Names | Shepherd - Ezekiel 34:1-6, 11-16 | May 24

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Why don't I go ahead and pray for us? We're going to get started.

If you don't have a physical Bible with you, I guess you could use your phone.

That's allowed still, but there's some in the back and I'll tell you where we're

going to be at after we pray.

So God, thank you for meeting us here this morning. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for your presence.

And I just thank you for all the ways you minister to us and meet us throughout

our weeks, the times that we are aware that we need it.

And then also the surprises where we didn't even know what we were missing.

We were just distracted by our daily routines and you interrupt and come in

and we are overwhelmed and so thankful and gracious for that interruption.

I just pray that you would interrupt us today. You speak clearly to us through your word.

I love your word and just so thankful for it and so encouraged by it.

I pray that it would transform our lives this morning.

And as we just dedicate our lives to you more and more each and every day,

as we come more like you, as we trust in our good shepherd and follow you,

knowing that whatever happens along the way, that we are in the care of our good shepherd.

So whatever dangers surround us, whatever darkness invades, whatever events

we encounter in life, we can trust our Good Shepherd.

Through whatever it is. I pray that we would know you and encounter you this morning in that way.

Just speak to us and may we have ears that hear and eyes that see all the good

you have for us, God. Amen.

So we're mostly going to be in, can y'all hear me okay? Everybody can hear me?

It's been a really tiring week. I woke up today so tired.

And so hopefully I'll be loud enough for everybody to hear me.

We're mostly going to be in the book of Ezekiel, actually, in chapter 34,

which is probably if I said we're going to be talking about Good Shepherd today,

you probably were not like, yeah, Ezekiel, totally.

And there's lots of other passages. There's a ton of passages and some are a

lot more well-known than Ezekiel 34.

And we'll get to some of those and we'll get to the ones that you're probably

thinking of more than likely.

But as I've been reading again through the Old Testament and this part of the

year, it's just amazing how often God tells his people that he is their shepherd

or refers to himself in that capacity in that way.

And it's a really profound and powerful thing as we learn more and more about

what that actually looks like and what that means. First, I want to ask you a question.

What do you think the most disobeyed verse in the entire Bible is? I know, right?

Certainly up there.

I have no proof for this. So again, it's just speculation.

So any answer is as equally correct as my answer, probably. I mean,

I guess there's some wrong answers.

Really, really like, you know,

whatever the unforgivable one is that nobody really knows what it is.

That's probably not the most disobeyed verse in the Bible.

But one of the most important, one of the most quoted,

one of the ones that you'll find on mugs and t-shirts and hung up in houses

all the time, that is probably also among those that are the most disobeyed

would be Proverbs chapter three, verses five to six.

Anybody off the top of their head got Proverbs three, five, three, five, six?

Did you read ahead what I was going to talk about or you just got that? Okay.

Jenny has an advantage. Sometimes she sneaks in and reads what I'm going to

say. So yeah, that deserves a clap. Yeah.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways, submit to him and he will make your paths straight.

It seems, you know, it's quotable. It's easy to memorize.

It's easy to put on your wall, but it's really hard to do.

We think and we imagine that we're good at trusting God, but I also imagine

that there are probably infinite numbers of ways throughout every single day

that we fall short in our trust.

And we know if we look at Israel's history, they just couldn't trust the Lord.

And why should we think that we're any different? We have a bent to trust our own way.

And as we've been talking about, so we've been talking about the names of God

recently and talking about a new name every week.

And we probably won't run out, but eventually we'll stop.

And as we think about this idea of the names of God, the whole idea that we

were surrounding is how we know, how God reveals himself and how we know him

speaks a lot to how we live.

And with regard to this idea of trust, what we worry about most in our lives.

Probably exposes and reveals the ways that we trust God the least.

So the things that we worry about most are probably the same things that we trust God the least.

And that exposes those things to us.

And if God is the good shepherd, and maybe that's a question we can ask ourselves

throughout this whole time today, is God still the good shepherd?

And if he is still the good shepherd, then why do we keep trying to self-shepherd?

Why are we still self-shepherding ourselves? And that's kind of the issue, right?

It's not whether or not, maybe we need to wrestle with whether or not God is

the good shepherd, but probably more so we need to wrestle with the issue of

why we actually would want to choose to be sheep that need shepherding

when so often we probably think of ourselves differently. But that's exactly

what we're going to talk about.

And I was told never to apologize for a sermon. I'm not going to apologize for

it. But because of just the nature of this week, nothing really happened this week.

It's just been, I woke up this morning so tired and I've had all of my thoughts

of what to say written down, but it wasn't until yesterday morning,

it just kept trying to organize them and they wouldn't organize themselves into

any way that I thought made sense.

And it wasn't until yesterday morning that I was like, okay,

that makes sense. And God revealed that to me.

So I don't really know how, I don't want this to be 40 or 50 minutes,

but I don't really know how long this is going to be.

And maybe I'll just skip some stuff if we start going on too long.

This is Ezekiel chapter 34.

Ezekiel 34 · chapter mention

And we're going to start rather than verse one, we'll get to,

we're going to start in verse 11.

So if you have your Bibles, if you have your phones, Ezekiel 34 verse 11.

Ezekiel 34:11

For this is what the sovereign Lord says. I myself will search for my sheep and look for them.

I look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is

with them, so will I look after my sheep.

I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.

I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries,

and I will bring them into their own land.

I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines,

and in all the settlements in the land.

I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land.

There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a

rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.

I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the sovereign Lord.

I will search for the lost and bring back the strays.

I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong, I will destroy.

I will shepherd the flock with justice." So we have this picture of God with

words that are very familiar to us.

Even if you haven't, You've probably read this, but even if you don't remember

that this is here in Ezekiel, because Ezekiel is real weird,

right? He's a real weird prophet.

So we don't necessarily read him all the time. But these are words familiar

to us, even if we haven't read this passage recently, that God searches for

his lost sheep. In some ways, this is even more expansive, right?

He searches, he rescues his scattered sheep.

He gathers them, he brings them near, he feeds them, he gives them rest.

I love how it says he binds up the wounded.

He strengthens the weak. He shepherds with justice.

And I love that the repetition here that God makes through the prophet is that

I myself will shepherd my sheep. I myself will search for them.

I myself will do this. That he rescues, he gathers, he feeds,

he heals, he strengthens, he carries, he protects, and that he's the one doing it.

Even though he's given rulers, he's given kings, he's given prophets that come

along at different times and are charged to shepherd the people.

It's not as if that he hasn't given that charge to others, but he comes along

and he says, I myself will do it.

When we think about some of the more familiar passages, maybe not,

this isn't one of among the ones that you were thinking about.

When Jesus is teaching on the Sabbath, when he's healing on the Sabbath,

he always gets the static, the pushback from the Pharisees, right?

In Matthew chapter 12, after they are accusing him again and coming against

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

him again for his work on the Sabbath, he charges them with this.

He said, if any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath,

he's talking to the religious leaders.

If you have a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take.

And he goes, how much more is a person than a sheep? Therefore,

it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

So he charges the Pharisees who are angry at him for healing on the Sabbath and doing good.

And the picture he uses is that of a sheep and going to rescue it.

Because as we know, sheep are flock animals, right?

And a sheep out by itself, as my child would say these days, is cooked.

Whatever that means, I don't know. It's not literally cooked.

You cook a sheep to eat it.

I don't know what people, what little kids are talking about these days,

but a sheep by itself is called a meal is essentially, I think what,

what the thrust of that statement is.

I don't know. I should start watching some younger things to improve my lingo,

but when they are lost, when they are separated from the herd and I'm not a shepherd.

So this is all not from personal accounts, but from what I've seen and also

what I've heard, we have seen some shepherds.

I've seen shepherds across the world, and some of them are just leading these

giant flocks across roads with highways, with cars moving fast.

And so it hasn't gotten easier for the modern day shepherd.

But when a sheep is separated from the herd, they don't know what to do.

As we're talking about, sheep are silly, they're dumb.

And they have no idea what to do. So they run around like crazy.

They'll hop fences. They'll chase themselves down into these rocky ravines.

And once they get exhausted because they don't know what to do,

the next thing that they do is find somewhere to hide under a bush in a craggy rock.

That's all that they're thinking about because they don't know how to do it themselves.

These were wild animals once and still are some places.

I don't understand how they have no... Have you ever watched those videos where

it's like people who have no survival instincts and yet somehow still survive

some Those are sheep, that's what sheep are like. They have no survival instincts.

But what Jesus is pointing to in the knowledge of all of these who have grown

up in a culture of shepherds is that.

On the Sabbath, these Pharisees, these Sadducees, these religious leaders are going to go down,

find the sheep wherever it has run,

into these ravines, into these craggy holes, and a sheep is not light.

So we're talking about 70 to 100 pounds, probably. These people are going to lift up the sheep,

put it over their neck, and then they're going to climb out of whatever hole

it got itself into on the Sabbath to do good for a sheep, for a dumb sheep, a dumb, dirty sheep.

And yet, isn't it even better to do good to people in need?

And so the whole point is the shepherd risks his life for the sheep.

Wherever it has gone, the shepherd goes and finds it. He picks it up and he climbs out.

And this is what the people have known. And I love,

again, I've been reading through the Old Testament again and And I can see why,

I don't have proof of this, but I would say that Isaiah is Jesus' favorite book

in the Bible. He quotes it the most often.

And I can understand why. It is, if you haven't read Isaiah recently,

just spend some quality time there. It is amazing.

In Isaiah chapter 40, there's this beautiful picture where he says,

Isaiah 40 · chapter mention

See, the sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm.

See, his reward is with them, and his recompense accompanies him.

So like images of power and greatness and strength.

And then in verse 11, it says, He tends his flock like a shepherd.

He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart.

He gently leads those that have young.

That this picture of Jesus that we get to see in the New Testament,

that God's already painting that picture in Isaiah, of a shepherd who holds

his sheep close to his heart.

And the crazy thing about shepherding in this picture is that the shepherd is

way more valuable than the sheep.

If you lose one sheep, you've lost one sheep. If you lose a shepherd,

you've lost your entire flock.

So the shepherd is way more valuable than the sheep.

And yet the picture we get in the reality of shepherding, but the reality that

God holds onto is that picture that we get in Luke chapter 15 of going after the one.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

When the 99 are safe, he leaves the 99 and goes after the one,

wherever it has gone, wherever it has traveled, whatever snare it got himself

into, the shepherd follows the sheep into whatever danger it is.

We see that picture with David, where he talks about before he fights Goliath, right?

That he has been tending the flocks of his father.

When a bear comes and attacks him, when a lion comes and attacks and tries to

drag off one sheep, does he not fight off the attacker?

Does he not fight off the animal for that one sheep? sheep, and the picture

we get over and over again, even though the shepherd is more valuable,

and even though sheep are dumb,

is that the good shepherd follows, finds the sheep, picks them up,

and holds them close to his heart.

And the reality we'll get to in a little bit is that we are,

whether you want to be or not, we are sheep.

And whether we try to be or not, anybody living in this world,

whether they're a Christian or not, is a sheep.

They're following something. Probably not a good shepherd, if it's not Jesus.

But every other shepherd that exists, that is not our good shepherd,

that is not God, that is not Jesus, saves himself at the expense of the sheep.

Jesus talks about this a lot. Hired hands, bad shepherds, do they not abandon

the flock when there's danger nearby?

Every other shepherd, other than Jesus, saves themselves. And yet we have a

good shepherd that saves the sheep at the expense of himself.

And that is an incredible truth for us this morning.

And so I just keep going back to this question of have you ever thought about

why is it that God reveals himself as a good shepherd, as a shepherd at all?

Why is it that God chooses a shepherd?

So the first time that shows up, Jacob says it.

And if you know Jacob's history and past, he wasn't a good sheep.

He tried to self-shepherd himself all the time. But not only that,

when Joseph is in Israel or sorry, in Egypt, right?

And there's the big famine, Joseph's in charge, all his brothers come and meet

him. He reveals himself to him, all that stuff. His family is finally restored, right?

And Pharaoh says, go and get your family and move them here.

Joseph instructs his dad when he meets the Pharaoh to say, that's very kind

of you, but we're shepherds and shepherds are detestable to you Egyptians.

So we can go live in Goshen.

And so God's doing this to separate Israel from Egypt, practically speaking.

And it's true. It's not like it's a lie. They are shepherds.

But why would God reveal himself as a shepherd when amongst most nations of

that time, shepherds are regarded as abominations, as detestable, as lowly.

And yet he willfully chooses this image for himself.

So much so that when, like I said, the first time that God as a shepherd is

mentioned is in Genesis chapter 48, when Jacob admits towards the end of his

Genesis 48 · chapter mention

life as he's blessing his sons,

May the God before whom my father Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,

the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day.

That's the first time it shows up. And God willfully reveals himself as a shepherd

when shepherds are detestable.

Jacob spent years self-shepherding, manipulating, running around, wandering, wrestling.

In all of his wrestling with God, what Jacob realizes in that moment and how

he recognizes God is that God has been guiding him.

God has been leading him. God has been protecting him as a good shepherd has.

Even though he's wandered, God has pursued him in his wanderings and brought him back.

This is why God is a good shepherd.

A shepherd, the good shepherd places himself in danger in between the sheep and the danger.

The good shepherd protects. The good shepherd provides.

The good shepherd loves. The good shepherd follows the sheep wherever it has

wandered and goes and brings it back and restores it.

God is not ashamed to be associated with wandering people.

God's not ashamed to be associated with us and all of our wanderings and all of our sheepiness.

It's not really sheepiness. It's goadiness, but I'll talk about that later.

This is why God is the good shepherd. And I want to throw this phrase out there,

before we move on and just let it hit you as it's going to, because it's sort of a grenade,

that it's like, you need to think about it a lot, or maybe you don't.

But for me, it's like, do I really? Is that how I think about God?

God is the good shepherd, right? who is not ashamed to be associated with our

wanderings and our, he's not ashamed to be identified as a shepherd in a world,

considers an abomination to be a shepherd.

That God has become an abomination to the world through chasing after me.

He willfully takes on that identity because he pursues his sheep on our behalf.

And that's what the cross is all about, right? That he takes on,

it says, cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree.

Jesus takes upon that curse as a good shepherd who wanders after his sheep.

That's an incredible thing to think about. And again, let it hit you later if it needs to settle in.

Good shepherds serve sheep, bad shepherds use sheep.

The beginning of this passage in Ezekiel 34, and the reason I didn't start off

there is because it is the charge against Israel's leaders who have failed as

shepherds and who are only self-serving and who are not good shepherds.

So let me read that for us.

This is the word of the Lord came to me.

Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.

Prophesy and say to them, this is what the sovereign Lord says.

Sovereign Lord, that is NIV by the way, so I'm not sure what your translation

says, but that's the way the NIV translates Adonai, the Lord,

my master, sovereign Lord.

So yours probably could say like Lord with lowercase letters or whatever,

but this is how this translates it. We talked about Adonai a while back.

Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves.

Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds,

you clothe yourself with wool and slaughter the choice animals,

but you do not take care of the flock.

You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured.

You have brought back the strays. You have not brought back the strays.

Or searched for the lost, you have ruled them harshly and brutally,

so that they were scattered, because there was no shepherd.

And when they were scattered, they became food for all the wild animals.

God says, My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every hill.

My sheep were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.

Israel's leaders abandoned the flock. They used and benefited from the flock.

They took their wool, which you don't have to kill an animal for,

but they also killed them and ate them.

They used them, they abused them.

And as a result, God's people, his sheep scattered, which should never happen for sheep.

It's a bad thing. They scattered, they became food.

And as we mentioned earlier, a sheep without a shepherd is a meal. So they became meals.

So Jesus comes on the scene and he directly picks up this passage from Ezekiel 34.

And I'm willing to bet that the people he was talking to had read this before

and it was not lost on them that he was talking about them.

So he comes in and says, essentially, and we'll go ahead and read John 10 as well.

So if you want to go ahead and move over to John chapter 10,

John 10 · chapter mention

this is probably a passage that you thought about when you think about God as a good shepherd.

Jesus comes in, and he's essentially saying in these first 15 verses, you are not doing it.

You are the bad shepherds of Ezekiel 34, 1 to 10 or whatever it is I read, 1 to 6.

So I am here because I promised I would do it. I am here now.

I am he, and I'm going to do it. I'm going to shepherd my flock.

This is what Jesus is saying in these words. We get the comfort part that speaks

about, I'm the good shepherd.

We kind of miss the context where he's essentially saying, you're not doing

it. So I'm going to, because I promised I would.

And it's a beautiful passage. Truly I tell you, Pharisees, anyone who does not

enter the sheep by pen by the gate, but climbs in by another way is a thief and a robber.

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him and the sheep listen to his voice.

He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them and his sheep

follow him because they know his voice, but they will never follow a stranger.

In fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice.

Jesus uses this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.

I think they're about to get it. Therefore, Jesus said again,

very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.

All who come before me are thieves and robbers. He's essentially telling them

that they're thieves and robbers, by the way.

But the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved.

They will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.

Abundant life is in the hands of the shepherd.

So Jesus is saying, I'm the gate. When there's these sheep pens,

but they don't have gates, the shepherd would lay in the place of the gate to

keep the sheep in the pen.

But as Brianna was saying about staying in the pen, it would be a joy for sheep

if all they did was stay in the pen, but then they have to take them out to the pasture, right?

So in the coming in and going out, he's not only the gate who lays there,

he's also the gatekeeper who lets in the sheep and lets them out.

And then it comes the statement, I am the good shepherd.

So he's also the one who pastures them in the wilderness and pastures them in the city.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep.

So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.

And when the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it, when the wolf attacks the

flock scatters, the man runs away because he is a hired hand,

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.".

Jesus says, I know my sheep and my sheep know me.

He says other places earlier, he said that I call them by name. Um,

And there's this incredible story about this.

I don't think we quite understand the reality of what he's saying here,

because we're not shepherds and we don't live in agricultural society anymore.

I was listening to a story and it was about, it was a friend of a friend.

So the guy who's telling the story's friend experienced this and then was sharing it to his friend.

So his friend was telling him that he was overseas somewhere.

And that there was this guy who became a minister. He entered into ministry.

Previously, he was a shepherd. So when he entered into ministry,

he gave his sheep away to another farmer, maybe several, but at least another farmer.

And so this guy is telling the story of one day, him and this previous shepherd,

now minister, got onto a train.

And as they were leaving the station, there was a pasture of sheep across in a field.

And the guy turned to him and says, four of those are mine. I don't know if

you've looked at sheep lately.

I cannot tell the difference between any two given sheep.

I couldn't even tell you which one was a boy and which one was a girl.

I mean, I maybe could get at it with some investigation.

But I can't tell the difference between sheep. let alone pick out four specific

sheep in an entire herd, flock, flock of sheep, flock, whatever,

we're going to go with flock.

I could not look in a field and say, I know four of those, here are their names.

So when Jesus says, I call my sheep by names, and I know my own and my own know

me, he's speaking with the authority of a shepherd who can look out at sheep

and know, I know which ones are mine.

That's the beauty of what he's saying in this moment, I can recognize which ones are mine.

And then the thing that he comes back to, which we've already talked about,

not just that I know my own and my own know me, but I am the good shepherd and

the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

It's another powerful phrase that's found in here that also makes God a good shepherd.

And there's a reason that when we get to Psalm 23, which is probably what most

of you thought we're gonna be talking about, there's a reason that Psalm 22 goes before Psalm 23.

Psalm 22 is all about the Messiah, the suffering servant. It's all about Jesus coming.

It's all about Jesus giving of himself. It's all about the cross.

So much so that when Jesus is quoting the Bible on the cross at the end of his

life, he's quoting Psalm 22.

And there's a reason that the cross comes before the pasture.

Because the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

So the big question, I suppose, is what does it look like for us to be sheep?

Let's talk about sheep for a minute, because if God is the good shepherd,

we are sheep. I don't think that's lost on any of us.

God doesn't call us pigs, which,

you know, there's probably some other reason he doesn't call us pigs.

But we know that we don't know this, but people say it a lot for some reason that pigs are smart.

See, even my son believes that. Seems like fake news. This is the era of fake

news. Pigs are really intelligent. We're not pigs.

Dolphins apparently are one of the most intelligent animals.

And so I've heard they can recognize themselves in a mirror.

I don't know how you know if a dolphin recognizes itself in a mirror.

But we're not dolphins. We're sheep. We're not even goats.

We're sheep. And there's a reason that we're sheep and not any of those other sheep things.

It's because sheep can't take care of themselves.

Sheep needs someone to take care of them. Goats can take care of themselves.

And there's this, another story. These are true stories. I'm probably not getting

all the details right, but these are true stories.

There's another story where a missionary was talking to a Muslim shepherd,

a modern day shepherd. This is not an old story.

I mean, It's probably an old story. It's not, it's not an ancient story.

So he's, he's sharing the gospel with this Muslim shepherd and he,

as he's sharing the gospel and he's using the context of his role,

he's talking about the fact that God is going to separate the sheep and the goats.

And this Muslim shepherd is like, that doesn't make any sense.

No shepherd would choose sheep over goats.

Goats. You can just let go and do their own thing. Sheep. You have to watch

after them. You have to take care of them.

One of our friends we went to college with, she grew up here,

and they have a farm. And we were here visiting during college one time.

And you have to cut the wool around their butts because they poop,

and they get it on themselves, and they can't clean themselves.

And then bad things happen, and they die.

You have to do that. You have to clean them. You have to shear them so they don't get too hot.

You have to do all this stuff for sheep. It's like, it doesn't make any sense

that God would choose sheep over goats if he's a good shepherd.

No shepherd would choose sheep over goats, but that's exactly what God wants.

He wants us to depend on him. He doesn't want a bunch of us goats running around

thinking we can do it our own.

God desires to take care of his sheep. He wants to be our shepherd.

He created us to depend on him. So it's no...

It's no small thing that he takes and adopts onto himself, that role of shepherd.

There's just one more story I want to tell. Do you know what sheep do when danger is nearby?

They don't look out for wherever that sound is coming from.

There's a picture that I've seen. And what it is, is a bunch of sheep.

And because it's like at night, you have the, you have sort of the semblance

of sheep. And then you have all of their eyes looking at the camera.

And the picture was taken illustrating that moment and that moment by the shepherd

that when the danger was nearby, all of the sheep turned towards the shepherd.

They fixed their eyes on the shepherd. They're not looking out,

searching for the sound of the wolf or the lion or whatever it may be.

They're not trying to figure out where the danger is coming from.

They fixed their eyes on the shepherd.

They keep their eyes fixed upon him. Great passage, Hebrews chapter 12,

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

one and two, that says that directly.

Isaiah chapter 26, if we're gonna keep to our Old Testament theme, is a great passage.

Isaiah 26 · chapter mention

God says, I will keep him in perfect peace whose eyes are fixed on me.

When the lions roar, when the wolves howl, when the bears growl,

the sheep turn and look at the shepherd.

They don't look into the unknown, into the near or distant dark.

They fix their eyes on the shepherd and perfect peace is the result because

they trust in the shepherd.

There is nothing in this world exempt from God's sovereign care.

He takes his role seriously.

In Psalm 139, we almost sang this as a song, but where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence? If I go to the heavens, you are there.

If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there, your hand guides me.

Your right hand will hold me fast.

This is David or whoever it is. I think it's David. As a shepherd reflecting

on his good shepherd, where can I go to get away from your love?

Where can I go to escape? Why should I?

Why should I want to be anywhere else? You lead me.

You protect me. Why should I desire to be anywhere else?

There is nowhere outside of his care. The problem is, is that we want God to not be a shepherd.

We want God to be the lady's voice on the other end of our GPS,

where we set our destination and we set our goal.

And then it's God's job to get us there. And if we get off course,

then it's his job to find us an alternate route to get to the destination that we want to arrive at.

And so we maybe can think of God as our Siri or our Alexa, but we probably don't

as often think of him as our good shepherd.

But Alexa and Siri don't care if we actually get there.

They don't care how we get there. And if we change our mind and want to go somewhere

else, they're like, you know what? That's fine with me. I'm here to serve you.

But our good shepherd, I don't know how we could walk away from any of these

passages we've read without the utmost belief that our good shepherd cares.

Not just about where we're going, but how we get there.

And as a good shepherd, he really wants to turn us around if we're going to the wrong place.

He wants to stop the car. Our GPS isn't going to stop the car if we get off course, turn us around.

And if God is the good shepherd, if he's still the good shepherd,

then probably he knows something that I don't know.

And he probably has a destination in mind that's better than the one I have in mind.

And probably, as much as we don't want to experience this.

Even if our destination agrees with the will of God, what we often pray for

are, God direct us to this destination, God provide us opportunities to get there safely.

But what if the good shepherd sees that the destination you'll arrive at in

the next two years requires you to go through whatever it is you're suffering right now.

In Psalm 23, when David says, the Lord is my shepherd, one of the lines is that

he makes me to lie down in green pastures.

I don't know why I never thought about the fact that there's some forcefulness in that statement.

She probably don't always know when they have a good thing going.

So the good shepherd makes them lie down.

And I don't think most of us actually like it when people make us do anything.

We probably don't like that aspect of God being a good shepherd,

but that too makes him good.

In all of our wanderings, in all of our goadishness that thinks that we have it and we can do it.

In Proverbs 14, it says that there's a way that appears to be right to man,

but leads to destruction.

And all the things that we think are right and the ways that we think we could

do it to ourselves or for ourselves.

At the end of the day, the good shepherd knows. and if God is,

if he is still a good shepherd, then what the Christian life is about is,

is not, it's not about accomplishing what you think is best in any given moment.

It's allowing the shepherd to accomplish what he knows is best in any given circumstance.

I probably could have said that better. I had the word circumstance written down twice.

So the Christian life is not about accomplishing what you think is best in any

given circumstance is allowing the shepherd to accomplish what he knows is best

in any given circumstance.

And so my confidence is not in the ability for me to figure out God's plan.

My confidence is not in my ability to figure out God's will.

Although he says that he reveals his will to us, though not always,

but we get to know and see pictures of it.

My confidence is not understanding and knowing God's plan.

Because I'm a sheep and sheep are idiots. Sheep are silly, right?

Sheep are silly. That's what I meant to say.

My confidence is in his ability to lead me in his will. And I love this phrase.

And I'll leave you with this.

Sheep with a good shepherd turn out fine. So is he still our good shepherd?

I think what would be really good to do is just go ahead and sit and take communion

together now. and we'll sing in response.

Jenny is going to share some testimony and thoughts as well with God as their good shepherd.

So maybe we do this. I want to read a passage. Let's take communion.

Jenny's going to share her testimony and then we'll sing in response.

There's passage in Psalm 28.

Praise be to the Lord, for he has heard my cry for mercy.

The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts in him and he helps me.

My heart leaps for joy and with my song, I praise him.

The Lord is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one.

Save your people and bless your inheritance. Be their shepherd and carry them forever.

He is still the good shepherd. He was the good shepherd in Isaiah 40.

He's the good shepherd in Ezekiel 34.

He was, when Jesus came on the scene, he was still the good shepherd when he said, I am in John 10.

And he is still that good shepherd who is carrying his people, us, even to this day.

Let's respond to that in the best way we know how, by remembering our good shepherd

and the fact that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep through communion.

So let's go ahead and take, in the back, okay.

So what I was saying is most of you probably know something about my story,

the sick in Moldova part and the sick with cancer part.

And the name of God as our shepherd has always been one that has resonated with

me because God has led me through some pretty hard things over the years.

And it's been a lesson of trust. How do I trust my shepherd?

So go back in time. When I was diagnosed with cancer, my world literally fell apart.

You could ask Zach. It couldn't be true because I had just got back from Moldova

and Moldova almost killed me.

It did not seem fair that now I was faced with cancer.

I had just begun to get my life and my health back in order.

Ada had just been born and then, boom, cancer.

So I refused to believe the first ultrasound. I refused to believe the first biopsy.

I begged my surgeon for a second biopsy. and that second biopsy showed 99% chance of cancer.

Cancer DNA mutation found. Basically irrefutable, right?

So then I begged him. I said, can we have a partial surgery?

Because I still did not believe that this was my lot in life.

I had people lay their hands on me. I had people anoint my head with oil.

I had well-believing Christians place their hands on me and declare the cancer gone.

All the while, while all that was going on, the cancer continued spreading and

had spread into my lymph nodes.

The story became more and more clear that this was the path ahead of me,

whether I wanted it to be or not.

I felt like I was truly in the valley of the shadow of death.

So I found myself at this crossroads, striving, refusing to believe that this

was true, finding my hope in everything but Jesus.

So I thought to myself, do I continue to try to control everything,

driving myself farther into fear and almost madness, or do I surrender to my shepherd?

So after all, he is the one who knows the way, and he has proven himself faithful up until now.

So one evening, I laid on the floor of our bedroom, and I poured my heart out. I poured my tears out.

I poured out everything that I had to God and surrendered all of my striving

and all of my false hopes to the good shepherd.

And the peace that washed over me in that instant was something that I will

never forget. He brought me to rest in green pastures in the middle of my battle.

He didn't take away my affliction. He didn't take away the battle,

but he gave me a way through that I couldn't see before.

And as I went into surgery a few short weeks after this, as I was being wheeled

down the hall, I kept praying Christ before me, Christ beside me,

Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ around me.

And I kept praying up until the moment that I fell asleep from the anesthesia. Okay.

And the surgery went really quickly. And though the cancer had spread to my

lymph nodes, the surgeon got it all.

And when I woke up, people were telling me that I was radiant.

The goodness of God, my shepherd, had carried me through in peace.

And God, my shepherd, knew the way, and he continues to know the way.

So as I reflect on God is my shepherd, Psalm 23 has meant so much to me.

And I think in our American culture, we expect suffering not to happen,

not to be a part of our story.

But Psalm 23 tells us that our shepherd goes before us, even while we walk through

the inevitable valley of the shadow of death.

Our shepherd uses his rod and he uses his staff to snatch us away from harm,

to protect us, to shield us, to comfort us.

How beautiful it is to remember that we are not alone in this valley,

but rather our shepherd, who is well acquainted with grief and sorrow and suffering,

goes before us and leads us through.

He goes and prepares a table for us.

In the presence of our enemies, he knows what we are facing.

He knows the fear, the anxiety, the sickness, the death, all of these things that the enemy uses.

When Jesus, our good shepherd, invites us to sit at the table with him,

we can trust that the battle has been won.

After all, he led us there and he knows the way.

Jesus doesn't want me to sit in my fear and my anxiety and my anguish.

This is a lesson I continue to struggle to learn, But he is gently reminding

me day after day year after year moment after moment that he is my shepherd and I can trust him.

So something that has been really impactful to me recently in my struggle with

anxiety over health has been praying Psalm 23 over myself, and I have begun

to pray that over others as well.

And so we're not going to have the time to do that this morning,

but I encourage us in our family groups throughout the week is to take aside

a friend and pray that over one another.

And so when you're doing that, you would say, the Lord is Zach's shepherd.

He has all that he needs. He lets

Zach rest in green meadows He leads Zach beside the

peaceful streams He renews Zach's strength He

guides Zach along the right paths Bringing honor

to his name Even when Zach walks through the darkest

valley He will not be afraid For you are close beside

him Your rod and your staff protect and comfort Zach You prepare a feast for

Zach In the presence of his enemies You honor him by anointing his head with

oil His cup overflows with blessings surely your goodness and unfailing love

will pursue Zach all the days of his life and he will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I encourage you that's just a practice that has meant a lot to me to just pray

that over yourself and over anyone in your life in your midst that's going through

the valley of the shadow of darkness or is being surrounded.