Governed by The Shepherd

[00:00:00] Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:08] You know that peace that comes through God's shepherding, sometimes peace looks like order in a classroom. I see a few of you out there who govern classrooms of children in a classroom. [00:00:26] Peace comes through obedience to the teacher's voice. [00:00:33] If you don't have a teacher, you're not going to have order. You're not going to have. There's going to be no peace. I see teachers going, yeah, just kidding. [00:00:44] So you might leave the classroom for a few minutes and there's still peace. That would be an ideal situation, but that's only because your word is. [00:00:55] The residual effect of your word is still in place. But it's only a matter of time before that ends and chaos ensues. [00:01:04] I remember in first grade trying to remember her. Some of you probably know her. [00:01:13] I called her Mrs. G. But her name has changed since then. [00:01:17] Beth. Ah, that's all right. I remember her standing in the doorway like this. [00:01:23] None of us noticed, you know, but she had been out of the classroom for five minutes. And that particular time, there were pencils being thrown and things like that. And then we realized, oh, there she is. You know, that's not the ideal situation. Right. Ideally, we would be shepherded. We would be governed by the voice of the teacher. [00:01:46] That's a lot of the purpose of the shepherd image. Just like in a kingdom, if you don't have a king, there's not going to be order, but the king brings order. [00:01:57] We just sang about Jesus as the king, his, the scepter, his, the throne, his, the victory. And then we said the songs of peaceful Zion. [00:02:06] Why is it peaceful Zion? It's because it's shepherded by Jesus Christ. Those were the words of a reading from Revelation, which ended by saying, for the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd. [00:02:22] So there you get people from every language and every nation there in a multitude that no one can number. And they're all saying the same thing in unison, kind of like we do in church. [00:02:37] They're all following the same order. They're ordered peacefully by their shepherd. That's what you and I want, is to be shepherded by Jesus Christ, to be his sheep. [00:02:49] Not individually, not just like, oh, I'm a lamb and I'm carried by Jesus. [00:02:55] That's definitely a part of the image. [00:02:58] But don't forget the other people around. Don't forget the. The sheep being governed together. [00:03:05] Although you can also think of this on an individual Level. We've said this before, but there are a lot of parts of you, a lot of parts of me that can get all tangled up and confused. [00:03:18] My desires and my fears, what I know I should do, and what I think I should do as an alternative to get out of a situation. All those kinds of things are swirling and need to be governed and ordered by Jesus Christ so that we experience his peace internally. Being shepherded, being governed by our good shepherd. But then it applies to us all as a whole as well. [00:03:46] But I want to focus in on that dynamic between the shepherd and the sheep. How does that happen? How are we governed by Jesus Christ? [00:03:56] Now, probably all of us in here would say that we're Christian. [00:04:02] The vast majority of us probably are baptized into Christ. [00:04:07] We've been united to him. [00:04:09] But faith is a daily struggle. [00:04:12] We can lose it. [00:04:14] Is it possible to fall away from Christ? [00:04:18] Well, yeah, it's possible to turn another direction, listen to another voice, be shepherded by another. [00:04:27] That's why we prayed in the collect of the day. [00:04:32] Almighty God, merciful Father, since you have wakened from death, the shepherd of your sheep, grant us your Holy Spirit, that when we hear the voice of the shepherd, we may know him who calls us each by name and. And follow where he leads. [00:04:48] We prayed for it because it's not a given. [00:04:54] As Paul said, you can make shipwreck of your faith. [00:04:58] Okay, so then how. [00:05:01] What is faith? And how does it happen? And how does that stay in place? And how do we keep following the shepherd? [00:05:08] We hear his voice and follow where he leads. It all comes through his hearing. Faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of God. [00:05:16] That's how it works. That's why you're all here this morning. [00:05:20] To hear from the shepherd and be fed by him, to be governed by him. [00:05:25] Luther said that the ear is the organ of salvation, or something like that. You just picture the Word coming in through the ear and working in the heart to shape it. That's what a shepherd does, shapes the actions of the sheep through his word. [00:05:46] Well, in the gospel reading, Jesus is speaking to leaders of the Jews. Here it just says the Jews, but it's implied. [00:05:58] The Jews who are not following him. [00:06:02] And they say to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? [00:06:09] We are so curious to know if you're the Christ. [00:06:15] Tell us plainly. [00:06:17] Just tell us. [00:06:19] So they're. Well, they're figuring things out. They're thinking. [00:06:24] They're actively looking to figure out the truth, so it seems. But Jesus says, I told you you could know. [00:06:36] I told You. But essentially you didn't receive my word. Picture Jesus telling them, but the Word, even if it came in through the ears, it didn't find any place in the heart. It's like it found hard soil that had already been trampled and was unreceptive to the seed of Jesus Word. [00:06:56] I told you, and you do not believe. [00:06:59] So something's not working. [00:07:01] They're not being shepherded by Jesus. They're not receiving him as the shepherd, and so they're not being transformed by His Word. [00:07:09] The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me. But you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. [00:07:16] How do you become part of his flock, then? [00:07:20] By hearing his voice and following him. By hearing his voice and receiving it. [00:07:27] My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me. [00:07:33] I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. This is such a beautiful reading to pair with that vision in Revelation, where it's like, I give them eternal life, they will never perish. They're following me, they hear my voice. And then you see them in Revelation. [00:07:54] Yes. You know, shouting with one accord. [00:08:01] Let's read that. Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power, and might be to our God forever and ever. [00:08:11] Amen. [00:08:13] Just think of us singing the Sanctus or something like that. Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of Sabbath. [00:08:23] We're praising God with the words of the angels and the words of God's people forever. Not just us, but all kinds of people today singing that same song, but throughout time and space. Or you could think of the. [00:08:38] The Gloria where we say, glory to God in the highest. And again, we're all speaking in unison. [00:08:44] Like, in the end, we're all being shepherded by our good Shepherd. [00:08:51] So it's nice to see that vision of the end, what that looks like. God's people receiving eternal life, being guided and protected by Jesus Christ forever in unison, brought into order, brought into peace by Him. [00:09:09] But, you know, that's a vision of the other side of things. [00:09:14] Well, that's from. It's like the coronation of Jesus in heaven after his ascension. [00:09:21] But here we are on the other side of things with St. Paul. [00:09:26] St. Paul in this reading from Acts 20. [00:09:31] Well, he's being shepherded by the Good shepherd, but it doesn't look like all fun and games. [00:09:39] In fact, he says essentially that he's receiving the word of the shepherd and that's guiding everything. In fact, he values the word of his shepherd more than anything, he says, but I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course, the course that Jesus Christ has set for him by his shepherding word. [00:10:16] I don't account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and. And the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus by faith to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. [00:10:33] And then he says before and after that, that there were all kinds of reasons to push him away from doing that, to draw him away from following the voice of the shepherd. [00:10:51] You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility, you could say receptivity. [00:11:04] With all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews. How I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that that was profitable. [00:11:15] He didn't shrink from it, even in the face of terrible danger later, again, he says, I didn't shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. [00:11:28] And that every time he goes somewhere, he knows that he's going to face trials and persecution. [00:11:36] Look at the boldness with which St. Paul followed the voice of his shepherd and participated in his ministry of gathering more into his flock. [00:11:49] Again, we pray that God would grant us his Holy Spirit, that when we hear the voice of our shepherd, we may know him who calls us each by name and follow where he leads. [00:12:03] So one thing we can take from this maybe is, well, we don't want to be like the leaders of the Jews who were unreceptive to Jesus Word. [00:12:16] And it seems like kind of an extreme case, like they don't know Jesus. [00:12:22] But, you know, we're surrounded by, well, by shepherds. You could say just how many youtubers there out there or. Or influencers. What are they trying to do? They want to gather you into their flock. [00:12:38] They want to have the voice that gives you what you need. [00:12:44] Really. It's like they're gathering a following. They're trying to get as many followers as they can. It's even called that on some social media platforms. [00:12:52] They're guiding you with their voice. [00:12:55] That can be okay. I mean, in a sense, like, I'm a shepherd. Call the shepherd a pastor for your sake, on behalf of Christ. [00:13:05] And there are all kinds of other shepherds. Teachers. Yeah, listen to your teacher bosses. Listen to your boss, your CEO. [00:13:14] We need shepherds. [00:13:19] But it's really easy, really easy to get sidetracked. By another shepherd. A lot of times that shepherd is. [00:13:27] Well, I mean for myself, like looking to myself to shepherd myself to figure things out. Not to listen humbly first, but to try and figure it out by sight, not by faith. [00:13:41] Being a sheep is the reverse. [00:13:44] Walking by faith and not by sight. The ear first and the ear trained in a particular direction to Jesus Christ. [00:13:53] You know, sometimes that requires some quiet, intentional listening. [00:14:00] That sounds like kind of a cliche throwaway thing. [00:14:06] That's how I would have heard it, I think without experience, like preparing for a sermon. [00:14:13] It's really, really. Sometimes it's like, what is going on in this text and how do things connect and. And I'm just trying to figure it out. [00:14:23] But things click more often than not just by pausing and remembering that dynamic and listening to Christ with attention to the text. Not just like, okay, drop something in here and I'll go, you know. [00:14:42] But it's that humility being soiled. It's just asking for a seed to come into it from God's word. [00:14:52] And that's true not just for preparing for a sermon, but for dealing with a difficult situation at work or a relationship problem, or being in the midst of a difficult parenting situation or when you get bad news from the doctor, anything like that. Faith is a daily moment to moment dynamic. And that dynamic is defined by listening and receiving listening in a particular direction toward Jesus Christ. [00:15:24] That's what prayer is, it's attention toward Jesus Christ. [00:15:31] That's what worship is, it's attention toward Jesus Christ. And we're doing that together as a flock, listening to Jesus. May he continue to strengthen each of our faith individually and all of us together in our life together in Jesus name, amen.