
So we all, confirmands, pastors, parents, teachers and children all come here for one purpose; to adore and feed on the One who gave His life for us. When we come to the Supper we all come as beggars needing the same forgiveness and receiving the same forgiveness. We come because we know the Good Shepherd laid down His life for us. We come because we know that in the Supper we receive God’s free and full forgiveness. We know that even though the people we kneel next to are not as good as the Shepherd; He will always remain good. And that word in the Greek doesn’t just mean “good” as in, “not bad.” It means “beautiful, noble and excellent - the very best.”
At Beautiful Savior we all realize that we are just sheep. You’re sheep before you’re confirmed and you remain sheep afterwards. We don’t try to taunt and flaunt ourselves because of all of our great programs and how many people are coming to this and how many people are doing that. We know ourselves well enough to know that we don’t want people coming here because of us. We don’t want them to be disappointed in our church because we aren’t as caring as they thought we’d be. Don’t get me wrong, we try to be loving and kind. We are baptized and forgiven and we’ve been given the Holy Spirit. Yet even with all of what the Holy Spirit does through us and in us, we’re still just the sheep. We still fail. The wonderful thing is that Jesus knows that; but He still died for us and loved us anyway. We want people coming here because of Him. He is the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd. We want to focus on Christ alone.
Psalm 23 is known as the Good Shepherd Psalm. David, a shepherd, wrote the Psalm and compared God to the Shepherd. He led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt on the way to the Promised Land. Yet in-between their redemption and the Holy Land they doubted God and ended up in a desert for forty years. God led them into the valley of the shadow of death. Sin has landed us in the same place. Even though Jesus died for us and baptized us and made us His own, we still have a valley of death to walk through.
We, like the Israelites, have a lot of walking to do through dry and arid places; sometimes it is due to our own worry and doubt. We’re weak. The devil is on the prowl. He wants your soul back. We need direction and protection. But looking over us; hidden behind the pillars of the Word and sacraments is the resurrected Jesus. He sees us and He knows us. He hears when we’re complaining. He sees when we’re getting tired. He knows when to make us thirsty and He knows when to send rain. He sustains us on the path with His Supper. He doesn’t tell us where we’re going today or tomorrow until we get there; but encourages us to trust in Him along the way.
The disciples didn’t know where Jesus was going when He told them He was going to the cross. They didn’t know He was going to rise from the dead even though He told them. It wasn’t until after it was all said and done that they realized and believed that Jesus had the whole thing under control the whole time. Jesus said, The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.
It is this Jesus; the One who died on the cross to pay for your sins; the One who rose from the dead; that calls on you to follow Him into the shadow of death. He has given you parents and teachers and a pastor. They have been called on by God to feed and protect you from the wolves of false theology and humanism and greed and sexual exploitation in the world. Some will lay down their lives for you. Some will be lazy about it. Some will run in the first sign of trouble. Some will confront you. Some will demand much of you. Some won’t. Some will challenge you to stay faithful and get to know your Lord better. Some will encourage you to be lazy.
No matter who is called on to lead you, remember Who is in the Cloud overhead. Remember who baptized you into this family of sheep. Remember Who comes to you in the Supper. Remember who is really at the Head. He is the One who promises you eternal life and salvation through faith in His death and resurrection. He is the One who promises to come again to take you Home. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and He will give you; the weak and helpless little sheep, the Crown of Life; for He the Good Shepherd has done His job. Amen.
