Feed My Sheep

I came across some verses in Ezekiel a few days ago that have been running through my mind ever since.

Ezekiel 33:31-32

"So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain. Indeed you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them."

The "you" in these verses is Ezekiel himself, and God is addressing Ezekiel directly. God is condemning the Israelites (they are in captivity in Babylon) who come and listen to Ezekiel, and at times even seek him out, as a source of entertainment and amusement. The people seem to be paying attention, and a few verses earlier, we are told that they make Ezekiel and his prophesies a subject of frequent conversation. But after they have been entertained by him, they go their way and do their own thing. They are unaffected by the message he shares with them. And this is a message that comes straight from God, bear in mind.

I will admit, if I had lived as a contemporary of Ezekiel, I would probably have been pretty entertained by him too. God made Ezekiel do some pretty strange things, as a way of "acting out" the judgments and prophecies that were given through him. I'm sure his friends and neighbors thought he was a bit "off." That is, until everything he revealed to them came true.

But back to our verses. When I first read them, I thought, "Ooh, good post material here. It looks like things haven't changed much in all these thousands of years! People still go to church to be entertained by "a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument."" And I'm not even talking about church service music, I'm talking about the message from the pulpit. There are plenty of modern day church attenders who go to church, listen to the nice sermon, walk out the door, and completely revert to a self-motivated lifestyle.

And I stayed in that train of thought for a couple of days. I even started thinking though the great points I would make in my post. And then, of course, I was convicted of a recurring problem I have.

I can be kind of self-righteous. If you know me, you might be surprised by this confession. I TRY not to be self-righteous in my interactions with other people. And I've come a long way in this area. I am convicted of self-righteous thinking pretty quickly nowadays. Sometimes, immediately. But still, it keeps popping that nasty little head up in my thought patterns.

After thinking about our "entertained" churchgoers for a day or two, I looked at the verses again, and a new thought occurred to me. God specifically calls these Ezekiel-listeners, "My people." Ouch. Do I really think that I am supposed to be self-righteously comparing myself to God's people? No. And then, I remembered who it was they were gathering to listen to: Ezekiel, God's chosen mouthpiece, His chosen watchman, His chosen prophet. The people weren't gathering to listen to some nice sounding, empty messaged smooth talker. This man was the real thing, a man of God, speaking God-breathed truth.

I realized that I was making an unfair comparison. Sure, you can find plenty of churches today that have sweet sounding preachers who have very little gospel truth in their sermons. And I betcha they've got a big audience showing up every Sunday to be filled with a bunch of nice sounding emptiness. But, as I have realized again and again, there are also wonderful, Bible teaching churches out there who are filled with genuine Christians, and some of them are simply immature. They believe God, they attend church, they live a "clean" lifestyle, but their hearts are unaffected by God's Word to the point of real change. I used to be one of them.

And believe me, when that attitude changed in me, it wasn't because of anything I did. God shook me so hard that I had to stop and pay attention to Him. I didn't have a choice. Well, I suppose that technically I did, but in reality, the shaking was so severe that it would have been almost impossible for me to ignore Him.

After the shaking, which was no fun at all by the way, major change took place in my heart, and thus in my life.

Now I want to share something with you that is kind of personal. There are some verses in John 21 that the Holy Spirit will often quicken in my heart. In fact, these verses are the main tool that God uses to convict me of self-righteousness when it pops up. And I call this personal, because this is the personal application that I have taken from them.

In John 21:15-17, Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him. And every time Jesus asks, Peter answers with a yes. And all three times, Jesus says in essence "Feed My sheep." In other words, if what you say is true, if you really do love me, then you must feed My sheep as a result of that love.

I can't tell you how many times my heart has had this "conversation" with God. It goes something like this: Hadassah sees error in other people, Hadassah starts to feel self-righteous, the Holy Spirit hammers Hadassah's heart with the question: do you love Me?, Hadassah says, yes, or course You know I love You!, the Holy Spirit hammers Hadassah with the command: feed My sheep.

Self-righteousness is of no nutritional value to God's sheep. They will starve to death if that is all I have to feed them. And, hey, I don't think that I am Peter or anything like that. But I have an overwhelming urge to take people by the hand and lead them where God has led me. And I believe that God has given me this desire to feed His sheep. By the way, implicit in this motivation is the requirement to feed myself, a fellow sheep, from God's Word.

John 21:17

"He said to him a third time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, "Do you love me?"

And he said to Him, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You."

Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep."