“DO SHEEP STAY WITH WOLVES?”
Saint Matthew 7. 15-23
The Eighth Sunday after Trinity: 29 July Anno Domini 2007
Fr Watson
Who do you think are the false prophets? If you think that I am a false prophet than you need to leave now. If you think that my prophecy, that is, my explication and commentary on the Word of God is false from time to time, than you need to leave now. If you think that the false prophets are the anti-Christian pagan teachers of Mohammed, Buddha, and the Hindu heathens you are totally mistaken.
The false prophets are not the ones that are easy to identify such as Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons and Unitarians. False prophets don’t want to look like false prophets. For the wolf to get close enough to you to chew off your face, he can’t look like a wolf. For a predator to infiltrate the flock he dresses like a sheep. He may even, for the most part, make noises like a sheep and try to do sheep-like things. He also disguises himself like a shepherd and will act, look, and even talk like a shepherd, sometimes, enough to keep the “act”Jesus understood that this was always going to be the way of His Sheepfold in the sinful world; that’s why He established the Holy Office of the Shepherd; the pastor. If you don’t think that, than you need to leave now, for that is what the Church believes, teaches and confesses.
The Shepherd is not here to only to feed you good grass and provide you with fresh water; the pastor is also to keep you safe from wolves.
I am not here to nourish you with my own opinions or preferences. You must be, and you will be, fed with Jesus, the God/Man! Only this food, pure, perfect and good will save your life; now, and forever. Without Jesus you are dead. Without the Good Shepherd you are not even sheep but dust.
Sheep are not smart animals. Sinners are not smart creatures. Your kind was created perfect; smart, intuitive, loyal and obedient; in the image of the Creator. Your kind is now, at best, sheep-like. Sheep without a shepherd are only “fast food” for wolves. Don’t like being called a dumb (dumb as regards eternal life and righteousness with God; not how worldly wise and cunning you might be) don’t take it up with me; take it up with the Holy Trinity and with your traitorous parents: Adam and Eve.
The Lord loves you because He made you; you’re His, you belong to Him. Christ loves you even more because He has rescued you from death and solitary “lost-ness” and carried you back to green pastures on His own blood caked back and shoulders. He obeyed for you; He hungered and thirsted for you. He was stripped, beaten, and bloodied for you. He died for you. That is what a Good Shepherd does for His lambs! Wolves be damned, the Shepherd fights and does not run. Hirelings run. Hirelings say “peace, peace” when there is no peace.
And neither does the Shepherd enter into fellowship and lengthy dialog with the wolves. The pastor is to use his staff, his shepherd’s crook, to rescue you but also to smash the lupine on the lips, breaking their lying faces. The staff is the wood of the cross; the ruby-red Crucifix. The Shepherd knows nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. The Cross and its content; The Word of God, is your dwelling, you clothing, your feed, your water, your family (flock), your joy, and your peace. But it is also a weapon of Christ’s Righteousness.
Tele-evangelists are wolves. They call themselves followers of Christ but do not teach Him in truth and purity. They do not teach His teachings on the Office of the Holy Shepherd. Jesus can neither be divided nor parceled out. There is no such thing as “mostly”Teaching fantasy about the middle-east and Zionism is what wolves in sheep’s clothing do. Articulating positions on a literal 1,000 year “millennium” diminished the inestimable worth of Christ’s Redemptive act at Calvary, and thus is of the devil; the head wolf. Advocating synergistic conversion methods is false and impious as well. If a sheep can go from being dead to being a “follower” of Jesus by its own decision than it is not a sheep and Jesus is not God. But it is not just the tele-evangelists and the kooky Protestants that are wolves.
A “president” who says that concern with doctrinal purity is “weird” and who attempts to place correct teaching of Christ over against evangelism is a wolf. He who has ears to hear let him hear. The vast majority of Synodical circuits who share in this Protestant poison of ablaze Methodism are also wolves. A group of “overseers” and their own “flocks” that legitimize the syncretistic praying with Muslims, Jews and Sikhs are nothing more than a slobbering wolf pack. The delegates (which was the majority) who voted in 2001 to only “recommend” using wine in the Sacrament of the Altar are “fruits” of false teaching and non-Lutheran catechesis. And in so far as these delegates have returned to their parishes and have advocated said doctrine on the Supper, along with open communion, they too are wolves; hell hounds.
He who has ears to hear let him hear. If the wolves can be killed by the Shepherd they should be: Thus saith the Lord; thus acted the proto-Shepherd David. But, if the wolves are not subject to being driven off or killed, if they are more than intermittent nuisances and have become established, institutionalized, normative, day-to-day, smorgasbord diners (dining on the spiritual flesh of the remnant flock) than they are to be avoided by fleeing and abandoning the killing ground. Do sheep stay with wolves?
The Shepherd does not take a vote of the sheep to determine whether they wish to flee to good pasture; the Shepherd leads. The sheep that discern Christ’s voice in their Shepherd’s preaching, teaching and feeding will follow. It matters not one whit that there may be other good shepherds in the next town, county or state; it matters not whether there are other believing lambs in other distant (or not so distant) fields. The sheep gathered at this altar, this feeding trough, are the concern of the Shepherd here. The far reaching scabrous arm and hand (with its bloody fingers; dripping with the spiritual blood of saints) which can reach directly into this parish because this fold is in “pasture-fellowship” with wolves, is not made one whit safer just because there’s another good shepherd or good group of lambs down the road somewhere.
For the third year in a row now (Trinitarian) this has been your called and ordained Shepherd’s message on this day. “The day is surely drawing near when God’s Son, the Anointed, Shall with great majesty appear As Judge of all appointed. All mirth and laughter then shall cease When flames on flames will still Increase, As Scripture truly teacheth.” [TLH 611.1]
There is the rub; the Lord has handed His flock over to His under shepherd with explicit instructions. Jesus does not give His pastors exemptions and “passes” on co-existing with false and pernicious doctrine. Sins of the flesh (as Luther also called them), are to be borne with patience, admonition, love, and longsuffering. Sins of false teaching are to marked and avoided: period! Nowhere in God’s word are heterodox teachers to be tolerated until in “3,6,9,12…” years they can be voted out.
Your under shepherd understands fear; he lives with constant fear; paralyzing fear; weak faith, sinful fear. But as Luther prophetically once spoke, it is not good to go against ones conscience. The day is surely drawing near…when the under shepherd will say “come follow me…The Savior Speaks!” The under shepherd will leave the wolves for safer grass and cleaner water. Some sheep will follow, sadly, some will not. He who has ears to hear let him hear.
The only thing the under shepherd will take with Him, is the Word of the Lord; Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. The only thing the pastor will preach and teach is that Jesus is your loving Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier—in the flesh. Jesus lived a perfect life for your sinful daily walk. Jesus paid for your rottenness by substituting His holiness on the tree. Jesus now tabernacles with you in Word and Supper. That voice; that meal; comes at the hands of His under shepherd in the safety of His New Testament pasture; yes, the Church Catholic, but for you, at a particular parish that seeks by the power of the Spirit to hold to His pure and unadulterated Word and Institution.
Will the shepherd be clawed, chewed on, ripped open by wolf fangs and slaughtered? Quite possibly. That is what happens to shepherds; that is what happens to all Christian martyrs. We pray that such damage and carnage is inflicted by wolves and not by Judas goats. But, the Lord’s Will be done
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost