Jesus, Our Good Shepherd

Ken and Diane, Kevin, Pyle family, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. May Jesus, our Good Shepherd, fill you all with His peace and strength today as we mourn together the death of Darlene Pyle.

The death of a loved one is never a good thing. Especially when it happens to one of our children. A parent should never out live their children. It is also a horrible tragedy to the spouse. In marriage, God joins two people together and makes them one. From we read “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” There have been volumes written on this very verse in trying to flesh out the depths of what it means that the “two will become one flesh”. It can be looked at in the physical sense of the two conceiving a child. It takes two for that to happen, and the result is the birth (most the time) of a child. But it is something experienced on an emotional level as well, in times of separation of the two, such as business travel, when one spouse has to leave the other because of work, there is a great tension felt because of the separation, tears are shed and the anxiousness felt while apart until they finally return home safe. Divorce is a violent separation of what God puts together. It rips apart that special union by the will of man. Death itself also is a violent ripping apart of what God has joined together. The surviving spouse feels the loss most dramatically. It often feels as if they have been cut in half. They are missing a part of themselves. That “one flesh” is now half a flesh.

The text that seeks to bring us comfort today is from the Gospel of John. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The context of this text is that Jesus had recently healed a man who was born blind. This act of compassion and love was done on the Sabbath, a day that the Jews were to do no sort of work whatsoever. So Jesus is brought in to be questioned by the Pharisees, persecuting Jesus for doing this act of kindness and love.

He then starts to try to teach them and all who were in His hearing of just who He is, and what He does and will do for those who follow Him. This section of John, Jesus is making the contrast between what God does for His people in comparison to what the Pharisees and Chief Priests were doing for God’s people.

The Chief Priests, Pharisees and other religious leaders were “hired hands” who cared little for the people of God. They were in it for themselves. Yet, Jesus, the Good Shepherd is God in the flesh. He cares ultimately for His creatures, His people. He does not run when the wolf comes. In , we see that the Shepherd seeks His sheep with rod and staff. The rod is used to defend the sheep from the wolf and other predators, to beat and kill all who would do harm to the sheep. The staff was used to pull the sheep from snares, thickets or wherever the sheep have been trapped in their trying to live life on their own outside the shepherd’s love and care.

Who are the sheep and what sort of creature are they? Well, sheep in the biblical sense, are those who have faith and trust in their shepherd. They are the ones who have been transformed from goats into sheep through the washing and regeneration of Holy Baptism. They are cleansed internally through the water and the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for the forgiveness of their sins. They are the ones who know that they cannot live life on their own, that they cannot escape their sinful condition, they cannot become perfect on their own, they cannot stop doing the evil they don’t want to do but often times finding themselves doing (), they are the ones who are considered weak by the world’s standards, who can only be strong through the Good Shepherd who claims them as His own through faith in Him and all He has done for them. They are the ones who hunger and thirst for something outside themselves that will perfectly fill the hole in their heart that they have tried to fill with other things, be it materialism, scientism, wealth, sex, drugs, or anything that makes faulty promises, that always leaves the end user still empty and hurting. They are the ones who always find themselves stuck in the snares of this world, the thickets of thorns as the cares of this world always lets them down or overwhelm.

Jesus makes this contrast between Himself and the “hired hand”. In this contrast Jesus makes clear that anyone other than He is just out for themselves. They really care nothing for the sheep that are His. He brings this contrast into light against the Pharisees, and the corrupt religious leaders who were out to line their own pockets and twist the word of God into a works based religion where they taught that salvation was accomplished the keeping of the Mosaic Law as well as over six hundred other laws created to hedge in the Mosaic Law. The ‘hired hands’ were leading the people of God entirely in the wrong direction. Jesus says that when they see the wolf coming they abandon the sheep and flee for their own safety, letting the sheep to be snatched by the predator, the wolf, who is Satan, who scatters the sheep and kills all he will.

Sheep today can have a hard time in following their Shepherd. This notion of being saved by grace through faith in the merits of Christ alone can be such a foreign and way too simple concept. So the sheep go wandering. They can go wander off into things that allows them to create their own religion. We live in a DIY world. We have been raised in this western world that there is good in all things, even different religions. So the sheep feel free to pick and choose what they feel is best for them. Sheep look for what is tantalizing, the glory and honor of putting something together on their own. So they can take what they feel is good about Christianity, and leave the rest. They love a good and gracious god that they feel is so loving that he certainly wouldn’t punish eternally for living how the sheep feel they are free to do. But they don’t much care for a God who has a set of parameters for the sheep in which they should live. More often than not the sheep long for their own glory, so they will add to the perfect work of the Shepherd with their own works. So they believe that by trying to obtain perfection of their behavior, and doing good works that their god will be most pleased with them.

This text this morning comes on the tail end of Jesus using two other metaphors about His sheep. The first of which illustrates what I was just speaking about. “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. These are the ones who claim to have eternal life by some other means. They either create their own way of salvation through their ‘Do it yourself’ means, or by their own good works, or they think that any road they take leads to the same destination, so they follow false teachers and false philosophies and doctrine because it is more palatable for them.

Then Jesus clarifies this even more. Jesus says that He Himself is door of the sheep. He is the gate through which the sheep go in and come out of the sheepfold. All who enter through Him will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Everyone else who claims to be the door to the sheepfold come only to steal, kill and destroy. But it is the Door, the Shepherd only that sheep can have life and have it abundantly.

We are here today to mourn the death of one of His sheep, Darlene. She became His sheep in the water and blood of her baptism. But as is known of Darlene, she was just like every other sheep; Darlene was prone to wander, and wander she did.

But such it is with all of us. Even though the Good Shepherd makes us His own in Baptism, us sheep think we know better than He. We are let out of the sheepfold by the Door of the Sheep, the Good Shepherd Himself, and we go out to find pasture, but we look off to the distance and find a grass greener than we see in our pasture. And we wander. Outside the care and protection of the Shepherd. He calls us, and we know His voice, but we pretend not to listen.

Darlene was such a sheep. She wandered to find greener pastures in other places. She chased what tantalized her eyes, and listened not to the voice of the Shepherd, but listened to the voice of others. St. Paul says to the young pastor Timothy, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” (, ESV)

It is the sound teaching of the Shepherd that we often ignore. We find His voice drone on and on and see it as boring. Then other voices appear around us, they scratch our itching ears that seek other things that we feel we need. Our wants outweigh the needs of the voice of the Shepherd, and we wander. Satan makes those pastures appear greener than the one the Lord gives us. He tantalizes us with money and possessions, with pleasure and glory. Yet when the Shepherd’s sheep divulge themselves of the promise to be “like god, knowing good and evil” (). We will soon discover that the greener grass is either fake grass, or dead grass painted green.

Yet our Good Shepherd continues to look for us, He did so with Darlene. And when He allowed her to wander at her own will, and suffer the consequences of that wandering, He readied her for the reception of the Good News of our Good Shepherd. Our text says that the Good Shepherd lay down His life for His sheep. That was the good news that she received the night when the Lord required her soul from her.

She heard again the same Gospel that was proclaimed to her in her Baptism. She heard of the Good Shepherd’s sacrifice at the hands of the wolves. How He was brought before Pilate by the Jews on trumped up charges who riled the crowds to have Jesus crucified. She heard of His passion for her and the world. She heard how the Good Shepherd was beaten, mocked, and nailed to the cross. There He shed His life blood for all His sheep, including Darlene, and you Kevin and your children. In His dying breath He declared “It is finished.” as He breathed His last. All through those six agonizing hours, He felt the presence of His Father leave Him, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” as He fulfilled the will of His Father. To be the spotless lamb to be slain for the atonement of the sin of the world. How Jesus was doing something new.

But that is not the end of the story, for Jesus, for Darlene, nor for any of you, friends, family, brothers and sisters Baptized into Christ Jesus our Shepherd.

Darlene and Kevin also got to hear how the story progressed and ends. Early in the morning, on the eight day, the first day of the new week, Jesus did do something new, He made something new. When Mary went to the tomb to finish the proper rite of burial, keeping the custom of the Jews, she seen how the stone was rolled away. Terrified that someone had stolen the body of her Lord, she wept bitterly, even as the angels announced to her that He had risen, just as He had told the disciples! Trembling in fear, wiping away tears as she ran, she told the other disciples this extraordinary news.

Our Good Shepherd not only lay down His life for His sheep, He also took it up again—rising from the dead. On the cross He single handedly defeated our enemies of sin and the power of Satan over the lives of the Sheep as His life blood slowly drained from His broken body, pierced with nail and spear. That morning of His resurrection, He validated that miraculous work and destroyed our final enemy, death itself. It was the eight day, the beginning of a new week, the beginning of a new covenant. He had made everything new.

The last

The last proclamation of good news that Darlene and Kevin heard that night was how that new beginning looks like in the culmination of all things. Jesus returns with the sound of the trumpets, and with the cry of command all the dead are raised, both sheep and goat.

In , Jesus foretells of this great and awesome day. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (, ESV) It is the sheep who are blessed by His Father. They are blessed with the gift of faith, that even in wandering away from the Good Shepherd, when they hear His voice, they listen and obey.

The goats are on His left. These are the ones who seek to do a Do It Yourself religion. They attempt to work out their salvation on their own. They spend their lives and all that they have feeding the poor, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and welcoming every stranger they come in contact with—and they do it all without faith! When that day comes, they lift up their lives of work saying, “...Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’” (, ESV) Then as Jesus taught the crowds in the sermon on the mount, ““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (, ESV)

It is by faith alone that the sheep are made sheep. It is by faith alone that they do the will of the father without knowing. It is by faith alone that they receive adoption as sons and daughters in the waters of Holy Baptism. It is by faith alone, that the sheep hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and allow Him to lead them home.

Then shall come to pass for all who simply believe, that through faith in the Good Shepherd alone, they will see the “new heaven and the new earth...” and will they hear with their own ears, “Behold the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.” And only through faith brought by the Holy Spirit will they see with their own eyes, God Himself, with nail scared hands and feet, with gaping wound in side, how “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” ().

Cancer may have ruled the last part of Darlene’s life. It was the effects of sin on this world that cancer took Darlene’s life. But the Word of the Lord remains firm. It has never been broken, nor shall it be. What Christ Jesus has made new with His death and resurrection, a new week has begun. a new covenant has been instilled. And a New Creation is at hand for the sheep.

Your Good Shepherd is calling you today. will you be a sheep and hear and obey the voice of your Good Shepherd, or will you remain a goat, following the voice of the price of this world, who is the wolf who crouches at your door and is salivating for your blood. This life is way too short, as Darlene has discovered, and so have you Kevin. The promises of the wolf are as temporary as life itself. The end result of the lies of the price of this world are nothing more than physical death, and an eternity separated from the Good Shepherd, an eternal life of pain, misery, regret and eternal suffering in a place where sheep will never be found.

In the name of the Good Shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ, and for His eternal glory. Amen.

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