THE TITLES OF CHRIST
THE GOOD SHEPHERD
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 10, PSALM 23
OCTOBER 16, 1988
Her name was Shirley Schwarm. She was my secretary at Faith Presbyterian Church where I served as Associate Pastor and Director of Education. Shirley had a servant’s heart. She considered it a privilege to serve the church of Christ and the kingdom of God. Those of us who worked in the educational area kind of viewed Shirley as the order in the midst of our chaos. She kept things from falling through the cracks and all the little things, the little details that we forgot, Shirley always remembered. She covered all the bases and she made us all look a little bit better than we really were. Shirley had medical problems in her family. Some of them were very severe, but she had a deep faith in Jesus Christ and she never allowed anything to quench her joy. I don’t ever remember walking in Shirley’s office when she didn’t greet me with a smile. People loved to gather there in her office and have some coffee and talk. It was just a good place to be.
Well, it was about a year ago that I found out that Shirley was dying of cancer. We prayed for her. The last time I saw her was two days before she died. Barb and I went over to the hospital in Aurora. By that time, Shirley couldn’t talk anymore but she still greeted us with a smile. Today, Shirley is with Jesus Christ and she’s smiling still, but for her husband and for her children, the smiles don’t come so easy. At the memorial service, I didn’t know what to say to Don, Shirley’s husband. I didn’t know what to say to the kids because sometimes words seem kind of shallow when the pain is so deep.
I don’t have to tell you that there is a lot of pain in this world. There is pain in our church. As Everett shared just this past week, Gloria and David Hall lost their three month old son. The dreams and the hopes that they had for him and this world were shattered. Then Jackie and John Stanfield lost their child in premature birth. Most of us can only imagine the pain that they feel. But this morning I know that God wants all of us to understand that someday it’s going to happen to us. Someday, if it hasn’t already, it’s going to happen to you. You’re going to experience the pain of grief. You’re going to lose someone you love very much and your world or some part of it will be shattered. It’s going to happen because we’re so human and this world is so fallen.
“I am the Good Shepherd” Jesus says, and as Christians, we are His sheep. When things are going well, it’s kind of easy to grant Christ this title, “the Good Shepherd.” When things aren’t going so well, that title is not so easy to grant. Why do Christians have to suffer? Why do the sheep of Christ have to experience so much pain? For 2,000 years Christians have debated that, and I don’t have any simple answers this morning but I do feel led to share with you two promises from the Good Shepherd.
The first promise is this; “In the midst of your suffering, I will work for good.” That’s the promise Christ has made. We’re going to suffer, but in the midst of the suffering He’s going to work for good. Romans 8:28 “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.” It’s the promise of God, the promise of His Son. He promises to make your suffering meaningful. He will not let you endure meaningless suffering.
In 1975, a 150-page report was released that described the horrors of political prisoners in the Soviet Union. In that report, there was one section that dealt with a Soviet prisoner whose name was Opanacinko. He took his own life in 1974 in the Perm Colony; death by hanging, suicide. He left a little note. The note said, “life has no more meaning. Curse you monster.” He was in the 22nd year of a 25-year sentence, and life had ceased to have meaning and he couldn’t endure it anymore.
Victor Frankl, the famous psychologist, tells us that human beings can endure almost any amount of suffering as long as life retains meaning. You see, the world suffers. Many times their suffering is hollow and it is empty and it has no meaning, but Christ promises He will always give meaning to your suffering. In fact, He says He will always bring good from your suffering.
Now, sometimes that “good” is transformation. Sometimes Christ uses suffering in your life and mind to bring transformation to us and to change us and make us more beautiful than we now are. This is illustrated even in the realm of nature. Many illustrations I’m sure are known to you. The emperor moth is one such illustration. The emperor moth builds a very unusual cocoon. Entomologists tell us that this cocoon is flask shaped and has a very narrow neck. The emperor moth is one of the most beautiful moths and butterflies. But in order to be transformed to go through metamorphosis, the emperor moth must work its way out of that cocoon through the narrow neck of the flask-like cocoon. It’s a great struggle. It lasts for hours and scientists don’t fully understand it, but they believe that during that struggle, when the moth is struggling to work its way through the neck of the cocoon, the pressure somehow forces life-giving fluid into the wings. The wings are given life. Many young children and even adults have watched moths struggle from cocoons and butterflies. Sometimes they feel sorry for the little insect and they go get a pair of scissors and they’ve snipped the threads in the neck of the cocoon. The moth falls out. It’s tragic because its transformation is cut short and it can only crawl. It cannot fly. It’s glory is diminished.
You see, Christ wants us to understand that sometimes we need pressure and sometimes we need suffering. He can use it to make us more beautiful. I’ve seen people accept Christ through suffering, the greatest transformation of all. Sometimes God just can’t get our attention unless we seem to have hit the bottom. Then, too, sometimes the “good” is motivation. Sometimes the good that Christ works through our suffering is simply motivation, because sometimes apart from suffering, we’re just not motivated to take the step He wants us to take.
Again, this is illustrated in the realm of nature. We’re told that eagles are very special birds and ornithologists, those who study birds, tell us that the eagle builds a very special nest. Usually it’s high up on a tree or high up on a cliff or a precipice. This nest is built from strange materials. The eagles will go and they will find thorns and they’ll find jagged rocks, anything sharp, and they will intertwine them and begin to build the nest. But then the mom will go and she will get fur and feathers and wool and she’ll begin to put that on top of the jagged things and she’ll make a soft nest there which is comfortable for her young. Then the eaglets come, usually two or three, and they develop there in the nest and things are really comfortable. But of course, as time passes, there comes a time when they need to take a step. They need to leave the nest, but they’re comfortable and they need to be motivated. So the mom just begins to remove some of the fur, some of the feathers, some of the wool. It sounds kind of cruel, but it’s really loving. It’s necessary and those thorns and those jagged edges; just what’s needed to make motivation possible.
Christ wants us to understand that sometimes it’s like that for us when he wants us to take a step. Sometimes we’re too comfortable. Maybe we need to change jobs or get a new circle of friends, and suffering helps accomplish that purpose. Then too, sometimes the “good” is ministry to others and this, I think, is the most beautiful of all. Suffering not only transforms us and motivates us, but Christ, the Good Shepherd can use your suffering to help you minister to others.
Adoniram Judson has kind of become famous in our time and more and more books are being written about him. It seems like the Christian community has just discovered him though he died more than 130 years ago. He was one of the great missionaries of the Christian era. He was a brilliant man. In year 1811, he graduated from Andover Seminary. He had already graduated from Brown University. He graduated from Andover at the young age of 23, and he was instantly offered a job at the Park Street Church in Boston, one of the more prestigious churches in 19th century America. He was honored and he wanted that but through a series of circumstances it didn’t work out for Adoniram Judson and that was painful. Well, a year passed and in 1812, Judson began to feel a joy about missions and a call to the mission field. He had his heart set on India. He longed to go to India. So in that year, 1812, he went to Calcutta. He was already multilingual, a brilliant man. He went to Calcutta, and he was excited about ministering for Christ there but the British government forced him to leave. They didn’t need religious controversy. They were having enough trouble in India. So Judson had to leave and it was painful.
Well, the next year, 1813, he made his way back to India to Madras. Again, he had great excitement and anticipation, but again he was forced to leave. He fled for his life and he arrived in the city of Rangoon in the nation of Burma. Now, Judson had always said “there’s one nation I never want to go to and that’s Burma; one city I never want to see and that’s Rangoon.” There he was, having escaped with his life. As the weeks passed, he began to minister to the people round about and seek to share Christ. Pretty soon he was entrenched in the city of Rangoon, in the nation of Burma. He became a missionary there and the first seven years were filled with incomprehensible suffering. He spent much of his time in the Ava prison and he had chains that bound him and iron shackles about his arms and his feet and they dug to the bone. They had nothing that would resemble a bathroom in his cell and he lived in a sewer. There were times they wouldn’t feed him for days at a time. He almost starved at death. The weeks and the months and the years passed and he was in and out of Ava. His scars from their beatings were so great and so large that they could be seen on his face and on his person, and they would remain there the rest of his life.
It took seven years; the year 1820 was when he saw the first person accept Christ in Burma. Can you imagine? Seven years and his first convert to Christ. But then the Holy Spirit came upon at Adoniram Judson. The Holy Spirit began to move in an incredible way and hundreds of people began to accept Christ through his ministry. Churches began to be formed. In 1834, he translated the entire Bible, Old and New Testament, every book of the Bible into the Burmese tongue. He gave the Bible to Burma. Well, he died in 1850 at the age of 62. He had suffered much but the ministry was great. Today there are more than a thousand churches in Burma because of Adoniram Judson. The Park Street Church in Boston, it’s still there. It has a thousand people today. It didn’t really need Judson. The first church that Judson founded in Rangoon today has 30,000 members. An official in the Burmese government said “you know, of all the missionaries that have ever come to Burma, only one missionary did we ever fear—did the Buddhist ever fear—and that was at Adoniram Judson.” He said, “We didn’t fear him because of his talents or his gifts or his intelligence, his abilities. We feared him because of his scars. People would just look at his face and they would see his scars and they would be moved and they would know; here was a man who believed.”
So God, through Christ, the Good Shepherd gives you this promise. In the midst of your suffering, I will work for good. I’ll change you. I’ll transform you to someone beautiful if you’ll let me, and I’ll use your suffering for ministry in this world. I can even use your scars. Very few of us have physical scars. We all have emotional ones. We’ve all had hurts. Even those, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Good Shepherd can use.
Well, a second and final promise from Christ. “In the midst of your suffering, I promise deliverance, I will deliver you from evil.” See, most of us when we suffer, well, you know…if the Lord would work for good, that would be nice. But what we really want is just to escape. Christ says “I will deliver you. I will rescue you.” The apostle Peter said “if God preserved Noah and if He rescued Lot, does He not know how to deliver you?
One of my favorite stories, it’s a story some of you have heard. It concerns King Theodore II. He was, historians tell us, one of the greatest rulers of Ethiopia. King Theodore II. His real name was Kassa. King Theodore II conquered the five provinces of Abyssinia and he united Ethiopia and he took the title “negas” which means king. He had great power and he lived in opulent splendor in his palatial fortress built high up in the mountains of Abyssinia or Ethiopia. The fortress was called Magdalia. It was built 700 miles from the sea. He was powerful and he was arrogant.
One day in the midst of his arrogance, King Theodore II, on a whim for no real reason, decided to imprison the British Consul whose name was Charles Duncan Cameron. Well, that was in the year 1867 and news didn’t travel so fast. When the British government found out, they demanded the release of Charles Cameron. King Theodore II, who considered himself borderline deity, refused. Ten days later, the British government began one of the greatest, most spectacular rescue operations in the history of the world. They sent 16,000 armed soldiers by sea under the command of Sir Robert Napier and they arrived at the coast of Ethiopia and those 16,000 men marched 700 miles over the Ethiopian desert. When King Theodore II looked out of Magdalia, when he looked down from his fortress and he saw 16,000 armed British soldiers, he was overwhelmed. He was humiliated. He committed suicide. He took his life that day, April 13, 1868. 16,000 British soldiers swept up that mountain and they stormed that fortress and they rescued Charles Duncan Cameron. Because, they said, he had suffered much, they carried him. They carried him all the way to the sea, 700 miles, and they took him safely back to England. 16,000 men, six months, $25,000,000 to rescue one man. The British government said “We wanted to send a message to the world that we have the power and the will to protect our citizens.”
Now if that’s true, and if it has been true of earthly kingdoms, how much more is it true of the kingdom of Christ? Jesus says “I have all power in heaven and on earth.” And He has power to protect you. Now, I don’t know what you’re going through. Maybe it feels like you’ve tarried quite a while in pain and you wonder when the rescue party is coming. Maybe you’ve lost your job or you have bills and they exceed your assets. Maybe you’ve just gone through the pain of a divorce or you have some kind of a disease or an illness and you can’t shake it and you’re worried. Maybe you’ve just suffered through the loss of someone that you love and you feel like it’s more than you can bear. You know God hasn’t caused these things, but you also know that He has permitted these things and you wonder, when He’s going to intervene?
Maybe you feel a little bit like Yellowstone National Park and you think Christ has a let it burn philosophy. But he doesn’t. He’ll come for you. He’ll deliver you. Maybe like Kirk Gibson…maybe it’ll be in the bottom half of the ninth, but He’ll come.
The Apostle Peter says “Behold your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world. And when you suffered for a while, the God of all graces who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus will Himself restore, establish, and strengthen you. That’s the promise of God.
Peter knew what he was talking about. He’d seen the deliverance of Christ. He’d been in prison. He was around the year 44 A.D. when he found himself in prison. King Herod Agrippa had placed him there. King Herod Agrippa decided he wanted to shut up the apostle, the man who couldn’t stop speaking about the Son of God. He planned to kill him. It was kind of a cost-effective way of pleasing his Jewish constituency to kill Christians and persecute them. The crowds had applauded the death of James and Herod planned to turn Peter over to the multitudes and let them dispose of him in whatever way they chose. He had Peter in that cell in the fortress prison, chained to a dungeon wall with a guard on either side and the prison cell door was locked and guards were outside. Then there were corridor doors leading out into open grounds and a steel iron gate, maximum security with guards all along the way.
Peter’s friends were praying for him at the home of John Mark, praying for deliverance. That night it happened and God sent his angel. The chains were broken and the doors were opened and supernaturally Peter was delivered and he was set free.
God will set you free. I believe that He will protect you and deliver you until that day when He gives you the ultimate deliverance and takes you home. That day came for Peter around the year 64 A.D. when he died a martyr’s death in Rome under the reign of the Emperor Nero: killed somewhere near the area where the Basilica of St. Peter stands today. Someday that day will come for you and it will come for me. And the Good Shepherd will take us safely into the fold.
We don’t know when. I don’t know whether I’m going to die tomorrow. I could. Or next week. Maybe 40 years from now. You don’t know either. But until that day, He feeds us, He guides us, He protects and He delivers us. And then one day He comes for us and He brings us safely into the fold. He wants us to understand that the fold is not the earthly home we have here in Colorado. The fold is our eternal home in heaven. Jesus said “I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there you may be also. He is the Good Shepherd. Until that day, He has told us that we’ll have joy and suffering in this world, but in the midst of the suffering He’ll work for good and He’ll continue to deliver us until he takes us home. “I know my sheep” He says. “They hear my voice, they follow me. I give them eternal life. They will never perish and no one can snatch them out of my hand.” Let’s close with the word of prayer.