One flock, one shepherd
Ezekiel 37:24, John 10:16
Who can Believers trust to lead them to truth?
In a world filled with lies, deceit, and evil, where can you find those who are teaching whole Bible truth? Listening to different pastors today, it seems that none of them are teaching the whole truth, only pieces, and mostly from the Second Testament.
Scripture says that God breathed the Holy Bible; it is all good for teaching.(2 Timothy 3:16-17) Many pastors discourage Believers from studying the First Testament, stating that it’s too hard, or it’s not relevant today. If your pastor is teaching you not to study the whole Bible for yourself, take a step back and pray. Ask for God to show you truth and His path for you.
Hungry for more of God? Is what you have learned and heard, not enough and left you wanting more? Are you wanting to go deeper in relationship with God? If so, that is why God has brought you here today. You have been praying for more and He is listening. He is bringing you to a cross-roads to stop, look, and listen for Him to tell you what to do next.
One flock, one shepherd
As stated in Part One, but bears repeating, in John 10, Jesus teaches that He is the one true shepherd. He explains that a true shepherd will lay down His life for His flock. He shares with them a parable of sorts that He is going to be doing just that, laying down His life for those who are His. All while planning to send His Holy Spirit to teach them after He ascends, He went on to warn about the “hired” shepherds that would try to deceive them. He warns them that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy so that they would know to be aware that there would be hired shepherds that they couldn’t trust.
How will you know who you can trust? Aren’t all pastors called by God to teach Believers and help save the lost? Well, there are prophets and teachers that all say they are teaching God’s truth. Wonder how many would be willing to lay down their life for their flock? It is up to you to depend on the Father to give you discernment to know who are the real ones and who are the false ones. God says to test everything and align what they say with His Word. (1 Thessalonians 5:21) If what they are saying does not align with His Word, toss it out. The only way to align what they are saying with God’s Word for a “truth test,” is to know His Word. You must study it cover to cover for all truth. It’s your Daily Bread, your Manna, your weapon against the enemy.
Another way to know who are following Jesus as one of His true shepherds is by their fruits. (Galatians 5:22) That’s actually a good rule of thumb to recognize all His followers. We don’t judge them but we can ask the Holy Spirit to show us who we can trust. We pray for those who are lost, but we don’t allow them to teach us God’s truth just because they have a title and position.
Where do we find truth?
Who will teach us truth? Who can we trust? In 1 John 2:27, we are told that the Holy Spirit is our teacher. In Jeremiah 33:3, He says to call out to Him and He will answer and teach you things you didn’t know.
Just like God breathed life into Adam’s nostrils from dust (Genesis 2:7), God also breathed the entire Bible so that He could teach us truth (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The first five books of the Bible, the Torah, are our instruction book for life that He breathed to Moses to write down for us so that we would know how to navigate this crazy thing called life. How many times have you wondered to yourself that there should be an instruction book for life? It was here the whole time and no one told you.
God is showing you His truth through His love that is all around you; look up and see Him. He’s everywhere in everything. In John 20:22, we see an indescribable example of His love when Jesus breathed on the disciples and they received the Holy Spirit. With this gift from Jesus, they could discern what was His truth.
In the book of Job, he says that the spirit of God has made him and that the breath of the Almighty God gives him life. (Job 33:4) In his pain, he could still see truth. He could still see the blessing and great love of His Heavenly Father.
Peter says that there has never been a true prophecy that was produced by the will of man, that men sent from God only spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:21) Those are the ones you can trust to be sent by God to teach you truth. You won’t know how to discern unless you stay in His whole Word daily and allow the Holy Spirit to teach you all things.
Thought to ponder: when you are in a situation that God doesn’t want you in, or His truth is being distorted but being called His truth, the Holy Spirit will let you know. If you are in relationship with Him and under His teaching studying the Word daily, you will know His voice. In those circumstances when it’s not Him, He will oftentimes give you an uneasy feeling, or He may even speak to your spirit and tell you, “that’s not me.”
I remember one time I was in a “church” service and I had an uneasy feeling, then felt like I was going to jump out of skin if I didn’t get out of there. Under peer pressure with friends I was sitting with, I stayed until the first break in the flow (of lies) and made excuses and left. I couldn’t get to my car fast enough. When I got in my car I asked God what was wrong with me. I said, everyone was enjoying themselves but me, what’s wrong with me? He said, ”that wasn’t me speaking through him. I made you feel that way to get you out of there.” I was so grateful and have learned since then to pay attention to what He’s trying to tell me. He can’t protect us if we won’t listen to Him.
Who scattered God’s sheep?
For those not knowing how to discern who is sent from God, many are deceived.
We learn through studying the whole Bible that in Ezekiel 34, God addresses His anger over the abuse of His sheep by the shepherds He put in place to care for them, who have become prideful and have abused their calling. God is angry that the shepherds are not feeding the sheep, but feeding themselves.
With social media today and access to anything and everything from our phones, we can quickly find a stream of false prophets who say they are speaking God’s truth. The Bible says over and over, woe to those who are leading the sheep astray. In the book of Ezekiel 34, God speaks to Ezekiel and tells him to speak to the shepherds and tell them of His anger over their behavior. Shepherds can be pastors, spiritual leaders from various faiths, or they can also be prophets. There are God’s chosen ones that have remained faithful in their calling, and then there are those who are considered false leaders on the stage parading as God’s shepherds. According to an online dictionary, prophets are: a person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God. So a false prophet or pastor is doing the opposite on the platform, whatever that platform may be.
This is not something new, it’s been going on since the Exodus, since God made rules for them to follow, they have been broken by many. That is why He sent prophets to tell them to turn from their wicked ways. In Ezekiel 34, God is telling Ezekiel to tell them that He knows and sees what they are doing. God is very upset that the shepherds are not feeding the flocks, but rather are feeding themselves. By ignoring the sheep, the sheep began to wander and became food for the beasts. The corrupt shepherds are scattering their flock leaving them to wander aimlessly for help and guidance. It’s in this state of mind that many of the sheep seek guidance from areas other than God.
A remnant are looking to God for food directly from Him. However, the masses are finding food elsewhere and it’s leading them down a path away from the God of Heaven, Adonai. The Bible is full of so many stories of God’s people going astray and worshipping non-living idols.
Back then God shows His anger to the shepherds, but in studying these Words today that He has for us in His Word, we are seeing the behavior of the shepherds is worse now than it was so many thousands of years ago. God is saying still today, listen up, shepherds; He’s done. He is against them and is going to remove their flocks from them, and remove the shepherds ability to continue feeding themselves and living the highlife on tithes. (Ezekiel 34:10)
You can read of God’s anger towards the shepherds through every prophet He sent. Do your research. He wants you to hear truth and that can only come from Him. Ask God what He wants you to do to learn His truth directly from Him. He will tell you. He said to call out to Him and He will answer. (Jeremiah 33:3)
His sheep are scattered
Since the “great lockdown of 2020,” God’s sheep have been further scattered than they already were. His people were originally scattered when they went into exile to Babylon back in the First Testament. Some returned to Jerusalem to help rebuild it but many stayed where they had planted and had begun a new life. It had been seventy years since the exile, so many weren’t willing to uproot their lives to return.
When 2020 lockdown caused churches to close, the sheep were scattered again but in such a unique way that it was obvious to Believers that God was doing something new. The “church” sheep were homeless and weren’t sure how to eat on their own. Church-goers had become so dependent on their pastors feeding them, that they didn’t know how to be fed God’s Word without their pastor’s leading. Most had never been taught how to study the Bible for themselves. During this worldwide lockdown, God seemed to be shaking things up. He seemed to be sifting and separating His people; separating the wheat and the chaff. (Matthew 3) There were believers that needed their routine and their pastor and wanted to get back in church any way possible. Then there were those that God was calling to stay away from mainstream church habits, and offered for them to follow Him in a different direction. He wanted to be the teacher and wanted them to listen to Him and learn whole Bible truth from Him. It was at this time that God separated His people.
It was also at this time that God seemed to start targeting the false prophets. Believers can already see the dominos falling. Through the falling of these false leaders, the sheep are getting scattered again. God is still separating the wheat and the chaff. He is pulling His sheep into His fold. Those that are following Him are being persecuted for not following the old patterns expected for Believers. God is calling His remnant flock to pray for the lost sheep and to keep loving them. We are not to walk along them with unrepentant sin, but we are to pray for them and love them in hopes that they will see His Truth and come back to Him.
How can I trust God? His shepherd let me down
Well, hopefully, that question has already been answered. Either His chosen shepherds became prideful and caught up in the power, position, and money and went astray by choice, or they were never His shepherds. They were false apostles that came in as children of light with the intention to deceive all along. (2 Corinthians 11:13-15)
It is easy to get caught up in the trap of idolizing a pastor and hanging on his every word. It happens to 99.9% of church goers. As Believers, we are hungry for more of God and can easily fall into the worldly routine of going to church to have a teacher on stage tell us what we need to know from God’s Word. It is in this habit, that you can fall victim to idolizing your pastor. He is human and flawed and will always let you down if your hope is in him. If this happened to you and he let you down or hurt you in some way, God sees and knows. If you turned away from God because a flawed human that you put your trust in instead of God, let you down and it caused you to leave the church and God, here’s your opportunity to turn back to Him today. He is waiting for you to turn to Him. He does not condemn you for putting your hope in an “idol”. (Romans 8:1) He has left the 99 to come get you.
Leaving the 99 to find the 1
In John 10, Jesus says that His sheep know His voice. You know His voice by spending time with Him. Spending time with Him doesn’t mean serving everywhere in church, it means staying in His Word. That’s where you learn to hear His voice, and how you will know when someone who says that God sent them, whether it’s true or not. This is how you will prevent being deceived by the enemy.
As His sheep, Jesus loves us and desires that none should perish. He is continually looking for His lost sheep to come back to Him. He tells a story of how He would leave the 99 to go find the lost one and bring him home. (Matthew 18) He wants you to come home and spend eternity with Him.
Fun fact: Did you know that when a sheep gets lost, they don’t turn around and try to go back to their flock? They hunker down and cry out to be found. It’s in their nature to do that, and it’s the exact response God wants from all His sheep. He doesn’t expect us to figure out a way home. He wants us to stop and cry out to Him, then He will reach down and pick us up and draw us close to Him in His loving arms.
As for shepherds, there is coming a time when they will not be needed any longer because Jesus is coming back to gather His people to Him so that He can shepherd them personally for eternity. Woe to those shepherds who have become prideful and turned from God while they still served in the shepherd role. Remember Shiloh, (1 Samuel 3) God’s judgement is coming.
While He is judging, God is going to seek out His sheep and gather them. He will care for them Himself. He will feed His flock like a shepherd carrying the lambs in His arms, holding them close to His heart. As sheep, be alert. Be ready. Cling to the Father and know His Word and His Truth so the enemy can’t deceive you and pull you away from the Father with his lies. (Isaiah 40:11)
For those sheep that have been staying true to God and searching for ways to go deeper with Him without a shepherd will have to search no further. Adonai, your God, will care for His beloved flock. When all seems hopeless and dark surrounding you, know that He is right there with you.
He will feed His sheep. He will provide all their needs. He will care for them because they never gave up hope that He would find them and rescue them. God’s sheep know His voice and He leads them to lie down in grassy pastures and leads them by quiet waters. (Psalms 23) He pastures His sheep and will let them rest in the midst of chaos. (Ezekiel 35:15)
Receive His Shalom peace that He has for you and rest in His arms as He teaches you and cares for you as one of His beloved sheep.
He loves His sheep and His sheep know His voice. Rest in His presence and be comforted that you are chosen, holy, and dearly loved by your Heavenly Father. (Colossians 3:12)
May God bless you and protect you.
(Numbers 6:24-26)