Please turn back in your Bibles to the book of Ezekiel chapter 34. Ezekiel chapter 34, and I'll begin by reading one verse back in chapter 33, chapter 33, verse 21. And we read there, now it came about in the 12th year of our exile, on the 5th of the 10th month, that the refugees from Jerusalem came to me saying, the city, the city of Jerusalem has been taken. And then we'll read chapter 34 and verse one, where Ezekiel says, then the word of the Lord came to me. And then the passage which will be the subject of our sermon this morning in verses 11 through 16. Verse 11, for thus says the Lord God. Behold, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out as a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep. So I will care for my sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the streams and in all the inhabited places of the land. And I will feed them in a good pasture and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down in good grazing ground, and they will feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will feed my flock, and I will lead them to rest, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost and bring back the scattered, bind them up, bind up the broken, and strengthen the sick. But the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment. Ezekiel chapter 34 marks a great change in the tone of Ezekiel's prophecy. And it is a change from words of judgment and destruction to words of mercy, grace, and deliverance. In chapters 1 through 24, Ezekiel has been prophesying of the judgment to come in different ways upon the nation of Israel for their many sins, especially their sins of idolatry in God's temple. And then in chapters 25 through 33, he has spoken of judgments on the surrounding nations, the nations that surround Israel. But then after those declarations of judgment and coming destruction now in this chapter and in the chapters that follow, there is this great change and he now begins to speak of God's mercy and his deliverance. And this change in tone from judgment to mercy is consistent with the Lord's character because he is a God of mercy. And he is slow to anger and judgment is his strange design. He would much rather send mercy and kindness and salvation to the human race. If we were to give a title to the different chapters here, we could call Ezekiel chapter 34 the salvation of Jehovah's flock. Chapter 35 is the restoration of Jehovah's land. Chapter 36 is the restoration of Jehovah's honor. And chapter 37 is the resurrection of Jehovah's people. Ezekiel lived in the time of the Babylonian captivity. The year was 597 BC. He was taken from the city of Jerusalem, and he became an exile in Babylon, and he was now among his fellow Jewish exiles at the River Chabar. And for 12 years in Babylon, Ezekiel had been prophesying of the coming judgment of God upon the city of Jerusalem back in Israel. But the false prophets, even the false prophets in Babylon were saying that Ezekiel's prophecies were not true. Jerusalem was the chosen city of God, and it was the place of Solomon's temple, and everything would be fine, the false prophets were saying. The Lord would never bring a judgment upon that city, and the captivity will be short, and we will soon be able to return. But as we read in chapter 33 and verse 21, the refugees came from the city of Jerusalem and they came with one message that the city has been taken. King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian armies had come down and destroyed the land and the city and the temple of Jerusalem. Everything that Ezekiel had been saying was true, and it was all proof that he was God's true prophet. The nation destroyed, the city, the temple all burned with fire. And so now the question was, is there any hope for the people of God? Will there be any future for them, any restoration? And what will come to them? And that's what now Ezekiel begins to tell them in chapter 34, the word of the Lord came to me, he says in verse one, and just as everything that he said concerning judgment was true, so now everything concerning God's mercy and his deliverance will be true as well. Ezekiel chapter 34 is pastoral, pastoral meaning that it is a chapter in which we hear of shepherds and their sheep, which is a very common theme in the Bible. The chapter begins here in verses one through 10, as we read earlier, with condemnation upon the false shepherds of Israel who were the leaders of the people. They were the kings, they were the princes, the priests, and the false prophets. And they had done harm to the sheep who were the common people. They had oppressed them. They had robbed them. They had used them for their own selfish gain. They did not care for the welfare of the people so long as they could make a profit from them. And they were the ones that led the people into so many sins and into the sins of idolatry. And all of this had brought the judgment on the nation of Israel. We see how Ezekiel speaks of them here in verses 2 through 4. He says in verse 2, son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to those shepherds, thus says the Lord God, woe shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves. Should not the shepherds feed the flock? You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool. You slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock. Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, nor the diseased you have not, and the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost, but with force and with severity you have dominated them. And the result of all of this is found in the beginning of verse five, where he says, and they were scattered for lack of a shepherd, which means that the people were scattered from Israel into captivity among all the nations. But then after the failures. Of these selfish human shepherds, Beginning in verses 11 through 16, the Lord promises that he will be a divine shepherd. He will be the good shepherd. He will come and he will deliver and he will restore his people. And as is the nature of Old Testament prophecy. There is not just one, but there are multiple fulfillments of these promises which we read of here this morning. The first is when the Lord delivered his people from the Babylonian captivity and restored them to the land of Israel, and that took place beginning in 538 BC. But then there is a second fulfillment of these verses, which takes place in the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, where he is the Good Shepherd, and he looks back himself upon this very passage in Ezekiel, and the New Testament declares him to be the fulfillment of these things. And then we may say there is a final ultimate, even an eternal fulfillment of this passage when Christ returns from heaven and he becomes the good shepherd, the eternal shepherd of his sheep and brings them into his eternal kingdom. So we look at the passage verses 11 through 16 this morning in this light as being fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the good shepherd. Before we come to him as the Good Shepherd, there are two things which we need to say. And the first is that the sheep have all been lost. The sheep have all been lost. This is what is meant in the beginning of verse 5, where he says, and they were scattered. And then we read two times down in verse 12 of his scattered sheep. He is among his scattered sheep, and at the end of verse 12, they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. And then down in the beginning of verse 16, he says, he speaks of them as lost. When sheep are scattered, they are lost. When they are lost, they wander aimlessly. They are weak, they are vulnerable. They are subject to all kinds of dangers. They wander hungry and thirsty. And they are caught in briars and thorn bushes. And they find themselves in filthy, muddy pits. And they have no way in themselves of recovering themselves. And when sheep wander, they do not know how to return back to their shepherd. This is what has happened to every one of us here this morning spiritually. It was indeed, as he says at the end of verse 12, it was a cloudy and a gloomy, a dark day when our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell into sin in the Garden of Eden. And the result of their sin is that their sin has been passed on to all of us. And so that we are all scattered and lost from God. We have all been born into this world. We are alienated. We are separated from Him. We have been cast out of the presence of God, and we have all, by nature, we have lost the knowledge of God. We have no relationship with Him. Our minds have been darkened. We have been blinded. Our souls are hungry and thirsty after truth, but we have no way of knowing where to find the truth. and we have no way in ourselves of returning to our God. Our danger is very great because we are really headed for an eternal destruction and we are headed where we will be lost forever under the judgment of God. Isaiah says this, all of us like sheep have gone astray. Each one of us has turned to his own way. So the people of Israel, they were scattered and lost among the nations of that day, but we have all been scattered and lost from the knowledge of God among all the peoples of the earth. We are under the power of sin. We are under the darkness of the devil's kingdom. We are all lost by nature. The second thing we want to see is that all the sheep belong to Jesus. The sheep belong to him. We notice in this passage that many times the sheep are spoken of as my sheep. We see it in the beginning in verse 11. He says, behold, I myself will search for my sheep. And then again in the middle of verse 12, He refers to his people as my sheep. And in different verses around this, we see over and again that we are referred to as my sheep and my flock. And what this means is that the father has given his people to his beloved son, Jesus, as his sheep. They are not just any sheep. They are my sheep, says Jesus. My father has given them to me is what he says in John chapter 10. He speaks of his sheep in this way. My sheep, my sheep, they have been given to me by my father in eternity in his sovereign election of them. And they are now my possession. And the father has given them to me. But they are lost sheep. They are my sheep, says Jesus, but they are lost sheep. They are mine, but they are scattered from God. They are under the power of their sin. They are in a most hopeless and desperate situation. And they have no power in themselves to find their way back to God. They are unable to recover themselves. And so what will he do? And how will he recover them? And he says, I will become their good shepherd, and I will come and be their savior. And that's what this passage here is all about. There are three things that we find the good shepherd doing here. First, he seeks them. Second, he feeds them. And third, he saves them. So we'll look at each of these separately this morning. In the first place, the good shepherd will seek will seek his lost sheep. This is what he says here in verse 11. He says, for thus says the Lord God, behold, behold, he says, I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out. Then down in the beginning of verse 16, he says, I will seek the lost sheep. This is what every shepherd does when any of his sheep are lost. He seeks after them until he finds them. Jesus said in Luke chapter 15 and verse 4, he said, what man among you is there if he has a hundred sheep and he has lost one of them? Does not he leave the 99 in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And this is what the Lord Jesus does here. He is the good shepherd and he will search and he will seek after his sheep until he finds them. We notice in verse 11 how personal this is. He says, I myself will search for my sheep. He means, I will not leave this to another. The work is too great and too precious to me, and I have too much love for them. I will not leave this to another. I myself will search for my sheep, and I will find them out. My love is so strong, whatever loss I may endure, whatever danger I may encounter, I myself will search for my sheep, and I will seek them out. And this is what he was doing when he came down from heaven and he became a man in the person of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, became the Lord Jesus, the Son of God and man. And he humbled himself and came into this world and began the great work of seeking after his lost sheep. And these words here in Ezekiel chapter 34, These words were spoken hundreds of years before the Son of God came down incarnate into this world. And so we may imagine here, we may see here, Jesus upon his throne in his pre-incarnate glory. And he says to himself, my Father has given my sheep to me, and they are in such grave danger, there is no one who can save them on earth. This is what I will do. I myself will go down into the world and I will search for them and I will seek them until I find them. And this is what we see him doing in the gospel records. The good shepherd has come into the world and he has come to seek after his lost sheep. We find him in John chapter 4. And John tells us there that he had to pass through Samaria. Samaria was a region where Jews did not go. Why did he have to pass through Samaria? The only answer is because there was that woman at the well, that Samaritan woman at the well, who was one of his lost sheep. And he had to go there in order to find her, to seek her, and find her. We see Jesus in the Gospels, and he passes by the sea, and he sees John and James, and he says, follow me. He passes by Matthew in the tax booth. He says, follow me, and they immediately follow him. Jesus, when he came, when he was headed to Jerusalem for the last time, he came into the city of Jericho. a city which had been under a curse, but he has come to bring blessing upon that city. And why did he come to Jericho? Because there was that lost sheep of his whose name was Zacchaeus. And he was up in the sycamore tree. Jesus came and says, Zacchaeus, come down, for today salvation has come to your house. And he said, for the Son of Man has come. He has come down from heaven. to seek and to save that which was lost. So this is what he was always doing when he was upon the earth. It was the work that his heavenly father had given him to do, to be the good shepherd who comes to seek and to find that which was lost. And there are many times when we lose something. And no matter how hard we search for it, We cannot find it. But it is never so with Jesus, because when he seeks his lost sheep, he always finds them, no matter where they are and no matter how far they are scattered from him. He is no longer on earth. He has ascended back up into heaven, and he is at the right hand of the Father in heaven. And this is what he is still doing from his throne. He is still seeking and after, searching after and finding his lost sheep in this world. And he is fully able to do so because he sees all things and he is omniscient and he knows where all of his lost sheep are among all the nations of the earth. And he is omnipotent, all power in heaven and upon earth has been given to him. So he has sight and he has power, he has wisdom to search and to find his lost sheep. And so what Jesus does is that he guides all of providence and he brings about events in our lives, in the lives of his sheep. And then he sends his word to them and his word is living and powerful by the Holy Spirit. And his word comes into our souls and it brings a new birth to us, new spiritual life. And this is what is taking place. Jesus is seeking after his lost sheep. This is the way that he finds us. Jesus said in John chapter 10, my sheep hear my voice. They will hear my voice. I know them and they will follow me. I give eternal life to them. They will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. All that the father has given me, he says, they will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. And so verse 11, is still taking place from his throne in heaven. This is what he is still saying. Behold, I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out. And his searching is always factual. And his searching is always brings him to the end of finding every one of his lost sheep. This is what he means in verse 13 as well, where he says in verse 13, I will bring them, meaning I will seek them and I will find them. I will bring them out from all of the countries, all the peoples and gather them from all the countries and bring them into their own land. In whatever place they may be, however far they may be from me to the ends of the earth, In every nation, this is what I will do. I will seek and I will find my lost sheep and I will bring them back into my kingdom. In verse 16, he says, I will seek the lost and I will bring back the scattered. I will come and find them and I will bring them into my glorious kingdom. And all of this is what has happened to us if we are believers in our Lord Jesus this morning. Because we were once lost sheep in this world. And we were once blind to the truth. And we were once under the guilt and the power of our sins and headed for an eternal destruction. But by whatever providences he chose, Jesus came and sought after us and found us and recovered us. as his sheep. Perhaps sometimes he sent trials, troubles upon our lives. And we began to see the consequences. We began to see the sorrows of our sins. He sent the conviction of our sins. Perhaps he guided us to other believers, to the word of God. And we heard the gospel. Sometimes we grow up in Christian homes and we hear the word of God. All of our lives, there are endless ways in which the great shepherd seeks after his sheep. But in whatever way he chooses, the word of God always becomes the truth to us. And the gospel becomes the power of God to our salvation. It becomes the living and abiding word of God. And it is the great shepherd, by his word and his spirit, who is seeking and finding us. I remember hearing the testimony of a man who was a professional minor league baseball player. He was not a believer at the time, and he was not even interested in the gospel. But he came into a very dark and distressing, depressing time in his life. He was in a hitting slump. terrible slump, and he began to realize that he was not going to make it into the major leagues, and he had personal problems in his life as well, and everything seemed to be falling apart. And then one day, He was playing in the outfield, and in between the innings, the players on the field come off, and the players in the dugout come out onto the field. And he passed another player on the other team, and a man that he had never met before. They had never spoken before, and they would never speak again afterwards. And he would never know who that man was. But as they passed, the man spoke very briefly to him, and he said one thing. He asked him a question. He said, are your sins forgiven? That's all he said, are your sins forgiven? And by that one question, it was the beginning of that man beginning to ask himself, how can my sins really be forgiven? And how can I know the way of salvation And it began, it was the beginning of him becoming a believer in our Lord Jesus Christ. What was taking place in those four words that that man spoke to him? Most people would simply blow it off and say, I have no interest in such a thing. But this man could not forget those words. What was taking place? The great shepherd of the sheep in heaven was seeking after him and sending his word to him until he found him and brought him back into his fold. The word becomes living and powerful to us and Christ brings us back as lost sheep. But that really is the most important question. that could ever be asked of any one of us here this morning. Are your sins forgiven? Because if you would go to heaven when you die, you must have all of your sins forgiven. Every last one of them. All of them, they must all be forgiven, and you must be made clean, perfectly clean in the sight of God in order to enter into his presence. Most people trust in themselves, in their own good works, in their own human efforts to try to improve themselves, and they would say to themselves, I have not been as bad as other people, and I have done the best that I can, and they think that that is a right hope of heaven. But the truth is that you could take all of your good works, you could take all of your human efforts and gather them all together from the beginning to the end of your life, all of your supposed goodness, and it would not forgive a single sin against God. That's the truth of the gospel. But the other truth of the gospel is that God has sent a savior in the person of his beloved son, Jesus. And by Jesus Christ alone, our sins, all of our sins can be forgiven by his blood that was shed upon the cross. The blood of Jesus and the blood of Jesus alone cleanses us from all sin and all who come to him for salvation, they will be forgiven. The good shepherd has come and he has finished everything. and he seeks and he finds his lost sheep. The second thing we can say this morning is that the good shepherd cares for his sheep. This is what we see in verse 12. He says, in verse 12, he says, as a shepherd cares, for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep. So I will care for my sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day." And then we notice in the middle of verse 13, he says, and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel. So he is the good shepherd who loves his sheep, and so he cares for them. The way in which he cares for them here is that he will feed them. He says, I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, there in verse 13. Mountains in the Bible are places, where God makes his presence known and he meets with his people on the mountains. And so the good shepherd, he will bring his sheep up upon the mountains. And upon those mountains, he will feed them with the finest of food on those high places. We see in verse 13, he says, I will bring them by the streams. I will lead them, he says, to pure streams and give them refreshing waters to drink. They will no longer be in a howling wilderness, but I will bring them at the end of verse 13 into all the inhabited places of the land. In verse 14, he says, I will feed them in good pasture. They will have and they will have such rest and they will have such safety. Their grazing ground will be upon the mountain heights of Israel. I will bring them to the very heights and to the highest places of the land, bring them into the place of God's presence with his people and they will be so well fed and they will be so safe that they will lie down, they will lie down in good grazing ground and they will feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. And then in verse 15, he says once again, he will be the one who feeds them. He says, I, the good shepherd, I will feed my flock. I will feed each one of them, and I will lead them to rest, and I will give them safety. And so here we have the good shepherd. who has come, and he brings his sheep into the safety of his own flock in his pastures, and he feeds them with the very, very best of food, and he feeds them generously and abundantly. All of this speaks of spiritual food for us, which is found in the truth of the gospel, and which fills our souls The great shepherd, the good shepherd feeds his people from heaven, every one of his sheep on the good news of the gospel. And the gospel has abundant and overflowing with good news for us, and it is so sweet to us to taste the words of the gospel, and it is so pleasant for us to hear the good news of our great shepherd. He brings us to the high mountains. He brings us to the rich pastures and into the presence of God. And he sends the Holy Spirit, which comes like streams of living water with the word. And we taste and we drink and we are refreshed and we are strengthened and we are healed. We are even healed from all the consequences. We begin to be healed from all the consequences of our sins. And the gospel is the word of eternal life to us. The center of the gospel is our Lord Jesus Christ, the person of Jesus and especially his death upon the cross. The word of the cross has become to us the power of God to our salvation. And Paul speaks in Acts chapter 20 and verse 28 of the church which he has purchased with his own blood. And so the cross is God's way of salvation. It is the place of propitiation in which the wrath of God was poured out upon the good shepherd so that it would never be poured out upon all who believe in him. so that the penalty that was due to us for our sin has fallen upon him. Jesus said, I am the good shepherd, and the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And so for every believer, there is no greater joy to us. than the promises that we find in the gospel, that we are justified even now before the throne of heaven, that the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ has been freely given to us by faith, so that we stand now righteous in the sight of God, not by any good works that we have done, but by his life and death alone. We have peace with God, we have sanctification, and we are adopted into his family as the sons and the daughters of God. We still sin in this life as believers, and we have many sins that remain with us, but we always have that promise. that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So in the gospel, we find things that we never found before. And we find things that cannot be found in any other place in this world. We find truth We find the truth of who we are in this world and how this world came into being and where it is going in the end. We find meaning, we find hope, we find peace and we find joy because in the gospel we have found Jesus and all of these things are found in him. He has found us and we have found him and our souls are satisfied And in Jesus we hunger and we thirst no more. When we were lost, we thought we could find happiness in the things of this world. But now we know how empty and vain this world is, and we find our happiness in our Lord Jesus Christ alone. The gospel is like a great banquet table. which has been spread out before us, every kind of dish and delicacy, and there is sweet wine there. We may come freely and drink and eat. It is soul satisfying. It is soul rejoicing. It gives us contentment. And we recline at the table, the great banquet feast, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the great shepherd at that banquet. Every Christian knows what it is to read the Word of God, to hear the Word of God, and our eyes are opened to the truth, and the Word comes upon our hearts with a spiritual power where we are convinced of its veracity and its truth, and we find sweet comfort, and we find joy, we find rest, we find peace in believing. What is happening when that even takes place for us today? The great shepherd of the sheep is feeding his flock, feeding his sheep in the earth. It happens day after day for us as Christians. We wish it would happen every day. But oftentimes, we find the truth of the gospel most comforting to us. It is the great shepherd of the sheep who is guiding and feeding all of his sheep. Paul says, the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. He wrote to the Romans that the God of hope may fill you with all joy and peace in believing, and that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the experience of believers, and it happens to us when Christ feeds us from his word. We are even able to rejoice in our trials. and find joy and comfort in the midst of the sorrows and the troubles of this present life. Paul could write to the Thessalonians, you receive the word in much tribulation. You receive the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit. And Peter says, we are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed to us. And in this, we greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. So he feeds us and he comforts us. And he cares for us, and he leads us into these good pastures, even in the midst of the trials of this life. We notice in verse 15, he speaks of my flock. He says, I will feed my flock. A flock is a gathering of sheep. And that's who he is speaking of here. I will feed my flock. And so what has happened here is that in the previous verses, he has spoken of my sheep, and now he speaks of my flock. And so what this means is that he seeks and he finds each one of his sheep as individuals, and that he brings them into his flock, which are the gatherings of his sheep, which is his church. And in the church, all of these things now come to their fullest expression on earth. The church is the mountain of the Lord in which he brings his people closest to his presence on earth. And there in the church, he feeds them in rich pastures. He brings them by the streams of flowing water. And there he meets with them and ministers to them, feeds them, gives them rest. And when the sheep are gathered into the flocks of his church, there they love and care for one another. There they serve one another. And they pray for one another. And they keep one another warm in the winter. And they find safety there from the wolves and from the dangers that are outside. And this is what is taking place throughout all the world this morning. The good shepherd of the sheep from heaven, he is watching over all of his flocks and wherever they may be gathered, whether they are large, whether they are small flocks, he loves them, he cares for them, and he is feeding them on his word from heaven. And there he meets with them and walks among them. And verse 15 comes to its fulfillment. I will feed my flock. I will feed my flock and I will lead them to rest. And we find that rest in our souls. We notice here in this entire passage that there is really a long series of divine, what we can call divine initiatives. Every verse speaks of what God himself will do. Back in verse 11, he says, I myself will. And then in the middle of verse 12, he says, I will care. And then each verse begins with the words, I will. Verse 13, I will bring them out. Verse 14, I will feed them in a good pasture. Verse 15, I will feed my flock and I will lead them. And verse 16, I will seek the lost. So this is what the great shepherd is doing throughout this passage. Everything is what he will do. Everything is by divine initiative. Everything is by his power and his grace as the great shepherd. He is the one who comes and seeks and feeds and cares and guides and saves. What do the sheep do? What do the sheep do in this passage? The only thing they do is they feed. They lie down in the rich pastures. and they find rest in the good shepherd because he has accomplished all things for them. They are so ruined by their sins they could never recover themselves, but he has come and he has done the great work for them. We are not saying that we have no duties or we have no commandments in the New Testament scriptures. We are not saying that, but in all that we do, He is always the Good Shepherd who gives us strength and grace and help and feeds us so that we are able to do His will. It is all by the grace and power of the Good Shepherd. The last thing we want to say very briefly here is that the Good Shepherd now saves His sheep. He has sought after them and found them. He has fed them upon the mountain heights of Israel and cared for them. And all of this now is to bring them to their final salvation and to be their good shepherd, their great shepherd forever. We see in the middle of verse 13, he says, I will bring them to their own land. I will bring them to their own land. He did bring Israel back to Israel's own land in Canaan, but he speaks here ultimately of the eternal and the heavenly land. Because Abraham was always looking to the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And the saints of the Old Testament were always seeking after their own country, a better country, a heavenly one. And so this comes to its ultimate, final, and eternal fulfillment in the new heavens and the new earth. I will bring them into their own land in that eternal world which is to come. And John tells us in Revelation chapter seven that all the saints are gathered before the throne of God and they all have white robes because they have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. And John tells us that they shall hunger no more and they shall never thirst anymore. Neither shall the sun beat down on them nor any heat. For the lamb in the center of the throne shall be their shepherd. He was their shepherd in this world. He will be their shepherd now into eternity. And John says he will guide them to the springs of the water of life. And God will wipe away every tear. Could there be greener, more pleasant pastures than those in the heavenly land where our Lord Jesus is? Could there be any grazing grounds more lovely, more beautiful, more abundant than the grounds in which Jesus will lead us as the great shepherd into eternity? The very top, the very highest of all the mountains, he will bring us to before the very throne of God in heaven forever. He will feed us on the bread of heaven. He will make us to lie down in the richest of pastures, and we will drink of the waters of life and eat of the tree of life forever. And every sorrow, and every tear, and every pain, and all suffering of this world will be gone forever. I will feed my flock. I will lead them into their own land. I will feed them, and I will lead them into eternal rest. So we have just two very brief applications as we close our time this morning. And the first is that this passage is a great encouragement to us in our efforts in evangelism. Because Jesus says in verse 11, I will seek, I will search for my sheep, I myself will search for my sheep, and I will seek them out. And we know from the rest of the Bible that he does this through his people. He has sent his church into the world to preach the gospel. And so it is our duty to pray and to look and make use of every opportunity we have to speak the gospel to our fellow man in this world to be the witnesses of our Lord Jesus. But as we do that on a human level, We can know that the great shepherd is always seeking after his lost sheep. And so we can pray, Lord Jesus, guide me in your providence to one of your lost sheep so that I might be part of your great work of finding them, of feeding them, and saving them. However weak our efforts may be, he is still doing his great work of seeking his lost sheep. And then we close with this thought this morning that here we have strong encouragement for the safety of our souls because the great shepherd has been exalted into heaven and he is seated at the right hand of God this morning. He has all power in heaven and upon earth. And if he has come and if he has sought after us as his lost sheep, and if he has found us with the gospel, and if he has brought us into his kingdom, he will never lose us. He will never lose one of his sheep. He will save us. He will protect us. He will guide us through all the troubles, through all the pains of this world, and he will bring us into his eternal kingdom. We may have great confidence this morning. that we are safe as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, and he is our great shepherd even into eternity. Let us pray together. Father and gracious God, thank you for the great shepherd, the good shepherd that you have given to us in our Lord Jesus Christ. O Lord, we have no other hope. We can do nothing of ourselves. All we can do is come to you and look to you, Lord Jesus, as the Savior of sinners. And we thank you that you have had such great mercy upon us. Lord Jesus, we pray for any who do not know you. May they hear your voice this morning, and may they come to you and find you to be the Savior of sinners. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the great hope that you give to us. And Lord, look upon us now with mercy and send your Holy Spirit and your grace throughout this day. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.