The Shepherd Himself goes looking

Sermon for Midweek of Easter 2

Ezekiel 34:11-16  +  John 10:1-10

You may have seen in the news that the papal conclave began today, the secretive process for choosing a new pope. The whole world is watching and waiting to see who the next pope will be, and what stances he’ll take, and whether he’ll rescue or further destroy Western Civilization. It’s somewhat ironic that it’s happening this week, as we hear the Scripture readings about Christ the Good Shepherd. Because, of course, the pope claims to be the Chief Shepherd over all Christians on earth, the head, not only of the Roman Catholic Church, but of the Holy Christian Church—as if the Church could have another head besides Christ, as if there could be another chief shepherd over the whole Church besides Christ. For that claim alone, Christians should recognize the papacy as an abomination. And no matter who sits in the chair that they falsely claim to be the chair of Peter, no matter who is chosen, the office of the pope will bring only destruction to Christ’s sheep within the Roman Church. It will only serve to scatter them and drive them away from their true Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. Because, while there are surely many sheep of the Good Shepherd still within the Roman Catholic Church, the office of the papacy, by its very nature, seeks to lead them, not toward the Lord Jesus and His Word, but away from Him.

It’s uncannily similar to the situation of Old Testament Israel at the time of the prophet Ezekiel, who wrote during the early years of the Babylonian captivity. There was no single shepherd or king or prophet or priest who had tried to lead the people of Israel astray. No, but the kings and priests, as a whole, and many false prophets, had thoroughly abandoned the sheep and had become self-serving instead, using their positions to hold onto their power and their possessions. In the verses before the text you heard this evening, the Lord, through Ezekiel, berated those worthless shepherds of Israel, even as Jeremiah had done not long before, because those shepherds had not been working to preach the Word of God to the sheep, had not been seeking the lost, had not been preaching the Law to the secure sinners, or offering the comfort of the Gospel to the fearful and guilt-ridden sheep. They had not been pointing people ahead to the coming of the Messiah. Their ministry had become a business to them, a political role, an institutional position, not at all unlike the ministries that flood the Christian Church today, both in Rome and outside of Rome. Those worthless shepherds had so decimated the Church of Israel spiritually that God had to come in and decimate them politically, too, sending the Babylonians against them, sending Israel into captivity. The sheep, for their part, weren’t innocent in all of it, but the shepherds bore the greater guilt.

And so, with His flock scattered as far as Babylon, largely because of the unfaithfulness of the shepherds, the Lord announced His solution: ‘For thus says the Lord GOD: “Indeed I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out.

Much like the prophet Isaiah, as we saw during our Wednesday evening services last year, the prophet Ezekiel’s prophecies often have a double or a twofold fulfillment. God Himself would intervene in history, first, to bring His people Israel back from captivity in Babylon, back to the land of Israel. God Himself, through rulers whom He would raise up, like Cyrus and Darius and Nehemiah and Ezra, would resettle His people in their land. That was the first fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy.

But it was a minor fulfillment, a stop-gap fulfillment, because the sheep would just go back to their wandering ways, and the new shepherds who would arise in Israel would, for the most part, be just as bad as the old shepherds, so that, by the time of Jesus, God’s evaluation of Israel was that they were like “sheep without a shepherd.”

And so, about 575 years after Ezekiel prophesied, the Lord fulfilled this prophecy in the most direct and personal way possible. He didn’t go looking for His sheep through anyone else. He went looking Himself, in person. He sent His only-begotten Son, God, the Son of God, to Israel.

I’m going to reread the rest of the verses you heard from Ezekiel 34. And, while some things in the text have a first fulfillment in the return from Babylon, we’re going to focus on the second, bigger fulfillment at the time of Christ—and afterward! Listen again to the rest of the text:

As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them in good pasture, and their fold shall be on the high mountains of Israel. There they shall lie down in a good fold and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will feed My flock, and I will make them lie down,” says the Lord GOD. “I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick;

Jesus did all of that during the course of His earthly ministry. He came, as He said, to seek and to save what was lost. He came calling the lost sheep to repentance and offering them a Father’s welcome back into the kingdom of God, to those who were willing to be carried back on Jesus’ shoulders. He fed them with the truth, with the Gospel, with God’s promise of forgiveness through Christ. He treated the broken and the sick, both physically and spiritually, and assured all who came to Him that He would give them eternal life and an eternal inheritance in the kingdom of God.

But notice what Ezekiel said the Lord would also do: but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment. That’s what Jesus did with the scribes and Pharisees. He didn’t physically destroy them. He destroyed them with the sword of His mouth, with His word, as He exposed their hypocrisy, charged them with sin in the sight of God, and assured them that, in the sight of God, they stood already judged.

Ezekiel doesn’t touch on the other part of Christ’s shepherding in this text, how the Shepherd would lay down His life for the sheep, to make atonement for their sins. That was the awful price of their readmittance into God’s favor. But it’s also the very thing the Father sent the Good Shepherd to do, and He did it gladly and willingly for all who were and who would become His precious sheep.

Of course, in this Easter season, we focus less on the suffering and death of Christ and more on His mighty resurrection from the dead. In this Easter season, we focus on how the risen Lord Jesus continues to shepherd His flock through the ministry of the Word. Because it’s still Him doing it, even though He uses flawed and weak men as His mouthpieces. It’s the still the voice of the true Shepherd that you hear when you hear His Gospel purely preached, and His Word rightly explained, and when His words are spoken in connection with His Sacraments. It’s still the Lord God Himself, coming to His sheep who are still in the world, to seek the lost, to comfort the broken and the sick, and to gather His flock of Christians to Himself within His Holy Christian Church.

But there is still a third fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy, just as there was a third fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies. Because, after Jesus is done gathering His sheep throughout the world, the LORD Himself will come again, in person, in glory, to gather His sheep on His right hand and to send all the others to His left.

And among those on His left will be all the false prophets who claimed to be the Chief Shepherd and the Holy Father of all Christians. They fooled many people here on earth, but they could never fool the Good Shepherd as they tried to steal His sheep from Him, nor, in the end, could they fool the true sheep of the Lord Jesus, because, as Jesus said in the Gospel, His sheep know the voice of their true Shepherd, and will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.

Always flee from the voice of the stranger, who presents you with an alternate gospel, and with doctrines of men instead of the teaching of God. You know your Shepherd’s voice. You’ve learned it from His Holy, inspired Scriptures. Keep listening. Keep following. And you can be confident that He knows and cares for each and every one of you, and will never let anyone snatch you from His hand. Amen.