Faithbase

I think I have almost always looked at Luke chapter 2. This is going to be... I'm going to have to figure out where I want to put this. Give me room to go by here. Kind of an avenue of escape is what I need. So, we'll do that. Luke chapter 2 is the typical passage that is addressed or looked at on this Sunday. I thought about, as I mentioned before, reading and teaching on Psalm 23, but what I want to do today is concentrate on Christ as the shepherd. The shepherds were notified concerning His birth. It was almost as if, as I mentioned before, these were fellow shepherds. This was the guild being notified that there was a new member. And it is significant, frankly, it is significant, that the shepherds were the first ones told outside of the family that Jesus Christ was born, these angels came, told them, not the kind of folk that you would typically invite to a celebration of a birth. King Herod would never have done that. You can bet your bottom dollar that he would have disdained someone of such low position in society. And yet, Jesus was celebrated, His birth was celebrated by these shepherds. And it is because of His status as a shepherd, I believe, that God chose to have these men notified. Throughout the Old Testament, we read about shepherds. Isaiah 45, I think it is, I wrote that down someplace, 40, I guess it is, verse 11, we read about the shepherd who holds his sheep to his bosom. He carries them, he loves them, he cares for them. And it is a picture, of course, of the Christ. One of the first times that, maybe it is the first time actually, that Yahweh is termed a shepherd is in Genesis, when Jacob is prophesying concerning his sons. And he speaks of Judah, and then he speaks of the Messiah, who will come from the tribe of Judah, who is a shepherd. Who is one who will watch over the flock of the people of Israel, watch over his own. And all of these references to the shepherd ultimately point to Jesus Christ. To Christ the man, Christ who is God, very God of very God. And when we come down to this one Sunday a year, and we, in a special way, acknowledge shepherds, we are actually doing that in celebration of who Christ is. Well, let's read the passage that we are going to look at today. Hebrews 13, 20-21. I have read this many times in our service as a benediction, so this will be familiar to you. Now may the God of peace, who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Heavenly Father, I pray that you will enable me to speak clearly those things that you've shown me this week, that you've placed in my heart. I pray that each one of us will be illuminated by the power of the Spirit to understand and to make application concerning this passage. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. The first thing I want to mention is the fact that this benediction is another example of the five-point covenant sequence. And as you recall, we pray the Lord's Prayer, we'll do that later, and that is likewise presented in the five-point covenant sequence. God is sovereign, He has a hierarchy of order, Christ is our representative, He expects us to obey His Word, He blesses us for obedience, and this covenant has continuity. It isn't going to end. Indeed, we'll see that it's an everlasting covenant. But the first thing that is presented in this portion of our Scripture is that it is the God of peace who brought up Jesus. In the Bible, peace is the absence of conflict with God. Obviously, it has to do with the blessings and the life in this physical realm that is flowing smoothly and so forth, but that doesn't really happen unless we are no longer at enmity with God. And so, the God of peace is a reference to the God of a covenant relationship. The God of peace, indeed, He's the only one who can actually bring peace to the individual or to the relationships and so forth. It's only God who has that capability to bring true peace. The kingdom of God, the Scripture tells us, is righteousness, Romans 14, 17. Righteousness, of course, is to live according to God's standards, that is, righteous living. Peace, as we've just mentioned, but joy is the attitude that we have, more than simply an attitude, more than emotion, but the actual state of being we have in the midst of any circumstance because we are at peace. It doesn't matter what we are experiencing in this life. If we are at peace with God, all else doesn't really matter. Now, I know that that's easy to say, and I know that I, like you, often fail to live up to that standard. This morning in devotion we were talking about the power and glory of God, that David remembered the power and glory of God at the sanctuary, and I mentioned that the sanctuary was designed in such a way, and as was the temple, to cause the children of Israel to recognize the absolute otherness of God, that He's not like us, but He has stooped down to lift us up, but He is not like us. And so the power and glory of God is seen in the sanctuary because it is supposed to be, dare I say it, alien. And I suppose we could say that. We need to soften that a bit to recognize that, of course, being made in the image of God, that there's a limit to that, but the sanctuary displayed the power and glory. We, at peace with God, likewise display His power and glory. People should look at us and say, there's something alien about them, because they're at peace. We don't want to be alien. We don't want to be a peculiar people, as the old King James puts it. That's not the best translation, but it does get across the point that we should be something different. That difference is the peace we have with God. That really determines everything. If we are at peace with God, we will be alien to much of the world. They'll look at us and say, what is this all about? How can they be at peace in the midst of this turmoil, in the midst of this economic turmoil that we experience, in the midst of cataclysmic events that take place in this earth, in the midst of the upheaval that takes place in their own neighborhood? And yet there's peace in that person's soul, in their household, in everything that they encounter. It's almost like some B-grade movie, that as that person moves through life, everything around them turns bright and sunshiny, and the clouds dissipate as they come through life. That's a poor way of illustrating it, but to be at peace with this God of peace is to make us something different. And if we want to be expressing the power and glory of God, we must first of all be in relationship with this God of peace. And that's realized in Jesus Christ. That's the God of peace who raised Jesus from the dead. Now, we read in John that Christ, we just read this, He said, I lay my life down and I take it up again. And you might think, well, it says here that God, this God of peace, is Him who raised Jesus up. It can't be both ways. Don't forget that we're talking about a couple different things here. Jesus in His humanity was raised by God. Jesus in His deity is God. So certainly He raised Himself up. We don't divide them as we ought. His humanity and deity. But we have to be careful that we don't completely separate them. There's two natures in a single person with no confusion of those two, but no separation either. And that's something we really can't understand. It isn't something that human words can convey. So when Jesus said that I've laid my life down voluntarily, He means that. And when I take it up voluntarily under my own strength and power, He means that in His deity. You can say, though, that He laid His life down voluntarily in His humanity. There's no question about that. Think about Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. As He was crying out to God and the sweat poured like an open wound, it's not true blood, it was just pouring off Him. Lord, if You would take this cup from me, but not my will, Your will. He laid His life down voluntarily in His humanity. He took it up in His own strength in His deity. So He is the God of peace who raised Jesus from the dead. So the first point of this benediction is the idea of God's sovereignty. He's the one who has the power to raise Jesus from the dead. You think, oh, wait a minute, there's been other resurrections. Think about Elijah, Elisha, and even those who were raised from the dead by Jesus. There's been other resurrections, but the difference is this. All other resurrections were temporary. Those people died again, which would be kind of a bummer for, say, Lazarus. Four days in the tomb, and then what does he have to look forward to? The same thing. At some point down the road, thinking, rats, I thought I had gotten this over with. When the Scripture says that it's appointed unto men once to die, it's referring to this final judgment. And it is not somehow negated by Lazarus and others who died and then died again. But Jesus didn't die again. There's something unusual. He was risen by the power of God. He was raised, I should say, by the power of God. And this God of peace, this sovereign Lord of the universe, had the power to not only raise Him but maintain Him in life. I mean His humanity. And Christ resides in the heavens today in His humanity. And we'll see what that means to us. But this is the first point of this benediction, that God is the sovereign Lord of the universe. He is the God of peace. And there is no peace apart from Him. But this peace takes place because of the great shepherd of the sheep. God raised Him up, our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant. That phrase right there, the blood of the everlasting covenant, actually is kind of a connecting phrase. It has to do with what precedes it and what goes after it. But we're looking at the great shepherd of the sheep. And here's our focus, the shepherd's Sunday. We are looking at the fact that Christ is the one who shepherds the people of God. This is the second point of this covenant sequence. There is a representative and it is this great shepherd of the sheep. This great shepherd of the sheep who by the blood of His, by His shed blood I should say, was put in this position to represent us. One of the things that's significant about this though, of course, is the fact that a shepherd has to have sheep. There is an administrator of this relationship, of this covenant, called the great shepherd, but he's got to have sheep. And when we think about shepherds in that culture, you probably know this, I'm sure you do. We've talked about it before and I'm sure you've read about it yourself. But shepherds of that era, that age, that culture, even today, are much different than what we might see today in this country. For instance, you would have a shepherd who would have about 100 sheep usually. It wasn't just a number that Jesus took out of the air when He said, there's a shepherd with 100 sheep, loses one, he leaves a 99, and so forth. That's about what they'd have, right around that number. And whether they were the owner or the caretaker, they would be shepherding these sheep, they would have, shall we say, a relationship with these sheep much like an owner with a pet. They would talk to them, sing to them, they'd get to know them. They might even know them by name. I don't know how you'd know 100 names. I have a hard time with the names of my children. And oftentimes when we do have pets around the house, I end up calling the pets by their children's name and vice versa. So naming and knowing the names of 100 sheep seems rather almost beyond belief. But I suppose there's people who can do that. Anyway, in that culture, the sheep would be led by the shepherd. They would know his voice, he'd sing to them, he'd talk to them. And Jesus says, my sheep know my voice. They know Him, I know them by name. When we lived in American Falls and I was ministering down there, there was a portion of the Sawtooth National Forest just south of the town. And it was kind of weird because it had this wide snake river plain. And you could see way to the north some mountains, and then down to the south there was some more. We would go down there sometimes and just hike around, take our dog with us. We'd let her out of the car, and she'd run in front of the car. We'd be doing 20, 30 miles an hour, and she loved it. Never would deviate from that forest service road. But we would have to keep an eye out for these large flocks of sheep. I would call them herds, really, because they're so big it wasn't a flock. Huge flocks of sheep down there. And if you saw anything, we would try to find them first and then get beyond it. But if we're driving down the road and our dog's running out there in front of us, and we're tooling down the road in this little Mazda, and all of a sudden we see some white fluffy stuff in the distance, slam on the brakes, open the door, and the dog will jump in. Because when you get there, you'll see the little sheep herders shack, the trailer. And around that would be three or four, sometimes 150 dogs. Well, it wasn't that many, several dogs. And at least one of them would be a very large, white, mean-looking thing that was there to drive away coyotes and that sort of vermin and predators or what have you. Well, it was a lot different than what Jesus would use to illustrate his relationship to us. Those guys would just push the sheep around. They didn't have any kind of an owner-pet type relationship with the sheep, not even really with the dogs so much. It was a completely different situation than what Jesus wants us to think about. That was like cattle in a herd. Jesus is talking about a large group of pets who know the owner. He has a relationship with them. He takes care of them. Indeed, Christ says that, I lay my life down for the sheep. David, of course, was the preeminent type in the Old Testament who protected the sheep from bears and lions. And Jesus is the anti-type who protects his sheep from all enemies, all those who would do them harm. Christ is willing to die that brutal death where we celebrate, which we celebrate, I should say, with the bread and the cup. This is the kind of shepherd that we have. This is the kind of representative that we have, this great shepherd of the sheep who shed his blood of the covenant to bring us into this relationship. Hebrews clearly states, the book of Hebrews, that there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood. There is no ratification of the covenant without the shedding of blood. It's a bit unusual when you consider that the sheep are saved by the death of the shepherd, isn't it? You would think they're going to be left alone out there. They'll be all by themselves, no one to care for them. And yet the shepherd's death is what ensures the life and protection of the sheep. And so, today, on Shepherd's Sunday, we celebrate the fact that the angels came to members of that guild, members of that fraternity, to tell them there is a new member born today in Bethlehem. Go and see him. He's the great shepherd of the sheep. The one who is willing to lay his life down that we might have relationship in this everlasting covenant. There's nothing before that covenant, nothing after. Everything that God is about, everything he was doing, was looking ahead to what Jesus Christ would accomplish. And it is all about, really it's all about this great shepherd of the sheep and his shed blood. Paul said, I came preaching nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. There's a lot more to that than simply saying Jesus died on the cross. But I want to focus today and I want to spend just a moment to get you to think about this great shepherd of the sheep. And I don't know what other illustration I might use. We think about a shepherd with those pets, those sheep, and maybe it's something that you can think about your own pet or maybe a child or a loved one that you love so dearly that you would be willing to lay your life down, that you would do whatever you had to do to make sure that person was okay. And you would die for that person. That's what Jesus is like. That's what we celebrate in the Lord's Supper. This great shepherd of the sheep who shed his blood, this blood of the covenant, this everlasting covenant. Only Jesus, this great shepherd, is our kinsman redeemer, which we talked about last week. He's the only one who can redeem us by his blood and establish this covenant. Now the reason he does that, the third point, is that we might be complete to do what is well pleasing. This is the purpose, at least part of the purpose, of what it is that Christ's death accomplished, this ability on our part to do his good will. This blood of the everlasting covenant, I said, was kind of a bridge between the second and third point. And the idea is that because of that blood, we are made complete. Now, when we look at this passage, we often fail to recognize the context. It's given to the corporate body. What Paul, and I believe it's Paul who wrote the book of Hebrews, is saying is, Jesus Christ shed his blood, our great shepherd of the sheep, that we might be made complete. And in the Greek it actually means rejointed, put back in joint. So the opposite would be you're out of joint, corporately speaking, not individually. Jesus Christ, our God of peace who brought up Jesus from the dead, the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant. And here's the key. Through the blood of the everlasting covenant makes you complete. It's through that blood that you are put back in joint. And it's a corporate idea. The purpose of the book of Hebrews was not to guide us, necessarily, in personal piety. It was to tell Christians who had come out of Judaism, who had not left behind their culture, but had left behind the legalism of the Judaic religion, that no, you don't want to go back to that, because that is far less worthy than what you have in Jesus Christ. As a corporate entity, you need to remain in peace. And the primary impediment to that would be the Judaizers coming in with an alternate gospel and stirring things up. And I've just been doing some study in Revelation, so this kind of sticks in my mind. And you'll note in the letters to the churches there in Revelation that that was the problem. Someone was coming in and stirring things up with false doctrine. And frankly, it's a doctrine of Satan to say that there's another way besides Jesus Christ. So Paul says, This blood of the covenant has been shed that you might be brought into joint as the corporate body of Jesus Christ. Do you see what he's saying? As the corporate body, if you're out of joint, how much can you accomplish? How many of you ever had a finger or maybe an arm or something out of joint? I know Kimberly had a knee out of joint, and it makes it very difficult to get anything done. I had an ankle, I guess you could say, out of joint when I was young, and I could hardly walk. The body out of joint, the corporate body out of joint can't get much done because there's no strength there. You can't even stand. This is the third point, and it has to do with the obedience to commands. And what is being said here, that the blood was shed that you might be back in joint to heal the rent, to join back together, to be brought into the unity of the faith, that you might show the superiority of the covenant. We talked before about the alien nature, if you will, of God, and how we're supposed to present that, not just individually, but corporately as well. And if the body is out of joint, they're going to look at that and say, Well, I can find that at the local moose club. Why do I need to go to church and be subjected to this kind of stuff when they're just as out of joint as anybody else? And the writer Paul says, that blood was shed in this particular situation. Remember, the whole of life and experience is covered by the scripture, and here it happens to be a corporate thought. We took this meal together. Each of us ate of this bread. This is a single body that was broken. The blood was poured from the veins of one man. We don't have individual loaves of bread. We don't have individual bottles of wine. It is a single Savior that brings us into the single body, and we must not allow ourselves to be out of joint, because that kind of body can't get any work done. And that's what he's saying here. You have been brought through the blood of the everlasting covenant that you might be made complete in every good work to do His will, working in you with His will, pleasing in His sight. You've got to be together. You've got to have a joint. You've got to be put back in joint, of course, as individuals. That's where it begins. But as the corporate body, in order to accomplish anything for the sake of the kingdom, the corporate body has to be in joint. And if you're out of joint, it just means that you're not in proper fellowship with your brothers and sisters. And that means we're just like everybody else, doesn't it? There's nothing alien about that. You can go any place and find discord. The place that I work a few times a week, down there in Lewiston, there is plenty of discord. You know, office politics. And we need to be alien. We need to be different. We need to be an expression of the power and glory of God. The complete otherness of God is expressed in how we are so much different than the world. We are not out of joint. We are in joint. We are solidly together. And that is well-pleasing in His sight. And we are able to accomplish the things that a well-ordered flock can accomplish under the authority of the Great Shepherd of the Sheep. And so this is what the Great Shepherd does. He oversees the flock and brings us into right relationship with Himself and with one another. And this is about obedience and submission. It certainly is. Of course, to the Word, to our Lord Jesus Christ and to the authority of the Church. The idea, again, before we move on in this point, that Paul is making in this benediction, is that as a corporate body, we have to be sure that we are holding together, firm and strong and in good relationship. This happens, fourth point, through Jesus Christ. He says, all these things may do His will through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Jesus Christ. All of this is accomplished through Jesus Christ. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, the fourth point there, the blessing of relationship, material blessing, give us this day our daily bread, spiritual blessing, forgive us our sins and we forgive those who have sinned against us. And the blessings that we experience are only through Jesus Christ. Paul brings this, he's starting to bring this to a conclusion. That there is blessing, but it's only through Jesus Christ, only under the covenant mediation of the Great Shepherd, help in time of trouble, purpose and meaning in life. Everything that you consider a blessing is given us in Jesus Christ. The eternal hope. And that is part of the otherness of the Christian. A lot of folks, they misunderstand. They think because we're forgiven that we claim to be perfect and that's not the case at all. We know that. We need to be able to explain that to people, that what is forgiveness? What is the purpose of the shed blood of Jesus Christ? Well, part of it, of course, is to wash us clean. Well, I guess you can't even say it's part of it, but that's to wash us clean of sin that we might be in relationship with God the Father. We need to explain what forgiveness is all about. And it is based, of course, upon the need for forgiveness. But when we explain to folks the nature of the blessing we have in Jesus Christ, it has to include, of course, what is forgiveness. There is the practical benefit of a well-ordered home, for instance, but you're going to find non-Christians with well-ordered homes. You're going to find non-Christians who do very well at a job, who are valuable employees, or in the Navajo tradition are called a valuable man. That means that they are esteemed and someone who they can be counted upon, or someone that you can count on. And I bring that up because I've been reading Tony Hillerman lately, and he touches on that. But there are people outside of the body of Jesus Christ because of common grace who are valuable men, because they are made in the image of God. But you will find that they are without peace and without purpose. You will find perhaps even because their home is well-ordered and so forth, they are more aware of that lack of peace. I would suggest to you that the chaos of a disorderly life often will mask the lack of peace. Obviously, there's no peace, and they know it, but they think they know why, because everything's a mess. The person who has everything in order, on the other hand, cannot mask that emptiness. And sometimes it is that person who is seemingly got it all together, who seemingly has it all together, is more open to hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. The person who's got a lot of problems, you're going to spend a lot of time dealing with their problems before you can actually begin to preach the gospel. The person who has it all together, on the other hand, very well may hear the gospel in a way that other folks cannot. This season, especially, we have an opportunity to proclaim blessings in Jesus Christ, primarily this peace, this purpose, this meaning, this hope for eternity. Finally, this is summed up, that this is going to be this, excuse me, the five points here are summed up with the idea of glory forever and ever. Glory to Jesus Christ, glory to the God of peace, and this is for eternity. This is the continuity of the covenant. Remember the five points. And this tells us that the covenant is eternal. There is no end. Yes, from generation to generation in this life, but our hope, of course, is for eternity. Paul says that if only in this life we have hope in Jesus Christ, then we are to be pitied above all men, 1 Corinthians 15, 19, but we have hope for eternity. Again, certainly it's a very practical religion, faith in Jesus Christ, but most emphatically we must say it is because of our hope for eternity that we recognize this relationship as something completely other than what the world has to offer. There's good pagans out there who do good things, who are making this world a better place to some degree, but they have no hope for the future. They have no hope for eternity. And it's our relationship to this great shepherd of the sheep as his flock that guarantees us this grand or wonderful conclusion to life. After life there is an eternal life with Jesus Christ. Let me conclude by saying this, reminding you, I guess I'd say, that every human being is seeking peace. Every human being, and that's really at the bottom of all human endeavor. I was watching a discussion, debate on the internet the other day between Christopher Hitchens, a well-known atheist, you might recognize the name, written several books, he writes, I think, for Vanity Fair, and Douglas Wilson, who's a pastor at Christ Church in Moscow who's written a plethora of books as well, and they had gone on a tour debating in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and I happened to see the debate that took place in Philadelphia at Westminster Theological Seminary. Christopher Hitchens is very articulate, obviously very intelligent, but he is damned to hell forever. And I seem to be able to, I guess I should say this way, it appeared to me that he was consciously aware that he was lacking in peace. Throughout this entire debate there was just something about the way he would respond. He was often borrowing from the idea that God exists. He had to, to make the statements he did. His presuppositions were unfounded concerning the non-existence of God, and he would say things that he would claim there is an absolute standard of truth and beauty, for instance, and there can't be apart from an absolute standard in God. If this world is chaos and chance and merely the passage of time, then there is no absolute standard. But it was apparent to me, or at least I thought this seemed to be the case, that Mr. Hitchens was lacking in peace. That is the quest of every human being, but it's only in the God of Peace that that is available. Every human being is likewise seeking the warmth and love of a shepherd, someone who will embrace them, no matter who they are or where they've been, and bring them into relationship. Every human being wants that warmth and relationship of love with the great shepherd of the sheep. It's only possible, of course, in Jesus Christ. Every human being seeks to belong. Every human being wants to be part of the family. Every human being wants to be put back into joint. And they're only going to find that, ultimately, in the church. Unfortunately, all too often the church is likewise out of joint. And that's what the whole New Testament is really about, is one time after another a letter to this church or that church, get back into joint and here's where you're out. Every human being wants to belong. Every human being wants to be put back into joint. Every human being wants blessings, the blessings of forgiveness, the blessings of forgiveness and purpose and order in their life and eternal hope. That's the final thing that every human being is really looking for, is eternal hope. Again, that's found only in the great shepherd of the sheep. I want to encourage you this Christmas season to make an effort to share with others your relationship with that great shepherd of the sheep. The seasons, they come and go, and sometimes they do that without any real opportunity to share these truths, but I encourage you to do the best that you can to recognize an opportunity when it arises. We are a blessed people. Those shepherds who were informed... of Jesus' birth 2,000 years ago, they experienced something that was beyond the realm of human understanding. It was completely other than anything that they had ever experienced before. We are privileged to live in an age wherein we can experience something that is likewise beyond the realm of human understanding. We experience the tremendous un- immeasurable love of the great shepherd of the sheep. And I would encourage you to, throughout this season, praise God for His tremendous gift of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus.