Yes, But Do You Know?

Old Testament reading this morning is in Ezekiel chapter 34. We'll be starting in verse 11. Please stand and honor God's word. For thus says the Lord God, behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out, as a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered.

So will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land, and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the ravines and all the inhabited places of the country.

I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain of heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel.

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat of the strong I will destroy.

I will feed them in justice.

New Testament scripture reading is John chapter 10, one through 18. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber, but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So Jesus again said to them, 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 listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and I will go in and out and find pasture.

The thief comes only to steal and 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. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the father knows me and I know the father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.

And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason, the father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my father.

You may be seated.

If you will, take your Bibles and turn with me to Hebrews chapter 13. Now as your attorney, I just want to say a few words. This is the last sermon from the book of Hebrews, and you're saying, well, it should be.

You've spent enough time in this book. Let me just say something to you. Almost exactly two years ago, on January 31st, we started this book. But let me just say to you as well, there were lots of interruptions.

I was gone for five months, all right? And if you count them all up, there's one year's worth of sermons here, okay? So, just wanted you to know that. All right, you follow now as I read Hebrews 13, beginning in verse 18.

Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things. I urge you the more earnestly to do all this, to do this in order that I may be restored to you the sooner.

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever, amen.

I appeal to you, brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly. You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon. Greet all your leaders and all the saints.

Those who come from Italy send you greetings. Grace be with you all. Father, now I pray that you would open the word of God to us. Our worship now involves our hearing. Just hearing me, but hearing the voice of God as He speaks in His word, so help us to hear your voice today.

We are thankful for the Lord Jesus. Pray that He would be exalted as we look into His word now, in Jesus' name, amen. Don't give up and don't give in. That's the constant refrain of this wonderful book.

You cannot give up on Jesus. You cannot give in to the pressure that says to you the cost of following Jesus is too great. The cost is greater if you abandon Him, and there is no hope if you leave. So this unknown pastor who wrote this sermon, this exhortation, shows you throughout this book all that Jesus is and all of what Jesus has done.

And so you say to yourself, I must remain faithful to Jesus, and I will remain faithful to Jesus. Yes, you must remain faithful to Jesus, but did you know, did you know that God will equip you to do that very thing?

That's what the prayer at the end of this epistle tells us. That's what he asks of God in your walk with Jesus. The persistent pastor ends this exhortation with a prayer, and he prays that the God who demands endurance will equip you to do the very thing that He commands.

And so from this prayer, you can gain confidence that in the face of persecution, in the pressure that comes along for following Jesus, you will not abandon Jesus, and you will endure. So let's look at these two verses, verses 20 and 21.

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen.

He says to you, yes, God says you must endure, but do you know what this God is like? Yes, you must endure, but do you know who the God is that demands your allegiance to Jesus? Yes, you must endure, but do you know what God will do?

Yes, you must endure, but do you know how God will do this? And so he says, yes, you must endure, but you've got to know these things as well if you will endure. First of all, he says, do you know who this God is?

Now he uses an interesting phrase here. He calls him the God of peace. This is a fascinating phrase. We haven't seen that in this book. He calls him the God of peace. Surely we conceive of God as the God of justice, the God of holiness, the God of power, and he is all those things, and he is a God of justice, and he is a God of wrath to those who are strangers to him, to those who have never entrusted themselves to Jesus.

He is not at peace with them because they are enemies of him. However, however, God has made it so that he is at peace with you. He has done that. You can come to him through Jesus with confidence and know that he will welcome you in Jesus as you've entrusted yourself to him.

He then is the God of peace, and so you can have confidence, and he will welcome you by one sacrifice that God provided. Jesus has purged you from the corruption that keeps you away from God, that makes you unpalatable to him.

Through Jesus, he has dealt with the corruption that is ours because of our sin. By this one sacrifice, he has cleansed your conscience so that you can go to God with confidence. God gives you peace when persecution, when persecution and pressure would unsettle you and tempt you to fear.

God is a God of peace. You possess God himself. You ever think about that? In the time of your trial, in the time of the pressure, when persecution comes, you have God, you have him. He's your possession, if you will, and even more, he possesses you.

And he has promised that he will never leave you nor forsake you. He is the God of peace. Notice as well, he is the God who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus. God took the initiative and he raised Jesus from the dead.

Now, the resurrection of Jesus is not explicit in this book. You've never read a sentence about Jesus being raised from the dead in the whole book until this very point, at the very end of the book, he talks about the resurrection of Jesus.

But even though he doesn't talk about it in the rest of the book, it is central nonetheless. Because Jesus has been brought from the dead, today he is exalted to the place of honor. Today, he is at the right hand of God.

Today, he sits on the throne of grace to give you grace in your time of need. When the pressure's on, when the persecution comes, when it gets very difficult, he is on a throne of grace now to give you the grace you need in your time of need.

Today, he serves as a sympathetic high priest. He is your sympathetic high priest today. He's faced the same pressures, the same suffering, the same persecutions that you have, and he cannot help but be sympathetic.

But he's not a long-ago sympathetic priest, he is that priest now. He sympathizes with you. Today, he intercedes for you since he is the forever priest after the order of Melchizedek. This is Jesus, he's raised from the dead.

He is all these things now for you. He's not a long-ago, far-away figure. He is alive today, and he is all these things for you. Yes, you have to persevere, but you have to know that God helps you because of his character and because of his word.

Do you know what God will do? It says in our text that God will equip you. God will equip you to do his will. Now, there are some fathers who approach the equipping of their children in this manner. They say, I'm going to teach my son to swim.

And so they carry him to the deep end of the pool, and they throw him in. Sink or swim, it's up to you. God is not like that, all right? God is not like that. The word equip here means to make someone complete, to make you complete.

That is, to give you everything you need to get the job done, right? That's what God does. He gives you everything you need to do his will, to persevere, to get the job done. He equips you so that you can do his will.

That is, what God calls you to do, he equips you so that you can do what he calls you to do, his will. Or to put it another way, as our writer does, he will work in you so that you will do that which is pleasing in his sight.

You can do that which is pleasing in his sight only because God has equipped you to do that. How is it that you can do the will of God? Because God is at work in you. By the way, you may feel at times that, well, I don't feel it happening.

Here's the deal, all right? I love what, well, let me illustrate it. Turn back to Colossians chapter one for a moment. This is a bedrock verse for me that helps me understand some things. Colossians 129, how can you do the will of God because God's at work in you?

Well, I don't feel God working at me.

Shouldn't I feel some kind of power.

Before I enter into what God calls me to do? No, listen to what Colossians 129 says. You've heard me preach on this many times. For this, I toil. What's he talking about? The ministry that he has, this ministry.

For this, I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. Now, do you see that verse? He says, I toil. That word means I work to the point of exhaustion. In this ministry, I work to the point of exhaustion.

Then he says struggling. The Greek word there is agonizami. Guess what word we get from that? Agonize. I work to the point of exhaustion. I agonize in this ministry with what? The power of God that works within me.

Wait a minute. If the power of God is at work, why are you working to the point of exhaustion? Why are you agonizing? Isn't the power of God at work in you?

Yes.

So you may not feel this power. I remember what one British pastor said that I heard one time. I love it. How do you know God's resurrection power is working in you? When you're working. You may not feel this thing.

You may be struggling.

You may be working to the point of exhaustion. You may be agonizing. But that's because God's power is powerfully working in you. So you see, the work of God makes your work possible. That's what he says here.

There's a plaque, a saying, I've seen it several times, that says the will of God can never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you. And so, must you persevere? Yes, certainly you must. But remember, know this, God equips you.

God equips you. You say you may find it impossible to remain faithful to Jesus. You consider that you might lose your job. And we need to start considering these things. You might lose your job because of Jesus.

You might lose your property because of Jesus. You may be jailed because of Christ. You possibly may even lose your life because of him. And you say, I don't know. I don't know if I can do that. Remember this, know this, God will not throw you into the pool of persecution or pressure and say, sink or swim, it's up to you.

He's not going to do that. Rather, he equips you. He trains you. He provides what you need in order for you to endure successfully. Whatever your shortcomings, whatever your weaknesses, he will equip you to overcome them so you can do what he's called you to do.

What sort of equipment does he give you so you can endure? What is he talking about here? Well, let's consider that. He equips you with the knowledge and I'm just thinking about what he's told us in this book.

He equips you with the knowledge that Jesus has been exalted to the throne of authority. He's been exalted to the right hand of the majesty on high where he sits now as sovereign. He's in control. Everything's operating the way he wants it to.

He equips you, chapter two, he equips you by freeing you, by liberating you from the fear of death. Remember what he says in chapter two? Jesus came and became one of us and died the death that we die so that we could be liberated from the fear, from slavery to the fear of death.

You no longer have to fear death. If you don't fear death, what can touch you? He equips you by giving you Jesus who endured every trial and temptation that you have so that now as we look at Jesus, we have an example that we can follow as to how to face persecution and pressure.

He equips you with the very presence of God because now he's brought you into the presence of God. You have the presence of God with you. He equips you with the fellowship of believers who can spur you on towards love and good works, who can walk with you on this journey of endurance.

He equips you with promises of an eternal city where peace and love and joy and perfection and glory will be yours so that you can give up what you have now because you have lasting possessions that are not yet yours but will be someday.

He equips you with all of these things. You can remain faithful to Jesus no matter what the cost since God himself has equipped you with everything necessary to endure when the hard times come. He's equipped you.

And then finally, the last thing we need to know. Do you know how God does this? And notice what he says. He does this through Christ. God always works for you through Jesus. Always remember that. He always works for you through Jesus.

That ought to say something to you. That you need Jesus. You need to entrust yourself to him. You need to understand he is the one who has paid the price for your sin, that sin that separates you from God.

He is the one who's paid the price. And as you lay, as you rest in him, as you quit trying to make it with God and all you do is rest in Jesus and say, I just trust what he did. I just trust what he did.

Then you have all of these resources. You have everything that you need. Everything you have, all the equipment we just mentioned is yours because of what Jesus has done and because of what he's doing now.

All that God has done has been accomplished through Jesus. And what does he say here? He goes on. He says, he's raised Jesus for you so he is the great shepherd of the sheep. He is not just your king.

He's not just your high priest. He is your shepherd. Did you hear how Jesus described himself as a shepherd today? He knows each one of his sheep. Listen, when you think of Jesus, how do you think of him?

I don't think we think enough of him as our shepherd. He knows you. He knows every one of his sheep. He knows your weaknesses. He knows your shortcomings. He knows you and he loves you and he cares for you.

What else did Jesus say? He goes before you. When you're entering new territory, he goes before you. Don't you need to remember that? Don't you need to remember that when you're going into something new, when there's something, whatever it is, whatever it is, the death of a loved one, the new ministry, the difficulty that lies ahead because you know you're a follower of Jesus, he goes before you.

What else did Jesus say? He gives you abundant life. He gives you abundant life. The life that you have following Jesus is more difficult and yet better. It's more difficult and yet it's better. I'm always surprised, not always surprised, but it intrigues me that the same Jesus who said, oh yeah, by the way, if they hated me, they're gonna hate you, is the same one who says, oh yeah, and I've come to give you a better life, an abundant life, a life that's better than anything you ever dreamed.

Okay, let me get this straight. If I follow you, people are gonna hate me, but then you're gonna give me a better life than I ever dreamed, and the answer is yes. And many of you here know exactly what I'm talking about.

You know what I'm talking about. The life you lived before of complete freedom was nothing more than slavery to your desires and your lusts, and now that you deny those things for the sake of Jesus, he gives you something better.

He gives you, the suffering you've had to go through because you follow Jesus yet produces a life that's better than anything you've ever dreamed. He promises an abundant life as your shepherd. In the face of danger, he will never abandon you, right?

When the wolf comes, the hired hand takes off. Not this shepherd. He knows you, he loves you, he will never leave you, he will never abandon you. No matter what it is, he will never abandon you. He even laid down his life for you.

The shepherd died for sheep. Get that vision in your mind, right? Somebody's gonna die for a bunch of dumb animals, right? This shepherd dies for his sheep. Listen to the prophet Isaiah, and as he describes God in Isaiah 40, a marvelous chapter, as he describes God, in actuality, he's also pointing toward Jesus.

The whole of Testament does that, it points to Jesus. And in Isaiah 40, you see this description of God. I'll just grab two verses. See, the sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm.

See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. See, here's this just God, he's going to come in justice. But then the very next verse, you know what it says? He tends his flock like a shepherd.

He gathers the lambs in his arms. He carries them close to his heart, and gently leads those that have young. This powerful Jesus, who's just, is the one who gathers you up in his arms, he carries you.

That's the shepherd that you have. That's the great shepherd of the sheep. And then, if that's not enough, he says he does this because of his covenant that he's shed his blood for. God sent Jesus to give his life as a sacrifice to purge you from your sin, but also to establish a new covenant.

And that covenant has been sealed by the blood of the Messiah. Now, when it says it's sealed by the blood, what that means is it's ratified. That covenant has been brought into force. It becomes our governing document because of what Jesus did, he shed his blood.

You remember in the old covenant, in the book of Exodus, you read about the covenant that God made with the Israelites at Sinai, and they commit themselves to that covenant, and Moses then offers the blood of a sacrificial animal and sprinkles it.

Why does he do that? Because that then brings the covenant into force. A life given brings it into force. And so therefore, Jesus gave his life, if you can imagine this, and his blood is sprinkled now so that this new covenant comes into the force.

And what is that new covenant? If we look at Jeremiah 31, we see the promises. What are they? Number one, he'll write the law. God will write the law, his law in our hearts. Number two, he will forgive us all our sins.

He will not call to mind any of our sins. And then what does he say? And I will be their God, and they will be my people. That's also a promise of the new covenant that Jesus gave us. He is our God, and we are his people, not on the basis of our obedience, not on the basis of our obedience, but on the sacrifice of Jesus.

That covenant then comes into play that says, I will be your God, and you will be my people. And you haven't earned it. It is yours because of what Jesus has done. And then he calls this an eternal covenant.

This is the one occasion in this epistle where the covenant has been described as eternal. Why would he say that? He wants you to understand there is no possibility of this covenant becoming obsolete so that you need another.

This is it. The promise that he will be your God, and you will be his people is forever.

Forever.

It will never be rescinded. Who can endure faithfully then? Those who come to Jesus, the one through whom God works. It is God who equips you to stand. And he does it all through Jesus, this great shepherd, and the guarantee of this new covenant promise.

And so, because of all that God has accomplished in Jesus, what, what does he say? Give him glory forever and ever. Sometimes I marvel at the coldness of my own heart. When I see all that Jesus has done, and I don't give him glory for it.

My goodness.

All that he has done, all the things just mentioned in this one book ought to drive us to give glory to Jesus and to love doing it. And so he says in verse 25, grace be with you all. The grace to endure that comes through the Lord Jesus, the grace to endure by equipping you to stand when the heat becomes intense, the grace to endure that recalls the nature of God and the work that he has done.

So, you must never give up. You must never give in. But you can, knowing what God has done for you. Lord God, we want to ascribe glory to Jesus this moment. That grace is with us and you've given us access to that grace as we lay hold of Jesus and all that he has done.

Lord, we have walked through this book and we have seen over and over and over, not just the command to never give up, give up and never give in, but we have seen Jesus. Jesus, the one who brings us the grace that we need so that we will never give up and never give in.

Lord God, we want to give him glory today. Thank you for this marvelous, powerful savior who will see us through to the end. Thank you for this book and the glorious truths we have learned in it. Make it, Lord, not just something we remember as a series of sermons, but rather help us to look at it now as our very life.

God, help us to do that, we pray in the name of Jesus, amen.