The Shepherd Gathers His Sheep

4th Sunday of Easter, 4/25/10
Acts 13:15-16a, 26-33


The Shepherd Gathers His Sheep!
I. He confronts them with their willful sin.
II. He comforts them with his amazing good news.


We live in an age of specialization. And perhaps that’s no more apparent than in the field of medicine. You may see your family practice physician for something ailing you. He or she prescribes some test to determine the source of the problem. If the test reveals anything remotely significant, your doctor is going to refer you to a specialist. And there are several reasons for it. One, modern medicine is so complex and changes so quickly, that no doctor can be informed about and proficient in every aspect of it. Two, we want to know when our doctor feels that another doctor—a specialist—is better able to treat us. Three, lawsuits happen when doctors try treating patients beyond their expertise. Thus we have doctors who are specialists.

This morning we hear about a Christian specialist of sorts. I’m referring to the Apostle Paul. When the Lord Jesus called him to be an apostle, he informed Paul that he was going to be the Lord’s special apostle to the Gentiles. Paul was going to be the Lord’s instrument to bring his saving gospel to non-Jewish people. And if you’re familiar at all with the life of Paul, you know how successful that effort was. Paul brought the gospel of Jesus to Asia Minor and Europe. Most Christians consider Paul to be the greatest missionary ever.

And yet Paul would tell you that the praise for his successful efforts didn’t belong to him. It belongs to Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Paul repeatedly declared the truth that the power to convert a sinful soul belonged to God and not to him. He was merely God’s instrument. Paul knew all along that it was Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who gathered his sheep into his saving flock.

And we see that happening in the event before us this morning. Paul proclaims the message and Jesus uses his power to confront and comfort the sinner. The Shepherd gathers his sheep! So that we have a deeper appreciation for the way he has gathered us and so that he can make better use of us to gather others, let’s pay attention to these words of our Good Shepherd, Jesus.

Part I.

Earlier I mentioned the missionary efforts of the Apostle Paul. This morning’s text describes one of those efforts. Our text doesn’t give us much background information, so let me supply it for you. Paul was on his first missionary journey. The verses before our text indicate that he and his companions entered the city of Antioch in the district of Pisidia. That’s present-day Turkey. Paul’s normal course of action was to enter the synagogue and that’s what he did here in Antioch. At first, you might think that to be an odd place to start working in an area, but it actually made good sense. Here were people who were familiar with what we call the Old Testament and all its promises of the Messiah. Here were people who were looking for the Messiah to arrive.

Paul told them that the Messiah had already come. In fact, he proclaimed to them just what their fellow Jews in Jerusalem had done to him. He said, “The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath.” How could it be that the Jews in Jerusalem could fail to recognize the Messiah? Because Jesus wasn’t the kind of Messiah they were looking for. Recall the Messiah they wanted—a powerful earthly ruler who would make their lives happy and successful. They wanted a Messiah to lead them into victory against the hated Romans. They wanted a Messiah who would perform signs in the heavens to prove he was who he said he was. But Jesus did none of that so they didn’t recognize him.

But worse yet, they condemned him. They couldn’t just let him alone. They falsely accused him and had him condemned in a Roman court of law. Pilate repeatedly stated that he was innocent and yet he handed him over to them.

And they cried for his blood. Paul said, “Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed.” We know the story so well that these words don’t strike us the way they did Paul’s hearers in this synagogue. Killing the Messiah?!? That’s unthinkable! At the hands of our fellow Jews?!? That’s preposterous! And yet it caused these Jews to think back about 15 years to the stories they had heard coming out of Jerusalem. Indeed, the Jews had crucified Jesus of Nazareth who claimed to be the Messiah. They recalled that many had hoped he was the Messiah. But his life ended on a cross. Surely he couldn’t have been the Messiah!

But notice what Paul stated more than once. “When they had carried out all that was written about him.” Paul pointed these people to the passages of the Old Testament that talked about the Messiah. Perhaps they recalled the words of Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 which speak about the death of God’s Servant. These Jews in Jerusalem didn’t know it, but they had fulfilled what God had foretold would happen to the Messiah.

Their fellow Jews in Jerusalem more than a decade ago had willfully executed Jesus. Why was Paul telling these people in Antioch about the willful sins of Jews in Jerusalem? Because he didn’t want them to make the same tragic mistake. The Old Testament plainly stated that the Messiah would suffer and die. Jesus completed that work. Undoubtedly some, if not all, of these Jews had heard about Jesus prior to this but they had chosen not to believe it. The Lord, the Good Shepherd, was now confronting them with that sin.

That’s what our Good Shepherd does. He confronts his sheep with their willful sin.

Why would they choose not to believe what God plainly says in his word? Why would anyone? Why would we? Yes, why would we? But don’t we believe all of God’s truth? Yes, I’d like to think so. But every time we choose to ignore what God says and give into temptation, we fail in a way to believe what God says. At times we willfully sin. We decide to do what God forbids for a variety of reasons: it’ll feel good, it seems like the better thing to do, it’s the easier thing to do, it’ll get us what we want, it’ll help us fit in with others. And those are spiritually dangerous positions to take. Thank God that our Shepherd reminds us of that! He doesn’t want us whistling on our merry way to hell. Instead, he confronts us with our willful sins.

Part II.

He does that so that he can share with us the greatest news of all—the comfort of our forgiveness.

You see, where there isn’t much pain, there isn’t much appreciation of comfort. We know how that applies to physical pain. When our heads are pounding so hard that we can’t think or when that pinched nerve nearly makes us immobile, we’re so thankful when relief arrives. But we barely consider the relief from a hangnail or the healing of a small scratch on our arm.

Our Shepherd confronts us with our sins so that we know and appreciate the good news of our forgiveness.

Paul announced that good news like this, “But God raised him from the dead. We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’” Just as the Jews had fulfilled the prophecies about the crucifixion of the Savior, so God fulfilled the prophecies about raising the Savior from the dead. Paul cites one of those promises from Psalm 2. The resurrection of the Savior is foretold here and in several other passages in the Old Testament.

Jesus fulfilled those promises by raising himself from the dead. That was the plan all along and Jesus knew it. He even announced it to his disciples and his enemies. The disciples failed to believe it when he said it. His enemies took steps to prevent him from doing it. But he did it nonetheless.

So why would Paul make such a big deal here about the resurrection of Jesus? Because without it, we don’t have a Savior. As Paul told the Corinthians, if Christ is still dead our faith in him is useless and we’re dead in our sins. We have no hope. We’re heading for eternal death in hell. But because Christ is risen, our forgiveness is sure. That’s what Paul wanted these Jews in Antioch to know and believe. The sinner’s greatest need is to know and believe that he or she is forgiven. Christ won that forgiveness for every sin of every sinner. His resurrection guarantees it. Instead of thinking that they could earn their own forgiveness, Paul called for these Jews to believe that Jesus had won it for them.

But Paul was just an instrument of the Good Shepherd. It was the Shepherd who gathered his sheep and he did so by comforting them with his amazing good news.

The picture of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is one of the most comforting pictures in all of the Bible. He cares for us as his sheep. He’s willing to die for his sheep. He did die for his sheep. But somehow we often get that relationship all turned around. We view it in terms of what we have to give up instead of what he gives us. Our relationship with Christ gets in the way of so many other things we want to do. Or we put Jesus on hold in our lives because we view him as an unwanted intrusion at this point. Jesus didn’t gather us as his sheep to fleece us or to get in the way of our lives. He gathered us as his sheep to give us true life—life with him. He gathered us as his sheep to announce his amazing good news to us—that our sins are forgiven, that heaven is ours. That’s the good news your Shepherd wants to share with you. Believe it with all your heart and enjoy life with Jesus as your Good Shepherd. Amen.