Jacob as Shepherd: Building an Empire

Jacob also was a shepherd, and when he went to to Laban, and he said, I’ll work seven years for for your daughter. Then he got tricked and they gave him Leah, so he worked another seven years. He was a shepherd of the flock. So it was something that the the Jews were very familiar with.

Shepherds: First Invitees to the Birth of the Messiah

And I also think it’s really significant that that Jesus’s birth was first announced to the shepherds who were again some of the the humble and the lowly, not the big names at the time.

Old Testament Prophecies about False Shepherds

But more than that, God’s also used as shepherding as an illustration throughout the Old Testament. So the prophets spoke extensively about faithless shepherds, those that abandon their their responsibilities. And when they were doing that, they were speaking to leaders of the time who were not upholding their responsibilities.

So just for example, Jeremiah in chapter 3 verses 14 through 15,

“Return home, you wayward children,” says the Lord, “for I am your master. I will bring you back to the land of Israel, one from this this town and two from that family from wherever you are scattered. And I will give you shepherds after my own heart who will guide you with knowledge and understanding.”

And then in Jeremiah 23:9,

“So woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture,” declares the Lord.

And then he talks about it in Jeremiah 56, Jeremiah 2:8, Jeremiah 12:10, Jeremiah 49:19 and 50:44. Isaiah also refers to the shepherds in Isaiah 56:11. Ezekiel does in chapter 34. It’s pretty much a whole chapter as an indictment against false shepherds. And then also Nahum chapter 3 verse 18.

False Shepherds and the AntiChrist

And then this is what’s really interesting because I know a lot of people are interested in Endtime prophecy. Zechariah actually refers to the Antichrist as the cruel shepherd, and this he talks about this and it starts in chapter 10 and then goes into chapter 11. But there’s a prophecy that the if you read Zechariah that there will be someone that the Jews will follow and they will believe that he’s their Messiah, and then he’ll turn on them and that kind of usher in the worst time or the time of Jacob’s trouble.

So there’s a lot of references to shepherding, both good shepherds and also false shepherds. He refers to lost sheep that have no shepherd in Numbers 27:17, 1 Kings 22:17. And Jesus referred to that. He said this in Matthew 9:36 and also refers to this in Mark 6:34, he said, “Seeing the people, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.” So whenever you feel like that, distressed and dispirited, if it describes your situation, then whenever you read a passage about shepherding, know that Jesus is speaking directly to you. He’s referring to that.

And in Psalms 23 is the one that we’re all familiar with. It says, “The Lord is my shepherd,” but also in Isaiah 40:11, it says that

“Like a shepherd he will tend his flock. In his arms, he will gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom. He will gently lead the nursing ewes.”

So keep that one in your mind when we go to Jesus’s parable. And also in Psalm 78:52,

“But he led forth his own people like sheep and divided them and guided them in the wilderness like sheep.”

The Parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15

Okay, so now we’ve looked at the history of the references in the Bible to sheep and shepherds and lost sheep. So in Luke 15 is the Parable of the Lost Sheep, and this is verses 1 through 7. Now some of the parables are repeated in multiple areas. This one is only found in Luke.

So starting in verse 1,

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associated with such sinful people, even eating with them,

Heaven forbid!

So Jesus told them this story. If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.

So that is basically echoing almost exactly here in Isaiah 40:11,

Like a shepherd, he will tend his flock. In his arms, he will gather the Lambs and carry them in his bosom.

Okay, continuing in verse 5,

“And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. When he arrives, he will call it together his friends and neighbors saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God then over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away.”

A Good Shepherd Cares for the Lost

So Jesus is saying here but we need to be concerned about those that are lost, and the Pharisees thought that they didn’t like that Jesus was associating with kind of the riffraff of this society.

Now the tax collectors had positions with the Romans. They were also corrupt. They were taking money on the side, so they were doubly hated both for their affiliation with the Romans and because everybody knew they were being cheated. But what can they do? The tax collectors had the authority of the Romans behind them. But Jesus associated with them, and he was friends with people that no one else wanted to be friends with, and that they thought were just utter scum, like tax collectors and notorious sinners.

How Jesus cares for individuals not just crowds

Jesus said he cares about the one. It’s the same thing that modern shepherd was saying. He was saying that you’re concerned with the flock, but you need to attend to the needs of the individual.

Lessons On Discipleship, Sheep, and Shepherds from John and Peter

Then in John, the Gospel of John doesn’t have parables, but he refers to some of these same things. And in John 10:11, Jesus makes very clear about his affiliation with what these prophecies in the Old Testament. He says,

“I am The Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”

And the writer of Hebrews explains that further saying in chapter 13 verse 20,

“Now the God of peace who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even then Jesus our Lord.”

Peter also tells us in 1 Peter 2:25,

“For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and guardian of your souls.”

So you know, like our goat Creampuff, he was just not really paying attention. He wasn’t being careful, and he saw something that looked good and ended up basically in a pit. He got himself in a mess until somebody came to get him out. And sometimes we’re like that too, right?

Vacation Bible School Lessons on the Lost Sheep Parable

So I have to share this story. I’ve mentioned before I teach Vacation Bible School, and it’s kind of crazy sometimes because the energy is just so high. And we’ll have like, I don’t know, maybe like ten different classes in one grade. So I teach third grade, so we’ll have like ten different rooms of that one grade on one floor.

We do some things in our classroom, but for our Bible story, we go down to the main worship center. So the way it normally works in the beginning is that they come, we have a little bit of time with them in the beginning, and then we take them down to the worship center for this story.

So the first day of VBS, this is a few years ago, — the other thing is that my church is very, very, very careful about making sure that we know who belongs to whom and is just really big into security. So we have to have all the parents’ contact information and also know if there’s anybody else that’s allowed to come pick the kids up. Normally I try to call the week ahead of time to introduce myself and to get all that information, and we write it down their name tag, and kids have to have that on all the time. But that year, I don’t know what the deal was, but I didn’t get a hold of very many people.

So the entirety of the beginning of from before it actually started to almost to the time when we were getting ready to go down to the worship center, I was talking to parents, writing down the information, and basically just getting all that settled.

So as I’m finishing this up, we were going to have a bathroom break — because you know how serious that is. We always have to have bathroom breaks before we go down, stuff like that. So anyway, I had just said, literally got them in the line, we had counted the kids that were going for a bathroom break, and I said, “you need to stay together, stay in the line because it would be really bad if we lost somebody.”

Okay, so we are on this floor. Our room is literally right across the hall from the bathroom. The bathrooms are in the center area, and we’re literally right across the hall.
So anyway, we’re kind of getting things ready to go down to the worship center and all the kids have come back. We get in the line, we do a count, and we’re one short — one short. And I was like, oh my goodness, and so I’m talking to the coordinator. “We’re missing somebody. I don’t know where they are.” We’re trying to see if they’re in the restroom and can’t find anybody — where did they go?

And I don’t even know who’s missing because I haven’t really even gotten a chance to get to know them — because literally it’s the first day and I was just basically getting all the details from the parents.

So anyway, count, count again, I have to go through the list to figure out who it is that’s missing. They say, okay, go ahead and go down. So we take the rest of the kids down. I am just like literally panicking, and they have the coordinators looking for them. They have pretty much the whole church on lockdown with people on the lookout for this child that is missing. They have security sweeping the floor. It was horrible. I sent a text message to my prayer group, “Please pray. We lost somebody.” I ran into this other lady from my Bible study, and she’s praying for me.

So anyway, the pastor at the beginning of the Bible story says, “Is Bailey here?” No answer, no nothing, Oh my goodness, where could she have gone?

So anyway, we start coming back, and then oh my goodness, there’s Bailey!

So what had happened was she had come out of the bathroom — and literally our door is three steps from where the bathroom is, maybe five if you’re eight, but it’s literally the right there. But just as she was coming down, there was another class that was on their way down to the worship center and she saw somebody she knew, so she just went with them. And I guess the teacher in that class didn’t notice they had a tag-along.

So anyway, we’re like, oh my goodness, but that was a story. And then guess what our story was? It was on this parable, on the parable of the lost sheep. I will never forget her name — because her name was Bailey — and we used this as an illustration. I told the whole story what had happened and how many people were out looking for her because she was lost and we didn’t know where she was.

What does it mean to be like sheep without a shepherd?

I always think of that story when I read this parable, but Jesus wasn’t just referring to the Jewish people, right? He was also referring to all of us. He said in John 10:16, he says,
“I have other sheep which are not of this fold. I will bring them to me also, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd.”

And I found an article that was talking about this passage in John 10, and it was called “Shepherd Discourse of John 10 in it’s Context.” I’ll link to that in the description here, but it says “the role of gathering dispersed sheep is qualification of an authentic shepherd.”

So I think sometimes we get real complacent, don’t we, about our church people, and then everybody else is just kind of out there and we don’t really worry about it so much, I think sometimes. But that is our mandate, that we’re supposed to go make disciples of all nations.

Jesus feeding his sheep meaning in John 21

And the last instruction that John records is relating to this care for and tending of Jesus’s followers. So this is in John 21, and this is after the resurrection, and Jesus has already appeared to them once. The disciples had already gone out and they were fishing.

And this is kind of interesting to me. So I was just thinking — this is actually what I read this morning in my devotions. It doesn’t say this here, but in other passages it says that Jesus told them to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came, right? But then here they’re out fishing, and it said they had gone all night. They they had gone fishing. So they went out in the boat, but they caught nothing all night.

So Jesus says wait until the Holy Spirit comes in Jerusalem, but they go fishing, and this is what they did before they started following Jesus. They were fishermen, right? So they go back to what they know.

“At dawn Jesus was standing on the beach, but his disciples couldn’t see who he was. He called out, ‘Fellows, have you caught any fish?’ ‘No,’ they replied. He said, ‘Then throw out the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you’ll get some.’ So they did, and they couldn’t haul in the net because there were so many fish in it. And then the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It’s the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his tunic, for he had stripped for work, jumped into the boat, and headed to the shore. The others stayed with the boat and pulled the loaded net in the shore, for they were only about 100 yards from shore. When they got there, they found breakfast waiting for them, fish cooking over a charcoal fire and some bread. ‘Bring some of the fish you cut,’ so Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net to the shore. There were 153 large fish, and yet the net hadn’t torn.”

Now I’m not a fisherman, and obviously I’m not a fisherman two thousand years ago, so to me that John highlighted this says to me that there was significance about it in itself, that number of fish, large fish, and that the net hadn’t torn. Not only was the provision miraculous, but the fact that they were able to contain it, to hold it was miraculous too.

And he said, “Now come and have some breakfast,” Jesus said. “None of the disciples dared to ask him who are you. They knew it was the Lord. Then Jesus served them the bread and the fish. This was the third time Jesus had appeared to his disciples since he had been raised from the dead.”

So what stood out to me this morning was that Jesus said to wait. They go back to fish, but they’re not getting any result from what they’re doing. And this was their profession. This is what they had done all their life before they followed Jesus, but they weren’t getting any results until he tells them to go, and then they get all these results.

So I think it’s important that we need to always be following God’s directions, seeking God’s direction, and following his voice specifically because and that’s where the the provision and the blessing is, is when we follow his voice.

So then going to the part that I’m referring to about the direction in the next verse it says,

“After breakfast Jesus asked Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ Peter replied, ‘you know I love you.’ ‘Then feed my lambs,’ Jesus told him. Jesus repeated the question, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ Peter said, ‘you know I love you.’ ‘Then take care of my sheep,’ Jesus said. A third time he asked him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the question a third time. He said, ‘Lord, you know everything. You know I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Then feed my sheep.'”

Nurturing new Christians through discipleship

And I’ve mentioned this before that he asked him three times because Peter had denied him three times. But what Jesus is saying here is that you are to disciple those that are new in the faith. You’re to take care of the sheep and then to to feed them, to care about those that are coming to Jesus are and to disciple them and train them.

Biblical approach to evangelism with non-believers

So when I was, when I was reading this, it’s really easy to like I said, it’s really easy to look at what we already have in church, but we always want to make sure that we are being sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit when we work sharing the Gospel, not even necessarily sharing the gospel, but just being a witness to other people. Like I mentioned, I think it was last week, Greg Koukl said he just is there to have conversations with people and to help to raise questions and to give the Holy Spirit good soil to work in.

And I have to tell the story. I have a friend that I through the apologetics program with. His name is James. He graduated a few years ago. When he was almost to the end of the apologetics program, he was laid off from his job. He lives in San Antonio. He used to be a writer for, I think, the business journal over there.
But anyway, so since then he’s just been doing some kind of a fill-in job. It’s not what he really wants to be doing for a profession, but he’s doing what he needs to do to pay the bills.

But during that time, he, and I’m not even sure how they net, but he met somebody who is a Wiccan. They would meet for coffee, I don’t know, every week or two.

Every time before he would go to meet with her, he would ask us, “Be praying for my friend. I’m meeting with her, just please be praying that God works on her heart and that I can answer her questions.”

Sometimes she would have a question, and James would come and ask us, “Hey, she had this question. What would you recommend for resources?”

We’ve been following this story for over a year that he’s been sharing this with us. Well, Saturday my friend said that she accepted Jesus. This is just this last week, and we’re so excited.

And the thing that is awesome about James is that I’ve, whenever he’s sharing these stories, because this isn’t the only person that he’s been being a friend to and witnessing to, he always reminds me of kind of like a mountain man that he will go and just talk to people that most people would write off, that they would just dismiss.

One of the things that this woman said was that when Christians would find out that she was a Wiccan, they would just be really aggressive about evangelism, and it was almost like, I don’t know. I think sometimes we need to remember that when we’re witnessing, these aren’t projects. These are people.

And we need to care about them and love them as an individual and listen to their life story and respond to what it is that they’re saying. James has been a friend to her for at least over a year.

When she asked him, “Are you happy about that?” He said, “I’ve been praying for you every day since we first met.”

That’s what we need to practice doing. We need to remember that even people that we think are so, so, so far from God, that God loves them and wants them to come to him. We need to have Jesus’s heart for those lost sheep.

The Good Shepherd Never Forgets His Sheep

Whenever I hear Lauren Daigle’s song, “I Will Rescue You,” the song starts as “You are not hidden. There’s never been a moment that you were forgotten.” So no matter who somebody is, God has not forgotten them. But the thing that really stands out is there’s one verse, it says, “I will send out an army to find you in the middle of the darkest night.” That’s true. I will find you.

Following the Voice of Your Shepherd

And so when God works through people, right? So could he just appear in a burning bush like he did to Moses to everyone? Yeah, he could. But he chooses to work through us, through his people, and that we are supposed to be those — when we make Jesus the Lord of our life — we’re supposed to be doing his will and listening to his voice.

You may have circumstances in your life and you’re thinking, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” Like my friend James, he doesn’t think as far as career wise — maybe he doesn’t think that he’s where he should be or where he wants to be, but God put him in a place so that he could witness to this person. And we don’t know who she’s going to influence.

It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Don’t think that it’s insignificant because wherever you are, just say, “God, you know what? I’m here to be used by you. So just show me what it is that you want to want me to do.”

Remember that whatever your interaction is that if you feel the Holy Spirit prompting you to make a comment or to drop a word of hope into someone or just to speak to something, especially if you feel uncomfortable about it. If you feel uncomfortable about it’s the Holy Spirit and it’s not coming from you. Just remember that maybe there’s somebody that’s praying for that person that you are in front of. Maybe that you can be part of God’s answer to that person’s prayer by bringing the person that’s in front of you closer to God.

Remember that we choose every day who are going to serve. Do we choose to be used by God? I encourage you to to make that decision.

If you’ve already made Jesus the Lord of your life, remember that every single day we make a decision. Are we following God’s will? Are we we doing what he has for us to do that day?

So anyway, so that’s enough our parable of the lost sheep, but remember there’s a lot of lost sheep out there, and so we want to be part of the Great Shepherd’s effort to bring them into the fold.

Prayer Requests

• Job for James
• Zak’s Spinrazza Injections
• Justice and illumination in the conflict between Kingwood and Conroe residents and the San Jacinto River Authority.