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1 Peter 2:25
To sing the Psalms, I understand that for years we didn't sing the Psalms, but it is something the New Testament commands churches to do. And so I'm grateful that we sing them. And I'm grateful for the rich theology that God has given us in the Psalms.
I'm going to start out this sermon today with a with a sermon. We're like in the movie The Inception now, we've got a sermon in a sermon. I'm going to give you a three-point outline about sheep. Now about kids, you can listen to this.
You like sheep, you can probably pay attention to this outline. The first point about sheep, though, is this, they're dirty. You're like, no, they're not dirty, they're white. Well, if you don't think sheep are dirty, it's because you've got them against the wrong background.
So if you compare sheep with sheep, you may think they're white. Or if you put sheep against a muddy background, you may think, well, they look pretty clean. But have you ever passed a flock of sheep maybe on the backdrop of snow, freshly fallen snow, you put them against a white background, and you'll find out that sheep are actually really dirty creatures.
Second thing about sheep is this, they're defenseless. Now, you guys, some of you guys like superheroes. I know Joe likes Spider-Man. I know Jack likes Spider-Man. We can go with Spider-Man, or we've got Batman, or we've got Wolverine, just thinking of the animal-based superheroes.
But you've never heard of, and you will never hear of, Sheep-Man.
Why?
What does a sheep have that's scary or terrifying?
Nothing, right?
Because it's defenseless.
It doesn't have claws.
It doesn't have sharp teeth. It's just a defenseless little creature. And then thirdly, sheep are dirty. They're defenseless. Maybe it'd be a quiz for you kids at the end of the sermon if you get it. Thirdly, parents, forgive me for using this word.
I hope it's OK in your home. They're dumb. Sheep are dumb animals. Sheep are animals that they will literally starve to death if you don't direct them correctly with food, or they'll die of thirst if you don't point them in the right direction when it comes to water.
They make dumb choices, and then they just stick with those choices until they're either rescued or killed. Now, why do I begin a sermon in a sermon?
Why am I talking about sheep?
Because I've chosen to end our year in 1 Peter 2, verse 25. Would you turn there? We spent four weeks in 1 Peter 2, 24. And so I thought maybe before jumping back into Nahum, which the plan will be to do that next week in our verse-by-verse exposition of that book, that before doing that, we would close out our year by considering verse 25 and think about this reality.
Sheep are dirty. Sheep are defenseless. Sheep are dumb. Maybe that's one reason the Bible uses sheep as an image of us. Maybe there's also another reason, though. Maybe there's another reason the Bible uses sheep to describe God's people.
Because sheep don't worry about if it's going to rain tomorrow. Sheep don't fight their own battles.
You can search high and low.
You can search the annals of history. You'll never find one instance of a sheep counting people in order to go to sleep.
So what do sheep do?
They follow the shepherd.
That's what they do.
They trust him.
They receive the goodness from his hands. They listen to his voice. This is a picture of faith. And the text tells us this morning that Jesus is the shepherd of our souls. He's worthy of our trust. He's worthy of being followed.
And may we, as a church, as we leave one year and enter into another, may we say, we're all in on this. There's no holding back, no turning back. Christ is king. Christ is worthy. And we're going to trust him.
We're going to follow him. That's the kind of sheep that we're going to be. 1 Peter 2, verse 25. Let's stand as we honor the reading of God's word, the shepherd of our souls. Peter says, for you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.
Father, we thank you for this text. We thank you not merely for the text, but also that the text describes an indescribable reality. That the king of kings and the Lord of lords, the high king of heaven, the one sitting upon the throne of David, that the right hand of the father, the one who became a child, the one who died on the cross and rose again, that this king, this God, this Jesus is also the shepherd of our souls.
I pray that we would rest in that fact. Some today need to trust that reality for the first time in repentance and faith. Help us, O God, to believe this text. And we pray, O Holy Spirit, that you would apply it to our hearts.
Be here with us. May this preaching not just be the ramblings of a redneck pastor, but may it be spirit-filled, Christ-centered. And may it be a means of grace to your people. May we continue in worship through the preaching of the word.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Be seated.
I remind you, this text, we're not going to really deal with it a lot, because I'm not trying to turn verse 25 into another series. But let me just remind you that you can hear it as you're listening to this text, that in the background is Isaiah 53.
As Peter is writing this text, he has in his heart Isaiah 53, which finds its full fulfillment, true fulfillment in Christ. So know that as we enter the text. But Jesus here is the shepherd of our souls.
This is all over the Bible. I'll read just a couple of passages. John 10, 11 says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. In Hebrews 13, 20, Jesus is called the great shepherd.
Even in this letter, if you flip over to chapter 5 and verse 4, chapter 5, verse 4 of 1 Peter, Peter says, and when the chief shepherd appears, he's talking to the elders, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.
So he is the good shepherd. He is the great shepherd. He is the chief shepherd. And our text says he is the shepherd and overseer of our souls. I want to dive into the text this morning, just consider what this means for us as a congregation.
And what would it mean for you to begin a new year really believing this? Not just hearing this verse, well, that's a cute little verse. I'll stitch that on a pillow next year for Christmas. No, really believing what this text has for us.
Really being challenged today by what this text has for us. Really being encouraged today by what this text has for us. Jesus is the shepherd of our souls. Number one, Jesus is the shepherd who suffered.
Now, we've spent four weeks really locked in to verse 24. And when you do that, sometimes you can forget the big picture context. So I'm going to start back in verse 18 of chapter 2, and I'm going to read through verse 25 to remind you that the context and the point of what Peter is talking about here is the suffering of Christ.
So in verse 18, Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.
For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure? This is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps.
He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were strained like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.
I hope that just gives you a little bit of taste here of the context. And so here's what's happening. This is why it's important to remind ourselves that Jesus is the shepherd who suffered. First, it reminds us of the great cost of our salvation.
That you were saved not by your works, not by anything that you've done. You were saved by the suffering of God. Well, God can't suffer, right? This is the impassibility of God. God can't suffer. That's right.
So God took on human flesh so that he could suffer in our place for our sins. It also reminds us that this great God and shepherd of our souls is able to identify with his sheep. We sing the song, Great is Thy Faithfulness.
There's that line.
His compassions, they fail not. So let me just ask you for a second. Remember, this might be sobering for doing something right. How was your year? Did you suffer unjustly? Have you been broken? Maybe some of you this morning, if you were honest, you put on a smile when you walked through.
But really, if you were honest, you would say, honestly, I'm dragging in here this morning. Maybe some of you would say, I've been betrayed. I've been, my family has abandoned me. I took a stand for Christ and this person is no longer my friend.
I've been beaten up a little bit, maybe physically, maybe spiritually. I've been cast down. I've been wounded. How has your year been? I'm telling you this morning, if you're in Christ, Jesus is a shepherd who knows our pains.
He's a shepherd who suffered. How gentle and caring is our shepherd for his sheep, full of grace, walking with us, knowing our trials and sorrows and never leaving us out in the cold. Secondly, he is the shepherd who seeks and saves.
Now, the text says that you were straying like sheep because this is from Isaiah 53. All we like sheep have gone astray. Well, the text is you are straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.
So let's walk through this for a minute. You know this, you've been here. You don't need a review of this, but we're going to give it because honestly, every week we need to be reminded of the gospel.
So we've all turned. We've all gone our own way. This is the essence of sin. You see it run rampant in our country today. The essence of sin is autonomy. The essence of sin is God says do this, but he's not God.
I am and I'm going to do what I want to do. And nobody can tell me how to do it. So it's rejecting the essence of sin is rejecting God's way. And now I'm going to go my own way. What does God respond to this?
Well, he continues to show his goodness to us in the sun rises and sets. There are people this morning who are continuing to breathe God's air, and yet they've continued to rebel against him. And yet in his mercy, he is continuing to allow them to inhabit his planet.
Yet the vast majority of mankind, even though God is kind to the whole world, the vast majority of mankind goes their own way, trampling the very thought of God underneath their feet. And but the text says that for these people here, they've returned.
They've returned.
How did they return?
Well, let me give you scripture. Luke 15, four and five says this. What man of you having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety nine in the open country and go after the one that is lost until he finds it.
And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. Now, in the context of Luke 15, Jesus is talking about himself. Jesus is the shepherd. Jesus is the sovereign shepherd who does not sit upon his throne hoping one day the sheep will just wander in, that these dumb sheep that can't even feed themselves that are just decided that they're going to rail against their creator, that there's somehow they're just going to trip over and stumble and come in the door and then they'll be saved.
He doesn't leave the sheep like that. Rather, he seeks them out. John 10, 27, 28. Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Can I just tell you this morning, you should know this. Being here in this church, you should know this. But let me remind you that if you're a Christian here, it's not so much that you found God, that's true in a sense, but it's also very much true that Jesus found you.
He sought you out.
You didn't seek him out.
You were going the other way.
You were like Paul, right?
Or Saul of Tarsus. Saul was going and he was ready to enslave the church and to persecute the church.
And Jesus said, I got other plans.
And so it was for you. Jesus sought you out. He called you by name. He laid you across his shoulders and he carried you home.
What grace.
Spurgeon says it this way. I read an amazing sermon from Spurgeon over the Christmas holidays. Every man that is saved is always saved by an overcoming call, which he cannot withstand. He may resist it for a time, but he cannot resist it so as to overcome it.
He must give way. He must yield when God speaks. If God says, let there be light, the impenetrable darkness gives way to light. If he says, let there be grace, unutterable sin gives way. And the hardest hearted sinner melts before the fire of effectual calling.
Consider the seeking of our Savior. Consider our shepherd. Have you heard the voice of the Lord Jesus? Meaning, not have you been in some corner and heard a voice, an audible voice, meaning has the gospel pierced your heart?
Has it brought you to conviction of sin? Has it brought you to repentance of sin and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Jesus is the shepherd who seeks and saves. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned.
And I'm just adding this here. This is theological, biblical. This is right. You've returned, not by your own doing, but by the seeking of the shepherd. You've returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.
Now, that's something else important. Certainly he cares. He seeks and saves. So certainly he cares for our physical needs. And we should take our physical needs. It's right and it's good to pray for physical needs.
This is good. But the highlight of this text is that he is the shepherd and overseer of your souls. You see that in the text, see it in the text. He gives the greatest care, beloved, and the greatest attention, beloved, in soul care.
Not that we separate body and soul. We're not trying to do that. I'm just saying there's a priority here that Jesus has taken care of our greatest need. Your greatest need is not a new truck. I'd like a new truck.
That's not my greatest need.
My greatest need is that I've sinned against a holy and awesome God. And yet Jesus has supplied my greatest need.
Namely what?
Verse 24. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. I was reading a Puritan actually last night, George Swinnick, and he brought this to my mind and I thought that is an incredible analogy.
He said God's given you two eyes, two ears, two hands, two feet. And if one of them fails, the other one can help. You know that. Some people have maybe lost an arm or lost a leg or lost an eye or lost hearing and ear.
And you got two of them. And the Lord has given that to us so that if one of those fail, there's another one that can come in and help us out. But he's only given us, Swinnick says, one soul. One soul.
And if the soul fails, all is lost. And yet the text says that Jesus is the shepherd and overseer of our souls. When the shepherd lifts you out of that miry clay, he does not heal you with your good works.
He does not heal you with the fact that you found a healthy church. He doesn't heal you with some sort of magic potion. He doesn't heal you with money. He doesn't carry you to some other physician. The text says at the end of verse 24 what?
By his wounds you are healed. His wounds flowing from his furrowed brow, flowing from his hands, flowing from his feet, from the spear that pierced his side, stricken by God,.
Propitiation.
He was pierced and we have peace. He is the shepherd who has the solution for your sin problem because he himself paid our sin debt and secured righteousness for us in his life. In his life, his death, his resurrection, our Lord Jesus secures perfect salvation for his sheep.
He was wounded so that we could be healed. So that our souls, friends, could be healed. And that we could enter into saving fellowship with God. To be justified. That is declared righteous by the merit of Christ.
To be adopted into his family. To have a seat at his table. To be forgiven of our sins. And friends, children, teenagers, adults, listen. He is the savior who says even now. He is the shepherd who says even now.
Come to me. All who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. And he can give you rest because he has tasted death for us and he has risen again. That's the question for the ages, right? How can a sinful man be made right with a holy God?
And the answer, of course, is Jesus. Jesus is the shepherd who saves us from our sins. Because he paid the penalty for our sins. And he rose again in victory over death, hell, and the grave. What a great shepherd he is.
Friends, if he was a shepherd, listen, you may like this. But if I said, hey, he's the shepherd and overseer of BMWs. Well, that sounds kind of cool. You come to this guy and he gives you BMWs. Well, that's great if you like BMWs.
That's great if you're like Connell and you like Ford trucks.
That's great.
I got to ask Connell about that.
What if he was a shepherd who gave you these things, gave you a new house,.
Gave you a new job?
Well, listen, maybe that would be great temporally. But one day you're going to die.
And you can't drive the BMW in hell.
That's not the shepherd we got. We got the shepherd who oversees our souls. We've got the shepherd who saves our souls, the text says. We've got the shepherd who reconciles us by his life, by his death, and by his resurrection to a holy God.
This is the shepherd. I wonder this morning if you know him. Are you strained? In the text, are you strained or have you come to him in repentance and faith? Is the king even calling you today? I'll remind you here, and some of you need this encouragement for your family and your friends and your neighbors.
Some of you need this encouragement for your own soul. Jesus can clean up anyone. Jesus can forgive anyone's sins. Jesus can set any captive free. He saves to the uttermost. Some of you here, you don't need to stay.
You don't have to stay in your hatred of God, in your slavery to sin, in your rebellion to his word. Behold the great shepherd. Come to him. Rest in him. Trust this message.
Jesus saves.
What a simple two word sentence. But the glorious and profound impact that it ought to have upon the human heart. Jesus saves a real, true, free and sovereign salvation. He forgives. He heals. He binds up the broken hearted.
He saves you from the wrath you deserve. He cleans you up. Today, some of you children, even adults, teenagers, you need to trust such a shepherd. Now, we would understand, wouldn't we, if we're talking about, hey, the shepherd is some tyrant.
The shepherd is some jerk. The shepherd is some charlatan. We would understand for you to say, I will not trust a shepherd like that. But only a rebel would hear of the good shepherd, King Jesus, and say, I'm not trusting that.
Friends, he is the shepherd who saves, who seeks and saves. Go to him. Repent of your sins and trust him for salvation. Believe the gospel. Thirdly, he is the shepherd who sanctifies. So I want to be clear with some tense of this text.
The text says in verse 25, just simple words, simple verb tenses sometimes can bring an important point to light. But the text says.
You were straying.
You were straying is not indicative of the believer. That's who you what were. You were straying, but now returned. You have now returned.
You've now returned. So he is the shepherd who sanctifies. That is, he is the shepherd that is so patient with us. But don't confuse the patience of Christ with indifference towards sin. Don't confuse that.
If you know Jesus as your shepherd, then you are being sanctified in him. The text says at the end of verse 24 that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds. You have been healed. In other words, part of the healing is not just reconciliation with God, but a part of the healing is.
Let me just give you an analogy like this. So the Bible, the New Testament talks about salvation and it gives analogies.
Like this.
The thief goes from not stealing, not to this neutral place of just, well, I don't steal anymore. But the thief goes move. If God moves a thief from not stealing past neutrality to now I'm a generous person, that's like Ephesians 4.
That's how the Bible describes the transformation that happens with the believer. So that's what Jesus is doing in our lives. It's a long process. In fact, I'll tell you this, not to discourage you, it's such a long process, you're never going to be finished with it in this life.
But Jesus is with his people every step of the way. He is for, you need to know this, he is for your growth in him. Does anyone care about my growing in Christ? Does anyone care about my struggling in Bible reading and my trying to increase my prayer time and try to be more evangelist?
Does anyone care? No one in the church seems to care.
Does anyone care about that?
I can tell you this, Jesus cares. Your shepherd cares about your growth in him. And by the power of God, we are being made more and more molded, more and more shaped, more and more into the image of Christ.
And Jesus has paid the full penalty of our sins against God. And even though the legal demand of our sin has now been taken care of, he is still concerned about the sins that we struggle with in real time.
For example, he says to the church in Laodicea in Revelation 319, interesting if you listen to the whole language here, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous. And repent. Did you know that repentance is a grace of God?
That any time that we're called to repent, it's by the sheer grace of God. Well, how can I say that? Because justice would just say. Pay for your sin, die. But grace says repent. Repent of your sin. Turn from it.
Repentance is a grace. And I'm going to talk to believers for a second. He calls you even today, believer, to repent. In his grace, in his being for your sanctification, not to crush you, not to destroy you, but in his grace, he says be zealous and repent.
Repent.
Turn from sin. Why does he say that to you? Because he loves you. And he cares enough about you to deal with your sin in whatever way is necessary. Do you really want to leave one year and enter into the next, stubbornly holding on to pride?
Is that how you want to conclude 2024 and begin 2025? By stubbornly holding on to your pride. Stubbornly holding on to anger. Foolishly crossing the line with lust. Foolishly being lazy or greedy. Is this how you want to close one year and begin a new year?
Oh, Christian, hear the voice of the shepherd. He kindly and graciously and lovingly comes before you this morning and says, don't do that.
Let it go.
Turn these things over.
The shepherd calls you to repentance. Psalm 23, we know that psalm, and I'll reference it later. But we know that psalm. But it's interesting in Psalm 23 how David says, his rod and his staff comfort me.
You ever seen a picture of a shepherd with his staff? Do you know sometimes he uses the staff to, we may call, correct the sheep?
Get in line.
He does it out of love.
The same way that we deal with our children in love. If my child is barreling towards a street,.
I'm not going to say, oh, Haddon, please don't go there. What am I going to do?
I'm going to get very quickly belligerent.
Haddon Ridley Nelson, stop! And if he doesn't stop, I'm going after him. And if he still doesn't stop, I'm going to grab him in my arms, and I'm going to tackle him, and I'm going to do everything I can.
I'm going to prevent him to go into harm. He would say, hey, man, you scratched up my knees. Dad, you hurt me a little bit.
I did.
But it was for this purpose, to save you, because I love you. That analogy is not perfect, but understand that Jesus is willing to do these things. The shepherd cares about the sanctification of the sheep.
In fact, I'll say this. And you need to hear this clearly. We need to think through this for your friends,.
Your neighbors.
If you're able to live in sin, and the shepherd never does anything about that, I say with biblical authority,.
You don't know him.
I'm not saying you, well, I feel bad for sin, so I'm good. Well, no, we all feel bad for sin at times, because we're made in the image of God. All of America feels bad for sin. Then you understand that this is why the homosexual has the pride parades, or why they have the shout your abortion, or why you have the bars where everybody can get drunk together.
Because sin loves company. Because in and of ourselves, we understand deep down inside, there's this guilt there, and it's gnawing at us, and we're trying to get rid of it. We're trying to shout it away, and we're trying to suppress it.
So you feel bad for sin. OK, that's good. You should feel bad for sin. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. In fact, I'll say this. I've seen this so much as a pastor. So in 2025, I'll have pastored here for nine years.
And I'll have been in the ministry for 19 years. And I've seen a cycle so much. Someone gets in trouble. They get arrested, or maybe they come to a breaking point, or maybe they get caught doing something, and they feel bad about it.
And so the next step is they come to church, and they try to make it better. And then they fall right back into sin, and the cycle just keeps repeating, repeating, repeating. But every time in the cycle, when they feel bad and they start coming to church, everyone thinks,.
They found God. They've been converted. Now it's real.
And I'm not trying to be cynical here. I'm just saying I've learned some things the hard way since I first started out. And one of the things I've learned is that sin is an awfully hard thing for people to part from.
And so I say this pastorally, but also clearly. If you can just live a life of sin, and the shepherd never delivers you from that, you're not a Christian. Well, that's bold of you to say.
No, no, no.
I think it's quite more brazen to say that Jesus is some shepherd that doesn't have the power or ability to take care of sin in real time. He's not that kind of shepherd, friends. Rather, he is the shepherd who sanctifies.
We all struggle with sin. We all fight sin, yes. And we too often stumble and fall. But Jesus is the one who convicts us of our sin, who stoops down and cleans us up again, who picks us up for the 1 ,099th time.
We're like, oh, we've just failed too many times. And then here Jesus is again in his grace, convicting us, confronting us. And here we are again, repenting and trusting and resting. This is the reality of the sanctification of the believer.
Fourthly, he's the shepherd who satisfies. Now, I bring this. I think it's worthy of application from the text because Peter says twice that Jesus is our shepherd. And so not only does he have Isaiah 53 in his mind, but also surely Psalm 23.
Now, in Psalm 23, verse 1, we know the first verse. The Lord is my shepherd. In fact, you can probably finish this, couldn't you? The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not what?
Want.
I shall not want, meaning I shall not lack. Now, I'm telling you in this point that he is the shepherd who satisfies. To know God personally is to know him through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
We preach experiential Christianity. That means we don't just know God, we experience him through Christ. You can't experience God without knowing him, and you don't truly know him unless you walk with Christ as your shepherd.
And it's not enough, friends, to know that Jesus is a shepherd.
Right.
The text says, for you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseers of your souls. In other words, we could put it this way. He's not just a shepherd for the Christian.
He is your shepherd. You must know God through what Christ has done, and to truly know God is to know that God satisfies our souls in Christ. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Now, just consider for a moment the context.
Peter is writing to believers, and these believers are suffering, and he reminds them, they're elect exiles, he says in 1 Peter 1. He reminds them, in the midst of their suffering, he reminds them of their shepherd.
Their shepherd. Surely drawing to our minds, Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Let me say it this way. In the midst of pain, in the midst of suffering, in the midst of things not going the way that you want them to go, in the midst of trial, Jesus is the one alone who stands as the supreme comfort and satisfaction of the soul.
If you're a Christian, he's not just a shepherd, he's not even only the great shepherd, but he is also your shepherd.
What a glorious confession.
Psalm 23, one. The Lord is my shepherd. Can you say that honestly today? Can you say, the Lord is my shepherd, and I am satisfied in all that God is for me in Christ. If you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your soul, then what else does your heart search for this morning?
It has all it needs in Christ. Now, I understand there's lots of things that you could want, that you wish that were better, maybe in your life or whatever, but your soul has all it needs in Christ. In fact, I'm just gonna be real for a moment.
I hope I'm always real, but let me just be really real. Let's get real. In this fallen world, you don't have to pretend, Christian. Actually, it's really dumb that Christians try to live this way. And that is, they try to always act like everything is fine, and nothing is out of sorts.
I'm happy, happy, happy, happy, happy. That's not reality. You understand that we live in a world that still groans, Paul says in Romans 8, groans under the curse. And frankly, there's a lot about life, little and big, that can just be a disappointment.
There's a lot of things in life that are painful. There's a lot of things in life that hurt you. There is a lot of regret. There is a lot of sorrow in this life. Only Jesus can wade through that indescribable pain.
I'll put it to you this way, heart pain, man, a broken bone can heal. Maybe in six weeks. I was talking to a guy just the other day, and you know him, I won't say his name just to not worry about hurting his feelings or whatever, but he broke his femur.
I saw him the other day, I'm like, he's walking. He's getting in a deer stand.
What?
And that was just not that long ago. Broken bones can heal, and they do heal. And they heal sometimes in such a way that you forgot that it was even broken. That's just not that way with the heart, is it?
Heart pain can be the absolute worst. A broken heart can linger for quite a long time. But I'm trying to tell you in this point that a broken heart, a heart that is broken, Jesus can still satisfy. And he doesn't wave a magic wand, and I don't understand it all, but he doesn't wave a magic wand and whisk all the pain away.
But he does through his word, and through his means of grace, and through the preaching, and through the fellowship of the church,.
And through the encouragement of our brothers and sisters in Christ,.
Through all these ways, Jesus tells us he is enough.
He is enough for us.
Christ is enough. He is good. He is able to satisfy our soul. He is able to heal the brokenhearted. He is able, even in the midst of pain, even in the midst of sorrow, even in the midst of hurt and conflict, he is able to satisfy all that our soul needs because he is the great shepherd and overseer of our souls.
We heard recently from Psalm 73, from Gunnar, your heart and your flesh may fail. Politics will fail you. Your president will fail you. Your pastors will fail you. Even your own family will fail you. Sometimes your health, your children, sometimes even your spouse.
They may all fail you, but Psalm 73, 26 says,.
But God is the strength of our hearts.
And our portion forever. And so Christ, the great shepherd, stoops down in the midst of suffering and he holds us. It's interesting the Bible says things like this. He keeps our tears in a bottle. That's strange to me.
He keeps our tears in the bottle. Every time my children cry, what would you say? You say, come over and you say, what is that? Is that a bottle of Sprite? I'd like to drink that. No, that's a bottle of my children's tears.
But God does this out of compassion, meaning he knows every tear that you've cried and the reason that you've cried every tear. And he has it bottled up before him, as it were, to remember his compassion toward you, his child.
Are you in Christ? Man, he says right now, you don't feel like you can hold on, but he's got you. No one and nothing will snatch you out of his hand. The Lord Jesus says to his sheep, I've got you.
I don't know what it is.
Some of you I know prayed this morning. Someone's got a cancer screening this week. And then tomorrow we have a joyful thing to be excited about Alex and Cheyenne going and having baby Fiona.
Praise God.
Through the highs of our life, through the lows of our life, Jesus has us.
You can't, nothing can, not even you.
Can snatch yourself out of his hand because he's the shepherd and we can trust him. Fifthly, he's the shepherd who stands guard. That's pretty much just a repeat of what I said. And I was gonna read John 10.
Some, you can read that. But just know that the text says he is the shepherd and overseer of our soul. He's not going to let you fall into apostasy if you're his. In fact, I do wanna say this in this point.
On one hand, we don't wanna bash people over the head because of every little disagreement we may have with a preacher. But on the other hand, we have to stop letting our friends and family be led astray by false preaching.
And here's what I'm trying to say. What if you, what if you, sister, what if you, brother, are the very means that God has to help rescue a loved one from false teaching? They're a true believer, but they've been for a season succumbing to false teaching.
And you say, yeah, but if I say something to them, it's gonna drive a wedge between us and it's gonna drive some conflict and I just don't wanna deal with that. But I'm saying to you, what if you are the very means that God is going to use to call them out of that?
You say, yeah, but it might be hard. You're right, it might be hard. And I'm just gonna tell you from experience, they might get mad at you. They may not even be your friend for a little while. But if they're a true believer, God will use those kind of things in their life because he is the shepherd who stands guard.
More I wanted to say under that point, but let's move along to the final point. Finally, I wanna say this. He is the shepherd that we submit to. For you were strained like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.
You've returned. The essence of Christianity, the essence of becoming a Christian is the fact that we've moved from traveling our own way and now we have bowed the knee to Christ in faith and now we are going his way, okay?
The shepherd, this is such a silly truism, if you will, but the shepherd doesn't lead us unless he leads us, right? He leads me beside still waters. Well, he's not leading you beside still waters unless you're what?
Unless you're following him. He's the shepherd that we submit to. And the job of elders, for example, these languages used for elders,.
Shepherds, overseers,.
That's used for elders in the church. The job of elders is to shepherd your soul in this sense by pointing you to our great shepherd. I don't have anything to offer this church outside of Christ. And I will even say this, we need more pastors who care about the souls of their congregation, not the pocketbooks or whatever the case may be,.
Not numbers, not accolades,.
Because if you care about people's soul, sometimes you've got to tell them hard things. Sometimes you've got to tell them things they may even get mad at you, but you have the larger purpose of pointing them to Christ.
You care about their souls and so you're pointing their souls to Christ and you're not concerned about your feelings. The job of elders is not to get you to obey them, but to show you the joy and necessity of obeying Jesus.
So submitting to Jesus as our shepherd means that we do what he says. That's simple, right? Boy, this is real intellectually stimulating. You just do what he says, individually and corporately. God says, the father says a couple of times in the gospels, this is my beloved son, listen to him.
It's an amazing thing in modern Christianity, that we call people Christians who don't follow Jesus.
How can it be?
Or they pick things that they like about Jesus and they follow those things, but then they just reject other things that they don't like. This means that Jesus isn't the shepherd of your soul.
You are.
If Jesus is the shepherd and overseer of your soul, it means we open up his book, we search his scriptures, and we submit to what we find there. Even sometimes when we don't have full understanding, we just say yes.
Yes, Lord, I'm still working through all this. I don't understand it all. I don't see how all this plays out, but I'm gonna say yes because your word says it to me. For example, just in the very next context, probably in your Bibles, you have something above chapter three that says like wives and husbands,.
Where there's an application.
It means that as husbands and wives, we submit to Christ as our shepherd in such a way that we carry out the biblical God-ordained roles of husbands and wives. And you can read that. We want to do that because we submit to Jesus as our shepherd.
On a church level, it means that Christ is the head of the church. So ultimately, here's the deal. We don't care. It's hard to say this, and it's a bit of a lie, actually, because there is part of me that does care.
Like I do care what people think. I would just have to be some sort of robot not to care about what people think. But when it comes down to it, and I have to choose what people think or what Christ says, then what is our response?
What Christ says. We don't care, then, what the church gurus have to say, or maybe what the community has to say, or what the latest fad has to say, or what the latest post on Facebook may have to say.
At the end of the day, we want to follow Jesus here.
Because he's the head of the church.
He's the shepherd.
He's the overseer. He's the great pastor. No one and nothing else.
It's Christ.
And we want to listen to him. I should maybe back up and just mention that there's no understanding of New Testament Christianity outside the local church. The gospel comes into a city. You read the book of Acts.
God brings people to spiritual life. And what happens? They form clubs.
No.
They form committees.
They form networks.
They form churches. Local churches that take the Bible seriously, that take church membership seriously, that take church discipline seriously, that take church leadership seriously, that take worship and evangelism seriously.
Submitting to Jesus means that we're committed to the local church because think about this for just a second. Jesus is the shepherd, not of individual sheep,.
Although that's true,.
But a shepherd has a what? A shepherd has a flock. And Jesus has a flock.
He has a community.
He has a people.
He has a family.
And this family manifests itself in the world today in visible local congregations. There's no understanding. Even this text about Jesus being the shepherd,.
You can't really understand it.
Without the local church. He has one flock. And this flock shows itself in the world today through local churches. Listen, we vastly underestimate to our great detriment the holy love that Jesus has for his local churches.
And we're foolish and we're wicked if we think that we can order the church at our whim and not his. It's interesting. How so many can convince themselves that they're submitted to Christ when in reality they're submitted to their own preferences or nostalgia or new stuff or whatever.
The question you need to ask yourself in this point is is Jesus the shepherd you're submitted to? Is he the one that we submit in all areas? Every single area.
Every nook.
Every door.
Every cranny of our lives. He's Lord of all. And may our church ever cling to Christ as Savior and Shepherd. And even may we be willing to do hard things and if necessary unpopular things.
If they are the things.
That our shepherd bids us to do in his word for his glory. Jesus is the shepherd, friends, who suffered.
Who seeks. Who saves.
Who sanctifies. Who satisfies. Who stands guard. And he is the shepherd we submit to.
Remember those dirty sheep?
The shepherd cleans them. Remember those defenseless sheep? The shepherd holds on to them. Remember those dumb sheep? The shepherd imparts his wisdom to them. I'll just close with this. As we leave one year and get ready for the next, is this the shepherd that you know?
Only this shepherd will do. There is no other. There's none better. Christ is King. Christ is worthy. Time is precious. Do not waste another second on paltry shepherds. Because the law can't shepherd your soul.
Your sin can't shepherd your soul. The world certainly cannot shepherd your soul. Only Jesus will do. And so for some of you that means stopping now.
Right where you are.
Stop playing games. Stop wandering around like a dumb, dirty, defenseless sheep.
Stop where you are.
Hear the voice of the shepherd and run to him. Run to him. Will he receive me? Answer a question. Are you a sinner? Answer yes. Then the answer is yes.
He will receive you.
Because Christ receiveth sinful men and women and boys and girls.
Stop where you are. Stop the games.
Stop the pretend. Stop the excuses and go to Christ who will save you. Trust his work. Repent and believe the gospel. And then for many of you in this room it just simply means this, if you will, if the language is okay, recalibrating.
Quit following lesser shepherds. Quit following the opinions of man. Let the word of Christ from the scriptures guide you into a new year. This is the shepherd worthy of our following. Let the Bible change your family, change your church commitment, change your personal walk.
Jesus is a worthy shepherd.
Follow him.
Amen. Would you stand this morning.
I will pray.
