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Sermons on Jesus (Page 10)
Spiritual apathy, doubt and unbelief are a like spiritual drowsiness. The Lord reminds and empowers us to be vigilant, spiritually awake and ready for His return and ready to share the good news of His saving work with the people around us.
We live in very uncertain times. There is truly nothing stable and lasting in this world. Sin and death mean that our certainty must come from outside this world. Our certainty is found only in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, our Savior, for only in Him do we have a righteousness before God.
The Lord describes Himself as a Good Shepherd. He uses the word picture to explain that He will guard and protects us, feed us with the food and drink that nourishes to eternal life and that He will give up His life for His flock. That’s us, the sheep of the Good Shepherd. We are the ones He cares about. We are the ones He would rescue by sacrificing Himself to pay for our wayward sinfulness and bring us to the safety of heaven. In faith and thankfulness, let us forsake our wandering ways and follow His paths of righteousness. We need not fear for He is with us, guiding us home.
The Lord is at that bittersweet moment in His earthly ministry. Judas has just left to betray Him, and Jesus knows that he will despair and ultimately drop into the eternal condemnation of hell. Yet, at that very moment, Jesus is on the final leg of His journey to the cross, and as He goes to receive the punishment for sin, He goes in the sure knowledge that His work will make manifest the infinite, forgiving love of God for humanity. This bittersweet moment reveals the motivation of God’s plan to declare us righteous for the sake of Jesus’ perfect life and innocent death and to begin the work of making us righteous and fit for the heavenly place by the work of the Holy Spirit through Word and Sacrament. All this is God’s doing, and this fact gives us courage in the bittersweet moment of this life.