The primary text for today, the 4th Sunday of Easter, is the Epistle lesson from 1 Peter 2. And this 4th Sunday of Easter, as I said, to open the service The title of the sermon today is, For the Sheep. Jesus calls His sheep to be servants, follow Him even if it means suffering, and ultimately brings His sheep. As I've alluded to already, that first part of our reading, not really our Epistle reading, but especially that first part, it has some really practical advice for us today. Something that everyone can take and they can apply in their daily lives as Christian people. And this section of St. Peter's First Epistle is actually about authority. That's the theme of this part of Peter's Epistle. It's about authority and submitting to that authority. So it's not part of the assigned text for today, but actually the preceding verse, right before where the back of your bulletin picks it up on verse 19, is very important, I think, to understanding the context of this text. Again, they didn't ask me, but I would have included that verse in this pericope today. verses 19 and 20, which you have before you. And verse 18 says this, So what is this section of Scripture specifically talking about? It's talking about servants submitting to their masters. That's what verse 18 tells us, and then you see verses 19 and 20, and you're like, okay, that's what it's talking about here. Now, we don't usually use that terminology today, master and servant, but we do have a contemporary, pretty close to equivalent, don't we? We have employer and we have employee. So at this point, you might be thinking a little bit about that. You might be thinking about different bosses that you've had in your life. Maybe you're already thinking about that, but if not, think for a moment about some of the bosses that you've had in your life. Now, is there anyone in here who's never had a boss? Nobody, okay. Now, we have a fairly small sample. I think you're pretty representative. There are very few people who've never had a boss in their life. Now, there are some people, they're self-employed, and that's all they've ever done. You know, they've had their own business, they're self-employed, so they might say, well, I've never had a boss. I've always worked for myself. But, Even in that case in those rare cases where you say well I've always been self-employed, you do have a boss though don't you? You do have a boss and the boss is your customer because your customer is deciding whether they want to spend their hard-earned money for a good or a service that you are providing and if you are not doing a good job at that guess what they're going to do? Your boss is going to fire you and they're going to go somewhere else and spend You've had a boss at some point in your life on the job. So I asked you to think about different bosses you had. Let's start with the positive. Well, maybe right now you're thinking of a particularly good boss that you had in your life. And this person was a good boss because they were fair. They were fair. They provided constructive criticism when you made a mistake and they seemed to generally something helped them make more money, but they saw you as a human being and they took an interest in things that were going on in your life. But maybe perhaps you're thinking right now, particularly of a bad boss that you've had, a horrible boss that you've had at some point in your life. And this person was a horrible boss because they were cold, they were uncaring, they belittled you verbally, And this is probably the most frustrating thing. If you're on a job, no matter what you did, they were never happy. It was never good enough, right? Whatever you did, however hard you tried, this person was always mad about something. They were never happy about you or any of the other employees. That is the kind of boss that you think of take this job and shove it, I ain't working here no more, right? Some of you know that. You know, I'm getting old, I have all these singles, my youngest is now 10 years old and I got in my car last night to go run a couple errands and I was like, oh great, classic country Saturday night song, I turned it on, I was like, oh, You know, we have in the Bible, I just read to you verse 18 about being respectful and honoring towards your boss, your master. And you notice in that verse, there was no escape clause, was there? There was no escape clause that said, honor and respect your employer, your master, if they're nice. But if they're not, you don't have to. It didn't say that, did it? It specifically said in that Bible verse that you're to be submit and you're to be respectful no matter if they're good and gentle or they're unjust. That's what it said. Now, of course, we have it a little bit better today because the text, when you read out verses 19, it talks about the servant being beaten, physically beaten. Now, it probably happened somewhere, but generally today, you might get yelled at. Your bosses are probably gonna beat you up. like in the years past where they're physically gonna beat you. So we have it a little bit better there. We also have the option today, if you don't like your job, if you don't like your boss, what can you do? You're free to go somewhere else, aren't you? Take your talents elsewhere and go work there. But what the scripture is telling us in our day and age is you're free, find another job, but at the same time, as long as you work there, as long as you work at that place of employment and for that boss, the Bible is very clear here. You are to be respectful. You are to be hard working. And then we see in verse 19 that as I talked about with children's sermon, it's usually kind of a mini sermon of what I'm about to tell the adults. What did we talk about there that if we suffer, even at the hands of someone who's a bad boss or a bad person in authority, if we suffer but we still remain respectful and hardworking, this is serving God. This is honoring to God. So yeah, the job and or the boss may stink, but if you are respectfully working hard and you are doing your job, this is still honoring to God. Verse 20 gives us a direct contrast. Verse 20 says, So in other words, if we're bad workers, if we do a bad job, and they let me know it, and you know what? I deserved it because I made a mistake. I did something I wasn't supposed to do. But I can also think of jobs where I didn't do anything wrong, and I still got in trouble, right? You ever been in the military, you know this for sure. One person in the unit messes up, everybody might pay for it. You made your bet like somebody else did, now everybody's in trouble. Those are the hard ones, right? You say, well, I didn't do anything wrong, and you're still getting in trouble. They're blaming you for something you didn't do. Now, you might be asking yourself at this point, what does an idiomist have to do with sheep? I thought this was Good Shepherd Sunday. Well, I'm gonna tell you because the text continues. So at this point, think of this question. As we're relating all of this about masters and employers and being good and respectful workers, lost as a jerk, why are you still being nice to them? Why are you still doing what he or she says? Say, well, as a Christian, I'm called to be respectful and a hard worker. I don't agree with what they're saying or doing, but I'm here to work. That's part of our testimony. But back to sheep. Why do shepherds have sheep shepherds actually own the sheep. They are actually owners of those sheep under their care. And that's the case of God, our Good Shepherd. God effectively owns all of us. He made all of us. He owns us, so to speak. He is the shepherd of the sheep that are His sheep. Now, in an earthly sense, a shepherd Now being a shepherd's not an easy job. You might think of sheep as these cute, cuddly animals, right? Stuffed animals or cartoons, you know. We've all heard the stories about people who've been saying this, especially, don't be a sheep. Don't just follow the crowd. That's the person who just does and thinks like everybody else is doing. The old story of a sheep goes off the cliff, all the other ones will follow because they're just doing what the other sheep are doing. They're not that smart. They're not smart animals. They need a shepherd. But the point here is that the shepherd, he has no sheep to earn a living. So in the same way, when you work for someone else, They're probably not giving you that job for charity, are they? They're giving you that job to make money. So what do you owe your employer? Luther talks about this in the catechism, the table of duties. You owe your employer an honest day's work because there's been an agreement made, right? They are going to give you money and you are gonna do certain things for them to get that money. It's a two-way street. So, not only is being disrespectful and trying to get out of work all the time, not only is that a violation of the fourth commandment of honoring the authority of others, what else is it a violation of? The seventh commandment, thou shalt not steal. Because if your employer's paying you to do something and you're not doing it, you're fudging the hours and all that, that's stealing from your employer. It's their money and you're taking it. So we want to be respectful and honest workers in that position and to those that are in authority over us. So let's look at some of the spiritual elements of this passage as well. So we've seen in a practical sense, we might have times when we're happy at work and we have great bosses, but there also may be times that we really don't like our jobs and we don't feel like we're being treated fairly. And it's in those times when we are not treated justly or kindly, We, guess what, we don't like to hear this, but we might be called to suffer some. There may be a season of suffering. Why? Why, God? This doesn't seem fair. This isn't fair. Well, you know what? It might not be fair. What did Jesus do wrong? Nothing. Nothing. I mean literally nothing. Jesus literally did nothing wrong. He never sinned, not even once. The only perfect man to ever walk the earth. He never sinned. He never did anything wrong. But what happened? of his own people, his own family was not even always supportive of his ministry, and then, of course, he was tried in a Canaanite court, he was beaten to a pulp, and then he was sent to die an agonizing and gruesome death on the cross. If anyone had the right to complain, this isn't fair. I'm not being treated fairly. It was Jesus. What if Jesus had said this? All this really isn't fair. I haven't done anything wrong. I quit. But we chuckle because that's a rhetorical question, isn't it? Because obviously if Jesus had quit because He wasn't being treated fairly, the consequences would be disastrous. They would be very bad for us because that would have meant He wouldn't have suffered and died for our sins. So think about that. The fact is, as Christians, we really shouldn't be surprised when Jesus sees fit to look at us and hand us a cross and say, follow me. We shouldn't really be that surprised by that. Christ Himself never promised a bed of roses for His disciples. In fact, He did the opposite. Guess what He told His disciples? He said, this is going to be hard. This is going to be hard. He told us, then and now, His disciples, that there are going to be rough times staying faithful to the Gospel. People are going to hate you. They are going to persecute you. But guess what? He also said at the same time, Jesus, as our Good Shepherd, He promises, I'm always going He's going to be with us. He doesn't send us out into the world to go in alone. Verse 21 of our reading, For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered, leaving us as an example that we should follow His steps. We walk in the steps of Jesus, and those steps of Jesus aren't always easy. Verses 22 and 23, or what I told you just a bit ago, He did nothing wrong, yet He still suffered, He still carried on, and He completed His mission. And we know what that mission was, right? It was to save His sheep by dying for them. He would be the one, as St. John 10 proclaimed to us, that came to give, what, life? into heaven to eternal salvation. And He did this for His sheep by going to the cross. Verse 24, 24. 24. 24. of the disease that is 100% fatal every single time. That is sin, because sin is a disease So we know Jesus suffered very immense physical pain. But it wasn't only physical pain that Jesus suffered going to the cross. but the pastor asked this question in the sermon I'll be asking today. Which person at any given point in history had the most sin? Which person in history had the most sin? Right, well, many people that day were thinking of people like maybe Hitler. I mean, it'd be pretty hard to get more sinful than Hitler, right? Jews, maybe it was Stalin. You know, Stalin killed more people than Hitler. He was in power longer. He killed maybe 20 million people. We don't even really know. It's gotta be Stalin. Or maybe a serial killer. Maybe like Jeffrey Dahmer. I mean, that guy, he was messed up. He was pretty bad. But I think I heard somebody say the answer out there. The answer to that question, shockingly, of the person who had the most sin in the history of the world Before someone pulls this out of context, especially since this is going on the internet, let me restate this to be clear. Let me restate this to be clear. Jesus never wants sin, just like I said earlier. He never wants sin. However, when He went to the cross, what had Jesus done? He had took every sin of every person who ever lived on Himself. The Bible puts it this way, He who knew no sin became sin for us. Every sin, Jesus took that on Himself and took it to the cross. He bore that weight of a sinful world. The Good Shepherd died for the sheep. God Himself taking on every single wicked act, every single wicked thought, every single wicked desire. The sinless one at that moment buried more sin than the most wicked person in history. This was done the inspiration of the Holy Spirit makes it so personal as he begins verse 25, the last verse of that reading there. How does that verse begin? It begins by saying, for you, for you. So that means for me and for each and every one of you. He makes it so personal there. Jesus did all this for you, fill in the blank with your name there. How have we sheep been behaving? Have we deserved it? No. We are the sheep that have not shown the proper devotion and gratitude to the Shepherd who has cared for us. We are those sheep that have stubbornly gone the opposite direction than what God has commanded us. so putrid that it is wafted up to the heavens. And we are those sheep that have done so many stupid things. And we are those sheep that have easily fallen victim to all the robbers and the wolves that are in sheep's clothing. Yeah, that's us sheep. But he did it for us. Yes, for you, for you. Shepherd didn't give up on us. He didn't throw up his hands and say, I don't get paid enough for this. That's not how Jesus reacted. Again, if anyone had justification to say something like that, Jesus did, but that's not what he did. There's that beloved parable where what does Jesus go out and do? He goes out and finds that lost sheep, doesn't he? He's not even content with, well, I've got 99 or 100 sheep, it's pretty good odds. No, it says Jesus is a good shepherd. He goes out and he finds that lost sheep and he carries the sheep back to the sheepfold. Even those that were part of the sheepfold that have wandered away. For the child that was raised in the church, but has drifted away into the world, For the once-faithful church member who has fallen victim to that popular philosophy of our times that says, you don't have to go to church to be a Christian, so why go? And for the lost sheep who have sinned in such a way that they have slumped off from the church in shame because they have falsely believed that what they have done is so horrible that God can't forgive them. It is for all of those lost sheep, and so many more. The Good Shepherd has bought and sought the lost sheep. He brings the straying sheep back to the sheepfold. And Jesus is our Good Shepherd. As the Bible says there, He is the overseer of our souls. The King James says, Bishop of our souls. These are the New Testament words that are the sexual equivalent of what we call a pastor today. What does pastor mean? A pastor means shepherd. them with the Word of God. So yes, you've got a pastor here in your local church. And anyone out there listening, hopefully you have a local church and you have a pastor there. But ultimately, us pastors here in the local church, we are under-shepherds. We are under-shepherds to the Good Shepherd, who is Jesus Christ. Who is the ultimate pastor? It's Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate shepherd, the ultimate pastor. because He is the Shepherd who is willing to and who did it. He didn't just say He would do it. He put His money where His mouth is, so to speak, and He did it. He died for the sheep. He died for the sheep. He bore our sins on the tree, and He defeated death, and He emerged from that tomb to live evermore. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!