"The LORD Our Righteousness " Sunday Morning, October 14, 2018 AM

Let's pray. Father, we come before you this morning.

I thank you for the reminders today. The reminders today from the book of Proverbs and from the hymns that we've sung, from the psalm that we read together, how dependent we are on you.

You deserve all of our praise. You are the source of all of our wisdom.

When it comes right down to it, you're all that we have. We have no boast here this morning.

Except in Christ. We're not here because we figured it out. We're here because Christ and what he has done.

We're not here because we're really good at worship. We're really smart about what your

Bible says, about what your word says. But Father, we're here because of your grace. Because you have brought us here.

Father, I'm so glad you did not send your son to the world for the righteous, for the sinner.

As the great physician, you did not come for those who think themselves healthy, but for those who are sick. And I thank you, you've sent

Christ for me. This morning, as we look at this word from your word, as we look at Christ, I pray that you would fortify the faith of your saints.

That indeed, Jesus Christ is our good shepherd in all our righteousness. And I pray for those who are here today who don't have a shepherd, don't know you.

Lord, you have compassion on them. You have compassion on us. May we rejoice together in Christ as Savior.

And pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased, amen.

Jeremiah chapter 23, verses one through eight. It's about shepherds.

It is about the failure of the flock the shepherds in Judah, and the promise of the shepherd for us all.

I would invite you to stand with me and do reverence to Christ who was revealed here in Jeremiah 23,

I will read verses one through eight. Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture, declares the

Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord God of Israel concerning the shepherds who are tending my people, you have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not attended to them.

Behold, I'm about to attend to you for the evil of your deeds, declares the Lord. Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their pasture.

And they will be fruitful and multiply. I will also raise up shepherds over them and they will tend them and they will not be afraid any longer, nor be terrified, nor will any be missing, declares the

Lord. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch and he will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land.

In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely.

And this is his name by which he will be called the Lord, our righteousness.

Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when they will no longer say, as the

Lord lives, you brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt, but as the

Lord lives, you brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the North land and from all the countries where I had driven them.

And they will live on their own soil. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

When you drive past a broken down car on the side of the highway, you wonder where the owner is.

When you see a mangy dog limping through the neighborhood, you wonder where its owner is.

When you pass by a rundown house, an overgrown lawn, you wonder who owns the house.

When you meet a child in shabby clothes, unwashed hair, signs of malnutrition, you wonder where her parents are.

When you see sheep, weary and scattered, distressed and dispirited, you wonder where their shepherd is.

When you see folks whose lives are full of sin, confusion, folly, and lies, you wonder what their

God is. On such sheep,

Jesus had compassion. Towards such people, Jesus had compassion. He saw them as distressed and dispirited, scattered about as those who had no shepherd.

He had great compassion on these kinds of people. Ezekiel 34 says that they are like prey for the wild beasts, prone to be destroyed by false teachers.

Zechariah 10 says, without a good shepherd, they're left to idolatrous nonsense, to the lies of mystics, to false dreams and empty comforts.

And toward those who were supposed to shepherd the sheep, but instead just used them,

Jesus cast a multitude of woes in Matthew 23. Bad shepherds, what are bad shepherds?

Jeremiah's day, bad shepherds are like the bad shepherds of the day. The leaders, the people who are responsible for other people, the bad shepherds tell the people who they're responsible for everything those people wanna hear.

It's a bad shepherd. Peace, peace, but there is no peace.

They have healed the wound of my people superficially. An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.

The prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule by their own authority and my people love to have it so. But what will you do at the end of it?

Those are bad shepherds. Bad shepherds are those who tell people lies. We don't tell them the truth.

And in general, just tell the people what they wanna hear. And so the sheep suffer.

Now, when we read in verses three through eight of Jeremiah 23, God has a solution for these bad shepherds.

We know that he will judge them. We know that he will remove them out of the way, but it doesn't end there.

There's good news about a good shepherd, the Lord, our righteousness. And just like the wellbeing of a young child depends on the quality of her parents, the wellbeing of a young child and the wellbeing of the sheep depends on the righteousness of the shepherd.

And we have a righteous shepherd. So I want us to start off by looking at the righteousness that is promised and fulfilled in verses three through eight of Jeremiah 23.

And before we start talking about promise and fulfillment, I feel the need to have a little primer on prophecy.

Three little lessons about prophecy. The first lesson is this, prophecy is sounded by Christ's proclamation.

Prophecy is sounded by Christ's proclamation. To put it simply, prophecy in the Old Testament, prophecy amounts to Christ preaching of himself.

Prophecy is Jesus Christ preaching about himself. First Peter chapter one, verses 10 through 11,

Peter says this, as to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, as they were writing down and preaching and proclaiming about the coming of Jesus Christ, they made careful searches and inquiries seeking to know what person or time the spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow, which means that the prophets are writing these things down and declaring these things and then saying, what did

I just write down? What did I just say? How's all that going to work?

I'm making careful inquiries into the things I just wrote down and said. Why? Because it is the spirit of Christ himself preaching about his arrival.

First lesson about prophecy, it's Christ preaching of himself. An example is given in first Peter three, verses 18 through 20, where Christ in the spirit preached through Noah to that ancient wicked generation who are now in hell.

So Christ in the spirit preached the gospel through the prophets. So that's lesson number one, a primer on prophecy.

Prophecy is sounded by Christ's proclamation. Secondly, prophecy is subject to Christ's interpretation.

Prophecy is subject to Christ's interpretation. All of these prophecies and they're so full of color and so full of pictures and this dramatic language and it comes from all these different prophets over all this different time period.

How do we know what it all means? Oh, your guess is as good as mine.

No. The one who preached it gets to say what it means. Christ preached it so he gets to say what it means.

The prophets themselves were servants of God and they were holy men and they were moved by the Holy Spirit and they made very careful searches and inquiries, what may all this mean?

But it was Christ who said what it means. Jesus, after he had begun his public ministry, well, he started that by going to see his cousin,

John the Baptist and he was baptized in the Jordan River and the heavens parted and the

Holy Spirit in the form of a dove came down upon Jesus Christ and God declares from heaven, this is my beloved son with whom

I am well pleased. He is then led by the Holy Spirit out into the wilderness where he is tempted for 40 days and he defeats the enemy, the devil, quoting scripture, refuting his temptation and then

Jesus comes preaching and the first place he goes to preach is his hometown, Nazareth and he goes to his synagogue where he had been many times before and he comes in and everybody knows him and welcome back,

Jesus of Nazareth, welcome back. You get to read the scripture today and they hand him the scroll of Isaiah and Jesus begins to read from the prophet

Isaiah, Isaiah 61 verses one through two and this is what he reads. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me.

Well, that's pretty obvious. We just read about his baptism and about his time in the wilderness, right? The spirit of the

Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news. That's what we mean when we say gospel, to bring the gospel to the afflicted.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the

Lord. What a wonderful passage from Isaiah. And then he began to say to them, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

The afflicted, the brokenhearted, the captive and the prisoner. Good news, good news.

God has sent his son to save his people from their sins. The angel said to Joseph, thus you shall name him

Yeshua. Jesus, the Lord saves. Well, Jesus gets to interpret what

Isaiah 61, one through two means. And we find him throughout his ministry having to correct time and again, the

Israel centered, law centered interpretation of the Pharisees and the scribes. John 5 39.

You search the scriptures because you think that in them, you have eternal life. Meaning you think you've got the code, you think you've got the plan, you think you've figured it out, but it is these that testify about me.

Jesus says to them, and even Christ's faithful followers, his own apostles needed corrections from their own cultural and unbelieving interpretations.

In Luke 24, verse 27, he says that beginning with all, beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.

Verses 44 through 45. Now he said to them, these are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law and the prophets and the

Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. And from that time on, the apostles, as we have all their writings in the new

Testament, consistently said, look there in the old Testament, there's Jesus Christ. And they did it over and over and over and over again.

See, prophecy is sounded by Christ's proclamation. It's him preaching about himself. Prophecy is subject to Christ's interpretation.

And a third lesson in this primer on prophecy is this. Prophecy is settled in Christ's incarnation.

When it comes to God's promises, we should not wonder in whom God keeps his promises or how

God keeps his promises. He's made that abundantly clear. Second Corinthians 1 .20.

For as many as are the promises of God in him, in Christ, they are yes.

So you go find them. Go find them. As many as are the promises of God in Christ, they are yes.

Therefore also through him is our amen to the glory of God through us. I think it's important that we remember that as we read

Jeremiah 23, three through eight. Christ preaching of himself.

Christ interprets this to say what it means. And Christ is the fulfillment of this prophecy.

And we do that. And we don't have to wonder about how it all comes together. We know because we just pay attention to who Jesus is and what he has done and what he has said.

And the first part of our prophecy in Jeremiah 23 is this. The sheep will be gathered. This is what

God says. The sheep have been scattered by the bad prophets. The sheep have been scattered by judgment because of their sin against God.

But here's good news. Here's a promise. The sheep will be gathered.

Verses three and four. God says this. Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their pasture and they will be fruitful and multiply.

I will also raise up shepherds over them and they will tend them. And they will not be afraid any longer, nor be terrified, nor will any be missing, declares the

Lord. Shepherds have done an awful job.

They have not tended the sheep. They have scattered them. Shepherds didn't care about the sheep.

They are using the sheep for their own purposes. They let the sheep be destroyed.

God says, in order to counteract what has happened, in order to answer the problem, he says,

I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries to which

I have driven them. He says, I myself will do this. Only the Lord can do this.

Only the Lord can gather this remnant from all the countries he has flung them.

Only he can gather them. Only he is powerful enough. Only he is wise enough.

Only he is righteous enough. Only he is the one who knows his flock, who knows his remnant among the whole of the nations and he will gather them back to their pasture.

God himself acts to gather them back. To what? To what are they gathered?

Back to their pasture, it says. Back to where they belong. So that what? They will be fruitful and multiply.

Does this sound familiar? Be fruitful and multiply? Being fruitful and multiplying is what

God told Israel to do in Leviticus. It's what he told Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to do in Genesis.

It's what he told Noah to do in Genesis nine. It's what he told Adam and Eve to do in Genesis one. Be fruitful and multiply.

He says it again and again and again. Why? Because he made us in his image. He made us in his image, his special creatures to love him supremely and love others rightly and steward this creation responsibly.

And the shorthand for how we're supposed to live in the image of God is this, be fruitful and multiply. And when mankind, when

God's special creature says, no thanks, you made me in your image, but I'm gonna live for myself, the end result is always exile.

It's always exile. God dismissed Adam and Eve from the garden. He displaced humanity with the flood.

He dispersed Adam's race at Babel. It's always exile.

But he will call his people home through Abraham's seed.

He will call them home, a blessing to all the families of the earth. I myself will gather them, he says, back to the pasture, back where they belong, where they will be fruitful and multiply.

And he says, I'm gonna do a new thing. I'm gonna do a new thing. I'm gonna put shepherds over them that are not going to fail.

These shepherds are going to do a kind of job with my people that has not been seen before. My sheep will no longer be terrified.

They will no longer be frightened. They will no longer be scattered. They will be well tended to something new.

I can't help but look at this and think to myself what

Jesus said. So I will build my church. I will build my church.

And what does he do? He gives shepherds to the flock.

Ephesians four. He gives some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers.

He will shepherd his flock. Are we warranted in thinking that way? Well, Christ tells us to.

And for that, for our understanding of what's going on in Jeremiah 23, we gotta go over to John 10.

Because Jesus is thinking of Jeremiah 23 when we read what he says in John 10.

Jesus is trying to explain who he is. He's talking about himself as a good shepherd and his people who believe in him as his flock.

So he's using this illustration of being a good shepherd. And the good shepherd would always, when gathering his sheep together into the fold, into the pen, there was this gap.

There was this one door in the fold and that's where the shepherd would sleep. The shepherd was, by essence, the door of the fold.

And this is what Jesus means when he says, I am the door in verse nine. He's saying,

I am the good shepherd. Let's begin in verse seven. So Jesus said to them again, truly, truly,

I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.

The bad shepherds. Woe to the bad shepherds, Jeremiah said.

And Jesus has something to say about the good shepherd. Well, what does the good shepherd do? The good shepherd does exactly what the

Lord said, I myself will do in Jeremiah 23. The Lord says, I myself will do this and I myself will do that.

And says this is exactly what he does. Consider John 10 verses 14 through 16.

He says, I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, even as the father knows me and I know the father and I lay my life down for the sheep.

I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will hear my voice and they will become one flock with one shepherd.

So who gathers the remnant from exile? Who gathers them into the fold? Who does it? Jesus Christ does.

And all the promises of God are yes in Christ. Verses 11 and 12, he says,

I am the good shepherd. The shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd who is not the owner of the sheep sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

The bad shepherds who scatter the flock, who do not tend to the flock, but the Lord is the good shepherd who sacrifices himself for the sheep.

He defends the sheep. He acts in such a way to reverse the failures of the bad shepherds.

Verses nine and 10, he says, I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

What did God say I myself will do in Jeremiah 23? He says, I will go out and I will get my sheep.

I will bring them back and I will bring them to pasture. So they will be fruitful and that they will multiply.

What does Jesus say? I will, he's gonna gather his sheep. And in Christ, they will go in and go out and find pasture.

The thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

If anyone enters through me, they will be fruitful and multiply. So the good news is the wellbeing of the sheep depends on the righteousness of the shepherd.

And God says, I will do this. And it's a new thing. He himself will be our shepherd.

And not a one will be lost. Not a one will be missing. John 10 verses 27 and 28 through 29.

It says my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And I give eternal life to them. They will never perish.

And no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who was given them to me is greater than all.

And no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. So no more being terrified, no more being frightened, no more threats and not a one missing.

So the sheep will be gathered. They will be gathered by the shepherd who is given to us.

Verses five and six. It's important that we're acknowledging this in this way, that we're looking to see how

Christ interprets the passage. Otherwise, we're just gonna be standing over here like this. Oh, that's very nice for them.

You've had conversations like this, of course. You're in a conversation with someone and they're talking to you about someone you don't even know.

You've never met them. But apparently their life is amazing. They got to do this and they went and did that.

And then so -and -so said this to them and it all came true. And then you went over there and they had this big experience as well.

And you said, well, that's very nice for them. I don't really know what it has to do with me. I don't know what it has to do with our conversation in terms of our relationship with one another, but that's very nice for them.

You've had those conversations, of course. We ought not read the

Old Testament like that. Oh, that's very nice for them. When Jesus Christ himself has proclaimed about himself and revealed himself to us as our savior.

So the shepherd will be granted, verses five and six. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land.

In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely. And this is his name by which he will be called the

Lord our righteousness. Now this is not something different from verses three and four.

This lies right alongside verses three and four, a further explanation of what God is declaring.

He says, behold, the days are coming. He says, in his days, the days of the branch, the days of the one being raised up in the place of David.

It's important that those who are in Judah now facing exile and judgment coming their way because of their many sins, that they know that there are other days, there are days ahead of them, hope -filled days, when

God will raise up a righteous branch, when he will raise up a new shepherd, a good shepherd, a new king.

And he puts their attention upon this one that he will raise up for David, a righteous branch, one who will reign on the throne of David.

That's really good news. We've just heard that Jehoiakim, the very last king, the last credible king of Judah, that his lineage will end and he will be off into exile.

And where will the king then be? Where will the lineage of David then be? Who will restore a descendant of David back on David's throne?

Well, only God can do that. And all the passages we celebrate at Christmas, Isaiah 9, about the king, the one who was born of a virgin, the branch in Isaiah 11, the branch from the line of Jesse, the one who will reign forever and ever, the prophecy that is spoken to Mary by the angel,

Luke 1, verses 32 and 33, he will be great and he will be called the son of the most high.

And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end.

Folks, we celebrate Christmas because these promises have come true. We celebrate the fact that the king has come.

We celebrate that the righteous branch has been raised. And even now he reigns upon the throne of David.

The throne that was broken in exile is transcendent in glory. And the son of David is now

King of Kings and Lord of Lords and all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him and he has been raised to the right hand of the father where he reigns.

What God said to the lesser Joshua, the lesser Yeshua of the greater Yeshua has taken place,

Zechariah 6, verses 12 and 13. Say to Joshua, say to the high priest Joshua, thus says the

Lord of hosts, behold, a man whose name is branch for he will branch out from where he is and he will build the temple of the

Lord. Did not Christ say this, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Verse 13, yes, it is he who will build the temple of the

Lord and he who will bear the honor and sit and rule on his throne. Thus he will be a priest on his throne and the council of peace will be between the two offices, our great high priest and the

King of Kings on the same throne, this is so. It's an early

Merry Christmas. Now, what will the shepherd do? Notice that he will reign and he will save.

The son of David, this righteous branch will reign as King and his reign will be marked by wisdom and justice and righteousness.

All those things that are absent from Judah in Jeremiah's day will be there in Christ. And we see that the heirs of Abraham will be saved and kept secure by the righteous and wise reign of this

King and Christ acted wisely and he acted with authority.

He says in John 10, 17 through 18, for this reason, my father loves me because I lay down my life so that I may take it up again.

No one has taken it away from me. No one stole Christ's life from him, but I lay it down on my own initiative.

I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it up again, this commandment I have received from my father.

And how it is that this King saved us by his death and resurrection is made clear by his name, the

Lord, our righteousness. There's no mistaking that the

Lord himself is righteous, but notice what it says, the Lord, our righteousness.

The Lord, our righteousness. So that we are not claiming righteousness of our own.

Let's make no mistake, God doesn't love us because we're very impressive. God wouldn't forgive us, claim us as his own, ever bring us to heaven because of our own righteousness.

I've done some very nice things lately and those things outweigh the bad things that I've done in my life, no. That's what bad shepherds say and that's how scattered sheep live.

Trying to outweigh their bad with their good. But the good shepherd is our righteousness, meaning that the entire basis for the way that we relate to God is based on the fact that Jesus Christ is righteous, that he has done everything that is required for humanity to do before the face of God, that he has fulfilled what it means to live perfectly before God and that he is our righteousness, so that by belief in him, by trusting in him, we will know favor with God and be accepted with God based on who

Christ is and not based on who we are. And then the sheep will give glory, verses seven through eight.

Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when they will no longer say, as the Lord lives who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt, but as the

Lord lives who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I had driven them, then they will live on their own soil.

There's going to be a change in the way we talk. Now, this has to be pretty significant. When things happen in the world that change the way we talk, it has to be pretty significant, doesn't it?

Our folks in our country used to say, remember the Alamo, and then they said, remember Pearl Harbor, and then they said, remember 9 -11.

Very significant things that happened in the history of our nation change the way that we talked. But it's not just about what's most recent.

It's about that which is transcendent and fundamentally changing about who we are.

So we no longer say, God save the queen. We say, God bless America. We say something different now, don't we?

Because something transcendent has occurred that has changed who we are. And this is what is being said here in verses seven and eight that the sheep will give glory for something greater.

They're no longer even going to talk about, they're no longer going to say about the exodus.

There's something new that transcends it all. Such will be the victory and salvation brought about by the righteous branch of David that those saved by his wise, righteous, and just reign will no longer point back at the first exodus as the premier expression of God's redemption in history.

Now they have something far greater to praise, a greater act of God's salvation. Now we know that under Ezra and Nehemiah and a few others that people came back from Persia and from other places and they came back to Jerusalem and they rebuilt the city, they rebuilt the temple, they rebuilt the walls, but that wasn't transcendent.

It was a signal of something to come that was. The return from exile under Ezra could not have eclipsed the glory of the first exodus.

The first exodus had Moses, Aaron, the tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, Joshua, the 10 plagues, plundering

Egypt, water from a rock, manna from heaven, parting of the Red Sea, the parting of the Jordan River, pillars of cloud, pillars of fire, the giving of the 10 commandments from a smoking

Mount Sinai. And did Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel eclipse that?

No, they did not. The rebuilt temple with its empty holy of holies was not greater than the revelation of God in the wilderness.

There was something greater to which that return from exile pointed. The greater exodus was prefigured in that return that was shadow but Christ is the substance.

Do you realize that we no longer say about our salvation, aren't you glad that God brought us up out of Egypt?

Do we say that? No. What do we say?

Aren't you glad that Jesus Christ has come, died on the cross for our sins, was raised the third day, that he even now is at the right hand of the

Father and reigns forever and he's soon to return? That's what we say. Here are some thoughts about righteousness, how we apply them, how we apply this righteousness that is fulfilled in Christ.

First of all, Christ's righteousness terminates our exile. It's Christ's righteousness that terminates our exile.

Because of Adam, because of his sin, we are apart from God, exiled from God, ruptured in our relationship with God from Eden on.

We are in exile because of sin. How does that exile end?

Everyone who has been, who is alive today, everyone who has ever lived, whoever will live, everyone who is created in the image of God knows that even if they deny it, which the

Bible says, and there's something in them that says, I'm not where I'm supposed to be.

I'm not where I'm supposed to be. We're made in God's image to be in fellowship with him and when we're not, we know it, there's something wrong.

We can try to cover it, sear it, drown it, ignore it, but it's true. How do we get back to God?

Many efforts are made today, the manipulation of our feelings, the affirmation of our friends, sacrificial acts of service, confident assertions of faith, but none of these things end our exile with God.

You can take a pilgrimage to Zion herself, walk her streets, eat her figs, immerse yourself in the

Jordan, weep at Golgotha, duck your head into an empty tomb, but you will have not drawn any closer to God.

You can fast for a week, listen to the rhythm of your own heart and the emptiness of your mind, waiting for God to speak, write down the words and images that bounce around in your head and you'll end up with the echoes of Babel and the musings of man.

That does not end exile with God. First Peter 3 .18 says this, for Christ also died for sins once for all, the just, the righteous, for the unjust, the unrighteous, so that he might bring us to God.

The end of exile. Having been put to death in the flesh, made alive in the spirit.

So Christ's righteousness is what terminates our exile and nothing else. And by this, the next lesson is very clear.

Christ's revelation concentrates our faith. Christ's revelation concentrates our faith.

Some people have accused God of being a really bad communicator. You know, he only invented language, all the languages.

His only begotten son is called the Word. He knows our frame, he knows who we are.

He's made our brains and our tongues, but he's just a bad communicator. He's just not made it very clear about who it is that are right in his sight, who it is who will be with him forever in eternity and who it is that face judgment for their sins.

He's just really confusing on the subject is what the current estimation of God's communication is today.

However, any brief skimming of the Word of God will show the clarity with which

God speaks on this matter. God deemed it necessary that we know for sure the only way unto salvation is

Jesus Christ, the good shepherd, the righteous branch. And this delivers us from confusion.

And he warns us of the danger of denying him. John 10, nine and 11, again, he says, nine through 11, he says,

I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved.

Is that clear enough? And we'll go in and out and find the pastor. The thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy.

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Verses 26 and 27 of the same chapter. He says to the very, very religious people who have a lot of Bible memorized, he says, but you do not believe.

They didn't believe in Jesus. You do not believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

So nobody gets in because of religious momentum built up in their life. Nobody goes to heaven forever because they've done some very nice things and thought some very nice things and said some very nice things.

Nobody goes to heaven because, well, God's just that way. God is holy and he is loving and he is just.

And he has given us a good shepherd. Bad shepherds tell you whatever you wanna hear. Oh, you're fine.

There's probably some way in for everybody. Bad shepherds tell you what you wanna hear. Jesus Christ, the good shepherd said,

I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the father except through me. That's what the good shepherd says.

And we have to be clear on that because that is increasingly, increasingly covered over in great amounts of static.

Thirdly, Christ's redemption accelerates our praise. Accelerates our praise. Notice verses seven and eight, how the praise got accelerated, the worship got accelerated.

We no longer say this, we say this now. Every redemptive act that God has ever done in all of history deserves praise, but we must not stop there, but go on to Christ and praise him.

Every blessing we now enjoy, we should give thanks for that. But upwards, we ought to look to Christ because he's the one who's reigning at the right hand.

And the reason why God would love us and favor us and bless us is because of Jesus Christ. So let's give him glory.

Let's give him the praise. Let's give him the thanksgiving. And what do we have to look forward to?

The one who died for us is the one who lives for us. Revelation 7, 17, for the lamb in the center of the throne will be our shepherd.

The lamb who's in the middle of the throne will be our shepherd.

He will guide us to spring to the water of life and God will wipe every tear from our eyes.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for a good shepherd. We thank you for these promises that are sure and clear.

We thank you that you do not leave us to ourselves, but in grace and mercy, you give us a clear word to turn our attention to Jesus Christ as our good shepherd, the

Lord, our righteousness, the way in which we are made right with you. We thank you for these promises and we give you the praise, we give you the glory.