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November 20, 2005
Christ the King Sunday
Ezekiel 34:11-16
Pastor Joel Zank

Jesus is Our Shepherd-King!

(Ezekiel 34:11-16) "'For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. {12} As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. {13} I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. {14} I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. {15} I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. {16} I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice....{23} I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. {24} I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the LORD have spoken.

In Christ Jesus, who is both Shepherd and Lamb, dear fellow redeemed,

There's and old saying, "Absolute power corrupts, absolutely." God didn't use those exact words, but that's the gist of what he said in 1 Samuel 8 when the people of Israel told him that they'd rather be ruled by an earthly king than by him. God warned them that any king besides him would take their sons and daughters away from them and turn them into slaves. Any other king would take the best of their fields, and vineyards, and olive groves for himself. But the people refused to listen. They demanded instead, "We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles" (1 Samuel 8:19-20). There's another old saying, "Be careful what you wish for." But it was too late. God gave Israel what it wanted. The people got their kings, and with them all the trouble and misery God had warned them about and more. For the kings of Israel, or shepherds as the Bible sometimes calls them, ruined the people of God, leading them into idol worship and every kind of sin. By the time the Prophet Ezekiel had arrived on the scene God had had enough. He told Ezekiel "Prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves!" (Ezekiel 34:2). God's judgment came upon Israel's selfish kings, and upon Israel itself, for like foolish sheep, the people were more than willing to wander off into sin. So God raised up the enemies of his people. In Ezekiel's day, he used the Babylonians to put thousands of Israelites to death. Those who survived the ordeal were taken as captives to a strange and distant land, where they received a final, crushing blow: the news that Jerusalem's temple, the symbol of God's love for them and with them, had been leveled to the ground.

All God's warnings over all the centuries of time had fallen on deaf ears. Of course, the people were listening now, but it was too late. They were lost, helpless, and hopeless sheep, doomed to die that way. We might say they got what was coming to them. But the Sovereign LORD said, "I myself will search for my sheep and look after them" (Ezekiel 34:11).

Can you imagine the impact such a promise had on those frightened captives? I suppose you can! For you were once a captive too; weren't you? You were a slave to the sin you were born in. You were lost in sin, destined to live out your days as its prisoner, doomed to spend your eternity suffering its curse and there wouldn't be one thing you could do about it. For you are a sheep by nature, a helpless creature with no homing instinct to lead you to God. Once a sheep is lost, it stays lost unless some shepherd comes searching for it.

We have such a Shepherd! Jesus is Our Shepherd-King who searches for lost sheep, sheep like us. Is there a more comforting truth in all of Scripture? When you and I were lost in sin, the God of all wisdom, power and might, the God who had reason to shun us forever, came searching for us instead. Do you see what that means? You are no spiritual accident, no lucky soul who just happened to find yourself in the family of God. Luck has had nothing to do with it. The Lord, in love you haven't earned and don't deserve, came searching for you because he wanted you to be his own. Think of what this means for your relationship with him. How often you're tempted to think of yourself as an outcast, the black sheep of God's family, the one God has no time for, no patience with. Such thoughts leave you feeling distant from God, neglected by him. But nothing could be further from the truth. Do you really suppose that the One who gave up everything to come looking for you, could now so easily ignore or mistreat you? Never!

The Savior's love for you and me is immeasurable. I say that knowing full well that this is not because we are so lovable, but because he is so loving. The truth is, as sheep we can be very unlovable. Saying that may not quite fit with our image of sheep. We tend to think of them as cuddly and cute. But that's not at all an accurate picture. Sheep become lost because they stubbornly love to stray. And straying sheep are foul, wretched creatures. Every time they wander off the beaten path, their fleece becomes filthy, matted with dirt and tangled with briars. Sheep are foolish creatures that pay no attention to their surroundings. They have no sense of danger until it's too late. Think about that as you confess with the Prophet Isaiah, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6). We're not confessing to be cute, lovable creatures, but filthy sinners, foolish rebels who wander off into spiritual danger much too often. So often in fact that we couldn't blame God a bit if he were to give up on us. But he hasn't and he never will. Instead he promises in verse 23 of our text, "I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David..."

By the time God spoke these words through the Prophet Ezekiel, the shepherd boy, David, whom God had hand-picked to be Israel's second king, had been dead for 400 years. He couldn't be the Shepherd God would send in the future. No, it had to be great David's greater Son - the one promised in Jeremiah 23:5 where we read, "The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land."

So God promised his people both a shepherd and a king - not two different people, but one individual who would serve in both roles. One individual, Jesus, born to the family of David, the very same person who says in John 10:11, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." You realize, don't you, the claim Jesus was making by calling himself the Good Shepherd? It's all right here in our text: "For this is what the Sovereign LORD says:..{12} As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness...{16} I will search for the lost and bring back the strays" (Ezekiel 34:12, 16a). By calling himself the Good Shepherd, there can be no doubt that Jesus was claiming to be the Lord God, our Shepherd-King who rescues us straying sheep. Of course he did so much more than claim it, he proved it by going on a search and rescue mission unlike any before or since.

Our sin, the sin we were born with and the sin we commit has brought us many cloudy, dark days. Our sin scatters and separates us as it tears away at the fabric of our families and friendships, and worse, as it rips us apart from our God. But Jesus came to undo our sin and rescue us from its punishment, its power and its guilt. With the love of a Shepherd he came all the way from heaven to be with us sheep, to actually become a sheep himself, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It's unthinkable and yet he did it. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, became our sacrificial Lamb, taking all our filth upon himself. "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6). Jesus took the blame for every time we have strayed, whether that be by chasing after some sinful pleasure, or giving in to some sinful impulse. All of it, all of our sin became his on the darkest day ever, the day God disowned his only Son in hell so as to punish him in our place for our sins. Jesus took all the pain, all torment that hell could muster, and then he walked away from that inferno as our victorious King, making sure to snatch all of us out of the fire too as he left.

Christ has searched for us and rescued us, but still his work is not done. For we are still sheep, still prone to wander and still subject to attack. We still need the Savior's constant care and protection. And we will have it, for Jesus is our Shepherd-King who pastures weak and injured sheep.

Let your eyes wander over the middle verses of our text. Let all the action words jump out at you. Our Shepherd's promises are striking. He says of his sheep "I will bring them out...I will pasture them... {14} I will tend them...{15} I myself will have them lie down...{16} I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice" (Ezekiel 34:13-16).

I once read that in order for sheep to lie down, four things are required: they must be full, unafraid, content, and at peace. Our Shepherd-King has both the love and the power to supply all these needs of ours and more. He makes us lie down in the green pastures of his gospel, where he constantly satisfies our hunger for his forgiveness. No matter what we've done wrong or have failed to do right, no matter how weak our sin has left us, the Good Shepherd pardons us sorry sheep and assures us that we still have a place in his flock.

With that promised forgiveness comes also the Shepherd-King's promised protection. We are weak sheep, susceptible to every kind of temptation and every brand of false teaching. How, then, can we possibly remain sheep of the Shepherd-King? What will keep us from falling prey to any or all of our spiritual enemies? Only the Shepherd-King's promise to destroy every sleek and strong predator who stalks us. That promise is all we need. Though we are weak sheep, our Shepherd-King is so strong that he has prepared a table for us right out in the presence of our enemies. Under his watchful eye we can live and eat and rest as his sheep in this world without any fear at all. Nothing and no one can snatch us away from our Jesus.

That doesn't mean that from time to time we don't still feel the injuries sin can inflict on us, be it the sin in us or the sin around us. Our hearts still ache in times of illness and loss, our pride is still wounded when we are wronged or betrayed, but our Good Shepherd binds up all our wounds. His promises to be with us and make everything serve us are his rod and his staff-they comfort us. And so we are content and at peace, shepherded by the justice of God which charges all our sins to Jesus and confers all his holiness on us. You and I are at peace today and always because our God forgives us fully even as his mercy empowers us to forgive each other daily.

So you and I live out our days on this earth with a future that is always bright, as bright as heaven itself, for we live with this assurance: "I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the LORD have spoken" (Ezekiel 34:24). Absolute power doesn't always corrupt-certainly not when it comes to our God and his Shepherd-King. For it is his absolute power and the promises it guards that will keep us the people of God, the sheep his pasture now and forever. Amen.