The Shepherd Has and Continues to Lead Us

[00:00:00] In the name of Jesus. [00:00:01] Amen. [00:00:03] You know, when we say in the name of Jesus, we're testifying, we're witnessing that he is alive and ruling and reigning. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Hallelujah. We sang earlier this morning, the lamb who was slain has begun his reign. [00:00:24] Has begun his reign. That's to say that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and he has ascended into heaven and he is sitting at the right hand of God and he is reigning as king. His reign has begun. [00:00:40] And notice it hasn't ended. [00:00:42] It will have no end. Right. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. [00:00:48] Hallelujah. [00:00:50] He is ruling. [00:00:52] King and king and shepherd have kind of always been, well, parallel patterns. [00:01:02] The king shepherds his people. At least a good king does. [00:01:07] Shepherd takes care of the sheep, provides for them, makes them to live together in harmony. [00:01:16] That's what a king does. There's a reason that. [00:01:20] There's a reason that David the shepherd was chosen to be king. [00:01:28] That's not a coincidence that David was a shepherd. [00:01:36] You could also say it's not a coincidence that Abel, Abel, the one who suffered at the hand of his brother, right. But was faithful to God. [00:01:46] He was a shepherd. Anyway, this pattern. Jesus is ruling and reigning as our king, as our shepherd. [00:01:55] And he will lead and guide us. Even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for he is with us. His rod and his staff, they comfort us. He prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. [00:02:14] In the very midst of danger, he puts a spread out for us and provides for us. [00:02:25] And the beautiful thing about Jesus as shepherd is that the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign. [00:02:34] It's not a shepherd that doesn't know how to be a sheep or what being a sheep is like. [00:02:39] In fact, he suffered the worst of it. [00:02:42] He became a sheep for us. The shepherd became a sheep and suffered. [00:02:50] In our epistle reading from 1 Peter, we're told that Christ's suffering is an example for us. [00:03:01] It's because Jesus Christ as our shepherd doesn't lead somewhere he hasn't been. [00:03:08] He leads us where he's gone before. [00:03:12] Nothing that he leads us into is foreign to his own experience. [00:03:21] For to this you have been called, namely suffering for doing good. [00:03:25] For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you might follow. In his steps he committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. [00:03:40] When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. [00:03:44] When he suffered, he did not Threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. [00:03:55] Now, that last part, you might think like Jesus. Well, Jesus is the shepherd, so maybe when he becomes a sheep, he doesn't have a shepherd. [00:04:05] That's not how you be a sheep. [00:04:09] Jesus as a sheep, okay? Becoming the Lamb of God. As the Lamb of God, he looks to God his Father as his shepherd and humbly submits to his word, listens to his voice, follows his will. He's come to do the Father's will, he says. He says that's his food. That's what satisfies him, is to do his Father's will. And then in Gethsemane, when his Father's will looks like the valley of the shadow of death, he says, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me. [00:04:49] But your will be done, not my will. [00:04:53] As a humble, obedient sheep, he listens to the voice of his Father and plunges ahead into the valley of the shadow of death. [00:05:03] And he suffers everything that human sin and violence, everything that danger could present. [00:05:16] He suffered and died for us, and now this is his example for us. [00:05:26] So we get a picture here in one Peter of his suffering and a really. I mean, it's like it puts us there and we see him suffering and the causes of suffering coming from outside and hitting him. [00:05:46] And he's just standing firm, obeying his Father's will through it all. [00:05:55] None of this was his doing. He committed no sin. [00:05:58] Neither was deceit found in his mouth. [00:06:01] He's taken it for us. [00:06:04] When he was reviled, people hating him, mocking him, spitting on him, and maybe not just during his crucifixion. You could think of all the other times when he was. [00:06:14] Was criticized or reviled, he did not revile in return. [00:06:23] Boy, I wish that were always my experience. [00:06:28] How did he not? [00:06:33] It's because he wasn't fixing his attention on, well, the outcome of that reviling. [00:06:42] He wasn't depending on others having a good opinion of him or building him up in the eyes of those around. [00:06:51] He didn't have his attention focused on what people had said in the past. Or, I mean, he could have said, look, all I've done for three years is go around and heal people and raise them from the dead and drive demons out of them and speak the truth for your sake. [00:07:12] I'm equal to God. I am God and I came for you to hear. [00:07:17] And now you are calling me that. [00:07:20] Okay, maybe that's what it would have looked like to be like, well, you're just to say that. But he didn't. [00:07:27] Instead he said, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. [00:07:33] He could have dwelt on the past or on the present wrongs surrounding him, but he didn't. [00:07:44] How? [00:07:45] That's not where his attention was. Where was it, Peter tells us, when he was reviled, he did not revile in return. [00:07:54] When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Where was his attention? [00:08:06] His attention was on God. [00:08:09] It's like, well, your will be done, not mine. [00:08:13] Lead me wherever you will. [00:08:16] Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Jesus has shown us what it looks like to be a sheep and follow the shepherd. [00:08:29] Jesus who didn't have to. [00:08:31] He's come and done it for us. [00:08:35] And he himself, the lamb who was slain has begun his reign. He has become the shepherd. That's what he came to do, to shepherd you and me and to guide us in the paths of life, to give us life and that abundantly. [00:08:57] It comes through suffering. [00:09:02] He's an example for us in his suffering of following the shepherd. [00:09:12] This is a pattern that's happened throughout the history of the church. It's not just, not just the apostles, Jesus, sheep who went out and followed him to their death, enduring beatings and reviling and persecution and death for Jesus sake. [00:09:31] The pattern didn't start there with Jesus. It was prefigured in all the saints of the past. Think of Joseph. [00:09:40] Look at Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers and then framed by Potiphar's wife. And then, you know, he's in prison and all of that. I mean, what a rotten life from a worldly perspective. He loses everything. He's not even free. [00:10:01] He's a slave from childhood there. But then you get that scene at the end of the story where there he is, he's the right hand man of Pharaoh. [00:10:15] He's ascended to the right hand of Pharaoh and is giving life to people coming from all over the place to Egypt because of the famine, including his own family who had betrayed him. [00:10:29] And instead of threatening them or reviling them in return, meting out punishment for the past. He doesn't have his eyes on the past. [00:10:40] He never has. That's why he survived this long in faith. [00:10:44] He's not dwelling on the problems of the past, the things that have hurt him so badly. [00:10:52] He's got his attention on God. [00:10:55] He's being shepherded by God and he says, you meant this for Evil says that to his brothers. [00:11:01] You meant this for evil, but God meant it for good. [00:11:04] Like, don't look at where we've come from, because they're terrified here. Their brother, who they'd made suffer, is standing in front of them with the power to hurt them. Really. [00:11:16] And he says, take your eyes off of the past. [00:11:20] Look at the present moment. Look what God has done. [00:11:24] However we got here, this is what God has done. He meant it for good. [00:11:31] The saving of all kinds of lives, including his brothers. Well, then, fast forward 400 years, and God's people are slaves and have been for a while. And things are getting worse and worse, and they're suffering, and it's like, how did we get here? [00:11:51] Well, don't ask. God's bringing us out of Egypt. [00:11:56] Here we are. [00:11:57] God's worked this for good. He's bringing us out of Egypt, saving us from the Egyptians and bringing us to the promised land. And then they get to the desert, right? Or let's say first they get to the Red Sea. It's like we got the whole Egyptian army behind us. Like, how did we get here? Why is. You know, don't worry about it. We're going across the sea and they're going to get drowned in it. It's all going to be okay. And then they get to the wilderness. [00:12:23] Why did you take us out here? [00:12:27] We could have had all kinds of meat and everything that we needed back in Egypt. Don't look at the past. Look at what God's doing for you right here. [00:12:36] They're not told how they're going to be taken care of. [00:12:41] It's not like they're like. [00:12:43] Moses is like, hey, we're going to go out to the wilderness and God's going to provide for us water from a rock. It's going to be like paradise in the wilderness. [00:12:54] They just go out there and they're just like Joseph, a slave, mistreated, hated by his family, you know, thrown out by his family. Worse than that. [00:13:07] Just like he had to contend with, like, how did I get here? [00:13:13] And to take his eyes off of that, just like Jesus, take his eyes off of all the hurt happening to him, all the circumstances that led to this. And just look to God and trust that he will provide for them. [00:13:28] And he did. [00:13:38] We have a shepherd, Jesus Christ, and we as a congregation. Our story started in 1904 and has brought us to this moment. [00:13:55] What are all the things that have led us here? [00:14:01] I've heard a lot of stories talking with you guys. Some good, some not so Good stories of wonderful things in the past that maybe we wish we could do now. Well, there's always opportunity. [00:14:15] Let's do it. [00:14:17] Stories of things that weren't so good. [00:14:21] Maybe there were decisions that not everybody agreed on. [00:14:26] Maybe that was a bad idea. [00:14:28] Maybe it was a good idea and everybody just doesn't understand. [00:14:32] How did we get to this moment? [00:14:36] Today we're celebrating the paying off of the mortgage on the school. [00:14:42] $1.7 million. [00:14:45] That's been a burden and contentious for 20 plus years. [00:14:54] And you know, there are all kinds of ways to look at it. All kinds of ways. People have talked about it with me and how did we get here? What are the things that led here? [00:15:09] We don't have to worry about that, any of it. [00:15:15] Just like Joseph came to that place and he's looking at his brothers who had maliciously sold him into slavery. And like, we don't have quite that story, right? [00:15:28] It's not like it was, you know, we don't have anything that serious in our past. [00:15:33] We don't have those kinds of challenges. Right? Joseph just says, forget about the past. Look where we are now. Like, however we got here, this is what God has given us. [00:15:44] Like storehouses and the opportunity to save people's lives. [00:15:49] Cool, Breathe, relax. He says to his brothers, here we are now. And he hugs them and they're happy, right? [00:16:00] That's beautiful. [00:16:02] Here we are. [00:16:04] Here we are today. And how did we get here? [00:16:07] You know better than me, I guess, you know, but it doesn't matter. [00:16:13] Here we are, and God is our shepherd and leading us. [00:16:17] And just like God brought Joseph to that moment for the saving of many lives, it's like, for what purpose has God brought us to this moment and given us all the gifts that we have brought us together, all the unique talents and abilities that you have? [00:16:39] Why has he brought us together as a church family, Trinity Lutheran Church and school, and everybody who's involved and everybody who's next to be involved, who will walk in our doors next or will hear about Jesus from us next, for what purpose has God brought us to this moment? [00:17:00] In Jesus name, amen.