The Shepherd King
Download MP3If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Ezekiel chapter 34. I think this is our fifth or sixth week in Ezekiel now. If you remember, Ezekiel is a 30 year old priest living far far away from the temple which he should be serving in, far away from Jerusalem because he is living in exile in Babylon. When I first introduced this book, I mentioned how being in exile is different than being homeless. Being homeless is when you don't have a home.
Joel Brooks:Being in exile is when you know exactly where your home is, where you belong, but that you can never go back there. And so with that in mind, I want us to read Psalm one thirty seven. I'm gonna read this to you before we read Ezekiel 34, because Psalm one thirty seven is a poem that the exiles wrote during this time that Ezekiel lived. By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows, there we hung up our liars, for there our captors were required of us songs and our tormentors mirth saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion.
Joel Brooks:How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, oh Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. If I do not remember you, if I do not set you Jerusalem above my highest joy. So why am I reading this poem to you before we read Ezekiel 34?
Joel Brooks:Well, it's because in Ezekiel 33, the exiles just received word that Jerusalem had been destroyed. Their home. The home that maybe they they kept this deep but faint little hope alive that they might someday be able to return. That hope is now gone because Jerusalem no longer exists. The temple has been razed to the ground.
Joel Brooks:And so they all feel at this point broken, bruised, or as Ezekiel will say, like scattered sheep without a shepherd. So for those of you who long for home, who long for that place for you to find rest, who long for green pastures, this text is for you. So Ezekiel 34, we'll read the first sixteen verses. 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?
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks:They wandered over all the mountains 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 declare, declares the As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become 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'm against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep.
Joel Brooks: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, I myself will search for my sheep and I will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep and have that have been scattered, so I will 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 I will bring them into their own land.
Joel Brooks:And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the ravines and in 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 a good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed all 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.
Joel Brooks:And the fat and the strong, I will destroy. I will feed them injustice. Now go to verse 23. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them, and he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them.
Joel Brooks:I am the Lord, I have spoken. This is the word of the Lord. Would you pray with me? Father, we come to you as sheep longing to be fed. You say that your sheep know your voice.
Joel Brooks:They listen to you. They obey you. And I pray that right now we would clearly hear you calling us. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. When I was in college ministry and I did that for eight or nine years, I would spend most of my summers in Ireland. I think I've been to Ireland Fourteen, Fifteen times. And there are a lot of sheep in Ireland.
Joel Brooks:Actually there's more sheep than people. Have you ever gotten a really good look at a sheep? I realize we don't have many sheep here in Birmingham. Some of you have goats, that's becoming the trend. Probably a very similar look in their eyes.
Joel Brooks:If you've ever looked closely at a sheep, and I have, there's nothing behind those eyes. I mean, nothing. Sheep are the dumbest animal on the planet. They cannot find any food on their own. They easily get lost.
Joel Brooks:And even when they get lost, and they're within sight of the sheepfold, they can't make their way back. They are the most defenseless of any animal. Search the world over and you're not gonna find a wild sheep. So never once are you gonna go hiking in the woods and be like, guys, look out for the sheep. You know, don't carry sheep spray with you.
Joel Brooks:You don't wear sheep bells to warn them you're coming. If you came across a sheep, you don't say, don't look it in the eye, back up slowly. They don't have any ferocious claws or or teeth. They basically exist to be a white fluffy food for wolves. That's that's the reason for existing.
Joel Brooks:They can't make it on their own. So don't miss the insult when God calls you sheep. And he does so over 400 times in scripture. Apparently we are so stupid, it's something he has to just keep repeating to us over and over and over. But over 400 times, he refers to us as sheep.
Joel Brooks:Now rest assured, we're not only called sheep, we're called, you know, some good things. We're called sons and daughters of God. We're called God's treasured possession, his bridegroom. We're called some beautiful things, but way more than any of those, we are sheep. In other words, there's just something very sheepish about us.
Joel Brooks:Now if sheep do not have good shepherds, things are gonna go poorly for them, which is exactly what happened to Israel. The reason they were in exile, the reason Jerusalem was destroyed, was not only because they were wayward sheep. I mean, the sheep themselves have sinned, they were wayward sheep, but they didn't have any leaders to call them out on it. They didn't have any leaders or shepherds to go after them and to care for them and to love them. Their shepherds failed them.
Joel Brooks:And so Israel was suffering from a crisis in its leadership. Ezekiel, he begins this chapter by listing, you know, litany of ways that the shepherds of Israel had failed the people. But you could really boil it all down to just one thing. They were selfish. These shepherds were selfish.
Joel Brooks:They were interested in feeding themselves instead of feeding the sheep. Sometimes they even slaughtered the sheep to eat them. And of course, this is a classic failure in leadership. Some leaders seek power not to serve, but to be served. These leaders also fail to tell people what they really needed to hear, which was God's word, the truth.
Joel Brooks:They just told the people whatever they wanted to hear, let them do whatever they wanted instead of reminding them of who God was, pointing out their sin and pointing them to truth. And as a result, Israel perished. Now because all of the failure, because of all the failure of these shepherds, to care for the sheep that God loves so dearly, God makes this promise. Since you can't do it, I will. I will come in and I will shepherd my sheep.
Joel Brooks:And we read this in verses fifteen and sixteen, which are really the heart of this entire chapter. And what we read when we read through these two verses, we read about five different types of sheep and five ways the Lord will deal with them. But let me just read fifteen and sixteen. 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, and 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.
Joel Brooks:I will feed them injustice. Here we see five different types of sheep and five different ways the Lord is gonna respond to them. We see the lost, the strayed, the injured, the weak, and then the sheep that are fat and strong. And what I want us to do is look at each one of those five sheep. First, we have the lost sheep.
Joel Brooks:And have you ever been lost before? Like really lost. I know it's kind of hard to do. We all have phones. I'm not talking about, you know, you temporarily lost your GPS, or you're a little confused, or you missed an exit, or anything like that.
Joel Brooks:I'm talking about, have you ever really been lost? I got lost only one time in my life. I was in Indonesia A Number Of Years ago, and I left the hotel to go on a run. We were in a small town in Indonesia of just five or 6,000,000 people. And so I left and I went on a run.
Joel Brooks:I did not bring any identification. I did not know the name of our hotel. I didn't bring any money and I didn't bring a phone. So mistakes were made at the start of this journey. But I thought, we're right next to a mosque, there's a marionette there.
Joel Brooks:All I to do is just kinda look at that marionette, I can make my way back. Just completely oblivious to the fact that there's hundreds of mosques around, all with minarets that look just alike. And so as I'm running, after about thirty minutes, I thought I was pulling back to the hotel and it wasn't. I was some other place. I was like, oh, wrong, wrong mosque.
Joel Brooks:Oh, it's over there. And so I ran over there, wrong. And then I kept running from place to place to place. I didn't speak the language. No one there spoke English.
Joel Brooks:And when you don't speak the language, you have no ID. You don't know the name of the hotel where you're coming from. You don't have any money. You have absolutely nothing. You start to feel a little desperate.
Joel Brooks:So I'm running around. I think I probably ran a marathon by the end of it, because I'm running for hours. Finally, I got so dehydrated. It's for the first time in my life, contemplated stealing. Because there was no water and I just thought, well, I could just, there's a market there, I could just take something.
Joel Brooks:But then I saw a police station. I was like, I ran to the police station, I went in. They couldn't help me because they didn't understand me. They literally shooed me out of the police station. And for the first time, panic hit.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I actually started to panic at this point because my strength is failing me and I was exhausted and I'd exhausted every option. And so at that point, I didn't know what to do. And thankfully I saw in the distance, a person pull out a phone that looked like an iPhone, and I just sprinted towards them. And by getting that person to use the iPhone, we were able to over hours of driving around, find my way back. Being lost is not just when you're exhausted, you've lost all your strength, it's when you've exhausted all of your options.
Joel Brooks:Like literally there's no hope for you. Have you ever been that type of lost? Some of you are spiritually lost. You're a wandering soul and you've tried everything. You've exhausted yourself trying to be good.
Joel Brooks:Some of you have exhausted yourself trying to be really bad. You've tried different religions, different philosophies. If there's one of those online quizzes, you've taken it. So you know what fruit you are. You know what celebrity you're like.
Joel Brooks:You know all of those personality things, what your animal spirit is. You've taken all of those things, but you still are lost. You feel completely empty inside, and you're just kind of stumbling through life without direction. Some of you are not lost, but instead you've strayed and that's the next sheep. You have strayed away from the shepherd, strayed away from the flock.
Joel Brooks:The person who has strayed is the one who actually, at least at one point, knew the truth. And maybe deep, deep down, they still believe the truth, they believe the gospel, they know that God's word is true, but they have knowingly and willingly departed from it. And perhaps now they're they're living a life in which they're trying to convince themselves that they really don't need God or his word. They don't really need to be part of a flock. They don't really need the shepherd.
Joel Brooks:They can fend for themselves. They can find their own green pastures. These people maybe at one point used to still hear that still small voice of God, but they've been ignoring it so long, it finally disappears. And that's both a relief and a pain to them when they can no longer hear God. This is the person who has strayed.
Joel Brooks:Is that any of you? This word strayed can also mean driven away. And perhaps that's where some of you are. Perhaps you grew up believing the gospel, but you were driven away from it. Maybe it was the hypocrisy of all the Christians you knew that drove you away from the gospel, or at least drove you away from the institutional church.
Joel Brooks:Perhaps it was the pastor. The preaching from that pulpit became so legalistic or so political, you can no longer even recognize the gospel anymore and it drove you away. Or perhaps you suffered some church hurt, from someone in leadership. And that is what pushed you from the faith. But regardless of the reasons that you left, you've now been gone so long, you can't even imagine ever coming back.
Joel Brooks:Remember when the sheep, the sheep that astrayed, even when they could see the sheepfold, even when they could see the shepherd, they're not smart enough to make their way back. And perhaps that is some of you. And next we read about the sheep that are injured. You could also translate this as broken. I think the King James translates it that way, injured or broken.
Joel Brooks:This is the sheep that's been attacked by maybe a wolf or a lion, or perhaps has just fallen in a ravine, has been severely injured. Spiritually, this broken person could be the one who maybe is in a marriage that has been so under attack, so defined by arguing, by the lies, by the selfishness that cannot even imagine itself being whole or healed again. Or perhaps this broken person is the one who is so addicted to a certain sin that has completely taken over their life. It's consuming them. Broken them down to the point that they are so injured, they just can't even move on in life anymore.
Joel Brooks:The assaults of that enemy are just devastating. There's no more joy. There's no more hope. They just feel like they're bleeding out. Or perhaps this assault comes in the form of depression or anxiety, and it's so severe it leaves you crippled.
Joel Brooks:You have no energy. It's hard to even get out of bed. You can't sleep. You can't eat. You begin you begin drinking too much or you begin binging too much on Netflix.
Joel Brooks:All is just a way to numb you to the pain that you feel for being so broken or injured. The next sheep is the weak one. Now the primary reason that sheep grow weak or sick, I think the King James translates it sick, is through malnutrition. This happens when the sheep leave the green pastures that their shepherd has faithfully led them to, but instead they go off and they eat some milkweed or some bracken ferns or some ragwort. The only reason I know that is I know nothing about shepherding or sheep, but I didn't look it up on Wikipedia.
Joel Brooks:I'm transitioning to AI and AI told me that those are the things that make sheep sick. I don't even know what milkweed is. It might make sheep sick, but it's not gonna make your soul sick. But your soul will get sick when you leave the word of God and you begin feeding on all the other junk food out there. And we are endlessly surrounded by spiritual junk food.
Joel Brooks:I mean, the the Internet, it is a endless supply. Now I I do not say this, what I'm gonna say next to mock anyone here, seriously. This is a a serious question. For those of you who are single, are you consuming more information about dating, marriage, and sexuality from sources like TikTok or from God's word? Not a joke.
Joel Brooks:It's not a joke because I meet with people often, and they're like, and they have the, what I think is the most crazy views of sexuality or of dating, this. I'm like, where did you get that from? TikTok. Like, literally, you're basing your your decisions on on that instead of the word of God? Or for those of you who are working, you're pursuing a career, what are you feeding your souls with concerning how you should view work, How you should view money?
Joel Brooks:Our days are just spent consuming things mindlessly from every billboard, every TV, every phone, every screen. And then we wonder why we don't feel so well. I mean, we're wondering, why am I so anxious? Why I'm always depressed? Why am I just confused all the time, feeling disoriented?
Joel Brooks:Well, you've been eating things that are bad for you. You've been drinking from poisoned wells. And as a result, some of you in this room are sick and you've been sick for so long, you have forgotten what it even feels like to be well. I mean, you've just grown used to it. You can't remember what it was like to truly be alive and energized by God's spirit.
Joel Brooks:Let me ask you this. Do you think our society, or society that now has, you know, endless sources of information written all by these experts, you think now that we have all of that information right here at our fingertips and we've been consuming it nonstop, do you think as a society we have become more or less anxious as a people? Do you think we become more or less joyful? Do you think we become more healthy and whole or have we become more sick? God's inviting us to green pastures.
Joel Brooks:Now, you might think after you've read through those four that there's little hope for those who are lost, strayed, injured, or weak. But you would be wrong. There's only one sheep that's without hope. That's the fat and strong or the healthy sheep. These, God says He's gonna destroy because these are the sheep that don't believe they need saving.
Joel Brooks:Remember what we looked at last week? The Bible doesn't separate people into these two groups. We typically think of the Bible sets right separates people between the good and the bad. Good go to heaven, bad go to hell. That's not what the Bible teaches.
Joel Brooks:The Bible teaches it's the humble that go to heaven. It's the proud that go to hell. It's the humble who recognize they are injured. They're sick. They're weak.
Joel Brooks:They're broken. Those go to heaven. It's the proud to say, you know what? I'm just fine and healthy. I don't need your help.
Joel Brooks:Thank you. Those are the ones who are judged. Essentially, God says, you don't wanna be rescued? Okay, I won't rescue you. So these fat and strong think they are just fine and don't need a shepherd.
Joel Brooks:But to those others, those other four sheep, God promises himself to come and that he will actually be their shepherd. Ezekiel tells these sheep that although all the other shepherds have failed them, God's gonna step in to be the the shepherd they've always needed, always longed for, and he does this through his son, Jesus Christ. There's actually a riddle in Ezekiel there in which you have God saying, he's gonna be the shepherd. I will do this. I will do this.
Joel Brooks:I will do this. And then it ends, he says, and I'm gonna make my servant David be a shepherd. Like, well, which is it? God, are you gonna be the shepherd? Or is it your servant David?
Joel Brooks:And the answer is yes, it's gonna be both through the person of Jesus Christ. In Jesus, we have a descendant of David who is also God's son, and he is our shepherd. He's the one who had the people come lay down in the fields of grass because it said he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He's the one who in John chapter 10, he says this, the thief comes only to steal, to kill, and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life, half it abundantly, for I am the good shepherd. And the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is the good shepherd who goes after the lost, the strayed, the injured, and the weak. So for those of you who are lost, know that you're just the type of person that Jesus came to save. In Luke 19, Jesus actually said, he goes, He came to seek and to save that which was lost. For those of you who have strayed, in Matthew 18, Jesus says this, what do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountain and go in search of that one that goes astray?
Joel Brooks:Jesus is irresistibly drawn to those who have strayed from the fold. He doesn't sit around just waiting for you to return, you know, get your act together, clean yourself up, and then if you do that, find your way back here, maybe I'll let you into the sheepfold. No. You are so much on Jesus' mind, he's not sitting around waiting for you to come to him. He relentlessly pursues you, leaves the 99, searches high and low to go and to find you.
Joel Brooks:He is relentless in his pursuit of you. No one pursues you like Jesus. I don't know what you feel like has been pursuing you your whole life. For some of you, you feel like you've been pursued by some dark shadows. Maybe you you feel like it's guilt from your past.
Joel Brooks:Just as always there. Maybe it's anxiety or depression. It's just always there following you. If that's you, hear what the Lord says in Psalm 23. It's his goodness and mercy that are following you all the days of your life.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is running after you. You see this, I think most clearly through the life of Jacob. He might be, you know, outside of Jesus, my favorite character in scripture. He is a scoundrel. I mean, I got a preach through him a few years ago, but you know, he grew up in this household of faith.
Joel Brooks:So he grew up knowing the Lord, going to church, if you will, knows all that, and he departs from it. And for his whole life, he's just this lying, cheat, scoundrel. He never really does anything right. And even when the occasional times he prays, they're terrible prayers. I mean his prayers are like, God, you do this, this, this, this for me, I'll think about worshiping and following you.
Joel Brooks:And he's got this huge hole in his heart and he keeps trying to fill it with everything. So he is a strayed sheep. It's not till the end of his life that the penny drops, and I love it. You go to the very end of Genesis, and Jacob is finally, he's praying. He says, Lord, as I look back at my life, you've been my shepherd all my days.
Joel Brooks:I love that. He looks back and he thinks, all those times I was running from you, all the times I didn't think I needed your help, all those times I was just lying and cheating and getting my own own way, all that, you were running after me. You were always there. You were my shepherd all my days. The Lord is relentless in His pursuit of you.
Joel Brooks:For those of you here or the sheep who are injured or broken due to your sin, Jesus offers you healing. I've got in my office, a Bible verses, comes from Isaiah 61. Lauren actually painted it for me when I first began ministry. Jesus quotes from it. And one of the things he quotes is, the reason he came was to bind up the broken.
Joel Brooks:To find those who are broken and to bind them up, to heal them. He's a great physician. But here's the deal. Injured sheep, they often assume that when the shepherd comes, the shepherd's not coming to help them, the shepherd is coming to kill them. Sheep will fight against the very help that they need.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, he might come to you and he might ask you to confess some things or to give up some things that you think are gonna be really painful to give up. You might even think if I do that, it's gonna be the end of me. No, that's gonna be the end to that life, and it's gonna bring you into a whole new healed life. Hear me, there is not one thing in your life that you're holding onto so tightly that is worth more than Jesus. And if he calls you to let it go, let it go.
Joel Brooks:Remember when Jesus or when God came to Jacob to heal him, Jacob wrestled him. God had to injure him. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life, But he begins to realize the Lord is my shepherd. He's actually with me. And some of those cuts that the Lord gives you, it's not cuts to hurt you, they're surgical cuts to heal you.
Joel Brooks:Finally, for those of you who are sick, because you've been eating and drinking all those bad things for you, know that Jesus, He says He's the bread of life. Jesus is the one who offers you living water. And John 70 says, To him who is thirsty, come to me and drink. Says, I'm that drink, I'm what your souls have craved your entire life. Jesus tells us the reason that he is the good shepherd is because he lays down his life for the sheep.
Joel Brooks:That's the one thing that makes him the good shepherd above all else. You don't just lay down your life as an example. That's not what Jesus is doing. It's like, you know, just laying it down so you could be like me, follow my example. That's not it.
Joel Brooks:He's doing it to protect us. That word laid down your life for the sheep can be translated laid down your life instead of the sheep. The picture is this, a predator is coming. Our sin has become a predator and it is going to kill us, but Jesus steps in and he gives his life for ours. He died that we might live and not just live, but live abundantly.
Joel Brooks:There's no greater love. And hear me, you can have no greater shepherd. Once again, the only person that Jesus does not come to and find and bring in and heal are those who don't feel their need for him. But what he's asking of you right now is to simply say, I need you, Jesus, and he will come running. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, we say this as a people out loud right now, we need you. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each one of us through their own way, But you have laid the iniquity of us all on Jesus. He died that we might live. Thank you, Lord. Spirit, would you come now and make those truths a reality in our hearts?
Joel Brooks:And we pray this in the sweet name of Jesus. Amen.
