Sublime

“Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood” (Acts 20:28 NIV).

‘As for you, My sheep, the sheep of My pasture, you are men, and I am your God,’ declares the Lord God” (Ezek. 34:31). It is always incumbent upon the people of God to remember that he is not only their shepherd, but that he is the Lord God.

Examples of those wolves might be materialism, sensuality, pluralism, relativism, and the panoply of sins flowing from them. In a culture saturated with these destructive values, the sheep not only need to be warned about the dangers but equipped to stand against them.

The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling. The circumstances surrounding our lives are no accident: they may be the work of evil, but that evil is held firmly within the mighty hand of our sovereign God. . . . All evil is subject to Him, and evil cannot touch His children unless He permits it.

In Peter’s words to his fellow elders he reminded them that they were to shepherd the flock, “nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:3).

The theologian Paul Tillich declared that faith is “the state of being ultimately concerned.” He argued that because each person has something of ultimate concern that defines their life and identity, all people are religious—even the atheist. Every person has something in their life that functions as their god. For some, this god-function is occup