Ezekiel chapter 34, and we want to look at the second half of this chapter. On Sunday afternoon, we looked at the first portion of the chapter where the Lord chastised the false shepherds, the false shepherds of Israel that had led the nation astray. They had watched them really go up into the hills and begin to be involved in occultic worship, build high places and worship there just like they worship the pagan gods.
They abandoned the truth of God’s word and did not follow it, and the false shepherds did nothing to gather them back and to seek to deliver them from the lies that they were following, but instead encouraged them and set an example for them to lead them astray. Just when you think there can be no hope, and I’m sure that Ezekiel, as he’s looking at what has happened with Nebuchadnezzar invading Judah and destroying Jerusalem, destroying the temple and taking captive the people, that he’s wondering, well, what hope is there? And the amazing thing is, beginning in the last portion of this chapter, the Lord is going to open up his plan for Israel, but not only his plan for Israel, his plan for all mankind, because he has come to be the good shepherd, and that’s what we’re going to be looking at this evening, the good shepherd that the Lord is going to send.
Ezekiel 34:11-32
11 For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. 12 As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. 13 And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country. 14 I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel. 15 I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God. 16 I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.
17 And as for you, O my flock, thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the he goats. 18 Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet? 19 And as for my flock, they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet; and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet.
20 Therefore thus saith the Lord God unto them; Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle. 21 Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad; 22 therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle. 23 And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. 24 And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it. 25 And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods. 26 And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing. 27 And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them. 28 And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall the beast of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and none shall make them afraid. 29 And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. 30 Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord God. 31 And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God.
Let’s just bow in prayer. Dear Holy Fathers, we come before you this morning or this evening. Lord, I pray that you just speak to us through your word, touch us with the truth of it, and help us to understand where our strength comes from. Help us to see that we’re not to trust in the things of this world, but rather we’re to trust in your strength, and power, and truth, and the promises you have delivered.
The greatest promise of all was that you would send your Son to redeem mankind, which you did. Lord, help us to see that you promised the nation of Israel that they are not done, and you are not done with them. And Lord, help us to speak to us rather through your word this evening.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. It’s interesting that we come to this passage the same week that the President declared that Israel wouldn’t be a nation if it wasn’t for him.
Well, I think that the passage just said something a little different. As you read that passage, one of the things that you saw there was that the nation of Israel was being consumed, and the Lord said they were being consumed by those that were fat, and those that took advantage of them, really, and used their positions of power and authority to make the people lean. Now, what is he talking about fat and lean? Well, if you look at what he’s talking about fat and lean, the ones that were in power and authority, the four kings that came after Josiah, which were three of his sons and one of his grandsons, led the people in rebellion against God and Judah, every one of them to varying degrees.
The last, Zedekiah, actually being one of the worst, and God ended up taking him to Israel, I mean to Babylon, and before he took him, if you remember when we were going through Jeremiah and Zedekiah tried to escape, and they had tunnels back then too, and the princes and Zedekiah and the royalty tried to escape through the tunnel that they had dug that went from Jerusalem and came out close to Jericho, but as we read in the text when we were studying that, Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers were waiting for them, and they killed all of them except Zedekiah and his children that were with him, and what they did, if you remember, he was going to be taken to Babylon, but the last thing he saw before he was taken to Babylon was his children killed in front of him, and then his eyes were taken out by Nebuchadnezzar. Why was God so strongly opposed to Zedekiah and to these other kings? Well, we see here because they caused the people to be lean. What does it mean that the people were lean? They weren’t fed.
Now, if you look at what is one of the goals of a shepherd, when you read the 23rd Psalm, you see that the shepherd is to look out for the sheep. He’s to lead them beside the still waters and to take them to the green pastures where they can lay down in peace, but these kings, they were the ones that demanded the people serve them, and they worshiped false gods, and then they forced the false gods and the false worship upon the people, and they would not bring the truth of God’s word into the land, as Josiah, their father and grandfather, had done, and the people became lean to the word of God. They struggled because there was no word.
There was no temple worship. The things were done wrong, and all the pagan religions had been synthesized into what God had established for the nation of Israel until it became something that was unrecognizable and an abomination to the Lord. This evening, specifically, I want to look at some things that it says that this good shepherd’s going to do, because the good shepherd is dealing with people that have been hurt.
They’ve been led astray. They’ve been shown that which is wrong and in error. They haven’t been fed the truth of God’s word, and I find themselves lean before the Lord.
So what is this good shepherd going to do? This good shepherd is going to come, and we’re going to take a look at verses 12 through 14 and see some of the things that he’s going to do. Well, we’ll start out with verse 11, and it says, I will search them and seek them out. This is something that the false shepherds didn’t do.
They let the sheep just wander and wander and do what they wanted to do, and if they got into danger, they didn’t desire to deliver them, but instead they allowed them to continue to go down the road that would lead to destruction, because it would give them, the false shepherds, they could benefit off of that. Much like what’s happening in much of the today, where you have false shepherds that come into the church, and they do not feed the sheep, nor do they seek out to help the sheep when they are sick and ill, and when they’re lost and don’t know where to go to find truth, they encourage them to continue in error. That’s what the false shepherds did, but the good shepherd is going to seek them out.
Jesus, remember, as we talked a little bit on Sunday afternoon in the book of John, often talks about the fact that he is the good shepherd. He talks about the fact that he has come to find those that are the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and he hasn’t come to heal those that don’t need a physician, but he’s come to heal the sick. For he says, why does someone, if they’re not sick, they don’t need a physician, but the people that are spiritually sick, they need the truth, and Jesus was there to give it to them.
He said, I am the good shepherd, and he compared himself to this shepherd, because this speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we see that the first thing he does is, unlike the false shepherds, he seeks them out instead of driving them away, and he seeks them where they’re at, and helps them where they’re at, and we’re going to see in some of these other verses what he does to help them. Well, let’s take a look at verse 12.
He says the first thing he’s going to do is he’s going to deliver them. Well, if you go back and look historically, the nation of Judah was not delivered at this particular time out from under the persecution of the house of Babylon and the house of Nebuchadnezzar, and they suffered greatly under his hand, but the scriptures also tell us God allowed it as a chastising tool against Israel for their lack of turning to him and trusting in him. So what’s the good shepherd going to do? The false shepherds, they tried to cut deals.
The false shepherds tried to cut deals even at the expense of the people. You remember when Nebuchadnezzar was attacking, they had different things they were going to try and do. First of all, they’re going to try and hold out, but God says don’t hold out against Nebuchadnezzar because what’s going to happen, you’re going to die one of three ways.
You’re either going to die by the sword, you’re going to die by pestilence, or you’re going to die by starvation, and it’s not going to be pretty, but they didn’t listen to God. They tried to hold out against Nebuchadnezzar. Then when things begin to get more bleak, remember they turn to Egypt, and Egypt, when you look at Egypt in the Old Testament, Egypt is always a picture of the world.
They turn to the world for help instead of God, even though Jeremiah had told him, turn to the Lord, remain in the land, God will be with you. He’ll use you to be his light in the midst of all that’s happening, but you have to remain in the land of Judah. Instead, they packed up and went to Egypt and trusted in the pharaoh of Egypt, and God said, I’m going to destroy the pharaoh, and Nebuchadnezzar is going to destroy the one that you think is going to give you all the help, and the very one that you go and turn to, I’m going to destroy, and you’re going to be destroyed with him.
And those that went down into Egypt, the vast majority of them were destroyed in Egypt and killed. What did the Good Shepherd do? The Good Shepherd seeks out those that are in need. He seeks to deliver them from their time of trouble.
He seeks to have them turn to him, the one who is there to guide and protect them. Now, if you look at verse 13, it says what? Not only will he deliver them, as he says in verse 12, but in verse 13, he says, I will bring them out. I will bring them out.
Now, it’s interesting, if you look at, you think, well, how were they brought out? The nation of Israel was left, and Judah were both left in ruins. Israel by the Assyrians, Judah by the Babylonians, and there wasn’t hardly anything left. Remember when we went and studied the book of Nehemiah, when he got there, the walls were tore down, so he couldn’t even walk around the whole city because his donkey couldn’t pass over the rubble.
It was so great. And when they got the walls rebuilt, there was no place for the people to live within the walls because all the houses had been destroyed, and they had to rebuild the whole city. But the Lord says, I’m going to not only deliver you, but he also says, I’m going to bring you out.
Now, the amazing thing is he brought them out, and he brought them to Babylon, which seems like an interesting place to go because they had false gods. They were led by a wicked and evil man, Nebuchadnezzar, but they also had prophets there in Daniel and Ezekiel who were called to proclaim the truth to God’s people. One of the amazing things, as you go through the book of Ezekiel, you’ll see that more than once he gathers the men of Judah that are with him, and begins to share with them what God has revealed to him in his word.
And oftentimes, these are words that are filled with promise, even though they have nothing to live for at that time that shows that they’ll ever be back in the land. They are captive in their enemy’s territory, but God says, trust in me. And he speaks through Ezekiel, he speaks through Daniel, and he shows them, I will bring you out of this world and back into my relationship with me, and I will show you who I am that you may trust in me.
And that’s the amazing thing to look at this rebellious, stiff-necked people that God would even do that, say that I’m going to bring you out, when he allowed them to be taken into captivity as a chastising tool against them. But yet he says in verse 13 that I will bring them out. Verse 13, he also says, I will gather them together.
He will gather them together. They’re not going to be an estranged people. Ezekiel, later on in his book, is going to give more specifics of how God is going to do that, and we’ll see that later when he brings the dry bones back into the nation of Israel, and then begins to put flesh on the bones, and begins to breathe life into them, and that they will once again be a nation, and eventually they will all turn to him in the last day.
But the Lord says in verse 13, I’m going to bring them, gather them together. Now, how can you be scattered to the four winds of the earth, four directions of the earth, and be brought back together? It’s never been done before, but God says he would do it with Israel. I know people that say they’re Christians, but they believe God’s done with Israel, and the nation of Israel today isn’t Israel.
I’m going, what do you do then with the promises of God? If God isn’t going to fulfill this promise, which I believe began to be fulfilled in earnest in 1948 when Israel became a nation once again after 2,000 years, and began to speak Hebrew again after it had been a dead language for just about 2,000 years, the people in Germany spoke Yiddish, they didn’t speak Hebrew. It was a combination of German, Hebrew, and a bunch of other European languages, and it became Yiddish, not Hebrew. But the nation of Israel not only began to speak Hebrew, but they made it the language of their nation, just as God said they do.
God said he’d gather them back in as he had scattered them out, he would gather them in. An amazing thing, and he says, and people will know that I am the Lord because I did this. You know, today there are people that want to deny that Israel’s there because they don’t want to acknowledge that God’s God.
And if you have someone that says they’re a Christian, and denies that God is at work in the nation of Israel today, and that his promises aren’t being fulfilled in the day in which we live, they need to examine what God’s promises are to us as Christians. Because if he has failed to fulfill those, how will he fulfill his promise to us that he will forgive our sins, that we will be called his sons and daughters, that our sins that are scarlet shall be washed as white as snow, that we shall dwell with him and rule and reign with him eternally? How can those promises be fulfilled if he doesn’t fulfill these? And yet you see them being fulfilled, but they want to deny them, just like the fat leaders of Israel that wanted to deny the power of God and prevent the people from seeing his power and hearing his word. Let me go on to verse 13, and it says, I will bring them in.
Not only will he bring them together, but he’s going to bring them in. He’s going to bring them into the land once again. And this seemed like an impossible thing.
If you looked at Nebuchadnezzar, and then prior to Nebuchadnezzar, the Assyrians, they were ruthless, wicked, evil people, and they destroyed people. Yet God says, I’m going to bring my people back, and I’m going to bring them into the land. I’m not just going to bring them back together in Babylon.
And many Jews for many years continued to live in Babylon, and it wasn’t until Islam became a strong factor in the Middle East that many Jews began to move out of the Muslim countries, and Babylon being one of them. So if there’s less Jews there today than there were at the time of Ezekiel, and up until even the time of Jesus, there were people in the time of the dispersion under the Romans, there were times Jews living all over the Middle East. And as I mentioned on Sunday, if you go and look at a map and which compares how many Jews live in the Muslim countries today versus the Muslim countries even a hundred years ago, you’ll see it’s amazing there’s hardly any Jews left in the Muslim countries.
God’s brought them back. And he’s brought them back into the U.S., although the U.S. has the second highest count of Jewish people of any nation in the world. But guess what? They’re even leaving the U.S. New York has got an outpouring of Jewish people right now back to Israel.
I don’t know why, because there’s a Muslim mayor that hates Jews and wants to kill them all. And has made that known, not maybe overtly to the news media, but he has made it known. And the Jews are beginning to leave New York.
Jews are leaving London. Jews are leaving Paris. Jews are leaving the Netherlands.
Why? Because of the tremendous persecution that they’re experiencing. And they’re going back to Israel. God’s calling them in.
And one of the things that’s happening is the leading rabbis in some of these countries are telling their people, go to Israel, you’ll be safe there. If you stay here, you’ll be persecuted. The leading rabbi in Jerusalem told the Jews of the world, you need to come back to Israel, or you’ll be safe.
These aren’t believers, but God’s using them. And he’s calling his people in. The next thing he says in verse 14, I will feed them.
God’s going to feed his people. What a novel idea that a shepherd would feed his flock. The false shepherds, they only fed their flocks that which would lead to destruction and cause them to be so lean they could hardly function.
You know, it comes to mind what the president of North Korea does. He feeds his people that which looks like it’s noodles, but it’s really not noodles. It has no nutritional value at all.
The only thing it does is it makes your stomach feel like it’s full, but it doesn’t help you at all. You lose weight. You don’t have strength because it’s not food.
That’s what the false shepherds do. They feed, they go, and they present. I remember when Joel Osteen had his big congregation.
I think he’s in trouble now, and I don’t think he’s got his bigger congregation if he did, if he even has one anymore. But I remember seeing him on television, and he would come out, and he’d hold the Bible up, and he’d use the Bible as a prop. He’d never teach out of the Bible.
He would never expound the Word of God, but he’d use it as a prop, and then he’d tell stories. He’d tell stories to tickle ears. He’d tell stories to make you feel good.
He’d tell stories on how you could become a better person, but he never talked about how the only way you could ever become a better person, that is to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and have your sins forgiven, and removed, and replaced with God’s Spirit and power, and your sins that are scarlet are washed as white as snow. And so we see here that the good shepherd feeds his people. The good shepherd feeds his flock, and that’s what Jesus did.
It’s interesting, the very things that are being talked about through the book of Ezekiel really happened when Jesus, and were exemplified when Jesus came and walked on the earth, because if you look at what happened, who were the people that really began to follow Jesus? It wasn’t the leadership. It wasn’t the fat ones. Those people did not want to preach the Word of God.
They didn’t want to speak the truth. They didn’t, when they looked at things, and looked at the Word of God, and they saw that Jesus could possibly be the Messiah, they wanted to deny it, and make sure that the people didn’t believe it. And they did everything in their power to prevent it.
But what did Jesus do? And who was Jesus’s biggest audience? It was the sinners, the castoffs, those that the false prophets had rejected and used, and manipulated for their positions of power and authority with the Roman government. And Jesus fed the people. Remember, there was times when he’d be speaking, and people would make the comment, no man has spoke like this before.
No man has spoke like this before. Even when Jesus was in his home synagogue in Nazareth, and he was reading from Isaiah 61, and he read about the passage
And his words, because of the truth that they possessed, and that he was God come in the flesh, they were amazed at his authority. This man comes and he feeds his flock. And we see also in verse 15, I will cause them to lie down.
I will cause them to lie down. Sheep are not a very smart animal. And sheep can be very nervous.
If they feel the threat of danger, they won’t rest. But the good shepherd comes and he enables them to lie down even in the face of danger. Because he gives them peace and hope, security, and he lays before them truth that reveals his power is greater than any power that would threaten them.
When you go to Israel and you have a shepherd taking care of his flock, the sheep trust the shepherd. And when he takes them out to the good fields and feeds them, they’ll go before him. When he puts them in the fold at night, they’ll go in the fold.
And the shepherd lays down across the door of the fold, which is like a fenced-in area with one opening. So there’s only one way into this fenced area where the sheep are. And any wild animal or any thief would have to cross by the shepherd, and the shepherd would prevent them from harming or stealing the sheep.
And the sheep begin to have security and trust in the shepherd. And they follow him and they respond to his voice. Jesus says that he’ll make them lie down.
They’ll be secure. Even in the face of danger, they’ll be secure because their shepherd is a good shepherd, and he will do that which he has told them he will do. In verse 15, I’m sorry, verse 16, he says, I will bind up the broken.
The false shepherd didn’t do that. The broken were cast aside. The broken were used as instruments by them to throw to the enemy.
But the good shepherd binds up the broken. You know, what makes the gospel so powerful? The transformation of people’s lives. Broken people are made whole.
People whose lives are in shatters are transformed into people who can love Jesus and are made whole because the shepherd binds them up. It’s interesting, the shepherd would take and bind the leek. I gave the example on Sunday.
I’ll give it again to you now just to put it in your mind. If a shepherd had a sheep that had a broken leg, what he would do is he would set the leg, and he would cause the leg to be set, and then so that the sheep would not wander away, he would carry the sheep until the leg healed. And by the time the leg healed, the sheep totally trusted the shepherd.
He would go wherever the shepherd went. He would do whatever the shepherd told him to do because the shepherd had bound up his leg that he could not walk on, and now he could walk. He was healed because the shepherd bound it up.
Jesus binds up our wounds of our heart. He binds up the wounds of our soul. He binds up the wounds of our life that the world cannot do but only cause those wounds to be driven deeper and cause us to be destroyed by the very thing that the world says will save us.
So Jesus does the opposite. He binds up the wounds. And then in verse 16, he also says, I will strengthen the sick.
I will strengthen the sick. Jesus is concerned about the sick. Now, it’s interesting as you look at the examples that Ezekiel is giving here that the Lord gives Ezekiel to deal with, it’s some of the very things that the nation of Judah had dealt with when they were being attacked by Nebuchadnezzar and he had surrounded the city.
The Lord said that they were going to die of sickness. They were going to die of disease. They were going to die by the sword.
But now the good shepherd comes, and the very things that would cause their death at the hand of the judgment of God are now going to be healed by the power of God through the love of the good shepherd and his care for the sheep. In verse 17 through 24, Ezekiel talks about the fact that he’s going to save the sheep from the false shepherds, which are fat and selfish. He’s going to save the sheep from them.
He’s going to come, and he’s going to fight against those shepherds that are false, revealing what they really are and judging them for who they are. You know, it’s interesting. That’s why it’s a scary place to be in our nation today when you’ve got the leaders of our nation so proud and arrogant they stand against God and want to take the place of God, and they are becoming fat and selfish shepherds who say, listen to me.
I’m the only one who can redeem you. I’m the only one who can save you. And God says, turn your hearts to me.
Repent and come to me, and I will redeem you. I will save you. In closing, I just want to look at a couple more things.
It’s interesting. We opened the service this evening by singing a song. There shall be showers of blessing.
That song came from this chapter. Chapter 26. And I will make them and the places around about my hill a blessing, and I will cause the shower to come down in this season.
There shall be showers of blessing. The false shepherds have brought nothing but judgment. God is going to bring blessing.
You know, a lot of times people want to replace Israel with the church, but we’re not Israel. But the thing is, God has given us some of the promises that he’s given to Israel. Like instead of his judgment, we’re going to experience his blessing.
And he’s going to come and give us those showers of blessing, even as he’s going to do to Israel. And in verse 27, And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them. Who today is serving themselves of the nation of Israel? Well, you don’t have to go very far.
Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas. But guess what? The U.S. is serving herself at the hands of Israel. The world is serving themselves at the hands of Israel.
And God says, that’s not the good shepherd, because the good shepherd comes to bless, not to steal. The good shepherd comes to build up, not to destroy. And in closing, because we’re out of time, let’s just take a look at the last verse.
Who is the flock of this good shepherd? The Lord tells us, Ezekiel tells us, under the inspiration of God, and my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God. His flock isn’t sheep sheep, although men are just about as dumb as sheep, but his flock are men. His flock, his main flock in all of Scripture is Israel, but then God in his infinite love and mercy opened up that fold and called the Gentiles to come in and be part of the flock too.
And so today, anyone who trusts and believes is part of God’s flock. And God will deliver him and do all these things that he said he’s going to do as the good shepherd. Let’s just close in prayer.
Lord, I pray that you just help us to understand this. Help us to understand the difference between false shepherds and good shepherds. Help us to have discerning hearts in the day in which we live that we would be able to discern the false shepherds from the good shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
Help us to constantly seek to walk in his power and his might according to his purpose and not be deceived by the false shepherds that would lead us astray and take us into places where we would find death and destruction. Go with us now and help us to proclaim the truth of your word to those that we come in contact with in the week ahead. This we’d ask in Jesus’ name.