Our Lord is shepherding us in this life because we are as children. He’s guiding and teaching us how to be like Him and guides us back onto a righteous path as needed and he takes us to pastures where we are protected and nourished by the Word of God. Eventually, we will receive the promise of a new eternal spiritual body and dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Our Lord Jesus has already received a glorified body when His father raised Him from the dead, never more to die. He became the firstfruits of the resurrection so that He is first in all things. This promise of our own resurrection gives us the hope that saves us and gives us encouragement to follow him for the rest of our lives here on earth.
He said that He was going to the Father to prepare a place for us so that when we die he will bring us to where he is so that we can be with Him. Paul tells us of the Paradise he saw that is awaiting us in the third heaven where God dwells in all His fullness. Paul said that when he was to leave the tabernacle of his fleshly body, he would go to be with the Lord.
While we are here on this earth, Jesus asked us to listen to his voice through the Holy Spirit and follow him as sheep would follow a shepherd but what does that mean?
It is not as some mindless thing as real sheep would do so that they can eat and drink and lie down in green pastures.
The Gospel of the Good News is that God loves us and has taken the initiative to reconcile us to himself by giving his Son to atone for our sins. Following Jesus begins when we respond to his call to repent and believe the gospel. It awakens us to receive God’s gift of grace and moves our hearts to want to live for Christ and follow him in the way He asked us to.
Following Jesus is to listen and learn from Him and to become like him. We can learn everything we need to know to follow Him from the Scriptures.
Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we (the Godhead) will come to him and make our home with him’”
Loving our Lord involves living by faith in God and trying our best to imitate him as he showed us in his life on earth as revealed in the four gospels. Jesus instructed His disciples to hear His words and obey them. He gave them the “Sermon on the Mount” to show them what living life in the Kingdom of God is like. He lived his life as an example for us and to bring external life to all who would hear and obey him.
There are really only two things we need to do and all these others things come from these two: To Love God with all our Heart, Mind and Soul and to love our neighbor as ourselves. All these other things are a result of these two:
- to worship God and to have faith in him
- to study the Word of God so that we will have it ready when we need it
- to believe that God is and will be the rewarder of those that trust Him
- to pray to our Father, giving thanks and asking for forgiveness
- to live each day conscious of our Lord’s presence in our lives and trusting Him
- to offer up what we have to others and not only for those in the house of the Lord
- to offer up our financial resources for Gods work as a sacrifice
- if need be, to offer up our bodies as spiritual sacrifices
- to reprove, correct or restore a brother or sister in the Lord
- to do good works
- to treat others, regardless of anything else, as we would have it done for ourselves
- to keep our promises to one another
- to grow in faith in what God has done and in hope of what He promises us
- to share the Gospel with others (who can tell whose heart the Lord has touched)
- to love one another, even to the point of giving up our lives for them
- to look past sin and forgive one another over and over again
- to forget the past and look to the future for the reward that God promises us
- to never return evil for evil even when we are spitefully used
- to have patience
- to have mercy
- to have charity
- to care for one another and the poor
- to be humble in spirit
- to serve one another as members in the body of Christ – each of us using the gifts of the Holy Spirit
- to encourage one another – building up our faith and hope through the scriptures so that we grow in our love and steadfast knowledge of our Lord’s ways
- To test all that we hear using God’s word so that we won’t be deceived by false teachers. There are many!
Some may say that these things may sound like works that make the Lord indebted to us but these are the fruit of the Holy Spirit in us and acts of faith in God and a reflection of our Lord’s image.
As we practice these things, we become more and more like our Lord as the image of God is restored in us, just as God intended when he made Adam and Eve. This is the work and purpose of receiving the Holy Spirit when we believe.
These things are contrary to the carnal mind, you know, the one that only thinks of what is best for himself, living in the lust of the eyes, of the flesh and puffed up in pride, always seeking things (coveting), satisfying fleshly desires and seeking to rise above others.
God has given some of the worst of these over to reprobate (debased) minds and they take great joy in doing these things and take pleasure in others doing the same things, not realizing that they will eventually perish without hope and all that they have will perish with them.
But we are not of this world or in love of the things it finds valuable and worth striving for above all else. Our treasure and reward is not in this world. The things we do for our Lord’s sake are the treasure that we store up for ourselves in heaven.
Brothers and Sisters, I would be neglectful if I didn’t go on to warn of the dangers to our flock of sheep from the wolves of the world seeking to destroy us. There is much in the Gospels and in Paul and other’s writings warning us of the dangers we face.
We, as sheep, face threats from the wolves of the world that disguise themselves as angels of light and come into the church to sow doubt in God’s Word. We must stoutly defend God’s Word (the Holy Scriptures) as “The Truth” and not compromise on a single thing that the world thinks up to change its meaning or add to it to create doubt in what God wrote to us. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me.”
The Lord is saying that his way (words) is the path to salvation and life. His words are “the truth” and He is the only way to the Father. Everything else you hear contrary to this is false and a lie. There is only one way and one truth so don’t let anyone deceive you.
The threat to the early church was so serious that Jude wrote his only book to warn us about those that would turn the Word of God into a lie, denying Jesus Christ as the authority under which we are to live and turning God’s Grace into something that enables them to live a life of sin. That threat is as real today as it was then!
Mankind, in modern centuries has sought science and logical truth, thinking that it would solve all their problems. It has made life easier in some ways but people’s spiritual life in this world have only gotten worse in rejecting God. So now, not getting what they hoped for from modernism, they have moved on to a concept called post-modernism. This thinking rejects science and logic and believes that we can each have our own truth and beliefs so that in whatever we do, it’s right because it’s our own truth. Post-Modernism rejects God’s Word as “The Truth” and replaces it with many truths, even contrary to what scripture says so as to destroy it. They say, “Who are you to say your truth is any more real and valid than mine”.
We may ask them: The Holy Spirit knows the mind of God and speaks God’s words to us. How is it then that you are hearing a different truth and not the words of Jesus who is “The Truth”?
Even learned theologians proclaiming themselves scholars, bored with obtaining a deeper understanding our God’s Word convince themselves to substitute their own worldly interpretations in place of God’s Word, making God into a liar and causing many to fall away from the faith. But, this was foreseen by God as it is written “Let God be true and all men liars” and “God made the foolish things of this world to confound the wise” and to Job, “where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth”.
Brothers and sisters, don’t think that by compromising and agreeing that the Word of God is not all true or to change it so as to make it more acceptable and believable in hopes that it will bring more people into the church. It is the Lord who searches out the hearts of those that will believe and he makes it possible so that when they hear the Word of God, they believe and are saved.
The church is under attack by Satan and his followers and compromising with them to have peace is nothing more than allowing a “Trojan Horse” into our congregation which they then hope to use to create doubt to undermine our belief and faith in God’s Word as the truth. The only thing we have to defend ourselves with is the Word of God, sharper than any two edged sword. Let’s not allow anyone take our “sword” from us.
The world tells us not to judge (reprove and correct) but to accept them as they are in their ever-changing carnal sinful natures. They cunningly quote scripture to make their point about not judging them in an attempt to disarm us.
Our Lord told us not to judge others but in looking closer at that scripture, he’s really telling us not to condemn and pass sentence on someone as a judge would.
Remember the story of the prostitute that was thrown to the ground at Jesus’ feet and they asked the Lord to pass judgment. They had already charged and condemned her and took up stones to kill her but our Lord rebuked them by calling for the one without sin to cast the first stone. After they left and the prostitute was there alone with our Lord he did not condemn her but forgave her. He also told her to go and sin no more.
Do you see how we can do the same? We can forgive that person by lovingly showing them the truth about sin in God’s Word so that they might have their consciences convicted and repent. The Apostle Paul adds that the one who won’t repent from sin should be avoided and treated as an outcast in hopes they will turn away from their sin out of shame and return to the congregation.
Our Lord and the Apostle Paul did tell us to judge rightly by first removing our own sin so that we can see clearly to identify sin in others and in all things, using God’s Word to correct one another to bring them back into the congregation. We can do that in a loving way, speaking truth to love. We do that out of love and if we don’t reprove and correct sin, we are not showing love for that person.
Paul tells Timothy these things to prepare himself for the onslaught of wolves that would creep into the church:
2 Timothy 3: 16-17 “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.“
How about ourselves? Does our own conscience convict us when we sin and make us aware of it so that we repent and pray for forgiveness? Mine does because the Lord loves me and that is His way of correcting and guiding me back onto the right path. He does that for you too. It’s kind of like what a shepherd would do for his own sheep who went astray and became lost.
But sometimes, a sin in our lives can become entrenched and it can affect our relationship with the Holy Spirit, quenching His influence on us and there is the danger of falling away from the faith. When we recognize this, out of love, we ought to help that person to recognize his sin and pray for him to be able to repent. And so we carry on, loving each other in all ways as the Holy Spirit moves us. May the Love of God be in us and our hearts ever close to Him. AMEN