Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 11th, A+D 2025
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran
Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Life Under the Good Shepherd
Sermon audio available HERE.
Terrible News! Paul prophesies to the pastors from Ephesus: I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.
And there’s more bad news, as the Apostle predicts his own future: The Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.
But wait, hope springs eternal: For John learns from his heavenly tour guide that: These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. "Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
From one extreme to the other. Great promises of protection and blessing, set alongside descriptions of terrible trials. We regularly hear such extremes in the Bible. Do you experience them in your life? One moment full of hope, the next full of dread? One day your child is an adorable five-year-old, seeking to please you, then suddenly they are sixteen, making bad choices and keeping you up nights? One day your job is secure, then the company is sold, and you think you might be out? Healthy one day, fighting cancer the next?
What are we to make of this? Why is Christian living like this, why aren’t things steady, predictable, and always full of obvious blessings? Well, this morning, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will find our Good Shepherd right at the intersection of blessing and trial, helping us to see and rejoice in God’s good plan.
But to start out, we should acknowledge that usually our lives do not seem so extreme. We may not live boring lives, but neither are they very often so dramatic as the life and death struggles described in our readings, and throughout the Scripture. Our highs are usually not so high, but we are o.k. with that, as long as our lows don’t get too low.
Your life is at it is. But be warned, even as Satan will try to use moments of trial to tempt us, he can also use an apparently hum-drum life against us. When life is predictable, neither too high nor too low, we can begin to believe this is all there is, forgetting that the drama of the Bible is also descriptive for life in the Church. Whether we recognize it or not, we are caught up in a spiritual battle.
When life goes along pretty well, especially when we do a little better by trying a little harder, when, to paraphrase a saying of the Marines, when we have all our “stuff” in one sack, well, then it’s very easy to lose your desire for a Savior. Who really needs a Savior when life is bumping along o.k., maybe not too great, but not so bad, either? Who needs a Good Shepherd when we can’t see any wolves, stalking us, seeking to devour us?
This was life for many of the Jews when Jesus visibly walked this earth. Their lives were not great, but not all bad. Sure, they were living under Roman rule, they weren’t independent. But, they were in the Holy Land, they had Jerusalem, and the Temple, and the Romans allowed them to practice their faith and culture. They were not free, but they could always take pride in the Maccabees, those brave Jews who three centuries earlier had thrown off Greek tyranny and paganism. No matter that this independence was short lived; their current situation was o.k., and the daring history of the Maccabees was a still a source of great pride.
It was also the source of the Feast of Dedication that provides the setting for our Gospel today, the celebration of those dramatic days when the Maccabee freedom fighters evicted the hated Greeks from the Temple, the day the Jews purified and re-dedicated God’s house to His worship. It was during this celebration that the Jews surround Jesus, demanding to know His intentions.
You see, the Jews of Jesus’ day, or at least the leaders of the Jews, they were doing o.k. They may not have had it totally great, but they didn’t have it so bad, either. So Jesus made them nervous. They were afraid of the turmoil that would result if Jesus publicly claimed to be the Christ, the returning King of Israel. They were afraid of the trouble He might cause them.
They should have been excited to be witnessing the coming of the promised Savior from God. Instead, Jesus caused them dread, because any revolutionary, religious or political, could upend their fairly livable arrangement with the Romans. The emperor and his governors allowed the Jewish elite to rule over their people and live well, as long as they kept the peace. These Jews surrounding Jesus didn’t want Him to upset their o.k. lives. They weren’t looking for a Good Shepherd to rescue them, and so they missed or willfully ignored the signs that obviously proclaimed Jesus was God in the flesh. Ultimately, they rejected the idea that they really needed a Savior in the first place.
We are not so different. There’s the pastor who hesitates to address a spiritual problem in his congregation because he’s worried speaking the plain truth might lead to turmoil and confrontation, and could even put his call, his livelihood, at risk. There’s the parent who ignores a teenager’s drift away from church and family and into lifestyles that mock Christianity, satisfied that at least she isn’t doing anything illegal, she isn’t embarrassing the family publicly. There’s the employee who decides not to say anything when the new owners of the business cut corners and try to squeeze every dime out of the enterprise, no matter if customers are cheated and the quality of the products and services go down the toilet. We all live with situations in which we are tempted to ignore problems that Scripture tells us are dangerous, simply because we can, for the moment, ignore them without any immediate consequences.
Life may not be as good as perhaps we once believed it should or could be, but most of us are comfortable enough to not want to upset the status quo, even when we know we are drifting away from God’s Way. Satan is happy to keep us comfortable in our drifting indifference, letting us think it doesn’t matter. But the ultimate stakes of life have not changed. The battle raging all around us, and within us, is between good and evil, between the truth of God and the lies of Satan. The reality of just how serious things are doesn’t often become obvious for us, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Sometimes the stakes of life become clear, like when you are travelling on vacation, and suddenly you don’t know where your young child is. Or when, hurrying to work on a winter morning, you lose control of your car on an icy curve. Or when you find out you have cancer. The reality of the struggle we are caught up in reveals itself when death comes unexpectedly, or when you fail someone you love, and you know they will soon find out. Then you realize, in your heart and in your gut, that drifting along isn’t good enough. Such moments of crisis help us understand that ignoring the spiritual struggle described in the Bible is the biggest mistake we can make.
Most of us don’t like it when our worlds are turned upside down, when the battle between good and evil drags us into the fray. But such disasters have a silver lining, no actually, a golden lining: When the reality of the spiritual battle breaks into your little world, then you realize, then you remember that you need a Savior, a Good Shepherd. Understanding the stakes of life and our impotence to control much of anything is the first step toward being made a member of the Shepherd’s flock, or returning to the flock you have wandered from.
With this in mind, Jesus came and very purposefully upset the world of the Jews, challenging their assumptions, revealing their disloyalties, threatening their status quo. Jesus came, teaching and working miracles, confronting pride and unbelief, exposing the drama of Satan seeking to steal sheep from God. He exposed the ugliness of sin, forcing Jews to choose between the God of Scripture and their religion of convenience. Jesus drew their anger onto Himself, revealing the power that Satan wields over the hearts of men. Jesus showed all the sheep of Israel to be disloyal and self-seeking, deserving of God’s righteous anger.
Then came a dramatic twist no one foresaw, even though it was predicted many times in the Hebrew Scripture. Jesus the Miracle Worker and Teacher became the Good Shepherd, who laid down His life for His foolish, unfaithful sheep. Jesus used their anger against His arrival to bring about their salvation. The Shepherd became the sacrificial lamb, dying at their demand, and for their benefit, pouring out His righteous blood to wash away their unrighteousness. Jesus died for them, and for you.
The Good Shepherd is now risen from the dead. Having taken up His life again He continues to seek after lost sheep, a fact that helps explain why our world is as chaotic as it is. God will one day end all rebellion. There will be finally a judgement for all people, and God’s peace will rule for the blessed. Jesus will gather His faithful sheep into a new and sinless reality, the new heavens and the new earth, while sending the unfaithful away from Him, away from His peace, away to suffer, forever.
But, God is not yet done saving the lost. For the sake of saving more sinners, God’s final destruction of the power of sin is delayed. God allows sin and sinners to continue wreaking havoc in this world, for the sake of His mission to rescue more people from eternal death. To keep this world going, the Lord must provide good things for the righteous and the unrighteous, graciously allowing and supporting and blessing mankind, even in the midst of our rebellion. God does all this, so that we sinful humans can continue to live, and be made ready to listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd.
And so while we may not think our lives are all that dramatic, Godly wisdom knows that this earthly life is truly the battleground of souls. The true ferocity of the battle is too much for us. We can only handle small glimpses, because seeing too much would frighten us. Our resistance would soon die, except for the Good News that the Good Shepherd is fighting on our side. He has already guaranteed the victory, laying down His life on the Cross, then picking it up again three days later. Now He is eager to share the Good News of His new life with everyone, so that many more come to faith. Abd this is the what and the why of our proclamation of the Gospel in this conflicted world.
So, how do we do this? How do we live in the midst of the battle between good and evil? How do we resist the temptation to accept the comfort of a so-so life lived in ignorance or denial of the truth? There is only one way. We must hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, speaking wisdom from the Scripture. We must hear His voice speak words of forgiveness over us, His still far-too-prone to wander sheep.
Hear Jesus, calling you to speak the truth in love, to step up to the good vs. evil challenges in your life. Repent of your failures and ask for His forgiveness and strength. Hear His voice calling you to the green pastures of His rich table, where He feeds you forgiveness. By His Word He holds you in His hand, and no one can snatch you away from Jesus. Likewise, no one can snatch you away from the Father, for Jesus and the Father are One.
Know the truth of this life, a battle for
souls waged by God. Listen to Jesus,
speaking His Word to you, and to the world.
Rest in His hands, in His loving grip, which covers your sin with His
forgiving scars. Your Good Shepherd will
keep you safe today, tomorrow, and forever.
For He is the Lamb standing in the midst of heaven’s throne, leading you
to springs of living water, wiping away every tear from your eyes, forever and
ever, Amen.
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