Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Have you ever been ripped off before?

Every paid for something and didn’t get what you were expecting?

I recently paid for a stereo system on Facebook marketplace and got ghosted by the seller after I sent him the money.

I’m sure we all have an example of someone pulling a slick one on us at some point.

Most of the time you get scammed for some cash and go on about your life.

Hopefully it wasn’t too much, anyway.

In my case, it was like $70.

Which is just enough to be annoying but not enough to need to file an insurance claim, you know?

But we live in a world where people who want something can be manipulated in really terrible ways.

People suffering from cancer will send their entire paycheck to a televangelist in hopes that he will pray their disease away.

People living in poverty will send massive campaign donations to politicians in hopes that they will make the world easier for them to live in.

See, we all want the same thing: we want peace and security.

We want our basic needs to be met and to live a healthy, untroubled life where we are free to do what we want.

We want peace.

So lots of scummy people will prey on our desire for peace and try to scam us out of our livelihood with false hopes.

But during advent we celebrate a savior who brings peace, and he is the only one we can trust to bring peace.

Anyone or anything else that offers peace is a false shepherd.

We’re going to read a few words from Ezekiel about these false shepherds, and see what he defines as godly peace.

What the Scripture Says

Last week we read from the prophet Jeremiah who lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and watched the people of Israel get taken away into captivity.

One of those people was Ezekiel, who was led captive into Babylon but seemed to continue his prophetic ministry the whole way.

Jeremiah may be called the “weeping prophet” but Ezekiel definitely had his share of troubles, too.

He is starved, forced to cook food over a burning pile of dung, and then loses his wife in one of the raids on the city by the Babylonians.

But Ezekiel had certainly read Jeremiah, and they may have even known each other.

Either way, the Hope Jeremiah proclaimed is the same Hope we see from Ezekiel in this passage.

He is hoping for a God that will restore Israel.

Even as he watches the world around him burn, his wife is killed, and he is taken captive - he has hope that God will not only end the suffering but put it right, and create something better in the ashes.

This is a big, long passage.

And I shortened it a bit, too.

Really, the first part of this chapter gives some important context to what Ezekiel is saying in this passage.

In short, the first half of this chapter is a prophetic condemnation of the shepherds of Israel.

Not the literal people herding sheep, but the spiritual and societal leaders of the nation.

It was their fault, after all, that Israel fell to Babylon after years and years of evil Kings.

This is a huge contrast to the Good Shepherd described in the rest of the passage.

If you’re thinking of the 23rd Psalm, you’re probably on the right track to understanding what this prophecy is imagining.

In taking on the image of the Good Shepherd, God is promising to correct the evil leadership of the nation of Israel.

He is promising these people even as their city is destroyed that their will be a shepherd who will lead the people back home.

This promise sounds a lot like the promise of the exodus, right?

These Israelites are being taken away into captivity and may imagine that this is going to be just like Egypt all over again.

Moses led the Israelites out, and this is a promise for a coming leader who will take the Israelites out of Babylonian captivity and back into their promised land.

But then verse 23 says something strange: God is going to place over them a shepherd, his servant David.

Now if anyone was coming back from the dead to lead Israel out of captivity, it should be Moses, right?

So why David?

Well, in verse 25 starts with God saying he’s going to make a covenant of peace with them.

Ah, okay, we’re talking about Messiah here, aren’t we?

David and Moses are both supposed to come alive in the Messiah who comes to restore Israel.

So what does the restoration of the Messiah look like?

What sort of thing can be hoped for?

First, in verse 11 and 16 we see that this is a shepherd who will search for his sheep: this is describing a God who takes the initiative to rescue those who have gone astray.

Next, in verse 13 we see a Shepherd who brings his sheep out of the wilderness of the nations and into the promised land.

Third, verses 15, 16, and 23 all describe a shepherd tending to his sheep, binding up wounds and strengthening them.

Verses 17 through 22 interject with something else this shepherd will do: he will judge them.

This is still a shepherding task: he’s protecting his sheep from inside attack.

See, the wolves are easy to identify and fend off.

But the goats hiding in the flock are harder to spot.

Part of this protective shepherd’s job is to keep his flock safe from the internal threats of his sheep.

Remember this, because we’ll come back to this later.

The further promise of the shepherd continues in verses 25 and 26: This shepherd will not only repair them and bring them into the promised land, but he will bless them.

Finally, there is the promise in verse 27 that this shepherd will break the bars and rescue them from their slavery.

The reason for all these promises comes in verses 30 and 31: God will restore Israel and do this work as a shepherd because it will show the nations who God is.

It will prove God’s covenant faithfulness to the world, and act as a witness to His power.

He will do this simply because he made this promise to his people.

What this Means

So we are getting this picture of peace for the people of Israel that is probably not what most people imagine when they think of the “Peace of Christmas.”

Because think about it: our idea of Christmas peace is a baby sleeping in a manger.

The Shepherd in this passage is much more powerful than that.

David was a shepherd, and this promised shepherd is identified with David in verse 23.

See, if we left it with just a generic shepherd, we can draw the line between a humble fieldworker and the baby in the manger.

But this is a shepherd-king, one who rules people with all the competence and gentleness of a shepherd with his sheep.

But to these people being taken away into captivity, the shepherd needs to be powerful.

That’s because in this broken world, peace can often only be achieved through violence.

Teddy Roosevelt called it “Big Stick Diplomacy.”

It’s the idea that oftentimes, peace requires a certain level of offensive capability in order to deter those who would take your peace away.

But notice that the power of this shepherd is not used to do violence against Israel’s enemies.

Don’t get me wrong, Babylon eventually gets their comeuppances, but it’s not the Shepherd who does it.

God actually does Justice for the crimes commited against Israel by breaking down Babylon from the inside-out.

The Shepherd is just the one who leads them out of captivity and lead them into this time of peace.

No, his strength as a ruler comes across in the judgement, not against the nations, but against the rams and goats in the midst of Israel.

Once the sheep have been rescued, the Shepherd is one who will create a New Israel made exclusively of those who are of the Flock of God, not those who pretend to be a part of the flock just to abuse and manipulate the people around them.

We know, looking back, that this shepherd was born 600 years later in a manger.

But again we get this issue with our savior because he does not exactly display the kingly power of this Shepherd as he lies in a feed trough.

Jesus doesn’t match up with peoples expectations for this Shepherd, and obviously we are not living in the covenant of peace that Ezekiel was imagining in verse 25.

So what do we wait for?

What sort of peace was Ezekiel hoping for?

It is the peace that only comes when the right person is in-charge.

We have to understand that this shepherd is also a king, he leads his sheep and rules over them.

Peace can only come when someone will the full character of God is ruling with perfect justice.

The only person with the full character of God is God Himself - so until God sits on the throne over his people, there will be no peace.

Here’s the good news though, Jesus being born in the manger shows us a God coming to be with his people - the shepherd actually coming to live among his sheep.

He was enthroned at Calvary and promises to return to fulfill many of the expectations that Ezekiel had.

But most importantly, he opened up his flock to all those who would seek to follow him.

The righteous remnant is no longer just a small group of sheep within the nation of Israel, it is a flock of people from all the nations and peoples of the world.

How We Live it Out

Here, though, is the caution of this passage.

Remember that is starts with this condemnation of Israel’s leaders who failed to shepherd them correctly.

Also remember the judgments that happen in verses 17 through 22. Part of the task of a leader is to root-out threats from within.

See, I think we all want peace.

We want suffering to end and evil to find justice.

When we want this sort of peace, our tendency is to try to find hope in the false leaders of our day.