I Will Build My Church: The Shepherd and His Sheep

Big Idea

Tension: Why shouldn’t we look down on other Christians?

Resolution: Jesus has gone into the far country to find them.

Exegetical Idea: Jesus says that we ought not to despise other Christians because Jesus has gone to find them.

Theological Idea: The church should receive all Christians because they are those who Christ has gone to save.

Homiletical Idea: Because Christ has brought us into the presence of the Father, we ought to welcome others into our presence.

Big Idea: The Shepherd saves lost sheep to be part of his flock.

Introduction: Big Sheep

Big Idea Reveal

W

What we’re saved from

“Gone astray” - One of the most revolutionary things about this whole passage is the definition of what it means to be lost. Look there, where it says “gone astray.” That word is actually the same word that is used to describe someone who is “deceived.” And so the idea is not just of a sheep who takes a wrong turn. The idea is of a sheep who is with his flock, and he sees something or is enticed by something and wanders away. It is the picture of a sheep who prefers the fruits of the wild to the grazing of the shepherd. It is the picture of the sheep who has said to the shepherd, “I can find something better on my own.” It is the idea of the sheep who doubts that the shepherd really does lead him through the valley of the shadow of death. He makes a decision and says, “What is out there is better than what is in here.” Even today, shepherds report that sheep quickly find the weaknesses in any kind of fence and will bust out easily.

Isn’t this a great way to describe sin? We go astray because we start to choose the world over God. We choose teh pleasures of sin over the pleasures of serving God. We put other things in the place of God in our lives. We say to God, “God, what you have given me is not enough for me." We, as one great Theologian likes to say, “Scorn his generosity.” We say, “This is not a good place go graze. I will go and find my own place. I can find something better to graze in on my own.”

Wanders away from safety - so instead of being safe in the flock, he wanders away. instead of being safe with the shepherd he wanders away. WHile sheep are not stupid animals as they are often portrayed, they are also relatively defenseless animals. Domestic sheep, even at the time of Christ, were smaller than the wild animals. They do nto have long horns like the wild sheep do. They startle easily. They are favorite prey for Carnivores of every kind. So when the sheep stray away from their flock, they leave every measure of safety.

And isn’t this so true of sin? We think that it will be better than Jesus, but it leads us into danger. There is a reason that says that the fruit of sin is death. It is because when we follow our own sin it ends in destruction. It’s kind of funny, when we live self-centered lives, it ends in isolation. When we walk away from God, we walk away from all the blessings of God as well.

The poet Dante identified seven cardinal failings or sins. These are, in order of bad to worst: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Most of these, he argued in the Purgatorio, happen as a result of good impulses gone wrong.

“The poet Dante identified seven cardinal failings or sins. These are, in order of bad to worst: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Most of these, he argued in the Purgatorio, happen as a result of good impulses gone wrong. We can look at these same misdirected impulses as they happen in the business world. These are the human weaknesses and temptations that can derail your momentum, disrupt your progress, or even destroy your career.” - Kevin Daum (businessman)

We can look at these same misdirected impulses as they happen in the business world. These are the human weaknesses and temptations that can derail your momentum, disrupt your progress, or even destroy your career.

Why don’t the sheep come home? - Now, here is what I was very interested to learn this week. Sheep have a very good sense of memory. So, often sheep might wander and come back. The problem is not that a sheep is grazing a little ways away from the rest of the herd. That’s not the kind of sheep that this is talking about. That kind of sheep is a sheep called an outlier. The sheep this is talking about is the sheep that grazes. And typically, when a sheep wanders and does not come back, it is not able to find its way back because something is wrong. When sheep fall down, they can’t get themselves back up. When a sheep is chased away by a predator it is too afraid to return. The sheep that is truly lost is the sheep that cannot and will not come home.

This is why says that we are “dead” in our sins. Dead things don’t move. Dead things don’t breathe. Dead things don’t live. And dead things most certainly do not seek. Listen, to be lost means that we are lost and we cannot find our way home. We cannot seek God, we cannot find him. He must seek us and he must find us.

This is what it means to be lost, isn’t it? To be lost is to wander away from Christ. It is to make a decision that what is out there is better than what is in here. It is to say that the shepherd does not have your best intentions at heart. It is to trade what is out there for what is in here. But when we do that, when we would rather have sin than Christ, when we choose sin over God, then we lose his safety. Because having God in our lives provides stability. It is not that he does not allow suffering in our life. It is that walking with him gives us the strength to withstand suffering in our lives. And when we do that, when we walk away from God, when we walk away from teh safety of the flock, we become so damaged that we can’t get back home on our own. This is the picture of sin that this passage gives us, of a sheep with a broken leg, bleating on the side of a mountain, our voice muted by the still, windless air. We are totally without hope in the world. A lost sheep is a sheep that chose the enticement of sin rather than the joy of God, a sheep that has opened himself up to the damage of sin, and a sheep that cannot find his way home. This is one of the reasons that hte metaphor of sheep is so great. In fact, I love , a verse we should all memorize, says: all we like sheep have gone astray, every one to our own way.

This tells us

How we’re saved

but this passage does not just tell us what it means that we are lost, it is the passage that tells us how we get saved.

The tone of foolishness - The first thing I think that we can notice is that this is a little strange to us. Right, what shepherd in his right mind would leave his ninety-nine sheep alone to go find a sheep? What shepherd in his right mind would rejoice more that he found one lost sheep than the shepherd that had kept ninety-nine? It seems a little incongruous, uneven, disjointed. The reason is that Matthew wants to remind us that the gospel is somewhat foolish. In fact, there is something about the gospel which will never make sense to our sensibilities. What kind of God in his right mind would send his Son to die on the cross for us, for sinners, for sheep? I mean, here we are, we say, “i would rather go out and find something else to eat than what’s in here, and not only that but I’m going to leave the safety of the herd ,and I”m going to go break my leg or fall on my back in some canyon somewhere else.” What kind of shepherd would go out and seek such troublesome sheep? Most of us would leave such sheep in their own devices. But, God, in his wisdom and in his own glory, chose to save us. This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of man.

Lays down his life for the sheep - Now, a number of us this Summer are reading through the NT in 90 days. THe frist four books of the new testaments are called “gospels,” they are “theological biographies” of Jesus. One of the things that can be very rewarding as we’re reading the gospels is to compare passages that sound familiar in the gospels. Because when we do that, a. We find that they are in basic agreement, but b. they all draw particular things about it out. And there is a very similar passage to this, although it is a little longer, in . And one fo the things that John really emphasizes as he is talkign about the sheep is that the shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. This is why he says in , , … John really wants us to understand that the Shepherd sacrifices his life for teh sheep. And what he is referring to there is this that tJesus Christ goes to teh cross to be the sacrifice for our sins. He bears the punishment we should have born. He is punished for the sins we should have been punished for. He is killed for our crimes. He pays our debts. He absorbs the wrath of God against us like a sponge. Nobody can come to the Father except through him, he is the way, the truth and the life. NOw, Matthew would not disagree wiht any of that. In fact, Matthew in his gospel gives picture after picture of Christ dying in the place of sinners on the cross. So Matthew agrees with all of that. But Matthew wants to emphasize somethign different here. So what is it that Matthew wants to emphasize? Well he wants to emphasize a few things.

First, the will of the Father: First, Matthew wants to emphasize for all his readers that this is the Father’s will. He wants us to understand that the Father desires to save us. Now, for some of us, that is a little weird, right? Because we can’t imagine having a Father that actually wants us around. But this is what it says. that the Father wants us with him. Now, this isn’t because tehre is anything intrinsic in us. There is nothing in us which compels God to say, “Oh, I just have to have Matt, I just have to have...” No. But God, in his grace says, “I want him.” If you ask God why he loves us, the pure, unadulterated answer is grace. He chooses to love us purely because he is love. And God’s love is generous, he loves to share it with us.

The joy of the Son

The joy of the Son: Not only that, but saving his people gives Jesus joy. Like Jesus says here that he gets more joy out of bringing home the lost than just about anything else. Can you believe that? That Jesus was born of woman, was tempted and tried, spent 3 years with disciples who were just about as bright as a burned out light bulb, was betrayed by his closest friends, was scourged, mocked, and spit on, and was nailed to a Roman cross and forsaken by God the Father. Why? All for the joy set before him. This is what says.... Now, let me ask this question. What about this brings joy to the Son? What about bringing the lost home brings the Son such joy? Well, two thigns. First, Jesus loves to see those who are lost in their own sin find freedom and forgiveness. He loves to see them clothed with his righteousness. ANd he loves to see them renewed by his life. He loves to make them new. This is why it says that he rejoices “over it.” But, the other reason he rejoices over it because he is accomplishing the Father’s will. This is what . Here is the great joy of the Son, that in saving us, he is doing the will of the Father. Do you believe that, that through the gospel, we are caught up into this relationship of love between the Father and the Son. Where the Father lavishes on the Son his great love, and the Son responds to teh Father in perfect obedience. And that is where our salvation comes from.

He comes out and finds us : But this passage emphasizes one more thing. We do not come home on our own. The Father comes out and finds us. This is what it says right here in 13. The Son goes out in search of us and finds us. This is offensive to us. Because we like to think that we go out and find God, that we come to our senses and get hold of God, that we track him down. But the reality that this passage says is that he comes out and finds us, that he brings us to our senses, that he takes hold of us. We like to think that we chose him, but this says he chose us. We like to think that we love him, but this passage says he loved us. We like to think that we found him, but this passage says that he loved us. This is what , … Here is the amazing news of this passage that the Good shepherd finds the lost sheep. The lost sheep like to think they find the shepherd, but the shepherd is the one who finds the sheep.

But this passage doesn’t just tell us what we’re saved from, and how we’re saved, but it tells us what we’re saved to.

What we’re saved to

Saved to God: The first thing that this tells us is that we are saved to God the Father. Look at what it says in vs. 10, and vs 14. It says in vs. 10 that our “heavenly angels always see the face of the heavenly Father.” Now, some people maybe will say that this implies that we have guardian angels who are always watching over us. That really is not what this is saying. Because guardian angels are supposed to be here guarding me. And this says that I have an angel in teh Lord’s presence. So it’s not talking about guardian angels. So what is i ttalking about? Well, it’s not really clear exactly what this means. In some sense, the angels are representing us in God’s presence. Even after studying this for hours and hours this week, I don’t really know how to make sense of that and I haven’t really found a good explanation of it. Now, while its exact meaning isn’t clear, it’s importance is clear. What this says is that, in some sense, every person is represented before teh heavenly Father. Let me say it like this, one of the great distinctive teachings of the gospel of Matthew is that we have the same Father that the Son does. His Father is our Father. The Son purchases us with his blood and brings us into the presence of the heavenly Father. Here is what you need to know, when Jesus saves you, he brings you into the presence of God the Father, and you are never ever ever far from his mind. That the Father never stops thinking about his children. He never has to run away from them. he never just “needs some space. No, the Father always has us on his mind.

Work of Evangelism: What this means is that we as a church ought to do everything we can to bring people to the Father. We ought to always be identifying people in our lives who do not know Jesus. We should seek and pray and look for opportunities to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. We want to always be trying to help people come to a relationship with the Father.

Saved to the each other: But there is something else that this passage teaches us about what it means to be saved. It means that we are saved to the Father, and that we are saved to one another. One of the misconceptions about sheep is that they’re stupid animals. THat’s kind of hte stereotypical saying about sheep, is that they’re just stupid animals who don’t understand anything. But that’s actually not true. In fact, sheep are the smartest livestock animal. They can distinguish between different human faces. They remember things for a long time. Sheep are actually quite intelligent. Why they seem stupid to us is because sheep very rarely do anything alone. That’s the reason that a straying sheep is so strange. Because sheep are always with each other. They are social animals. They follow each other everywhere. This is, among other reasons, why Jesus calls us sheep. Because the idea of a solitary sheep is an oxymoron. Sheep belong to one another. And Jesus says, in the same way sheep love one another, and receive one another, you should accept one another and receive one another. Look at what it says in vs. 10. It says, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones.” That word means to have little regard for. Listen, Jesus says, in teh same way that the Father has accepted you, you should accept one another.

We are saved to one another: But we also need to recognize that we are saved to one another. The church Father Cyprian says that “He cannot have God as Father who does not have the church as mother.” To follow Jesus, you have to be part of his church. To have him as shepherd, you must be part of his flock. To let him lead you, you have to become part of the church. Part of the reason that we are always encouraging you to be more consistent in your attendance on sunday morning, and encouraging you to join growth groups, and encouraging you to get involved here in church, is because if you want Jesus to be your shepherd, you need to be around other sheep. This is why I absolutely hate missing Sunday mornings, and why even when I’m out of town, I still go to churches wherever I’m out of town. Because to be a follower of Jesus means we need to be part of his people.

Valuing Church Membership: As we have been saying this summer, this is what church membership is all about. it’s about recognizing, “Hey I am part of God’s flock here. We are trying to obey him and to seek him and to follow him. We are trying to be follow one another as we follow Christ.

Help find straying sheep: But we also want to, when we see our other friends going astray, try to bring them back home. We want to help other sheep who are starting to wander off come back home. Now, how exactly we do that, that’s the topic for next week.

Learning from other sheep

Big Idea: The Shepherd saves the sheep to be part of his flock.

Work of Evangelism: What this means is that we as a church ought to do everything we can to