The Good Shepherd

¹¹"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."  John 10:11

¹⁴"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— ¹⁵just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep."  John 10:14-15

I had a wonderful grandma.  She was a simple woman.  She was a farmers wife.  She was one of the best cooks I have ever known.  She knew how to make creamed peas and potatoes and pot roasts and pies that were out of this world. She made her own jellies and jams.  She took care of the farm cats and occasional dog with the most delicious table scraps any animal has ever known.  

At her funeral her pastor mentioned the faith she had been given in her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Her pastor spoke about how she best understood her Savior as the Good Shepherd.  She had lived on a farm her whole life and the Shepherd analogy spoke to her better than any other.  She had helped my grandpa take care of animals on the farm. She knew a lot about how animals behave and what needed to be done to take care of them.  She knew that she needed to be taken care of by the Lord in many of the same ways the domesticated farm animals had to be taken care of by the farmer and farmer's wife.  

A lot of hard work, blood, sweat and tears go into taking care of farm animals.  In a lot of ways the farmer gives of his life in order to take care of the animals.  He can't go on a vacation unless he can find someone else to take care of the animals.  He gets sick and injured doing the hard work of taking care of animals.  He can even lose his life doing the difficult and dangerous work that is 'farm work.'

I was singing a hymn tonight that led me to meditate on Jesus as our Good Shepherd.  The hymn is, O Dearest Jesus, What Law Hast Thou Broken.  The fourth verse begins, "What punishment so strange is suffered yonder! The Shepherd dies for sheep that loved to wander."  We do love to wander, even to our own peril.  But Jesus knew this better than any farmer or shepherd ever knew it.  He knew that our wandering would lead to our eternal death, and so He died our death for us in order to take our just dues upon Himself.   He was perfect, yet He went through the cross and the tomb so that He would overcome death for us.  He rose from the grave on the third day so that, in Him, we His sheep may have victory over death.  He graciously does all of this for us and grants us eternal life through faith in Him given in baptism, the Lord's Supper, His Gospel preached and forgiveness given.  What a Shepherd.  Praise be to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Love

 ¹⁵Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  1 John 2:15

"Man is created in such a way that he must love something."  

C.F.W. Walther

We were created in the image of a loving God.  Before their fall into sin, Adam and Eve loved God with their whole heart and each other as themselves.  After the fall man by his nature loved the world instead of God.  He loved the creation instead of the Creator.  

In Jesus we see the love of the Father in its purest form.  At Jesus' baptism and at His transfiguration God revealed how pleased He was with His Son, how much He loved Him. Jesus whole earthly ministry demonstrated the love of His Father.  When Jesus wasn't praying to His Father He was showing His Father's love for the people.  When Jesus gave His body and blood on the cross for us sinners He proclaimed the love of God in the greatest way possible.   God didn't even spare His only begotten Son.  

The only way we can love God more than the world is when that love is given to us from an external source.  Jesus is that source.  We deny Him and our sinful nature pushes away the love of the Father and pulls us back to love the world instead, but Jesus keeps coming back to us.  He daily calls us to repentance and then forgives us and gives us His Father's love.    When we are joined with Jesus in our baptism and the Lord's Supper and the hearing of the Gospel, we are safe in Jesus who has the love of the Father in Him.  

Jesus Walks on Water

 ⁴⁵Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. ⁴⁶After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.

 ⁴⁷When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. ⁴⁸He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, ⁴⁹but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, ⁵⁰because they all saw him and were terrified.

   Immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." ⁵¹Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, ⁵²for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.  Mark 6:45-52

Jesus had just fed 5000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish.  He immediately put his disciples on a boat and sent them to the other side of the lake while he stayed behind to dismiss the crowd and then go up on the mountain to pray.  Looking out upon His boat load of disciples paddling against the wind, Jesus walked to them on the water. 

Jesus was on top of the water that day, but he had been in the water on another day.  On the day when he was baptized by John in the waters of the Jordan he knew what it was like to be covered by the water and to feel its weight.  In His baptism He was covered with water dirtied by the sin of all sinners.  He took our sin upon Himself and brought it to the cross where He would be punished for it.   At the same time He touched the water and made it pure for us so that we would be washed clean from our sins in baptism and be connected to Him and His cross.    

Jesus has authority over everything.  He doesn't have to obey laws of nature.  He can subdue nature.  Its impossible for us sinners to believe this on our own.  It is also impossible for fallen man to believe that the Son of God, who has this kind of authority, could be crucified in our place on a cross.  How often are our hearts hardened like those of the disciples?  Thanks be to God that He sent the Holy Spirit to us to give us Jesus' Word, baptism, body and blood that we may repent and believe.  

Faith Alone

⁸For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  Ephesians 2:8-10

The Christian truths rediscovered during the Reformation can be summed up by saying that we are saved or justified (declared righteous) by Grace Alone, through Faith Alone, in Christ Alone as He has given us in His Word Alone.

What does it  mean to be saved through faith alone?  It means the source (Jesus) of our faith and object (Jesus) of our faith gives us eternal life.  He did this by taking all of our sin and guilt from us.  Even though He was perfect He took our guilt and bore our sin in our place by being joined with with us in the waters of baptism and then dying on the cross in our place.  He lived a perfect life for us and gave us His life when we were baptized so that His Father now declares us righteous for Jesus sake.  When He was raised from the dead on the third day our HE gave us who He justified power over death and the grave.  Faith is not about anything we do.  Faith is a totally free gift of God.  Our Heavenly Father sends the Holy Spirit to us who creates faith in Jesus in us through His Word and Sacraments.  The Holy Spirit is always pointing us to Jesus and His death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.  He is always calling us sinners to return to Jesus. 

How can we understand "our" faith?  We shouldn't look at faith as an object in and of itself that can be measured or quantified, i.e. "look at how much faith I have" or "do I have enough faith?", instead we look to the object and giver of our faith, Jesus.  When we look to Jesus who gives us all we need and more, instead of focussing on our trust and belief in Jesus, we can simply live the faith.   We live the faith in Jesus by attending church, meditating on Holy Scripture, daily repenting of our sins and sinfulness and thus remembering our baptism into Christ,  receiving Jesus' body and blood in the Lord's Supper and then going out and serving our neighbor.   This kind of faith doesn't need to ask "is my faith strong enough?", because we know that our Lord is strong enough, for us.  This kind of faith doesn't find meaning in our circumstances, it finds meaning in Christ.  

A Son

²¹She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."²²All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:  ²³"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" which means, "God with us."  24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. 

Matthew 1:21-25

The virgin Mary gave birth to a Son.  He looked like any other baby because He was completely human, but at the same time He was completely God.   He was named by Joseph who had been told by the angel Gabriel to name Him Jesus.  Jesus was a family name.  The name Jesus came straight from His Father, YAHWEH, which means "I AM with you."  

The name Jesus is a transliteration of the Hebrew "Joshua" (which is why you find Him occasionally referred to as Yeshua by people of Jewish background who have become Christians). The Hebrew word Joshua means 'YAHWEH is salvation', hence the meaning of Jesus name savior.

Jesus was a helpless newborn like all of the rest of us have been.  He supped at Mary's breast, pooped and peed in His swaddling clothes, burped, spit up and cried.  The mystery of it is that while He was and did all of this, He was also the one and only perfect true God, all knowing, all powerful, all present.  He was a baby born a Prophet, Priest, King, God Himself, and Savior of the world.  He came to live a perfect life full of good works for sinners of every tribe, race, and time, and His greatest work was dyeing on the cross for every human who ever has and ever will walk the earth.  It is no wonder kings and shepherds and even we have bowed before Him. 

How does Jesus save us and how can we know this man was born for us, lived for us, died for us and claimed us so that we can be with Him forever?  The answer is Jesus has given us His Church, His Word, His baptism, His body and blood in the Lord's Supper, and faithful Lutheran pastors to serve these gifts, absolve our sins and preach and teach God's words to our souls along the way.   

In The Beginning

¹ In the beginning, God - Genesis 1:1a

God the great "I Am" IS in the beginning.  He is also with us now.  But Who is God?  God tells us in His Holy Word that He is Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the Trinity,  three distinct Persons, yet one God.  Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." John 10:30  Can the human mind logically understand this? No.  Can we know God? Yes.  How can we know God? The Bible says we can know God through one person, the God/man Jesus Christ. This blog is about knowing God through His Son Jesus Christ.  It is about being atoned and made right with God through His One and only Son Jesus Christ.  It is about being saved from death and hell by the God pleasing sacrifice provided by Christ Alone.   This blog is meant to be about Christ alone, one life, one cross, one death, one resurrection for sinful you and me, and so we begin with Christ alone.