Slide - 3 Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem… (John 10:22) Which also means dedication… According to Gary M. Burge… Hanukkah thus became a season that asked hard questions about failed leadership and false shepherds. How did the temple leadership lose its way during this Greek period? Where were the shepherds? What must shepherds do today? During the week when Jesus gave his good shepherd sermon, synagogues were reading prophetic critiques of leadership. Therefore… Why listen to Jesus… …because He said…these others who came before Him…were thieves and robbers…and only led to trouble and had little concern for the ordinary person…who suffered as a result of their bad leadership… Jesus…offers us leadership…like no other…and of there is anything that we need today…in the world that we live in…its leadership… I don’t know if you notice that…but all around the world there seems to be a lack of people who can make sound decisions and lead people in a way that would lead as Jesus does… Towards quite waters and peaceful living…rather we hear sabre rattling…and selfish-ambition…quarreling between nations…which can only lead to uncertainty and impoverishment…for the ordinary person… Who…will listen to the Good Shepherd…who will come the way of the entrance into the wise King of Heaven…and seek His council?
For sure…this story is about salvation from sin…the fact that the shepherd goes on to lay down His life for the sheep…as a lamb to the slaughter…is an act of atonement… He does something for us that we are incapable of achieving on our own… He does it…so that we can continue to live…day by day…in the knowledge that we are safe… No matter what thieves and robbers intend to do by means of harm…we have that knowledge that our very lives eternally…are kept by Him…no-one…can get in past the Gate…to steal that away… Although…foolishly…we could choose not to listen to Him…in the first place… Illustration… The Golden Gate Bridge was built back in the early 1900’s and…at that point in time… factored into the cost was…that for every 1 million dollars spent on a major construction project… one life would be lost… Engineers on the Golden Gate Bridge…believed the risks could be lowered. So…when construction began in 1932…numerous safety measures were put into place and strictly enforced…e.g…mandatory use of hard hats, prescription safety glasses…tie-off lines, and an on-site hospital helped to greatly reduce the casualty rate…After nearly four years of construction and $20 million spent…only one worker had died. The most effective safety device…was as new to bridge building as it was old to the circus: the use of a trapeze net…This large net cost $130,000 and draped sixty feet below the roadbed under construction, extending ten feet to either side…
Yet…life can be wearying… A colleague was cautioning me recently about the tell-tale signs of doing too much…and yet she also recognised she herself had not been practicing what she had preached…ministers are probably the worst at doing that… But…it’s not because we can’t stop ourselves…but life just gets filled with things that you can’t just drop…you can’t just phone in for a day off when you feel like it… To a certain extent…you can plan days off and breaks…but life itself will dictate what needs to be done…and you can get busy periods… Now…the point of this is not for you to get the violin strings our…as many of you are very busy too…some of you make me wonder if it is worthwhile retiring…because you fit so much into your lives… But the thing is this…no matter what life throws at us… We can have rest… Slide - 6 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul… (Psalm 23:2-3) Perhaps the mistake of those who awaited for God’s hand to move…for the Messiah…was to take matters into their own hands…which ended in retribution at a heavy cost…instead of waiting for God… Perhaps…we are inclined to make the same mistakes also…rush ahead…rather than waiting on God…