The Risen Savior Provides Good Shepherding
1 John 4:1-6
1) Test for It
2) Listen to It
Suppose that you need to be somewhere, but you can’t go. Who do you send in your place? If you’re a country’s leader or ruler, you send ambassadors or the Secretary of This-and-That to represent your country’s interests. If you’re a parent, you’ll send your oldest child or ones you trust to take care of things while you’re gone. If you’re a boss, you’ll send managers and inspectors to ensure your company’s culture and quality assurance. Regardless of who you are, you send someone who acts as an extension of yourself.
Our Risen Savior does the same to provide good shepherding for us. He calls spiritually mature men to serve as our pastors who shepherd a specific flock of people on God’s behalf. They do this by feeding them with God’s Word, corralling those who stray aside, and protecting them when danger arises. However, there are many people who claim to do this on God’s behalf yet end up saying very different things about God As sheep of our Good Shepherd, how do we know through whom our Risen Savior has provided good shepherding for us? That’s why we turn our attention this morning to 1 John chapter 4. It’s here that God tells us how to test for good shepherding so that we may listen to our Good Shepherd’s voice through it.
1) Test for It
The Apostle John starts right off by telling us that we aren’t to believe everyone who claims to speak on God’s behalf. Rather, we are to test them by their confession of faith, what they believe and teach. John describes it as this, “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit [that is, religious teacher] who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” (1 John 4:2 EHV) The first thing is to confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Promised Savior of long ago. He alone takes our sins away by fulfilling every prophecy and requirement so eternal life can be ours. The second thing is to confess that Jesus has come. He is a real person in history who did everything the Bible says: born to Joseph and the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, raised in the town of Nazareth, died on a cross in Jerusalem, and rose from the dead three days later. The third thing to confess is that Jesus has come in the flesh. As true God, he existed before anything was created and is God in every way. However, he is also
true man, born under the law that threatens us, having flesh and blood like us yet without being limited in any way.
Since John wrote this letter, the Christian church has needed to further clarify what the Christian faith is. Look to the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds to know what it means to say, “I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” Look to the Athanasian Creed to describe who our Triune God is and is not as well as how Jesus is true God and true man in one person. Look to the Book of Concord to see what differentiates Lutherans from other Christian denominations.
If a religious teacher’s confession of faith agrees with these biblical statements, then they are from God and through whom our Risen Savior provides good shepherding for us. If a person’s words don’t match up with what God has said in his Word, then they are correctly labelled a false prophet, someone who speaks the spirit of error. And we can be certain that our Risen Savior is not working through them to provide good shepherding for us.
Yet, how well do we actually test those who shepherd us in God’s name? How willing are we to actually do this in the first place here it’s here at Grace or whoever we’re listening to? Perhaps we hesitate because of our politically correct culture. It’s frowned upon to call things how they are, even if it’s done in a loving way. When we do address the elephant in the room, we’re often put on the defensive and effectively pushed out without changing anything. If we know how much trouble we’ll cause by testing those who come in God’s name, maybe it’s easier to just go along with it and hope for the best.
Perhaps we refuse to test a religious teacher because we’re children of our culture. Christianity is no longer the one, right religion. Rather, a person’s religion is just an expression of who they are just like your preference for food, taste in fashion, or accent you speak with. Maybe we’ve fallen for the false hope of all religions (or lack thereof) are equally good. There are many roads to the same destination, many names for the same divine being. Christianity happens to call them heaven and God. So, we withhold any kind of testing because it ultimately doesn’t matter, there are no wrong religions or false hopes.
To forgo testing for our Risen Savior’s good shepherding is to open ourselves up to destructive shepherding. We listen to whoever has our ear or embodies what we want rather than to our Risen Savior’s good shepherding. We trap ourselves in sin again because we’ve traded Jesus’ forgiveness for something less. We set ourselves up for eternal suffering because we confess something other than “that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2 EHV) and what all that means. We settle for less than ideal shepherding when we allow a denomination’s false teaching to be mixed in with the Bible’s correct teaching.
This doesn’t have to be the case though. Our Risen Savior has in fact provided good shepherding for us! He’s also provided the test so we can identify them. That test is God’s unchanging Word. In a sea of conflicting voices and uncertain times, God’s Word remains constant and his promises secure. So we take their confession of faith and compare it to God’s Word. If it’s the same, bingo! We’ve found a religious teacher who speaks the spirit of truth. If not, then we correctly label them a false prophet and stay away so we don’t fall for their spirit of error.
2) Listen to It
With the test results in hand, we then listen to our Risen Savior’s good shepherding for our benefit. God does more than give us his Word and say, “Take it, read it, and figure it out by yourself.” He calls spiritually mature men to be our pastors who shepherd us with God’s Word. While they don’t add anything to God’s Word or make it more powerful, they know how best to apply its content for our lives, to make it come alive for what’s going on in life, and to lead us to green pastures and quiet waters.
They do so by telling us what God has already said. For example, take what he says through these words from the Apostle John, “You are from God, dear children.” (1 John 4:4 EHV) Though we were born in sin and as enemies of God, he has conquered our hostile hearts and brought us to life by adopting us into his family of faith. We are near and dear to God, known to him by name and precious in his sight. Or consider these words from John, “you have overcome the false prophets, because the one in you is greater than the one in the world.” (1 John 4:4 EHV) To see how great Jesus is, just look at Easter’s empty tomb. Sin, death, and the devil tried their worst and left empty-handed. For Jesus went into the grave as our perfect sacrifice and rose up as our victorious Savior! He has given us his victorious blessings through faith so that we are forgiven, at peace with God, and promised eternal life in heaven. That’s what our Good Shepherd tells us through the pastors he’s called to shepherd us in his name.
And we’ll need to listen to them in light of how things are in the world. We Christians are outnumbered by far across the world and increasingly so here at home. No one wants to be in the minority. When we see the majority flocking to false prophets or to no one at all, it’s discouraging to remain behind. The
distinguished scientific community promotes a worldview without the Bible. God’s Word is either a non-issue or at odds with its conclusions. When we need extensive learning to just put up a defense, are we so sure we should listen to our Good Shepherd instead of Dr. So-and-So? Let’s not forget about ourselves. Our sinful nature may be brought low by God’s power within us, but it’s not out. It challenges our godly intentions, tempts us to sins of habit and sins of choice, and inflicts guilt upon our consciences. Rather than struggle with this for the rest of our lives, wouldn’t it be easier if we just gave in and became deaf to God?
That’s why we need to listen our Risen Savior’s good shepherding through the pastors he’s called to serve us. We Christians may be outnumbered, but they remind us we’ve already overcome the world. We stand with Jesus who overcame sin, death, and the devil with his death and resurrection. We Christians may sound like fools to some scientists, but our pastors tell us how God views us: his beloved child in his righteous family which is better by far. We Christians struggle against our sinful nature, but our pastors lift up our spirits by proclaiming the victory of our Risen Savior Jesus Christ who is with us everywhere we go, forgiving and blessing us. Let’s not forget who we are actually hearing through the work of our faithful pastors: it’s our Good Shepherd, our Risen Savior, who provides good shepherding for us through them.
Closing Encouragements
We sheep hear lots of voices out there claiming to speak to us on God’s behalf. To know who is and isn’t from God, let’s test them according to God’s Word. If their confession of faith is in line with God’s Word, we’ve found who is actually from God. (If possible, let’s go all the way down to the denomination because those details matter over time.) Once we’ve found who’s trustworthy, let’s then listen to them so we may hear God’s unchanging Word come to life and so benefit our soul for eternity. For it’s through these spiritually mature men our Risen Savior provides good shepherding for us today. Amen.