The Good Shephard

Ezekiel 34:1-31

 

Good morning!  We are looking at Ezekiel chapter 34 today in our series on that book.  It is a great chapter and a breath of fresh air amid what can be an intense and at times heavy book.  God has revealed hard things to us in His Word.  It is important for us to consider the full message of Ezekiel.  God wants us to understand the consequences of life separated from Him.
 
If we zoom very far out and look at the book of Ezekiel as a whole, it can be divided up into three general parts: (1) chapters 1-24 concerning judgment against Israel (2) chapters 25-32 concerning judgment of the nations, and (3) the final major section which we started last week concerning consolation for Israel.
 
Chapter 33, last week’s passage, Ezekiel was again exhorted to be a faithful watchman.  God explains what that means, which is to communicate God’s messages and warnings to the people.  God makes it clear that the reaction of the people is not Ezekiel’s responsibility.  His job is to communicate God’s message and warning.  And as we have seen, Ezekiel is a watchman who is faithful.

That is not the case of others who have been in the position of prophet or priest.  Isaiah 56 describes others who should have been a protection for the people as watchmen …
 
Israel's watchmen are blind, they all lack knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark; they lie around and dream, they love to sleep. They are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding; they all turn to their own way, they seek their own gain. "Come," each one cries, "let me get wine! Let us drink our fill of beer! And tomorrow will be like today, or even far better." – Isaiah 56:10-12
 
I should not be too hard on our dog Odie.  He’s 15 or 16 years old, so he has his own challenges with mobility and hearing.  He can bark, but he does not have the hearing and energy like he used to.  In the past, he would bark whenever he heard someone opening the front door of the house.  He would bark whenever anyone knocked or rang the doorbell.
 
Now, he sleeps a lot.  So, he doesn’t notice things happening because he’s asleep.  Then, his hearing is a little off.  So, it’s often a mystery to us when he does bark because it almost seems out of the blue.  Usually, when there is a noise that would have caused a bark in the past, he’s ambivalent.  To be honest, I’m happy with fewer protective barks.  All that to say, Odie is not a good watchman any more.
 
The leaders of Israel, her kings and princes, officials, prophets and priests are not good watchmen nor are they good shepherds.  Thankfully, the people of God do have a good shepherd, and that’s what we get to enjoy reading about today.  Let’s pray and get started.
 
Father God, please help us to rest in You.  Likewise, in the midst of being still, help us to move forward.  Thank you for that both-and thinking.  We rest in you, but we are also active.  Lead us to where You would have us to go.
 
Okay, one more aside.  The thought in the prayer “be still and move forward” is from Exodus 14 just before the Israelites cross over the Red Sea.  They are trapped with nowhere to go.  They are distressed, crying out to the Lord, and also yelling not nice things at Moses, like, what have you done to us, were there not enough graves in Egypt that you brought us out in the desert to die, didn’t we say leave us alone, let us serve the Egyptians.
 
Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.” – Exodus 14:13-15
 
I love that exhortation, “The Lord will fight for you.”  And yet, right on the heels of it, God speaks, “Move forward.”
 
Then, God tells Moses to raise his staff and stretch out his hand so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground which is just completely amazing.  (As if the sea won’t part without Moses doing that.)  God pulls His people into the midst of what He is doing.  We should be expectant that God will be working in, through, and around us because that’s what He does.  I think of I Corinthians 5:21, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”  In Christ, we have become the righteousness of God.  He makes us what we are not.  We are set apart in Him, we are called to action.  “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  Ephesians 2:10
 
Let’s move forward and see what God has revealed to us in Ezekiel 34.
 
The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. 6 My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them. – Ezekiel 34:1-5
 
In the ancient Middle East, it was not uncommon language to refer to rulers as shepherds.  This description is also applied repeatedly across the Old Testament referring to the kings of Israel and their officials as well as the prophets and priests.
 
The crime of these leaders was failure to care for the sheep, the people of Israel.  One commentator notes that the Hebrew verb form here makes it clear that these bad shepherds were continually taking advantage of the sheep.   And, if they ever did lead the sheep, they led them the wrong way.
 
This, of course, is not the first time we have seen God condemn the failure of the leaders of Israel.  Ezekiel 22 uses the analogy of building up the wall and standing in the gap to describe their failures.  From that perspective, the failure was failure to protect by providing a wall and failure to protect by standing in the gap.
 
The scattering of the sheep in this context has to do with the exile of the people.  In Jeremiah 50, God explains, “My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray and caused them to roam on the mountains. They wandered over mountain and hill and forgot their own resting place.” (Jeremiah 50:6)
 
" 'Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them. – Ezekiel 34:7-10
 
The language is figurative in the analogy of sheep without a shepherd.  The wild animals are the nations that have attacked Israel and Judah, devouring the nation and carrying off the people of the land.
 
Not only have these bad shepherds let the wild animals take the sheep.  The bad shepherds have wantonly taken for themselves from the flock while refusing to care for the flock.  And so, God will deal with those bad shepherds, and see to the sheep, His flock, Himself.  He will not leave His sheep without protection.  He will be their protection.
 
" 'For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice. – Ezekiel 34:11-16
 
You can imagine that on a day of storms, sheep would scatter.  Gathering sheep is God’s passion.  It’s a reflection of His great love.  These words in Ezekiel bring to mind so many of the words of Jesus.  I think of Matthew 18:12-14.
 
12 "What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.
 
I tried to find a short video about shepherds, but I never could settle on just the right one.  Each video had its own challenges for adapting to this setting.  So, I settled on a collage of images from several shepherds. 
 
In the upper left, you see three photos of Frank Shirts.  Frank has 28,000 sheep, a huge operation.  And you can tell that he just loves it.  I showed three pictures because he’s got a smile on his face whenever he talks about the sheep.  You just get excited watching him.  Directly below him you see one of the shearers.  I believe he’s from Uruguay.  They use shepherds from Peru, as well.  That long pieced together photo, I took from a video panning across one of the flocks as it crossed Idaho 55.  The scale of what they do is amazing.  And those shepherds are just so attentive and aware of what needs to be done to care for the sheep from the time the lambs are born through all their grazing time.  As Frank said, “Somebody’s with them 24 hours a day.  They’re taken care of.” [A Year in the Life of Raising Sheep in Idaho]
 
Antonio and Molly Manzanares are pictured in the lower left.  They live and shepherd in New Mexico.  At the time of their documentary, it was said that they had been raising children and sheep for 35 years.  They started with 90 and at the time of the documentary they had 900.  Sheep, not kids.  While they aren’t quite as free with smiles as Frank was, it was also clear that they have this deep abiding care for the sheep.  When explaining their breeding and lambing plan, Antonio, said “It’s not the best time of the year to breed, but it’s the best time for us.  Now is too late to have multiple births in a year.  But, I like to wait till the green grass is starting to come out when the lambs are born.  Our concern is survival.  If they get a good start and the mother’s got good milk, and she mothers up to them well, then they take off.  But, if they struggle the first two weeks, forget it.  They will struggle their whole life.”
 
Watching them, you can appreciate how difficult the work is, and yet they are good shepherds and they are blessed in their work.  At one point, Molly said, “Even when it’s bad, it’s good.”  (Bad weather, problems with your horse.)  I think when you love the sheep, then you can say things like that.
 
The photo on the lower right shows Ademma in Cherukuru in Andrah Pradesh, India with her flock.  Ademma and Gopalappa, her husband, are “new” shepherds, starting with 4 goats and within 3 years growing the flock to more than 16.  Their work starts every day at dawn or before with cleaning pens, gathering green leaves for the lambs, and checking over the sheep for ticks and other pests hosting on them.  They also clean up and dig out stones, sticks, thorns or the like lodged in the hooves of the animals. Gopalappa said, “If we don’t do this regularly, the animals could end up with unknown wounds.”    Different again from the other shepherds, but again focused on the lives of the sheep.  Their own lives filled with protecting and providing, makings sure that predators can’t get any one sheep or goat when they are out grazing. [A day in the life of a shepherd – The Timbaktu Collective]
 
All of these shepherds are good, and the work fills them with joy.
 
I happened to send an email to Fred and Carl this week.  I don’t know why, but I used an original closing.  I wrote, “Hope you've seen God smiling at you this week, but if not, know that He is anyway.”  And then, I’m watching this video of these shepherds, and the work is grueling and stinky and just challenging, and yet here they are smiling in the midst of it.  Why?  Because they love the sheep.  God loves you brothers and sisters.  He is smiling at you.  Even if you don’t feel like you can see it, know that He is anyway.
 
From a spiritual perspective, I thought the observation about getting their hooves taken care of daily was interesting because there is risk of “unknown wounds” if they don’t do that.  How often have I suffered from “unknown” wounds when I didn’t take time to come to the Shepherd of my soul.  (I Peter 2:25)
 
“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”  For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. I Peter 2:24-25
 
Getting back to our passage in Ezekiel 34, we were looking at verses 11 through 16.  There God continues His promises to bring the people back from exile and restore them to the Promised Land.  He has said this already in chapter 11 (v.17), chapter 20 (v.34,  41-42), and chapter 28 (v.25).  God will continue to speak words of restoration through chapters 34 to 39.
 
It is interesting too that the promises of restoration extend to the people and even to the land.  In chapter 6, God had judged the mountains of Israel harshly because of the idolatry that had gone on there.  Now, after the nation is restored, God will bless the mountains and make them pasture lands for the sheep of Israel.
 
In verse 16, God says that he will destroy the sleek and strong sheep.  Let’s continue with the next passage to see what is behind that.  Why would God do that?
 
" 'As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats. Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet? " 'Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says to them: See, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you shove with flank and shoulder, butting all the weak sheep with your horns until you have driven them away, I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another. I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the LORD have spoken. – Ezekiel 34:17-24
 
So the sleek and strong had gotten that way by oppressing other weaker sheep.  On top of that, they continue to ruin things for the weaker sheep, trampling the pasture and muddying the water.  There is clearly a need for awareness of and taking responsibility to care for the weaker among God’s people.  This area of caring and meeting needs is sometimes referred to as social justice.  Social justice is a (somewhat) loaded expression.  It has different undertones and meanings to different people.  One example, I feel like this topic of social justice is often connected to humanism and can be associated with a whole bunch of other -isms.
 
In the context of my engineering work, I have seen industry and management trends come and go and come and go.  It’s so prevalent that it is common to describe these phenomena as a pendulum that swings first one way and then the other.  It gets too far to one side and then reactively gets swung back the other way.  In reality, whatever the topic might be, the best place to be is a place of balance which recognizes the truths which rest at either extreme of the pendulum.
 
Social justice without Christ is empty and vain.  What good is it to be well fed and entertained while on the path to destruction?
 
On the other hand, proclaiming Christ while ignoring people’s other needs does not portray God’s love correctly.  God does care about people’s physical needs.  We are encouraged in Scripture to take the needs of others seriously.  One of the most familiar passages on this topic is found in James 2:
 
Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. – James 2:15-17
 
John says something similar in I John 3:
 
If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.  1 John 3:17-18
 
Coming back to our passage in Ezekiel, we see that God’s solution to the problem of the bigger and stronger sheep taking advantage of the weaker and smaller is a new shepherd.  Jesus.  Jesus is the good Shepherd.  Jesus is the Son of David, descended from the man after God’s own heart.  Jesus is the Prince of Peace foretold in Isaiah 9:6.
 
" 'I will make a covenant of peace with them and rid the land of savage beasts so that they may live in the wilderness and sleep in the forests in safety. I will make them and the places surrounding my hill a blessing. I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing. The trees will yield their fruit and the ground will yield its crops; the people will be secure in their land. They will know that I am the LORD, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslaved them. They will no longer be plundered by the nations, nor will wild animals devour them. They will live in safety, and no one will make them afraid. I will provide for them a land renowned for its crops, and they will no longer be victims of famine in the land or bear the scorn of the nations. Then they will know that I, the LORD their God, am with them and that they, the Israelites, are my people, declares the Sovereign LORD. – Ezekiel 34:25-30
 
Throughout Scripture, God’s covenants are focused on peace.  In Numbers (25:12), God tells Moses to tell Phineas “I am making my covenant of peace with him.”  In Isaiah (54:10), God tells his people, “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the LORD, who has compassion on you.  Over in Malachi (2:5), God described his covenant with Levi, “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name.”
 
That gives us a good perspective on the proper response to God’s covenant of life and peace with us.  This calls for reverence.  What did that look like for Levi?  He stood in awe, in awe of the Name of God.
 
The word peace in the Hebrew is of course Shalom.  Shalom definitely includes the meaning of peace between two entities.  In this case, peace between God and His people.  Shalom also incorporates the idea of well-being, welfare and safety.  This is God’s covenant for us, a covenant of wholeness.  It is not only the absence of hostilities.  Living under God’s covenant peace gives fullness of life.
 
Here, in Ezekiel 34, God is pointing to the new covenant that Jeremiah spoke of (Jeremiah 31:31-34).  This is the final peace initiated by Jesus.  And for which we are waiting for its final fulfillment.  The chapter closes with God’s declaration to His people.
 
You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, declares the Sovereign LORD.' " – Ezekiel 34:31
 
In spite of everything, if we return to God, we are restored.  Remember in Matthew 18 (v.21-22) when Peter asked how many times he should forgive a brother?  What did Jesus say?  Peter had offered seven times as a very generous number of forgivenesses, but Jesus had disagreed.  Not seven times, but seventy seven or even seventy times seven.  God extends that kind of forgiveness to us, through Jesus.
 
Jesus is the good shepherd, our good shepherd.  I want to close today’s message with Him.  Luke 19:10 tells us why Jesus came.  “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”  Jesus’ purpose in coming was to fulfill God’s promise.  He is not surprised by us or anything we have done.  Matthew 9:36 tells us, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”  Even in (or maybe especially because of) the hyper-religious time in which Jesus came to Israel, the people were harassed and helpless.  The rulers of Israel in Jesus’ time were no better than in Jeremiah and Ezekiel’s time.  They too harassed and did not help the people.  Yes, they were very religious, but they turned around and made rules and burdens which caused the people not to draw close to God, but rather to feel cast down and rejected.
 
Jesus sees our condition and our need.  He knows our unknown wounds.  He is the Good Shepherd and the Great Physician.
 
I’m going to read Jesus’ own words from John chapter 10, verses 1 through 18, and then we can pray.
 
"Very truly I tell you … anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice."
… Jesus said again, "Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me-- just as the Father knows me and I know the Father--and I lay down my life for the sheep. 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. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life--only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father." – John 10:1-18
 
Jesus, we thank You that You have come for us.  Thank You that You are the Good Shepherd.  Help us to rest in Your care.  Listening to Your voice.  Following You where You lead.  We are not wise.  We need Your constant guidance.  We look to you.  Thank You for saving us.  In Your precious and perfect Name we pray.  Amen.