Easter 3 Misericordias Domini

Ezekiel 34:11-16; John 10:11-16

April 15, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

This week, Pastor Ezekiel is at it again in our Old Testament reading.  He speaks again the word of the Lord to the people of the Lord.  We hear how the Lord is fed up with the bad and false shepherds that scatter His flock, and so the Lord Himself will go out in search and rescue of His sheep and He will be their Shepherd. In doing so, He will gather them together and bring them into the promised land, feeding them, providing for them, protecting them. He will seek the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured, strengthen the weak, destroy those fat and strong with their own arrogance and sin, and bring justice.

It would do little good for God to replace Israel’s bad shepherds with other earthly rulers. Humanity cannot lift itself up out of the quicksand, out of the corruption of the heart, out of the clouds and thick darkness of this sinful world. In the place of unfaithful shepherds, God will provide One Shepherd, who faithfully provides God’s Word to the world, who searches for the lost, the lonely, the least.  Later on Ezekiel proclaims, 23-24, “And I will set up over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and My servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord, I have spoken.” This shepherd is not self appointed not selected by democratic vote. His sole source and authority is God. He is the Good Shepherd who is close beside God because He is at the Father’s side (John 1:18). 

Today, in our Gospel reading, Jesus stands upon this and Psalm 23, and the many other portrayals and sayings of the Old Testament, when He calls Himself the Good Shepherd. In the previous immediate context of our Gospel reading, Jesus exposed the Pharisees as blind leaders of the blind, that they were not feeding God’s flock as they ought, they were murderers and thieves for locking shut the kingdom of heaven to people and turning them into children of hell. Now, Jesus contrasts Himself to these evil shepherds. Pastor Ezekiel spoke God’s Word of promise that the Lord would raise up for His people one true shepherd over His flock. This prophecy has now been fulfilled in Christ.

For this Jesus is the Good Shepherd that lays down His life for the sheep. He gives His life on His own accord, buying the flock with His very blood, a flock that has been scattered around the earth since the very beginning. Initially, when God created man as His people and as the sheep of His pasture, He did so as one flock, as one Church, over one Head. But man did not stay in this flock for long. He jumped the fence and confinement of the Lord’s commandments by which He enclosed His flock. And man fell into the wolves of sin, death, and the devil as a result. Not idle, the Shepherd of our souls went after them into a world barren of the righteousness with which it was created. He lay His life on the line for us, so that we poor wandering lambs might one more be ripped out the jaws of the devil and brought home to safety in the flock of the church. Straying like sheep, we have now been returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls.

There is a tender, loving care of God who would send His Son to die for the sheep.  This is not a wrathful, merciless God that some make Him out to be. This is a God who sees the merciless world and that wrath that is deserved, and then lays it upon Himself. The holy prophets of old testified about this clearly. Isaiah compares sheep who with astray with the innocent and suffering Lamb of God and Shepherd who gave His life as an offering for sin. “We all like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). Zechariah likewise prophesies that the Shepherd will be struck and wounded, “Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, against the man who stands next to Me… Strike the shepherd , and the sheep will be scattered, I will turn My hand against the little ones” (Zechariah 13:7).  And Amos faithfully proclaims, “Thus says the Lord, ‘As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who dwell in Samaria be rescued… (Amos 3:12a). We poor lambs were actually stuck in the throat of the devil because of sin. There was hardly a piece of an earlobe left when the faithful Shepherd, Christ, gave up His own life that we might be ripped out of the mouth of the hellish lion.

Normally, the death of the shepherd would not do any good for the little lambs, but here, the heavenly Shepherd, the Good Shepherd, the Godly Shepherd, conquers all by His death and by His resurrection. Christ is plague to the devil and hell. He is a poison to death.

Christ also describes Himself as the Good Shepherd with pastures. For this is one of the primary aspects of His ministry: to graze the sheep. He feeds us with the spiritual food for eternal life, He provides the water of life that quenches thirst for eternity. He feeds us and gives us to drink of His body and His blood. In this way, He is both the shepherd and the pasture. He guides, He feeds, He protects, He loves, He tends. He creates and intimacy with His sheep, so that He knows who are His and He knows us by name. In turn, as God’s little lambs hear His voice and follow Him only.

Of course, Jesus draws on this Word of the Lord from Ezekiel’s mouth when He refers to other sheep, the Gentiles, that must be gathered into one flock under Himself as the one Shepherd. The one church spanning both Testaments consists of all believers in Christ, both Jews and Gentiles. All who are under the One Shepherd are part of God’s one flock, and likewise, all who refuse to submit to this one Shepherd are not. When He wants to increase His flock, He leads people to the water of holy Baptism, calls them to the sheep stall of the Church through the Word. He feeds and tends to them with His body and blood, defending them against all evil and every attack.

Until the second coming of Christ, we shall continually be plagued by evil shepherds of one sort or another. We must be on our guard for those who try to lead God’s people away from Christ and His Church. False shepherds will entice and seduce, will falsely claim that the grass is greener on the other side of heaven.  Members of the church may be scattered for any number of reasons. We’ve had our share of exoduses here at Zion over the course of 100 years. Some are found by other faithful shepherds, but many wander aimlessly and fall prey to the seductions of the culture or abandon the Christian faith entirely.  God grant that we, as obedient little lambs, hear His voice and follow only Him.

Pastor Ezekiel was a predecessor, but also an under shepherd of the Good Shepherd. Likewise, we hear of the under shepherd Peter in our Epistle lesson who points us to Jesus.  Jesus Himself is the Shepherd who has come for the lost sheep of Israel, who sends His apostles, and now pastors, out as His under shepherds to gather the lost sheep.  Grant that we, as obedient little lambs, hear His voice and follow only Him.

* Much of this sermon was adapted from Johann Gerhard’s Postilla for the 3^rd Sunday of Easter