A Commitment to Feeding the Sheep

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The theme of this little encounter we’re going to have here has to do with the process of teaching in the Body of Christ. The motivation for me getting together to talk about this is just simply that the nature of life in the Kingdom of God, spiritual life, individuals’ lives in Christ is that man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. If you ponder that and consider that just for a second, the conclusion you would have to reach based on this thing Jesus said, is that our very well-being, the thing that keeps us from shriveling up and dying is bread from Heaven in the form of His Word being eaten and digested by our spirit man.

Now, as Jesus presents this life parable of the Kingdom, He discusses and makes analogous remarks regarding the nature of His people as being a flock and that He was the great Shepherd of the sheep. One of the primary roles of a shepherd and a flock was that he would make sure that the flock had green pastures and waters to drink from.

We’ve been in a mode for twenty months or so of considerably fewer corporate gatherings. I’m not of the opinion that it needs to stay that way. The feedback that I’ve gotten is not that it needs to stay that way or that anyone is really committed to it staying that way. There is some level of commitment to the writing of the Hebrews author, Apollos or whoever that may have been, regarding “as the day of the Lord approaches” all the more we should be committed to meeting together.

Now, meeting together doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole church is in one place. It means being together. This qualifies. Every night many things that happen in the church here qualify as “being together.” The issue was being apart versus being together, not necessarily entire church gatherings. It had to do with the context of being able to spur one another on to love and good works, which requires us being together. As the day approaches, that commitment needs to be “all the more” that we’re together in various forms. One of the ways that God has ordained that His people be together is 1 Corinthians 14 – “when the whole church is together.” We’re not even necessarily discussing this idea of teaching as it relates just to corporate gatherings. We’re also relating it to meals with saints and living room experiences and evenings, and so on and so forth.

It needs to be somewhere in our minds that man does not live by bread alone. He doesn’t live just by videos, just by little entertainment ditties, sports ditties, but he lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Again, because God has called this experience that we have together as a flock, and the analogy is that His people are sheep. And He is the great Shepherd of the sheep and there are under-shepherds and those that would care for and nurture the flock. It makes a whole lot of sense that we would have a commitment in our hearts and in our minds, a continual issue in front of us that we will see to it that everyone in our sphere of experience, the rest of our lives, gets fed well. It must be a commitment on our parts.

You consider the things around you, the people around you and the things that they eat, and then you make it a point. I am not speaking just simply of those with the gift of teacher. I am also speaking again the way the Hebrews writer referred to this journey that we have together when he said, “You all ought to be teachers by now.” He wasn’t just speaking of a gift, he was speaking of maturity, of those that have come from being children to becoming fathers. What father or mother is not a teacher? Are they a teacher because somebody pays them a paycheck every week to teach or because they went to educational school? Or are they a teacher simply out of relationship that requires that?

There is no competent, responsible, Godly parent that is not a teacher, in a sense that they are training up their children in the way that they should go. It’s likewise essential in the Kingdom of God that we all ought to be teachers by now. The gift of teacher is an important aspect of what we want to talk about. But it is also true that maturity, raising up from being a child where we feed only ourselves, and we’re only looking for other people and other things to feed us, to where we begin to look around and take responsibility as fathers or mothers in the faith to care for other people. I don’t mean an ego trip of: “I’m important, I’m a father, I’m a teacher.” I mean just simply that we love others more than we love ourselves, and we’re aware of the spiritual principle that man does not live by bread alone.

We’ve got to make sure the people of God are fed and not just fed a diet of Walt Disney videos or cheap entertainment things or just being together. Being together is fine, but the content needs to be continually driven towards the Word of God. Somehow, some way, let’s see if we can deposit something in each other’s lives and those around us on a regular basis, emphatically. To care about them enough to press that issue, knowing that just as our children need physical food, so also our spirits, and the spirits of those around us must have spiritual food, or they will wither and die.

Again, we haven’t had a huge number of corporate gatherings over the past twenty months. Fine. That’s been alright. It doesn’t have to stay that way. If there is initiative, if there is a drive, if there is creativity to begin to do that on a more frequent basis in the future, if that’s generated in your hearts and you’re responsible enough to act on that and to stir that up and to move with it, then we’ll have more corporate gatherings in the near future. That’s on your shoulders and some that aren’t here as well. Be looking to God about that.

Even apart from that, be aware that because that’s lacking -- and I don’t mean lacking in the sense that we haven’t done enough of it -- I mean lacking in the sense that we are not currently doing very much of it. Because that’s true, that’s sort of a generic open-field harvest time. It’s sort of like the gleaners in Boaz’ time. The field is there, and corporate gatherings are a field where we can just go through and glean as we please. We can take as much as we want and eat as much of the harvest as we can possibly gather to ourselves and digest within ourselves. That’s a wonderful opportunity to do that. Because we haven’t had a lot of corporate gatherings, the responsibility is even greater to make sure that God’s people, the lambs, don’t wither and die.

Now if you have a four-year old and you just let them roam the house and eat as they please, how well will they do? They’re going to eat what they want to eat, which isn’t necessarily going to be what they need to eat. They’re not going to eat regularly, and they may not eat at all. What they do eat may be gluttonous or very poorly chosen. The nature of childhood is that, given an opportunity to eat, most children do not eat very well of their own nature and self and decision. It’s no different at all -- I think you know that just looking inside of yourself as well as looking around -- you realize it’s no different in the spiritual realm.

Children don’t tend to eat very well if they are left on their own. They’ll be gluttonous of something that they don’t need to eat, and they will starve themselves to death rather than just open a cupboard. All they have to do is open the cupboard, right? But they won’t do it because they don’t have enough confidence to be able to fix themselves a meal, so they won’t do it. It’s like that in the spiritual Kingdom of our God as well, that there need to be parents. There need to be those that care enough about those around them that they’re willing to make the effort to see to it that the things are brought out of the cupboard and prepared in a way that all of God’s people have the ability to eat.

There have been some things that have been referred to as “spring cleaning” that have happened over the past twenty months, and it has been God. Some things have been very clearly from God and confirmed in many ways. But what I don’t want to do is, because of the lack of understanding about these things that we are talking about right now, is get to the place where people are starving to death because they’re not able to fix themselves a meal very well. Then they look like casualties or rebellious people simply because we haven’t put the effort into caring and feeding as we should.

I don’t want to minimize everyone’s individual responsibility to seek God. I don’t want to minimize that at all. I don’t want to make any excuses for those that have chosen the way of the flesh over the way of the Spirit. On the other hand, it is essential that we take responsibility to care for God’s lambs in every environment. Not only people that live in this city, but people that are somehow in our sphere of relationship in other cities too. That we don’t let anyone starve out of our negligence or our foolishness and then call that rebellion. That’s our problem, that’s not their problem.

I want to heighten our awareness as to why we are talking about these things. I want to make sure that the food is there and it’s prepared, and that everyone that has a desire to eat, an appetite like a newborn babe, craving pure spiritual milk gets their fill. They are filled in every way in as far as their appetite can lead them towards a path of food. I want to see that they get their fill. It’s incumbent upon us to see to it that they have every opportunity. Newborn babies can’t feed themselves very well.