The Good Shepherd

Ezekiel’s Indictment of the Shepherds of Israel

Old Testament reading today is in Ezekiel 34, 1 through 16. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, prophecy against the shepherd of Israel. Prophecy, and say to them, even the shepherds, thus says the Lord God, ah, shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding yourselves.

Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.

So they were scattered because there was no sheep, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains, and on every high hill, my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherd have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep.

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God, before I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves.

I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them. 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 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 will bring them into their own land, and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the ravens, and in all the habitant places of the country.

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

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and lost, and I will, and I will strengthen the weak and the fat, and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them for injustice.

The New Testament Reading and the Shepherd of Our Souls

The New Testament reading is 1 Peter 2, 24 through 25. 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 straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

Amen, Jesus.

So as we are all aware,.

Pastor Tim has not been quite himself lately. Be in prayer for him. And as the situation kind of came up pretty quickly here, the elders decided that we needed to do something a little different. So we have, and I'd like to introduce to you, Brian Solomon, who is a friend of LaRue.

And actually, we have a little history, to be honest with you. When my kids were small, this young, beautiful young lady came over to babysit our kids, and she would stay afterwards when Deb and I'd go and come back home and have a great date.

She'd want to know how our date went. And one thing led to the next, and then two hours later, Naomi's mother would come and say, is Naomi still at your house? I'm just wondering. She's, you know, yeah, she's still here.

We're talking about life. And so anyway, she came over and showed us her senior pictures and said that the photographer was very interested in what her future was. And anyway, because she was so beautiful,.

She should be a model.

And she said, you know, I don't want to be a model, but you know, my mom has talked to me and told me, you know, that this is truly a gift of God. And if it gets me a great husband, then I'm good with that.

Well, you must know how beautiful Naomi is because Brian is her husband, and Brian is a great godly man. And so the Lord answered that prayer. We're very excited about that. Brian has been involved, and Naomi have been involved in Scioto Hills and leading there.

He's also pastored at South Gate in Springfield as an assistant pastor there. And currently he is the state director of Capital Ministries, which is in Columbus. And he's looking to expand some of that ministry possibly into Colorado.

So anyway, we've had connections with him and asked him to come and help us in our time of need. And he was very ready to do that. So I know that you will welcome him and just get to know him. And we will be led to the Lord.

And we appreciate Brian, you coming to do that. So thank you.

God’s Word, Fresh Eyes, and a Brief Introduction

Well, my wife, she does like to talk. And I love her. And she's not here this week, so I can say the truth about her. And she is beautiful for sure. But of course I'm biased. So, but my poor wife, you can pray for her today.

If she thought her good looks were gonna get her a good husband, you can pray for her because her life definitely took a sideways turn for her. So it's good to be with you. Pray that our time together would be encouraging for all of us here.

And as we dive into God's word this morning, pray that his word would speak truth into our hearts. And one of the things that I was praying specifically last night and then into the morning as I came up was that we would approach this very familiar text with fresh eyes.

Oftentimes we come to the pages of scripture and if you've grown up in church or grown up in the faith, many passages are familiar to us. And this is one of them. But I pray that the familiarity of this passage wouldn't find our hearts dull, but that we would dive in and see some new things that maybe we've missed before.

And so I pray that the text would be helpful for us this morning. Well, by way of introduction, I thought maybe I would do this. I've got a couple of slides here. This is my family. We've got four daughters.

Our oldest, Allie, is 14 and then Claire is 12. Mia is 11 and Lydia will be 10 next week. And so the Lord certainly has a sense of humor. I'm the oldest of four boys. So having four girls was the furthest thing from my mind.

And so obviously being outnumbered by all these ladies, I had to go buy a boy dog. And then that boy dog needed a therapy dog. So we got a new puppy too. So it is what it is. But yeah, I live in a world full of pink for sure.

So I find solace in backpacking and camping. So I've got to do manly things. I've got to get out of the house just to keep my sanity. But no, I love my daughters. A couple of years ago, after serving for about 13 years on staff at Southgate Baptist Church, I joined a ministry called Capital Ministries.

And essentially I'm a missionary to political leaders. And for so long, there have been many ministries in our nation that have been pointed toward national leaders, but they tend to, from my point of view, miss the mark somewhat.

So some of those ministries focus in on prayer and certainly we need prayer in our nation's capital for sure. Many of those prayer efforts have degenerated into more ecumenical moments where you have, well, even more recently a representative praise on the floor of Congress in the name of Brahma or to the God of Brahma, just awful things where the name of Jesus is actually devalued in those places.

There's also been a movement toward Christian lobbying and certainly we need Christians to lobby in our government, but that's not what we do. We are primarily Bible teachers. We lead expository Bible studies in the capitals and we lead legislators through God's word verse by verse and allow his word to have their way in their lives.

And we believe that if a person's life is transformed by the gospel of Jesus, they'll live and legislate differently. And so we are viewing the landscape of politics less as a battlefield, but more as a mission field where people need the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So that's what we're doing. Oftentimes I have the opportunity to open the Senate in Columbus in prayer. Funny story, last February I had a chance to open the house in prayer. And at the time representative Larry Householder, who was a speaker of the house, who if you're following state politics at all, you'll know that he caught up or was caught up in a $60 million bribe and is now the subject of a pretty intense FBI investigation.

Well, Speaker Householder was standing next to me as I was opening the session in prayer. And I was praying the essence of Philippians chapter two and that God would guard the hearts of the legislators there from any sort of selfish ambition.

And I watched the prayer back afterwards. And as I'm praying that, Speaker Householder's eyes kind of go, and then went back down again. And I think the Lord was actually extending him a moment of grace, because even then he knew that he was caught up in something that was purely selfish.

And God was giving him a way of escape even then. And yet he didn't listen. And so we'll see what happens there. But God gives us opportunities to meet with legislators on Wednesday mornings in Columbus.

And currently my wife and I were raising support with the hope of possibly launching a ministry at the Denver Capitol in Colorado. Colorado is a growingly dark place, culturally liberal, politically liberal for sure, but just people who are lost and need the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so we're praying that God would raise up funds for us and would make his will known to our family for this next leg of ministry. The founder of our ministry is Ralph Drolinger. If you've been around a while, some of you old timers would recognize the name Ralph Drolinger.

He played basketball at UCLA back in the 70s. He was the first NCAA basketball player to start in four straight Final Fours. Played for Coach Wooden there. And Ralph is seven, two. And next to him, I look like I'm 12 years old.

So I was looking for a phone book to stand on before we took that picture, but who has phone books anymore? But Ralph and his wife, Danielle, started the Ministry of Capitol Ministries about 25 years ago in the State House of California in Sacramento.

And currently they lead, well, they were leading several Bible studies in the nation's Capitol every week. There was a Monday study that he currently still leads with Congress. There's about 30 congressional members that come for this weekly Bible study.

On Wednesdays, there's a Senate study. On Tuesdays, he was leading the first Bible study of its kind in over 100 years. He was leading a presidential cabinet study. So every Tuesday in an undisclosed location, 11 of the 14 members of President Trump's cabinet would come for a Bible study.

And so Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Housing Ben Carson and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Jim Bridenstine, the head of NASA, Sonny Perdue, the Secretary of Agriculture, and others would come faithfully for a 70-minute Bible study.

And it was pretty awesome. With the change of administration, it should heighten all of our prayers for our nation's leaders. I don't believe that there is a God consciousness in this new administration.

And I would just pray that God would send faithful people to our government and point people toward Christ in those places. And so we should be praying evangelistically for our leaders in that way for sure.

The Deity of Jesus and the Problem of Misconceptions

Well, this morning, we're gonna be in John chapter 10. So if you have your copy of scriptures, I'd invite you to turn to John 10. But before we do, let's pause and pray and ask for God's help. Lord, as we open your word, I pray that you would find us faithful in the preaching and the hearing and then eventually the applying of your word.

And Lord, I pray that you would guard me from error this morning and that you would guard the people from any sort of mental vacation or weariness that we would all give attentiveness to your word here this morning.

We need your help. And so we pray for it in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Well, the deity of Jesus is a major theme in John's gospel. And throughout this gospel, we see over and over again, John is presenting to us Jesus as the son of God, that Jesus is in fact God. Jesus as the hypostatic union of two natures, 100 God and 100 man coupled together in the person of Jesus.

And so as we leave the gospel of John today, even in this short snippet here of John chapter 10, I pray that your heart would be gripped with the knowledge that Jesus is God. Jesus is God. That was not a message that was well received by the religious leaders of Jesus's day.

And many of his hearers, this fact was lost on them as well. Mistakes and misconceptions abound all around us, right? There are misconceptions everywhere. I was reminded of a story recently of a little boy named Tommy.

And Tommy was excited about this news that his family was going to receive a new, he was gonna have a new brother or sister come. His mother was pregnant. And so little Tommy was super excited and he was six years old.

And so in his first grade class, he would announce often to his class and to his teacher that he was going to have a new baby brother or sister that was going to come to his house soon. Well, one day Tommy's mother allowed Tommy to feel the movements of the unborn child in her belly.

And he would put his hand on his mom's tummy and there was movement inside of her womb. And Tommy's eyes got big and, but as weeks would go by, the teacher noticed that Tommy stopped telling the class about this new baby brother or sister that would be coming to his home.

And so the teacher finally sat the boy on her lap and said, Tommy, what's ever become of that baby brother or sister that you were expecting at home? And poor Tommy burst into tears and confessed, oh, I think mommy ate it.

Poor Tommy didn't have the life experience necessary to be able to process all that was going to happen with this new baby or brother coming to his home. He had a misconception. Often we have misconceptions about who God is, right?

And sometimes those misconceptions are because we create caricatures of God. If you've been to a fair or circus or different places, and oftentimes there will be an artist that would be drawing out caricatures and someone would come over and they would sit into a chair and the artist would look at this person and they would draw out this picture of this person.

But this caricature, however, will be based on one feature of that person and the artist would kind of over-exaggerate that one feature of that person. I grew up in Denver, Colorado, and the artists loved John Elway and oftentimes the newspapers would have caricatures of John Elway and John Elway, of course, was known for his big teeth.

And so the caricatures on the front page of the sports section would certainly take great liberties with John Elway's big front teeth on the paper. It was a caricature. Well, we create a caricature of God sometimes and say, well, God is love, right?

Well, of course he is. Sometimes we present a caricature of God to our neighbors and to our world where we highlight one attribute of God over another. We might say, well, God is all love. Well, certainly he is.

But God is also a righteous judge. He is. He takes sin serious. But sometimes we highlight his attributes of justice over and above love and we portray an angry God who's looking to zap ya every time you step out of line,.

Right?

And so for parents and grandparents, trying to represent God to our children and grandchildren, oftentimes we give to them a caricature. Well, when we come to this section of the Gospel of John, people no doubt are wrestling through a caricature of who God really is.

And John chapter 10 is helpful in allowing us to see the heart of God and particularly the heart of Jesus here. Well, finding the right balance between work and rest has been one of the ever elusive realities of our human experience too.

Some err on the all work and no rest extreme while some err on the all rest, no work extreme. And both are wrong and not at all what God had intended for us. In Jesus's day, the caricature of God was all based upon the conformity externally to the written word found in the Mosaic law.

So there was great emphasis placed on work and not emphasis placed on faith and resting in the truth of who God is. Polar perspectives have consequently crept into our thinking as we relate to God as well.

Most worldviews believe that our good deeds, our works, our laboring must outweigh our bad deeds in order to make it into heaven. Biblical Christianity teaches that the only way that we can approach God is on his terms and by his grace.

God extends his grace and forgiveness to all people, not on the basis of our good works, but on the basis of his loving kindness. Ephesians two teaches us that for by grace are you saved through faith.

It's not of your own doing, it's the gift of God, not as a result of work so that no one can boast. This has been God's plan of redemption since the beginning and then may manifest through the person of Jesus.

Now we've deviated from God's plan and through the ages we've tried to impress God and others through our own brand of goodness. And as I look at the issues facing the church today, people are still erring on the extremes and in doing so we present to the world a caricature of God and his redemptive plan.

Many young people are motivated by the injustices of our time. They throw themselves into all sorts of various forms of activism that's void of evangelism. Being connected at Southgate Baptist Church in Springfield, we're 12 miles north of Cedarville University and I'm amazed at how many college students, Christian college students from this evangelical school are drawn toward issues of justice that are void of any sort of evangelistic purpose.

Evangelistic thread. Conversely, many older Christians champion evangelistic efforts that are void of mercy efforts. It's important for the Christian to balance both gospel proclamation and demonstration.

The two have to go together. The struggle for balance has defined the days in which Jesus lived too. The Jewish leaders of the day focused their teaching on living externally compliant lives, consistent with the Mosaic law and the traditions of their own customs.

Everything they did revolved around the outward legalistic kind of living and they missed the fact that Abraham and the patriarchs were justified not by their doing and working and laboring, but by their faith.

They were justified by faith. God is not impressed in our doing and our complying with religious standards. I mean, after all, you all are fine, upstanding Christians. In the era of COVID, you showed up at church this morning.

How wonderfully compliant of all of you. And for those of you at home watching online, you tuned in this morning. Good job. And yet the measure of our faith is not based on external conformity to certain religious standards.

No, we are justified by faith. Alone in Christ alone. God is deeply interested in our internal transformation that begins when we repent of our sin and place our faith and trust in Christ. And only then do we live our lives as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.

So it's kind of a roundabout way of bringing us into John 10 this morning. But even before we get into John 10, it's important that we establish some sort of context before we just leap into John 10. John 10 is about smack dab in the middle of the gospel of John.

So it's halfway through John's gospel, but it's only three months from the cross. And so as we come to John 10, we've got to understand some of the context around Jesus's words in John 10 so that we can feel the tension that is building as John leads us toward the events of the cross because there's a lot of drama surrounding John 10.

And if we just go to John 10, we'll kind of walk away again with a caricature of Jesus. It's like, oh, Jesus, that good shepherd. Oh, isn't Jesus just a kind, gentle man? He's kind of like that long-haired hippie who holds lambs.

Oh, kind Jesus. Well, you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful. And so we're gonna water ski through John chapter nine to establish a bit of context, and then we'll walk through John chapter 10. We'll highlight some observations and some interpretations and, Lord willing, the applications that flow out of John 10 will be obvious.

So speaking of obvious, there's gonna be a lot of Captain Obvious-like statements throughout this morning. And so we'll begin with this. Here's a good Bible study tip, right? Good Bible study begins with making good observations.

We work with legislators in the Capitol. We work with people at our church, students and children even, helping them learn to study God's word on their own. And as we work with folks, we try to communicate the importance of good Bible study and good Bible study in our daily living habits.

And so when we come to God's word, we're looking for repeated words, we're looking for lists, we're looking for conditional statements, looking for words like if and then, and also looking for statements or ideas that are in contrast with one another.

Good observations lead us to making better interpretation and application. So this morning we're gonna be making all sorts of observations surrounding contrasts. And this text is full of contrasts, so pay attention.

All right, John chapter nine, and we'll go to John chapter 10. John chapter nine. So the setting of John nine and 10 is actually sandwiched between two Jewish festivals. And so the festival of lights, it's called the, excuse me, the festival of dedication or the festival of booths, and the festival of light.

So it's the two Jewish festivals that this context of John nine finds itself in, John nine and 10. Festival of tabernacles or booths took place in September, and Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, notes that this was the most popular of Jewish festivals.

This festival of booths lasted for an entire week where people would live in makeshift booths or tabernacles. It was kind of like the precursor to this modern movement of RVing, you know, where people buy an RV and they drive toward a campground and they pull up and they camp out in this makeshift home for a weekend or a week or so.

This was like that. And so the people would come to Jerusalem and they would set up their tents. It was like a week-long camping trip with all of their friends and neighbors, and they had a blast. It was a good time.

It was one of the most popular of festivals or customs for the Jewish people. The festival lasted an entire week. They would look for ways to commemorate Israel's wilderness wanderings. There would be a lighting of huge candles in the women's outer court of the temple to demonstrate the Shekinah glory, how God would lead his people in the wilderness by pillar of fire at night and a pillar of cloud by day.

Every day, there would be different ceremonies that were prescribed, and there would be a drawing out of water from the pool of Siloam. And every day at daybreak for the seven days of the feast, a priest would go down to this pool of Siloam and would fill these golden pitchers with water, containing about two and a half pints of water, to be exact.

He was accompanied by a procession of people and musicians. And on returning to the temple, he was welcomed with three blasts from a trumpet. And going to the west side of the great altar, he poured the water from the golden pitcher into a silver basin, which had holes in the bottom through which the water was carried off.

And this ceremony was accompanied with songs and shouts from the people, the sound of trumpets.

It's very formal.

And each one of these things was to communicate different things that the nation endured and experienced in their wilderness wandering. That's the one festival. The second festival was the Jewish Festival of Lights, or the Festival of Dedication.

Most Jews call this the Festival of Hanukkah, right? So this Festival of Hanukkah let me find my notes here, I'm all discombobulated. Essentially in 186 BC, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid king, profaned the Jewish temple and forced the Jews to abandon their sacrifices and adopt pagan rituals.

And so in 165, Judas Maccabeus led a revolt and they overthrew the Seleucids and reclaimed the temple. And according to their rabbinic traditions, when the Jews reentered the temple, they could only find one small sealed jug of olive oil that had not been profaned or contaminated by the Seleucids.

They used this to light the menorah in the temple. And though the oil was only enough to last one day, it miraculously lasted eight days. Time for more oil to be made ready. And this is the reason why Hanukkah lasts for eight days.

John 9 and 10 take place right in between these two Jewish festivals. So that's the context culturally there. Now, John chapter nine. Many of you will remember this from your flannel graph studies in Sunday school way back in the day.

And this is the story of how Jesus heals a blind man. Verse one of chapter nine. As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?

That he was born blind. And Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it's day.

Night's coming when no one can work. And as long as I'm in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said these things, he spit on the ground and he made mud with the saliva. And then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam.

What else was happening at the pool of Siloam? Well, during this festival, there was a huge formal procession with trumpets and golden pitchers and drawing water out from the pool of Siloam so that it might be ceremonially poured out there in the temple.

And Jesus says to this man, go wash in the pool of Siloam. And Siloam, which means sent. So he went and washed and he came back seeing. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, isn't this the man who used to sit and beg?

Some said, yeah, it's him. Others said, no, but it's like him. And he kept saying, no, I'm the man. So they said to him, then how are your eyes opened? And he said, the man who is called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash.

So I went and I washed and received my sight. And they said to him, well, where is he? And he said, I don't know. So they brought the Pharisees, brought to the Pharisees the man who had been formerly been blind and now it was the Sabbath.

And when Jesus had made the mud and opened his eyes, so the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, he put mud on my eyes, kind of.

Is that really what happened?

He put mud on my eyes? Again, let's come to this text with fresh eyes. What did Jesus do exactly? He spit on the mud or in the dirt, made mud and put it up on the blind guy's eyes. Now in the era of COVID, how would that make you feel?

Somebody walks in here and hawks are looking. Many of us would be like, whoa. Especially some of us who were COVID crazy. Whoa, makes me nervous. I don't know if I can do that, right? Jesus does something very unclean and he makes mud and he slaps it on this guy's face and says, hey, go wash this mud off your face.

This is incredible.

In last June, I had a cornea transplant surgery in my left eye. About four years ago, I'd gotten the shingles virus and the virus actually crept down under my face and then it just kept on going and it actually got into my eye and really just tore up my cornea to the point where I was legally blind.

I'd gone from 20 -20 vision in my left eye to where I was seeing 2 ,200 over 20. Meant that I wasn't seeing anything out of my left eye. Praise the Lord, one thing led to another and I was referred to a corneal specialist in Cincinnati at the Cincinnati Eye Institute.

Turns out this guy is one of the pioneers in his field and is a world-renowned corneal specialist. Imagine if I had walked into his office and he said, hey, Brian, just hold on right there. I'm gonna go outside, grab some dirt.

I'm gonna spit in this dirt and throw it up on your eye. I'm gonna tell you to go wash it. You know what? That cornea is gonna be made new. I would have said, yeah, right. But what this cornea specialist actually did was take a cornea from a cadaver, a healthy cornea from an organ donor and he did what's called a DALC procedure.

They went in and they cut out the damaged portion of my cornea and they dropped in a new cornea and they sutured it together. And then they injected an air bubble underneath all of the layers of the cornea to kind of press it together and then they sent me home.

I still have 12 stitches in my eye. You wouldn't be able to see them. It's remarkable what happens. And although it's remarkable what modern medicine can do, never in the history of the world has a man's eyes been open who was born blind.

That has never happened. It's never happened. Jesus heals this man. Then they take this man to the Pharisees. They tell the Pharisees what had happened and the Pharisees said, Jesus did what on the Sabbath day?

He did a work on the Sabbath day? This is blasphemy. Now there are misconceptions all the time. There are misconceptions about God, the caricatures that we had just talked about. And then there's just flat out willful rejection of the truth.

John in his thesis of the Gospel of John in John chapter 20 says that these things are written so that you may know and believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. John says that there are many other things that I could have included in this book, but I didn't.

But what is here is enough. And for the witnesses of this miracle who lived in that day and the Pharisees who were so caught up in this legalistic, externally conformity to the traditions of Moses, they missed the Messiah who was right there.

If we had time, we'd walk through the rest of John chapter nine. We see that the rhetoric and the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees are escalating to the point where the Pharisees are calling Jesus a demon.

They're saying that he's demonic. Imagine that. That's offensive to us who know Jesus as Savior and Lord. Nah, he's demon-possessed. The end of John chapter two, they just say he's flat out insane. Jesus is communicating through his words and his works that he is God.

The tension is rising. Again, we're three months now away from the cross. And in the midst of this intense back and forth with the religious leaders who have just called him demonic, Jesus says in verse one of chapter 10, he says, 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 the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him, the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice and he calls out his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he's 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. 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.