Two television evangelists were talking. One was explaining how he was seeking to be the ideal shepherd to his television flock. “There are three ways I seek to do that,” he said.
“What three ways do you mean?” asked the other evangelist.
“Well” he explained, “First, we FIND them. Every year we find new stations to carry our ministry. Then we FEED them. I give them the plain unvarnished word of God.”
“But what’s the third thing?” asked the second evangelist.
“Well,” he answered, “Once we’ve found them and fed them, then we FLEECE them!”
Some TV evangelists have become quite proficient at fleecing their flock.
I hope you understand that nothing could be farther from the example of Christ. Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep . . .” Fleecing the flock is a long way from laying down your life for them.
Jesus contrasts the good shepherd with a hired hand. The sheep belong to the shepherd. He works very hard not to lose a single one of them. The hired hand, however, really could care less. The sheep belong to someone else. Why should he risk his life for someone else’s sheep? We’ve all known people who have the attitude of the hired hand.
A paratrooper who had recently resigned from the military was asked how many times he had jumped out of an airplane. He said, “None.”
A friend of his asked, “What do you mean, ‘none,’ I thought you were a paratrooper?”
He said, “I was, but I never jumped. I was pushed several times . . . but I never jumped.”
The hired hand never jumps. He has to be pushed. Churches often have hired hands in them. Not our church, of course. But other churches are full of people who have to be pushed to do what they know they ought to do.
Jesus did not have to be pushed. Understand dying for the sins of humanity was not something he relished. He died an excruciating death. But still he did it out of his own volition. He lay down his life for the sheep. That should really speak to us.
It says, first of all, that we really do matter to Christ.
In one of his most memorable parables Jesus compared himself to a shepherd out in the wilderness. One of his sheep has gone missing. He leaves the ninety-nine other sheep under his care to search for that one lost sheep. He really does care.
It’s like a scene that occurred on September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four airliners, ramming two of the planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
“The entire world watched in horror as the towers erupted into gigantic fireballs, then imploded until nothing was left of the 110‑story, glass‑and‑steel structures except soot, dust, and a six‑story‑high pile of smoldering rubble.
“Even before the dust settled, the heroic rescue effort began as thousands of people systematically started combing through the debris to find the survivors. One rescuer told how he had climbed down into a hole in the twisted steel and rubble, extending his arm even farther to shine his flashlight into the darkness, when out of the dusty blackness a hand reached up and grabbed his! He was so startled he almost dropped his flashlight and let go of the hand! But instead, he reached back for someone to grab his hand, then someone grabbed that person’s hand, until a human chain was formed and the man trapped in the pile of debris was pulled to safety.” (1)
It’s wonderful when human beings reach out a helping hand to one another in times of great need. But it is even more significant when the eternal God sacrifices His son in our behalf. It’s like a shepherd risking his life for a sheep. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that is how much we are loved.
Sheep aren’t the most intelligent creatures in the animal kingdom. Maybe we have overly romanticized the relationship of a shepherd and his sheep.
In his book, The One and the Only You, Bruce Larson prints an hilarious letter from a friend of his who tells of having to deliver seven new-born sheep while her husband was out of town.
In her letter she says, “Never again can I think of the Good Shepherd without knowing that he must love us beyond measure if we are like sheep to him. A sheep is smelly, with an oily kind of dirt that lingers on anything it touches and soaks right through clothing to give an overall aroma long after you’ve come in. One old ewe that I hate with a passion, since she takes advantage of every unsuspecting moment to assert her authority, had trouble having her lamb. Would you believe we had to pen her up all the while she was trying to incapacitate us . . . and then rassle her down and sit on her head before we could pull the lamb? Then she was so exhausted she didn’t want to get up to take care of her baby, so I pretended to get back into the pen with her and she was so anxious to clobber me, she got up with no trouble at all. And that was only one of seven we delivered that week! Thank heaven the others were less traumatic.” (2)
We all have this image of the cuddly little lamb, but adult sheep are not the most endearing of God’s creatures. And the idea of a shepherd giving his life for a sheep is absurd. But Jesus is trying to say to us that this is how absurdly wonderful God’s love for us is. God is much higher above us than a shepherd is a sheep, and, from a logical standpoint, it is absurd that God would love us that much, but that’s the Gospel. God really does care for us so much that Christ lay down his life in our behalf.
This brings us to the second thing we need to know about the Good Shepherd. God knows us by name. God doesn’t just love humanity en mass. God loves each of us intimately. God knows our name. Jesus goes on to say, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me just as the Father knows me and I know the Father . . .”
One of the most disturbing and influential books of the last century was a futuristic novel by George Orwell titled, 1984. Some of you undoubtedly were required to read 1984 in school. In this novel everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities, mainly by video screens. Watching over this totalitarian state was an enigmatic dictator called Big Brother. The people are constantly reminded that “Big Brother is watching you.”
Ever since 1984 hit the bookstores, people concerned about individual privacy and freedom have looked for signs that Big Brother is becoming a reality in our society. And it is true that more and more of our urban landscape is being observed by security cameras. But that is only one way our privacy is being invaded.
Let’s not forget Google Earth, where you can go online and peer into your neighbor’s back yard. Who knows where we are headed?
There was a news report several years ago that Israeli scientists are now marketing a microchip that, implanted under the skin, will protect film stars and millionaires from kidnappers. The chip emits a signal detectable by satellite to help rescuers determine a victim’s approximate location.
Originally the chip was developed to track Israeli secret-service agents abroad. The $5,000 chip doesn’t even require batteries. It runs solely on the neurophysiological energy generated within the human body. The firm which developed it, Gen-Etics, won’t reveal where the chip is inserted but said that, at that time, 43 people had had it implanted. (3) Since this report was published there has been an explosion of interest in this technology. Farmers keep tabs on the health and safety of their cows and other livestock with such chips. But the use of such devices to monitor human beings is almost limitless. Already there is a monitoring bracelet for Alzheimer patients, so that families can use GPS systems to help find loved ones who might have wandered off.
Would it be inconceivable that loving parents might want to monitor the whereabouts of their children via satellite? Why not have a chip implanted. Pet owners are already using such technology. Some cynics have suggested that some wives might want to monitor their husbands. The list of benign applications may eventually suck as all in. Why not have implanted a secure form of identification that would allow us to go through airports without waiting in line, a “glorified bar code” that would allow us to be scanned in the check-out lane of the supermarket, so we wouldn’t even have to present a credit card? The list of possible uses grows longer with each passing day. Soon we will see signs, “Big Brother is watching.”
Here’s what’s amusing to me. There are people who have no difficulty believing that one day the government will keep track of us all, but who cannot conceive that an all-knowing God can take a personal interest in each of His children, hear each of our prayers, and be responsive to each of our individual needs.
Friends, we’re sheep! No matter how far our technology progresses it will still be painfully primitive in comparison to the mind of the God who created all that lives and moves and has its being. God knows our name. When we come before God to confess our sins and express our needs, God hears our individual petitions and is present there with us as if we were the only person in the universe. If you can believe that science can track our whereabouts, how can you not believe that the God who made it possible for us to have such technologies, who created the heavens and the earth, and who makes it possible for us to probe the universe, can be individually responsive to those who call on His name?
God really does care for us. God knows us by name. Here’s the last thing we need to know: God wants to be our partner as we seek to cope with life. Jesus compared us to sheep, and there are times we are sheep. But he also called us his friends, as well as his brothers and sisters. He told us to be yoked to him. He wants to partner with us as we live our lives.
Robert A. Schuller tells about a young woman named Shannon who was impacted by the television ministry of Schuller’s Dad, Dr. Robert H. Schuller.
Shannon’s mother was an alcoholic. Many times as a child, Shannon says, she remembers crawling underneath her dresser and being very quiet so her mother couldn’t find her. As she grew up, she was afraid of being friendly with the other kids. She didn’t want them to come home with her and see her mom. In high school Shannon began experimenting with drugs, which helped her to fit in.
But then, one morning Shannon heard Dr. Schuller on television say that Jesus loved her. And she began believing it. Through prayer she turned from drugs. She felt God’s presence in her life. This emboldened her to pray for what she called for the greatest miracle of all: for her mother to stay sober. She prayed and prayed. Yet nothing seemed to happen. Finally she decided to take matters into her own hands. She took away her mother’s last bottle of booze after she had passed out one afternoon, even though she knew that you weren’t supposed to do that to an alcoholic. That evening, when she was talking to a friend on the phone, her mother came up behind her and screamed, “Shannon, I hate you! I want to kill you!” And Shannon turned to see that her mother had a knife in her hand. Shannon ran to her bedroom. Her mother stood outside her bedroom door screaming, “Shannon, I hate you! I wish you were dead! I hate you!” Then she heard a thud and the knife came through the door. Shannon looked at the tip of that knife, and felt all her hope shatter. She fell into a clump on the floor and cried. She was angry with God. “Why would you let this happen?” she screamed at God. “I’ve prayed. I’ve had faith.” And she listened for an answer.
And then God spoke to her. God said, “Shannon, get up off your knees, open that door, and tell your mother that you are sorry.”
That was not what Shannon wanted to hear. Her mother had just tried to kill her. But suddenly she felt a peace come over her, she calls it the peace of the Holy Spirit. She opened the door. Lying there on the floor was a very sick woman. And she felt sorrier for her mother than she did for than herself. “Mom, I’m sorry that it’s like this. I love you very much. And I’m sorry.” Change didn’t happen overnight. The fights kept occurring. But every time Shannon said, “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry it’s like this.”
One day Shannon came home from school. Shannon felt a peace in the house. She went into her bedroom and her mother came in. She put her arms around Shannon and said, “Shannon, I’m very, very sick. I have a disease. It’s called alcoholism. I’ve called AA, and they’re coming to pick me up. I’m scared, Shannon. I just want you to know that I love you very, very much.” It was the first time in her life her mother had really told her she loved her. Shannon’s mother has been sober now for more than eleven years. (4)
Friends, miracles like that happen all the time. It may not happen today, or even tomorrow, but God loves us, God knows our needs, and God wants to partner with us as we deal with our lives. He is the Good Shepherd. He knows His sheep and His sheep know Him. God cares about you. God wants to help you deal with your life.
1. Nancy Guthrie, Holding On To Hope (Carol Stream, IL:Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2002), p. vii.
2. Bruce Larson, The One and the Only You (Waco: Word Books, 1974).
3. “World Watch” edited by Anita Hamilton, Timedigital, Nov. 30, 1998, p. 107.
4. Robert A. Schuller, Getting Through What You’re Going Through (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1986), pp. 38-41.