In the Word of God, we'll turn back to the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel, we're in chapter 34. And Ezekiel 34, we'll be considering this morning verses 11 through 16. But to set the context, we'll read verses 1 through 16. Ezekiel 34. Before we read, let's pray to ask God's blessing. Our God and King, as we come to Your Word, we ask that You would open our eyes. We ask that You would bless our understanding so that we might believe and trust in Jesus Christ. We pray that You would give help to those who need it, Lord, which is each of us. We pray for it in Jesus' name. Amen. Ezekiel 34 The Word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy and say to them, even to the shepherds, thus says the Lord God. Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves, should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed. The injured you have not bound up. The strayed you have not brought back. The lost you have not sought. And with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered. They wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth with none to search or seek for them. Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts since there was no shepherd. And because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves and have not fed my sheep. Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God. Behold, I am against the shepherd. And I will require My sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue My sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them. For thus says the Lord God, Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out My sheep And I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries. And will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the ravines and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture. And on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I Myself will be the shepherd of My sheep, and I Myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost. I will bring back the strayed. And I will bind up the injured. And I will strengthen the weak and the fat and the strong. I will destroy. I will feed them in justice. This is God's Word. Do you kids remember the story we were talking about last week? About the owner of the flock who left wicked shepherds in charge and how mad he would be when he got back and found that all his sheep were starving and that the shepherds were out back eating the rest of the sheep that looked good. What do you think that owner would do? He would get rid of all those wicked shepherds, wouldn't they? But that's not enough, is it? Just getting rid of the bad shepherds isn't enough, because then who's going to take care of the sheep? Now you don't have anybody taking care of the sheep. And this morning, we're going to consider the second half of that story, how the owner of the sheep decides, I'm going to stay and I'm going to take care of the sheep myself. We've seen as we've gone throughout the book of Ezekiel, chapter after chapter of judgment, of darkness, Jerusalem burning, the sins of Israel being put into a blazing spotlight. And not each sermon has been easy to preach or I imagine easy to listen to. But what we've seen throughout the book of Ezekiel is the heart of God, which becomes abundantly clear in this passage. God is not merely concerned with justice. And we may have that mistake in our mind by reading through the book of Ezekiel and preaching this far. God is not merely concerned with justice. It's not his mission to just make wrong things right and to punish the wicked people. God's passion is to be with his people. God's love is to be with his people and his passion is not justice, but it is mercy. Kids, as we're going through the sermon this morning, if you're drawing pictures, you could draw pictures of the different things that Jesus does for us and you'll hear some of them in the sermon. So you could draw pictures of Jesus feeding us or protecting us or things like that. Well, let's remember a little bit about where we were last week, because we said that last week was really the first in a two part sermon. I don't really want to consider them as two different sermons. Last week, we saw the first 10 verses of chapter 34, where God rebukes the false shepherds with extraordinarily harsh language. And again, rather than being shocked at the harsh language of God, we should realize that God's anger against the false shepherds rises out of his love for his people. When we see God mad, when we see Jesus turning over tables in the temple, we shouldn't say, well, there's just an angry person. We should say that's how much God loves me, that he's angry at the people who would oppress me. So his anger grows from his love. And what we'll see then today is that God promises to correct the failures. Now, up to this point in the book of Ezekiel, there's been grace in every chapter. There's been a lot of harsh language, a lot of judgments and then little bits of grace, right? There's been darkness, darkness and then grace, usually one bit of grace per chapter. But now in chapter 34, the trickle of grace turns into a fire hose. And if you've sat through all the sermons wondering, when does it really change? When do we really get to just grace without judgment? We're ready. Chapter 34 is all about the grace of Jesus Christ for you. It's all about how much He loves you and what He promises to do. And when we talk about the fulfillment of verses 11 through 16, they are fulfilled particularly by Jesus and not just when he returns his people to the promising. And we'll see that again in just a minute. The first thing we need to see to really understand this passage is how beautifully and strongly Ezekiel contrasts the fall shepherds and God's shepherding of his own people. We look at verses 1-10, we see rank failure. The shepherds don't feed the sheep. They don't go and find the sheep. They don't protect them. They don't bind them up. They don't help them and love them. But then we see in verses 11-16, not just something a little different, but something 180 degrees different. And in fact, some of the verses are almost exactly opposite. Let me show this to you. Look at verse 4. The indictment is this. The weak you have not strengthened. The sick you have not healed. The injured you have not bound up. The strayed you have not brought back. The lost you have not sought. And with force and harshness you have ruled them. Well, look at verse 16 and keep the language you just heard in mind. I will seek the lost. I will bring back the strayed. And I will bind up the injured. And I will strengthen the weak. And the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them injustice. The whole passage is built on this contrast between the wickedness and the oppression of these selfish leaders and the mercy of Jesus Christ and His shepherding toward you. One of the things that God does throughout the Scriptures, and what God does in each of our lives, is that He rewrites the stories that we write. You see, Israel had written its own story And their story had themselves at the center. And their story had these wicked leaders. And Israel wanted kings. They wanted kings to come and rule over us so that we would be like the other nations. They began to write their story in a different path than what God had decreed for them. But God, in His mercy, rewrites our stories with Himself at the center. And the second thing we should see about this passage is not only the contrast but the emphasis that God puts on Himself. Look at v. 11 to see this. For thus says the Lord God, Behold I, I Myself. That might seem just like a normal thing to say, but in the Hebrew language, when you repeat something, when you repeat an idea, especially at the beginning of a sentence, it holds extraordinarily powerful emphasis. It's as if God is now... He had been shining the spotlight on the wicked shepherds, and now He turns around and says, look at Me. Now pay attention to Me and watch. And He does it throughout the passage. I will do this. I will do this. As a matter of fact, if you were to look for specific commands in verses 11-16, there are none. This is not a passage of Scripture. that we go and do. This is a passage of Scripture that we believe because Jesus has done. So when was this fulfilled? In 40 years from this time when Ezekiel prophesied this, God would begin to send his people back under the leadership of Ezra and Zerubbabel. And that was the beginning of when he was beginning to feed his people and return them and gather the scattered cheap. But we know from our Old Testament history that that wasn't enough, was it? When Israel returned to Jerusalem, it wasn't perfection. It wasn't that the people just finally fell into line and everything was just hunky-dory. But when Israel returned to Jerusalem, it wasn't very glorious. The temple wasn't very big when they got it done. And they had no more kings. And so we kept looking for another fulfillment. A second way that this passage is fulfilled is that God decided it was time to be done with kings. Back in the stories of the Old Testament, we read when the people of God decided we want to be like everybody else around us. We want kings and God warned them. If you take kings to yourself, they're going to rob you blind through their taxes. They're going to oppress you. They're going to lead you into false worship. That's exactly what happened. And God in His mercy now is simply putting an end to the kingship of Israel. No more. There will be no more kings. I'm done letting you kings, you false shepherds, ruin things. Done. That's the second way in which this passage is fulfilled. That God cuts off the kingship of Israel in order to take control, more direct control himself. But still, that's not enough, is it? That's not enough to say this passage was really fulfilled because this is all about Jesus Christ. This passage is a prophecy, not of the return to Jerusalem in 40 years time. It's a prophecy of Jesus coming to this world to be the shepherd of his people. When God says, I, I myself, this is Jesus Christ speaking in the Old Testament to say. 500 years time. I'm coming. And I'm going to do what nobody else has been able to do for you. And I'm going to be the shepherd of my people. And we can look at these few verses, not just as general spiritual things that Jesus does, but we can look at them as almost a literal record of the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. It would be one thing to say, Jesus feeds me. Jesus protects me. Jesus seeks me out. And those are true. But when we look at the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, we see these things becoming literally true. Jesus says in verse 11, I will search for my sheep. When Jesus came to this earth and became a man, when He began His ministry, He began searching for His sheep. And His sheep weren't the ones that you thought they would be. He began searching for people like Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. He was the least popular person at his high school reunion. Nobody liked Matthew. But he belonged to Jesus. And Jesus found him. Jesus searched for his sheep. He also says next, I will seek them out. I will find those who belong to me. And so Jesus, instead of going to the self-righteous Pharisees, He stops and looks at short little Nicodemus and says, I'm going to go to your house today. Zacchaeus, because you belong to me. He seeks out his own. He says in the next verse, I will find those who have been scattered and I will bring them back. One of the things we saw when we went through the book of Luke a few years ago. is that when Jesus came to this earth, he radically changed our understanding and appreciation of women. And up to the point of the ministry of Jesus Christ, women were degraded. They were less than second class citizens. And Jesus loved them, and he brought them together, and he said, follow me. He brought together those who had been scattered by society. He says, I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And what did John say? But that the light has come and that light is a spiritual truth that Jesus is the light of the world. But when Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, that light became more than just a spiritual truth. It was a reality that blinded the disciples who saw it. When Jesus says the light will shine, he doesn't mean just figuratively and spiritually, but the light will shine because he is the light of heaven. He says, I will gather them, verse 13, I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the nations. He wasn't just content to find the Jewish people who lived around his town. Instead, he went to the well at a time when he knew that the only people that would go there would be the less and the least of society. And there was a woman from Samaria. A spiritual half-breed. A religious mutt that everybody hated. Jesus went there to find her. And He brought her out from the nations. And brought her to Himself. He says in verse 13, I will feed them on the mountains of Israel. And when Jesus looked at the crowds and He had compassion on them, because they were hungry, He didn't just feed them with the Word. He said, sit them down. Give me whatever food you have, because we're going to eat. And Jesus fed them on the mountains of Israel. All 5,000 of them. It was just the men. All 6,000 of them. He says in verse 14, there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pastures they shall feed. Let me read for you from Mark. Mark 6, verse 31. The apostles turned to Jesus and they told Him all that they had done. And He said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. Jesus found His disciples. And He said, please, take a nap. Lay down and rest. He says, I will seek those, in verse 16, I will seek those who are lost. And when the woman of sin came to Him and wept and washed His feet with her tears and her hair, He found one who was truly lost. And the lost became found. He says, I will bring back the strays. And more than once in his ministry of preaching, he talked about story after story of people who were straying. The prodigal son who had strayed so far and was welcomed back with open arms in celebration. All the stories of the sheep who stray and the shepherd who is faithful to go find them. Jesus says, I will bind up the injured. And so when a woman who had been bleeding for years and years and years touches his garment, she's healed. He says, I will strengthen the weak. So that when he hangs dying upon the cross, he looks at John and he looks at his mother. He says, take care of her. She is weak and she needs help. He says, I will destroy the fat and the strong. So when he came and he saw the money changers oppressing his people and turning worship into business, he beat them, not just a little bit, but he beat them because he loves his people. when he looked and he saw that his people were like sheep without a shepherd. And he saw these Pharisees and scribes who were supposed to be the shepherds. He didn't go to the shepherds and say, maybe you ought to reconsider. He said, you are vipers. You are vipers and woe be upon you. When Jesus says, I will do these things, he kept every single promise, didn't he? And if he did, then he will continue to keep every single promise of this passage. This is not a passage, as I said a minute ago, that we do. But it is a passage that we respond to. And as I study this passage, we see five broad promises of Jesus Christ. And what I want to give you now are not applications of a sermon. but the invitations of a Savior. If Jesus feeds, then what is our response? Kids, if Jesus says, I will feed you, then what are we supposed to do? What's our response? We eat. We eat. Jesus says, I will feed you. We don't go in the kitchen and start cooking. We eat. So let me ask you this morning, are you hungry? Are you unsatisfied with life? Like Solomon, have you played the world's games and found no satisfaction? Have you tried to be satisfied with your work and found that success only makes you more empty? Have you tried to find entertainment, find your fulfillment in entertainment and find that it just drags you down? Have you looked into relationships, romance, to find satisfaction only to find even that's not enough? Are you hungry? Then come and eat. Come to Jesus Christ. Come to this table. and eat and be satisfied. If Jesus says, I will give you rest, what is our proper response? To lie down. Jesus says, I will give you rest. Our proper response is to sleep. So let me ask you, are you tired? Not just physically, but are you tired? Are you weary? Are you sick of trying to keep life in order and to control everything? It's the Sabbath today. It's your day of rest. It's a day when you don't have to work. It's a day when you don't have to pretend like you're in control. It's a day when you can go home and take a nap because you don't have to work today. This is a day of rest. Jesus doesn't want you to do anything. He wants you to go to sleep. He wants you to rest in Him. If Jesus says, I will protect you, what is our proper response but to retreat to Him? So let me ask you, are you hurt? Are you fearful? Are there people that have hurt you and have made you afraid? Are there circumstances in your life that just bind you up inside and make you anxious? Do you have enemies that are seeking to bring you down? Retreat. Don't fight. Hide under the wings of Jesus Christ. If Jesus says, I will gather the straying and the lost, then what could our response be except to follow? Are you straying away from Jesus Christ? Are you more distant from Him than you were last month or a couple of years ago when things were going really well? You come to worship, but do you pursue Jesus during the week? Is that relationship really a part of your life? And if it's not, today is not a day to obey. It's simply a day to believe and to receive the grace of Jesus Christ. At the end of every year at Keri Quad, there's a sign put up that said, if you took any of our trays to go sledding down Slater Hill on, Put him back now. We'll just look the other way. Just put him back and come on back. No, no harm done. I don't want to press this too far, but if you've been far away from Jesus Christ, don't try to claw your way back. Just come back. Just ask. He's never been distant from you. Just ask. Can't see anymore. Are you lost? Are you afraid of hell? Are you under the penalty of your sins still? There's nothing in here that says what you have to do to be saved. All you have to do is to trust. When Jesus says, I will rescue you, What is our response except to cry out for rescue? Are you in trouble this morning? Are there sins that are threatening to overwhelm you and overpower you? The things you can't handle? Cry out for Jesus Christ. You can't win. But Jesus is our Shepherd. In just a minute, we're going to sing one of our favorite psalms, Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. And even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For You are with me. Your rod, Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Is the Lord Jesus Christ your Shepherd? Then you don't have to be afraid anymore. You don't have to save yourself anymore. You don't have to frantically claw your way through this life. You don't have to defeat your own enemies. You only have to trust and eat and sleep and run to him because the Lord is my shepherd. Let's stand and pray together. Lord, we bless your name for you alone are our great shepherd. And how we pray, God, that You would feed those who are hungry today. And that those who have strayed would be won back by Your grace. We pray for those who are tired, that You would grant them rest in You. We pray for those who are under attack, that not one arrow would pierce them. Because Jesus' wing are stretched over them. Lord, we pray that you would help us to believe in Jesus Christ. We pray in His name. Amen. Let's turn to there in our blue Psalter, Psalm 23, Selection B. David wrote this many years before Ezekiel's ministry.