Sometimes in human relationships, the more we know a person, the more we love them. Now that’s true, not because the more we know people, the greater they become in our eyes, because oftentimes as we know people, we begin to discover their weaknesses, their failures and faults, their shams and their shames. Now unlike our knowing other people, the more we know Jesus, the greater he becomes, and the more we love him. Napoleon was once visiting with a group of cynics and these skeptics concluded that Jesus was a great man, a good man, a great prophet, but nothing else. And Napoleon looked at them and said, gentlemen, I know men, and Jesus is more than a man. That’s the ultimate paradox of the Christian faith. Jesus is God and man. And we’re trying to know him better by looking at the great claims he made about himself during this Lenten season. I am the good shepherd, he said. But he said more than that. All that came before me are as thieves and robbers. Now that’s not just an isolated, outrageous claim on the part of Jesus. He made many other equally astounding claims about himself. I am the bread of life. I am the door. I am the light of the world. I am the resurrection and the life. If Jesus were a mere man, then we could dismiss him as a mad egotist. But the more we know him, the longer we look at him, the more convinced we are that this is God’s picture of himself. So let’s look at him again today; and let’s look at him in light of this claim of his, I am the good shepherd. Let’s look long and longing. And if there’s a person in the congregation today that does not yet love him enough, and know him enough to commit their lives to him, let’s pray that that love will be kindled in their lives this morning. And for us who already love him and know him, let’s pray that a new kind of love will fire our souls in order that we might go from this place today, willing to follow the good shepherd wherever he leads.

My guide for this long and longing look at Jesus is very simple. I want us to take a look at a picture of the shepherd, then the priorities of the shepherd and finally, the power of the shepherd. A picture of the shepherd, the priorities of the shepherd, and the power of the shepherd. First a picture of the shepherd. I remember my first visit to the Holy land in 1968. I’d not seen many sheep before. We didn’t have sheep down in south Mississippi. And I had never seen a shepherd. I took more pictures of sheep and shepherds than anything else on that trip. Not because of the quaint picture of seeing those shepherds moving across the hills with their sheep following after them, but because I think there was being made in my consciousness a connection between all those images that I had read in the Bible about the sheep and the shepherd and now what I was actually seeing. The picture of God in the Old Testament, the picture of Jesus in the New Testament, centers around the shepherd and sheep. And when I saw all of that, the lone shepherd moving across the barren land alone, his sheep following after him, knowing that the shepherd was willing to lay down his life for the sheep, knowing that the shepherd would spend himself until he found the pasture for his sheep, and knowing that the sheep were completely dependent upon the shepherd, the words of the Psalm came alive. Do you remember Psalm 23? Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, why? Because the Lord is my shepherd. And do you remember that word from the 85^th Psalm, he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. It is no wonder that the prophet Isaiah, when he got ready to image forth who the promised messiah would be, he talked about that messiah in terms of a shepherd. He said he will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom, and he will gently guide the young. When you get to the New Testament, the picture becomes even more pronounced, listen to Jesus. What man among you who has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, will not leave the 90 and 9 in the wilderness and go out and seek the lost one until he find it. And listen to Jesus again, fear not little flock, it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. And then there’s that beautiful benediction in the letter to the Hebrew’s, and now may the God of peace who brought again Jesus from the dead, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of his eternal covenant, equip you with every good that you may do the will of the father. So that’s the picture – Jesus is the shepherd, the shepherd who will spend himself until he finds that one straying sheep. Jesus is the shepherd that will have pity upon his people because they are as sheep, without a shepherd. Jesus looks at us and calls us his disciples, his own little flock. He is the shepherd of the souls of men, who has been brought again from the dead, having laid down his life for us. That’s the picture.

Let’s look now at the priorities of the shepherd. The first priority of a shepherd is to know his sheep. To know his sheep. What a claim Jesus makes. I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep by name, and they know me. Now to get the full impact of that claim, we need to know something about sheep and shepherds in ancient Palestine. Remember what I said last week about the two kinds of sheepfolds in the ancient Palestine. There was the communal sheepfold in the village that was owned by all the shepherds. They would bring their sheep in after a day of grazing in the field, and all the shepherds would deposit their sheep in that communal sheepfold. It was presided over by a doorkeeper, who had the key to the door, and only shepherds who were known by the doorkeeper could enter. Then there were the other kinds of sheepfolds; those way out in the wilderness. When the shepherds were away for an entire season, weeks after week after week, not able to come back into the village, they had those sheepfolds out in the wilderness made of stones, little enclosures around on the hillside, and there they would enclose their sheep at night. Now when Jesus talks about knowing his sheep by name, it’s best to think of that communal sheepfold, because at the close of the day, the shepherds, all of them, would bring in their sheep. Some small flocks, some big flocks, and they would all come together there in the sheepfold. In the morning time, the shepherd would come back. Well how in the world do you get your own sheep in the midst of all the sheep that are there? I mean they all look alike don’t they? We have to know something about sheep and shepherd in ancient Palestine. The shepherd named his sheep. Every sheep had a name. And the sheep knew the voice of the shepherd, so he simply had to call them by name and his own sheep would follow him out to find pasture. Now get the full import of that. Christ is the good shepherd. And as the good shepherd, Christ knows me. Say it to yourself. Christ the good shepherd knows me. He knows my name. Now if we could appropriate that - I mean really claim it, really it claim as a truth in the very depth of our being – it would radically transform our lives. Think what it would do for our praying. Do you come hesitantly to prayer? Not sure at all about making contact or how God is going to respond? When you pray, do you think that you somehow have to make a case with God? That you have to convince God that you have right to do what you’re doing, that you have a right to claim what you’re claiming, that you somehow have the privilege of asking him what you’re asking him? Oh my friends. Take heart. Christ the good shepherd knows you by name. You don’t have to come hesitantly into his presence. You don’t have to hang back at prayer. You can come boldly before the throne of praise, because Christ knows your name. That’s one of his priorities – to know you. Think what that would do for our praying. Think what it would do for one of the, one of the most pronounced problems here in this congregation this morning, the problem of insecurity. I don’t know a problem that ravages more people than the feeling of insecurity. But think what we could do with our insecurities if we really believed that Christ know us by name. Insecurity ravages our lives. It begins very early, in fact, at the beginning usually of adolescence. Young people become victims of a crowd mentality - drugs, sex, drink, because they’re insecure, they need to belong. And that which begins in adolescence sometimes becomes even more pronounced as we move along. I counseled with a 38-year old woman about three weeks ago, a very attractive person, marvelous dynamic personality, outstanding family, a husband who loves her and provides for her everything that a husband should provide for a wife, and yet there are occasions in her life when she sinks into depths of depression because of extreme insecurity. She developed slowly as a teenager, was very unattractive during her high school years, and therefore did not date. Her mother and father did not provide for her the warmth and the acceptance that helped her from developing a low self-esteem. She went to college and didn’t start dating in college until she was mid-way through that time in her life. And yet after all these years of having been loved and accepted and affirmed by her husband and her children, still she has not overcome that ravaging insecurity of her life. I see it in all sorts of ways. At least 50% of the men with whom I share, at a time when they’re making a career change or when they’re going through a midlife crisis, or when they’re having some family problems, at least 50% of them are really ravaged with insecurity. If we could appropriate, if we could really know that Christ knows us and calls us by name, we could overcome that. I’m convinced that continuing insecurity in our lives is really a result of a lack of assurance that we are accepted by God. That’s really the root of it. We really are not in touch in the depths of our being with the fact that God accepts us. We know it with our head, but we haven’t accepted it with our hearts. Listen to Jesus today. Hear him, believe him, accept what he offers, I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep by name, and they know me.

But not only is knowing his own a priority of a good shepherd, to nurture his own is likewise a priority. The shepherd spends his life nurturing his sheep. Plods the stark, barren land until he finds pasture, the grass upon which his sheep will feed. A teenager sent his girlfriend her first orchid, and along with that orchid this note – With all my love and most of my allowance. As the good shepherd, as the good shepherd, Jesus’ word to us is – with all of my love and with all of my resources – knowing this, the Christian can make at least two bold assertions. One, Christ knows me and loves me just as I am. But that isn’t all nor is it enough. Christ nurtures me. He changes me. The living, loving Jesus Christ not only sees me as I am in loving forgiveness, he also releases me from that which makes me unfree. He changes me. In him, we are not only reborn; we grow. It’s not enough to experience the cleansing of Good Friday, we need to know the power of Pentecost. It was not enough for the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable to leave the pigs, the pigs had not yet left him. Back home safe in his father’s house, he still had bad habits to master, and he still had new attitudes to cultivate. The disciples sitting expectantly in the Upper Room long after Jesus had departed from their sight, they knew that Jesus loved them, yet they knew that they didn’t have the power to change the world. They needed to grow in his power in order to heal the sick and raise the dead, and cast out the demonic, and reconcile the hostile. Beloved, it was written to the church later. Beloved now are we God’s children – that’s acceptance and security. It does not yet appear what we shall be in the future, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we will see him as he actually is. That’s expectancy and growth. I like the way Agnes Sanford said it so gloriously. She said, we Christians must sit down on the bottom rung of the ladder of sanctity and yell for Jesus. Now that’s a good image. We sit down on the bottom rung of the ladder of sanctity and we yell for Jesus, and he will come. He will come as the good shepherd to nurture and change us.

The priorities of the shepherd are to know his own, to nurture his own, and then there’s a third priority – to protect his own. To protect his own. Is there a more dramatic word, amore hope inspiring, a more courage providing, a more strength giving word than that which Jesus speaks in verse 17 of our scripture lesson – I lay down my life for my sheep. That’s one of the highest priorities of the shepherd, to protect his sheep.

What do you fear most this morning? I mean what are the real fears of your life? Failure? I talked with a 42-year old man just this past week, who is paralyzed in his profession, almost incapable of functioning because he is so fearful of failure. Old age, we can’t imagine the fear that sometimes grips people as they move on into old age. A fella heard the sermon at 8:30 this morning, he’s 78 years old, and he told me he was going to worry about that when he got old. But not all of us are that fortunate. Old age comes to us sometimes as something to fear, because we’re not quite certain that we’re going to have enough economic resources to see us through retirement. And tragedy of tragedies, there are people who are fearful of old age, because they have not yet had confirmed for them that their children are going to continue to love and care for them and minister to them in these twilight years of their life. Do you fear it? Broken relationships, the marriage isn’t what you’d like it to be. Each of you in the relationship has been casual and even calloused about it, and now the hurt and the pain and the sorrow has accumulated, and you’re not sure the marriage is going to last. You fear broken relationships. There’s another kind of fear present here today, the most common fear – the fear of parents in relation to their children. I’ve experienced it, I’m not over it yet. We fear what’s going to happen to our children – the kind of lifestyles that are present in our culture causes a parent to have anguish about what life child, lifestyle his child or her child is going to choose. Who are they going to marry? What vocation are they going to select? Are they going to really be able to make it? And so we fear. And there are all sorts of fears. Fear of temptation because of sexual lust. Fear that we’ll compromise in our business because all of the pressures that impinge upon us. Fear that we’ll lose our integrity because of the demands that are pulling at us. Listen to this. Listen to this. The good shepherd will lay down his life for you. He will protect you from that fear. Now we know that with our head, we need to accept it with our hearts.

The priorities of the shepherd is to know us, to nurture us, and to protect us. And that leads to the final word – the power of the shepherd. And we’ll say just a brief word about that. And you capture it in a beautiful way there in verses 17 and 18, for this reason the father loves me, because I will lay down my life that I may take it up again, said Jesus. My life is not taken from me, he says, I lay it down of my own accord, I have the power to lay down, and I have the power to pick it up again. This is the season of Lent, the season when we concentrate on the cross, the passion, the suffering, and death of Jesus Christ. The gospel of the cross is incomplete without this understanding – Christ’s death was a death absolutely self-determined. It was a death absolutely self-determined. He died by choice. He had the power to take up his life or he had the power to lay it down. You remember what he said in the Garden of Gethsemane? He said, thinkest thou that I cannot pray to the father and he will send over 12 legions of angels to deliver me. But instead he prayed, not my will but thine be done. So there’s something different about this death of Jesus. This is more than the sacrifice of a shepherd laying down his life for the sheep. This is more than the self-giving of a person who inspires a life of noble living. Jesus didn’t lose his life he gave it. He was not killed he chose to die. As all powerful as Rome was, as firmly in control of the religious establishment as Israel was, these powers did not thrust the cross upon Jesus – he took the cross, voluntarily, for us. Please hear this. Let the truth burrow its way into your soul. The good shepherd had the power to take up his life or to lay it down. He laid it down on the cross, poured out every last drop of blood, sweated in pain until there was no more water of life left in him – and all of that, for you and me. No wonder the gospel songwriter would put it so starkly – each drop of blood bought me a million years. A soul was born each time he shed a tear. He loosed the chain that fetters you and me. He bought my soul from death at Calvary.

Sometimes a contemporary human picture will give us a hint of eternal reality. I read a story in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago, about an accident on a construction site. A man and his son were working together on that site, and the father suddenly saw that, that the son working down in a excavated area was about to become the victim of a landslide. Instantaneously, he jumped into the hole and threw his son on the ground and covered his son up with his own body. When the bodies were unearthed, the father had died from a blow on his head, but the son was still alive because the father’s body had covered him from the dirt and he could still breathe. It’s a picture, a faint picture of the good shepherd who will lay down his life for the sheep. The priorities of the shepherd is to know us, to know us, to nurture us, to protect us, and finally, to save us; and he does that through the cross. You can’t ask for more than that, can you? Well you don’t have to ask for it, it’s given. You have only to accept it. Amen.