OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
In a first, Julie preached tonight dressed as a sheep… not a sentence that can be written frequently! Taking inspiration from the children’s musical ‘Hey Ewe!’ by Antony Copus, she explored the idea that we are all sheep (see Ps 100:3) and that God is frequently described as a shepherd (Ps 23:1, John 10:11). We have been learning interesting facts about sheep (such as the fact they have four stomachs), but it’s also interesting to see how many Bible heroes had that profession (e.g. Moses, Jacob, Amos and David.)
Sheep tend to go astray, as Isaiah 53:6 makes plain. All of us are ‘black sheep’ in the sense that we want our own way and often rebel against God. Christmas reminds us that God has done something about our sheep-like tendencies and has given Jesus, His only Son, as the way we can become reconciled to Him. Isaiah goes even further and says, ‘the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’ (Is 53:6) Everything we have done wrong, all our sin and our wrongdoing, have been placed on Jesus, and because of His sacrificial offering to God, we can know forgiveness and salvation and can have peace with God. Christmas is an important chapter in the story of salvation, for we begin to see how God saves us: through a sinless child, born to a faithful woman. The rest of the story involves His perfect life of service and His death, resurrection and ascension, all key aspects of God’s salvation story.
Sheep need shepherds, and John 10 reminds us that Jesus is the good shepherd, unlike the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy. The Parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15) reminds us that God cares about the individual and has gone to great lengths to rescue each one of us. But as the play on words in the title song makes clear, this is a personal call (‘Hey Ewe!’ – Hey, you!)
Will we be like the curious sheep who realised ‘something’s going on; I just know it. Nothing’s as it seems; can’t you see?‘ or like the others who dismissed this as nonsense? If we will come back to God, ‘everything’s going to be alright’ (see 1 Pet 5:4; Rev 7:17). It’s up to us – God is still calling us!