"Sheep of the Good Shepherd"

Dear Friends in Christ,

    I doubt that any of you remember the introduction to my sermon last year on Confirmation day, but in that introduction I talked about a game that we play at the beginning of just about every one of our classes.  It’s a basketball game called knockout.  And I made a prediction in that sermon.  After saying that that was the first year that a girl had ever won a game of knockout, I predicted that that girl would be a force to contend with this year and sure enough, my prediction held true.  The girl I’m speaking of is McKenzie Magnus.  She’s tall.  She’s fast.  And she’s got a deadly shot.  And though she won some of the games of knockout this year, she had plenty of competition from the other kids as well.  Blake Garrett won just a few weeks ago.  Tyler Ayala took his share of games.  Joey Rose was in the running most of the time.  And then there was little Chance McCay who won several games and who I predict will be the frontrunner by far next year.  As for me, I had my worst year ever in knockout, probably winning only 2 or 3 games – but some of the time I had a sore foot and then I had a bad back and then it was a jammed finger.  If you think those sound like excuses, that’s exactly what they are.  And they’re pretty lame, aren’t they?

   Well, it’s one thing to win at a game of knockout, but it’s another thing to win at the game of life.  And that’s what I want to spend my time talking about this morning as we examine these familiar words of Jesus in John 10 where he proclaims us to be his sheep and himself to be our Good Shepherd.

   And the first point that we can glean from this text is that each of us matters greatly to Christ.  In one of his most memorable parables Jesus told about a shepherd who had 100 sheep.  But at the end of the day when he counted those sheep, he discovered that one of them was missing.  Now he could have very easily said, “What’s one sheep among so many?  My goodness, I still have 99.  And if that sheep is dumb enough to stray from the fold and leave my protective care, then it deserves to be lost.”  But that’s not what the shepherd did.  Instead, he left the 99 in the safety of the sheep fold and went in search of the lost one, thus demonstrating to us just how much he cares about each and every one of us.  Now obviously in that parable Jesus is the shepherd and we are the lost sheep.  And it serves as a powerful reminder to us of just how much each one of us matters to him.

   It’s reminds me of a scene that occurred on September 11, 2001 when those terrorists hijacked 4 airliners, 2 of which they flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.  An author by the name of Nancy Guthrie describes one of the scenes that unfolded that day in her book Holding On To Hope.  She says: “Even before the dust settled, the heroic rescue effort began as thousands of people systematically started combing through the debris to find the survivors. One rescuer told how he had climbed down into a hole in the twisted steel and rubble, extending his arm even farther to shine his flashlight into the darkness, when out of the dusty blackness a hand reached up and grabbed his! He was so startled he almost dropped his flashlight and let go of the hand! But instead, he reached back for someone to grab his hand, then someone grabbed that person’s hand, until a human chain was formed and the man trapped in the pile of debris was pulled to safety.”

   You know, it’s wonderful when human beings reach out a helping hand to one another in times of great need.  But it’s even more wonderful when the eternal God of the universe in the person of Jesus Christ reaches out his nail-scarred hand to a lost and dying world, and like a shepherd searching for a lost sheep not only risks his life for that sheep but gives his life for it.  And it’s even more amazing when we realize that when the Bible labels us as sheep, it is not paying us a compliment. 

   Many years ago I read a book by author Gary Richmond entitled All God’s Creatures and subtitled Spiritual Lessons from the Animals of the Bible.  My favorite chapter in that book is the one on sheep because I learned things that I never knew about these creatures to which we are most often compared in the Bible.  For example, I learned that sheep, of all the domestic animals, require the most care and supervision.  Why?  Because they have an unlimited capacity for getting into trouble.  One reason for that is that they are compelled by mob instinct.  They take their cues from one another.  So if one sheep panics, they all panic.  If one sheep runs off a cliff, they may all run off that cliff, as actually happened in Turkey back in 2005.  According to an article that appeared in USA Today:  “First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the same cliff, Turkish media reported.  In the end, 450 dead animals lay on top of one another in a billowy white pile, the Aksam newspaper said. Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher and the fall more cushioned, Aksam reported.”

   I also learned from that book that sheep are animals of low intelligence.  Consider their mating behavior.  When the females come into season, the males feel obligated to challenge other males for the right to mate.  So you know what they do.  They stand several feet apart and run full speed at each other and butt heads.  Not exactly a bright thing to do.  Sheep are stubborn.   They have a tendency to wander off.  They also have an incredible ability to get dirty because their skin is full of an oil called lanolin making the sheep one of the most effective dirt-attracting and dirt-catching devices known to man.  In addition to that, their wool transforms them into giant walking Velcro strips that pick up grass, dirt, burrs, dust, and everything else it comes into contact with.   

   So you get the picture, don’t you?  Sheep are not the most pleasant and loveable creatures God ever created.  And guess what?  Neither are we.  For we too require a lot of care and supervision.  We too are compelled by mob instinct or what we commonly refer to as peer pressure.  We too often butt heads with other people over the silliest of things.  We too are stubborn.  We too have a tendency to wander off.  And we too have the incredible ability to dirty ourselves with the filth and sin of this world. 

   So the idea of a shepherd giving his life for a sheep is absurd, isn’t it?  But Jesus uses that analogy to show us just how absurdly wonderful and great is his love for us.  Which brings us to the 2^nd thing we can learn from our text for today, and that is that our Shepherd knows us by name.  “I know my sheep,” Jesus says.  He doesn’t just love humanity as a group.  Rather, he loves each one of us individually and intimately, personally and passionately.  So much so that out of the 6.77 billion people who inhabit the earth right now, he knows every single one of us by name.  In fact, in Matt. 10:30 he says that “even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”  So what exactly does that mean for you? 

   Well, it means that when you children are all bummed out and stressed out by all the homework you’ve got to do and the sports practices you have to attend, your Shepherd is knows all about it.  It means when you’re sick or injured, frightened or sad, lonely or discouraged, he is fully aware of it.  It means that when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back to sleep because you’re worrying about some blunder you made at work the previous day or you get to thinking about all the things you’ve got waiting for you at your job in the morning, your Shepherd knows all about it.  But he doesn’t just know about it.  He cares about it.  And he stands ready, willing, and able to help.  Which is probably why somebody years ago recommended that if you can’t sleep at night, don’t follow the common practice of counting sheep.  Instead, talk to the Shepherd.  After all, he’s going to be up all night anyway.

   But I’d like to also add as a word of warning here because if our Shepherd knows us by name and he is aware of every detail of our lives, then that means he is also aware of every sin and misdeed that we commit.  Or to put it another way, you can’t sin secretly.  You might be able to hide it from your spouse, your parents, your teacher, your friends, but you can’t hide it from God.  And sometimes when you step out of his will your Shepherd will lovingly discipline you and do what is necessary to wake you up and shake you up out of your spiritual slumber and draw you back to him.  We all know the familiar words of the 23^rd Psalm where in v.4 David writes: “your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”  Have you ever thought about what that means?  The shepherd’s staff was a long stick with a hooked end on it that was used for the purpose of rescuing sheep when they got into trouble.  The shepherd’s rod was a straight stick which the shepherd used to keep sheep out of trouble.  He would poke and prod the sheep to keep them going on the right path lest they stray into a dangerous area.  Well, sometimes our Good Shepherd has to do the same with us.  He has to poke and prod us because of our tendency to stray from his ways.  So when we feel his rod poling us in our hearts, when we feel his stern discipline in our lives, let us remember that that discipline flows from a heart of love that only wants what is best for us.

   And that takes us to the final point that I want to talk about this morning, and that is that this news about our Good Shepherd needs to be shared with others.  Like Jesus says in our text: “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”  One of the things that I appreciate so much about the Lutheran church is the emphasis that we place upon instructing our children in the chief doctrines and teachings of the Christian faith through our Confirmation classes.  Here at Salem Lutheran we actually have a 3-year program that begins in 6^th grade where the students do an overall study of the great stories of the Bible and how they all fit together in God’s marvelous plan of salvation.  Then in the 7^th and 8^th grade they study Luther’s Small Catechism where we delve quite deeply into what Luther called the 6 chief parts of Christian doctrine.  We study the 10 Commandments, the Apostles Creed which provides us with a detailed look at each Person of the Trinity.  Then we examine prayer and the Lord’s Prayer.  Then it’s on to the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.  And finally we conclude with a look at the church under the heading “The Office of the Keys and Confession.”  What we try to do in those classes is give our children a good solid foundation upon which they can base and build the rest of their lives.  And it is my hope and prayer that when their experience with Confirmation ends, their study of God’s Word does not.  For as I emphasize over and over again, Confirmation does not equal graduation.  In those 3 years they have only studied the tip of the iceberg.  There is so much more for them to learn.  So parents, I cannot emphasize enough to you the importance of seeing to it that your children are in church and Sunday School regularly and that they take an active part in our youth group where we can continue to hone and build on what they’ve learned in Confirmation. 

   But I also like to emphasize with my confirmands that while it’s one thing to know all the right information up here in the brain, it’s even more important to have that information make that 18 inch journey down into the heart so that it begins to impact the way you think and the way you live.  For once it gets into the heart, then it’s going to be too good to keep to yourself and you’re going to want to share that glorious message with others so that they too might come to know the Good Shepherd like you know him. 

            Amen.