God Cares
Sermon
Walking With God
Cycle A First Lesson Sermons for Proper 23 through Thanksgiving
Object:
Imagine yourself in a remote location, separated from familiar faces and places. The location could be a city teeming with people, but nobody there knows you or cares to know you. Or maybe it's a lonesome wasteland in which you are separated from another human being by scores of miles. The distance -- either geographical or relational -- creates an unforgiving barrier between you and interaction with others. Not a pretty picture so far. Lonely. Isolated. Separated.
Now imagine that you have been placed in that remote location against your will. You were forced to go to the strange and awful place that feels like a cold, dank prison. Being there reminds you of the warm, inviting home you were forced to leave. Leaving everything that you associate with home, you have been given no other choice but to start over in this strange place. You won't get any help from your new surrounding. Don't count on anyone to check on you from time to time. Forget about being loved and nurtured. Survive if you can. If you can't, then you'll die lonely and alone.
Into this imaginary scene, add one more important detail. You haven't heard from God ever since you arrived. Like every other person who believes in the living God of the Bible, you want to know him better and walk with him more closely. You have read one passage after the next in the Bible, and you have learned about how much God cares and how you can depend on him to intervene in your time of crisis. Yet, in this particular crisis, he hasn't shown up yet, and he hasn't given much of an impression that he actually cares for you. You wonder if what the Bible says about God is actually trustworthy information.
Maybe for you, the awful predicament described so far isn't the product of your imagination at all. It really exists in your world. It's not far-fetched. Rather, it is a fitting description of your situation right now. The ring of truth for you in the description is that God doesn't seem to care about you where you are right now. You feel like you've been deported to a strange land, and God seems to have lost your forwarding address.
If that's the case for you, then you can identify with the Israelites after they were taken into Babylonian exile. The forced march from Jerusalem to Babylon took them farther and farther from their home each day, and it seemed to take them some distance away from the Lord as well. Their last image of Jerusalem included the walls toppled, the temple destroyed, and the city on fire. Gone, everything was gone. And so were they, to a distant land to start over, presumably all by themselves. God went only as far as the county line. From that point on, they would have to go it alone.
The prophecy we read in Ezekiel 34 must have been welcomed by God's people as they languished in their loneliness in the distant land to which they had been led by their captors. The prophecy reassured them that God still cared, and he expressed his concern for them in some redemptive ways.
We would do well to allow this message in Ezekiel to remind us of God's caring ways with us. Although we may feel distant from him, we can rest assured that our feeling isn't based on facts. The facts in this prophecy point to the reality that God is close and that he cares.
God expresses his care by nourishing his people (vv. 1116). Notice in the text the number of references to feeding sheep. These references point to one of the ways in which God will take care of the people he loves. He nourishes us.
In Ezekiel's prophecy, God compared the people of Israel in Babylonian exile to a flock of sheep that had been scattered in every direction. Vulnerable because they had been separated from each other, some of the sheep had been abused by predators. Others had gotten lost. All of them had suffered from not having been fed. They suffered from malnourishment. Someone had to step in and help them or they would grow weaker. If they didn't fall victim to a predator, they would eventually starve to death.
Using the setting of Ezekiel as the backdrop, comparing weary Christians to hungry sheep is easy. We understand the analogy at first glance. Like scattered sheep, we sometimes find ourselves lost and alone, spiritually and emotionally impoverished, wondering what to do next. For some of us, our spiritual poverty has turned into a serious form of malnourishment. One of the character traits of such a chronic problem is that we don't even know we are hungry anymore. We have grown so accustomed to the gnawing pain in our soul that we don't even sense it. We have gone so long without any spiritual food that we have lost our taste for it.
In the New Testament, Peter talked about the food. He compared Christians to newborn babies who depended on mother's milk exclusively for their nourishment. He went on to say that believers needed to take in pure spiritual milk (1 Peter 2:1). From what source did such spiritual nourishment come? According to Peter, it came from God's word. Asteady diet of his word would give believers what they needed so they could grow strong. And being strong would be critical. The struggles they faced would be taxing, to say the least. They needed to be spiritually well-fed.
God knows that we need his word in order for us to be nourished properly. That's why God has given us his word. By referring to God's word, we draw the conclusion correctly that he's talking about the Bible. Taking time to read and meditate on the Bible feeds us spiritually. When we give attention to the scripture, one outcome can be guaranteed. We will be drawn to Jesus Christ, whom John called the word of life (1 John 1:1). Through the written Word, we grow in our relationship with the living word. In that relationship we find the nourishment we need.
What does the provision of God's word say about him? It says that God cares about us enough to feed us. And he nourishes us in the best way possible. He feeds us in a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, a relationship described well in his written word. It's a wonderful expression of his care for us.
God also expresses his care by judging his people (vv. 16, 20-22). At first glance, you may wonder how God's judgment could be an expression of his care. We generally tend to think about God's judgment in terms of a foreboding legal action taken against people who have not taken him seriously. For the people being judged, such a perspective is correct. But for the people who have been victimized by the injustices of predators, God's judgment becomes an act of mercy. They see it as a time when injustices cease and predators are held accountable for what they have done to hurt God's people. In that way, judgment shows that God cares.
Ron and Melinda saw judgment in that way when they walked through the ordeal of a trial. Their daughter, Samantha, had been killed by a drunk driver. When they found out that the driver had been driving without a license and that he had been ticketed a number of times for driving drunk, they were enraged. When they saw him try to manipulate the legal system so he would avoid being accountable for Samantha's death, they could hardly contain their fury. As they watched the scene unfold leading up to the trial, they felt that they had been victimized by the slow legal procedure. But they discovered that while it's slow, justice was sure. In due time, the person who took their daughter's life stood before a judge and was pronounced guilty. At that moment, they felt a sense of closure. Justice had been served.
The people of Israel felt helpless as they were herded from their homes to a life of captivity in Babylon. God spoke through the prophet to remind them that he held the leaders of Israel accountable for what had happened to them. The religious leaders had to be held accountable for not leading God's people to nurture a relationship with him. Picking up the comparison between God's people and sheep, the prophet referred to the leaders who misguided Israel as shepherds who didn't care for the flock and who victimized the sheep (vv. 1-10).
In the analogy, the prophet also compared the uncaring leaders to fat sheep (vv. 17-21). Because of their size, they could be spotted easily, especially in a flock of undernourished sheep. Their size reflected the way they had behaved. Like God said, they had pushed the weaker lambs aside in their quest to satisfy their self-indulgence. They got to the food first and didn't care if others were fed. Furthermore, they used their weight to push sheep away from the flock. They goaded the smaller sheep with their horns, eventually driving them from the flock altogether. No wonder so many were famished. No wonder so many had been lost. No wonder the flock had been scattered.
As the Lord promised, judgment day would be coming soon enough. The fat sheep as well as the thin sheep would be judged. That's when the fat sheep would see that their fatness set them apart for slaughter.
In the same way, God's people can count on him to render justice. All people everywhere will be included. No one will be able to escape it. In his justice, people who mistreat his followers will be held accountable. According to Matthew 25, Jesus said that he would return one day and judge the world. He would separate the people who followed him from individuals who had not taken him seriously. His followers would be welcomed in to heaven. The people who rejected God would face the sentence of his punishment. Everyone is included in his judgment, and the issue on which all of us will be judged has been clearly described.
God's justice doesn't always wait that long. He has the final word in people who mistreat others because they follow him, and he will mete out justice to whomever he wishes whenever he wishes. For the judged, it will be awful. For those who have been victimized, it will express the reality that he really cares for the people who have given themselves to him.
God expresses his care in yet another way. He demonstrates it in the way he leads his people (vv. 23-24). He doesn't give up on us, and he provides leadership so we can grow in our relationship with him.
Continuing to use the imagery of sheep to elaborate on God's ways with his people, the prophet proclaimed that they could look forward to the arrival of a new shepherd. Notice the sequence of events heralded by Ezekiel. First, God would nourish his scattered sheep in order to restore them to health. Then God will judge the selfish predators that have mistreated them. Finally, God will raise his shepherd who will guide the sheep.
The prophet provided a captivating description of the shepherd God had in mind. He referred to the shepherd as his servant, David. Later on, he said that David would be a prince among them. Indeed, David was both a shepherd and a prince. His boyhood was spent in the pasture with sheep. As an adult, he wrote about God's goodness by comparing him to a loving and caring shepherd. When God anointed him to succeed Saul as king, he demonstrated a remarkable sense of spiritual maturity. As a prince, so to speak, he lived on the run in the wilderness so he could escape Saul's sword.
In the end, he became a king and served God well. All Israel loved him. Little wonder that the shepherd God had in mind would be a David figure.
From our side of the cross, we affirm that Jesus Christ fit the description of the shepherd God promised his people long ago. Born in Bethlehem from the line of David, Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecy regarding the Davidic shepherd who would guide God's people. He even referred to himself as the Good Shepherd who would lay down his life for his sheep (John 10:11).
Because of Jesus Christ, another feature of the prophecy was fulfilled. God promised his people through the prophet that he would be their God. In other words, God would take the initiative to restore his relationship with them so they would be able to call on him. God would see to it that they would walk with him and live according to his ways. Jesus made the restoration of that relationship possible. He tore down the wall that our sin built. The wall separated us from God. With the walls tumbling down, an intimate walk with God can begin.
As a result of what Christ has done for us, we have been given the leadership we need for our future. The Lord can be counted on to direct our steps so we will please him with our lives. In pleasing him, we find joy and contentment.
Best of all, the Lord doesn't lead us from a distance. Quite the opposite, God walks with us each step of the way, and he remains intimately involved with us. He challenges us to spend time with him, to listen to him, to trust him, and to obey him. The purpose of these challenges is to help us to follow God faithfully and to grow in him toward spiritual maturity.
Let's return to the beginning. Earlier you were asked to imagine yourself in an isolated place, held there against your will, with no impression that God even cared about you. After working through Ezekiel's prophecy, you can add other important detail to the image created so far. Imagine the Lord observing everything that's going on with you and working in your life to nourish you so you can press on in his name. Imagine God holding accountable the predators in your life who seek to do injustice simply because they are strong and you are weak. Now imagine God leading you out of isolation and toward home where you belong.
Actually, you don't have to imagine it. If you don't already live it, you can by turning to Jesus Christ. He nourishes you, renders justice for you, and leads you. Why? Because God cares for you. Believe it. Act on it. Amen.
Now imagine that you have been placed in that remote location against your will. You were forced to go to the strange and awful place that feels like a cold, dank prison. Being there reminds you of the warm, inviting home you were forced to leave. Leaving everything that you associate with home, you have been given no other choice but to start over in this strange place. You won't get any help from your new surrounding. Don't count on anyone to check on you from time to time. Forget about being loved and nurtured. Survive if you can. If you can't, then you'll die lonely and alone.
Into this imaginary scene, add one more important detail. You haven't heard from God ever since you arrived. Like every other person who believes in the living God of the Bible, you want to know him better and walk with him more closely. You have read one passage after the next in the Bible, and you have learned about how much God cares and how you can depend on him to intervene in your time of crisis. Yet, in this particular crisis, he hasn't shown up yet, and he hasn't given much of an impression that he actually cares for you. You wonder if what the Bible says about God is actually trustworthy information.
Maybe for you, the awful predicament described so far isn't the product of your imagination at all. It really exists in your world. It's not far-fetched. Rather, it is a fitting description of your situation right now. The ring of truth for you in the description is that God doesn't seem to care about you where you are right now. You feel like you've been deported to a strange land, and God seems to have lost your forwarding address.
If that's the case for you, then you can identify with the Israelites after they were taken into Babylonian exile. The forced march from Jerusalem to Babylon took them farther and farther from their home each day, and it seemed to take them some distance away from the Lord as well. Their last image of Jerusalem included the walls toppled, the temple destroyed, and the city on fire. Gone, everything was gone. And so were they, to a distant land to start over, presumably all by themselves. God went only as far as the county line. From that point on, they would have to go it alone.
The prophecy we read in Ezekiel 34 must have been welcomed by God's people as they languished in their loneliness in the distant land to which they had been led by their captors. The prophecy reassured them that God still cared, and he expressed his concern for them in some redemptive ways.
We would do well to allow this message in Ezekiel to remind us of God's caring ways with us. Although we may feel distant from him, we can rest assured that our feeling isn't based on facts. The facts in this prophecy point to the reality that God is close and that he cares.
God expresses his care by nourishing his people (vv. 1116). Notice in the text the number of references to feeding sheep. These references point to one of the ways in which God will take care of the people he loves. He nourishes us.
In Ezekiel's prophecy, God compared the people of Israel in Babylonian exile to a flock of sheep that had been scattered in every direction. Vulnerable because they had been separated from each other, some of the sheep had been abused by predators. Others had gotten lost. All of them had suffered from not having been fed. They suffered from malnourishment. Someone had to step in and help them or they would grow weaker. If they didn't fall victim to a predator, they would eventually starve to death.
Using the setting of Ezekiel as the backdrop, comparing weary Christians to hungry sheep is easy. We understand the analogy at first glance. Like scattered sheep, we sometimes find ourselves lost and alone, spiritually and emotionally impoverished, wondering what to do next. For some of us, our spiritual poverty has turned into a serious form of malnourishment. One of the character traits of such a chronic problem is that we don't even know we are hungry anymore. We have grown so accustomed to the gnawing pain in our soul that we don't even sense it. We have gone so long without any spiritual food that we have lost our taste for it.
In the New Testament, Peter talked about the food. He compared Christians to newborn babies who depended on mother's milk exclusively for their nourishment. He went on to say that believers needed to take in pure spiritual milk (1 Peter 2:1). From what source did such spiritual nourishment come? According to Peter, it came from God's word. Asteady diet of his word would give believers what they needed so they could grow strong. And being strong would be critical. The struggles they faced would be taxing, to say the least. They needed to be spiritually well-fed.
God knows that we need his word in order for us to be nourished properly. That's why God has given us his word. By referring to God's word, we draw the conclusion correctly that he's talking about the Bible. Taking time to read and meditate on the Bible feeds us spiritually. When we give attention to the scripture, one outcome can be guaranteed. We will be drawn to Jesus Christ, whom John called the word of life (1 John 1:1). Through the written Word, we grow in our relationship with the living word. In that relationship we find the nourishment we need.
What does the provision of God's word say about him? It says that God cares about us enough to feed us. And he nourishes us in the best way possible. He feeds us in a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, a relationship described well in his written word. It's a wonderful expression of his care for us.
God also expresses his care by judging his people (vv. 16, 20-22). At first glance, you may wonder how God's judgment could be an expression of his care. We generally tend to think about God's judgment in terms of a foreboding legal action taken against people who have not taken him seriously. For the people being judged, such a perspective is correct. But for the people who have been victimized by the injustices of predators, God's judgment becomes an act of mercy. They see it as a time when injustices cease and predators are held accountable for what they have done to hurt God's people. In that way, judgment shows that God cares.
Ron and Melinda saw judgment in that way when they walked through the ordeal of a trial. Their daughter, Samantha, had been killed by a drunk driver. When they found out that the driver had been driving without a license and that he had been ticketed a number of times for driving drunk, they were enraged. When they saw him try to manipulate the legal system so he would avoid being accountable for Samantha's death, they could hardly contain their fury. As they watched the scene unfold leading up to the trial, they felt that they had been victimized by the slow legal procedure. But they discovered that while it's slow, justice was sure. In due time, the person who took their daughter's life stood before a judge and was pronounced guilty. At that moment, they felt a sense of closure. Justice had been served.
The people of Israel felt helpless as they were herded from their homes to a life of captivity in Babylon. God spoke through the prophet to remind them that he held the leaders of Israel accountable for what had happened to them. The religious leaders had to be held accountable for not leading God's people to nurture a relationship with him. Picking up the comparison between God's people and sheep, the prophet referred to the leaders who misguided Israel as shepherds who didn't care for the flock and who victimized the sheep (vv. 1-10).
In the analogy, the prophet also compared the uncaring leaders to fat sheep (vv. 17-21). Because of their size, they could be spotted easily, especially in a flock of undernourished sheep. Their size reflected the way they had behaved. Like God said, they had pushed the weaker lambs aside in their quest to satisfy their self-indulgence. They got to the food first and didn't care if others were fed. Furthermore, they used their weight to push sheep away from the flock. They goaded the smaller sheep with their horns, eventually driving them from the flock altogether. No wonder so many were famished. No wonder so many had been lost. No wonder the flock had been scattered.
As the Lord promised, judgment day would be coming soon enough. The fat sheep as well as the thin sheep would be judged. That's when the fat sheep would see that their fatness set them apart for slaughter.
In the same way, God's people can count on him to render justice. All people everywhere will be included. No one will be able to escape it. In his justice, people who mistreat his followers will be held accountable. According to Matthew 25, Jesus said that he would return one day and judge the world. He would separate the people who followed him from individuals who had not taken him seriously. His followers would be welcomed in to heaven. The people who rejected God would face the sentence of his punishment. Everyone is included in his judgment, and the issue on which all of us will be judged has been clearly described.
God's justice doesn't always wait that long. He has the final word in people who mistreat others because they follow him, and he will mete out justice to whomever he wishes whenever he wishes. For the judged, it will be awful. For those who have been victimized, it will express the reality that he really cares for the people who have given themselves to him.
God expresses his care in yet another way. He demonstrates it in the way he leads his people (vv. 23-24). He doesn't give up on us, and he provides leadership so we can grow in our relationship with him.
Continuing to use the imagery of sheep to elaborate on God's ways with his people, the prophet proclaimed that they could look forward to the arrival of a new shepherd. Notice the sequence of events heralded by Ezekiel. First, God would nourish his scattered sheep in order to restore them to health. Then God will judge the selfish predators that have mistreated them. Finally, God will raise his shepherd who will guide the sheep.
The prophet provided a captivating description of the shepherd God had in mind. He referred to the shepherd as his servant, David. Later on, he said that David would be a prince among them. Indeed, David was both a shepherd and a prince. His boyhood was spent in the pasture with sheep. As an adult, he wrote about God's goodness by comparing him to a loving and caring shepherd. When God anointed him to succeed Saul as king, he demonstrated a remarkable sense of spiritual maturity. As a prince, so to speak, he lived on the run in the wilderness so he could escape Saul's sword.
In the end, he became a king and served God well. All Israel loved him. Little wonder that the shepherd God had in mind would be a David figure.
From our side of the cross, we affirm that Jesus Christ fit the description of the shepherd God promised his people long ago. Born in Bethlehem from the line of David, Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecy regarding the Davidic shepherd who would guide God's people. He even referred to himself as the Good Shepherd who would lay down his life for his sheep (John 10:11).
Because of Jesus Christ, another feature of the prophecy was fulfilled. God promised his people through the prophet that he would be their God. In other words, God would take the initiative to restore his relationship with them so they would be able to call on him. God would see to it that they would walk with him and live according to his ways. Jesus made the restoration of that relationship possible. He tore down the wall that our sin built. The wall separated us from God. With the walls tumbling down, an intimate walk with God can begin.
As a result of what Christ has done for us, we have been given the leadership we need for our future. The Lord can be counted on to direct our steps so we will please him with our lives. In pleasing him, we find joy and contentment.
Best of all, the Lord doesn't lead us from a distance. Quite the opposite, God walks with us each step of the way, and he remains intimately involved with us. He challenges us to spend time with him, to listen to him, to trust him, and to obey him. The purpose of these challenges is to help us to follow God faithfully and to grow in him toward spiritual maturity.
Let's return to the beginning. Earlier you were asked to imagine yourself in an isolated place, held there against your will, with no impression that God even cared about you. After working through Ezekiel's prophecy, you can add other important detail to the image created so far. Imagine the Lord observing everything that's going on with you and working in your life to nourish you so you can press on in his name. Imagine God holding accountable the predators in your life who seek to do injustice simply because they are strong and you are weak. Now imagine God leading you out of isolation and toward home where you belong.
Actually, you don't have to imagine it. If you don't already live it, you can by turning to Jesus Christ. He nourishes you, renders justice for you, and leads you. Why? Because God cares for you. Believe it. Act on it. Amen.
