From memory. And so we’re just going to read this in a living way. I’ll start out.
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 for ever.
Today, I’d like to read from Hebrews 13. I also wanted us to read Psalm 23, so it was really useful to read that together. Hebrews 13 is the last chapter of that book, and the writer is giving his concluding salutations—his final words in the letter. It is right before he says, in effect, “Bear with the word of exhortation, for I have written unto you in few words.” To us it seems like a long book in the Bible; to him, there was so much more to say.
In this concluding section, where he is thinking about everything that has been shared, there is a passage in verse 20 with a phrase I wanted to use today. The description of the Lord is that He is the great Shepherd.
Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus,
Make you perfect in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ;
To whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.—Hebrews 13:20-21
We will stay with this verse for a little bit. There is one more phrase I want to mention. We read it last time when we were looking at the good Shepherd. In John 10, the Lord describes other folds that He will bring together, and there will be one flock. One thing He says is that there will be one flock and one Shepherd. I want to use that phrase a lot today: there is one flock and one Shepherd. Just as we read in Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd.”
Let’s pray together.
Lord, we bring Your word to You and to our hearts. Lord, we pray that, as You are near to our hearts and near to our mouths—not far from us and not difficult—You would feed us. You would break the bread and distribute it to us, that we would be fully satisfied with our Lord, that we could find You, Lord, and feed on You.
We pray that You would meet with us today in all of our various places and all of our needs. In all of our spots where You are leading us, Lord, we pray that You would lead us as our great Shepherd, that You would meet with us in this time and fellowship with us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
In Hebrews 13, as he concludes by speaking about the God of peace, this is the Father. It is the Father who brought the Son from the dead. The God of peace raised Him from the dead, and the way He is described is as the great Shepherd.
It says that God brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd, by the blood of the eternal covenant. Something to discover first, in considering that our Lord is the great Shepherd, is found in the person of our Lord Himself. We would all agree that He is great.
In Hebrews, there is this contrast between what is good and what is better. There were good things even in the old covenant, but this eternal covenant that the Lord has brought in is better. There were good shepherds in the past. Even Moses was a shepherd, and he did well. Many have done this work, but there is this great Shepherd. There is something different in what the Lord has done.
There was a covenant from God with Israel, but the eternal covenant—the new covenant—depends one hundred percent on the Lord. Israel found out that they did not fulfill their part of the covenant very well. In Jeremiah 31, the Lord says that a new covenant is coming. This covenant is all based on Him, not on whether they make it or whether they choose Him as their God.
Because of His blood, the blood of that eternal covenant, He can bring us into something not based on anything we have done and not based on our keeping ourselves there. This eternal covenant is all packaged in the great Shepherd.
Because of the greatness of His work on the cross, the blood that He shed speaks better than Abel’s blood, as Hebrews says. Abel’s blood cried out from the ground, declaring that unrighteousness had happened. It exposed murder. That is not wrong, but the Lord’s blood forgives unrighteousness. He died for our sins.
Our great Shepherd is not only great because He rose from the dead and is alive forever. He is also bringing us into His eternal covenant. We experience Him as our great Shepherd in a different way than we would experience anyone else trying to shepherd us.
Hebrews 7 compares the Lord with other high priests. Those priests kept dying, but He was raised from the dead and ever lives. He is always alive, and He is able to save completely those who approach God through Him, because He lives and intercedes for us.
Part of His greatness is not merely that He did the work in the past to provide the eternal covenant and died for us. By the power of the blood of the eternal covenant, God raised Him from the dead, and He is alive right now. Part of His greatness is that He is currently shepherding us.
There is one flock right now, and there is one Shepherd. Our Lord is our Shepherd. When we say, “The Lord is my shepherd,” it is actually true. He is alive, and He has been praying for us today. He has been praying for us this week.
It is amazing when you hear that someone you barely know has been praying for you. It encourages you so much. But when you know that the Lord knows you very well—and you are getting to know Him pretty well—and that He is praying for you, He actually knows what He is praying. He is praying for us to come through to a complete salvation.
There is such a great salvation that He has prepared for us. Hebrews uses that phrase: “So great a salvation.” As the great High Priest, He is praying, working, shepherding, and leading us into something beyond us. It is something great, and it is something He has on His heart.
The salvation He has for us is not just a past thing: “I was saved from hell.” That is pretty good; that is pretty great. But He is saving us right now. He is delivering us. He is freeing us from regular things that come up in our lives.
The Lord snatches us out of little bits of fire. He must have been praying for us and preserving us at that moment. He is currently saving us all the time. He is praying, delivering, and working in us that eternal salvation. He is bringing it to the forefront of our lives.
He is delivering us not only in our spirits from eternal death, but also from all that oddness in our souls that does not match God—from the things corrupt with sin. He is delivering us from darkness regularly. He is saving our souls. He keeps working, fixing our emotional mess, our mental distress, and our stubborn wills. He is working with us and delivering us.
He is currently this great Shepherd, working right now. He has that shepherd’s staff with the hook, and sometimes He holds you back from falling into a ditch. He has His shepherd’s rod: He disciplines, but He also blocks wolves, lions, and other dangers. He protects us. The Lord is the warrior who fights for us. We stand still and watch Him as our great Shepherd, saving us now.
He also has eternity in view. Sometimes we think, “Yes, this is the life,” but it never fully matches up. When we are in His presence, we say, “Yes, this is the life.” But then we are living in this world, problems happen, and sad things happen in the earth. We realize this is not all that God intended for this world or for us. This is not heaven. This is not it. This is not even earth in eternity. This is a mess.
In His great salvation and His great plan, there is future salvation. The redemption of our bodies is coming. As our bodies break down, or we have problems and limitations, there is a salvation ahead in which He delivers us completely from these bodies that will die. He gives us a new body, a resurrection body like His, that will never die.
Along with that, He removes even our sin problem. A time is coming when we will not struggle with sin. That is a great Shepherd. He is leading us into a future so great that we will be able to live the way we inwardly desire to live.
There is a time coming when you will be delivered all the way from every struggle. It will not merely be that, by His grace, you overcame. The whole temptation will be removed. In that new body, the old sin nature will be gone—all that we inherited from Adam, all that we were born into, and all that we have been overcoming as He delivers us today.
We have made our eternal choice that we will follow the Lord. In that day, there is no turning back and no temptation. That is an amazing Shepherd. That is where He is taking us.
If we step back and consider where He is taking us, it is something. Hebrews 13 says that the God of peace will perfect us, mature us for every good work, and work in us to do His will. He is doing in us what is pleasing before God through Jesus Christ.
This is like Ephesians 2:10: we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. The salvation is great, and our Shepherd is great, but He is also working something in us. There is something for us to do. He is maturing us to do something according to His will.
The great Shepherd is so great that the shepherding work He is doing brings us into doing it with Him. The things we do as the body of Christ have to do with our great Shepherd bringing His one flock all the way through in this eternal covenant. We are created in Christ Jesus, and we will do it through Jesus Christ. It pleases the Father because it is the great Shepherd’s work.
He has a plan and an end goal, and He wants us to be part of it. First Corinthians 12 describes the body of Christ: there are many members, many parts, and they all work together. “So also is the Christ.” It is not only the body of Christ; it is the body and the Head together.
Christ is not only the Man in glory at the right hand of the Father, ruling over all. He is the Head over His body, the body of Christ, and we are part of Christ. We have the great Shepherd. In His greatness, He has brought us into Himself, and through Him we have something to do with His great work of shepherding.
We have parts to play because we are part of Him. This is what pleases the Father. It is for His will. We work our works unto the will of God, and we do them through Jesus Christ. Because it is Him through us, we see how great He is.
There is one Shepherd, but He works through you. The Lord has shepherded us throughout all our Christian lives. Even before that, He was seeking us and saving us as the good Shepherd. Much of His shepherding feels direct because He is the one Shepherd, but if we look back, we see that much of it has come through people and through His church.
If people have done it rightly, we recognize the great Shepherd doing His work. If we work with the Lord rightly, we will all see the one Shepherd. We will not become caught up with the people who help us, however great they are or however much they reflect the Shepherd. What we notice is Christ.
We can say, “The Lord gave me grace through what this person shared, through this prayer that person prayed.” But it was the Lord, the great Shepherd. We know it is through Jesus Christ, to whom is the glory for ever and ever. When we recognize that He is the great Shepherd working through people, He gains the glory over all.
A while back, we looked at the term “chief Shepherd” from 1 Peter. I want to get a little more specific with it, just to show how great our great Shepherd is. The chief Shepherd is the main Shepherd. He is the Lord over all who do any kind of shepherding. He is the chief Shepherd; He is the King Shepherd.
Others are called to shepherd. We are all called to help each other and care for one another, and some are called to do a greater measure of shepherding. But we always find Him as the Chief. The sheep know His voice and follow Him. That part belongs only to the chief Shepherd.
You may recognize His voice through other people, but it is still His voice when they speak. You say, “That is my chief Shepherd.” The Lord may use them as part of His body, but “My sheep hear My voice,” and “My sheep follow Me.” We are following Him; we are never ultimately following another person who is used to shepherd.
This is especially important in 1 Peter because Peter is speaking to fellow elders. He exhorts them to shepherd, but not as lording it over the flock. The one Lord is the chief Shepherd. They are not to shepherd selfishly or in a controlling way.
Earlier in 1 Peter, the Lord is called the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. “Overseer” is also used as a description of elders. Sometimes the Bible uses “bishop,” but bishops are overseers. The term is used interchangeably with elders.
The thought of overseer is connected with responsibility and care. There is an overseeing of what is going on, but it should be linked with shepherding. The term “elder” can speak of spiritual maturity, but overseeing is the function, and it is especially connected to shepherding.
Paul also exhorted the elders in Ephesus in Acts 20. As he gave them his final words, he told them to shepherd the flock and to watch out for wolves. This call to shepherd is given to those entrusted with care for the church.
Sometimes, because we are broken and bent, we see someone overseeing, shepherding, and caring, and we are tempted to miss the chief Shepherd, the chief Overseer. This helps us see the greatness of our Shepherd.
When we study church leadership in the Bible, we find a group of elders—a presbytery, an elderhood—set up in different churches. There is a reason for that. The temptation to find one human shepherd is strong. We want to latch onto a person and expect all goodness to come from them.
That can ruin the Lord’s sheep because we get lazy and expect all the work of shepherding to come from one leader. Today, we often call a church leader “the pastor,” which is a term for a shepherd. Unfortunately, whoever receives that title receives all the burden with it—the burden of the chief Shepherd.
These poor men work their hearts out. Even if they do not have a second job and are not working forty hours a week elsewhere, there is not enough time. If there are even fifty believers, there is not enough time to do the work of the chief Shepherd. It is impossible.
They become worn out and spent because of the unfortunate carnal mindset of believers: we want a king instead of the Lord as King. We want someone we can call, “My shepherd. There is my shepherd right there.” But there is no shame in saying, “The Lord is my pastor. The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want.”
I am not lacking because I do not have a human shepherd. I have many shepherds, but they are all under the chief Shepherd. That is higher ground. It is more scriptural ground.
I was speaking with some in another church, and there was embarrassment because visitors kept asking, “Where is your shepherd? Where is your pastor? You all are missing something.” But one leader over pastors, from a certain denomination, visited their meeting. He came to help, but when he left he said, “You know what? I think you have found something better.”
He did not know how to explain it, but he found that they did have a Shepherd and they were being shepherded, even though no one was named as the chief Shepherd. No one had that title except the Lord. That is something absolutely beautiful in the Scriptures.
The Lord raises up leaders in the church and calls them to an extra measure of shepherding, sometimes for more intense or difficult work. But He does it with a team. He does it with a group, so that the burden of the chief Shepherd never falls upon one person.
In His greatness, He reserves His right to be the one Shepherd. He will not entrust any one of us to another person. Even if, for three months, you are helping a believer very thoroughly, and the Lord is using you a lot, you are only temporary.
Hopefully, you are doing it by the Lord’s grace. You are praying for them and doing it through Jesus Christ. But all that you are doing is constantly leading them to the great Shepherd. You are constantly leading them to Christ.
Where are you taking them? If you are shepherding, where are they going? You are taking them to Christ. They are feeding on Christ. They are discovering, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Once they discover that and begin to work directly with the Lord, they become established. They are following the Shepherd, and you can back off a little.
Even in New Testament church groups, part of establishing those groups was that they found the way to the Shepherd. They needed a lot of help in the beginning sometimes, but establishment included the establishment of local leaders. Some had found the Shepherd, and He was shepherding through them.
Some are connected to the Shepherd, and He works through them, so they no longer require temporary help. But if we work according to our own style, we want to build our own empire. Who starts a business and then leaves it for someone else to enjoy? Yet the Apostle Paul did the work and then entrusted it to the Lord, because it was never his to begin with. The Lord is always the Shepherd.
I know I am pressing this point, but part of the greatness of the Lord is that, however much we are involved, it is the Lord through us, and He is the great Shepherd. He has been shepherding us, and He wants to shepherd through us.
Another passage people might use to argue for a titled pastor is Ephesians 4. I want to mention it more specifically because it shows how great this Shepherd is. He does not entrust His sheep to anyone as “the shepherd” in that titled sense.
Ephesians 4 reveals the growth of the body of Christ as it grows up into the Head. This is part of God’s purpose. He uses the whole body to minister to itself and build itself up into the Head. There is work through everyone in the church.
Before that, it says He gave some to equip the saints: apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. These are not given to do all the ministry by themselves. They are given to equip the saints.
Evangelists do evangelism, but they also inspire and equip us. If you are around an evangelist preaching the gospel, you get swept up into their flow and anointing. You think, “I want to preach the gospel too.” Those of us who are not evangelists begin to do it some because they equip us.
The same is true of prophets. There are unusual times when a prophet such as Agabus gives a prophetic word about a coming famine so the saints can prepare. But much prophesying happens through ordinary believers. First Corinthians 14 says that all may prophesy—sharing words that edify, comfort, and console, words from the Lord that are helpful in the moment.
There are prophets given to the church, but what are they doing? They are equipping. Barnabas, for example, was called the son of encouragement. His ministry encouraged the saints so that they learned how to share encouraging words with one another. We all begin to do it a little.
The shepherds and teachers are the same. The point is not to distribute shepherds so there is one designated shepherd in every church. The point is that equipping is taking place through those who have a measure of gifting in shepherding and teaching.
It may be that shepherds and teachers are packaged together in Ephesians 4. But it is also helpful to distinguish them. There are two words there for a reason. It may be one package that belongs together, but there is a range within it.
Some may have a greater measure of shepherding. Yet to shepherd in a gifted way, there needs to be some teaching—clarity that brings people into truly green pastures. This often happens one-on-one or in a small group, not necessarily through a long public teaching.
All the elders in Scripture are called to shepherd. It seems likely that some measure of this gifting is present in those called to eldership. Yet one qualification is that they must be apt to teach, able to teach. If shepherding is present, there should at least be the ability to teach someone personally and help them come through into understanding.
This is shepherding-type teaching. It is helping someone understand through dialogue. It may not mean explaining something for five or ten minutes; it can be a back-and-forth conversation that helps someone find the Lord.
Likewise, if someone teaches without even a little shepherding heart, it can become dry grass. Sometimes we think of teaching as dead teaching: pulling a book off the shelf that is not the living word for this time, not according to the needs of the saints.
I used to mow and spray grass a lot. Bermuda grass is rough and hard to mow. It is not the grass the saints need at the moment. Teaching should have a shepherding flavor. Those who teach should have in mind, as they pray for the saints, “This is the teaching for this moment.”
Even if teaching is not their main thing, there must be some shepherding with it. When they step down from giving a teaching, they should also be able to dialogue with people through it. If someone can teach for ten minutes but cannot help someone personally understand that teaching, something is missing.
In Antioch, there were prophets and teachers ministering to the Lord. In Acts 13, Barnabas and Saul were called out while they were ministering with other prophets and teachers. Those people were locally ministering the word and seeking the Lord together. They may or may not have been elders; the passage does not say. It simply calls them prophets and teachers.
This is fascinating because of how great the Shepherd is. He has not given evangelists to do all the evangelism; He has given them to equip the saints. He has not given prophets to do all the prophesying; He has given them to equip the saints to speak encouraging and edifying words from God.
He has not given shepherds and teachers to do all the shepherding and teaching. He has given them to equip the saints, so that we can share in the greatness of the ministry of shepherding.
Another thing I brought up last time concerning the good Shepherd needs clarification. I said we are not called to be the ninety-nine. This comes from Luke 15. We are not the ninety-nine; we are the one sheep that He leaves the ninety-nine to find.
According to the passage, the ninety-nine more represent those standing by at the beginning of Luke 15, saying, “Why is He doing this with all these sinners?” They were bothered that He was going after the lost sheep. They were gathered together as righteous ones, condemning His action as Shepherd.
They are like the older brother at home with the father, who did not care about the lost son. The leaders of Israel had a history of being in the house of God and being with the Father, who cares for all humanity. But when lost people needed to be found, they wanted Him to focus only on them. They became selfish.
That does not mean we are always to remain lost and that every week the Lord must go after us and find us again. He brings the sheep into His home. He heals them and brings them to where they can walk again.
I helped a sheep out of a fence one time in Greece. It was scary because the shepherd on that farm would shoot often. But the sheep was crying out. Another brother and I went over, and the sheep was alone, caught in wire and bleeding.
I was a little afraid, but my friend helped. We untangled the sheep together and got it free. I do not know if that shepherd did the right thing, because he drank a lot and threw rocks at the sheep. But that sheep hobbled away, and I think it could have been healed with some anointing oil or something. It could have been restored enough to walk with the flock again.
The Christian life is not merely mercy upon mercy in the sense that we are always lost and always being found. It is grace upon grace. It is about getting established, learning to hear His voice, following Him, and staying with the one flock. There will be one flock and one Shepherd.
In the picture from Luke 15, our place is more like the friends at the house who rejoice when the woman finds her coin. We rejoice with the Lord because we care about the lost. Or we are like the brother at home who has been praying with the Father and rejoices at the feast when the lost son comes home.
In the great Shepherd concept, we are usually part of the way the Lord brings lost sheep in. Sometimes He saves a lost soul directly. I know a brother who was saved while staring at a leaf. Strange things happen; people have dreams and encounters. But if we put everything on that, it would be sad, and it is not the Lord’s heart.
Romans 10 asks, “How shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” The Lord sends us with feet ready with the gospel of peace, and we go. The Lord sends us, and we share.
He uses us as His feet and legs, as hands that pick up, help, and heal, and as mouths that speak the words of the gospel of peace. He uses us as eyes of compassion that see sheep without a shepherd, scattered in a crowd. He uses us as ears that hear the cries of the sheep.
That is the great Shepherd concept: we are not left behind as the ninety-nine. We are part of the Shepherd, walking with Him, and He wants to use us to bring in the lost sheep. That is the largeness of His shepherding.
As we experience the Lord, He works in us, and then He works through us. Ephesians 2:10 says that we are His workmanship. We are saved by grace and not by works, but then we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do something. We are being conformed to the image of Christ.
Philippians 2 says that it is God who works in us both to will and to work. You may not even be willing. You may not even care. You may not have the heart for something. But God works the willing and the doing within you.
This has helped me recently: in the great Shepherd, I can care about people I do not naturally care about. The great Shepherd has a great heart, and He has given us a new heart. In that new heart is the great Shepherd’s heart.
We may start with the capacity to pray for one person. As we touch the Lord’s heart, we discover that His capacity is very large. It does not put a burden on us; it frees us. We are joining in His heart’s capacity.
We will surprise ourselves by whom we can pray for and how many people we can care about, but only as we touch the heart of the great Shepherd. If we naturally have a large shepherding heart, it may need to go through the cross and come out in resurrection so that it remains connected to His heart.
If you naturally have a loving, shepherd-type heart, it must go through self-denial, so that we make sure we are leading people to the Shepherd. But it is okay if you are not naturally very loving or caring. If you do not naturally like a lot of people, it is okay, because you have a new heart.
In that new heart, the old damage and old hurts are not there. In the new heart, we have the capacity of the great Shepherd, and He cares about all these people. As He works in us, He works through us.
We regularly experience that the Lord is our Shepherd. Sometimes Christians have come under baggage, rules, legalism, or people commanding them all the time and telling them how to live the Christian life. But there is freedom when you find, “No, the Lord is my Shepherd,” and you learn to follow Him directly.
When we have learned that there is one Shepherd, we can help any believer realize that there is one Shepherd. This is one of the first major things that must be established when we help others, whether they are brand-new believers or broken believers: help them realize that the Lord is their Shepherd.
When someone is lost and coming into salvation, there is a wrong way to approach it. We can try merely to bring them into the church: “Please show up. Please come.” We can feel satisfied when they attend enough. Sometimes they are saved while among us, and that is good. But what we are really doing is bringing people to find Christ.
Another mistake is trying to bring someone to agree with an ABC-type statement of gospel truth. We think, “If they agree to these points, they will be Christians.” But if they do not find the Shepherd—if they do not find Christ and believe in Jesus—they do not become Christians. They may agree with gospel teaching, but no life has been received.
Their name is not in the book of life, and their destiny remains the lake of fire, even if they agree. I once tried to trick someone into saying, “Jesus is Lord,” because the passage says no one can say that except by the Holy Spirit. It did not work. They said, “No, you’re tricking me.” They have to find Christ directly.
Whenever we are helping someone, we should have this in mind: the Lord is our Shepherd. We ask, “Lord, what is going on here? How are You shepherding? How is the Lord bringing this lost sheep in?” We want to come alongside and do what He is doing.
This is true in witnessing as well. We do not merely bring our one memorized gospel presentation. We have so much more to offer. Everything the Lord has ever done in us is a tool for gospel preaching. Everything that is Christ is salvation for people.
If you have met Christ in loneliness, people can come to Him because they are lonely. Everything the Lord has worked in you is part of your gospel message. As you have found Him as your Shepherd, that is your package. It is not merely, “I have these four verses I can work with.” Every verse you have experienced can help others find Christ.
You are equipped with whatever you have received from the great Shepherd. He has worked in you as His workmanship, and wherever we are, He can work greatly through us in shepherding if we connect with Him as the Shepherd.
Then you begin to sense, “This is what is going on with them. I have found the Lord as my Shepherd in this way also.” Sometimes that is how He leads us to help others find the Lord as their Shepherd. Whether it is initial salvation or helping a believer find more of the Lord, it is always about finding Him.
Psalm 23 says, “I shall not want.” If you have discovered that, it is not merely, “He met all my needs today.” It is, “I have given my life to the Lord, and He has fully satisfied me.”
With a brand-new believer, if you are shepherding a little lamb, it is not enough simply to get them into heaven. They need to find that they shall not want. They need to find that their whole package is bound up in the Shepherd: “He is my Shepherd. I have no other need.”
As the response of a good conscience, they are baptized. They give their lives to the Lord and want to follow Him as disciples, and you help them into that. We urge them to give their all to the Lord. As they do, they find, “I shall not want.” All the other things that seemed satisfying, all the things they searched after as wants, do not work. But now they have Him.
When we find another believer desiring other things, if we have given ourselves to the Lord in those areas, we can help them find, “That is not what you want. It is not what you want.” Sometimes there is an extra price to pay for the sake of others, not only for your own sake.
First John 2 says, “Love not the world.” If you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you. The love of the Father is the Shepherd’s love and His care for others. When we find other things that we want, we become tempted by them and think they will fill our needs, but we are always missing something.
The desire to care for other people helps us find more and more that the Lord is everything and that we do not want anything else. Sometimes the Lord calls you to give things up that are not necessarily sins. He calls you into a greater measure, and you may not recognize it until you are helping someone else.
For the sake of another person, you become willing to lose some freedom. Paul gave up freedoms that were good and not sinful, but not necessary. He could say, “I can do this. I do not need to be as free as God has given me freedom to be, for their sakes.” His wants were not found in things he was free to do; all his wants were found in the Shepherd.
The only way we can help people discover this is if we have given our lives to the Lord. When something else creeps in and we covet it or really want it, we bring it to the Lord and say, “Lord, only Your will be done. If the desire of my heart matches Your heart, okay—but I shall not want.”
Part of our help, as the great Shepherd works through His hands, feet, and body, is that He has worked Himself into us. We are created in Christ Jesus. The way we recognize the needs of the Lord’s people in the moment is through sensitivity to what is missing of Christ.
We may have an idea of the path the Lord wants to take a believer on, and that can be good. But in the moment, we must stay connected to the great Shepherd. He knows that path better than we do. He sees it more clearly and sharply, and He knows the roots along the way that may cause someone to stumble.
At this moment, He is the only one who really knows what they need. So we become quieter and more connected to the great Shepherd. As we fellowship, encourage, counsel, or comfort someone, we allow the Lord to use us almost as a tool of diagnosis.
As someone shares, you may recognize, “That is where something is wrong. There is a missing part of Christ.” The Lord may bubble that up in a life-giving way, give you a word, or bring something to mind. Then you find where the great Shepherd is working with them.
We do not need to be nervous and ask, “What am I going to say? How am I going to help?” Neither do we need to become machines: “If they say this, I will give them this verse.” It is good to have materials, but in the moment the Lord may use an unusual verse from Ezekiel that you received in your morning watch rather than the normal verse you would use for that problem.
He is the great Shepherd, and He knows how to help in the moment. He has given us sensitivity to Christ. You know His voice because you have followed Him a little. That is why, as you speak with someone, you can recognize, “The Shepherd is missing here.”
The Lord makes us lie down in green pastures. This returns us to the teaching question and the idea of dead-grass teaching. When the Lord is doing it, He has in mind the kind of pasture that needs to feed the saints at that moment.
I remember learning one teaching as a brand-new believer. Whenever someone had a problem, I gave them that teaching because it was all I had been helped with. Then I received a second teaching: that you can be forgiven by the blood of Jesus right now. It was the most amazing teaching I had ever heard.
When I caught that, I was helped with almost everything by being cleansed by the blood and getting right with the Lord. I was seventeen and newly saved, and everyone who came to me with a problem heard, “Let’s get the blood.” That was all I had.
Eventually, I found that the blood was not the immediate answer to every issue. For a while, it is. For a while, you are fed, satisfied, and able to lie down. But the Lord has pastures. He has many teachings and many helps through which we find Christ. He has many varieties of help and many different people helping in different ways.
He brings you to where you are so satisfied and fed that you lie down. You are filled. It is like a Thanksgiving meal: afterward, you need to sit down and fall asleep. Paul told the Ephesians in Acts 20 that he had not held back the whole counsel of God. There is a wide range of things that feed the saints.
Sometimes Christians find a wonderful way of teaching something, and then that is all they teach. Whole groups can receive only one kind of grass. Then they become oddly shaped because they are eating only carrots, so to speak. The Lord has a great treasury for building His church.
He has many servants and many different bits of grass. It is all Christ that we feed on; it is all the Lord. But there is variety. Paul went to Corinth, but the Lord also sent Apollos and Peter. He had many people helping in many different ways.
Some come with a psalm, some with teaching, some with prophecy, some with a tongue, and some with interpretation. These are different green pastures. Paul told Timothy to have an outline of sound words that he had heard from him. This is part of equipping yourself to share with and equip others.
There is value in an outline of sound words. First Corinthians tells the Corinthians that they needed milk rather than meat. There is a basic outline of different kinds of grass. They were still in the baby phase of eating and needed words of grace. They needed to understand their salvation and receive easy food.
They needed to hear things plainly: “Do you know that you have the Holy Spirit in you? Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.” These are gracious words. Hebrews 5 tells the Hebrews that the writer wanted to share meat concerning Melchizedek, but they needed milk because they were stumbling over the foundations of salvation.
They were thinking they needed to crucify Christ again and again. But they were saved. The writer gives elementary teachings: repentance from dead works, faith toward God, baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection, and eternal judgment. This helps us understand where someone is beginning and what kind of grass they need at that moment.
But there is also the word of righteousness. There is a word that says, “You need to do something with the Christian life you have received.” There is more than merely the grace you have received. There is grace upon grace.
This grass may be tougher. It is not fescue grass; it requires more chewing. Like cud, you lie down and chew it for a while. Chewing meat is harder than drinking milk. We tell people not merely to be hearers of the word but doers of the word.
We urge them to walk in something and practice righteousness—not merely to be righteous because Christ is their righteousness, but because, now that they are righteous before God, they should do something right. Revelation speaks of the righteous acts of the saints. It is not merely that the saints are righteous; they do righteous things.
An outline of sound words is not simply a piece of paper someone hands you. The Lord develops it in you. There are general principles in Scripture—faith, hope, and love; milk and meat—but in general, the Lord works out the outline with you. He shows you a path of life He has worked in you.
The paths will differ somewhat. Great men and women of old have written teachings for new believers, and there are many similarities among basic lessons. Andrew Murray has such material, and there are many books for new believers. You can see the outline of sound words and the green pastures in them, but they are guiding people toward Christ.
The more we touch the great Shepherd’s heart, the more we realize He has a whole span of a path that He wants to take us on. What the Lord speaks to you today is not necessarily what He wants to use you to help someone else with today.
When you are a new believer, it often works that way because that is all you have. The Lord just met you, and you share that with everyone, and it is edifying. But later, whatever the Lord has met you with may overwhelm someone else because they are not there. It is not their grass. They need something different to chew on.
The Lord not only makes us lie down in green pastures; He leads us beside still waters, like the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit. A really important thing the Lord has been teaching us is to quiet our hearts and listen to His voice.
The whole package of the great Shepherd is this: He is my Shepherd, and I can hear Him. I know His voice, but it is quiet. It is like still water—friendly to walk up to, not something that will drown you.
He speaks so quietly and still that sometimes you are unsure whether it was the Lord or your own thought. We are all learning this. The Lord has worked with us through quiet, still, small, intuitive leading.
Because this is the way the Lord works with us, we dare not lead others in a way that replaces His voice. Why would we answer every question? Why would we tell people the will of God for their lives if they can hear the still, small voice instead?
The Lord shepherds by leading us to still, quiet waters. When we are helping somebody, we should hesitate. This does not mean we never answer difficult Bible questions. But sometimes we might ask, “What did you try to study? Did you even try?”
I know a brother who asked Christian Chen a question. Christian’s answer was, “How often do you read the Bible?” That young brother said he began reading ten chapters a day after that, and he received his own answer. The question was returned to him: “Have you searched? Have you tried?”
Sometimes, if you asked Brother Kong a question, he would ask, “Did you ask the Lord?” It can hurt because you know the answer and want to help immediately. But we should ask whether the person has tried to go to those still waters.
More than anything, help somebody get there. You definitely want them to find the answer and the way, but finding living waters is more important because they find the Shepherd there. They find His living life, eternal life, the living waters that satisfy thirst.
Otherwise, they keep coming back to you like Jacob’s well, seeking more and more water in the heat of the day. It becomes a struggle for you and for them. They are trained the wrong way.
Sometimes we do need to help them. They may be trying to hear from the Lord and have something partially right, but it does not match Scripture. Then we can say, “Let’s look at this.” We help as they are being led, but we must never take the place of the still, small voice. That would make us the shepherd instead of the great Shepherd.
“He restoreth my soul.” We have experienced this many times. It is not only the restoration of a lost sheep who has wandered far away, though that is a major part of it.
If someone sins against you and you go after them and work with them to gain your brother, that is a restoring of the soul. You become an ambassador of the Lord, restoring somebody to the Lord. Jude also speaks of helping someone trapped in something, but doing so carefully, fearing even to touch the filth.
Galatians tells us to bear one another’s burdens. Those who are mature should help, but they must be careful and not proud because they could fall just as the other person has fallen. There is restoration in that sense.
But there is also a regular restoration of our souls that we experience almost daily, certainly weekly. You may have your feet washed in the presence of the Lord. You come among the saints and say, “Oh yes, Christ. I forgot. Oh yes, I remember Him now.”
Or you simply need a quiet moment in your day. Everything has become hectic. You have not sinned, and you are not far from God. You have not wandered, but you have been bombarded by life. Then you take a moment and say, “Ah, my soul is restored because Christ.” He restores my soul.
If we experience this, it becomes a large part of our shepherding ministry. It is not always something drastic, like restoring someone to walk with the Lord again. Much of the time it is just friendly fellowship. You may have no idea what is happening with someone, but because they are refreshed in the Lord’s presence, their soul is restored.
My soul has been restored by many people in this room many times, and you would not even know it. I do not put on my “sinner face,” or say, “I’m feeling dead today.” Maybe I am acting normal and do not even realize it. But then we talk for a moment, and I remember Christ.
Sometimes it is a particular topic. I heard someone talking about abiding recently, and as they spoke I thought, “This is always so good to hear.” I do not even know how well the preaching was going; when they mentioned abiding, I thought, “Yes, abiding in Christ. That’s right.” My soul was restored.
Someone may simply mention Jesus. Someone recently handed out a tract, and seeing it restored my soul. I thought, “Yes, that’s it. That’s the way.” This is part of our ministry: being fresh before the Lord.
You come prepared a little. You are with the Lord and in His presence. That is a large part of shepherding.
“He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” Sheep are not always lost; they are also walking with the Lord and becoming established. This is the doing I was talking about with the grass of teaching. It is the doing of righteous things.
There are paths. There are things to do. Sometimes you find a believer who has been restored and is right with the Lord, but to go on they need some meat. They need to hear, “Let’s do something.”
You will see believers whose whole walk is stumbling and stumbling. Sometimes it is because the Lord wants to call them to do something, and until they hear that call, they remain trapped in the world or trapped in sins. Their path must become a path of righteousness. They have to do something, or they will starve.
This is not for their namesake, so they can say, “I am a righteous person now.” Even if you do right things and serve the Lord, you never think that way. It is for His name’s sake. As Hebrews 13 says, it is always to the glory of God.
When you do a righteous work with the Lord, you step back and say, “That was the Lord. Praise be to God. The Lord blessed. The Lord worked in me. The Lord worked through me. Hallelujah.” We are not building the tower of Babel to make a name for ourselves. We are building the house of God and glorifying His name.
When we fellowship with one another, we sometimes recognize that the Lord has led us into certain things to do. Many Christians have been led into things they should do, but they are walking another way. We can go to the great Shepherd and ask, “Is this something for me to do?”
Some have been delivered from sins not primarily through help concerning their sin or a verse directly addressing it, but because they were called to do something for the Lord. They became distracted from their sin by taking a path of righteousness.
On paths of righteousness, many temptations are blocked off by walls. I was delivered from a lot of sin in high school because I took a path of righteousness and preached the gospel. As soon as I let people know I was a Christian, many temptations were removed.
Sometimes, when I speak to a Christian tempted by friends, I say, “It is time to take a step with your gospel shoes and let them know about Jesus.” As soon as you do, they will stop inviting you to the same party. You get delivered from so much.
For you to grow, there is a path of righteousness. There is something to do. John the Baptist said, “Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.” There is a doing with repentance, because it keeps you from falling back into sin. “Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works.”
The Lord leads us in paths of righteousness, but we find that this world becomes like a valley of the shadow of death. Even as we walk through this valley, the fear that should be there is removed because He is with us.
Something to learn from the great Shepherd is that He does not usually answer our difficult questions in the midst of the valley. Or rather, He answers them in a particular way: with His presence.
The time to understand the sovereignty of God, the problem of evil, or how He works all things together for good is usually not when someone is in the midst of a horrific, traumatic event. At that moment, what is needed is not reasoning or explanation, but presence.
“I will fear no evil.” Everything may be dark. It may not make sense. It may not be bright and green. If there are green pastures, you cannot even see the color because it is dark. But you do not fear because He is with you.
Job’s friends sat with him for seven days. That was really good—until they started talking. Then it became bad. So we should hesitate more. Romans 12 says to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. With those who weep, you are simply with them.
In that case, shepherding has more to do with presence. “I fear no evil, for Your presence is with me.” Then His rod and His staff comfort us.
His rod protects us from evil and also disciplines us sometimes. At some point, if we are not carnal like Job’s friends, perhaps there is a word to say—but not our own words. If it is the word of the Lord’s rod or staff, it may pull someone out of a ditch.
Sometimes someone is in a dark valley for the wrong reason. They fell into a ditch, and the Lord wants to pull them out. He may use some of us to help each other out of the miry dirt we have gotten ourselves into. There may be some sharing, some hooking, and some pulling back toward Christ, but the main thing is His presence.
If there are real enemies around us, if that is part of our dark valley, the Lord prepares a victory table right there. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”
This is like when the spies said that the giants in the land would be their food. There are enemies and difficulties, but the Lord helps us eat these difficulties as food. There is a table in the presence of our enemies.
There is a victory in Christ that we find in the Lord. I was speaking to a sister this week about a very difficult situation involving angry people she had to speak with. It was the worst thing in her life to deal with.
But as we talked, we found that if we do it with Christ, all that enemy surrounding and difficulty becomes spiritual food. She needed food; she needed to find Christ. Through fellowship, I think she found a table set before her.
She found that if she went through it with the Lord, if He blocked her enemies, covered her heart, and became a shield around her, it would become food to her. The food was that she found Christ—Christ as her victory.
Then He anoints our heads with oil, and our cups run over. The Lord has poured out something upon the church. The Head, the great Shepherd, has been anointed with oil, and we also are to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
We are not to be filled with our own things. In the victory of Christ, we are not filled with ourselves, the world, or other things. We find ourselves part of this great Shepherd and this great High Priest, whose anointing oil is upon us.
Instead of filling us with other things, He fills us with the Holy Spirit. There is joy in the Lord, boldness in gospel preaching, and an ability to share Christ with the saints.
As we help one another, we help each other be filled with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians says, “Be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit.” Do not be immersed in, consumed by, or overtaken by anything else. Be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes this means a deeper emptying. It is not always about sin. Sometimes, in order to help someone else be filled with Christ and the Holy Spirit, the Lord does a deeper dealing in you. He removes things from your life that may not be sinful in order to give you a larger measure to help others.
It is like having a little more supply of oil to help other people. Now is the time to help others. A day is coming, like the parable of the ten virgins, when no one can share oil with another. But now is the time when your cup is overflowing.
As we drink of Christ, He is abundantly supplied to us, and it overflows for others.
The great Shepherd brings us into assurance: “Surely goodness and lovingkindness shall follow me all the days of my life.” There is assurance when you know that the Lord is your Shepherd.
When we are unsure and unstable, it is because we are not living in the good of, “The Lord is my Shepherd. I am okay.” Surely goodness and lovingkindness—goodness and mercy—will follow me all the days of my life. This is my stance.
If you know a believer who is nervous or worried, they can come to Him. The peace of God, which passes understanding, will guard their hearts and thoughts. He brings us into assurance like this.
Then we find ourselves brought into the greatness of the great Shepherd: “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” His whole course is bringing us to this.
We step back and see this great Shepherd. He found us as lost ones and brought us into His home. We experience His house now through His presence, and we look toward the future New Jerusalem, the ultimate house of God, where we will dwell forever.
As we pray for other people, we can ask, “What is the Lord doing in the end?” He is conforming them to be like Christ. What is He doing in the end? He is building them into the New Jerusalem.
The great Shepherd is doing this. We can commit ourselves to Him as our great Shepherd and commit ourselves to be used by Him in this shepherding work. Let us go to the Lord in prayer.
Lord, we can say, how great is Your love? How great is our God, who has done all these things for us?
Lord, we come to You, and we offer ourselves to You as living sacrifices. We pray that wherever we are, and with whatever You are doing right now, You would bring us out of ourselves and out of our selfishness. Bring us into the greatness of what You are doing.
Lord, in our hearts, bring us a step back to behold You: to see You and Your church, to see You and eternity, to see the New Jerusalem, and to see where You are taking us as You conform us to the image of Christ.
Lord, we give ourselves to You. We pray for each other that You would work with us, work through us, and care for us. Lord, we connect ourselves to You.
We confess that we believe and know—and have experienced—that goodness has been following us, that lovingkindness and mercy have been with us all these days. Today, we declare that You are our Lord and that we love You, Lord. You have been taking care of us.
We offer ourselves to You, Lord. We hear Your voice, and we give ourselves to follow You, Lord, as our one Shepherd. In Jesus’ name, amen.