“Woe to the shepherds who are
destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!” declares the LORD.
Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of
One
of our favorite pictures is found in Psalm 23, where the LORD is called our
Shepherd. It is a beautiful picture
because the shepherd is one who feeds and cares for the flock and leads them
beside quiet waters. Today,
however is Christ the King Sunday. The
picture of a King usually brings to mind majesty and power and strength. This is a good thing too, especially when you
consider the alternatives.
The Picture of the LORD
as King is Comforting to His Kingdom
I.
Consider the Kings of
When
Jeremiah wrote these words the kings of
The
other shepherds - the officials and priests of
What
happened as a result of this bad leadership?
Jeremiah declares, you have
scattered my flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them. The Israelites were just plain out of
control.
Jeremiah 7:31 They have built the high
places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire something I did not command, nor did it enter
my mind.
Jeremiah 11:13 You have as many gods as
you have towns, O Judah; and the altars you have set up to burn incense to that
shameful god Baal are as many as the streets of Jerusalem.' (NIV)
Jeremiah 34:14,16 `Every
seventh year each of you must free any fellow Hebrew who has sold himself to
you. Your fathers, however, did not
listen to me or pay attention to me. But now you have turned around and
profaned my name; each of you has taken back the male and female slaves you had
set free to go where they wished. You have forced them to become your slaves
again. (NIV)
Therefore, driven by greed, lust, and a desire
to find the “right god”, God compared them to animals in heat.
Jeremiah 2:23‑24 See how you behaved
in the valley; consider what you have done. You are a swift she‑camel
running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the
wind in her craving– in her heat who can restrain her? Any males that pursue
her need not tire themselves; at mating time they will find her.
II. Consider the response of God
This
was no light thing. Imagine if you hired
a young teenage lady to babysit your children while
you are out of town at a funeral and can’t be reached. She had been trustworthy and responsible in
the past. But in recent months she got
mixed up with a real loser. While you
were gone, she decided to invite her twenty four year old boyfriend over. Instead of watching your kids, she goes in
the basement and makes out with him and does who knows what else for a few
hours. What is worse is that this guy is
a registered sex offender. Not only does
he teach your kids how to cuss like a sailor, he also decides to play doctor
with them. When your neighbor sees
what’s going on, he comes over and tells you to get that guy out of there. But since she “loves him” and “trusts him,”
she sees no need to do anything. Even
though the house is trashed and the kids are getting hurt, she excuses it with
the fact that they are being exposed to the “real world.” Finally, your neighbor is able to get a hold
of you and tells you what is happening.
How would you feel about such a situation? Obviously you’d be angry as you could be and
get home ASAP. These are your children
that are supposed to be taken care of!
Imagine
now how God feels about how the children of our society are being raised. How many children even know the words to the
Lord’s Prayer or the doctrine of the Trinity?
If you were to ask for three miracles of Jesus - how many would be able
to do so? If you were to ask what
Christmas is about, how many would answer “the birth of Christ”? What is the result? We live in a society of self centered
children. If they want sex, they go for
it. If they want new i-pods
or cars, their mommies and daddies give them it. The only religion they are taught is that
they can do anything they set their minds to.
So we have a society of Americans who live under the American ideal - be
all that you can be - running after money, sports and popularity. In the meantime, God is left in the
background. Violence is on the uprise. Sexual
disease is rampant. Greed is king. Popularity is all consuming.
The
saddest fact is that this is what is happening to our own children and
grandchildren! How many of you know your
grandchildren are not going to worship?
How many of you know members are openly living in rebellion against what
God says about worship and marriage? How
many of you allow your children to watch just plain smut with you by their
side? When they come to visit you, you
smile and feed them dinner and talk about the Chiefs. But religion or faith or open sins are not
mentioned, because you know it will just cause a fight.
How
do you imagine God feels as He sees your family members chasing after this
fantasy and the next while you sit back and try to convince yourself that all
you can do is pray? Are you in effect
acting like the teenage girl? These are
not just your kids to do what you want with.
These are God’s kids that He has put under YOUR care. When Jesus went through the towns and
villages, he lamented that they were “harassed
and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Mark
God
doesn’t just sit in the heavens and cry, however. He also gets angry. He sends judgment. Three times He said to Jeremiah, “do not pray”
for this people. In Jeremiah 15:1-2 the
LORD said to Jeremiah: “Even if Moses
and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people.
Send them away from my presence! Let them go!”
And if they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ tell them, ‘This
is what the LORD says: “‘Those destined for death, to death; those for the
sword, to the sword; those for starvation, to starvation; those for captivity,
to captivity.’ God didn’t just hold
the people as innocent victims of their shepherds. He also held them accountable. God doesn’t just cry and do nothing about
rebellion. He does something about it.
III. Consider how God deals with it
Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of
This
is the way God pictures Judgment Day.
Jesus - the King of the Universe - will come in the clouds suddenly to
visit His people. If the Israelites
thought it was scary when Moses came down from
Yet
the visit that Jeremiah speaks of is the complete opposite of this. Instead of abandoning His people and throwing
them all into hell, something strange is predicted. First of all, Jeremiah says, “I myself will gather the remnant of my
flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them
back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number. I
will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be
afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the LORD. Instead of punishing the flock, He gathers the
flock that has abandoned Him and brings them back to pasture! He increases their number! Then He places faithful shepherds over them
who will tend them. What is the
result? Instead of being afraid and
terrified, they will be fearless and comforted.
What is more is that all of them will be there!
Think
of the magnitude of this statement. At
this point in the history of the Israelites the northern kingdom of
“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will raise
up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is
just and right in the land. In his days
In a miracle of miracles, the LORD predicts that
He Himself will put on the crown and establish this justice, righteousness and
peace in the land. After the Israelites
were scattered God sent Nehemiah and Ezra to lead three returns to the Promised
Land. There hundreds of years later, in
the town of
Yet
His ruling went way beyond just healing people and speaking mercifully to
them. The King entered the battle field
of sin, death and hell itself. Instead
of being crowned with a King’s crown of gold, He was crowned with a criminal’s
crown of thorns. Instead of having a
scepter of wood in His hand, the righteous Branch had his hands and feet nailed
to a tree. Even though the sign above
Him read, “King of the Jews,” He looked nothing like it. The King on the cross seems like a dreamer, a
delusional man who can’t wake up from reality.
But the Holy Spirit works through His words to reveal that this indeed
is our King hanging on that cross. Why
is He hanging there? The God who
threatened hell on the lazy parents, pastors, and false prophets would fulfill
our hell on the cross. It was only
through this suffering and death of the LORD on the cross that our sins would
be paid for. In Jesus’ resurrection God
then declared to the world that the King had conquered sin, death, and
hell. So God’s Word declares in 2
Corinthians 5:21, “God made him who had
no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of
God.” Peter also says in 1 Peter
3:18, “Christ died for sins once for
all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” The role of a King was to protect His people
- no matter who they were. The King came
and protected His people from His own wrath by becoming the punishment for
them. Jeremiah declares this King would
be called, “the LORD Our Righteousness.”
IV. Trust in the King as your
righteousness
The
picture drawn in Jeremiah is completely opposite as to what happened in the
history of the Israelites. In their
early history requested to have a king so they could be like all of the nations
around them. It was a rejection of the
leadership God had given them. As a
judgment on them, God gave them a king by the name of Saul. His leadership was filled with taxation,
attempted murder, and a complete loss of control. From there on in a majority of the kings of Northern and Southern Israel ended up abusing
God’s people in the years to come; all partly a result of their own sins. Yet in today’s text God acts without the
request of the Israelites. He gives them
a King that they didn’t deserve. And who
is this King? It is Himself! What a strange King He is! Instead of ruling in a palace - He rules in a
heart. Instead of coming in power, He
comes in weakness. Instead of
establishing His kingdom by powerful destruction, He establishes it through
powerless suffering.
Ironically
it is the cross that fulfills all of the predictions of Jeremiah. Here we stand, feeling threatened by our poor
shepherding skills. We feel like running
from the King knowing that these condemnations of bad shepherding belong on
us. The coming of the King terrifies us
because of how rotten of shepherds we have been! But then we hear why the King came to earth
through the branch of David. Instead of
bringing judgment, He became the judgment.
Like a Good Shepherd the King says to you, “don’t run from me. Run to me. Come
hiding in the shadow of my cross. Let
the blood pour from my side onto your head and your heart. As the blood pours over your head and into
your mouth - it covers you in me! Don’t
you see? I am not a King that has come
to destroy you. I am a King who has come
to save you and gather you together - through my blood.” So we stand under His blood at baptism. We fill ourselves with His blood in the
Supper. We hear the wonderful promise of
our King calling to us, “given FOR YOU.
Shed FOR YOU.” When you then can
say, “yes, the LORD is my King - He is My
righteousness,” then you experience the powerful gathering of the King. Then you find yourself living in safety; even
in the midst of your enemies. You find a
hidden fellowship and happiness when you are gathered together with fellow
Christians. Through faith in HIS
righteousness, you realize that when this King comes again He will not come to
condemn you. He will come to rescue you
from this world. You realize that even
if the devil persecutes you and personally were to put you to death on this
earth, you would still go to heaven.
Why? Because the King promises
you that He already came to provide YOUR righteousness - free of charge. When you realize who this King is and what He
gives you, then you realize that the King has
established residence in your heart. He
is ruling in you in a hidden and yet a powerful way,
and you love it.
When
someone says to you, “never mind, I’ll do it myself,” it usually isn’t a good
thing. It usually means you’ve messed up
or complained about doing something, so they are going to do it as a judgment
on your own bad behavior. The shepherds
over