He Is Our Good Shepherd
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been tended to or bandaged. There’s one that has a little broken leg, and he’s just dragging it
along behind him. The sheep are malnourished. The sheep haven’t been protected. There is one
that has open wounds, and they’re sick and diseased and have been allowed to get infected. It’s
going to kill them. They haven’t been treated.
What would you say? You’d say, “Well, I don’t care what he looks like, he’s not a good
shepherd,” because if he was a good shepherd, it would be seen in the condition of the sheep.
Can you see this?
We are His glory. Did you know that? We are His glory. But the devil has lied through
preacher’s mouths for centuries saying that if we’re really consecrated and humble, we’ll
probably be sick, broke, and defeated, but some way or another, it glorifies God in our bearing
with our lack, disease, and poor condition. No, it’s a bad reflection on our Shepherd. We’re
failing, we’re being destroyed, and we’re going under, and we tell people, “Well, yes, the Lord is
teaching us something, and the Lord’s working something out in us.” Then we turn around and
ask, “Don’t you want to join the flock?” What are they going to say? “I don’t think so.” No.
They already have a shepherd like that, who is not a shepherd. He is a thief, a wolf, that steals
and kills and destroys, and it’s not the Lord.
You may have heard some of this before, but friend, most of the church world has not believed it
yet. It’s not the weaker and more defeated you are that some way or another makes your
Shepherd look good. It’s when everyone else is going under but you go over. Everything else
says you have to fail, but you come out. Your bills are paid when nobody else’s are. Your kids
are healthy when everyone else is sick. You overcome when everyone else has to die with it.
After a while, people get to seeing that and they’ll come to you. It might be on the job, it might
be across the fence at the house, or it may be at the grocery store, and they will ask, “How do
you do it? Man, you’re something.”
You say, “You think I’m something? You ought to see my Master.”
It’s not the more beat down, it’s the more glorious and victorious our life is. It glorifies our Lord.
They ask, “How do you do it? How do you keep doing that?” You respond, “I have a Good
Shepherd, and He takes good care of us, and by the way, we’re still taking applications for the
flock.” People want a Shepherd like that, don’t they? One Who will heal them, Who will meet
their needs, Who will bless them, and Who will protect them. If the shepherd doesn’t do that,
then I don’t care who he is, he’s not a good shepherd. Whether it’s me, whether it’s you, whether
it’s the Lord Himself—if you don’t take care of the sheep, you’re not a good shepherd. It just
doesn’t work.
We are sure it’s God’s will for all of us to be healed today because He is
the
Good Shepherd.
In Ezekiel 34, He reproved them, and He corrected them because they weren’t taking care of the
sheep. In verse 4, He mentioned specifically the diseased they didn’t strengthen. He told them
they didn’t heal the ones who were sick, and they didn’t bind up what was broken. In verse 11,
He says what He’s going to do. “For thus saith the Lord G
OD
; Behold, I, even I…” What does
that mean? They didn’t take care of them, but they’re My sheep, and I Myself, “…will both
