Brown's Daily Word 4-14-08

Good Morning,
Praise the Lord for this glorious day. It is bright and bountiful. The Lord blessed us with a wonderful fabulous weekend. The Five 4 Five concert was awesome. Thank you for praying for us. The bands were loud but the message about Jesus was clear. Hundreds of young people came and we were all blessed. Praise the Lord for all the youth leaders, youth pastors, parents and grandparents who brought the young people. The Lord anointed the concert, the music and the message. It was wonderful to see the move of the Lord in the lives of young people. The youth rocked the city and the church! I saw even the grandmas dancing with jubilant feet. It takes a lot to organize these events. Praise the Lord for all those who participated and supported.
The readings for yesterday focused on Jesus as our Shepherd. He is the Good Shepherd. He is the winsome Shepherd. I'm reminded of what Jesus said about His love for lost sheep. Jesus said, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep’” (Luke 15:4-6). What this Scripture tells us is that you don’t have to be a perfect sheep for God to love you. You can be lost and He still loves you and longs for you. You can be a wandering sheep and He still wants you back in the fold. The Shepherd does not reject the wandering sheep, or hope he gets what he deserves, the Shepherd seeks to save and bring back the lost sheep. He is not angry or scolding toward the sheep; He only rejoices when He is able to bring it back home. Jesus said at the end of the parable, “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent” (Luke 15:7). Even though we as sinners have brought Him trouble, and He has had to go and seek us, He is full of joy when He can bring us home. What a great, good and loving Shepherd we have. Sheep are not particularly bright animals. It is not that they occasionally wander off, it is their pattern. It is predictable and expected. They are easily distracted and easily led astray. A story ran in the Washington Post in 2005 telling about shepherds in Gevas, Turkey who watched in shock as hundreds of their sheep followed each other over a cliff. First one sheep wandered away and fell over, and eventually the entire flock followed it. In the end, more than 400 sheep died in the plunge. There were 1,100 others that followed, but they survived because their fall was broken by the first ones that went over. Long ago, the prophet Isaiah recognized that the human condition was much like these sheep, for he wrote: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). We have followed the crowd instead of the Shepherd and the result is destruction. But there are some good things about sheep also. They can learn to follow the true Shepherd. They learn to recognize His voice. Jesus said “My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27). And when they get to know His voice, they follow Him and will not follow a stranger. It is the loving attention and care of the Shepherd that develops trust and draws them to Him.
The second point I want us to consider is: The nature of the enemies of the sheep. The enemies of the sheep are dangerous and devious. There are thieves who try to get into the sheepfold surreptitiously. They climb over the protective hedge or fence. The sheep do not belong to them, but they want them. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). There are thieves, but there are also predators. Wolves and other predators are always looking for a straying, wayward sheep who is beyond the protection of the shepherd. Everywhere the sheep went there were always predators lurking in the shadows, and watching from a short distance, awaiting their opportunity. They want to devour the sheep. Jesus equated this with those who try to lead people astray and destroy them. Jesus said: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves” (Matthew 7:15). The problem with prophets is that they appear to be prophets. They take on the role of a spiritual leader. They look like the real thing. They are believable. What is interesting about this image of Jesus is that the wolves are still ferocious predators, but they are disguised as one of the sheep. And the disguise is not some cheesy sheep coat with a wolf’s snout sticking out. They really look like sheep. That is the point. In fact, it is impossible to tell them from real sheep. This is what gives them the ability to mix in among the sheep without being recognized. No one would be able to tell until it was too late. The false prophets do not talk like wolves, they say things that sound very spiritual and religious. In fact, their beliefs, words and actions often seem to outdo even the most committed. But in the end, they devour the sheep. Finally, let’s look at: The nature of the Shepherd. I am impressed by the love of the Shepherd for His sheep in this parable. He calls them each by name. He knows each one intimately and cares for them. He goes and searches for the wandering ones. Even those we think of as hopeless sinners are still sheep, even though they may have strayed and become lost. Jesus said, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). The lost are still sheep by nature — God’s creation — and the good Shepherd is still seeking them. It must have concerned those who thought of themselves as righteous and having exclusive rights to the Shepherd, when Jesus said, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd” (John 10:16). In the Gospel of Matthew we read: “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:35-36). The Shepherd has compassion. He does not drive the sheep, He leads them. He looks after their wounds. He brings them to places of renewal where they can be refreshed. He provides pasture and water for them. Jesus says that He is not only the Shepherd, He is the gate for the sheep. At first this sounds like a confusing double metaphor, until you understand that in biblical times the shepherd would take the sheep to a cave, or lead them into a sheepfold that was created by thick briars on all sides. Both the cave and the briars had an opening where the sheep could go in and out. The only problem was that predators could go in as well. So the shepherd would lay down in the opening at night and literally become the gate. Nothing could go in or out without going through him. It could be a dangerous position to be in. He would literally lay down his life for the sheep, and many shepherds lost their lives in this way from an attack of predators. The whole life of the shepherd is lived to do good to the sheep. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Jesus, the good Shepherd, has come to give us life. Life. It is unfortunate that we have reduced the Christian life to a moral code. There is a moral code, but it is so much more than that. I t misses the point when we present the Christian life as a set of rules, or a body of doctrine. It is tragic when we reduce the Christian life to some kind of formula: Believe these things and say these things in this order, and you will be saved and won’t have to worry about going to hell. It totally misses the point that the Christian life is a relationship. It means loving our Shepherd. Following Him. Listening to His voice. Staying near Him. Trusting Him. Jesus never gave an altar call, or asked for a show of hands of those who believed in him. That would have been too easy. What He did say was, “Follow me.” Those are some of the most simple and most difficult words ever spoken in the history of the world. It is one thing to confess your sins and ask Christ to come into your life (and that is a very good and necessary thing), but it is quite another thing to actually follow Jesus day by day, hour by hour. Becoming a Christian is not just a crisis event, it is an ongoing relationship with God that results in a new way of living. But for some reason this is hard for us to get through our skulls. Donald Miller, in his excellent book, Searching for God Knows What, tells about going to a Bible college where he taught one of the classes. Speaking to this group of Bible students, he told them he was going to present the plan of Salvation, but he was going to leave out one key element, and they were to listen carefully so that at the end they could tell him what it was. He began by saying that mankind is sinful and separated from God, and he pointed out many of the sins of the culture — euthanasia, abortion, homosexuality, drug use, etc. He talked about the need to repent and backed it up with several Scriptures. He used a real life example of a bridge being out, and how a man shot flares just over the top of cars to get them to stop and not drive over the bridge to their death. He again quoted Scripture that talked about the wages of sin being death, and how we were to avoid spiritual death at any cost. He talked about the beauty of morality, and told the story of a man who avoided being unfaithful to his wife when faced with the opportunity, and how his marriage blossomed after that and became better than ever. He talked about heaven and how wonderful it would be — streets of gold and gates of pearl with a beautiful river running through it. He said all this could be theirs if they only believed, repented and honored God. Not only would heaven be theirs, but real meaning and fulfillment would be realized in their lives right here and now. He then asked the students what was left out of the story. There was absolute silence in the room. Now these were students who had grown up in evangelical churches. They attended a Bible college where they had studied theology. They had read the Bible and taken classes in both Old and New Testament. And only weeks before had taken an evangelism class and knocked on hundreds of doors in an attempt to lead people to Christ. Miller said that the students sat there for several uncomfortable minutes. Finally he wrote, “None of the forty-five students in the class realized I had presented a gospel without once mentioning the name of Jesus.” If there is anything the story of the Shepherd and the sheep tells us, it is that the Christian life is not about going through a few steps so we can avoid hell and get to heaven; it is about a relationship that takes place between the Shepherd and His sheep. It is not about getting into the fold, for that is never mentioned, it is about following the Shepherd. Jesus said, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (John 17:3).
In Jesus our Shepherd,
Brown
The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel ourselves at home here on earth. ... Malcolm Muggeridge