WHO IS OUR SHEPHERED? Let us read Psalm 23:1 “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.” When our Lord is our shepherd, we will not lack for anything. To truly receive the blessing from the Lord there is only one way. I am talking about the true blessing from the Lord for that only one way is there. Let us read Mathew 6:33 “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you”. First we have to seek the kingdom of God and the righteousness then all our needs will be added to us. So when we seek the kingdom of God and righteousness God will provide our all needs. This is called true faith. When we read Hebrew 11:6 “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Whoever comes to God, we have to do these two. 1. Believe that God is there 2. Believe that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek God So we have to seek God and we have to come to God. Then He will provide our all needs. Most of the time what we do is, we seek our need instead of seeking God. We have to clearly understand that the word of God is from God. So whatever is said in the word of God, He will not work against the word of God. We have to clearly understand the word of God and we have to follow the word of God: for that we should know the clear understanding of the word of God. Let us read II John:2 “Beloved, I pray that you may proper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.” Wonderful verse, you may prosper in all things, and in health, just as your soul prospers. So if we need to prosper in all things and health, we have to prosper in soul. How to prosper in soul? We have to purely follow the word of God. When we follow the word of God, the word of God will purify us and then we will be pure and holy like Christ: that is called prospering in soul. When day by day we are growing in the Lord or becoming holy, both are same, God will bless us in everything, our all needs and our health. So let us prosper in soul. We have to understand the word of God and we have to follow the word of God. As we read. Psalm23:1 “The LORD is my shepherd: I shall not want”. I hope this introduction made us to understand very clearly about this verse. Now let us meditate on psalm 23:1 The Lord is my shepherd. We all are sheep. What are the works of sheep? The sheep has to follow the shepherd and totally sheep should surrender to a shepherd. The Sheep should surrender himself 100% to shepherd; that is called the sheep which is following the shepherd truly. When we truly surrender our self to Christ Jesus, we can receive all the blessings. Let us read Romans 12:1 “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” So first, we have to sacrifice our body, living sacrifice. What it means? It means we are not living anymore; we are living for Christ Jesus. We are no more living for ourselves: we are living for Christ Jesus. Let us read Philippians 2:5 “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” We should have the mind of Christ. Living sacrifice means we should not have our mind: we should have the mind of Lord Christ. What is Christ mind? Let us read Mathew 11:29 Jesus expects every one of us to take his yoke. This is the mind of Christ. We have to take the mind of Christ that is called living sacrifice. So let us understand very clearly what is yoke? This yoke is Christ yoke. When we read Isaiah 53:5 we can clearly understand about this yoke, Isaiah 53:5 “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the Chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by his stripes we are healed.” Yoke means the chastisement for our peace was upon Him. He wants to make peace between us and God that is the yoke of Christ Jesus. As we all have committed sin and we all are gone away from God, so there is no relationship between us and God. The Mediator- Son of Man, Christ Jesus came to the world to make peace between us and the true God that is called yoke of Christ. Today Christ is excepting every one of us to do the same. This is mind of Christ and yoke. We have to make peace between people and God How to make it? When we preach the word of God, peace will come over there. When we say, Jesus will forgive your sin and when truly we ask forgiveness, God will forgive them and then peace will come. When Christ forgives any men or woman sins, there peace will come. Then we can see the presence of the Lord with us. So we have to go and pray for the people for forgiveness, for peace. When peace is made between us and God, then God is with us and then we can receive all the blessings from the God without any obstacle. Instead of that just asking for only blessings will not help us. First we have to make a peace with God. It means we have to surrender ourselves to God, we have to ask forgiveness and God will forgive us then God will be with us and then we have to make peace between our family members and God, our church people and God our colony people and God, our state people and God, the whole world and God. When we read Acts 1:8 we can understand the same. Acts 1:8 “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” God is explaining the same over there. So first, we have to make a peace between us and God because there is no peace between us and God because of our sins. God is angry and unhappy with us. In a family, one son is there and parents are expecting him to come first in the class but he failed in the class, so the parents will not be happy with the son. Any good parents will not be happy with the son. So there is no peace between parents and the son. Now if the son is asking the forgiveness to the parents and making a covenant with parents that next exam surely he will come first then there will be peace in the family. Similarly God was expecting everyone us to be holy. I Peter 1:16 because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” God is holy, so God is expecting we all should be holy but we failed in it. So there is no peace between us and God. So we cannot receive the blessings from the Lord even in a family the son who fails the parents will not give whatever he wants. They will say you are unworthy; you are not doing our will so why should we provide your all needs? That s the thing will happen with any good parents because the parents want him to repent and understand the truth, so those parents are called good parents. There are few parents even they fail they will give the money, they will say, “Even if you fail no problem you be like that. You do whatever you like. I tell you they have spoiled their children. But our God never wants us to be spoiled. That son can’t have a peaceful life or happy life in his whole life. But God wants us to have a good life so he wants every one of us to repent and come back to Him. So He is expecting us to repent. When we follow God truly, we will receive all the blessings. We have to live as a living sacrifice and holy. Holy means we have to live like Christ Jesus. How a man or woman can lead a holy life? When we do the will of God, we can lead a holy life. I Peter 1:15 “But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.” 1 Peter 1:15 it says we have to do every work holy. Every work should be holy. How we can do every work holy? We have to do according to the will of God then it will be holy. It is very easy and simple to lead a holy life in this world. This is my personal experience. We cannot lead a life according to any man. There are people they may say you are not holy, that is their standard. We have to lead a holy life according to Christ. Jesus has to tell us you are a holy man, that’s what God is excepting from us. When Jesus was in this world, God said, Jesus is God s beloved son and Jesus is holy. So we have to live like that. In Romans12:1 the third part is acceptable to God, so whatever we do that should be acceptable to God. How we can do the work acceptable to God? According to will of God. When we live according to the will of God, that is acceptable to God. Only these people will reach heaven and these people will receive the true blessing on the earth. Mathew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” When we read Mathew 7:21, we can understand Christ says, “Whoever does the will of God only they will reach heaven”. This is the people who truly follow the shepherd. When we do like this, we will not lack for anything. I will take few more minutes to understand some other characters. Now we saw how to live for God and how to follow and receive all the blessing from the Christ? Blessing when we are in this world and blessing when we reach heaven. The life which is going to come, Now we are going to understand there are few people, who are trying to follow and failed. Mainly we are going to meditate on two characters: 1. The people who all are following God but without love. 2. The people who are all regularly trying to follow God and hearing the Word of God but not following the word of God. Let us read Luke 9:51-56 Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He Steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, do you want us to Command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” But He turned and rebuked them, and said, you do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them. And they went to another village.” Jesus steadfastly want to go to Jerusalem, so He called His servants, messengers and said to them, “Go and arrange it.” The disciples went and they arranged it in Samaria. They entered the Village of the Samaritans to prepare for Him, but the Samaritans did not receive Christ Jesus. Why they did not receive Christ Jesus? Because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. Here the will of God is Jesus wants to go Jerusalem but His disciples they arranged it in Samaria They did not understand the will of God. They clearly not understood what Jesus want. When we are not doing the will of God the love will go away from us. This is very great secret. Those messengers are following with Christ but when they are not doing the will of God, the love of God have gone away from them. Instead of arranging it in Jerusalem, they arranged in Samaria. Due to this reason, Samaritans are not accepted Christ because will of God is different. So these people misunderstood the thing again and without love they started talking to Christ. Luke 9:54 “And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” The mistake is with these people. These people are not following Lord, they are not doing the will of God but these people want to consume and kill others. So sad! Jesus rebuked them and Jesus said to them, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.” They forgot they have the Holy Spirit and they stared using their own spirit without any love. When we read I Corinthians 13:3 says “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be Burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” These disciples are living as a living sacrifice; they are ready to do anything for Christ. They are ready to give their body as a burnt offering to Christ and they left their all the property and family everything and they are following Christ but there is no love then what is the use? They left everything, they are ready to do anything for Christ but they were not doing the will of God. So there is no love in them, no profit. So let us be not like them. This is one big failure. The Second group we are going to meditate from. Acts 13:27 “For those who dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they did not know Him, nor even the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, have fulfilled them in condemning Him.” Wonderful verse. These people who are living in Jerusalem and the rulers, they are going to synagogue (church) regularly and every Sabbath they are reading the word of God and they are hearing and meditating on that. I hope almost like us. Every Sunday how we come to church, they went to every Sabbath to church (synagogue) and they read and meditated on the word of God, wonderful thing but do you know who killed Christ Jesus?- The same people. Why? They read the word of God but they could not understand the word of God. Every Sabbath they were reading the word of God but they said this is not Messiah and they said kill Him. Very clearly everything read about Jesus Christ in Old Testament. From birth how is going to grow and where he is going to grow and from where he will come? Everything is written. Bethlehem to Egypt. Egypt to Galilee all the things are written in the Old Testament. They read but they couldn’t understand, because of that only they killed Jesus Christ. Today also, we all read the word of God morning and evening, even in Sunday service but we are not understanding the true truth from the word of God, so we are doing sin. When we read Hebrew6:6, it says those who are not following word of God they are crucifying Christ Jesus. So let us not crucify Christ Jesus. We also read the word of God but we are not implementing the word of God in our personal life. Let us read Hebrew 6:6 says “If they shall fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.” So when we do sin knowingly or unknowingly, we are crucifying Jesus Christ. In Jerusalem also same thing happened they killed Jesus Christ. Today also when we do sin we are killing Christ Jesus, because of not understood the word of God in depth, height, width and length. We have to understand it very clearly and we should implement it in our life. Then we will not be like a people who lived in Jerusalem. We can lead a holy life. So let us ask God. Let us not to be like two groups- Those who are all not doing the will of God and are not having love and the second group is those who is not having the deep knowledge in the word of God. So let us follow our shepherd. We will not lack for anything. That verse is 100% truth because it is happening in my life. So let us praise Him. Let us pray: “Father, thank you for your mercy and grace. Lord, whatever the unworthy thing in me, remove it. Make me a living sacrifice to you, holy and acceptable to you and give me your wisdom. Let me live like you. Lord, let me take your yoke and follow you. Let me put your mind in me Lord. You make me like you. Fill me with your power and authority. Fill every one of us. Make us like you. have mercy, totally transform us Lord. Lord, give the clear crystal clear knowledge in the word of God and make us to follow you Lord. Pour your love upon us Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, let us be a peacemaker to this word. Let us be a true peacemaker for this world. Make us like you. We ask in Christ matchless name. AMEN.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 19:17:28 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015