During my presentation at ACBC and at the Faith Biblical Counseling Training Conference on Mental Illness and the Church, I addressed God’s call to all of us as His shepherds.
God’s Shepherds: Caring for God’s Fragile and Frail Flock—Ezekiel 34:1-16
In Ezekiel 34:1-16, the Sovereign Lord castigates false shepherds who take care only of themselves. In the midst of these woes against false shepherds, the Lord reveals the calling of every true shepherd:
“To strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strays, search for the lost.”
What is God’s nouthetic confrontation of the false shepherds who refuse to care for the weak, sick, injured, stray, and lost? In 34:10 we read:
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock.”
In our day, we find models of pastoral ministry that teach that the pastor is only to engage in the pulpit ministry of the Word and to focus only on the healthy sheep. He is not to engage in the messy personal ministry of the Word or minister to the sickly sheep. Ezekiel 34 teaches a very different model—the biblical model of ministering to the weak, sick, injured, stray, and lost.
By whatever definition or label, people who come to us diagnosed as struggling with mental illness certainly fit into the Good Shepherd’s diagnostic category of weak, sick, injured, stray, or lost sheep needing a shepherd.
Will God say to us and our churches, “Well done, thou good and faithful shepherds of the weak and sick”?
Or, will God nouthetically confront us and our churches saying, “I am against you false shepherds who refuse to minister compassionately to my weak and sick sheep”?
Caring Like Christ: The Compassion of Jesus
Jesus models the compassionate ministry to the hurting that God calls all of us to. Preaching on Matthew 9:36 where we are told that Jesus “was moved with compassion,” Spurgeon says:
“‘Moved with compassion’ is said of Christ Jesus several times in the New Testament. The original word [for moved with compassion] is a very remarkable one. It is not found in classic Greek. It is not found in the Septuagint. The fact is, it was a word coined by the evangelists themselves. They did not find one in the whole Greek language that suited their purpose, and therefore they had to make one.
It is expressive of the deepest emotion; a striving of the bowels—a yearning of the innermost nature with pity. I suppose that when our Saviour looked upon certain sights, those who watched Him closely perceived that His internal agitation was very great, His emotions were very deep, and then His face betrayed it, His eyes gushed like founts with tears, and you saw that His big heart was ready to burst with pity for the sorrow upon which His eyes were gazing. He was moved with compassion. His whole nature was agitated with commiseration for the sufferers before Him.”
Wow!
When struggling, hurting people come to us, is our whole nature agitated with commiseration for the sufferer before us? That’s what it means to care like Christ.
The Rest of the Story
You can download for free the entire document on Mental Illness and the Church by clicking here: Mental Illness and the Church.
You can direct others to this free resource with this shortened link: http://bit.ly/MIandChurch
Join the Conversation
Will God say to us and our churches, “Well done, thou good and faithful shepherds of the weak and sick”?
Or, will God nouthetically confront us and our churches saying, “I am against you false shepherds who refuse to minister compassionately to my weak and sick sheep”?
When struggling, hurting people come to us, is our whole nature agitated with commiseration for the sufferer before us?
RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth
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