Pentecost 2018

Acts 2:1-21

May 20, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

When God led the children of Israel out of Egypt, He had them observe the Passover the same night of their deliverance.  He commanded them to celebrate it at the same time each year as a memorial of their deliverance and departure from Egypt (Ex 12:14).  From that day on they travelled for fifty days when they approached the foot of Mt. Sinai. There, God gave His people the Law through Moses, the two tablets with the 10 Commandments.  They were commanded to observe a memorial of this blessed event every year on the fiftieth day after Passover (Lev 23:15-21; Deut 16:9-12).  It’s from this that the festival gets its name “Pentecost”, which comes from the Greek word meaning fiftieth day.

And so St. Luke speaks about how when Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. They were in Jerusalem, where Jesus had instructed them to be, as they waited for the promised Holy Spirit. And on top of that, there were visitors from all over the world, Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphilia, Egypt and Lybia, Cretans and Arabians. These were both Jews and proselytes, or those Gentiles who were God fearers and believed in the one true God. As they were there celebrating when God had gave the people the Law on Mt. Sinai, then the Holy Spirit came, just as Jesus had promised. So we today celebrate this festival not because of the old history, but because of the new, that is, that Christ has kept His promise in sending the Holy Spirit to guide His people in the truth of the Gospel.

And that He did. The Spirit descends from heaven, much like what happened at Christ’s baptism, but now rests upon the people of Christ. He enflames their tongues so that they become confident and bold in their preaching about Jesus. This Spirit of God equips the disciples to carry out the Great Commission that the Lord had given before His Ascension, to make disciples by baptizing in the name of the Triune God and teaching people the Word of God.

And what timing the Lord had in this. On the day when the people gathered were celebrating the giving of God’s Law, they, and we, are reminded that no one can be made righteous through the Law.  “The Law of God is good and wise and sets His will before our eyes. Shows us the way of righteousness, and dooms to death when we transgress.  The Law is good, but since the fall Its holiness condemns us all; It dooms us for our sin to die And has no power to justify.” (LSB 579:1, 5). That is why He sent His Son to die and shed His blood to forgive us our sins: we are unable to free ourselves by our own power or works. We cannot keep the Law.

But Jesus can, and He did. He was crucified at the hands of lawless men, delivered up according to the plan and foreknowledge of God. God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death and is exalted at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. This He did for you, and the benefits of His life, His death, and His resurrection are yours by faith.

So it is necessary that what is preached is also believed.  At the end of Peter’s sermon that morning, the people who saw the flames of fire, who heard of Jesus in their own language, who gave ear to his words, were cut to the heart. They people asked what they should do in light that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom they crucified.  Peter’s answer to them was one of faith, for faith, and by faith: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.” (Acts 2:38-39).   

And so it is for you.  As surely as those who were there on that Pentecost, who cried out “crucify!” just over 50 days earlier, it is because of your sin that Jesus went to the cross.  Your sin runs so deep, corrupts so completely, cuts the heart so severely, that you stand guilty before the Lord and Christ of all. Repent. Turn away for your sin, away from your shame, away from your guilt, which is great. Repent.  But you cannot do even that on your own. Even this repentance is beyond the efforts of your sinful heart. But that too is the work of the Holy Spirit within you: to create sorrow and contrition over sin and to point you to the One who died so your sins would be forgiven.

Peter doesn’t stop there, however, and neither will I.  Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Most, if not all of you here today, are baptized.  If you aren’t, please come talk to me after the Service. For this promise and this gift is for you and for your children, for everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself by the preaching of the Gospel.

For those who are baptized, remember your baptism.  As Pentecost is the birthday of the Christian Church, so when that water combined with the Word of God was poured upon you, that which carried the deliverance of His promise in Christ and bestowal of the Holy Spirit, that is your spiritual birthday. In other words, remember that you are baptized, that it is a present tense reality and identity gifted you in those blessed waters. You are baptized into Christ’s death and into His life, and God delivered to you His forgiveness, His life, His salvation, His Holy Spirit.  God sends His Holy Spirit to push the preaching of the Gospel into your heart so that it remains and lives there. It is the work of the Spirt to create, and sustain in you, call upon the name of the Lord in faith, and in the certainty of your salvation for the sake of Jesus, who has done everything, who has fulfilled the demands of the Law, who takes away sins, and declares your justified, not guilty, free.

By the grace of God, by means of faith in Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit, take hold of this great treasure. The sinful flesh and the devil will continue to tempt you to think you can build your way up to heaven and make a name for yourself. God will not be mocked, and He will tear down your sinful pride more quickly than it took for the dust from the tower of Babel to settle. The Spirit will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that Christ has said. That is His job. That is what He does for you and in you and through you by means of His Word and Sacraments. For Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, alleluia!

Ascension 2018 (Observed)

Luke 24:44-53

May 13, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

Easter 6 2018

Numbers 21:4-9; James 1:22-27; John 16:22-33

May 6, 2018 + Confirmation Sunday

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

Today changes nothing in your life. Confirmation, vows, all the work you’ve done, isn’t over.  It is the same faith you confess today that you have received and believed confessed since your baptism. Sometimes you probably felt like those Israelites in the Old Testament reading, wandering around in the desert wondering what in the world you are doing there.  That’s not an uncommon feeling in the life of a Christian.  Get used to it, if you’re not already.  And get used to God’s answer to such things. The Old Testament people brought sickness and poison upon themselves because of their sin.  God provided the antidote, that any who would look up to His chosen means in faith would be healed.  All that takes place in catechesis, all that we do in Bible study and Sunday School, is to know Christ and Him crucified, to have the benefits of the cross delivered to you personally by the means of His Word and the Sacraments and received by faith for your good. We study the Catechism and God’s Word because it teaches us how to repent, believe, love, pray, and fight the devil.

In studying Christ, we see ourselves, our defects, our errors, our sinfulness in our character and lives.  He who does not know Christ does not know Himself.  In Christ, we see how we ought to be, and yet how we fail. We see the way that humanity was created to live.  In Christ, we see how the Lord is making humanity whole again, restoring the image of God. Your life, your eternal life, began at your baptism. It was there in those waters combined with the very Word of God that He declares sinners forgiven, adopts into the family of God, makes heirs of the kingdom of God along with all believers in Christ.  All the grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, life, and salvation of Christ is yours already by virtue of God’s giving in your baptism.

You make these vows today in the rite of Confirmation, but these are not new.  Almost everyone here made these same promises, in the same faith, and share the same hope in Christ. This is no different than what you did yesterday, last month, last year. It is simply living your Christian life by the grace of God.  It is being a doer of the word, as St. James explains.  The imitation of Christ is not chains that weigh you down. His commandments are not meant to spoil our fun or limit our freedom, but to set us free to be our better selves, finding our righteousness not in our words or actions, but in Christ. The world, even some in your family and among your friends, and at times your heart, will think you crazy.  Remember Jesus’ words, “Take heart, I have overcome the world.”

Any Christian that is serious today to follow the Bible, to live by the Bible, to teach the Bible, has to recognize that we do not fit into this culture. We cannot fit in. Pray for yourselves, and for one another that we would never give the truth of the Gospel up.  That no goods, fame, child or wife is worth it.   There is no compromise to the most basic fact of reality and life: Jesus lives, and He is the Truth, the Way, and the Life, and salvation is found only in Him.

All this may seem like an impossible task. And truth be told, it is.  You cannot live a perfect life this side of eternity.  You will grumble and complain and worry, just like God’s people of old, and those still today. When you feel the bite and poison of sin, the burden of worry, the complaint of living life in a broken world, look to Christ who lived His life for you. You live a life of repentance and forgiveness in Christ. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so Jesus was lifted up that you may believe in Him and have eternal life (John 3:14-15).

Today changes everything in your life. All of us here today witness the confirmation of four young men in our congregation. And this is a big deal.  But keep in mind this simple fact.  All that happens today, all that has been leading up to this point, isn't about your commitment to God. It is about fully understanding and believing in God's commitment to you in Christ.  More important than your vows today, tomorrow, or the rest of your life are the vows of Christ. These promises are for you, stretch back to the beginning, both your beginning and that of the world, when the Lord promised Christ after the Fall into sin.

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus speaks of two great gifts He gives to God’s children. They will find the Father’s heart wide open when they pray in Jesus’ name, and the Holy Spirit will speak the inmost truth plainly. Jesus says, “in that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God” (John 16:26-27). Jesus consoled His disciples this way, that His disciples will ask in His name, and the Father will hear and answer.  Why should it be difficult to believe Jesus’ words? Why not trust the Father’s love? That is your glad news, the Lord’s assurance that your prayer in His name will be heard. That you are not alone, nor forgotten, nor ignored.

The Spirit of Christ was given at your baptism and by God’s grace is still with you today. You are not alone.  The Lord is with you. God has blessed you by making you part of His body, the one, Christian, and apostolic Church in which He daily and richly forgives all your sins and the sins of all believers.

You who are being confirmed today will receive the Sacrament of the Altar for the first time.  Here you taste and see that the Lord is good, you taste His promises, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. There is no more personal of a union with Christ than what happens here.  For the strengthening of your faith, we come to the Lord’s Table and commune with Him in fellowship with Him and in unity of faith with one another.

Easter 5 2018

James 1:16-21

April 29, 2018 + Quilt Dedication Sunday

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

We live in a time when people spend their lives looking down.  When you go to a restaurant you often do not see people looking at each other, but instead they sit there looking down at their smart phones.  Basically when you go to anything where people are not required to be actively doing something or to be focused on something else, you find them looking down at their smart phones.

It’s really not surprising. When you combine the ability to communicate instantaneously with access to the internet all in the palm of your hand, that is an incredibly powerful temptation.  Combine endless amounts of reading material, the ability to interact on social media, to watch videos, to play games and you have a black hole in your hand with seemingly unlimited power to suck you in. It’s no wonder why technology has united us in ways never before thought of, more people are lonely and have fewer personal connections than before.  

While we spend so much time looking down, people in the ancient world spent much time looking up.  They didn’t have the desire to be entertained at every moment, and looked up in wonder. The ancient world was far more attuned to the moon, the planets and the stars. I don’t know about you, but apart from the Big and Little Dipper, I can’t name or find anything in the night sky.  I don’t really pay close attention to what phase the moon is in, and I only really notice it on random occasions.   By contrast the ancient world did.  Some of this was for practical reasons. God placed the sun, moon, and stars to help us mark the passage of time. And some of it was for religious reasons since it was very common to think of the heavenly bodies as somehow connected to pagan gods that controlled life. This kind of thinking was everywhere in the first century world in which James wrote.

It is therefore not surprising that James begins our text by writing: “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”  God is described as the “Father of lights.”  He is the Creator of all of things in the heavens and controls them.  James says that there is no variation in God, there is no shadow due to change.  And how can there be? Christ is the light of the world, the light no darkness can overcome. No shadows can block this light. He is eternal, all powerful, all present.

And just as important, He is reliable.  You can count on Him.  And what you can count on Him to do is to give gifts.  Our text says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”  God is the giver of good and perfect gifts.  Good gifts are the benefits that we have here in this world. Perfect gifts are those we expect to have in the life to come.  In these words “good and perfect gifts” He includes all the benefits we have already been given by God and will still receive in heaven and on earth, both here and there.

This is why we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Not only are we praying for God to provide for us, to give us good and perfect gifts, but we pray that God would lead us to realize this and to receive these gifts with thanksgiving. To believe that they are all freely given for the sake of Christ.

Now it is easy to lose sight of this fact and focus on the things themselves.  It is easy to focus on our own actions and think that we can take credit for those good things.  And so James warns about this, “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.”  Our desires are disordered.  Since we don’t fear, love and trust in God above all things, we desire things. We put them first.  This desire conceives and gives birth to sin. And this sin brings forth death because that is what sin always does.  It breeds death, discord, despair.

When you look down, when you look inside, everything is tainted by your sinfulness. What is truly good, right, and salutary cannot come from within us. So instead, salvation comes from the outside.  It comes from above, from God who is Giver of every good and perfect gift.  James says in our text, “Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”

While sin brings forth death, God gives us life by the word of truth.  He gives us life through the Gospel.  The Giver of good gifts gave His Son by sending Him to suffer and die on the cross.  But this is a story about giving life.  And so God gave new life – resurrection life – when he raised Jesus Christ from the dead.  He began in Jesus the resurrection of the Last Day that will be ours when Christ returns. Do not look down in the grave, but look up to the resurrection.

God has given you saving life.  He has begun that new life in you through the work of His Spirit.  As James calls Christians to live in ways that reflect what God has done for them, he says, “Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”  In Holy Baptism God used water and the Word to join you to the saving death of Jesus Christ. The saving Word that joins you to Christ has been implanted in you and has made you a child of God, quilted together into the body of Christ, the Church.  This is a word that you continue to receive as you hear it read and proclaimed.  It is a word that you continue to receive as Christ’s Gospel words are spoken over bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar – as he says given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. The Spirit of Truth which our Lord promised to send works through this word of truth, so that you have been made “a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”  You have been redeemed, and your redemption is the beginning of God’s saving work that will extend to his whole creation.

God’s giving birth by a word is not only intentional, but it has a specific intention: that we given this life might represent all creatures before God. Just one small example, take a look at the quilts adorning our church today. They are wonderful, beautiful, work of the hands of God’s people.  Literally, blood, sweat, and tears are shed to make these quilts. They will be shipped around the world to be used as blankets, beds, comfort, security, love.  God is the source of all goodness. When we do good, therefore, we imitate Him and reflect His light to all the world. Christians give freely because God has first given so freely to us: we are only imitating our Father, growing up into His likeness.

Look up. Look up to Christ, who gives His good gives, leading us to share those gifts with others in need. Look up, for your salvation is drawing near.

Easter 4 2018

So Now for a Little While You Sorrow…                                                                                                   

John 16:16-22

April 22, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

It is Maundy Thursday in the Gospel reading.  In less than 24 hours, Jesus would be dead and buried. St. John includes a fuller glimpse of the entire conversation on this night in which our Lord was betrayed.  Jesus speaks to His disciples of what is to come – of His betrayal, suffering, death, and resurrection.  They were confused by it all.  He is preparing them by placing the cross soon to come in the context of the eternal salvation which is also soon to come.

The disciples do not see it.  Or perhaps better, they do not want to see it.  Like Peter’s rebuke of Jesus’ talk of suffering and death, they do not want to believe that the Kingdom of God must come through pain and suffering.  We don’t want to admit it either.  But according to Jesus, the Kingdom of God will only come through pain and suffering.  God cannot simply erase the sinful past that began in Eden and led up to this present moment.  That past must be paid for, atoned for, and satisfied not with silver or gold or good intent but with Jesus’ own flesh and blood in suffering and death upon the cross.  Only the Word made flesh can answer the mountain of sin and its terrible stepchild of death.  He was born to die and it is only this death that will answer sin with forgiveness, grace, and mercy.

Redemption’s suffering happens in a moment of time but it effects an eternal outcome. Three hours in time on a cross buys an eternity for those who believe in Christ.  A life of suffering on earth endured because you are in Christ will find the reward of eternal joy.  Jesus knows this better than His disciples and better than we know it.  The Kingdom of God is born through the suffering and death of Christ or it will not come at all and we will still be in our sins and subject to death.

The child in us wants to think that what Jesus did makes everything better in an instant.  We want to believe what Jesus did ends suffering and pain for those who believe in Him.  But the Kingdom of God comes in your life in the same way.  Your sufferings do not atone for your sins but because you are in Christ, the world has marked you for suffering and Christ Himself has called you to take up your cross and follow Him.

In other words, the weeping, lament, suffering, and sorrow of this life are not imagined.  These are real.  They hurt.  Jesus knows this.  He does not lie to you.  He does not shield you from this.  He is painfully honest with us.  We live in the world but we are not of the world.  We no longer fit in this world because we have been marked for the Kingdom of God in baptism.  We are odds with values of the world and strangers to the ways of this world.  The pain of this is not imaginary.  It is real.  Jesus Himself wept in the face of death and loss.

But the reality of this suffering and pain does not last.  It is momentary.  It lasts only for this brief mortal life.  And it must give way to the great and eternal joy that God has prepared for those who love Him.  You were redeemed not to have your best life now but for eternity.  You are citizens of heaven in a world that resents this.  You are called to endure, to be patient, to meet the sufferings of this mortal life in confidence of the holy joy that does not end, what God has prepared for you that for now you grasp by faith until the day when you see it face to face.

The life of a believer is no sprint to the finish but a race to the end.  For this reason, our Lord sends His Spirit.  Alone we will not endure.  Tested and tried by sorrows and struggles, defeats and disappointments, and living with the daily regret over sin and its effects will kill us unless the Spirit is at work in that daily repentance and empowering us to fight against the world, the devil, and our own sinful flesh.  So, you fight.  Your fight is not for salvation – Christ fought that fight.  Your fight is to endure in faith, to remain steadfast in confidence that your time is coming when your joy will be full, the birth pangs complete, and Christ is fully formed in you.

Like a woman in labor, this is the fruitful struggle in which the eternal joy of the Kingdom is born in you.  It is not that you forget the pain but that it no longer matters.  So do not lose heart.  Do not judge eternity by this moment of pain.  Do not let this moment of pain determine eternity.  Your time is coming.  It is a little while.  You have sorrow now.  I know it; you know it. But as sure as you have sorrow now, it will not last.  Christ will see you again and your hearts will burst into rejoicing so full that the painful memory has no room to linger.  And this joy is certain.  It is not the “what if” of a dreamer but the “because” of Christ’s death and resurrection.  And no one and nothing can take this joy from you.  “A little while” is nothing in comparison with eternity.  This is what we come to hear when life grows hard, when we grow weary and tired, when the pain is great and we struggle to see the future outcome of our faith.

So people of God, who have learned to rejoice no matter how great their sufferings.  We belong to Christ.  We have the Spirit.  God has given us new birth to the eternal life in which joy and only joy remain.   Christ is risen!  Alleluia.  Alleluia!

*This sermon is adapted from a sermon by Pr. Mark Latham of St. John Lutheran Church, Buhl Idaho

Memorial Service for Joyce Chase

April 10, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

The bible passage from the Gospel according to St. John, the passage that was just read as our Gospel reading, was one that was underlined and marked in Joyce’s Bible.  It recalls the time when Jesus calls His first disciples to follow Him, and their reaction. They didn’t just sit on their duff and watch Jesus, but they got up, followed where He led, and told their family members and friends about that they had found Him of whom the Scriptures testified.

Jesus led Joyce to many different paths in this life.  She was involved in many different aspects within our community. She travelled up until the last years of her earthly life, and her wit and personality continued to be a whirlwind. She had 5 children and numerous grandchildren and even great grandchildren.  I don’t pretend to know the intricacies of her relationships with everyone, and neither should you. She was a complicated woman, headstrong and stubborn at times, loving and caring at others. She was not perfect, there is no doubt about it. She was a sinner. She knew it. She struggled with it. She confessed it. She was forgiven, and now delivered out of the vale of tears and suffering, to struggle no longer.

The last thing that she told me, right after she had received the Lord’s Supper for the last time, was that she wanted her kids to know Jesus and have peace.  She wished that her kids, her family, her friends, who treat each other as brothers ought to, as Simon and Andrew, Philip and Nathanael in our Gospel reading.  We don’t get to hear the family drama of these disciples, but instead, that they told one another of Jesus, made introductions to Jesus, that they followed Him despite the shortcomings and sins of the other disciples.

St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:17-21).

The Lord knows you as surely as He knew Nathanael sitting under the fig tree. He knows what you were feeling when you heard the news of Joyce’s death. He knows what you are feeling now. He knows the sadness, the frustrations, the anger, the loss, the regret, the doubts, the skepticism, the uncertainty.  And it is for this reason that He came. Jesus came into the world to deal with all these things, and more. To take it all upon Himself, to have all your anxieties cast upon Him because He cares for you. To reconcile you to Himself, to reconcile you to one another, and on the great and mighty day of the Lord’s return, to reconcile you to Joyce and all those who die in the faith. Ultimately, He came to die so that death would not have the last word.  But we live, we live in the reality of Easter, of the Resurrection, of Life itself. Peace. Joyce is at peace. Because of Jesus. Peace. The peace of the Lord is yours. Peace in a reconciling with God, be reconciled with one another.

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