Summary: To challenge the hearers to identify themselves not always as the lost sheep but to see themselves as "lead sheep" or shepherds by caring and loving God’s "sheep", using Jesus Christ as their example. To speak to a congregation a message of hope, restoration, and growth in the local church,
Introduction
We have many professional pastors, preachers, and teachers leading the churches of Christ. However, we have very few prophets. A prophet is "called by God to speak for God." The prophet speaks what God gives without regard for the likes and dislikes of the people. The prophet speaks out of a sense of calling and purpose. The prophet is called out to serve God on behalf of his people.
Today’s Word comes from the book of Jeremiah, and although we need a little history lesson to help us understand the context of Jeremiah’s message, I’m going to start with the text. It comes from the 23rd chapter, and we will look at verses 1-6. (Read Text) – The Word of God for the people of God – Thanks be to God. I must admit that reading this text made me question my desire to go into ministry. I mean it starts right off by saying, “Woe to the shepherds”. And as some of us may know, the Latin word for shepherd is “pastor”. As I read this passage, I was getting the idea that the “shepherds” were getting blamed for all that was going wrong and that the people seemed to be “let off the hook.” God is going to “attend to” the shepherds for their evil doings. I don’t know about you but “attend to” used in this manner doesn’t strike me as spending five minutes in the “time-out” chair. It sounds like serious business. And while the shepherd is being attended to, God will bring the sheep back into the fold where they will fear no longer.
By itself, this passage seems to me like a congregation’s dream passage. If any problems arise in the church and outsiders come in to help, all the community has to do is quote this passage, then point to the pastor and say, “It is the shepherd you must attend to. We are but sheep. Please help bring us back into the fold so we may fear no more.” Now I’m not trying to take away from the shepherd's responsibility. Church leaders can and will be held more accountable if their teachings lead their followers away from God, and the penalties will be severe, as quoted from Jeremiah 23:15, “I am going to make them eat wormwood, and give them poisoned water.” Now that’s what I call being “attended to.” But if we make a deeper investigation of this passage, it shows us that, yes, the leadership during the time of Jeremiah rebelled against God’s will, but we will also see that the sheep were not so innocent. But regardless of who was at fault for the nation's condition, more importantly, we need to see that Jeremiah’s message tells us that finger-pointing is useless. To God, it does not matter who is at fault. We will find a God that reprimands the sheep (and shepherds) but never stops loving them. No matter how the sheep and shepherds try to turn away from God’s covenants, they are reminded that God made the covenants and that we cannot break them.
We are also assured that the remnant of the flock will be gathered personally by God and that shepherds will be made to rise over us, who will follow God’s commands of righteousness and justice. And at the end of this passage, Jeremiah shares God’s promise to raise a righteous branch of David to reign as king and who shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
Recognizing that hired help would not have the same dedication to the flock (would maybe run from a wolf instead of saving the sheep), the shepherd would look to family for help. A family member would have a stake in caring for the sheep and could be seen as more reliable and trustworthy. The same goes for God. Although we all know that God can care for the whole flock without help, God constantly tries to partner with humankind (His family) to help care for and nurture His creation. You see, God lets some of the sheep go out in front of the others and even lets some of them lead, but God always remains close by. This can be seen most dramatically in Exodus. God chooses Moses (His lead sheep) to lead the chosen people out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt. But remember that on the wilderness journey, represented by the smoke during the day and fire at night, God was always close by. And one of the reasons God stays close is so that the sheep and shepherds that get out of line can be “attended to.” There’s that “attended to” statement we heard in today’s Scripture. So how will God attend to the “bad” sheep and shepherds? Let’s look at what shepherds do to sheep that keep leaving the flock. I came across a story about a traveler in Syria who saw a shepherd carrying food to a sheep that had a broken leg. The traveler asked how it happened. “Did it fall into a hole, or did some other animal break the leg?” he asked. “No,” said the shepherd, “I broke it.” “You broke it?” asked the surprised traveler. “Yes. This is a wayward sheep. It wouldn’t stay with the flock and would lead some sheep astray. It wouldn’t let me near it, so I had to break its leg to allow me to feed it. In doing this, it will get to know me as its shepherd, trust me as its guide, and keep with the flock.” So let's take a look and see how God, like the shepherd in Syria, had to do some “leg breaking” during the time of Jeremiah.
Let’s start with the leaders, the kings. Jeremiah’s call came toward the end of the reign of King Josiah. Now, Biblical scholars will recall that Josiah is best known for his reform. That is to say, in short, Josiah found an old copy of the Law of Moses, saw how bad Judah was doing, and started to clean the house. The changes that were being made must have been supported by Jeremiah because he didn’t do too much preaching during this time. He must have felt that Judah was heeding his earlier warnings, joined in the reform, and therefore must have been hoping that Judah would be spared. But after Josiah’s untimely death, things began to change. Jeremiah tried at first to remain optimistic, but it wasn’t long before the defects of the reform became apparent, and Jeremiah saw how shallow and artificial the reform was in the hearts of the people. Externally the people of Judah were following the law, but internally they had not changed. So early in the reign of king Jehoiakim, Jeremiah delivered a series of oracles against all the people of Judah (not just the leaders). In these oracles, Jeremiah condemns the people accusing them of turning away too far from their God. He tries to convince them that they cannot continue believing that Jerusalem is safe from destruction because of the temple's location. And it’s from the very gate of this temple Jeremiah tries to get the people to repent, from chapter seven, saying, “Amend your ways and your doings and let me dwell with you in this place.
Now you may remember from the beginning of the sermon that I was concerned that the people of Judah seemed to be “let off the hook.” But let’s go back and look at the beginning of the third verse of today’s passage. It reads, “Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them.” God says, “Where I have driven them.” So God was driving them already (regardless of the “bad” leaders). We can see by this passage that the fate of the people was already sealed from when Jeremiah gave the sermon at the temple; they were to be exiled like the people from Israel. It seems like everyone served other gods throughout the week and came to the temple on the Sabbath feeling saved. Well, let’s be thankful we don’t see that happening anymore. So we might ask if the fate of all of Judah was sealed, why the extra “woe to the shepherds” at the beginning of our text today? Well, believe it or not, the wickedness did not end what we have already covered. Jeremiah continues trying to tell the kings of Judah that the Lord is using Babylon as a tool of justice. Still, here’s where the other “bad” shepherds come in, the king’s prophets were prophesizing that peace shall reign and that all the people should continue life as normal resting in the assurance that they were Gods chose, people. Jeremiah tries fruitlessly to explain that these “false” prophets were speaking from visions of their minds and not the words of the Lord.
Eventually, the forces of Babylon do come, and Judah is able, for a while, to remain semi-independent by paying vast amounts of money in tribute to Babylon. So in this time of poverty, what do you think the king of Judah did to help his struggling people? Right, he builds himself a big house and makes the people perform the labor free of charge. There goes looking out for the oppressed and poor right out the window. An environment where the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. Again, I must say, I’m glad we don’t see that anymore. Well, eventually, the kings and prophets, the “bad” shepherds, relied one too many times on their self-confidence and tried to overthrow the reign of Babylon. The king of Babylon finally got tired of them, and the city of Jerusalem is destroyed along with the temple. So what happened then seems pretty simple to us now. Through Jeremiah, God simply stated what was expected of the people and their leaders - to love God with all your heart, soul, and might and to love others as yourself. Consistent with the view of genuine religion in Hebrew scripture, Jeremiah knew that love of God must be paralleled with love of neighbor; worship without social responsibility was no religion at all.
The lesson for us in this part of the story is clear, and that is our love for God will always show itself in our love and care for God’s people….all of God’s people. If we claim to love God at the core of our being, we will love those whom God loves at the core of God’s being. But sadly there are many people who claim to love God with their whole heart and yet who show nothing but contempt and hatred toward other of God’s children. They simply do not answer the call to lovingly and gently nurture God’s children, the call to be shepherds! So, is that the end of the story? Not by a long shot. We must remember that through Jeremiah God promised the return of the remnant of God’s flock and the rise of good shepherds along with the coming of the righteous branch of David who would reign as King.
And in chapter 31:33-34 Jeremiah reveals God’s future covenant that will be made saying, “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” This new covenant would be made effective by the free grace of God, which creates in the hearts of the people a knowledge of God and of God’s ways, leading to the obedience of God’s law. God will be their God and they will be God’s people in a fellowship unbroken by the sinful rebellions of the past. This hope of Jeremiah is the hope of Israelite faith and in turn of the Christian faith. Now it’s a good habit not to jump too quickly into the New Testament because you can miss things along the way. But here I can’t help but look with New Testament eyes. Why? Because my search of scripture shows many events happenings return from exile, rebuilding of temple, destroyed again and many leaders came but none that fully fit Jeremiah’s prophecy and none that brought the idea of a new covenant. That is until Jesus. Think about it, was it not described at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry that He was going out to “sheep without a shepherd”? So, is Jesus the king we are looking for? Matthew goes out of his way at the beginning of his gospel to show Jesus’ lineage to David. And it is Jesus himself that uses the analogy of the good shepherd compared to his ministry.
After all, Jesus fed us with the Word of God, Jesus washed away our sins, and Jesus, like a good shepherd, by his own choice, laid down His life for the sheep. And what about this new covenant that Jeremiah talked about? Well, was it not after the ascension of Jesus that his disciple was filled with the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus promised, and through that Spirit that was inside of them, they were given the courage and the strength and the knowledge to go out and witness to Jesus’ teachings? And what about those other shepherds that were promised? Well, look around you. After his resurrection, was it not Jesus himself who told his disciples, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you…” In this great commission, Jesus calls us all to action. I say “all” because if we follow our Protestant heritage, are we not all called into the “Priesthood of Believers”?
In the New Testament, pasturing and shepherding are actions we are all called to do. We are called to move just like Peter was when the Risen Christ instructed him that if Peter loved Him, he should tend and feed God’s sheep. Just as Jeremiah saw it, love for God and love for people are so intimately bound up tight that we cannot separate them. We cannot claim to love Christ and, at the same time, persist in bitterness, spite, revenge, and gossip. We cannot claim to love Christ and continue to hate. A lack of love for any of God’s people cuts us off from any claim to love God. As Jesus sees it, all of us are called to do this particular task, to care for and love one another, to shepherd. And we need to be careful in understanding this task of shepherding. Too often, we also make the mistake of thinking that it is only the minister's job to care for the church. And as long as we persist in seeing ministry as the special responsibility of the minister, we will always be linked to the notion of the church as a professional organization that employs people to do the caring.
God wants Pastors who will declare his righteousness. Who will stand for what God wants and not for what the world and the people want? God wants Pastors who love and care enough about his people to speak the truth in good and bad times. God wants somebody who knows his Word and will declare it from the rooftops until the return of his Son, Jesus Christ. And God says that after he has dealt with the evil pastors, he will raise pastors who will care for his people.
Pastors will tell them that the "wages of sin is death and the gift of God is eternal life. Pastors who will live the life they preach about. Pastors who will confess their sins and the sins of the people before God. For when a pastor is truly a prophet: one called and appointed by God - the people will not fear, neither will they be dismayed nor refuse to come to worship God and fellowship with his saints.
So ministry becomes just another job. And when someone is in need, when someone is sick, or has financial difficulties, or is suicidal, or is spiritually depleted, we call in the professional, the minister. After all, it’s the minister’s job. Folks, that’s not the way God sees it. God calls on all that profess love for him to also love others. So, let us learn from today’s scripture and step up to the responsibilities that God has laid before us. This morning, we must ask ourselves, “Do we truly love God with all our hearts, soul, and mind?” If you answered “yes,” then feed God’s sheep. If you answered “no”, then find and sit with someone who answered “yes”, I’m sure they will be glad to talk and walk with you this morning. Let us pray. Thank you, Lord, for all that you do. Help us to love others as we love you. Help us to act on this love as we go out into this world and feed our sheep. In the precious name of Jesus, our Shepherd, we pray. Amen.
