The Lord has given us something a little different than last Wednesday.
My heart is still rejoicing this morning from the word the Lord spoke to us last night. It really was a very encouraging word, very informative.
This morning, I would like for us to begin by looking at a couple of portions of Scripture. First of all, in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel 34. We want to read the first six verses.
Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel,
prophesy, and say unto the shepherds, Thus saith the Lord God:
Woe unto the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves!
Should not the shepherds feed the sheep?
Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill the fatlings;
but ye feed not the sheep.
The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick,
neither have ye bound up that which was broken,
neither have ye brought again that which was driven away,
neither have ye sought that which was lost;
but with force and with rigor have ye ruled over them.
And they were scattered, because there was no shepherd;
and they became food to all the beasts of the field, and were scattered.
My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill:
yea, My sheep were scattered upon all the face of the earth;
and there was none that did search or seek after them.— Ezekiel 34:1-6
And then in Matthew 9, we want to read verses 35 through 38.
And Jesus went about all the cities and the villages,
teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom,
and healing all manner of disease and all manner of sickness.
But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them,
because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd.
Then saith He unto His disciples,
The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that He send forth laborers into His harvest.— Matthew 9:35-38
Let us pray together.
Father, our hearts are full of thanksgiving to You this morning for Who You are and for all the mighty things that You have done on our behalf. We are made mindful this morning of some of the ways in which You have manifested Your mercy to us, and it causes us to come in humility and with thanksgiving to You.
Lord, already we have made petitions to You regarding our time together. But we want to come now and specifically pray that Your Holy Spirit would be here in such a rich and full way that all that would be taking place would be begun by Him, carried out by Him, and concluded by Him.
We acknowledge that we are only flesh, but You, by Your Spirit, can do Your work this morning. So do speak to our hearts, because we ask it in Your name. Amen.
From these two portions of Scripture, we discover that there is a real need among the people of God for shepherds—the kind of shepherds who will take care of the people of God.
In Ezekiel 34, the Lord had to point out to those who had this responsibility their failure, their lack of really fulfilling their responsibility as shepherds. It is a very sobering thing when you read those verses and hear God speaking to those to whom He had given responsibility, and discover that they had failed in carrying out what had been given to them.
Then, in Matthew 9, we find the Lord Jesus, just in the opposite way, having great compassion on the multitudes and seeing them as sheep without a shepherd. His heart goes out to them, and He encourages His followers to petition the Lord of the harvest that He might send workers out into the harvest.
I hope this opens up to us the real need that existed both in the times of Ezekiel and as the Lord Jesus viewed it in His own day. I think we could probably say that, to a certain degree, throughout the remainder of the history of the church, there has been this need among the people of God for shepherds who will really shepherd according to the Lord’s heart.
There is a desperate need among the people of God today for such shepherds—those who really represent the shepherd heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are a lot of things that men are seeking to do under the name of shepherding, and yet somehow they do not seem to really accomplish the task of shepherding.
We are grateful to the Lord that He is giving us this opportunity to consider together, both in terms of looking into His Word and fellowshipping together, and then this evening as well, regarding this matter of the Lord’s shepherding care of His people.
To begin with this morning, I would like for us to look at some of the characteristics involved in shepherding. I would like for three brothers or sisters to read a portion of Scripture. As these brothers and sisters are reading, I would like for you to take note of the various characteristics pointed out in these passages.
I will list them on the chalkboard this morning so that we can get a broad and full understanding of what is actually involved in this matter of shepherding. Let us turn first of all to Psalm 23:1-6, John 10:11-15, and 1 Peter 5:1-4.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside still waters.
He restoreth my soul;
He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me;
Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and lovingkindness shall follow me all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.— Psalm 23:1-6
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep.
He that is a hireling, and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not,
beholdeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth;
and the wolf snatcheth them, and scattereth them:
he fleeth because he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd; and I know Mine own, and Mine own know Me,
even as the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father;
and I lay down My life for the sheep.— John 10:11-15
The elders among you I exhort, who am a fellow-elder,
and a witness of the sufferings of Christ,
who am also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:
Tend the flock of God which is among you,
exercising the oversight, not of constraint, but willingly, according unto God;
nor yet for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;
neither as lording it over the charge allotted to you,
but making yourselves ensamples to the flock.
And when the chief Shepherd shall be manifested,
ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away.— 1 Peter 5:1-4
My brothers and sisters, we discover from these verses a number of characteristics involved in shepherding. I trust that, as these were being read, you noted some of these characteristics. Let us write them down.
The characteristics identified included:
Brothers and sisters, I hope you can see that there is quite a bit of work to be done in this matter of shepherding. It is not as simple as we may often have considered it to be. There is quite an activity going on in this matter of shepherding.
There are other things we could add to the list. The Lord Jesus mentions in John 10, “I know My sheep, and they know Me.” There is a very important part of shepherding involved in this matter of knowing. We can see a whole range of different activities from these three portions of Scripture regarding shepherding.
I felt it would be good this morning to give some thought to what is actually the goal of all this activity and the other activities involved in shepherding.
Notice, for instance, Psalm 23, where David said, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” The goal of shepherding is to bring the people of God, the sheep of God, into a place of not having any need.
I hope we understand that what he is talking about here is not necessarily something outward, although we do not need to neglect that part of it. It is to bring each one who belongs to the Lord to a place where the Lord Jesus is all in all to them.
This word that our brother Jerry shared this morning, of God speaking to Moses and saying, “You tell them that I AM THAT I AM”—as someone has pointed out, it means that at the end of that “I am,” you can fill in the blank. Whatever it is that you are in need of, God wants to be that to us.
As the Shepherd, it is His intention to bring each one of the sheep into a place where there is no need: “I shall not want.” If we yield fully to the shepherding ministry that the Lord Jesus desires to express, then the outcome in the lives of those receiving that ministry is that they will be fully satisfied and become complete.
Another way we can look at this is in John 10:10.
The thief cometh only that he may steal, and kill, and destroy:
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.— John 10:10
The objective, the goal of shepherding, is to bring each one of the Lord’s people into an experience of this abundant life. It is very important that we understand that the life our Lord Jesus is talking about here is the very life that God has in Himself.
He is not just interested in improving life on the natural plane. God intended from the very beginning that those who were created in His image would become recipients of His own life—the life represented in the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. Had they eaten of that tree, they would have been partakers of the very life of God: the eternal, uncreated life of God.
When Jesus says that His intention, the reason He has come, is that they might have this life and have it abundantly, He is speaking of the very life that is in God Himself. Not just enough to get by, but a great supply—an overflowing measure—of this life that is in God and has now been given to us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You remember that in 1 John, he says, “He that hath the Son hath the life.” It is that simple. The whole intention of shepherding is to bring each one, without exception, into the full experience of that abundant life.
Then look in Colossians 1:28.
Whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom,
that we may present every man perfect in Christ.— Colossians 1:28
Again, that is the goal of ministry. Since we are fellowshipping about shepherding, the goal of shepherding ministry is to bring every person to a position of completeness in Christ. They are to become mature, alive with the life of Christ, with Christ as their life, living out of Him.
It is not just a matter of learning or trying to get people to improve their activities in terms of their old Adamic nature and make it act like it is Christian. It is to bring them to an actual experience of completeness, maturity, and fullness in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are not just interested in helping people get through difficult circumstances in their lives, nor merely in making life easier for them. The real objective is that, through all that we walk with them through, they would come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Shepherd—to where they could actually say and experience, “I do not have any needs. He is all in all to me.”
There is a corporate dimension to shepherding as well. Let us look at Ephesians 4.
And He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets;
and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering,
unto the building up of the body of Christ:
till we all attain unto the unity of the faith,
and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a fullgrown man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.— Ephesians 4:11-13
That is the goal in terms of the corporate life of shepherding: to bring an assembly of the Lord’s people to the place where there is the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
From the inception of an assembly of the Lord’s people to the end, all that is involved is to bring more of Christ into that assembly, so that there is a greater and fuller measure of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not just activity for activity’s sake. It is not just meetings for meeting’s sake.
Everything involved is to lead to and produce a greater measure of the Lord Jesus Christ in any given assembly. The responsibility of elders in their shepherding care is to bring an assembly of the Lord’s people, under the shepherding care of the Lord Jesus, to a place where there is a greater and fuller measure of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
The objective in shepherding is not just to get people out of difficulties and make life easy for them. There is something very wonderful, glorious, and eternal that we are involved in: bringing people into a deeper, living knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and bringing us all as an assembly into an experience of knowing the Lord in a greater way.
We could simplify this by looking back to Psalm 23, where David, apparently at a later stage in his life, could make this wonderful declaration: “The Lord is my shepherd.”
If every one of us can know the Lord as the Shepherd of our lives, the way David knew the Lord as the Shepherd of his life, then all these things we have been talking about in terms of goal will be realized.
Shepherding care is not to get people to a place where they are dependent upon us. What a temptation there is in this whole activity. There is something in our old nature that somehow gets satisfied by having a few people dependent upon us for their well-being.
But the whole objective in shepherding care is to bring one to a place where they can say with David, “The Lord is my shepherd.” It is not to bring them to a place where they depend upon you or others, but to bring them to maturity in Christ, where they can say, “The Lord is my shepherd.”
I want us to give some thought to various dimensions of this shepherding work that the Lord would have His people involved in. Turn with me to John 2.
Now when He was in Jerusalem at the passover, during the feast,
many believed on His name, beholding His signs which He did.
But Jesus did not trust Himself unto them, for that He knew all men,
and because He needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man;
for He Himself knew what was in man.— John 2:23-25
If we are going to be effectively involved in the shepherding care of the Lord’s people under the shepherding of the Lord Jesus, then there are some things we need to understand. First of all, we need to get clear in our own hearts what is in man, so that we are not deceived and led astray by our own lack of understanding, but really understand through the revealing work of the Holy Spirit what is in man.
It is an interesting thing that John tells us the Lord Jesus was not entrusting Himself to them because He knew what was in them. He had no need for anyone to tell Him about man. The Lord Jesus understood man. It would be valuable for you and me to have some understanding of man in his various states.
I think it is important that we go back and remind ourselves of the way God created man. God took the dust of the ground, and out of that dust He formed man’s body. Then we are told that God breathed into him, and man became, in the Hebrew, a nephesh chayyah—a living being, a living soul.
With that, and what we have in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, we discover that when God created man, He created him as a tripartite being:
In creating man in this way, God created him with the capacity, first of all, to know God—not merely to have information about God, but to know God by actually entering into the life of God.
Man, as spirit, soul, and body, has the capacity to know God. He has the capacity to know himself; he can actually stand outside himself and look at himself. He has the capacity to know and experience the world around him.
Much of the shepherding work that we will find ourselves involved in will probably have to do with someone after they have had an experience of having their spirit renewed. Most of our functioning will be focused upon this matter of the soul.
What are the functions of the soul? God has created man this way. What functions does the soul perform?
These are the three main functions of a person’s soul. After one has had an experience of being born again, the real hurdle is allowing the life that is here to permeate this part of man’s being, so that this life begins to form and create life the way God intended in the beginning.
We know that part of our salvation also includes the body, but we have to wait a while on that one. There will come a time when we will receive a resurrected body—a glorious body, a spiritual body. But right now, most of our activity in shepherding will be focused on the matter of man’s soul: how he feels, what he thinks, and what he chooses or wants.
What about man in his fallen state? Let us look at Ephesians 2:1-3.
And you did He make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins,
wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the powers of the air,
of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience;
among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh,
doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.— Ephesians 2:1-3
Then look at Romans 1:18-32.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,
who hinder the truth in unrighteousness;
because that which is known of God is manifest in them;
for God manifested it unto them.For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made,
even His everlasting power and divinity;
that they may be without excuse.Because that, knowing God, they glorified Him not as God,
neither gave thanks;
but became vain in their reasonings,
and their senseless heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God
for the likeness of an image of corruptible man,
and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness,
that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves:
for that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie,
and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator,
Who is blessed forever. Amen.— Romans 1:18-25
The passage goes on to describe the degrading passions, the depraved mind, and the many expressions of unrighteousness that issue from humanity’s rejection of God.
That is some description of man in his fallen condition. Brothers and sisters, if we are going to be effectively involved in shepherding the Lord’s people, we need to have some understanding of the condition of man in his fallen state, the hopelessness of man in that state, and the degree of degradation that has taken place in human nature.
We must not be deceived into giving some little band-aid approach to the shepherding care of the Lord’s people. It is valuable that we understand the degree to which man has fallen, so that we do not take a superficial approach to shepherding.
It is wonderful: the Lord had something great in store in the beginning when He created man. It is very sad what we see has happened to man. In Genesis 6, things had gotten so bad that God said, “I am sorry that I made man.”
But in the midst of all of that, God acted and redeemed man from his fallen state. Let us read a few verses in Ephesians 2 to help us understand the redemption wrought in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us,
even when we were dead through our trespasses,
made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved),
and raised us up with Him,
and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus:
that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace
in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.For by grace have ye been saved through faith;
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not of works, that no man should glory.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.— Ephesians 2:4-10
What we have here is a description of the redemptive work of God and man in his redeemed state. God has acted in the person of His Son to buy man back from the condition described in Ephesians 2 and Romans 1.
It was the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary to take man from that fallen condition, redeem him, buy him back, restore him, and bring him into what God initially intended for man when he was created.
It is valuable, as we seek to shepherd the Lord’s people, to understand that even man in his redeemed state is affected by the old man. As Paul refers to believers in 1 Corinthians 3, we can still be carnal.
If we are going to be helpful to the Lord’s people, we need to understand that there continues to be an effect of the old Adamic nature upon the lives of those who are the Lord’s. Even though they have been redeemed and born again, there continues to be a negative influence that comes into their lives through this old man.
In Romans 7, we discover something of the dilemma Christians go through in seeking to follow the Lord and live out the life He has given them. Paul describes the dilemma of one who has been born again, has become a child of God, and has the life of God indwelling him, yet finds another force at work within.
For we know that the law is spiritual:
but I am carnal, sold under sin.
For that which I do I know not:
for not what I would, that do I practice;
but what I hate, that I do.But if what I would not, that I do,
I consent unto the law that it is good.
So now it is no more I that do it,
but sin which dwelleth in me.For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing:
for to will is present with me,
but to do that which is good is not.
For the good which I would I do not:
but the evil which I would not, that I practice.— Romans 7:14-19
This is, in my opinion, a description of a real civil war. Only the civil war is taking place inside those who know the Lord.
Part of the responsibility of shepherding the people of God is to help some of God’s people understand what is going on and help them know how to get through that experience of seriously wanting the Lord. This is not the confession of someone who is playing games in the matter of knowing God. This is someone who is serious. He wants to do good. There is nothing he wants to do more than to do good. But the harder he tries, the more he fails.
Every Christian, regardless of who they are, if they want to go on with God, will come into this experience of Romans 7. It is good that we understand the dynamic, having been there ourselves and having gone through it, so that we may encourage them and walk with them through such an experience.
It is very important that we also understand man in his spiritual state. Romans 8 follows Romans 7.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
made me free from the law of sin and of death.
For what the law could not do,
in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,
condemned sin in the flesh:
that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.— Romans 8:1-4
Brothers and sisters, it is to be the normal experience of walking by the Spirit. It is helpful if we understand the different states in which man can find himself: a fallen state, dead in trespasses and sins; a redeemed state; and the different dynamics involved in growing through the various stages.
There is an experience for every child of God of walking by the Spirit and being led by the Spirit of God. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Romans 8:14). Paul could say to the Galatians, “Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).
It is so simple—not easy, but simple. If we are going to be involved in shepherding care along with the Lord Jesus, we must have some understanding of what is in man, what his state is, and what his condition is, so that we can help him get beyond that.
The second thing that I feel would be good for us to understand in this shepherding care is God’s great salvation. We need to understand what God was doing in His Son when His Son was being crucified—the breadth and depth of what God was doing.
We need to have available to us a spiritual understanding regarding this great salvation that God has wrought, so that when we find ourselves shepherding the Lord’s people, we have the resource necessary to apply to any given situation in which we find someone.
I would like to give us seven words this morning. They may look like big words, but they are biblical words. I am not saying they totally exhaust the subject, but they pretty well cover the range of God’s great salvation.
The first is justification. How would you define justification? “Just as if you had never sinned”—well, that is one dimension of it. But it is an act that God has carried out in His Son.
Even though we are unrighteous, when we believe in His Son, God says about us that we are righteous. It is not that He looks upon us and sees us merely as forgiven sinners. He sees us as if we had never sinned.
For some of the sheep of God that you will encounter, this will be glorious news. Many of us, even though we have come to know some forgiveness, do not know the fullness of that forgiveness. We are still haunted by the idea that we have to do something to atone for our own sins.
Especially within Christian circles, there is something still at work among us that conveys this idea: yes, God forgave us in the beginning, but after that initial experience, you have to begin to do something to atone for what you have done wrong.
But when we embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, God clears the record—past, present, and future. When we avail ourselves of that finished work of the shed blood of Jesus, then we have been justified.
Being therefore justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.— Romans 5:1
The second word is reconciliation. What word comes to your mind when you think of reconciliation? How about peace with God? We are at peace with God.
God has never been our enemy, as I understand it, but we have been His enemies. Yet God, in His great mercy, has signed a peace treaty on both sides. He has signed our side of the peace treaty too, and all we have to do now is enter into it.
God was in Christ reconciling, bringing the peace of God into the world. Many of the things we will find people involved in are a result of their not having the peace of God in their hearts. They are still agitated. They do not have the freedom to come right into God’s presence.
They do not know Him as the One who has signed a peace treaty and made peace with them. Even though we were enemies, He has worked in His Son to remove all the enmity, all the strife, all the hesitation, all the insecurities, and all the reasons why we would not come into the very presence of God. We have been reconciled.
Another word is regeneration—being born again.
God told Adam and Eve, “When you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.” When God says something like that, you can be sure that if those conditions are met, that will be the result. That is exactly what happened. Man died in his spirit toward God.
The first work God does is to come in by the Holy Spirit, taking the very life of God and putting that life into the human spirit. As a result, our human spirit is resurrected and brought back to life.
Even though you cannot explain it, you can declare, “I know that I know that I know that I know.” Even though you do not know how you know, you just know that there is a God and you know Him. That is regeneration. That is being born again, being born from above—the Holy Spirit coming in and bringing our human spirits back to life.
Another word is redemption. Redemption is a word used in the slave market. Someone was a slave, sold into slavery, and you could go down to the slave market and redeem, or purchase, a slave.
Brothers and sisters, whether we knew it or not, when Jesus Christ died on the cross, He bought us back. He bought us out of slavery to sin and purchased us for God Himself. We have been bought back with a price.
The very blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has been the price paid so that you and I, and all people, might be redeemed. He is not only a propitiation for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world.
No matter what kind of person you may encounter or find yourself involved with, we need to be reminded that when the Lord Jesus Christ died on Calvary, their sins were paid for. They have been bought back with a price. We have good news to share with them.
There is also this matter of identification. It is a very frustrating experience to know the forgiveness of your sins and yet go on sinning. If you have any heart at all for God and to do God’s will, it is very, very frustrating to know your sins have been forgiven and yet continue to sin without knowing what to do about it.
There is good news, brothers and sisters. Hallelujah! Not only has God forgiven the sins, but He has done away with the sinner. The sin factory has been dismantled.
The way God has done it is that He has taken us by His own sovereign power and put us in His Son. When His Son was crucified, hallelujah, we were crucified with Him.
Many of God’s people do not know the reality of that or live in the good of it. They are still trying to take their old man and make him a Christian. They try hard for years, with great effort, but they are always failing.
We will find ourselves again and again in places where we need to bring to bear upon given situations this wonderful good news: we have been crucified with Christ.
I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,
Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.— Galatians 2:20
God’s great salvation includes putting to death the old sinful nature and helping us enter into the experience of being free from the power of sin in our lives.
Another word is sanctification. Sanctification means, basically, that we belong fully to the Lord. There is a progressive process through which we go, where more and more of Christ is formed in us.
Sanctification has a beginning, in the sense of our understanding, but then there is a progressive activity of the Holy Spirit. He engages Himself in our lives and arranges circumstances so that we encounter the different areas of our lives that are unsanctified.
These are areas not under the control of God and not energized by the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, even though His life is in us. The Holy Spirit, through various experiences, brings the individual to encounter different things and exposes areas of our lives that have not been brought under the control of the life of Christ.
Step after step, day after day, year after year, the Holy Spirit takes the Christian through this process. That process is called sanctification.
There is one final word: glorification.
Those whom He justified, He also glorified. We ought to keep this in mind, brothers and sisters. It is in God’s heart to bring many sons to glory—not merely to a place, not merely into the presence of God, as wonderful and glorious as that is.
He wants to do something in us. He wants to glorify us by forming us into the image of His very Son. That is glorification. That is our glory. It is God’s glory, but it is our glory too: God is working toward this objective of forming us into the image of His Son.
It is very important that we have an understanding—a living knowledge, not merely head knowledge—of that which God has wrought in His Son on Calvary, so that we can bring that to bear in given situations.
I do not know how you see this matter of shepherding, but I see it very simply, brothers and sisters. It is just one beggar telling another beggar where to get some bread. It is very simple. It is not complicated.
If you have been to a place and discovered some bread, and you find another beggar who needs bread, then you can tell them where to go get bread. But if you have never been there, and you are without bread yourself, you will not be able to give the other beggar any either.
It is not complicated, but it does mean that we need to be experientially informed regarding the reality of what God has done through His Son on Calvary. It is the only thing that we have to offer, brothers and sisters.
I know that in the world there are many things offered, and I do not want to make light of those. They are an expression of God’s mercy too. Let us not forget that God loves everyone.
But in terms of us being shepherds—under-shepherds of the Lord Jesus Christ—there is a particular focus that is ours. It is to take what God has wrought in His Son on Calvary and bring it to bear in people’s lives wherever we may find them, whether in their fallen state, their carnal state, or whatever state they may be in.
There are two other things I want to mention this morning that I think are very valuable in shepherding the Lord’s people. Our brother Stephen mentioned one last evening: the reality of the working of the Holy Spirit.
If you intend to be involved in shepherding the Lord’s people, to whatever degree that may be, then you absolutely need the Holy Spirit’s ministry. Without it, all the best you can do is give some human advice, some good ideas.
No matter what the situation, no matter how many times you have been through a situation that seems like one you have encountered before, you need the Holy Spirit to be there.
First of all, He knows everything about that person. He knows more about that person than the person knows about themselves. As a matter of fact, you cannot even depend upon what the person tells you is wrong with them. They may tell you one thing, but that may not really be the problem.
Their hearts are deceitful—not only theirs, but ours. Our hearts are deceitfully wicked. We have even deceived ourselves. You can probe around and identify symptoms, but even as you are probing around, you had better have at least one ear tuned to what the Holy Spirit is saying.
You need to remain open to allowing Him to lead, guide, and bring you to a place where you can really bring to bear upon that person’s life what they truly need.
I want to share one experience that my brother and I had a number of years ago. We were thrown into a situation in which we were seeking to be of help to a sister who had gone through some very devastating experiences in her life.
She had been in a mental hospital twenty-eight different times. They had given her all kinds of advice about what she should do, but she was in worse condition than when she first started. I do not say that to be critical, but simply to state the case.
Here we were, two ill-equipped individuals who did not know what in the world to do. We could not even spell psychiatry. Yet we were faced with a woman who had been in a mental hospital twenty-eight times and had received all this help from psychiatrists.
We were trying, but it was like trying to climb Niagara Falls. We were not getting anywhere. So we stopped and asked the Lord to really help us.
The other brother with me had an impression. It seemed so out of place that he hesitated to say anything. But he said, “Ernie, I have to say this. I have this word inside my heart that keeps saying, ‘Bicycle.’”
You can imagine: here was somebody whose life was falling apart, and he came up with this word, “Bicycle.” It seemed silly. It did not fit. But he said, “It will not go away.”
When he said the word “bicycle,” she just broke down. There were events in her life that revolved around an experience she had with a bicycle. The Holy Spirit opened it up, and it was the beginning of something beautiful.
The only reason I am saying that is to point out that we can trust the Holy Spirit. He knows what we do not know, both in terms of what is going on in that person’s life and in terms of what needs to be done for them to come into the experience the Lord has planned for them.
I do not care how many times you may be involved in this, perhaps from daylight to dark. Every situation requires that you cast yourself afresh upon the Holy Spirit.
The greatest danger we encounter in shepherding is that we begin to trust ourselves. We feel that because we have had an experience, that qualifies us for taking on the next case. Oh, may the Lord deliver us.
If we do not learn this lesson and pay the price of remaining humble before the Lord, we will end up doing the kind of shepherding we find in Ezekiel 34. We will bring more hurt and more damage to people’s lives.
I want to appeal to us that we get in that place of remaining humble before the Lord and telling the Holy Spirit, “I refuse to touch this person’s life with my own hands, but only if You will come through and help.”
The last thing I would mention is that we need to learn how to live among the sheep.
We need to understand some of the experiences that people go through. There is a real danger in shepherding activity that we somehow begin to remove ourselves and become experts from our lofty positions. You know what I am trying to say?
May the Lord deliver us from being professionals in this matter. May we learn how to live among the sheep, experience some of the hurts and bruises that they experience, and know by being there what they are going through so that we can identify with them.
This is at the basis of it all, brothers, it seems to me. When you read Philippians 2, even though He existed in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped or held onto. He humbled Himself and became a man. He identified with humanity in its various experiences.
If we are going to be used by the Lord in shepherding the Lord’s people, then we must pay the price of getting down there and rubbing elbows with those who are going through these experiences.
Otherwise, it will be impossible for us to identify. It will be very difficult for us to have patience. Somehow it is easy to sit back in our plush offices and hand out all this great advice. But if you are there, it is a different story. You find out that you have a lot less to say and a lot less sage advice to hand out freely when you are in the midst of the process taking place.
May the Lord keep us in a place where we are willing and able, and discipline ourselves, to be among the sheep. It brings us down to this very simple thing: we will always be sheep.
Even though the Lord may use us in some ways to shepherd, we will always be sheep ourselves. May we never forget that.
The Lord desires very much in this hour that there would be among His people those who would genuinely, lovingly, and effectively shepherd His people.
I trust that somehow our hearts can be apprehended in this hour and that we can grow in our understanding of what the Lord is after in each of us.
I trust that none of us gets to the place where we somehow write somebody off. We need to understand what His great salvation is able to do in anyone’s life. It is the power of God unto salvation to those who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
It does not matter how far down they have fallen. God is able, and we may be the ones God would use to bring that word into someone’s life.
May we also be those willing to get involved in understanding man and discovering what man is like. We can look at ourselves, though most of us do not like to do that. We can discover something about human nature and its various phases in life by actually getting involved.
May we keep clear what God has wrought through His Son in His death on Calvary. May the Lord help us. Let us pray.
Lord, it is a great indictment that You had against the shepherds of Israel because of how much You love Your people and how they were not being cared for. They were not being effectively shepherded.
Lord, we sense that in some way, even in this hour, the same indictment could be laid at our feet. But Lord, we want to identify with Your own heart this morning, that when You looked out upon the multitudes and saw them as sheep without a shepherd, something of that would be wrought in our own hearts today.
Oh, Holy Spirit of the living God, we do beseech You that You will grant us revelation regarding the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ—that it will be so clear to us, so real to us in our own experience, and that we will have the biblical foundation that will enable us to effectively shepherd those whom You bring into our lives.
Holy Spirit, we do plead with You this morning that You would do a work in our hearts, even right this moment, that we could never get away from: regardless of the situation, how much we need You to be our Helper, how much You must be our portion, and how we must cast ourselves upon You.
Finally, Lord, we ask You to allow us to humble ourselves and live among Your people. We ask it in Your name. Amen.