shepherd – Seek Grow Love

The showdown between Moses, God, and Pharaoh’s hard heart escalated in our reading today. What God said would come to pass did: Pharaoh continued to harden his heart again and again despite the plagues that came upon Egypt. At one point, the officials said, “How long will this man be a snare to us? Let the people go, so that they may worship the Lord their God. Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?” (Exodus 10:7). We see the same cycle repeated. At first, Pharaoh was completely unyielding. But, as harsher and harsher plagues were brought upon the people, Pharaoh began to consider letting the Israelites go.

Exodus 9:15-17 says, “For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go.”

Hail rained down and wiped out everything in the fields. Pharaoh finally said, “This time I have sinned. The Lord is right and my people are wrong” (v. 27). It would seem like the plagues could finally stop right? Pharaoh finally humbled himself and was willing to let the people go. After the plague stopped, Pharaoh changed his tune. His heart was hardened, and he refused to let the people go.

He followed this same cycle of refusing, repenting, hardening his heart, and refusing again with the plague of locusts and darkness. Reading through this story, you might wonder why Pharaoh didn’t see that by hardening his heart, he didn’t gain anything. In fact, he led his nation into ruin with his pride. If he had just let the people go, he would have saved everyone from a lot of pain and suffering.

It’s interesting to consider that the pharaoh was considered a god by the Egyptian people. Pharaoh is so rash, foolish, and fickle, compared to the God of the Israelites. Pharaoh kept deciding to do something and changed his mind once his feelings changed. Would that be a god you want to follow?

In Psalm 23, we read about how God, as our shepherd, leads us on right paths. Lysa TerKeurst describes this scene:

“We might imagine lush green hills like you’d find in Ireland, but David’s reality was the steep, rocky, dry Judean hills. Hills that had to be carefully traveled in order to get to the water and vegetation waiting in the valleys below.

Shepherds leading their flocks also had to be cautious about the timing of their trips. Hard rains could quickly lead to flash floods in a gorge. When a shepherd knew a storm was coming, he wouldn’t allow the sheep to be down in the gorge because they’d drown; instead, he’d wait patiently until the storm passed to lead his flock down to drink. So not only did sheep have to trust where the shepherd was leading them; they had to trust the when of his leading.

The Hebrew word for “paths” in Psalm 23:3 referred to well-worn or deep ruts that were actually good ruts, important because they marked the safest paths. While these paths could be formed by one shepherd over time, it’s more likely they were formed by other shepherds who’d gone before — generations of shepherds wisely walking the same paths. Even today, you can literally look at the hills in Israel and see paths the shepherds have been walking for generations.”

The showdown in Exodus draws a distinction in leadership, sovereignty, and control between God and the Egyptian gods. The God who proved to be the true God – the one who was the most powerful and in control – was the Israelites’ God.

The world’s leadership mimics that of Pharaoh’s. Culture is fickle and promotes rash, foolish behavior. If you follow the world’s leading, you will end up being led to destruction. When we follow God, we are walking in the sure and right paths. The paths that don’t lead to danger, but instead lead to life.

Who are you following today?

~ Cayce Fletcher

Cayce writes about discipleship, productivity, and homemaking at her blog https://amorebeautifullifecollective. You can find her latest post on how to seek the kingdom of God everyday here. You can also listen to A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

Describe the differences between Pharaoh and Moses. And, between the Egyptian gods and Yahweh.
How does it change your understanding of Psalm 23 when you consider the actual terrain of Judah? How does picturing the rocky, steep hillside help you to recognize your need for a shepherd?
What is the difference between the leadership of God and the leadership of the world? Where does following the leadership of God end? Where does following the leadership of the world end?

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Numbers 27-28, Luke 4

As the book of Numbers draws to a close, Moses begins to make preparation for his death. God tells him he will not enter the Promised Land with the Israelites, but he will be able to see it before the Israelites enter in. Moses is (very understandably) concerned for the Israelite people. He has had to intercede for them and guide them away from idolatrous actions again and again. In Numbers 27, Moses passes on the leadership torch to Joshua so that the Israelites will not be like a “sheep without a shepherd” (Numb. 27:17). Joshua would become the next leader who would guide, command, and take care of the Israelite people as they enter into the land of Canaan.

Luke 4 describes the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Moses had spent years building up trust and confidence from the Israelite people, and Joshua benefited from that. He was able to build on the legacy of leadership that Moses left behind. Unlike Joshua, Jesus had to start from square one when building confidence and trust with the Jewish people. We see him begin this process in Luke 4. After the temptations in the wilderness, he begins preaching in the synagogues. At one point, he reads a passage from Isaiah that begins with “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because he has anointed me to…” and then lists out all the actions the God has sent him to do (Luke 4:18). Jesus did not have a Moses that told all the Jewish people to listen and follow after him. But, Jesus had something better to establish his authority. Not only did God speak over him after he was baptized, “This is my beloved Son. I take delight in him!” (Luke 3:22). He also had all of the Old Testament scriptures that spoke about him!

Even so, the Jewish people did not accept him as a leader, because he challenged the way that he led and thought about the world. Just like the leadership example set by Moses, Jesus knew that the Jewish people needed someone to guide them, protect them, and care for them. They needed a shepherd. But, being led by a shepherd sometimes includes being corrected by a shepherd. The Jewish people, especially those in positions of power, were resistant to this. In fact, this section of Luke ends with the Jewish people doing this: “They got up, drove Him out of town, and brought Him to the edge of the hill, intending to hurl Him over a cliff” (Luke 4:29).

Jesus is the “good shepherd” (John 10:14). His sheep “follow him because they recognize his voice” (John 10:4). When Jesus is leading us, do we follow? Are we resistant and stubborn to correction, choosing to go our own way? Or do we trust that our good shepherd will guide us on the right paths? How do we view Jesus’ leadership?

My prayer is that we will trust in Jesus as our good shepherd. That his leading, both in guiding and correcting, will be a “comfort” to us as he lets us “lie down in green pastures,” leads us “beside quiet waters,” and “renews our life” (Ps. 23:1-4).

~ Cayce Fletcher

Read or listen to today’s Bible reading at Biblegateway.com: Job 1-2 and 2 Corinthians 2 .

download the seekgrowlove 2021 Bible reading plan

Quit Something

Ezekiel 34-36

Thursday, March 30

“It’s Thursday. Quit being who you were.” – Bob Goff

Bob Goff, the author of “Love Does”, has a weekly ritual. It’s called “Quit Something Thursday”. Each Thursday, Bob Goff quits something to free up time or shake things up. He has quit having an office. He now works on a lobster boat he refers to as the Goffice. He quit leaving phone messages to minimize the time that is wasted with the back and forth. He throws away furniture, and has even resigned from the board of a non-profit charity. Now the idea is not to back out of your prior commitments and become a wild-card liability for the people around you. Instead, the idea is to give God room to show you something new. Bob Goff suggests quitting habits that keep us from being the best we can be. On a more moderate scale, he suggests we might quit keeping score, quit sorting through our failures, or quit believing you are who you used to be.

So how does this relate to our reading today? In Ezekiel 34 the sheep were scattered because the shepherd did not care for them; the shepherd only cared for himself. However, we learn from Ezekiel 34:2-4 that it is the responsibility of the shepherd to care for the flock. Instead, the shepherd “eat[s] the curds, clothe[s] [him]self with the wool and slaughtered the choice animals, but [he]did not take care of the flock. [He] did not strengthen the weak or heal the sick or bound up the injured. [He has] not brought back the strays or searched for the lost” (Ezekiel 34:2-4). The shepherds are too caught up in their own lives, their own ideas, their own health and fortune, that they lost sight of their purpose. If not a shepherd, where is their identity? Thankfully God takes action and tells of the time when David (David’s line) will be the shepherd and God himself will be their God. We see parts of the kingdom here on earth now, and we wait excitedly for the return of Jesus and the kingdom on earth.

We, too are shepherds tending to a flock. As Christians who are no longer on milk, we have a flock to tend to. We have a Church who needs us to show up in more ways than to simply fill a seat on Sunday. As the shepherd cares for the flock, and strengthens the weak, we are called to do the same.

So the question becomes: what are you going to quit so that you can tend to your flock? Is your plate overfilled? How will you re-evaluate your obligations so that they align with your true priorities? It’s Thursday – quit something! I am going to quit washing my clothes because it takes up valuable time I could be investing in others…kidding mom, I really do wash my clothes. But in all seriousness, I will quit placing so much emphasis on how others perceive me, and instead trust that the identity I have in Christ will carry me where I need to go. What will you quit?

“We can’t change much if we don’t quit much” – Bob Goff

-Amber McClain

Your Mind = Blown

Psalms 90-95

Tuesday, January 10

The universe is big. REALLY big. You know it and I know it, but I don’t usually stop and think about just how big it all is. I am not a whiz when it comes to science, but some scientists estimate that there is roughly 440 sextillion kilometers of space. I can’t even get my head around that number. When have we ever had to use sextillion to describe anything else? And this is all part of our observable universe, because we can’t see past a certain point for a variety of reasons. Therefore it is possible that the universe is INFINITE. Whoa. And if you really want to have your mind blown, in mathematics, we can learn that there are different sets or levels of infinity, meaning that some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Now, if you are like me, you may need to take a moment to clear your head of all that big-ness. It is a lot to take in.

In the Ancient World of the Psalms, people thought of the world differently. The idea of an infinite universe would have been completely unthinkable. I won’t digress into their actual way of thinking about the world, but they thought space was limited to Earth. However, they had no such notion about TIME. Time, for the authors of the Psalms, was something that goes back forever and goes forward forever. Time is what the Earth will always experience and go through, and since Earth will experience it, so will people.

Psalm 90 is a big reminder that people are mortal, or that people are born, they live and they die. We all go through that process. Nobody that is can skip any portion. People “return to dust”, recalling the opening chapters of Genesis. The author uses a number of images to express what people are like; grass (90:5-6), a sigh or tale that is told (9). We are all a mist or a shadow, to use other metaphors in scripture. And the author even gives a longer estimate of life, because he says that we receive 70 or 80 years! But that is nothing in comparison to the world, to the sun, the moon and the stars.

And least of all to God. God is eternal; God does not suffer from the passage of time, God does not experience time as humans do, and some Christian thinkers even say that God is outside of time. The eternality of God is in beautiful contrast to the mortality of humanity. YHWH is God before the mountains were born or he gave birth to the world, from “eternity to eternity”.(90:1-2) A thousand years are like a day to the Almighty. (90:4) Just as your days pass by quickly, so do thousands of years for God, because he literally has all the time in the world.

Because of this we should rejoice! Not because we only have to endure a few decades of doldrums, but because we are connected to the God who reigns forever. Psalm 93 says “Your throne has been established from the beginning; You are from eternity.” God is praised for being the King, and the King forever. God’s holiness and beauty will be established for all the days to come (93:5). With all this in mind, it is understandable why the authors of the psalms would cry out “Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. 7 For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep under His care.” How amazing is it that the eternal, all-powerful, King of the Universe would want to be our shepherd. Let that truth sink in, and when it will, it will blow. your. mind.

-Pastor Jake Ballard

(Photo credit: http://hiswordinpictures.blogspot.com/2014/10/psalm-904.html)

Tag: shepherd